The Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Friday released two ransom notes that were sent to media outlets shortly after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Arizona home as the investigation into her disappearance approached its six-month mark.
Authorities said they hope someone who sees the notes may recognize the writing style of the person or persons who sent them.
“These communications reveal distinctive patterns of word choice, syntax, and phraseology that reflect the writer’s unique linguistic style,” the sheriff’s department said in a press release posted to social media. “They also provide valuable insight into the person’s mindset, motives, and the evolution of their tone over time.”
Local CBS affiliate in Tucson, KOLD-TV 13 News, received the first note on Feb. 2, and the second note on Feb. 6.
No new breakthroughs
Despite poring through evidence, fielding thousands of leads and briefly detaining at least three people for questioning, investigators have made no recent breakthroughs in the baffling case.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at around 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 31, when she was dropped off at her home in the Catalina Foothills by family members following dinner, police said. She was reported missing around noon the next day after she did not show up at a friend’s house to watch an online church service.
Spatters of blood were also found on the front porch, which DNA testing later confirmed belonged to Nancy.
Hair sample yields no DNA
Investigators have also ruled out one forensic clue found at the scene. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told multiple news outlets on Thursday that investigators could not obtain a DNA profile from a hair sample recovered from Nancy’s Tucson, Ariz., home and therefore could not identify a potential suspect.
“It came back … there’s no DNA,” Nanos told Fox News Digital. “But does that mean the hair isn’t that of the suspect? We won’t know that till we have the suspect’s hair. You don’t just destroy it.”
Nanos also said that investigators have preserved the hair sample, which may be of use later in the investigation.
“There’s other things that hair may prove valuable for, but right now it was just about, ‘Is there any DNA there?’ And the answer was no,” the sheriff said.
That leaves a mixed DNA sample from as many as four people as the only potential piece of biological evidence left in the investigation, Nanos told ABC News.
Early in the investigation, the sheriff’s department sent the DNA samples to a private lab in Florida that they routinely work with. Then in April, the samples were sent to an FBI lab in Quantico, Va., for advanced DNA analysis.
Additional labs in Kansas, Florida, California and Arizona are currently working to untangle the mixed DNA, the sheriff said.
Images captured by a security camera show what the FBI describes as an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door before she disappeared.
(via REUTERS / Reuters)On Feb. 10, the FBI released doorbell camera footage and images showing what it described as a masked, armed individual outside her home on the morning she disappeared.
In the video, the person walks up to the front door, then attempts to block the camera with a gloved hand and grabs nearby plants to cover it, before the camera stops recording.
The FBI described the person in the footage as male, with an average build, about 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-10 tall, who was wearing a black 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack.
Two videos recovered from the doorbell camera might be from two separate days, the sheriff’s department said.
“These videos are critical to our understanding of the unidentified male’s behaviors and choices,” the department statement said Friday. “They indicate he took steps to prepare for the event on the night of January 31 to February 1.”
Investigators also discovered a damaged utility box near Nancy’s home that could have been connected to a reported internet outage that disabled nearby surveillance cameras around the time she disappeared.
‘Tell us where to look for her’
On July 27, Savannah Guthrie posted an emotional video on social media, “begging” her mother’s apparent kidnapper to “do the right thing” and “tell us where to look for her.”
“We are in agony. We are in a nightmare that will not end. Nothing about our situation has changed,” said the Today co-host. “So I’m asking you, begging you, to do the right thing now, make the right choice. Help us find her. Tell us where to look for her. I truly believe it is never too late to do the right thing.”
A combined reward of $1.2 million is being offered for information leading to Nancy’s recovery.
Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Pima County Sheriff’s Department tip line at 520-351-4900 or the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
