STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Savannah Guthrie, the co-host of the "Today" show, is again appealing to whoever took her mother.
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SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: You're not lost or alone. And it is never too late to do the right thing.
INSKEEP: That's her new post on Instagram about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. Investigators hope to find leads from DNA on a glove found about 2 miles from the Guthrie home in Arizona. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: The FBI says investigators had found about 16 gloves in the vast area around the house, but most turned out to belong to the people helping with the search, except for this one glove that was different. It was found in a field near the side of the road. And it appears to look similar to the gloves worn by the masked man caught on the doorbell camera video at Nancy Guthrie's house. The steps from here are to analyze the DNA and then run it through the national database managed by the FBI.
MARY ELLEN O'TOOLE: In that database contain the names of people primarily that have been convicted and incarcerated in different prisons throughout the United States.
SELYUKH: Mary Ellen O'Toole is a retired FBI agent who is now the director of the forensic science program at George Mason University.
O'TOOLE: All states contribute their DNA samples, which is what makes it so effective.
SELYUKH: So the search of the database might match a previously convicted person. Or it could also get no hits, and if that's the case, the next step might be genetic genealogy. Investigators might try to find relatives of the person with the DNA. Either way, after two weeks of very little progress shared on the case, O'Toole says this glove...
O'TOOLE: If it belongs to the offender, that's very significant.
SELYUKH: It could help identify someone or offer leads for further searches.
O'TOOLE: If this offender was taking off gloves, what else did they take off that might also be located out in the desert?
SELYUKH: Guthrie was discovered missing on the morning of February 1. She's 84 and the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie. Investigators say the man on the home surveillance video from the morning of Guthrie's disappearance is 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-10 in height with average build. And the FBI has doubled its reward to $100,000 for information leading to Guthrie's recovery or a conviction in the case.
Alina Selyukh, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF NANCY WILSON'S "ELEVATOR BEAT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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