A ransom note tied to Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance says she died shortly after she was taken from her home outside Tucson, according to reports citing law enforcement. Authorities have declined to discuss the note’s contents, while search efforts have continu
The foothills outside Tucson went quiet after Nancy Guthrie disappeared in early February. Now. new information circulating through the case points to a darker outcome: a ransom note tied to her disappearance is being reported to say the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie died shortly after she was taken.
Multiple media outlets, including CNN, are reporting that the note’s contents indicate Guthrie was dead and that the kidnappers did not intend to kill her. CNN reported Monday that it knew the contents of one such note, and that a Tucson TV station had received two notes.
For now, the words on the page are staying off public view. CNN said it and the Tucson station agreed to hold off on sharing the contents so any future communications with the kidnapper or kidnappers could be authenticated.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on the note’s contents. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment, and the Guthrie family did not make any immediate social media posts or public comments about the notes Monday.
Authorities believe Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped, abducted, or otherwise taken against her will after blood was found near the doorstep of her home outside Tucson. Later, the FBI released surveillance videos showing a masked man on the porch the night she vanished.
In the weeks after her disappearance, volunteers and search teams scoured nearby desert terrain filled with cactuses, bushes, and boulders. A volunteer group recently conducted a search for her body near the Arizona-Mexico border but did not report finding her.
The sequence of reported facts has left investigators and family members facing a cruel possibility: even as searchers looked outward. the case’s communications appeared to point to what happened soon after Guthrie was taken. With authorities refusing to discuss the note’s contents and the family keeping silence. what remains clearest is the stakes—whether the next message comes. what it might confirm. and how authentication will be handled in a case already marked by uncertainty.
Nancy Guthrie Savannah Guthrie ransom note Tucson Pima County Sheriff’s Department FBI disappearance