Evaluating the Kidnappers' Timeline

This memorial day as America approaches the twenty fifth anniversary of nine eleven, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation paid off the mortgages on twenty six homes for gold star families and families of fallen first responders across thirteen states , in tribute to the three hundred and forty three FDNY firefighters lost on nine hundred eleven, Tunnel to Towers has committed to delivering three hundred and forty three mortgage free homes this year. Their courage will never be forgotten. Join us. Donate eleven dollars a month at Twitter . org . I have a theory . I think when they kidnapped Nancy Guthrie, it was all about money and then she dies and they freak out because they've committed murder. You kidnap somebody and they die as a result of the anguish and the fright. It's felony murder. Mark, we have received two emails today Friday when we're doing this from a man who claims he knows where Nancy Guthrie's kidnappers are, who they are and will lead authorities to them for the price of one bitcoin. And I am going to lay out everything we know, the communications with the FBI, and I want to hear from you and everybody watching and listening , is this guy a fraudster or the real deal? So let me tell you what we got today. Early, early this morning. So this guy , he starts out by saying , I am not the idiot who recently called in a tip about her burial site in Mexico. Now, there were reports recently that somebody had that they knew where she was in Mexico . He's saying, I'm not that guy . Although he did tell us earlier when she was supposedly still alive that they had taken her to Mexico. But here's what it gets . There's wait, so people understand is this somebody who had previously sent a note which you turned over to the FBI? We've turned all the notes over to the FBI and is this one that the FBI gave some cred ence to not this particular one, but an earlier one. Well , he's referring to somebody who made a statement that her body was buried in Mexico. I have no idea whether the FBI took it seriously. He's saying , It's not me . But this is what's interesting . He says, Only two are directly involved , and I doubt they would be the ones to call in and snitch on themselves . So I think that's really interesting because he has told us before , if you believe him, that there are multiple kidnappers, but a main guy. This is the first time he's given us a number where he says two . So he says there are two kidnappers and he's basically saying it wasn't me that made that other that comment that circulated recently about Mexico, and it certainly wasn't them because why would they snitch on themselves? So that's kind of interesting. Is this when did this guy or this person first email or send you a note. Days after we received the first ransom note days So this is somebody who's been sending to you all along and at the beginning almost every day we've received at least a dozen of these from the same A . And I'm going to, you and I have talked about this before. You can do a pretty good triage on whether somebody is fifty one, fifty just on the basis of the notes they said. He's not fifty one. He's not fifty one, fifty. He's either legit or a sophisticated fraudster. He's one of the two. He's either legit or really sharp and knows how to defraud people , but there is nothing in these notes that make him seem off kilter in terms of his , you've got more experience than most in fact ninety eight percent of the population at being able to detect who's yeah off kilter to use your term . So then this is where it gets really interesting . He says I have a phone stashed in a secure location , guaranteeing both the information it stores and the safety of the phone. What it contains is my definition of delivering this on a silver platter , a short video of the main guy with Nancy the day that was probably her last . And then he says, in addition to that, the phone has the names and addresses of the kidnappers . So he is saying he has a video of Nancy because he had said earlier that he had seen Nancy with the kidnappers. That if you believe him , he has some close connection to the kidnappers. That's what he says. But he says he is not involved in the kidnapp ing and has repeated that over and over and over . So without being cynical , the fact that he only wants one bitcoin seems odd to me. Number one, number two, since this has started, Bitcoin has not exactly skyrocketed in value. It's about sixty thousand bucks now. A little less. Yeah. And so has he changed the amount he 's asked for over time ? Well, in a way, yes, because initially he had asked for what amounted to one hundred thousand in Bitcoin . And now he's asking for one , which is , like I said, just under sixty thousand dollars. I agree with you. I mean, it's like if this guy is really trying . Now he says the reason he wants the money is because he has to go underground he get.s And more detail ed here, but he's saying that he is basically on the run because these kidnappers appear to know that he has all this information and he's scared of them and he has to go underground. And he goes on in this letter in this email to say that he can see if the money is put into the Bitcoin address that he gives , but he will not access it until after the kidnappers are caught because he doesn't want to access it and