A ransom note demanding money in exchange for the return of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother was “carefully crafted” and included details not previously released to the public, according to people who have read it.
The note has taken center stage as authorities are still frantically trying to find Nancy Guthrie, 84, after her apparent abduction from her Tucson-area home. Her family has now made two heartfelt videos pleading with her suspected kidnappers to communicate with them.
Officials say they are taking the ransom note seriously, but still have not identified any suspects in the case. On Friday, the fifth day since Guthrie disappeared, Arizona news outlet KOLD reported it received a new note from the alleged abductor. The station did not report details from the new letter, but said that “the new note contains information the senders seem to think will prove to investigators they’re the same people who sent the first note.”
FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s officials confirmed they were aware of the message and said they are “actively inspecting the information provided in the message for its authenticity.” Members of a federal forensic task force were visible at the news station Friday afternoon.
It’s been years since such a high-profile abduction case, particularly one with alleged ransom demands, has captured the nation’s attention quite like this. Experts who work on such cases say Guthrie’s abduction appears to have been intricately planned, given the lack of DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene and how officials — even the nation’s top internet-based exploitation investigators — do not appear to have traced the ransom letter’s origin.
“Whoever did this came very prepared,” Tracy Schandler Walder, a former FBI agent who has been following the case, said on Instagram.
Two deadlines
Although the entire note has not been released, some details that were included have been shared publicly. The letter contained a first deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday and a second demand with a Monday deadline, said Heith Janke, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix division. He declined to say what, if anything, was requested at each deadline, or if there was a threat if the deadlines weren’t met.
Nancy’s son, Camron Guthrie, issued a video pleading with the kidnapper Thursday afternoon, around the time of the ransom letter’s first deadline.
“Whoever is out there holding our mother, we want to hear from you,” he said. “We haven’t heard anything directly. We need you to reach out and we need a way to communicate with you so we can move forward.”
Harvey Levin, founder of celebrity news website TMZ, has reviewed one of the three identical letters that were sent to media outlets and told CNN on Thursday that “the Monday deadline is far more consequential.”
TMZ reported receiving the alleged note earlier this week via email, and said the letter demanded millions in cryptocurrency for Guthrie’s release. Levin said Thursday night that TMZ had confirmed the bitcoin address was real.
The family and authorities are particularly worried because Nancy Guthrie has many physical ailments and requires a daily medication that she appears to be without. Officials said they haven’t yet received any proof that Guthrie is alive, but they are operating on that assumption — despite real concerns she could be dead.
“I’m fearful of that. I think we all are,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said. “This is Day 4 or 5 and still we don’t know that she’s getting her medication, and that could in itself be fatal.”
‘Carefully crafted letter’
Levin and a Tucson-area journalist, both who said they’ve seen the ransom note, offered a few additional details.
“This is a letter that really spells out precisely what they want done, what the consequences are if they don’t get what they want,” Levin said in another interview with CNN.
“They began the letter by saying that Nancy is OK, but scared,” Levin said, adding that it includes a line saying there will be no way to reply or contact the sender.
“They went to great lengths in sending this email to us in making sure that it stays anonymous,” he said. “It is a carefully crafted letter, and this is not something that somebody threw together in five minutes.”
Unique details
Law enforcement sources, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity, said the ransom note is being considered legitimate because it contained at least two details about Guthrie’s home that hadn’t been made public.
Janke, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix division, said that there were details about an Apple Watch and a floodlight, but declined to elaborate.
According to Levin, the note mentioned a specific detail about the Apple Watch, which he found to be key.
“That placement of the Apple Watch, if this is true, is something where they would immediately take this seriously,” Levin told CNN.
Mary Coleman, an anchor at KOLD-TV, added: “A lot of it is information that only someone who is holding her for ransom would know — some very sensitive information and things that people who were there when she was taken captive would know.”
Race against time
Authorities describe the investigation as a race against time.
“Right now we believe Nancy is still out there. We want her home,” Nanos said at Thursday’s news conference. A massive team of local and federal partners continue to work “round the clock” on the case, he said, including specialized agents with the FBI.
“There has been no proof of life,” Janke said. “…Time is of the essence.”
Although Guthrie is of sound mind, family have said she has physical ailments and uses a pacemaker.
“She lives in constant pain. She is without any medicine,” Savannah Guthrie said in the first video she posted to social media about her mother’s abduction, where she also appears to address the captors directly. “She needs it to survive and she needs it not to suffer.”
She begged for whoever took her mother to contact the family.
“We live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know, without a doubt, that she is alive and that you have her,” she said in the video shared on Instagram. “We want to hear from you, and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to us.”
FBI officials have said they are working with the family, but ultimately any decision about how to respond to the ransom demand is up to the Guthries.
Horace Frank, a former assistant chief of the Los Angeles Police Department who oversaw kidnapping investigations, said the family’s videos try to appeal to the captor’s humanity.
“You are trying to make it difficult for the those behind this,” Frank said. He said he’s glad the entirety of the note hasn’t been released, because the case becomes more difficult as more details are made public.
“If you give too much information, the problem is you could be compromising some of these deadlines,” Walder, the former FBI agent, said on Instagram.
While experts have called this case unique, both for its circumstances and the media involvement, it is not the first kidnapping and ransom scenario to fascinate the public.
In 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst was kidnapped. She was abducted from UC Berkeley by a small cadre of Bay Area militant radicals, who demanded her family pay to feed the poor en masse. Her parents complied with the ransom, but Patty Hearst remained with her captors. It’s now unclear, however, how much of that decision was hers, or the group’s, because she would go on to pledge her allegiance to her captors and their cause and even robbed a bank with them.
In 1963, Frank Sinatra’s son was kidnapped from a Lake Tahoe lodge. His family worked with the FBI to comply with a ransom demand for $240,000, and their 19-year-old son was released. The entire ordeal lasted just four days.
Several decades earlier, however, a ransom payment didn’t end well for the family of Charles Lindbergh, famed American aviator, whose 1-year-old son was kidnapped from his New Jersey home in 1932. The Lindbergh family ended up paying $50,000 through a mediator, but the baby was not returned as promised, and later found dead.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
