Critical errors in Nancy Guthrie missing person investigation in spotlight
Retired FBI agent Jason Pack is pointing to what he calls serious early missteps by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in the investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance. Pack says the scene was not properly protected from outsiders, including reporters and delivery drivers, and he is now examining newly released ransom notes that may point to a disturbing timeline in what authorities continue to treat as an active kidnapping case.
A retired veteran investigator tracking the Nancy Guthrie case says the decision to release two alleged ransom notes resembles a rare law enforcement tactic once used in the hunt for the Unabomber. Investigators appear to be hoping that the wording, tone or style of the messages will prompt someone to come forward with new information, six months after Guthrie was believed to have been abducted in Tucson, Arizona.
“Law enforcement rarely makes the deliberate call to release an offender’s own words to the public,” said Lisa Miller, a retired investigator with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
Miller is not part of the official Guthrie investigation, but she said she has followed developments in the case closely over the past six months.
Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home in the early hours of Feb. 1, and investigators have been handling the case as an apparent abduction. (Fox Flight Team; Courtesy of NBC)
“The last major precedent: 1995, the Unabomber manifesto…published on the FBI’s recommendation, betting someone would recognize the writing,” Miller wrote in a post on X over the weekend. “It worked.”
In that case, David Kaczynski and his wife, Linda Patrik, identified similarities in Ted Kaczynski’s writing and contacted authorities. Ted Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 and pleaded guilty two years later in a deal that spared him the death penalty. He spent much of his prison sentence at ADX Florence, the federal Supermax prison in Colorado.
FBI records state that Kaczynski had sent a 35,000-word manifesto explaining his motives and laying out his views on what he described as the problems of modern society.
On Friday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department released two notes that have been deemed potentially credible in the abduction of the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie.
Then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno signed off on a plan to publish the document. After it ran in national news, the task force investigating that case received thousands of tips — including a note from David Kaczynski, who included other writing samples that linguistic analysts used to compare against the manifesto.
On Friday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department released two notes that have been deemed potentially credible in the abduction of the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie.
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On Friday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department released two notes that have been deemed potentially credible in the abduction of the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie.
Authorities said the two notes share a “unique linguistic style” and are believed to have been sent by the same person.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, left, said there is “nothing to indicate” a recent Tucson home invasion and sexual assault is connected to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. At right is an image released by the FBI showing a masked person seen outside Guthrie’s Tucson-area home before she vanished. (Reuters ; FBI)
“There are a number of pieces of information in these notes that just might jar someone to say, ‘You know, I’ve heard that,’ or the wording, the style of the writing,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said in a video posted to X Saturday. “We hope that by releasing the actual note, we’ll get some response from the community.”
They are much shorter than the Unabomber’s lengthy essay and less useful for linguistics analysis, Miller said, but they still contain clues and consistent phrasing that could stand out to someone who knows the writer.
WATCH: Nancy Guthrie’s Nest doorbell cam records masked suspect
The clearest habit appears to be the sender’s tendency to write a statement and then immediately follow it with a comma-spliced reinforcing statement, she said.
For example, she gave the following lines:
“You will not be able to contact me from here on out, there will be no negotiation.”
“We never intended to hurt her, that was not our intention.”
Police officers bring Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, to court for arraignment. Kaczynski later pleaded guilty to the mail bomb attacks that killed three people and injured 23. (Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images )
Miller said she doesn’t believe the notes were written by artificial intelligence. The notes include “uneven grammar and syntax,” emotionally charged repetitions and awkward phrasing, she said.
Authorities are looking for help identifying the masked intruder who appeared on Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camera on the night of her abduction as well as the sender of the notes.
Anyone with information in the case is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI or, to remain anonymous, call 520-88-CRIME.
The sum of all rewards in the case is over $1.2 million. The money remained unclaimed as of Friday, a day before the six-month mark since Guthrie’s kidnapping.
