Nancy Guthrie ransom notes may be fake as renowned profiler says case looks more like burglary gone wrong
The two letters purported to be connected to Nancy Guthrie's suspected abduction leave investigators with questions about their authenticity, but forensic psychologist Dr. Kris Mohandie says investigators made the right call by releasing them because doing so could renew public interest and generate new leads.
"I don't think the ransom note is legit, and I don't think that that letter days later is legitimate — but I think it's appropriate for law enforcement to investigate it just in case it might be," he told Fox News Digital.
"A good investigation keeps an open mind," he said. "It really does."
Some investigators said they were confident that the ransom demands are all bogus, while others are cautious about reaching that conclusion while Guthrie's whereabouts remain unknown, federal law enforcement sources told Fox News and Fox News Digital last month.
Early in the case, they appeared to have taken them seriously, with Heith Janke, then the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix field office, sitting down with Guthrie’s adult children, including "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, to record a video response to the first note.
Mohandie also cautioned against treating crime scene details in the first letter as proof its author was involved. Those include references to Guthrie's Apple Watch and a broken floodlight.
"I don't make much out of those two details," he said. "They seem to be details that inadvertently could have gotten to somebody, and so that's not enough for me to say, this is something only the killer would know."
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Mohandie said the letters also point to an author who appears comfortable with technology, citing references to Bitcoin, email communication and the unusual demand for "$4 million USD" — details he said could help identify whoever wrote the letters, whether they prove to be genuine or a hoax.
"I certainly question the legitimacy of the so-called ransom note in which the individual is sending it to a news outlet, saying this will be a ransom, so on and so forth, talks about ‘we’ and then breaks into ‘I’ in terms of pronouns," Mohandie told Fox News Digital. "There are a lot of things wrong with that ransom note, and it raised a lot of questions for me of veracity."
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Mohandie said he also has doubts about the second letter, which claimed Guthrie had "perished" days after the alleged kidnapping. While he said investigators are right to pursue every credible lead, he questioned whether a kidnapper would risk exposing themselves again with an apology or use the word "perished" in place of more common terms.
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"I understand why law enforcement needs to investigate these as potential leads, and it is a strategy that has worked," he said. "You look at Ted Kaczynski and putting that out there on the Unabomber case is what led to it being resolved. So they need to put that out there. Maybe somebody does recognize something unique in these writings."
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Even if the notes are hoaxes, investigators are looking to identify the sender and potentially bring criminal charges, as they did in the case of Derrick Callella, who sent "imposter" ransom demands to the Guthrie family in early February and has already pleaded guilty.
However, he added, "the devil is usually in the details." And while much of the contents of the notes have been publicly known for months, the grammar and punctuation were only available to a select few before the Pima County Sheriff's Department made them public on Friday, July 31.
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Mohandie said the surveillance footage released by investigators remains the most significant publicly known piece of evidence, adding that it appears more consistent with a burglary or home invasion than a sophisticated kidnapping plot.
"Unfortunately, I think this case is a simple matter of a burglary gone wrong and then attempts to cover things up," Mohandie said. "But that's a hypothesis and good investigators are investigating all hypotheses and following leads, and I think they're doing their job here."
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The only known suspect, the man who appears in the Nest doorbell video, remains unidentified. According to the FBI, he is roughly 5 feet, 9 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall with an average build. He was carrying a black Ozark Trail backpack.
Anyone with information 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 — none of which has been claimed.