The FBI has determined that all three ransom notes tied to the suspected kidnapping of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie are not genuine, a finding that upends a central premise of the investigation and leaves her family without any verified communication from whoever took her.
Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, vanished from her home in northern Tucson, Arizona, in the early hours of February 1. A masked intruder appeared on her front steps in video recovered from her Nest doorbell camera. Six months later, no suspect has been named, no arrest has been made, and her whereabouts remain unknown.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department released two of the ransom notes publicly in July, hoping someone might recognize the sender's writing style. A retired Colorado detective who analyzed the notes identified a string of grammatical quirks she said could help narrow the field. But the FBI's conclusion that none of the notes came from the actual kidnappers casts that effort in a harsher light, and raises a harder question: if ransom was never the motive, what was?
Investigators did not simply dismiss the notes on a hunch. The Washington Examiner reported that the FBI deposited cryptocurrency into an account specified in the first ransom note as a direct test of its authenticity. The funds were never touched. That untouched deposit, combined with other investigative methods, led the bureau to conclude that none of the three notes, two from early February and a third received more recently, were genuine.
An FBI official told Reuters plainly: "None of the ransom notes are believed to be genuine."
Two of the fake letters are believed to share a common origin, though not from anyone connected to the actual disappearance. The third note, as the New York Post reported, claimed to know the identities of Guthrie's abductors, a claim the FBI now discounts entirely.
The disclosure did more than discredit the notes. Reuters observed that the finding "seemed to raise doubts about investigators' fundamental premise that Nancy Guthrie was abducted for ransom to begin with." If the people who took an 84-year-old woman from her home never bothered to collect a payment, the case may be something far different, and far darker, than a ransom kidnapping.
Before the FBI reached its conclusion, the Pima County Sheriff's Department had asked the public to scrutinize the notes' language for clues. Just The News reported that the first note was sent to CBS Tucson affiliate KOLD-TV on February 2, addressed to Savannah Guthrie, and claimed Nancy was alive and safe. The second note, sent February 6 to the Guthrie family, told a different story: Nancy had died unexpectedly due to pre-existing health conditions shortly after being taken and had been buried "in nature."
That second note included a passage that read, in part:
"We did not fully grasp the seriousness of her physical condition. We never intended to hurt her, that was not our intention. She perished shortly after she was taken."
Savannah Guthrie responded publicly, pleading with whoever sent the notes:
"We received your message and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us.... This is very valuable to us, and we will pay."
That plea now appears to have been directed at someone with no actual knowledge of her mother's fate.
Retired detective Lisa Miller, a former law enforcement executive at the Colorado Attorney General's Office, analyzed the two released notes for Fox News and identified a pattern of repeated grammatical quirks she said pointed to a single author. Miller noted comma splices, two sentences joined by a comma rather than separated by a period, running through both notes. She also flagged open compounds: "heart related" written without a hyphen, "smartwatch" split into two words, "floodlight" separated into two words.
The word choice stood out, too. The author wrote "perished" instead of "died" and used the phrase "buried in nature." The notes specified a ransom amount using both a dollar sign and the abbreviation "USD", an unusual doubling. Miller said these patterns, taken together, formed a kind of linguistic fingerprint.
Miller described the concept of "idiolect", a person's individual style of communication shaped by region, upbringing, and personal habits:
"Perhaps this idiolect, this personalized language is something that they've said based on religious upbringing, based on books they've read, maybe 'buried in nature' is something they utilize."
She urged the public to think about whether anyone in their circles used similar phrasing in speech or writing:
"Think about if you've heard someone in your group, maybe outside your orbit that you just encounter that uses this strange language, or if you're written a letter. If you see something in their writing or in an email where they're using these comma splicings, those are the things that are useful to ask people to look for."
Miller also noted that the note's author blamed the victim, a behavioral pattern she said was common among offenders trying to distance themselves from their own actions.
"They blame others. They blame, you know, the victim themselves. They distance themselves from that bad thing that they did."
Even with the FBI's determination that the notes are fake, Miller's linguistic breakdown is not necessarily wasted work. If two of the three notes share a common origin, identifying the author could still matter, both to clear false leads and to determine whether the hoaxer had any peripheral connection to the case or was simply an opportunist exploiting a family's agony.
Miller framed the public release of the notes as a pressure tactic, even before the FBI's findings were known:
"The bad guys can't help but look over their shoulder and wonder, are they onto me? Are they coming? And that pressure creates behavioral leakage that we're looking for and people around them might see."
The physical evidence in the case remains thin but significant. Breitbart reported that DNA testing confirmed blood found on Nancy Guthrie's front porch matched the 84-year-old woman. The FBI released two images recovered from her Nest doorbell camera, though investigators have not confirmed whether the images show the same person.
A Pima County sheriff's official was stationed outside Guthrie's home on February 14. Missing person billboards went up in Phoenix by February 6. Savannah Guthrie posted a photo of her mother to Instagram on August 1. The total reward pool has grown to more than $1.2 million.
None of it has produced an arrest. The FBI tip line, 1-800-CALL-FBI, and an anonymous tip line at 520-88-CRIME remain the primary channels for public information.
Authorities have not confirmed whether this case is a kidnapping for ransom, a kidnapping with some other motive, or something else entirely. The notes that once formed the backbone of the ransom theory have been discredited. No authentic communication from anyone holding Nancy Guthrie, or claiming responsibility, has surfaced.
The specific ransom amount demanded in the notes has not been publicly disclosed. The identity of a "mystery tipster" who reportedly emailed TMZ about the case has not been explained. And the most basic question, where Nancy Guthrie is, remains unanswered six months after she disappeared.
Someone took an 84-year-old woman from her home in the middle of the night, left her blood on the porch, and has said nothing real since. More than $1.2 million in reward money sits unclaimed. The people who wrote the fake ransom notes, whoever they are, wasted investigators' time and exploited a family's desperation. The people who actually committed this crime remain ghosts.
