A veteran criminal profiler who has interviewed serial killers says the ransom demands tied to the abduction of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie read like the work of two different people, and neither one strikes him as the kind of person who would drag an elderly woman from her bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night.
John Kelly, a psychoanalyst and president of STALK Inc., told Fox News Digital that the two notes central to the case do not match the behavior of the suspect captured on doorbell camera footage the morning Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Catalina Foothills home in Tucson, Arizona.
His blunt assessment: the notes are not authentic.
Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, was taken from her home in the early hours of Feb. 1, 2026. A masked man armed with a gun appeared on her Nest doorbell camera that morning, wearing long sleeves, black gloves, and carrying a black Ozark Trail backpack available at Walmart. Blood was found at the doorstep. The camera appeared to have been tampered with.
At some point after the abduction, a first ransom note surfaced at local media outlets. It demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin, set a payment deadline, and, critically, included crime scene details not widely known at the time. It did not include proof of life.
A second note, details of which became public more recently, took a sharply different tone. A federal law enforcement source close to the case told Fox News that this note claimed Guthrie had died inadvertently after her abduction and that she was "buried with nature." Versions of the second note were sent to different media outlets.
Kelly said the gap between the two messages tells its own story. The first note, he said, is purely transactional, "strictly about the dollars, about the bucks." The second reads like someone trying to offer comfort. And that shift, in Kelly's professional judgment, does not add up.
"Bottom line is, I don't believe they're real. The first note is strictly about the dollars, about the bucks....Now when you get into the second note, you're talking about a kind of a different personality to me."
Kelly zeroed in on the word "intentional" in the second note, a word he called emotional, and one he would not expect from the type of person who commits a violent home invasion against an 84-year-old woman.
"Most of these guys are psycho, and going to do that, rouse an older woman out of her bed and haul her away like that bleeding all over the place...they're going to just want to get away from the problem as quick as possible. They're not going to be worried about leaving condolences."
That contradiction sits at the heart of Kelly's analysis. A suspect cold-blooded enough to force an elderly woman from her bed at gunpoint, leaving blood at the scene, would not then write a note expressing regret and offering a kind of emotional closure to the family. As Kelly put it, "This is a person to me that wouldn't know a feeling if they tripped over one."
Kelly also examined the doorbell camera footage recovered by Google and the FBI, which shows a single unidentified male of average height and build. What struck the profiler was the suspect's composure.
"I was watching his eyes on the video that we could get to see, I mean, I wasn't seeing normal blinking taking place. I wasn't seeing anxiety. Psychopaths are like that, they can be as cool as cucumbers. They don't feel a whole lot of fear...They just go about their business."
That behavioral read deepens the disconnect Kelly sees in the second ransom note. A person who shows no anxiety while committing a kidnapping is not the same person who would later write that a victim's death was not "intentional" and that she was "buried with nature", as though the family should find solace in that detail.
As Kelly told Fox News Digital, the note's attempt at consolation after what he described as "that whole horrific trial of removing Nancy and freaking torturing her emotionally right out of that house" does not fit the profile of the man on the video.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed or ruled out the authenticity of either ransom demand. They have also not ruled out the possibility that multiple plotters were involved. Only a single suspect appears on the doorbell camera footage, but the investigation remains open on that question.
Savannah Guthrie has addressed the ransom notes publicly. In a March interview with "Today" colleague Hoda Kotb, she acknowledged that multiple notes had arrived, and that most were likely fakes. But she drew a distinction between the noise and what she believes is real.
"There are a lot of different notes, I think, that came, and I think most of them, it's my understanding, are not real, and I didn't see them....But I believe the two notes that we received, that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real."
That puts Savannah Guthrie's own assessment at odds with Kelly's professional conclusion. She believes two of the notes are genuine. He believes neither is.
The family's anguish has been visible throughout. Savannah Guthrie has pleaded publicly for answers since the second note claimed her mother had died.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Heith Janke of the Phoenix field office sat down with Guthrie's adult children to record a video response to the first ransom note. The family has demanded proof of life before engaging further. The Associated Press reported that Savannah and her siblings explicitly cited concerns about manipulated voices and images, stating they needed confirmation their mother was alive.
Her brother Camron Guthrie said publicly: "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."
Nancy Guthrie has a pacemaker and heart issues, details that have added urgency to the family's appeals. DNA-confirmed blood was found on her porch. A combined reward of more than $1.2 million has been offered for information that cracks the case.
The investigation has not been without friction between agencies. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos pushed back against reports that his office withheld key evidence from the FBI. The Washington Examiner reported that Nanos denied the claims, saying the FBI agreed with his decision to send all collected evidence, including gloves found approximately a mile from the crime scene, to a Florida DNA lab for analysis.
"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 said. He called the claims of a jurisdictional power struggle "not even close to the truth."
Still, the sheriff's relationship with the Guthrie family has drawn scrutiny, and questions about evidence handling have lingered as the case stretches on with no arrest.
FBI agents and law enforcement officers conducted a door-to-door search of Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood on March 5, 2026. Pima County deputies had earlier examined a flyer taped to the mailbox outside her home on Feb. 23.
The ransom note landscape grew even more tangled when a third email surfaced. The New York Post reported that a ransom email sent to TMZ claimed multiple individuals were involved in the abduction and that the "main individual" had fled the United States. The email told investigators to "be prepared to go international." The anonymous sender explained contacting TMZ rather than law enforcement: "You don't trust me, and I don't trust you."
Unidentified DNA evidence was recovered from Guthrie's property and sent to a lab for analysis. The FBI doubled its reward to $100,000 and released a description of the armed suspect, approximately 5'9" to 5'10" with an average build.
The ransom notes have also yielded clues that investigators hope may advance the case, though concrete results have remained elusive.
At least one prior note was confirmed as a forgery from an impostor, adding to the fog surrounding which communications, if any, actually came from whoever took Nancy Guthrie from her home. The details of the notes themselves remain in dispute, with key facts still contested between sources.
Newsmax reported that Savannah Guthrie made an emotional public appeal rejecting any finality about her mother's fate. "We are in agony, and we cannot be at peace," she said. "We love our mom. We'll never stop looking for her." She added: "Somebody knows something."
Nancy Guthrie's body has not been located. The second note's claim that she was "buried with nature" remains unverified, a claim in an unverified note. No arrests have been made. No named suspects or persons of interest have been publicly identified beyond the masked figure on the doorbell camera.
The FBI continues to accept tips at 1-800-CALL-FBI. Anonymous tips can also be submitted to Tucson's Crime Stoppers affiliate, 88-Crime, at 1-520-882-7463.
Kelly's analysis raises a question the FBI has not yet answered publicly: if the ransom notes are staged, who wrote them and why? Were they the work of opportunists who saw a high-profile abduction and tried to exploit it? Or were they designed to mislead investigators, to buy time, create false leads, or manufacture a narrative that the suspect wanted authorities to believe?
The profiler's read of the doorbell footage, a calm, methodical figure showing no anxiety, paints a picture of someone who planned carefully. The ransom notes, by contrast, look sloppy and contradictory. One demands millions. The other offers condolences. Kelly sees two different hands at work, and neither one belonging to the man who took Nancy Guthrie.
An 84-year-old woman vanished from her bed months ago. The reward has climbed past $1.2 million. The notes keep coming. And the people paid to find answers still cannot say whether a single word in any of them is true.
