All of Nancy Guthrie Ransom’s letters have been reported to be fake

Federal investigators told Reuters this week that three warrants sent to the media related to Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapping were false and unrelated to the disappearance of Today host Savannah Guthrie’s octogenarian mother.

Two memos were sent to local media and to TMZ in the days after Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her Tucson-area home on January 31. The first note demanded two payments of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to an anonymous account on February 5 and February 9; The second note, published last week, indicated that the 84-year-old man had died and demanded a ransom. A third memo sent to TMZ last week claimed she knew the identities of Nancy Guthrie’s kidnappers and had a video of the “key man” involved in the kidnapping, as well as a video of the victim on the day of her death.

An unnamed FBI official told Reuters, “None of the ransom letters are believed to be real.” The news agency said it confirmed the office’s conclusions with a second agent.

To test the validity of the evidence, the FBI sent a small amount to the Bitcoin address provided. The source inside the office told Reuters that the money has not been touched yet. This fact, along with “other unspecified means”, led investigators – who took the lead on all the ransomware-related items and suspected elements from the local police – to conclude that the messages were fraudulent.

The FBI did not reveal to Reuters how it determined that the third message, which it said came from a different source than the first two, was fake.

The revelation that all three notes were hoaxes casts doubt on the kidnap-for-ransom theory about Guthrie’s disappearance. Reports of the notes were widely covered in the media, and Savannah Guthrie referred to them on her show during her pleas for information about her mother’s whereabouts and fate.

Nancy Guthrie was in frail condition and taking numerous medications to survive when she disappeared. On January 31, she spent the evening with her eldest daughter, Annie Guthrie, and her son-in-law.

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