The sheriff leading the search for Nancy Guthrie has admitted it could take “years” to find her, as the hunt to find the mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie enters its third week.
With no arrests made and no suspects identified despite a massive two-week search involving police, the FBI, and promises of support from President Trump, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confessed to finding the case “exhausting.”
“It’s exhausting, these ups and downs. But we will keep moving forward,” Sheriff Nanos told the New York Times on Friday.
“Maybe it’s an hour from now. Maybe it’s weeks or months or years from now. But we won’t quit. We’re going to find Nancy. We’re going to find this guy,” he added.
The sit-down was the sheriff’s first media appearance in several days, but he offered no new information about potential suspects.
Sheriff Nanos, who has been criticized for the investigation, did say that investigators had found DNA belonging to someone not in close contact with Nancy at her home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood north of Tucson.
DNA tests are also being run in a lab on two gloves found about two miles from Nancy’s home, Nanos noted.
The Post exclusively reported about one of the gloves being recovered by FBI evidence specialists.
He said he had “no way” of knowing whether the gloves were the same ones worn by a masked man seen in footage recovered from her doorbell camera on the night she was abducted.
Some 400 people are now on the case, and investigators are still “looking hard,” Sheriff Nanos said, as he reiterated his certainty that they would find Nancy and her abductor.
On Friday night, investigators descended on two locations close to Nancy’s home, shutting down a residential street and swarming a gray Range Rover at a nearby Culber’s parking lot.
The vehicle was photographed heavily by investigators before being towed away.
At least four people were reportedly detained following the joint Pima County SWAT team and FBI mission, but none have so far been confirmed as suspects in Nancy’s disappearance.
Officials are still awaiting forensic results from Friday’s operation, but “no sign of Nancy was found,” Sheriff Nanos said on Saturday.
The FBI increased its reward from $50,000 to $100,000 this week for information leading to the location of Nancy or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.
Investigators have also deployed a high-tech bluetooth scanner placed on the bottom of a helicopter to try and detect Nancy’s pacemaker signal.
The pacemaker lost connection with the corresponding app on Nancy’s iPhone at around 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 1, roughly five hours after she was last seen by her family when she was dropped off by her son-in-law, Tommasio Cioni.