A ransom note was sent days after Nancy Guthrie’s abduction claiming her death, sources said
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The ransom note was sent days after the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC Today Host Savannah Guthrie said the 84-year-old has died, CNN and other news organizations reported Monday, citing law enforcement sources.
NBC, which hired Savannah Guthrie, also reported the contents of the letter citing three people familiar with the matter.
Some media outlets reported finding ransom notes linked to the case in the days after Guthrie disappeared in early February from his home outside Tucson but did not identify him as missing.
CNN reported Monday that one of the notes revealed that Nancy Guthrie was dead — and that her captors did not intend to kill her, but that she died shortly after she disappeared. CNN said it knows the contents of one such note, and that a Tucson TV station has received two notes.
CNN and the station have agreed to stop sharing the contents of the notes publicly so that any future communication with the kidnapper or kidnappers can be verified, CNN reported.
NBC reported that after the second note was found, Savannah and her siblings posted a message on Instagram saying they had received the note and that they understood it.
“We received your message and we are listening,” said Guthrie sitting next to his brother and sister. “We are asking you to return our mother to us so that we can be happy with her. This is the only way we will have peace.”
NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie told her mother’s potential captors, Nancy Guthrie, on Saturday that the family is willing to pay for her safe return.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on the contents of the note. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
And the Guthrie family did not make any new social media posts or any public comments about the notes Monday.
Authorities believe Nancy Guthrie was abducted, kidnapped or taken against her will after blood was found near the front door of her home in the hills outside Tucson. The FBI later released surveillance videos showing a masked man on the porch that night.
In two videos released by the FBI on Tuesday, a masked man who appears to be armed is seen tampering with a doorbell camera at the home of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie who is believed to have been kidnapped ten days ago. FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in an X post accompanying the photo that it was taken the morning of her disappearance.
Volunteers and search teams scoured the nearby desert area filled with cacti, trees and rocks in the weeks after it disappeared.
A group of volunteers recently searched for his body near the Arizona-Mexico border but did not report finding it.
