Nancy Guthrie: FBI Expert Says Ransom Notes Don't Match Real Kidnapping
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Monday ransom deadline is here in the Nancy Guthrie disappearance — six million dollars in Bitcoin, a reported threat on her life — and retired FBI Special Agent Robin Dreeke says the behavioral profile of these ransom notes has never matched a legitimate kidnapping-for-ransom.
Three identical letters were sent to KOLD, a second Tucson station, and TMZ containing non-public details about Nancy's home — her Apple Watch location, a destroyed floodlight, what she was wearing. Harvey Levin called the note "grammatically perfect." The FBI took them seriously. But there was no phone number, no email, no way for the family to respond.
The family shifted from demanding proof of life to saying "we will pay" in a Saturday video that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN was crafted with FBI hostage negotiators. CNN's Josh Campbell confirmed the public plea means no private communication channel exists. A second message arrived Friday — no demands, no proof of life. KOLD is calling it "a message," not a ransom note.
On True Crime Today, Dreeke breaks down what legitimate kidnapping communication looks like, why this case deviates from every known pattern, and what the behavioral profile of these notes suggests about who wrote them and why. The deadline is here. And nobody can explain how this adds up to a real kidnapping.
Robin Dreeke is a retired FBI Special Agent and former Chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program with twenty-one years of service.
#NancyGuthrie #SavannahGuthrie #RansomNote #RobinDreeke #FBI #TrueCrimeToday #BitcoinRansom #TrueCrime #Tucson #MissingPerson
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brewski, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:09.8 | This is going to be interesting. |
| 0:11.9 | Eight days into Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, purported ransom notes have become the centerpiece of the public narrative. |
| 0:18.2 | But the behavioral profile of those notes |
| 0:20.9 | raises more questions than answers. |
| 0:23.8 | At least three identical letters |
| 0:25.7 | were sent to media outlets |
| 0:27.2 | demanding millions in Bitcoin |
| 0:29.2 | containing non-public details |
| 0:31.4 | about Nancy's home, |
| 0:32.5 | yet providing no way for the family |
| 0:34.3 | really to respond. |
| 0:35.7 | The family has now gone on camera |
| 0:37.2 | saying we will pay. |
| 0:39.4 | What does it all mean? Joining me, we have Robin Drake, retired FBI special agent, |
| 0:45.8 | chief of the counterintelligence behavioral analysis program to help break all of this down. |
| 0:50.9 | We're going to be doing this into a couple different sections here. I want to |
| 0:54.5 | talk about the ransom notes first, because there's a lot to unpack here, so much that has come out |
| 1:00.9 | over the weekend about the various notes, the legitimacy of each one of them, the contents of all |
| 1:10.1 | of them. Robin, ransom notes in this case were sent to three media outlets that were, we understand, |
| 1:16.8 | K-O-L-D, K-gun, and TMZ, but included no phone number, no email, not necessarily an encrypted |
| 1:24.4 | channel, no way for the family to communicate back. |
... |
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