An experienced private investigator, who has dealt with numerous abduction cases, has outlined what steps Nancy Guthrie’s alleged captors must take to convince her family that she is unharmed.
Logan Clarke, a renowned investigator from California and the founder of Global Pursuit, emphasized that if someone holds Nancy—mother of ‘Today’ show host Savannah Guthrie—they need to do more than provide a photo of her with the day’s newspaper.
He pointed out that the risk of digital manipulation with AI makes such images unreliable.
Clarke suggested that a video showing Nancy, 84, responding to personal questions only she could answer, might serve as sufficient evidence of her well-being.
“Questions like ‘Where did you meet your husband?’ or ‘What did Savannah give you for Christmas this year?’ could be definitive,” Clarke explained to FOX 10.
Authorities are proceeding on the assumption that she remains alive. Recently, FBI forensic teams examined the rooftop of her Tucson, Arizona, residence, where they discovered a previously overlooked surveillance camera.
The same day, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told reporters he believes she is out there and was taken against her will.
‘What I believe is that Nancy was removed from her home against her will, and that we need to find her. That’s what I believe. She’s still alive,’ Nanos said. ‘I believe that I have no choice until something shows me, a piece of physical evidence shows me that that’s different.’
Nancy Guthrie (pictured with her daughter Savannah in 2020) went missing from her home in Tuscon, Arizona, on the night of Saturday, January 31. Private investigator Logan Clarke said her purported kidnappers would need to send a video of Nancy, 84, answering questions only she would know to prove that she is still alive
Aerial footage of FBI agents conducting a search at Nancy’s home on Friday, February 6
Complicating matters further are the multiple ransom notes that have come in to news outlets since Nancy went missing from her home on the night of Saturday, January 31.
Tucson television station KOLD News 13 received the first letter at approximately 5pm on Monday, February 2.
KOLD news anchor Mary Coleman appeared Wednesday on CNN and said the note contained ‘information that only someone who is holding her for ransom would know’.
She also said the letter included a ‘dollar amount’ and a ‘deadline’. That letter was sent to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office.
TMZ appeared to receive this same letter on Tuesday and revealed that the alleged kidnappers wanted millions of dollars in bitcoin sent to a specific crypto wallet address. This address was verified as authentic by investigators.
The note TMZ received specified two deadlines. One was at 5pm on Thursday, which has already passed and another was on Monday, February 9.
The message warned that if the first deadline was missed, the demands would change and that there would be ‘a more serious consequence’ if the second deadline was missed, according to TMZ.
On Friday, staff at KOLD were left ‘alarmed’ by a second message from Nancy’s alleged captors.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos believes Nancy is still alive and investigators are operating under that assumption
Yet, Nancy’s supposed abductors have not contacted the Guthrie family, even though they have made multiple videos pleading for their mother’s safe return
Coleman told CNN that both messages were sent straight to law enforcement.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said that the IP address from the email did not match the first one sent to the station earlier this week.
If the ransom notes are legitimate, private investigator Clarke said that that whoever sent them to news outlets instead of the family made a ‘rookie’ mistake.
The Guthrie family has noted that no one who claims to have Nancy has contacted them directly, despite their multiple heartbroken pleas on social media.
‘No one in 40 years have I seen anybody do a kidnapping, send a ransom note, and then not contact [the family]. The people have no communication with them. That tells me that something went wrong,’ Clarke said.
He speculated that the supposed kidnappers may not have a viable plan to prove Nancy is alive without getting caught. He also suggested authorities may be inferring with whoever has Nancy to buy time.
Clarke said if there ever ends up being an exchange of money, that is when the perpetrators will likely get caught.
‘They’re smart and they’re stupid,’ Clarke said. ‘They knew the Guthrie family. They know who they are. They know where they live. They knew enough about them to pull this thing off.’
Clarke, the private investigator, believes something may have went wrong in the alleged kidnappers’ plan that has prevented them from contacting Nancy’s children
Savannah Guthrie isn pictured with her mother on the Today show in June 2023
Clarke believes Nancy is being held nearby because of her poor health. Transporting a woman with a pacemaker and limited mobility almost certainly makes things harder for the kidnappers.
Clarke also shared his opinion on the kidnappers demanding to be paid with Bitcoin, calling it ‘stupid’.
The FBI has tools to trace funds going to crypto wallets, but criminals do have methods to obscure transactions.
They often use mixers or tumblers, services that pool funds from many different sources to hide specific transactions.
Another option is to have funds sent to an exchange in a country with lax anti-money laundering laws. It is unclear where the crypto wallet address included in the ransom notes originates.
