Nancy Guthrie Update: The 11-Week Delay Investigators Are Still Trying to Explain

Nancy Guthrie has now been missing for more than seven months, and as the search enters its eighth, a retired FBI agent says the case's next breakthrough is more likely to come from a person than a lab.

The 84-year-old mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie vanished from her home in the Catalina Foothills area of Tucson, Arizona, in the early hours of February 1. Despite more than 13,000 tips logged in the case's first twelve days alone, no suspect has been named and no trace of Guthrie has been found.

Retired FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer told reporters this week that with forensic leads stalling, the case may only break when one of the people involved turns on the others to protect themselves - a pattern she says is common in cases that go this long without an arrest.

Part of the delay traces back to how evidence was handled early on. A hair recovered from Guthrie's home was sent by Pima County's sheriff's department to a private laboratory in Florida rather than directly to the FBI's facility in Quantico, Virginia - a decision that reportedly pushed back federal access to the sample by roughly eleven weeks.

The reward for information leading to Guthrie's recovery has climbed accordingly, doubling from $50,000 to $100,000 within the investigation's first two weeks.

Through more than seven months without answers, the Guthrie family has continued to lean publicly on their faith, with Savannah repeatedly thanking supporters for their prayers. Nancy remains a member of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Tucson, the same congregation that first noticed her absence.

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