The mystery DNA recovered from a black glove found near Nancy Guthrie's Tucson home has produced no matches in the FBI's national database, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed Tuesday. A separate set of genetic material collected from inside Guthrie's home also came back empty.

Both samples were run through the Bureau's Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, which cross-references DNA evidence from crime scenes against profiles of individuals convicted of violent crimes and, in some states, any felony. Neither returned a hit.

Sheriff Nanos told Fox News:

"We're hopeful that we're always getting closer, but the news now, I think, is we had heard this morning that, of course, the DNA on the glove that was found 2 miles away was submitted for CODIS. And I just heard that, CODIS had no hits."

The results mark a significant setback in an investigation that has now stretched weeks without a named suspect or person of interest.

The glove and what it could mean

The black glove was discovered roughly 2 miles from Guthrie's million-dollar home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood north of Tucson, near the main highway running through the area, the NY Post reported. Authorities had previously said it appeared to be the same kind worn by a masked man captured on surveillance footage at Guthrie's house before her abduction.

That detail made it one of the most potentially significant pieces of physical evidence in the case. Authorities had already confirmed that the DNA found on the glove was different from the DNA collected inside the home, meaning investigators may be dealing with more than one unknown individual, or at the very least, more than one source of genetic material that doesn't belong to anyone in the system.

The glove was one of more than a dozen collected from the scene near the highway. Most of those, however, were determined to have been dropped by searchers participating in the initial hunt for Guthrie, according to the FBI. Whether any remaining gloves are still under examination is unclear.

No suspects, tens of thousands of leads

Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen on the night of January 31. In the weeks since, no suspects and no persons of interest have been publicly identified.

That is not for lack of volume. Sheriff Nanos said Monday that local law enforcement and the FBI are currently working through between 40,000 and 50,000 leads. The sheer scale of that number speaks both to the public attention the case has drawn and to the difficulty of narrowing the field when the physical evidence keeps pointing nowhere the system can follow.

A CODIS search typically takes about 24 hours once the FBI receives a DNA sample. The speed of the process only underscores the starkness of the result: the system worked exactly as designed and returned nothing.

Where the investigation stands

No CODIS match does not mean the DNA is useless. It means whoever left it has not been convicted of a qualifying offense in a jurisdiction that feeds into the federal database. The profile remains on file. If a future arrest produces a match, the connection will surface. But that is a passive mechanism, not an active lead.

For now, investigators are left with two distinct DNA profiles that belong to no one the system recognizes, surveillance footage of a masked figure wearing what appears to be the same type of glove recovered from the roadside, and a missing woman whose disappearance has generated an enormous volume of tips but no clear suspect.

The DNA was supposed to be the break. It wasn't. The investigation continues without one.