then have a trace to him if the kidnappers are still in the loose. So he said I would assume that you as a subsidiary of Fox cannot pay for this. I'll tell ya I called the FBI about a month ago and I said look, I said, I may be really naive here and I don't know , but I keep asking you guys , you know, is this guy a kook? Is he a fraudster? And you tell me you don't know, but you also say you're really trying to track him down. And it's like you're not dismissing it. And I just got this feeling it might be true. So what if we do a documentary and we actually pay the Bitcoin into the account to trigger this and follow where it leads us. And obviously we'll work with you. So this was about a month ago. And the first reaction I got was, well, that's kind of interesting. Let us run it up the fl toagpole. And I called them back and a couple days later and they said we're still talking about it. And then I kind of got ghosted for almost a month and I called back half dozen times and they never returned my call. And I just figured, okay, where they when you say they FBI called the FBI . So have you responded? Is this an interactive relationship ? Or are you not able to respond to what he's I can't respond but we respond in a different sort of way and I'll tell you in a minute, but let me just say Okay a couple of days ago the FBI did call me and they said well look you know they knew about what I had requested. And they said, look , we feel we're closer to finding this person. And they said this person might actually be a woman. And that's all they said. They didn't say why they thought that. But I was gonna that's interesting they said that because if I was going to ask you if there was any indicia that this was a female using a man's right uses a man's name that doesn't mean it no , I know But then they said on the documentary thing to stand down that they were working on it. And I said, fine. And so because there were these stories that had come out this week you know, , the second ransom note said that Nancy had died . It seems like that's what triggered this guy into they understand this person did not tell you that Nancy is dead ? Well he is essentially he told us that it I'm going to call him he just because that's what we've read . He told us this early on. At one point he said essentially, time is of the essence and then in a follow up email said time is no longer of the essence . And how early or how long after a week disappeared? A week and so and so yeah, I mean he's he has essentially told us over time that she was dead. And again, we've been sending all of these to the FBI . they And have spent a lot of time with my IT team , a lot of time and multiple FBI agents who have been trying to crack the code of both this guy's email and the first kidnapping note. They've spent a lot of time with our team . As far as I know, they were not able to crack it. I know that until at least you know, a month ago, they certainly wasn't were not able to crack it. I don't know what they have done with this guy . Is this guy the one that you know, remember when Savannah did that really tugs at your heart strings emotion laden . Right . Please bring us back and there was two interpretations. One was she wanted the remains, the other , you know , are people who wanted to be positive or think positive ly we're interpreting it differently . Is this guy the one that you believe was saying that she's already gone? No, the reason that Savannah that's a really important point . There was a the first ransom note said she was safe but scared. We received that as did two Tucson television stations . The second note was only sent to one of the Tucson television stations . And what came out this week is in that second note, which was sent five or six days after the kidnapping , it said she was dead And they were basically saying, you know, we didn't do it. She died . And it was that second ransom note from the kidnappers. We know both notes were written by the same people it was the same it had the same bitcoin address for the ransom . So it was that second note that said she was dead and yes that weekend on I believe, it was Saturday night is when Savannah came out with that really heart wrenching statement where she said , bring us to our mother so we can bring her home and celebrate . That felt me back then like they knew she had died . When you say bring her back so we can celebrate Bitcoin address given by notes one and number two , number two only going to one station is a different bitcoin address than the Bitcoin address in this note that we're talking about today. Yeah. And the reason we know that this note today is the same as is written by the same person is that the last one we received before this one , the last one we received said I'm not going to get in touch with you anymore. I'm going to deactivate the Bitcoin account. And we never published the Bitcoin address. So in this note , he says, I have a new Bitcoin address that you can send this money to , and then he references the old one just to show it's the same guy . And we never published that Bitcoin address and it is the exact same one. Have you published any of these notes? We haven't published the notes in full. We've quoted from them . Have you even shown anything indica of it? No, we've never we've never shown any of the notes, but we've should we show a little bit