FBI Confirms All Three Nancy Guthrie Ransom Notes Are Fake, Upending the Case's Central Kidnapping Narrative

TUCSON, Ariz. — The FBI has determined that all three ransom notes circulated in connection with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of "Today" show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, are fraudulent, a bombshell development first reported Tuesday by Reuters that strips away the central kidnapping-for-ransom narrative that has dominated five months of public coverage and family appeals.

An anonymous FBI official told Reuters the FBI assessed the authenticity of two ransom notes reported in early February, just days after Guthrie vanished, and a third, more recent ransom note that claimed to know the identities of her kidnappers.

"None of the ransom notes are believed to be genuine," the FBI source told the publication.

A second law enforcement source familiar with the matter confirmed the FBI's assessment that the ransom notes were not genuine. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, and the FBI did not elaborate publicly on the specific methods used to reach its conclusions.

The revelation fundamentally reshapes the publicly understood picture of what happened to Nancy Guthrie after she was last seen at her Tucson, Arizona, home on the night of Jan. 31. The Guthrie family, responding to what they believed were genuine communications from kidnappers, made repeated public pleas to the alleged abductors in the weeks following her disappearance, with Savannah Guthrie telling them in one video message posted to social media, "we will pay." Those appeals, posted alongside her siblings Camron and Annie Guthrie, were premised on the assumption that the ransom demands were real and that Nancy Guthrie was alive in the custody of those who had taken her. The FBI's determination that all three notes were fabricated removes that premise entirely.

The first note, reported by TMZ, demanded a sum of cryptocurrency in the millions, setting two deadlines for payment on Feb. 5 and Feb. 9. TMZ also reported receiving nearly a dozen emails from the same man, with the first email sent just days after the abduction, saying he would divulge information in exchange for one bitcoin. The following day, the same sender wrote again saying time was "no longer of the essence," suggesting Nancy had died after being taken to Mexico.

According to the FBI official who spoke to Reuters, investigators determined that the first two notes originated from the same sender, though the methods used to establish that connection were not disclosed. To test the authenticity of the first note and potentially identify those responsible, the FBI deposited a small amount of cryptocurrency into the account specified in the message. Those funds remained untouched and were never withdrawn, a finding that became a key piece of evidence supporting the conclusion that the sender had no actual connection to Guthrie's disappearance.

The second note claimed Guthrie had died and was "buried in nature," sources close to the investigation told NewsNation's Brian Entin. That note, which was sent to KOLD, the NBC News affiliate in Arizona, had previously been described by NBC News as potentially credible, citing three people familiar with the situation. The FBI's determination that it too was a fabrication represents a significant reversal from how the correspondence had been characterized in media coverage over the preceding weeks.

The third and most recent note was an email sent to TMZ claiming the sender possessed video evidence of the alleged abductor and of Guthrie on the day of her death, along with information that could identify the kidnappers. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos had publicly expressed skepticism about that communication before Tuesday's FBI determination, voicing doubt about its authenticity on a local radio station shortly after it surfaced.

"People who call in fake ransom notes, people who claim for the sake of media and the family, they get out and disturb, in this case, an entire neighborhood," Nanos said.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department, which is leading the overall investigation in coordination with the FBI, declined to comment directly on Tuesday's findings. Sheriff's spokesperson Angelica Carrillo referred all questions about the ransom notes to federal authorities and confirmed only that the investigation remains active.

"We don't have any updates, other than this is still an active investigation," Carrillo said. She added that DNA samples and video evidence collected during the investigation remain under forensic examination.

With the ransom note narrative now formally closed by the FBI's determination, the case returns its focus entirely to the physical evidence collected at the scene of Guthrie's disappearance. Authorities have confirmed that blood found on the front porch of her Tucson home belonged to her based on DNA testing. Surveillance footage recovered from a doorbell camera, retrieved from corrupted backend server data after the camera itself was tampered with, showed a masked individual approaching the property in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, shortly before Guthrie's pacemaker app recorded a disconnection from her phone at 2:28 a.m. A separate piece of DNA evidence, recovered from a glove found near the home that resembled the one worn by the masked figure in the footage, failed to match any profile in the FBI's national CODIS database, prompting investigators to pursue genetic genealogy testing as an alternative path toward identification.

No suspects have been publicly named or arrested in the case. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to Guthrie's location or to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. The Guthrie family separately offered an additional $1 million reward, bringing the total to $1.1 million. Neither the FBI nor the Pima County Sheriff's Department has publicly confirmed whether Guthrie is believed to be alive, and Savannah Guthrie herself has acknowledged the possibility that "she may already be gone" while continuing to hold onto hope publicly.

The case has drawn national attention for months, driven in large part by Savannah Guthrie's visible public role as a sitting anchor at one of American television's most watched morning programs. Her repeated on-air appeals for information, continued even as she maintained her professional duties at the "Today" show, kept the case in the public eye throughout the investigation's most active stretch, including during Tuesday's broadcast when she again referenced the family's $1 million reward and described the ongoing ordeal as one of "agony."

With all three ransom notes now formally dismissed as fabrications, investigators face the sobering challenge of pursuing a case that has produced significant physical evidence, including blood, video footage and a DNA sample, but has yet to yield a named suspect or confirmed account of what happened to an 84-year-old woman nearly five months after she vanished from her home in the early hours of a February morning.