Reward for Nancy Guthrie Doubles to $202,500 as Confusion Persists Over Polygraphs and Border Leads

An anonymous donor has doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of the kidnapper, or kidnappers, of Nancy Guthrie, as the search for the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie entered its 18th day. The donor pledged $100,000 to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Wednesday, increasing the combined total of the Tucson Crime Stoppers’ reward and the FBI’s payout to $202,500, authorities said. Meanwhile, Fox News, citing data from Google Trends, reported that there were searches for Ms. Guthrie’s Tucson address and Savannah Guthrie’s salary between June 21 and June 28, 2025. Also on Wednesday, NewsNation reported that authorities had previously administered polygraph tests to “clear people” in the Nancy Guthrie case. However, Embattled Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told FOX News that the tests were performed on Wednesday for new hires and were not connected to the Nancy Guthrie investigation. NewsNation reporter Brian Entin later clarified in a post on X that the polygraph tests he was referring to had occurred earlier and not on Wednesday. Last week, the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department worked closely with private sector partners to recover footage and images that were initially believed lost after Ms. Guthrie’s doorbell camera was disconnected hours before her family reported her missing on February 1. The footage was recovered despite Ms. Guthrie not having an active subscription to the service. The FBI has reached out to federal law enforcement in Mexico to alert them of Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance after authorities came to believe Ms. Guthrie may have been taken across the border sometime well after the kidnapping but not directly following it, TMZ reported. So far, Border Patrol cameras and “other electronic devices” have not yielded any corroborating evidence that Ms. Guthrie or her alleged abductors had crossed the border.However, local law enforcement officials told NewsNation’s Mr. Entin that Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance did not show any indications of “cartel involvement.”Mr. Nanos had previously denied that Ms. Guthrie had been transported over the border.On Tuesday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced that the DNA recovered from a glove recovered about two miles away from the home of Nancy Guthrie does not match non-Guthrie family DNA found at her home. The separate DNA samples from the glove, which matched the one the masked suspect was seen wearing in recovered surveillance footage, and the home also failed to produce any hits in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a national database of DNA of people who are arrested or are otherwise compelled to give samples. Investigators are now turning to investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG, which uses public genealogy databases to match relatives to DNA evidence recovered from crime scenes. IGG was notably used to arrest and convict Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo for 13 murders and multiple rapes that for decades remained unsolved. It was also used to identify Bryan Kohlberger, the killer in the 2022 University of Idaho murders.But IGG can take anywhere from 20 minutes to more than seven-and-a-half years to yield a definitive analysis of the DNA, a genetic genealogist, Cece Moore, told CNN on Wednesday. “If I was the Guthrie family, I would be begging AncestryDNA, 23andMe and MyHeritage to allow this profile to be compared against their databases,” Moore said. “I don’t believe they will allow it, unless they are served with a warrant,” Ms. Moore told CNN host Kaitlan Collins. In previous investigations, law enforcement has worked with so-called “armchair detectives” – private citizens who aren’t bound by legal restrictions on use of private genealogy databases and can flout the platforms’ policies. Once the armchair detectives identify a potential suspect, law enforcement will often retrieve discarded items — like dental floss or cigarette butts — to obtain a DNA sample and pursue the case from there.FBI agents in recent days have visited several gun stores throughout the Tucson area, showing employees lists of names and photographs to determine whether any of the individuals had recently visited or patronized the store. However, TMZ reported Wednesday that the FBI “did not get any leads” from the stores it contacted.TMZ also reported it had received a new ransom demand worth upwards of $6 million in a different cryptocurrency that wasn’t bitcoin, unlike previous ransom notes the online news site received. TMZ added that the latest ransom note “graphically” described the consequences if the ransom isn’t paid.Mr. Nanos said that authorities were speaking with Google to recover more video footage from other Nest cameras located on Ms. Guthrie’s Tucson property. Google gave Mr. Nanos a sobering answer: “We don’t think we can get anything, but we’ll try.”“We’re hopeful,” Mr. Nanos told Mr. Entin on Tuesday.

Reward for Nancy Guthrie Doubles to $202,500 as Confusion Persists Over Polygraphs and Border Leads

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