Nancy Guthrie disappearance: Sheriff holds out hope 3 weeks in, citing no ‘proof of death’

The search for “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie’s missing mother, Nancy Guthrie, has entered day 18 as police are holding out hope that she is still alive. 

“They ask me, do I have proof of life? I ask them, is there proof of death?” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who is leading the search efforts, told Fox10 on Tuesday. “I’m going to have that faith, and sometimes that faith, that hope, is all we have. My team, 400 people out there in the field today, woke up this morning and went out there with the hope and the belief that they’re going to find Nancy.”

Guthrie, 84, was last seen by her family when they dropped her off at her home the evening of Jan. 31. A timeline provided by the police indicates that in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, Guthrie’s doorbell camera disconnected, and her pacemaker app later disconnected from her phone.

As rumors have swirled online about who could be behind Guthrie’s disappearance, authorities have cleared the Guthrie family of suspicion in the case.

“To be clear … the Guthrie family – to include all siblings and spouses – has been cleared as possible suspects in this case,” Nanos said in a statement this week. “The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case. To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel. The Guthrie family are victims plain and simple.”

Police also said Tuesday that DNA found on a glove near Guthrie’s home as part of the investigation produced no DNA matches.

“The DNA that was submitted to CODIS was from the set of gloves found 2 miles away,” the sheriff’s department wrote on X. “It did not trigger a match in CODIS and did not match DNA found at the property. The DNA found at the property is being analyzed and further testing needs to be done as part of the investigation.”

Authorities have not named a suspect, but they have released videos and images of an armed individual who appears to tamper with Guthrie’s front door camera on the night of her disappearance, as The Lion previously reported. The FBI has said the individual in the footage is a male, about 5’9 to 5’10 tall and of average build.

The longer the search has gone on, concerns have mounted about Guthrie’s health. She is a “vulnerable adult who has difficulty walking, has a pacemaker, and needs daily medication for a heart condition,” according to the FBI, which recently increased its reward for information related to the disappearance to $100,000.

Savannah Guthrie, both on her own and with her siblings, has spoken urgently to the abductor(s) in several video messages since the disappearance. 

“I just wanted to come on and say that we still have hope and we still believe, and I wanted to say to whoever has her or knows where she is, that it’s never too late,” the NBC host said in a video posted to her social media page Sunday night. “And you’re not lost or alone and it is never too late to do the right thing, and we are here, and we believe, and we believe in the essential goodness of every human being.”