Five months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was taken from her Tucson, Arizona, home, the FBI still calls her case a kidnapping for ransom, yet a prominent criminologist says the bureau's own evidence gives it no reason to believe a single ransom note in the case is genuine.
Dr. Casey Jordan, a behavioral analyst who appeared on NewsNation, put the problem bluntly: not one note has come with proof that anyone holding Guthrie is actually behind the demands. No proof of life. No proof of death. Nothing that ties the writers to the crime itself.
The assessment lands at a moment when the FBI appears caught between two positions. The bureau has already dismissed some notes as "extortion attempts without legitimacy," while insisting others "are still being investigated" as potentially real. One man has already pleaded guilty to sending a fake note. And law enforcement sources have privately told reporters that the FBI does not believe any of the notes are legitimate, even as the bureau stops short of saying so publicly.
That gap between what investigators apparently know and what they are willing to say out loud is exactly what Dr. Jordan flagged.
Dr. Jordan's core point was direct. She told NewsNation:
"The No. 1 reason, and this is probably 90% of it, is that nothing, no communication is offered, any proof of life, proof of death, evidence of anything."
She added that without such evidence, "there is no reason to believe that they're real," and characterized the FBI as "just kind of hedging their bets."
That hedging has a practical explanation. Law enforcement sources have indicated the FBI's investigative report on the ransom notes is not yet complete. Until it is, the bureau apparently does not want to make a definitive public ruling. But as the weeks stretch into months, the absence of any verifiable contact from whoever took Guthrie tells its own story.
The Washington Examiner reported that the FBI tested the notes' authenticity by depositing cryptocurrency into an account specified in one of the demands. The funds were never touched, a strong signal that whoever wrote the note had no connection to the actual abduction. All three ransom notes, the Examiner reported, are now believed to be fake and unconnected to the real kidnappers.
The timeline of notes paints a picture of opportunism, not organized crime. Nancy Guthrie was reported abducted on February 2. Within days, a pair of notes, traced to the same IP address, arrived at the family's doorstep and at news outlets.
The first note claimed Guthrie was safe and demanded $4 million in bitcoin. The second reversed course entirely, claiming she had died and been buried "in nature," and offered what was described as a rambling apology for her accidental death. Two contradictory claims from the same sender. Neither accompanied by evidence.
Separately, Derrick Callella sent a fake ransom note to Guthrie's daughter, Annie Guthrie, and son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, just days after the abduction. Fox News reported that Callella was expected to plead guilty in federal court for sending the fraudulent texts. A criminal complaint was filed in Arizona federal court, and Callella did plead guilty. His note was not linked to the February 2 ransom demand sent to local media and TMZ.
A California man ultimately received probation for his role in sending a fake ransom note to the Guthrie family, a sentence that may strike many as remarkably light for someone who exploited a family's worst nightmare.
Then, roughly a month before the FBI's latest statement, yet another note surfaced, this one sent to TMZ. The sender claimed to possess a phone containing a video from the day Guthrie "supposedly died," along with pictures, names, and addresses of two alleged kidnappers.
"I have a phone stashed in a secure location guaranteeing both the information it stores and the safety of the phone."
The sender offered to hand over the phone's password for one bitcoin. TMZ alerted the FBI after receiving the email. Whether that sender was ever identified or charged remains unclear.
The bureau's public statements have evolved in ways that merit scrutiny. FBI Phoenix posted on X that the case "continues to be investigated as a kidnapping for ransom case." In the same statement, the bureau acknowledged that some notes had been "deemed to be extortion attempts without legitimacy."
That framing left room for the possibility that other notes might be real. But the AP reported that the FBI discounted some notes as fraudulent extortion while still evaluating others, a posture that tracks with Dr. Jordan's description of an agency hedging rather than leveling with the public.
Earlier in the investigation, the FBI had taken a markedly different position. Just The News reported that the bureau had previously confirmed to news outlets that at least one ransom note was believed to come from the actual kidnapper. That assessment now appears to have been walked back, representing a significant reversal in the bureau's evidentiary position.
The shift matters. If the FBI once treated a note as credible and later determined it was not, the public deserves a clear accounting of what changed, and whether the earlier assessment led investigators down a false trail during the critical early days of the case.
As we have previously reported, the FBI's conclusion that all three notes were fake effectively upends the kidnapping-for-ransom theory that has framed the entire investigation. If no genuine ransom communication ever existed, the motive behind Guthrie's disappearance remains a complete unknown.
Nancy Guthrie, an 84-year-old grandmother with a reported heart condition, has now been missing for five months. There are no known suspects. No proof she is alive. No proof she is dead. And every ransom note that promised answers has turned out to be, at best, the work of strangers looking to cash in on a family's agony.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who spearheads the local investigation, described the fake ransom notes as a "shame." That word barely begins to cover it. The sheriff had earlier flagged the latest note as likely fake even before the FBI's formal assessment, one of the few moments in this case where local law enforcement appeared ahead of the federal bureau.
The Guthrie family has endured not just the disappearance of their matriarch but a parade of cruel hoaxes. Savannah Guthrie, Nancy's daughter and a prominent television journalist, posted a social media video in early February pleading directly with whoever might be holding her mother: "We received your message and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us.... This is very valuable to us, and we will pay."
That plea went unanswered by anyone with actual knowledge of Nancy Guthrie's fate. The people who did respond were fraudsters.
As the months have passed, the family has been left with silence from the people who matter and noise from those who don't.
Several questions remain unanswered. Was the TMZ note sender ever identified? What specific charges did Callella plead guilty to, and what was his stated motive? Are the paired notes from the same IP address connected to Callella's note or entirely separate? And perhaps most importantly: if the FBI now believes none of the notes are genuine, why does it continue to publicly describe the case as a "kidnapping for ransom"?
The label matters. It shapes how resources are allocated, how leads are prioritized, and how the public understands what happened. If the ransom framework has collapsed, the bureau owes the Guthrie family, and the public, a frank reassessment of where this investigation actually stands.
Dr. Jordan's assessment may be uncomfortable for the FBI, but it is hard to argue with. When every note is either proven fake, untouched by the supposed kidnappers, or devoid of any evidence linking it to the crime, the reasonable conclusion is not that the case might still be a ransom situation. The reasonable conclusion is that someone took an 84-year-old woman from her home, and five months later, the people responsible have never said a word.
Families deserve answers. The FBI's job is to provide them, not to hedge.
