‘When this is all done with, offer your critiques all you want, but right now we have work to do,’ Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said.
The Arizona sheriff investigating the disappearance of “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie’s mother confirmed that gloves were discovered in connection with the case and denied reports that he withheld evidence from the FBI.
There were “quite a number of them,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said during a Feb. 12 interview with KVOA-TV, referring to gloves that were found. “We don’t even know the true value of these gloves.”
He stressed that the focus is on trying to locate Nancy Guthrie, an 84-year-old grandmother who went missing in late January.
“When this is all done with, offer your critiques all you want, but right now we have work to do,” the sheriff told the outlet.
A report from Reuters, citing anonymous sources, claimed that Nanos was blocking FBI access to evidence in the case.
The FBI had asked the sheriff’s office for physical evidence in the case, including a glove and DNA, to be processed at the FBI’s national crime laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, but Nanos wanted to use a private lab in Florida, according to the report.
Nanos, in response to the Reuters article, denied those claims in the KVOA interview.
“Not even close to the truth,” Nanos said, emphasizing his department’s longtime partnership with the FBI. He confirmed that a private laboratory in Florida is analyzing DNA samples from the gloves that were obtained.
Nanos said that “the FBI just wanted to send the one or two they found by the crime scene, closest to it, mile, mile and a half.”
“I said ‘No, why do that? Let’s just send them all to where all the DNA exist, all the profiles and the markers exist,’” he said. “They agreed, makes sense.”
Authorities have said they believe Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will. She was last seen on the night of Jan. 31. Authorities say she takes several medications that are needed to sustain her life. Traces of blood, discovered on the woman’s front porch, were confirmed by DNA tests to have come from Nancy Guthrie, officials said last week.
