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(NEW YORK) — Authorities said they’re looking into using genetic genealogy in the investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s mysterious abduction, and an expert says the cutting-edge technique could be the key.

While authorities may find Guthrie’s kidnapper through other avenues of investigation, “if they don’t, investigative genetic genealogy definitely will,” genetic genealogist CeCe Moore told ABC News.

Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, was kidnapped from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the early hours of Feb. 1 by an unknown suspect.

The FBI ran DNA from a glove found during a roadside search through the national criminal database known as CODIS, but did not get a match to any of the roughly 22 million samples in the database, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.

That glove — which was found about 2 miles from Nancy Guthrie’s house — also did not match DNA found at her property, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Moore, a former ABC News contributor, said, “I think we have to exercise a lot of caution in putting too much emphasis on” the glove.

“If it had had Nancy’s DNA, or had matched the DNA at the crime scene, obviously that would be different. But with it being found at such a distance, I always was a little hesitant to get too hopeful about that,” she said. “I think the DNA found at the home is far more compelling.”

While the DNA found at Nancy Guthrie’s property is still being analyzed, the sheriff’s department said on Tuesday that investigators are “looking into additional investigative genetic genealogy options for DNA evidence to check for matches.”

Genetic genealogy takes the DNA of an unknown suspect left behind and identifies the suspect by tracing the family tree through his or her family members, who voluntarily submit their DNA to a genealogy database. Genetic genealogy has been used to solve hundreds of cases since it was first implemented in the 2018 arrest of the “Golden State Killer,” a cold case that had stumped California law enforcement for decades.

“Just like in the hundreds of cases where we’ve been able to identify a violent criminal that couldn’t be found any other way, genetic genealogy has the power to do so through reverse engineering this individual’s family tree based on his DNA alone,” Moore said. “When you have this person’s DNA, you have so much information about their family tree at your fingertips. And so you can piece that tree back together … you just have to spend the time to look at all that information and sort through it.”

“So genetic genealogy often steps in and is successful when all the other leads have been exhausted,” she said.

In the Guthrie case, investigators “were very smart to start [pursuing genetic genealogy] early, and not wait for all those other leads to be exhausted,” Moore said. “Because if he’s not identified any other way, investigative genetic genealogy will definitely be the key — it’s really just a matter of time.”

And when it comes to that timeframe, Moore said, there are two factors: “the population group from which the person of interest descends — and luck.”

“Sometimes you just get lucky and somebody has a close relative in these very small databases,” Moore said.

“If the population group is one that’s not well represented, then that can make it extremely difficult. If the person has deep roots in the United States and primarily Northwest European ancestry, they may be identified in a matter of minutes or hours, because that’s the population group that’s best represented, and it’s also the one that we have the most information about being here in the United States,” she said. “If someone’s born in another country, or even as far back as their great-grandparents were immigrants, there’s far less representation in the databases that we’re able to use, and it’s also more difficult to work with records outside of the U.S.”

In the Guthrie case, law enforcement sources told ABC News on Wednesday that the FBI has reached out to Mexican authorities. There’s no evidence Nancy Guthrie was taken to Mexico, but it’s an avenue investigators are exploring given Tucson’s proximity to the border, the sources said.

If the Guthrie suspect’s parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents were born in Mexico, Moore said, “it will likely take longer.”

Moore said she predicts the genetic genealogy process in the Guthrie case “won’t take more than weeks, maybe months.”

“I have worked on cases for years. However, I don’t think this case will take that long because of the large amount of resources being dedicated to it. I would suspect the FBI genetic genealogy team would be brought in if it takes too long, and they have 200 agents,” she said.

Moore also noted that investigative genetic genealogy can be slowed due to law enforcement’s limited access to DNA profiles.

“There are over 50 million people who have taken direct-to-consumer DNA tests, but most of them are in the three largest databases, and those companies have barred law enforcement from using their databases for these purposes,” Moore said. Currently, law enforcement is limited to accessing three smaller databases, which combined have about 2 million DNA profiles, she said.

“I do expect that if [the Guthrie suspect] is not identified soon, then law enforcement very likely will serve a warrant on those bigger databases” to try to request access, she said.

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(TRUCKEE, Calif.) — The group of skiers involved in the deadly avalanche in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains on Tuesday includes parents, mostly mothers, of students at a local school and ski academy, according to a source involved in the search and rescue effort and a statement from the school.

“Multiple members of the Sugar Bowl Academy community and others with strong connections to Sugar Bowl, Donner Summit, and the backcountry community died in an avalanche on Tuesday, February 17, 2026,” a statement from the school said.

