An expert on genetic genealogy has said that DNA collected from Nancy Guthrie’s property will help law enforcement find the person responsible for the 84-year-old’s disappearance.
CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon Nanolabs, said investigators can use the DNA that was recovered in a process called Investigative Genetic Genealogy, or IGG. That involves uploading information to a genealogy database to look for possible relatives of the person whose DNA was found at the scene and thus, identify possible suspects.
“I’ve been waiting for that to happen, just hoping that there would be DNA found that was not tied to any of the known individuals from the home because that will solve the case if nothing else does,” Moore said in an interview with NewsNation’s Brian Entin on his podcast, Brian Entin Investigates, on Sunday.
“It’s just a matter of time then. If they have that DNA, that person who left that DNA will be identified.”
Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Friday said investigators had collected DNA that does not belong to Guthrie or people known to have close contact with her from her home and are working to identify who it belongs to. “We are not disclosing where that DNA was located,” the department said.
Moore said this DNA is more important, in her view, to the DNA recovered from a glove about 2 miles from Guthrie’s property. The FBI said the glove appears to match those worn by a masked person outside her front door in Tucson on the night she vanished. The FBI said it received preliminary results from DNA testing on the glove and was awaiting official confirmation and quality control before submitting an unknown male profile to the FBI’s national database.
Law enforcement “have a reasonable belief that it could be from the crime scene” if they are considering inputting the information into the database, Moore said. “However, being two miles away, of course, I would obviously use great caution in coming to conclusions about who the suspect is just based on that alone,” she added.
The DNA from Guthrie’s home is “much more significant because we know that’s tied to the crime scene. Of course it still doesn’t guarantee that it is the suspect.”
Guthrie was last seen at her home on January 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities said they believe she was taken against her will and that her blood was found on the front porch.
This is a developing story. More to follow.