of this? Well, I mean, I've read I've read, I've read a lot of this to you . And and, you know, when he says , he says, look, if you send us , if you send me the Bitcoin , that I will let you know where this phone is and it's in a safe location that's easily accessible if you are guided to it. To me, that feels like a safe deposit box. And he says that the phone is turned off , but I will lead you to that safe deposit box and give you the password so you can access the phone. So that's what he says. Now if this guy is not or woman is not a fraudster , what I and I think I said this to you once before and I would hopefully they're listening or hear it. Why don't they just go to a lawyer and have the lawyer work on a contingency to broker the information which then keeps the anonymity of the client and allows the information to get wherever. You don't even have to rely on a Bitcoin. A lawyer can keep the money in a trust account pending the confirmation of the information or the phone or whatever else it is. I don't know why they make it so cloak and dagger when there seems to be a rather simple way to navigate this. That's actually a really interesting idea . And he certainly hasn't raised it. And one of the reasons he might not want to do that is if he's a fraudster . Right. And so that's that's what tends to leave me to believe that the person is a fraudster because otherwise go to a lawyer who's got attorney client privilege with you, who has a trust account that you can receive whatever funds and not have to disclose , meaning not have to disclose to the general public , so to speak , and then let the lawyer broker this deal so that you can then take that information and if you have some interest in getting this solved, that's the way to solve it. Okay, I will double down with you on that and say there is more evidence he's a fraudster and then after I tell you what that evidence is, then I'll tell you why he might not be a fraudster. So my goodness . Okay, I'm gonna get my no going to get my fraudster whiplash. You are going to get you going to get fraudster whipling. Let's first go towards doubling down on fraudster. Okay, let's do that. So you had asked me earlier , is this one way communication or are we able to communicate with him? We cannot send him emails or anything like that. That is a one way street there we don't have any ability to do that, never have. However , we have a website and we have television shows and we have social media. And on all of those , we have said things really directly to him . And I said something to him early today getting this email . And I said, look You could be an absolute scammer and show there's a reason the FBI and the Guthrie family hasn't paid you . So it's got to give them pause that you're the real whether you're the real deal or not. So what about this ? Send us and this is the way we've communicated with him. I put this on social media and on the website today and I said , send us a screen grab from the video of Nancy Guthrie , something , just a screen grab that shows you the real deal , and we will immediately forward it to the FBI and I would assume if they think it's real , they're going to pay the money . So a couple hours after we posted that , he sent another email saying , I'm not going to do that because the metadata will lead them directly to me and I'm not going to take that chance . So that made me think this guy's full of it right because and once again , you could show it to a lawyer confidentially . The lawyer can take a look. The lawyer does not have to access the metadata, but the lawyer can then do a reverse proffer to the FBI or the authorities. The lawyer could also, if you're worried about being apprehended or if you're worried about your liability, so to speak , then they can do if it turns out to be true and you're not a fraudster, they can work out some kind of an arrangement for you. That's right . Okay. So that's how my daughter leads you what leads you to the other Where's the whiplash on the other egg? So I send these two emails today to the FBI and they are saying we're on it . We're on it . Wow, you know, it's like it's like stop sending us these stupid emails . And I'm not getting that . And so I'm just really confused why are they spending time on this guy if they don't believe that he might be legit ? But on the other hand , if they think he even might be legit , why not roll the dice on sixty grand , which in the greater scheme of things , you know, it's not going to break the bank , but if they're spending this much time trying to figure out who he is , then roll the dice on this thing because the guy there was a point mark where I don't know, a month in, I did a social media post again, the only way we could contact this guy. And I just said, look , the FBI literally asked me do this social post and say to you that if this is a scam , they will find you, they will charge you, they will prosecute you, and they will send you to prison. And they had actually asked me to say that and I did. And he sent me an email back saying , I am well aware that anybody who pulls a scam like this can be prosecuted and sent to prison. I am not doing that. So look I don't know , but I mean if you If zero to one hundred, one hundred is he's telling the truth and zero is no credibility. Where are you on the spectrum ? Right now until you give me