Six months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson, Arizona, home, the Pima County Sheriff's Office has released two ransom notes in full, including one that claims she "perished shortly after she was taken" and is now "buried in nature."
The sheriff's office made both letters public on Friday, pulling back the curtain on documents that had been held as evidence since early February. The first note, received by Arizona television station 13 News on February 2, demanded $4 million in bitcoin and threatened to kill Guthrie's mother if the family did not pay. The second, received four days later, abandoned the ransom demand entirely and instead offered an apology, claiming the 84-year-old had died of a heart-related condition soon after her abduction.
Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC Today host Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her Tucson home on February 1. No body has been recovered. No one has been charged. And the case, now half a year old, has produced more questions than answers, along with a $3.25 million notice of claim filed against the sheriff and his department by two men who were arrested, held for hours, and released without charges.
The first ransom note, addressed directly to Savannah Guthrie, laid out a rigid payment schedule. It demanded $4 million in bitcoin by 5 p.m. on Thursday, February 5. If the family missed that window, the price would jump to $6 million, due by 5 p.m. the following Monday. The note warned that if neither deadline was met, Nancy Guthrie would be killed.
The letter included details apparently meant to prove the writer had access to Guthrie's home, referencing a white smart watch on the floor at the foot of her bed and a destroyed white flood light in the backyard. It included a bitcoin address, which the sheriff's office redacted before releasing the document. The Daily Mail published the full text of both notes after the sheriff's office made them available.
The note's tone was blunt and transactional:
"You will not be able to contact me from here on out, there will be no negotiation. Do not play games, law enforcement will not be able to help you."
Four days after that first letter arrived, a second note landed at the same television station. Its tone was entirely different.
Addressed to the "Guthrie Family," the February 6 note contained no demand for money. Instead, it claimed the writer "did not fully grasp the seriousness of her physical condition" and that Nancy Guthrie had died shortly after being taken. The note attributed her death to a heart-related event.
"She perished shortly after she was taken. We believe it was heart related. She is buried in nature now. Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome. We want your family to know this and hope you all can find peace. We are truly sorry."
The second note still included a bitcoin address, redacted in the public release, despite making no payment demand. Both letters were turned over by 13 News to the Pima County Sheriff's Office and the FBI. As earlier reporting on the first ransom note detailed, the documents have been central to the investigation from the start.
The FBI has confirmed it is treating the case as a kidnapping for ransom. AP News reported that while several ransom notes have been received over the course of the investigation, some have been dismissed as extortion attempts. Others are still being evaluated as potentially legitimate.
That distinction matters. A California man named Derrick Callella, 42, of Hawthorne, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony harassment for sending fake ransom notes while impersonating a kidnapper. His plea deal calls for five years of probation rather than the maximum two-year prison sentence. Formal sentencing is set for September 10. But Callella's conviction does nothing to resolve the underlying case, Nancy Guthrie's whereabouts remain unknown.
Within days of the ransom notes arriving, authorities moved fast. On February 10, officers arrested Carlos Palazuelos, a food delivery driver, near the Mexican border in Rio Rico, Arizona. He was questioned for roughly seven to eight hours. His home was searched. He was released without charges.
That same day, Daniel Maddox was handcuffed at a home belonging to his mother, Josefina Maddox. He was detained for several hours, then released. A third, unnamed man was arrested on February 13 during a traffic stop near Guthrie's Tucson neighborhood. He, too, was released. Officers also raided a home that night and questioned three additional people inside.
None of these encounters produced charges. But according to a notice of claim filed Monday by attorneys for Palazuelos, Maddox, and Josefina Maddox, the damage was already done.
The filing, a required first step before a full lawsuit under Arizona law, names Sheriff Chris Nanos, an unnamed detective, Pima County, and the sheriff's department as respondents. It seeks $2.5 million on behalf of Palazuelos, $500,000 for Maddox, and $250,000 for Josefina Maddox, totaling $3.25 million.
The claim paints a stark picture. It alleges Palazuelos was arrested "at gunpoint" in a public manner and held without probable cause. It says officers "ransacked" his home, damaging his front and back doors. Palazuelos later told Telemundo outside his home that he had nothing to do with Guthrie's disappearance and that agents told him he resembled someone captured on surveillance footage.
