Ex-FBI agents point to clues, rare circumstances in Guthrie case

Chris Kenning and Perry Vandell, USA TODAYSat, February 7, 2026 at 11:05 PM UTC

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Ex-FBI agents point to clues, rare circumstances in Guthrie case

TUCSON, AZ. — A missing octogenarian. A ransom demand. A frantic race against time.

Those elements of the high-profile search for “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother in Arizona are familiar echoes for former FBI agent Katherine Schweit.

Almost exactly 23 years ago, she was investigating the case of an 88-year-old Wisconsin grandmother Hedwig Braun, who had been taken in the middle of the night. Schweit said Braun was thrown in the trunk of a car and later kept chained in a snowmobile trailer.

Five days later, she was found alive – and authorities arrested a local suspect who was familiar with the family and her grandson’s construction company, abducting her to get $3 million ransom.

Now, as investigators searching for Nancy Guthrie focus on possible leads, Schweit and several other former FBI agents say the details released so far suggest the perpetrator likely had prior knowledge of the home or family, and a financial rather than ideological motivation for the crime. At the same time, investigators face challenges including verifying ransom demands in the digital age.

A high-profile kidnapping in the digital age

“A true kidnapping for ransom is a throwback to the Lindbergh time,” Schweit said, citing the 1932 kidnapping for ransom of Charles Lindbergh’s son.

These days, most kidnappings are typically connected to domestic or family issues, human smugglers or mental illness. Cases targeting wealthy or famous individuals, though uncommon, garner outsized attention, such the 1974 abduction of William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter.

“They’re what movies are made of because they're dramatic and scary. You don't see them playing out in real life,” said Lance Leising, a former FBI agent. “Now you are, unfortunately, in a horrible way for the family and the victim.”

Guthrie was first reported missing by her family on Feb. 1, when she didn't show up for church. Her disappearance sparked a large search effort in the Catalina Foothills community, perched north of Tucson, and a criminal investigation by the Pima County Sheriff's Department and FBI. Sheriff Chris Nanos later said Guthrie was believed to be "taken from her home against her will.”

Three days later, on Feb. 2, ransom messages were delivered to several media outlets, demanding payment in Bitcoin. But with no further contact, the family posted social media videos urging anyone holding Guthrie to make contact. On Feb. 5, the FBI arrested Derrick Callella in California, who authorities say sent text messages referencing Bitcoin payments to Guthrie’s family shortly after they publicly pleaded for her safe return. He’s facing charges including with transmitting ransom-related communications, according to a criminal complaint.

On Feb. 6, the FBI announced it was examining a new ransom message without providing further details. Tucson TV station KOLD, which received both the most recent and one of the first potential ransom note, said the new note contains information that seemed intended to prove that the senders were the same.

No suspects have been identified.

Leising, the former FBI agent who worked in Phoenix, is not privy to department details in the investigation. But he believes the publicly reported evidence at the home – including Nancy’s blood on a stoop, the early morning motion detection on a home camera, and the detailed timeline – suggests the perpetrator is likely to be someone who had some familiarity with the home or family, or someone who “saw her at a bank or somewhere and thought she had money, or somebody who just knew she was the mom of a celebrity who has money, and then they target her for those reasons," he said.

The remote upscale roads, with homes set back, is not the kind of area likely to see a random abduction, he said. And it’s likely there was planning involved, he said. But whether the ransom note is legitimate is less clear, he said.

More: How could Nancy Guthrie's kidnapper avoid surveillance cameras?

Authenticating the ransom note

Michael E. Anderson, president of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI who had a 28-year tenure with the agency, said it was imperative for law enforcement to authenticate the ransom note and ensure that its author or authors were the ones behind the abduction.

Anderson said news of an abduction — especially one as high profile as Guthrie’s — can sprout copycats posing as a faux abductor to scam distraught family members while simultaneously diverting precious resources from an investigation where time is of the essence

The notes in Nancy Guthrie’s case are “highly unusual,” he added, since kidnappers typically share ransom notes with the family directly and discreetly.

