The FBI still can't crack the ransom notes in the kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother — and after months of work, most of the leads have gone nowhere, which is what passes for normal at an agency that prioritizes surveilling school-board dads over solving actual crimes.
Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Arizona home on Jan. 31. In the days after, more than a dozen ransom notes flooded TV stations, TMZ, and the Guthrie family — and the FBI has spent the months since trying to figure out which, if any, are real. Most aren't. The agency acknowledged Wednesday that "some have been deemed to be extortion attempts without legitimacy," while "other ransom demands may potentially be legitimate and are still being investigated as such," according to the FBI's Phoenix field office.
The Daily Caller, citing Reuters, reported Tuesday that the FBI had concluded all three noted ransom messages were fraudulent, attributing the call to an anonymous FBI official. The New York Post pushed back the same day, citing law enforcement sources who said the Reuters story relied on an "unfinished internal document" and that the legitimacy of some messages remains under investigation. In other words: the bureau's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing — or at least isn't telling the public.
FBI Director Kash Patel declined to clarify when pressed at a Wednesday press conference. "I'm not going to comment on that. We are continuing to assist that investigation. We've always been in an assist role. It's a state matter being led by the state authorities," Patel told reporters. Pima County Sheriff's spokesperson Angelica Carrillo offered only that "this is still an active investigations."
Here's what's actually on the record. The first ransom note demanded $4 million in Bitcoin by Feb. 5 and Feb. 9. A second claimed the grandmother was dead but her remains could be purchased. A third, arriving more recently, claimed knowledge of the kidnappers' identities. Two or three of the notes attracted serious attention because they contained details never made public — a broken security light on the house, the Apple Watch Nancy was wearing.
Investigators tested the Bitcoin wallet with a small transaction. Nothing came back. No acknowledgment, no follow-up. The wallet went silent.
Then there's the suspect caught on Nancy Guthrie's doorbell camera the morning she disappeared — fumbling with the device, failing to disable it. Cyber crime attorney Todd Spodek told the Post that level of incompetence doesn't square with a sophisticated crypto ransom operation. "An actual, sophisticated operation wouldn't have gotten involved in a kidnapping conspiracy-turned-homicide. That alone says it's rookie s–t," Spodek said.
The task force is reportedly tracing proxy servers used by the note senders. Whether that effort produces results — or joins the growing pile of FBI dead ends — remains to be seen.
An 84-year-old woman is still missing. The ransom notes are mostly bogus. The one suspect on camera looked like an amateur. And the agency that's supposed to be solving this is busy managing its own contradictory leaks. For ordinary Americans who've watched the FBI marshal armies of agents against parents at school board meetings and traditional Catholics at morning mass, the question answers itself: this is what happens when law enforcement serves politics instead of the public.
