Nearly five months after Nancy Guthrie disappeared, investigators still are searching for answers.
A new anonymous message has added another unexpected twist to one of the nation’s most closely followed missing-person cases.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, went missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona, in early February.
Since then, federal investigators, local authorities, forensic specialists and hundreds of volunteers have worked to determine what happened in the hours around her disappearance.
The probe has drawn national attention, but many of the most important questions still remain unanswered.
Now a new demand letter has once more put the case back in the spotlight.
Multiple reports say the anonymous message was sent to TMZ from the same email account used to deliver ransom communications related to the case. The sender says he has secret cell phone with information that could lead to identification of those responsible for the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.
One of the allegations in the letter is that there is a video of Nancy with the person the sender claims is the “main guy” involved in the alleged kidnapping. The message also says the phone has photos, names, addresses and other identifying information about two people believed to be connected to the case.
The sender demanded payment in Bitcoin in order to tell the location of the phone and give the password necessary to access its contents.
But none of the information has been validated by investigators, despite the dramatic claims.
The latest communication is being treated as investigative material rather than as verified evidence, officials said.
The message has been received by the FBI and authorities continue to look into every possible lead, but they ask the public not to assume the claims are accurate until investigators are finished with their review.
The latest communication adds to a number of other communications that have complicated the investigation.
The ransom notes saying that Nancy had been kidnapped were sent to family members and media outlets within hours of her disappearance. One note said she was alive, another that she had been taken from her home and had died by accident.
Law enforcement has never verified those claims and investigators have repeatedly said that the case is still active.
The authorities have continued to regard the communications as credible, because they contain information not available to the public at the time, and have been painstakingly evaluating whether they came from someone with a direct link to the disappearance or from somebody trying to interfere with the investigation.
Retired FBI investigators have observed that ransom communications frequently exhibit linguistic patterns that can be highly revealing.
Investigators often examine writing style, sentence construction, word choice, and recurring phrases which can help identify the sender or demonstrate relationships between multiple messages, rather than just the actual claims.
Forensic language analysis has become an important part of many complicated kidnapping investigations.
Nancy Guthrie vanished in the early hours of the morning after spending the previous night with family members.
Investigators have said evidence found at her home had previously indicated strongly that she didn’t leave of her own free will.
She left behind her phone, medications and other personal items at the residence and surveillance video reportedly showed a masked person tampering with the home’s security equipment before her disappearance.
Authorities have also confirmed that biological evidence found at the scene is consistent with Nancy, but have not released any other forensic details publicly.
Detectives have been reviewing surveillance footage, examining digital evidence, conducting forensic testing, and following up on hundreds of tips received from across the country since that time.
Officials said those efforts have not led to any arrests.
Savannah Guthrie has spoken publicly on a few occasions about the emotional toll that the investigation has taken on her family.
On a recent appearance on NBC’s Today she made an emotional plea to anyone with credible information to contact investigators.
She acknowledged the extraordinary difficulty of the uncertainty surrounding her mother’s disappearance while expressing gratitude for the continued work of law enforcement agencies and members of the public who continue to share information.
Authorities have also continued to call on people to stop disseminating unverified rumours on social media.
High-profile investigations draw false claims, fabricated tips and misleading online speculation that can drain valuable investigative resources.
Authorities are carefully following up on every credible lead but are urging the public to rely on verified updates from investigators, not anonymous posts on the internet.
People involved in kidnapping investigations say that anonymous messages demanding cryptocurrency are common in cases that get a lot of media attention.
Some messages eventually lead to real suspects, others are found to be hoaxes perpetrated by people seeking notoriety or financial gain.
The classification of a communication into a category requires a forensic analysis that is not ascertainable by reading its contents.
For that reason, investigators are still taking the latest demand letter with a grain of salt.
The claims might sound dramatic, but law enforcement officials have not verified the existence of the alleged hidden phone or the video described in the message.
Instead, they continue their investigation under established procedures designed to separate verified evidence from unsupported claims.
It’s almost 5 months since the investigation started and the public still has great interest in the case.
Friends, relatives and supporters are still hoping new evidence will eventually come to light on what happened to Nancy Guthrie.
But most of the key questions remain, for the moment, unanswered.
Authorities are still asking anyone with information about the case to contact the FBI or the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
Until investigators complete their review of the latest communication, officials said the public should treat the claims as allegations, not proven facts.
That last letter has generated a lot of interest, but the investigation is still aimed at the same thing: finding Nancy Guthrie, figuring out whether a crime was committed and who’s to blame, and giving her family the answers they’ve been seeking for months.