The second message arrived on February 6, 2026, four days after a first communication that had treated 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie as a living hostage whose release could still be purchased. That earlier note, sent on February 2 to Tucson station KOLD and other outlets, was addressed to her daughter, NBC Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie. It claimed Nancy was “safe but scared,” set a seven-day holding window, and demanded four million dollars in bitcoin by 5 p.m. on February 5, rising to six million if that ᴅᴇᴀᴅline was missed, with a final cutoff of 5 p.m. on February 9. If the money did not arrive, the writer warned, “she will be killed.”

The same letter told Savannah that her mother’s life was in her hands, forbade negotiation, and insisted law enforcement would be useless. It also offered details meant to prove the sender had been inside or immediately around the Catalina Foothills house: a white-banded Apple Watch on the bedroom floor at the foot of the bed, and a broken white floodlight in the backyard. Those particulars, later cited by investigators as one reason the pair of notes could not be dismissed out of hand, matched what family and detectives already knew about the scene. The second note abandoned the ransom. Addressed to the Guthrie family rather than to Savannah alone, it said the writers had not grasped how fragile Nancy’s health was, that they never intended to hurt her, that she “perished shortly after she was taken,” that they believed the cause was heart related, and that she was “buried in nature now.”

It added that nothing the family could have done would have changed the outcome, expressed hope they could find peace, and closed with “We are truly sorry.” Law enforcement sources later told NBC, CBS, CNN and the BBC that investigators regarded the two messages as potentially coming from the same person or group, and that the bureau and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department continued for months to treat at least some of the early communications as possibly legitimate even while other notes and texts were written off as crude extortion or hoaxes. The family answered the second note without quoting it.

In a video released on February 7, Savannah and her siblings said they had received the message and understood, then begged whoever had taken their mother to return her and said the family would pay. That public posture, and the later decision by local media to withhold the death claim for months at the request of police and the family, was designed to keep a channel open and to avoid poisoning public tips. By late June 2026 the contents had leaked widely enough that BBC News and other outlets reported the death claim in full. On July 31, as the case reached six months, the sheriff’s department itself released the texts, redacted where necessary, and asked anyone who recognized the writer’s word choice, syntax and phraseology to come forward. The notes remain one of the few documents that purport to describe what happened after Nancy Guthrie was last seen alive on the evening of January 31, when relatives dropped her at her Tucson-area home. She missed a virtual Sunday church service the next morning. She did not have her phone or her critical medication. Blood on the front porch was later confirmed as hers. A doorbell camera captured a masked, gloved figure who appeared to tamper with the device and to be carrying a pistol. Whether the person who wrote “buried in nature now” is the same person on that footage, whether the medical explanation is true, and whether Nancy Guthrie is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ at all are questions that, more than seven months later, official investigators still have not answered in public.

Source: BBC News