As the hunt for Nancy Guthrie reaches its sixth month, a new hope has been sparked to find answers as attention focuses on the ransom notes received by her family and various media outlets.
In the wake of her alleged kidnapping, two ransom notes from the people claiming to be behind the 84-year-old’s disappearance, including one that claimed she had passed away.
Nancy was last seen at her home in Tucson, Arizona, on January 31, after being dropped off by family just before 10 pm. She was reported missing the next day after failing to attend her usual church service. It comes as the Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s Chris Nanon spoke out about the ransom notes.
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According to Air Mail, one ransom note that was sent to TMZ contained an apology for her death. Initially, a previous ransom note stated that the 84-year-old was “safe but scared,” with the person who penned it asking for $4 million to be handed over by 5 pm on February 5.
The second letter, sent on February 6 from the same IP address as the previous missive, reportedly included an apology and a claim that she had accidentally been killed.
While the ransom notes haven’t provided any solid answers, they have shed fresh light on Nancy’s possible fate, and now former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer has wondered if the kidnappers might have been trying to save their skin.
“They have a murder on their hands as opposed to a kidnapping, and that is punishable by the death penalty in Arizona, and they well know this,” she told NewsNation.
“This is some sort of pretext to kind of say, ‘Listen, we didn’t mean for this to happen.’ You know, mea culpa, if you will, for the event that they are caught.”
Jennifer then theorized that the alleged kidnappers sent the notes to TMZ due to the media attention they would gain from such a move.
“It’s about attention. It’s about control. And he hopes he can get a Bitcoin out of it, too, but it’s mainly about controlling this narrative at this point,” she explained.
Jennifer speculated that the possible kidnappers “didn’t want her to die before they could make the claim and send proof of life and get their ransom,” and so the kidnapping “went horribly wrong” for them.
The former agent also shared that she believed the authorities were getting closer to an answer. This update follows Sheriff Chris Nanos, addressing the number of ransom notes they had received in the wake of Nancy’s disappearance.
“I think the FBI has done a number of arrests for false or fake ransom notes. It’s a shame that that happens, but I think we’re looking at another one of those today,” he told KVOI AM 1030.
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“It is a shame that these types of events occur; people have great interest…that’s good because it helps us, but then it gets really abused,” he continued. “People who call in fake ransom notes, people who claim for the sake of media and the family, they get out and disturb, in this case, an entire neighborhood.”
