A Former FBI Agent Says She Received Four Nancy Guthrie Ransom Emails in April and Never Replied to Them

A former FBI agent said she received four ransom emails in April tied to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, messages she reported to the bureau and believes were sent by people trying to exploit the case rather than by the abductors.

Jennifer Coffindaffer, who also appears as a commentator on NewsNation, told Newsweek the notes arrived over two days at a personal email address, demanded bitcoin, and included an image she described as generated to look like Guthrie. "I never responded to any of them," she said. She came forward after learning that a neighbor of the family, Lauren Serpa, had posted a note on Facebook with a nearly identical image. "That's the reason I wanted to come forward because I was concerned that now other people might be contacted and might fall for the ploy," Coffindaffer said.

Newsweek reported the sequence. One email, at 12:37 p.m., demanded 25 bitcoins and carried a Bible reference and the same image. It read, "No one sees Mrs Nancy Guthrie without me, I need 25 BTC to bring Mrs Nancy Guthrie back home within 12 hours, she's alive." A later message the same day, at 3:52 p.m. on April 10, repeated the 25-bitcoin demand. A fourth, at 11:26 a.m. the next morning, again cited scripture, lowered the figure and included a QR code. "I need 2 BTC urgent instantly into this bitcoin wallet account address," it said. Coffindaffer said the wallet addresses in her notes matched those in Serpa's. Newsweek said it had not verified that match.

The emails sit on top of a case that has not produced a suspect. Guthrie, 84, the mother of NBC's Savannah Guthrie, was taken from her home in the Catalina Foothills near Tucson on Feb. 1. A masked person appeared on a Nest doorbell camera around that time, described as 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 10 inches, medium build, carrying a black Ozark Trail backpack. The FBI released images. It has not said they identify the person. Two notes sent to news outlets in the first days, one demanding bitcoin and a later one saying she had died, have not been authenticated. A text brought to the task force on Sept. 28 was ruled not credible. Derrick Callella, 42, was sentenced in August to 10 years of probation for fabricated extortion demands sent to the family. The FBI has said other ransom messages remain under investigation.

Coffindaffer has argued since the spring that the early theory was a kidnapping for money. "What were they looking at at the beginning? Kidnapping for ransom, kidnapping for ransom, that was the entirety of the theme," she told Newsweek. "That's why they had the family go on television, making social media posts, making this plea, that's why they orchestrated all of that." Savannah Guthrie, in a Feb. 16 video, addressed whoever was holding her mother: "You're not lost or alone, and it is never too late to do the right thing. We are here. And we believe. And we believe in the essential goodness of every human being."

The family has offered $1 million. The FBI has offered $100,000. Tips go to 1-800-CALL-FBI or Tucson Crime Stoppers at 520-88-CRIME. Luke Daley, detained and released without charge after a Feb. 13 stop near the house, was booked Sept. 30 on drug and weapons counts the sheriff's department called unrelated. No one has been charged with the abduction. Guthrie has not been found.

Four emails in April, two months after the disappearance, do not restart the clock. They show what a public case attracts. A demand that drops from 25 bitcoins to 2 in a day, sent to a commentator's private address and to a neighbor, is the pattern of a scam that borrows an image and a name. Coffindaffer reported them and did not pay. The bureau has not said the April notes are the February ones. Eight months on, the question the family is still asking is not who emailed a former agent. It is where Nancy Guthrie is.