Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

FBI Reportedly Concludes All Nancy Guthrie Ransom Messages Were Fake

Billy Hathorn, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The FBI determined that all three reported messages tied to the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s elderly mother were fraudulent, Reuters reported Tuesday.

After 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished Jan. 31,  two ransom notes were reported back in February with a third most recent message allegedly knowing the kidnappers’ identity. The FBI recently assessed that none of the notes are “genuine,” an anonymous FBI official told the outlet.

The validity of the notes raise questions about whether Nancy Guthrie was taken for ransom, according to Reuters.

The FBI did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for additional comment.

“We don’t have any updates, other than this is still an active investigations,” Pima Country Sheriff’s spokesperson Angelica Carrillo, told Reuters.

The three ransom messages were delivered to different media outlets, along with TMZ.com, and were turned over to authorities for review, according to the outlet.

Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of NBC News’ “Today,” referred to the demands within video message with her siblings, wanting a direct line of communication with kidnappers and expressing wanting to pay for the ransom, Reuters reported.

Originally, FBI officials told Reuters that the two letters were from the same sender.

The first note demanded millions to be paid in cryptocurrency with deadlines of Feb. 5 and Feb. 9, according to TMZ. The outlet received another note last week, and the FBI discounted its authenticity.

The exact details of how investigators ruled out the notes as a fake are still unrevealed, Reuters claims.

The Guthrie family still has hope that their mother is alive and they’ll “never stop looking for here,”  Savannah Guthrie said in an Instagram post.