The San Francisco forensics lab that assisted in the conviction of Gilgo Beach killer Rex Huermann is now believed to be helping in the suspected abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie, in Tucson, Arizona, FOX News reports.

Huermann pleaded guilty earlier this month to the killing of eight women between 1993 and 2010 on Long Island after facing groundbreaking DNA evidence collected by rootless hair samples.

"I am pretty confident that they will want to use the lab that they have been extremely successful with, which is Astrea," said CeCe Moore, one of the nation's leading genetic genealogists at Parabon Nanolabs in Virginia, via FOX News. "[DNA Labs International] has been working to refine their own rootless hair analysis, but I haven't seen any successful cases from them yet."

Last Thursday (April 16). ABC News reported that the FBI reportedly received and is now analyzing potentially critical DNA from Nancy Guthrie's home. DLI, a private Florida lab that has worked alongside the Pima County Sheriff's Department, reportedly sent a DNA sample from Guthrie's home to the FBI in recent days and the agency is using new technology to conduct advanced analysis in order to finally identify a lead in the 84-year-old's suspected kidnapping, which took place on February 1, according to the sources.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos recently told a Neighborhood Watch group that it could take six more months for the sample to be identified as the strands need to be separated and isolated. Nanos also said as many as five other labs around the U.S. were working on the Guthrie case, though it wasn't immediately clear which ones nor what their roles were. About two dozen investigators from Pima County and the FBI are reportedly still working on the active Guthrie case.

Multiple purported ransom notes were sent since her disappearance. Savannah Guthrie made her return to the TODAY Show's anchor desk hours before the new ransom notes were sent to TMZ on April 6. The FBI had released doorbell camera footage of an armed and masked man outside her home on the morning she was reported missing.

The bureau described the man in the footage as being 5 feet, 9 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches with an average build.

Armstrong & Getty