An Arizona couple stumbled onto a pair of blood-stained gloves and a rock marked with a dried blood droplet in the desert roughly a mile from the home of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC "Today" host Savannah Guthrie, who vanished on January 31 and has not been seen since.
The couple found the items on February 11, reported the discovery to authorities, and asked to remain anonymous. Investigators descended on the area off Campbell Avenue in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, questioned the couple, and then allowed them to leave.
Officials remained at the scene until 2 a.m. As of Saturday, the search for the elder Guthrie entered its 20th day.
The two gloves were found approximately ten feet apart, the NY Post reports that FBI officials collected at least one glove off the side of the road, roughly one and a half miles from Guthrie's home. Officials said the black glove appeared to be the same kind worn by an unidentified masked suspect captured on camera outside Guthrie's home on February 1.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department offered a measured response when pressed on the discovery:
"We cannot confirm at this time. Detectives and agents have collected multiple gloves from the area, and analysis is part of the investigation."
Several gloves have been found across the area, and DNA collected from other gloves has not matched any results in the FBI's database. Nor has any DNA evidence found inside Guthrie's home produced a match.
Twenty days in, and the forensic trail remains cold.
The timeline is thin but unsettling. Nancy Guthrie vanished on January 31. By February 1, surveillance footage captured an armed, masked individual outside her home. Then silence, until a couple hiking through the desert found gloves spotted with blood eleven days later.
Authorities have previously confirmed that DNA on a recovered glove differed from the DNA found inside Nancy's home, which raises more questions than it resolves. If the gloves belong to whoever was outside that house on February 1, the DNA mismatch means investigators may have biological evidence from a suspect. If they don't belong to that individual, detectives are sifting through noise in a case already short on signal.
There is something deeply unnerving about the disappearance of an 84-year-old woman from a quiet Tucson neighborhood that, three weeks later, has produced an armed masked figure on camera, scattered gloves across a desert landscape, and zero database matches. This is not a cold case gathering dust in a filing cabinet. This is an active investigation with physical evidence, federal involvement, and a family waiting for answers.
The FBI's presence signals the seriousness federal authorities attach to this case. That is worth noting. Local sheriff's departments handle missing persons cases every day. When the Bureau shows up to collect gloves off a desert road at two in the morning, the investigation has moved beyond routine.
For the Guthrie family, and for a community watching this case unfold in real time, every new piece of evidence carries the weight of hope and dread in equal measure. Blood on a rock. Gloves ten feet apart. An armed figure outside a now-empty home.
Twenty days, and the desert hasn't given up its answer yet.
