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A ransom note sent days after the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC Today show host Savannah Guthrie, said the 84-year-old had died, CNN and other news organizations reported Monday, citing law enforcement sources.
NBC, which employs Savannah Guthrie, also reported the contents of the note citing three people familiar with the matter.
Some media outlets had reported receiving ransom notes tied to the case in the days after Guthrie’s disappearance in early February from her home just outside Tucson but did not reveal she was no longer alive.
CNN reported Monday that one of notes revealed that Nancy Guthrie was dead — and that those who kidnapped her did not mean to kill her, but that she died shortly after her disappearance. CNN said it knew the contents of one such note, and that a Tucson TV station had received two notes.
CNN and the station agreed to hold off on sharing the contents of the notes publicly so any future communications with the kidnapper or kidnappers could be authenticated, CNN reported.
NBC reported that after that second note was recieved, Savannah and her her siblings posted the Instagram message that said they had received the note and that they understood.
“We received your message and we understand,” Guthrie said, seated alongside her brother and sister. “We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace.”
NBC broadcaster Savannah Guthrie told the potential kidnappers of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, on Saturday that the family is prepared to pay for her safe return.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on the note’s contents. The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
And the Guthrie family didn’t make any new social media posts or any public comments about the notes Monday.
Authorities believe Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will after finding blood near the doorstep of her home in the foothills outside Tucson. The FBI later released surveillance videos showing a masked man on the porch that night.
In two videos released by the FBI on Tuesday, a masked person who looks to be armed appears to tamper with the doorbell camera at the home of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie who is presumed to have been abducted about 10 days ago. FBI director Kash Patel wrote in an X post accompanying the footage that it was taken the morning of her disappearance.
Volunteers and search teams scoured the nearby desert terrain filled with cacti, bushes and boulders in the weeks after she vanished.
A volunteer group recently conducted a search for her body near the Arizona-Mexico border but didn’t report finding her.
