The Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Friday released two previously unreleased ransom notes connected to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the woman identified in public reporting as the mother of broadcaster Savannah Guthrie. The new material was shared on the department’s X account and includes two handwritten communications that differ sharply in tone and content, one presenting a clear demand for money and the other asserting the missing woman’s death.
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In the first of the two documents, dated Feb. 2, the sender frames what it calls a ransom demand and requests payment in bitcoin. That note specifies an amount of $4 million and carries an explicit warning aimed at whoever would consider refusing or involving authorities: “do not play games, law enforcement will not be able to help you,” the text reads. The message is presented as a direct financial demand, and the sheriff’s department made that communication public as part of the sequence of materials it has been reviewing during the ongoing investigation.
Four days later, a second note dated Feb. 6 was provided to the same local news outlet and was later released along with the Feb. 2 communication. The tone of the second message is markedly different from the first. Rather than reiterate a demand, the Feb. 6 note states: “We never intended to hurt her, that was not our intention. She perished shortly after she was taken.” Those lines, included verbatim by the sheriff’s office in its public posting, are the clearest assertion yet contained in the newly released materials that the person at the center of the investigation may no longer be alive.
Both notes were addressed to a Tucson television station, KOLD, and the sheriff’s department’s post on X included photographs of the two pages. Alongside the scanned or photographed notes, the department provided additional context, identifying the documents’ dates and the intended recipient. The decision to make the items public came after the department reviewed them as part of its broader inquiry into the disappearance; in its social media thread the agency identified the two documents as part of the case record and included images for public awareness.
A missing-person flyer for the woman at the center of the Tucson disappearance taped to a rural mailbox as investigators continue the search.
The photographs and notes were released by the sheriff’s office late Friday evening, with timestamps on the agency’s X posts showing activity at approximately 7:01 and 7:04 p.m. The posts comprised a short thread that identified the documents as being linked to the ongoing investigation and included the two images of the handwritten pages. The department’s public release of the communications is the latest in a string of disclosures intended to keep the public informed about investigative leads and evidence collected in the matter.
Along with the images of the notes, the sheriff’s department also posted a photograph from a recent press briefing in which senior agency officials addressed the case and displayed a photograph of the missing woman. That image, included with the department’s social media update, shows the county sheriff speaking at a podium with an enlarged image of the woman visible in the frame. The department’s posts included captions and numbering indicating the release of multiple items connected to the investigation, and the notes themselves were presented as numbered attachments within the thread.
Pima County sheriff speaking at a press briefing shown alongside a photograph of the missing woman, illustrating law enforcement’s public update on the case.
The two-page set of communications establishes a brief chronology: the Feb. 2 note, demanding $4 million in bitcoin and warning against involving law enforcement, was followed by the Feb. 6 note that asserted the woman had perished after being taken and included language suggesting the death had not been intentional. The sheriff’s office has not appended additional commentary to the verbatim lines reproduced from the notes in its public postings; the agency made the documents available as part of the investigative record it chose to disclose on Friday.
Investigators with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department continue to assemble evidence and review leads connected to the disappearance, and the newly released notes form part of the evidentiary material now in the public domain. The agency’s release of the two documents, their dates and the recipient to whom they were addressed — the Tucson television station KOLD — make clear the chronology by which those communications reached outside parties and ultimately law enforcement. The sequence presented by the material is limited to the contents of those pages and the dates stamped on them, and the sheriff’s department has preserved the notes and provided photographic copies in the series of posts it issued late Friday.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s publication of the notes was accompanied only by the images and the minimal identifying information included in the social media thread. The two documents — one a ransom demand with a specified bitcoin sum and a warning against contacting authorities, and the other an assertion that the missing woman had perished — were released without additional narrative from the department in the posts that made them public. The record now includes the handwritten statements themselves and the dates on which they were purportedly sent, and those items will form part of the documentary trail investigators and any subsequent proceedings may rely upon.
The department’s decision to publish the pages and to identify their recipient underscores that the notes reached media outlets in Tucson during the early February dates marked on the documents. Aside from the text of the two notes and the photographs attached by the sheriff’s office, no further evidentiary material or explanatory detail was included in the Friday evening release. The sheriff’s department has not appended additional statements beyond the photographic release, and the notes remain available in the public posts the agency placed on its X account.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department noted that the notes contain distinctive linguistic characteristics in word choice, syntax, and phraseology. Officials released them hoping the unique style will be recognizable to someone who knows or has interacted with the writer, generating new tips in the six-month investigation.
The FBI’s Phoenix field office has been working alongside Pima County investigators from early in the inquiry, saying it has received several ransom‑related communications and that some of those messages have since been discounted as extortion attempts while others remain under evaluation.
Separately, a Los Angeles‑area man, Derrick Callella, pleaded guilty in federal court in July to sending fake ransom text messages to Guthrie family members; prosecutors said those messages were unrelated extortion attempts and he faces probation at his upcoming sentencing.
Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have posted public video pleas asking whoever has their mother to make contact, and in late February the family offered a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to Nancy Guthrie’s recovery (combined with law‑enforcement offerings, reported totals put available rewards at roughly $1.2 million).
Investigators have said multiple Arizona news organizations received purported ransom communications in early February and turned them over to authorities; after the Feb. 6 message the sheriff’s office returned to the Guthrie residence and surrounding area for follow‑up work.