As the search for Nancy Guthrie continues, former FBI special agent Jen Coffindaffer says Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie and other family members should be upset by the handling of the DNA evidence.
Coffindaffer sounded off on her True Crime podcast on Saturday, April 18, reflecting on reports that a private Florida lab that was working with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department had recently sent a DNA sample to the FBI to make use of the bureau’s advanced analysis technology.
“When I read that, I just shook my head,” Coffindaffer said in the podcast episode. “If Florida didn’t have [advanced technology] they never should have had it, the sample. They should have never done it that way. They should never [have sent] it down there. In fact, it should have gone straight to the [FBI] lab from the onset. And I’ll tell you this, I guarantee the FBI agreed to do that.”
Nancy Guthrie-Some important new developments need explained. https://t.co/gavqGD9R98
— Jennifer Coffindaffer (@CoffindafferFBI) April 18, 2026
On February 13 — less than two weeks after Nancy, Savannah’s mother, was reported missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona — Reuters reported that the FBI had asked Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos for physical evidence in the case, including DNA, so that evidence could be processed at the bureau’s national crime laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, but the sheriff had insisted on using a private lab in Florida.
In Coffindaffer’s assessment, there was no reason to “waste 70-some-odd days and not have it at Quantico if [the FBI has] always had the most advanced sophistication in a particular technique that would have assisted in this case.”
Reuters also reported that Nanos had explained that the Florida lab was working on the Guthrie case on a pro bono basis, and Coffindaffer thinks there was a financial reason for the Florida lab to send the DNA to the FBI after all.
“Seventy-seven days is a long time to do something pro bono,” she said. “And I think that that’s a factor we’re not hearing about. Nobody wants to talk about that.”
She went on: “The fact that they’re saying the FBI has this advanced technology — they would have always had it. So that really should irk everyone off, that the sample didn’t go there, because they would have always had the advanced technology and expertise. … Knowing that they had that technology, [that] really should have the Guthrie family and anybody who cares about justice for Nancy upset, because that is not tracking at all.”
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