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TUCSON, Ariz. — More than a dozen volunteers turned out to search for evidence in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills neighborhood Sunday, three weeks to the day after the 84-year-old’s suspected abduction.
The search came a day after Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said DNA recovered from the scene had not yet led police to a suspect in the kidnapping of the mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie.
In an interview with her network, NBC, that aired Saturday, he said a mixed sample could take weeks, months or up to a year to unravel at the Florida lab where he sent the evidence.
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Other DNA has already been processed. Blood on the front porch traced back to Guthrie. The lab also tested a suspicious glove recovered about two miles from her home, which authorities said appeared similar to those worn by a masked suspect on Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camera.
The glove provided no answers — it did not match any known criminals in the FBI’s CODIS database and did not match any other samples recovered inside the home.
Sources told Fox News Digital over the weekend that the mixed DNA inside Guthrie’s home has so far provided only a partial profile, which was insufficient to check against CODIS.
However, genealogy experts tell Fox News Digital that investigative genetic genealogy, another tool in the DNA toolbox, relies on different genetic information and may still be viable from the same piece of evidence.
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CODIS relies on short tandem repeat (STR) testing, which compares 20 genetic markers against the federal database to seek a direct match. IGG, also known as FGG or forensic genetic genealogy, tests for hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP or “snip”) markers, a completely different aspect of DNA to find ancestral ties.
“It is possible to deconvolute a mixed sample and get a profile, but it’s really hard to get a profile into CODIS,” said CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon Nanolabs and a leading expert in the field. “It has to be practically perfect.”
If the sample doesn’t have a complete STR profile, there may be no CODIS hit. As a result, SNP sequencing is more effective on degraded or incomplete samples.
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“You could absolutely use that same sample to create a snip profile,” Moore told Fox News Digital.
And while SNP profiles have only recently been accepted in court, partial STR profiles can be used to get an arrest warrant, even when they are not eligible for CODIS, she said.
“If you’re comparing 13 markers, or just 10 markers, you can still compare them,” she said.
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With few official updates, volunteers stepped out over the weekend to take the search into their own hands. Among the items they found were a black glove, possibly similar to others found in the case, and a backpack that did not match the description of what authorities say a suspect was wearing.
A little over a dozen volunteers met shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday, broke up into groups of two to four and split up into different parts of the neighborhood. Organizers declined to let Fox News Digital see the map they’d marked up.
“I just feel like if it was my mom or anybody in my family that was missing, I’d want somebody to come out and search and try to help find her and bring her home,” said Christi Wiggins, a volunteer who drove in from Phoenix Sunday morning to help out.
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The volunteers were looking for clues tied to a masked suspect, who may or may not have acted alone. Earlier in the investigation, the FBI released doorbell camera video showing a masked man on her front porch. Notably, according to the bureau, he was wearing a black Ozark Trail brand hiking backpack.
“I’m nervous, I’m kind of scared, I am unsure, but I’m also, I have a lot of energy to get out there and hopefully, you know, help locate anything to help find her,” said Katherine Montanez, another searcher.
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Volunteers found a SwissGear brand backpack Sunday, about 2.8 miles from Guthrie’s home, which a Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said appeared unconnected to the case.
The glove was closer to Guthrie’s address, around 2.3 miles away at the intersection of First Avenue and East Camino Alberca. But the spokesperson said search crews had not reported it as of early Sunday evening.
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Organizers did not respond to an email about the search Monday morning.
The glove turned up near the home where a search warrant had been served on Feb. 13 in connection with the case. That warrant did not result in any charges, however.
A woman living across the street told reporters that police had already canvassed her neighborhood for Ring camera video. She said she turned over what she had but did not believe it showed anything significant.
Sheriff Nanos said over the weekend that investigators were working to confirm the other items the suspect was seen wearing.
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Back at Guthrie’s home, a pair of women from a group called Madres Sonoras Desaparecida, or Sonoran Mothers of the Missing, went onto the property briefly with a shovel and a length of rebar.
Several streamers taking video with their phones followed them onto the grounds before a deputy asked them all to leave.
Anyone with information is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Fox News’ Olivianna Calmes contributed to this report.
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