some other piece of information that I didn't have eight minutes ago . I'm giving it about a sixty five percent, a sixty five out of a hundred. Is that worth ? Is that worth rolling the dice? Yeah, I think that is worth rolling the dice . So you would roll the dice . If I'm you and I've got a website like you've got, I would roll the dice. Well, we cannot, we will not do anything like that unless the FBI said go ahead because I figured if they weren't, what skin is it off their teeth if we do this documentary and do it? But for whatever reason they said, No, no, no, stand down. Why are they saying that? How long ago they to did tell you stand out ? This week . Okay , so well they when I first called them about the idea , they said, Don't do anything yet. Let us run it up the flightight.. R Then you did the follow up. Right. Have you asked them since this last one? Yeah, when I was on the phone with them this week and I mentioned it again, they said, No, no, stand down. Okay, well then that would lead me to believe then my sixty five is a very confident sixty five because that would lead me to believe that they think they've got something. If they thought this was a complete dead end, they wouldn't have told you to stand out Yeah, and we have never spoken with the Guthrie family on this. So and you know this is got to be the most it's hard to believe heart wrenching heart wrenching . It' persf aect word for it. Can you imagine your mom is gone? You don't know what's happened and you've got every grifter in the world and you've got it just I don't even know how to it's inexplicable and it's not just that it's like with Savannah, you know, she's got a job that requires her, you know, to at times be joyful and at times, you know, just be inquisitive and to have all sorts of emotions, you know, depending on what she's doing, you know, during each, you know, multi hour of the Today Show . And what's underlying all of it is this pain that sometimes just seeps out which it did this week where she just broke down . And when she breaks down in the middle of it, you think, my God, this woman literally has to act every day . And it is true acting, you know, to be able to, you know, just bury that , you know, emotion and And and it always just doesn't stay down . Yeah, it's it's heart wrenching. That's why I said, if I are you? You asked me, I'm a solid sixty five I'm around there too. But to me a sixty five is roll the dice . Right, I agree. Anything more than fifty is Roll the Dice. So I got a theory about this Wait, do I have all the information at this point that you have ? Most, I suppose . But I mean, there were some things that they asked us not to say . But I gotta when the things they asked you not to say would seem to the idea that this person is legit. Correct ? I can't say that. I can't say one way or the other. It's more about the kidnappers than it is about him by this guy really. But as to the kidnappers , I have a theory . I think clearly these kidnappers wanted money . And that's all they wanted. And when they kidnapped Nancy Guthrie , I think their intention was as soon as they got the money, release her. It was all about money and then she dies on their watch and she and they freak out and go radio silent because they've committed murder. It's felony murder. You kidnap somebody and they die as a result of the anguish and the fright and the fact that she didn't have her meds and everything else . It's felony murder. So these guys thought they were doing a kidnapping and then all of a sudden Nancy Guthrie dies and they realize holy crap, we're going to be prosecuted for murder and they go away never to be seen again. They never ask for another ransom amount . They in fact, in that second letter, they didn't ask for any specific amount. They just said she's dead. We didn't do it. And so it feels like they just didn't want anything to do with it, including they didn't want to say where her body was because they thought it would lead the FBI to them and they'd be prosecuted for murder. Okay, so I'm going to push on this theory a little bit . Do you think this is one of what we have heard about these cross border kidnappings for money that is more common than you and I would know because we toggle between the coast . Or do you think this targeted Nancy Guthrie because of who she was as opposed to meeting related to Savannah, or do you think it was randomly Nancy Guthrie because of the location of her house and that it seemed to be in a wealthy enclave? What's your theory there? I think these kidnappers are based in the Tucson area, specifically the Tucson television market. They were contacting two local stations in Tucson . They didn't contact NBC News , which is where Savannah works. They contacted two local stations . I think these kidnappers either knew Nancy Guthrie who would rightfully brag that her daughter is the anchor of the Today Show, Savannah , or they had heard it in town because in a way, Nancy Guth rie is a celebrity because her daughter is somebody that people in that market watch every single day . And so they knew Savannah Guthrie was Nancy's daughter , and they assume and probably correctly, that not only is she famous, but rich and they saw a payday, which to me bolsters the theory that this was , you know, give us the money, we'll give her back to you and we'll be set for the rest of our lives. And