Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos fired back on claims that he withheld essential physical evidence from the FBI in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.
“Not even close to the truth,” Nanos told NBC Tucson affiliate KVOA on Thursday.
The second-term Democrat pressed that he had been cooperating with his federal counterparts after Reuters revealed that evidence found in the high-profile investigation was being sent to a private DNA laboratory in Florida instead of the FBI’s national crime lab in Quantico, Va.
“Actually, 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.’ They agreed, makes sense.” Nanos told the outlet.
Nanos also noted gloves discovered by FBI investigators — and exclusively reported by The Post — may not be as important to the case as previously believed after multiple were picked up on the side of the road near the Catalina Foothills home of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie’s mother.
“We don’t even know the true value of these gloves,” he said, noting there were “quite a number of them.”
The garment seemingly resembled the gloves that a masked individual was wearing after being captured on video outside Nancy Guthrie’s home the night she disappeared on Feb. 1.
Federal investigators reportedly wanted to examine the evidence themselves instead of handing it over to Nanos’ teams.
“The FBI asked Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos for physical evidence in the case, including a glove and DNA from the home of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, to be processed at the FBI’s national crime laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, but Nanos has insisted instead on using a private lab in Florida,” an anonymous law enforcement source told Fox News Digital.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has spent approximately $200,000 to send evidence from Arizona to the lab in Florida.
The sheriff’s department maintains primary jurisdiction of the case but can request FBI assistance or federal investigators are legally prevented from taking part in the investigation.
Nanos was thrust into the national spotlight after Guthrie’s disappearance, assuming the role as chief spokesperson for the investigation.
“When this is all done with, offer your critiques all you want, but right now we have work to do,” Nanos told KVOA.
The timeline of the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom:
Nanos claimed that an FBI official told him during a Thursday meeting that, “we do not want the media to divide us,” according to KOLD.
The 50-year veteran officials took heat for attending a University of Arizona men’s basketball game in the middle of the search for Guthrie on Feb. 7.
Guthrie was last seen at her Tucson, Ariz., home on Jan. 31, when she was dropped off by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, after she had dinner with him and her daughter, Annie.
On Thursday, the FBI released new details about an armed individual captured on security video outside Guthrie’s home the morning she went missing, and upped the reward amount from $50,000 to $100,000 for information leading to an arrest or the discovery of Guthrie.
The unidentified suspect is believed to be between 5’9” to 5’10” tall with an average build.
The male, alleged kidnapper, was also wearing a black, 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack in the doorbell video, authorities added.
Federal officials also increased the reward for information leading to an arrest from $50,000 to $100,000.
“We hope this updated description will help concentrate the public tips we are receiving,” the FBI said after receiving over 13,000 tips regarding the missing elderly woman.
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