What To Know
- Experts outlined three possible motives for the ransom note writers in Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
- The Pima County Sheriff’s Department released two ransom notes to the public six months after Nancy’s abduction.
- Savannah Guthrie, Nancy’s daughter, has offered a $1 million reward and continues to urge the public for information to help find her missing mother.
Ransom notes in Nancy Guthrie‘s case were recently released — and two experts detailed three possible motives of their writer(s) as Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie‘s mother remains missing six months later.
On July 31, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department released two ransom notes to the public. During an interview published on August 3, NewsNation’s Brian Entin discussed the ransom letters with James R. “Fitz” Fitzgerald, a retired FBI profiler and forensic linguist, and Fitzgerald’s wife, Natalie Schilling, also a forensic linguist.
“The first hypothesis is that the masked perpetrator who abducted and wrote the emails did it for kidnapping slash profit purposes,” Fitzgerald said on Brian Entin Investigates. “So the masked perpetrator also wrote these emails because it’s legitimate kidnapping, which are the rarest of the rare in the U.S. and even in North America. But that’s hypothesis one.”
A second theory he floated was that the masked perpetrator “did the abduction, wrote the emails, but it never was really a legitimate kidnapping.” He explained, “It was done as a smoke screen and a misdirection to throw off the investigators.”
The third hypothesis involved the masked perpetrator “had nothing to do with these two emails.” Fitzgerald explained, “He did the abduction for whatever reason, and someone else, an opportunist, undertook sending off these two emails,” which were received on February 2 and February 6.
Meanwhile, a forensic psychologist recently speculated that two different people wrote the ransom notes.
Nancy, 84, was last seen at her Tucson home on the evening of January 31. Although the Today host has offered $1 million on top of other reward money, and the FBI has released still images and video clips of a masked suspect on Nancy’s front porch, no suspect has been named in the investigation.
On August 1, Savannah issued a renewed plea to the public to share any information they might have that could help her family find closure.
“We will never stop looking for answers — and we will never stop looking for the light,” the NBC journalist, 54, vowed. “We will always be hoping and praying and believing in the best of our world — in spite of circumstance. This is what our faith makes possible. Please. Bring her home.”