A fourth ransom email tied to the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie — Savannah Guthrie's mother — landed in TMZ's inbox Monday, and this one carried a new claim: the writer says he saw Nancy alive in Mexico.
The letter, which TMZ says came from the same Bitcoin account linked to three previous ransom notes, included a partial statement from the unnamed author:
"I know what I saw [five] days ago south of the border and I was told to shut up so I know who he is and that was definitely Nancy with them."
As reported by the Daily Caller, Nancy Guthrie has now been missing for 16 days. And while the identity and credibility of the person behind these emails remain entirely unverified, the claim that she may have been moved across the southern border introduces a dimension that should sharpen the urgency of this investigation considerably.
Harvey Levin, who has become the de facto public-facing conduit in this strange ransom saga, addressed the writer directly in a video, offering TMZ as a go-between with the FBI. His pitch was straightforward — part plea, part warning:
"If you are not real, you are committing a crime. You should know that, and this is a serious, federal crime."
Levin then laid out the logic for the writer to cooperate through TMZ rather than continuing the anonymous back-and-forth:
"If you're worried about getting this money, and you really do have this information, send it to us. You're sending us these letters, send it to us, we will forward it to the FBI, and that way there's a record that we have, that you supplied this information."
The calculus Levin is presenting is simple: if the information is real, a paper trail through TMZ protects the writer's claim to any reward. If it's fake, the writer is digging a deeper federal hole with every email sent.
Four letters to the same media outlet, all routed through the same Bitcoin account, from someone who claims a burglary conviction dating back ten years. That's either a deeply unusual informant or someone building toward a serious prison sentence.
On February 16, the Pima County Sheriff's Department announced that the entire Guthrie family had been cleared as suspects in the investigation. Sheriff Chris Nanos stated the matter, though the full text was not made publicly available beyond a social media post.
This matters for two reasons. First, it removes a line of inquiry that inevitably shadows any missing-persons case involving an elderly family member. Second, it narrows the field. If the family is out, then law enforcement is now working outward — toward unknown actors, and potentially toward a foreign country.
The clearing of the family should also put to rest the kind of idle speculation that metastasizes on social media every time a high-profile disappearance occurs. The sheriff's department did the work. The family cooperated. That chapter is closed.
If the ransom writer's claim has any truth to it — and that remains a significant "if" — then the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie is no longer a domestic missing-persons case. It is an abduction with an international dimension, and the location allegedly involved is not some distant, unreachable jurisdiction. It is directly across the southern border.
Americans do not need to be reminded that the U.S.-Mexico border region remains a corridor for cartel activity, human trafficking, and violent crime. An 84-year-old woman allegedly moved south of the border "with them," paints a grim picture that demands a response commensurate with the stakes.
The FBI is reportedly involved, but the source material offers no detail on what specific steps the bureau has taken. Sixteen days is a long time. For an elderly woman in unknown hands, possibly in another country, every hour compounds the danger.
The case now sits at an uncomfortable intersection of tabloid spectacle and genuine law enforcement crisis. TMZ is receiving ransom notes. A celebrity family is in anguish. An unnamed writer with a criminal record is making claims that may be credible or may be the work of someone exploiting a family's worst nightmare for Bitcoin.
President Trump has already weighed in, reportedly threatening the death penalty if Nancy Guthrie is killed. That is the kind of signal that moves bureaucracies and puts foreign governments on notice that the United States takes the safety of its citizens with deadly seriousness, regardless of which border they were dragged across.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department has done its part in clearing the family. The FBI needs to do its part in running down these ransom emails and, if the Mexico claim holds, in pressing for immediate cross-border cooperation.
Nancy Guthrie has been gone for sixteen days. Somewhere, someone knows where she is.