Sugar Bowl Academy is a private independent school boarding and day school designed for competitive skiers. 

A source involved in the search and rescue effort on the scene told ABC News that most of both the deceased and surviving victims of the avalanche are parents connected to the school.

The parents’ kids are on a winter break from school, according to sources familiar. 

Authorities have not publicly identified any of the victims.

Emergency responders “are still working to recover all of the victims and are not at this time sharing the personal details of the victims and the survivors out of respect for the families affected,” the school said in the statement. “Sugar Bowl Academy is similarly not sharing the names of the victims and survivors out of respect for the families affected.”

The statement went on to say, “Sugar Bowl Academy is focused on supporting its athletes, students, staff, and families through this tragedy. Most importantly, the Sugar Bowl Academy community will continue to be there in the months and years ahead for the families that have lost loved ones.”

The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office said earlier Wednesday that 15 people were part of the group of skiers who were caught in the avalanche on Tuesday at the end of a three-day guided trip.

Eight people are confirmed dead and one other person is still missing, but presumed dead, the sheriff’s office said. Of the dead and missing, seven are women and two are men. 

Six people survived the avalanche — four men and two women — and were rescued by crews after sheltering under a tarp for hours amid “highly dangerous” conditions, authorities said.  

The tragedy is the deadliest U.S. avalanche in 45 years, second only to an avalanche that killed 11 people on Washington’s Mt. Rainer in 1981.

A spokesperson for Nevada County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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(FULTON COUNTY, Ga.) — Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, are renewing their effort to have the 2020 election files seized from their election office last month returned, arguing that a recently unsealed search warrant application falls “woefully short” of establishing probable cause of a crime. 

In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for Fulton County argued that the FBI agent behind the search warrant application “intentionally or recklessly omitted material facts” about purported discrepancies in the 2020 election in Georgia, after the Justice Department last week released the sworn affidavit that was the basis for the search warrant.

“Despite years of investigations of the 2020 election, the Affidavit does not identify facts that establish probable cause that anyone committed a crime,” Tuesday’s filing from Fulton County said. 

FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from Fulton County’s Elections Hub and Operations Center after obtaining a search warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, despite Georgia officials auditing and certifying the results and courts rejecting numerous lawsuits challenging the election’s outcome.

FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the sworn affidavit that following the 2020 election “there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia” and that “Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County.”

Fulton County filed a motion earlier this month seeking the return of the records, and revised its request in light of the recently unsealed affidavit. They argue that the FBI’s investigation focuses on “human errors that its own sources confirm occur in almost every election … without any intentional wrongdoing whatsoever.”

“The Affidavit omits numerous material facts — including from the very reports and publicly-disclosed investigations that the Affiant cites — that confirm the alleged conduct was previously investigated and found to be unintentional,” the filing said. 

Attorneys also argued that the FBI’s witnesses are unreliable and that the FBI failed to disclose information that would discredit its own witnesses. 

“The Affiant failed to include facts — including from the very sources he cited — that shut the door on even the faintest possibility of probable cause,” the filing said. 

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(FULTON COUNTY, Ga.) — Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, are renewing their effort to have the 2020 election files seized from their election office last month returned, arguing that a recently unsealed search warrant application falls “woefully short” of establishing probable cause of a crime. 

In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for Fulton County argued that the FBI agent behind the search warrant application “intentionally or recklessly omitted material facts” about purported discrepancies in the 2020 election in Georgia, after the Justice Department last week released the sworn affidavit that was the basis for the search warrant.

“Despite years of investigations of the 2020 election, the Affidavit does not identify facts that establish probable cause that anyone committed a crime,” Tuesday’s filing from Fulton County said. 

FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from Fulton County’s Elections Hub and Operations Center after obtaining a search warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, despite Georgia officials auditing and certifying the results and courts rejecting numerous lawsuits challenging the election’s outcome.

FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the sworn affidavit that following the 2020 election “there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia” and that “Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County.”

Fulton County filed a motion earlier this month seeking the return of the records, and revised its request in light of the recently unsealed affidavit. They argue that the FBI’s investigation focuses on “human errors that its own sources confirm occur in almost every election … without any intentional wrongdoing whatsoever.”

“The Affidavit omits numerous material facts — including from the very reports and publicly-disclosed investigations that the Affiant cites — that confirm the alleged conduct was previously investigated and found to be unintentional,” the filing said. 

Attorneys also argued that the FBI’s witnesses are unreliable and that the FBI failed to disclose information that would discredit its own witnesses. 

“The Affiant failed to include facts — including from the very sources he cited — that shut the door on even the faintest possibility of probable cause,” the filing said. 

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