Maddox's account is similarly forceful. The filing alleges armed men in military-style gear pointed guns at him and ordered him to lie on the floor of his hallway. He was then kept "under guard" inside a van for several hours. His mother claims her property was damaged during the search. An unclaimed $1.2 million reward in the case has drawn attention to the narrow pool of suspects, and to the pressure investigators face to produce results.
The notice of claim also targets a social media post Nanos made after Palazuelos's arrest, in which the sheriff wrote: "The subject is currently being questioned in connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation." The claimants' attorneys say the post and other statements from the sheriff's office portrayed Palazuelos as a suspect "despite there being no evidence to justify that characterization."
"Despite requests by undersigned counsel, Sheriff Nanos and the PCSD have refused to retract their statements or to make clear that Carlos is innocent and had no involvement in the Guthrie case."
In an interview with ABC 15 released Thursday, Sheriff Nanos pushed back against the suggestion that the released men were in the clear. Earlier statements from his department had suggested exactly that, that the detained men and the three others questioned during the home search were no longer under suspicion. But Nanos appeared to reverse course.
"Because we didn't make an arrest, or released some people, doesn't mean they're cleared. It just means that we don't have enough to hold you."
He declined to specify whether detectives were still investigating the two men named in the notice of claim. But he insisted the case was far from cold. A four-day delay early in the investigation may have cost authorities critical doorbell camera footage, a setback the FBI has acknowledged.
"We have gathered a lot of evidence in this case and I wish you knew it, I wish the community could know all of the evidence, but that's just not how investigations work."
Nanos added that new information could surface at any time. "The evidence we've obtained, who knows, maybe a day from now, a month from now, a year from now, somebody might call in and say, 'Oh you missed this.' And guess what? We'll go back."
The Pima County Sheriff's Department marked the six-month anniversary of Guthrie's disappearance with a statement posted to X, noting that "the analysis of DNA and digital evidence has been underway for the past six months" and calling the work "complex and time-intensive." The department urged anyone with information to come forward. As our earlier coverage of the six-month milestone detailed, investigators have leaned heavily on that DNA and digital review as their primary line of effort.
On Monday, Savannah Guthrie broke a weeks-long public silence about her mother's case. In an Instagram video, her first public statement since an emotional June 23 broadcast from the NBC anchor desk, the Today host was direct.
"Nothing about our situation has changed. We have done our part. We will never stop looking for her."
The FBI has said it believes at least one of the ransom notes demanding millions of dollars came from the actual kidnapper. A second note, whose authenticity has not been confirmed, is the one claiming Nancy Guthrie died. The gap between those two assessments is where the investigation sits: somewhere between a kidnapping and a death notification, with no body, no charges, and no resolution.
The Washington Examiner reported that the second note was sent from the same IP address as the first ransom demand, a detail that could bear on whether the same person or group authored both letters. CNN and a Tucson television station were reportedly aware of the note's contents but withheld publication at law enforcement's request to aid authentication efforts.
Meanwhile, Savannah Guthrie has continued her professional obligations even as the case drags on without answers, a public endurance that has drawn sympathy from viewers across the country.
The case sits in a difficult place. Investigators say they have gathered significant evidence but cannot share it. The men who were arrested say they were wrongly detained and publicly smeared. The ransom notes, now public, tell two contradictory stories: one of a calculated kidnapping for profit, the other of an accidental death and a guilty conscience. And an 84-year-old woman remains missing.
Sheriff Nanos faces a notice of claim alleging his department violated the rights of people it could not charge. His own statements about whether those individuals have been cleared have shifted. The FBI continues to work the case but has offered little public detail beyond confirming the kidnapping-for-ransom framework.
When law enforcement arrests citizens at gunpoint, searches their homes, broadcasts their names in connection with a high-profile crime, and then releases them without charges, the public deserves a clear accounting. Six months in, the Guthrie family deserves answers. So do the men whose lives were upended. Right now, nobody is getting either.
