TUCSON, Ariz. — After weeks of anguish and dead ends, the search for missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie is taking a high-tech turn: investigators are now using investigative genetic genealogy on DNA recovered from gloves linked to the kidnapping — the same modern tool that helped identify suspects in some of America’s most notorious cases.

Authorities say the unknown male DNA profile taken from gloves found roughly two miles from Guthrie’s home produced no match in CODIS, the FBI’s national criminal DNA database — a setback that initially threatened to freeze momentum. Instead, it appears to have triggered a pivot: genealogical analysis can work even when a suspect has never been arrested, by tracing partial matches to distant relatives through opt-in databases and then narrowing to individuals by age, location, and other records.

Investigators have also said additional DNA evidence from inside the home is being examined, raising hopes that multiple biological traces could be compared and separated — a painstaking process that can determine whether evidence belongs to the victim, household contacts, or an outside intruder.

The public pressure is rising alongside the science. Guthrie’s family has issued renewed pleas for tips as detectives rebuild the timeline around Feb. 1, when surveillance imagery showed a masked figure at the door wearing gloves similar to those later recovered.

Genetic genealogy is not instant magic — it can take time, depend on DNA quality, and raise privacy debates — but it is often the tool used when everything else fails. For a case now defined by silence, that is what makes this moment so volatile: a single strand of DNA may finally point to a name — and expose how close the kidnapper has been hiding in plain sight.