Nancy Guthrie Ransom Notes Reveal Repeated Writing Quirks That Could Help Identify Suspect, Expert Says

Two messages believed to be linked to the suspected abduction of Nancy Guthrie from her Arizona home may contain important clues about the person who wrote them, according to retired Colorado investigator Lisa Miller. She said similarities in grammar, phrasing and sentence structure indicate the notes were likely authored by the same individual — a detail that could help generate the breakthrough tip detectives need.

Guthrie, 84, is the mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie. Investigators have said she was taken from her northern Tucson home during the early morning hours of Feb. 1, after recovered doorbell camera footage showed a masked intruder appearing at her front steps.

Miller said the decision to release the messages publicly last month may serve a purpose beyond refreshing the public’s memory. It could also rattle the writer, creating pressure that leads to a revealing mistake or behavior noticed by someone close to them.

“The bad guys can’t help but look over their shoulder and wonder, are they onto me? Are they coming? And that pressure creates behavioral leakage that we’re looking for and people around them might see.”

The wording of the notes, Miller added, may give members of the public something more concrete to recognize if they have seen similar writing before.

She urged people to think about anyone in their circles — or even someone on the edge of their daily lives — who uses unusual phrasing like the language in the messages. Miller said emails, letters or other written communication featuring the same kinds of punctuation patterns could be worth reporting to investigators.

One detail that stands out, she said, is the repeated use of comma splices — instances where two complete sentences are connected with a comma instead of being separated by a period — a distinctive habit that appears in both notes.

“We see it also again in the second note,” she said. “So it’s continuous between the two notes, which is one of the reasons why I believe this continuity more likely than not indicates this one author.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department released the notes in July, six months after Guthrie’s suspected abduction from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Her whereabouts remain unknown, and authorities said they are hoping that someone recognizes the sender’s “unique linguistic style.”

“These are characteristics, these are things that law enforcement can use to ask people, crowdsource for help in this case,” Miller said.

And the comma splices aren’t the only habits that caught her attention.

“We’re seeing also some open compounds through the notes,” she said. “We see ‘heart related,’ that should be hyphenated by most people when they write that. We see smartwatch written as two words. Most people write that as one. Floodlight, we see that written as words. So that is a continuity that we’re seeing between the two.”

She also said she doesn’t think the sender used AI to concoct the messages. There’s a typo, for example, and the sentences don’t have a smooth, AI-generated flow, she said.

Instead, the unusual language may reflect the writer’s unique speech and writing habits, Miller said.

“There’s something else, it’s called idiolect,” Miller explained. “Idiolect is our personal style of communication and it can be affected by many things. The region we grew up in, neighborhoods we live in, slang that we’ve adopted.”

The sender’s idiolect could be why they used the word “perished” rather than “died” and wrote that Guthrie had been “buried in nature,” Miller speculated.

“Perhaps this idiolect, this personalized language is something that they’ve said based on religious upbringing, based on books they’ve read, maybe ‘buried in nature’ is something they utilize,” she said.

Another possibility, she said, is that offenders typically try to minimize their wrongdoing.

“They blame others,” Miller said. “They blame, you know, the victim themselves. They distance themselves from that bad thing that they did.”

Miller also flagged the sender’s use of both a dollar sign and “USD” to specify the ransom amount, along with the way dates and times were written, as other notable quirks.

“I would bring people from the public that are looking at these notes to look at that also, cause that’s a distinction,” she said.

Authorities have not yet confirmed that the notes are authentic, but Guthrie’s daughter, “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, has said she believes they may be — and investigators haven’t ruled them out either.

The sum of all rewards in the case is over $1.2 million.

Anyone with information is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI or, to remain anonymous, call 520-88-CRIME.