all of a sudden she dies and now they're murderers and they just go radioil sent . And did was one of the stations in Tucson that received the initial notes, one of those two an NBC affiliate ? Oh , I don't remember whether it's NBC One was a CBS. I just It's KOLD and K gun and I don't remember, but those are the two. I think okay, so then if that is the case if this was a money grab and it was they knew who she was , I'm going to sixty five percent on that theory as well, frankly. I'm higher than sixty five on that on that theory. I'm higher than you think they knew who she was Nancy Guthrie, you think when they took her that they specifically knew she was Savannah's mother . I'm ninety five percent on that. . And by the way, for those who think this is ghoulish , and it is, but this is the problem if you don't think the FBI has gone through this , every which way is a Rubik's Cube or Mental Gymnastics, you're naive because this is precisely what the investigative techniques are in terms of trying to figure out or profiling who it is or what it is. And you know, and Mark, I think that that second ransom note, and again, we haven't seen it, but we now know the reporting on it , you know, where they and we do know this because one of the people from KOLD, the station that got that second note, had said publicly, not a lot publicly, but said that there was not a specific ransom demand in that second note. That's really interesting because in the first note, it is very specific. The note we got that four million dollars until Friday . And if you don't pay us by Friday, it goes to six million dollars. And if you don't pay it by Monday, we will kill her. So they're very specific and very money oriented in this letter. And then it is specifically say dollars as opposed to Bitcoin ? It was dollars. It was dollars. And it was round number four and then round number six. Correct. And in the second one, according to a reporter from KOLD , there was no mention of a ransom amount. So again I think that when they sent the second, it was to say, hey, we're really sorry she died, but we didn't do it. She just died. And they went silent. So I think at that point, you know, they could have said, if they wanted to, we'll lead you to her body if you give us X. They didn't do that. And that's why I think they just freaked out and that they so between you got note number one which was contemporaneous with the two to the local station. Greet, right? Okay . Then note number two, which you believe she had already passed away they didn't make a number. You didn't get a note for note number two. Correct, correct. And this person who sent you up to a dozen communications doesn't surface until after note number two. No, surface I believe No, I believe no surf,aced after note number one . After note number one. But before number two, before when they surfaced, did this person believe or indicate that she was still alive? Initially, yes and, at a point early on said no , what they said was essentially time was of the essence and the beginning . And then in a subsequent note said time is no longer of the essence. Have you done a timeline of this. So note number one, obviously they're asking for money. Presumably she's alive . Note number two, by the people where you didn't get it, she they believe if it's legit. It's a matter of it's like a matter of or five days mark . So it would appear because that the person that this person has some connection to whoever's sending notes number one and notes number two , would it not? Because of that interconnection, because they knew at a certain point that something untorted happened or I'm sorry, you're saying there's a connection between note one and note two. No, I'm saying that the person this is not the person who sent the first note or the second note to guy that 's sending to us is somehow connected. He says he's connected. He says I know he says it, but I'm just trying to see if there is a way to roughly correlate the data. It roughly fits on the timeline. There's a bit of a delay from the time the kidnappers told KOLD Nancy was dead and the time he told us that, but not by not by not by much . If I'm analyzing it, when they're telling KO LD that Nancy is dead, that was not publicly known in real time. People were just speculating correct back and forth because of this. That was a known that wasn't known until this week . Correct. So what I'm saying is the person you're now communic ating with and have for a dozen times seem to know around the same time. Yeah, around the same time. So that would tend to say if this person is a fraudster, those two are probably fraudsters, but if this person is legit, that gives some legitimacy to the person to the group or whoever it was that was sending notes one and two to you and KOL D. Yeah, now I will end with this that the F I know the FBI believes that the person who sent or people who sent ransom notes one and two are one in the same and they are the kidnappers. They absolutely believe they're the kids That's the case then I'm raising we'll end with this. I'm raising it from sixty five to eighty percent by confidence . And then you just got to figure out why haven't they paid ? And I'm stuck. I'm stuck . Well , we'll read the comments. I'm sure we'll find some. I'm sure they will have a piddle. I'm sure they'll thank you, Harvey. Mark you too. Bye bye