A second ransom note in the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie told media outlets that she "perished shortly after she was taken" and that her body is now somewhere in the desert, a grim development that TMZ's Harvey Levin disputes matches the communication his outlet received, and that a retired FBI hostage negotiator says could crack the case wide open.
The note, emailed to at least one Tucson television station, used the phrase "she is buried in nature now" and included the words "We are truly sorry," Arizona's Family reported. A federal law enforcement source close to the case told Fox News Digital that the note indicated Guthrie had been "buried with nature" after her abduction from her home in the Catalina Foothills north of Tucson.
Sunday marked twenty weeks since investigators believe Guthrie, the mother of NBC "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, was taken against her will. No arrests have been made. No body has been recovered. And the reward for information that breaks the case now exceeds $1.2 million.
Harvey Levin, who has been the recipient of a batch of suspected ransom demands in the Guthrie case, posted a video to TMZ's YouTube channel Monday afternoon challenging the characterization of the note his outlet received. He drew a sharp line between the ransom note TMZ got and the separate emails that followed it.
"I wanna talk about Nancy Guthrie and some communications I had with the FBI that I haven't talked about until now."
Levin said the ransom note TMZ received contained no apology and no reference to Guthrie's death. He was direct about it.
"It is not in that ransom note at all. It does say that she's scared but OK. But the ransom note makes no reference to Nancy Guthrie either dying or the kidnappers apologizing."
What Levin described instead was a separate individual, someone who sent TMZ multiple emails claiming to know where Guthrie was being held and where the kidnappers were. That person demanded $100,000 for information, far less than the original $4 million ransom demand. Early on, the emailer wrote that "time is of the essence." A few days after the kidnapping, the tone changed: "time is no longer of the essence", which Levin took to mean Guthrie was no longer alive.
Levin said this person also expressed fear of being implicated. The emailer claimed to have a burglary conviction from roughly eleven years earlier and apparently knew the kidnappers well enough to worry about being connected to the crime. He wanted money so he could go "underground" and avoid retribution. He never received a dime.
TMZ passed both the ransom note and the subsequent emails to the FBI. Levin said he even offered to have TMZ put up money to see if it led to a resolution. After that offer, he said, his FBI sources stopped responding.
The federal law enforcement source told Fox News Digital that the FBI deposited small sums of cryptocurrency into a Bitcoin wallet tied to the purported ransom demand, testing whether the wallet was active and whether whoever controlled it would respond. The source said no money or Bitcoin was sent in response to the two original ransom notes.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Fox News Digital on Monday that the FBI has been handling the investigation into numerous ransom demands, "some bogus and some with potential to be real", since the beginning. He deferred further comment to the bureau. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Authorities have not publicly identified whoever sent the original notes and have neither confirmed nor denied their authenticity. Investigators have floated what they call a "wrench attack" theory, a scenario in which a computer hacker, likely overseas, hired local criminals to kidnap Guthrie in order to extort her famous daughter.
The FBI has weighed new forensic technology in the case as it approaches the five-month mark, but the investigation remains publicly stalled.
Jason Pack, a retired FBI supervisory special agent who spent twenty-five years with the bureau and served as a hostage negotiator, offered Fox News Digital a blunt assessment of what an apology in a ransom note signals.
"People who have leverage do not apologize. They demand."
Pack said the language in the second note, a "rambling, labored apology for an inadvertent death", suggests something went wrong that the abductors did not plan for. And he sees opportunity in that.
"That is a crack. And in my experience, cracks are where cases break open."
If Pack's read is right, the apology is not a sign of remorse so much as a sign of desperation. Kidnappers who lose their hostage lose their leverage. The question is whether law enforcement can exploit that opening before the trail goes cold.
Meanwhile, an anonymous tip prompted a search for Guthrie's remains in the Mariposa area near the Arizona-Mexico border, northwest of Nogales. The Mexican volunteer group Buscando Corazones Nogales received a call claiming Guthrie was buried in an unmarked grave near a stream in the area, the New York Post reported.
Ramona Guadalupe Ayala Ortiz, head of the volunteer group, said they searched the area but came up empty. The group pledged to continue future operations there. The same region had yielded more than twenty-five unmarked graves discovered between April and May 2025, a detail that underscores just how lawless and dangerous the border corridor remains.
The Pima County Sheriff's office confirmed it had not been contacted by Mexican authorities regarding the tip, the Washington Examiner reported.
That disconnect, a Mexican volunteer group acting on an anonymous tip while the lead American law enforcement agency says it hasn't heard from anyone across the border, raises obvious coordination questions in a case where time is not on anyone's side.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her home just outside Tucson on January 31 and was reported missing the following day. Drops of blood were found on her front porch. Two photos of a suspect on Guthrie's porch were taken on different days, a source familiar with the matter has said. AP News reported that authorities believe she was kidnapped or abducted against her will.
Volunteers have scoured the desert around her home despite official warnings to leave the work to professionals. The Pima County Sheriff's Department put out a statement saying, "We all want to find Nancy, but this work is best left to professionals." The volunteers kept looking anyway.
Savannah Guthrie spoke publicly about her mother's disappearance weeks into the ordeal, and on Mother's Day she posted a plea on Instagram: "Mother, daughter, sister, Nonie, we miss you with every breath. We will never stop looking for you. We will never be at peace until we find you."
The case has drawn sustained national attention in part because of Savannah Guthrie's prominence, but also because the facts are so stark: an 84-year-old woman taken from her own home, blood left behind, ransom demands flying to media outlets, and an investigation that, twenty weeks in, has produced no suspect in custody and no confirmed account of what happened.
The search has now extended into Mexico, where volunteers work terrain that has already given up dozens of unmarked graves from other cases. The broader picture is not reassuring. A border region so saturated with clandestine burials that search teams know the ground by heart is not a region where law enforcement has the upper hand.
Meanwhile, the spectacle around the case has drawn unwanted characters. A YouTuber was arrested twice in one week near Guthrie's home after confrontations with deputies, a reminder that high-profile cases attract chaos alongside concern.
The list of open questions is long. Who sent the original ransom notes? Are the notes authentic or opportunistic hoaxes? Did the FBI's Bitcoin wallet test produce any response? Who is the unnamed emailer who contacted TMZ, and has law enforcement identified or located him? What was the source of the anonymous tip that sent volunteers searching near Nogales? And why did FBI sources reportedly go silent after Levin offered to put up money?
None of these questions have public answers. The FBI has not commented. The sheriff has deferred. The ransom notes sit in an evidentiary limbo, not confirmed, not denied, not explained.
Twenty weeks. An 84-year-old woman missing. A $1.2 million reward unclaimed. Ransom notes that may or may not be real. A search that has crossed an international border. And a federal investigation that, from the outside, looks like it is running out of daylight.
If the people who took Nancy Guthrie really did lose control of the situation, if the apology is genuine and the death was unplanned, then Jason Pack may be right that there is a crack in this case. But cracks only matter if someone moves fast enough to pry them open.