“They want to keep it quiet,” Anderson said. “Because any time you put something out there publicly like this, it draws even more law-enforcement attention to it.”

This strategy of sending the notes to the media could be designed to ratchet up pressure, said Eric O’Neill, a former FBI counterintelligence operative and cybersecurity expert. The perpetrator may hope to “create a pressure to pay, to just (get the family to) say, ‘To hell with it. We're going to send the Bitcoin and and roll the dice.’”

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1 / 0Authorities search for Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old missing mother

The Pima County Sheriff's Office in Arizona received a 911 call reporting Nancy Guthrie missing from her home outside Tucson around noon local time on Sunday, Feb. 1.

O’Neill said the lack of a channel of communication after the first demand was also unusual. While the note sent instructions on sending cryptocurrency to a digital wallet, he said, officials did not say it contained any way to negotiate or instructions for what happens after any payment.

Despite the risk of digital footprints in communicating with officials or the family, he said, negotiations are typical.

The lack of communication instructions led family members to make video appeals to any abductors in consultation with the FBI, with Savannah Guthrie urging anyone holding her for firm proof her mother was alive.

“The family statement followed a very typical playbook for ransom kidnapping negotiation tactics for investigators,” Leising said: humanize the victim for kidnappers, urge contact that leads to her release or the capture of the kidnappers, and hope the victim might hear about the efforts to rescue her.

More: The search for Nancy Guthrie – and the loss felt by her community

Why proof of life is even more critical now

Verifying proof of life is a major hurdle to clear, Anderson said — especially in the age of AI where sophisticated videos impersonating one’s voice and appearance are a few keystrokes away.

“Years ago, maybe it could be a photograph of someone holding up a newspaper or a magazine where you could see the date,” Anderson said. “But with the technology we have today, that’s not sufficient anymore. You need more than just a photo or somebody’s voice.”

Effective verification would likely entail having the abductor — or abductee — provide a unique piece of information only a handful of people would know.

“It could be a word,” Anderson said. “It could be something that happened in the family’s history. You know, ‘hey, where did we go on vacation this year,’ or something personal that again, only that individual and the family would know.”

The importance of motive

At this point, there’s little to suggest the motive is political or ideological, Leising said. Compared someone making monetary demands, a kidnapper looking to make a statement can be more dangerous because there is less incentive to keep the person alive. The hope for a big payout could lead kidnappers to keep the victim healthy.

Leising expects the perpetrators to focus on getting money, like those responsible for the string of “coyote kidnappings” his office investigated in the 2000s — immigrants who crossed the border illegally who were then held for ransom by their smugglers.

Whether the new message represents a break in the search isn't yet clear. But the case has become a high priority for the FBI, which offered a $50,000 reward for information. President Donald Trump has said investigators had some strong clues.

“I would just caution that there's a lot we don't know. Law enforcement is being very restrictive on what they release. If I was in charge of that investigation, I'd be releasing only things that I think would help solve this case,” Leising said.

For example, he said he might hold back a detail that fraudulent tipsters would not know.

Meantime, the clock continued to tick on the ransom note’s second deadline of Monday, Feb. 9, after the first deadline on Thursday, Feb. 5 came and went.

An emotional decision

Whether the Guthrie family pays a ransom is their decision, officials have said.

But for the family, a lot of unknowns remain, O’Neill said. In any kidnapping case, paying a ransom does not guarantee a victim's return or that there will be an opportunity to catch the perpetrator.

With digital currency, the kidnappers won’t have to retrieve a suitcase of cash like they might have in the old days. They could have left their victim somewhere and fled the area long ago.

“I can't imagine the sheer terror and horror for that poor family who is now approaching the second deadline on Monday,” O’Neill said. “Going through the calculus of, what do we do?”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ex-FBI agents point to clues, rare circumstances in Guthrie case

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