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A missing 84-year-old mother of a famous TV morning show anchor; droplets of blood and a mysterious white van; a ransom note sent to a celebrity news website; no suspects; a city surrounded by desert near the US-Mexico border; frustrated investigators; and a concerned US president.
It is for all these reasons that the astonishing case of the missing Nancy Guthrie has captivated US public attention in a six-day mystery that still has no resolution. It leads the US news and dominates the headlines, fusing crime and celebrity together in ways not seen since OJ Simpson or the Lindbergh baby.
The Pima county sheriff’s department, which covers Tucson, Arizona, says that Guthrie, mother of Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, was last seen at 9.48pm on 31 January when she was dropped off at her single-story home after dining and playing games with her daughter Annie and husband Tommaso Cioni. At 9.50pm the garage door closes.
Then, at 1.47am, Guthrie’s Ring doorbell camera disconnects. At 2.12am, the software detects movement, perhaps a person, on camera. But there’s no film because the account wasn’t set up. At 2.28am, Guthrie’s pacemaker app disconnects from her phone. The following day, at 11.56am, the family checks on Guthrie after she missed church: she is missing.
At 12.15 a patrol car arrives. The Ring camera is missing. Guthrie’s phone and Apple watch are in the home. There are blood droplets on the porch, later confirmed as hers. Authorities have been searching for her since, warning that she has “some physical ailments, has some physical challenges, and is in need of medication”.
It might have been a missing person’s case were it not for three ransom notes received via email by the celebrity news site TMZ and two Tucson-area outlets, KOLD and KGUN, that included a demand for millions in Bitcoin, two deadlines and details about the crime scene.
Heith Janke, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix office, said details about an Apple Watch and a broken floodlight were included in the alleged notes. The FBI has said it does make recommendations when a ransom is received, and “any action taken on any ransom is ultimately decided by the family.”
In a tearful appeal posted to Instagram, Savannah Guthrie, who had to cancel her assignment to report from the winter Olympics and was flanked by her brother and sister, described their mother as “funny, spunky, and clever”, saying: “Momma, if you’re listening, we need you to come home. We miss you.”
To her mom’s presumed captors, she said: “We need to know without a doubt that she’s alive and that you have her.” She asked for “proof of life” and addressed the possibility of people creating deepfakes. “We live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated.”
FBI’s Janke said: “With AI these days you can make videos that appear to be very real. So we can’t just take a video and trust that that’s proof of life because of advancements in AI.”
Criminal activity and its motivation may be relatively similar across eras, but advances in technology have changed how they are conducted and resolved. The Guthrie case is both old-fashioned – a ransom note sounds almost quaint – and what might have once been a demand for a suitcase of cash in non-sequential, used, small-denomination bills at a drop-off is now a transfer of cryptocurrency.
In December, the FBI warned that people posing as kidnappers can provide what appears to be a real photo or video of a loved one, along with demands for money. In this case, Guthrie is missing, presumed abducted. Investigators won’t say if there was a forced entry to the home and say they believe Guthrie is “still out there”.
Pima county sheriff Chris Nanos told reporters: “We have no suspect, no persons of interest.”
A neighbor of Guthrie’s has reported seeing a white panel van nearby in the days before Guthrie went missing. A clue perhaps? Nanos said on Friday authorities won’t hold another news conference until there’s major news. “It’s pretty pointless to just keep hounding the same things over and over,” he said.
Bryanna Fox, a former FBI profiler and professor of criminology at the University of South Florida who has previously appeared on NBC’s Today show with Savannah Guthrie, says the case is indeed perplexing.
“I’ve never seen a case where the ransom notes were sent to the media and the family’s response was not done at a press conference but posted on Instagram,” she says. “The ransom itself was not asked for as cash in a bag, and we can’t even rely on the ransom is real and proof of life is real because of artificial intelligence.
“And all of it – Bitcoin, AI, TMZ and Instagram – wrapped together in a conversion of pop culture things,” Fox adds.
Then, naturally, there is a political fringe to it. Almost as soon a Guthrie’s disappearance became public, there was speculation online of involvement of the Mexican cartels operating the border. Had Guthrie tipped off would-be abductors when she invited Today cameras in her mother’s home months ago?
Or could it be related to anger at the media in the age of Donald Trump?
But the TV anchor Guthrie is one of the most politically neutral in the business – the friendly face to whom millions of TV viewers wake to weekday morning. She became co-anchor of Today in 2012 after serving as both White House correspondent and as a legal analyst and correspondent.
Trump called Guthrie to offer his support and posted on social media that the federal government is making available “all resources to get her mother home safely. The prayers of our Nation are with her and her family.” Guthrie thanked Trump for taking the time to call her family.
On Thursday, a California man was charged with sending text messages to the Guthrie family seeking bitcoin after following the case on television – but there is no indication he is connected to the case. TMZ founder Harvey Levin speculated that the kidnapper or kidnappers could still be in the Tucson area and described the purported ransom email as “very specific” and “well-organized”.
Levin told Fox News’s Sean Hannity: “The letter begins by saying she is safe, but scared, and they go on to say she knows exactly what the demand is.” He said the Bitcoin address is real, and the ransom note was not AI generated. “This is not a letter that was thrown together in a couple of minutes.”
Nanos, meanwhile, has said he’s not ruling anyone out. “We’re actively looking at everybody we come across in this case. Everybody. It would be irresponsible if we didn’t talk to everybody.
“The Uber driver, the gardener, the pool person, whoever, everybody. It’s so cliche, but everybody’s still a suspect in our eyes. That’s just how we look at things and think as cops.”
The ransom note or notes, says Fox, is the strongest piece of evidence for investigators to decode, but she points out that more than 100 people confessed to the Lindbergh baby snatching in 1932.
During Fox’s training at the FBI’s Quantico headquarters, her FBI intake were tasked with analyzing the ransom note left at the scene of another famous case, that of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996. “You get so much information about who could have done this, their motivation, is it legitimate?”
In the Guthrie case, she points out, investigators can’t know that the note is real because it wasn’t left at the scene.
“So we’re already starting out with doubt,” Fox says. “The question is, are there details in the letter that only a kidnapper could know, because you never know what detail is going to become critical. People get frustrated with the police, but their only goal is find her [Nancy Guthrie] alive. They don’t care about the public’s insatiable interest in crime.”
