Months after ransom notes connected to the abduction of Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, were sent to TMZ and turned over to the FBI, the publication’s founder, Harvey Levin, is sharing new details on what the notes actually said.
His video statement, posted to social media on June 22, 2026, came amid a new report that in one of the ransom notes, the abductor apologized, saying that Nancy was no longer alive. While that’s not true, per Levin, he did say that another letter sent to TMZ — as well as other media outlets — claimed Nancy had died.
Harvey Levin Reveals Communiciations With the FBI He’s Never Shared Before
Air Mail, an outlet founded in 2019 by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and former New York Times correspondent Alessandra Stanley, said a source “close to the team working on the case” reported that a second ransom note sent to TMZ and local news stations in Arizona, where Nancy lived, included a “sputtering and labored” apology for Nancy’s unintended death, and asked for $4 million to return the body.
But in Levin’s new video, he refutes that claim, insisting, “That was not in the ransom note that we received, it is not in the ransom note at all.”
Levin said he posted his video statement to clear the air about “some communications I’ve had with the FBI that I haven’t talked about until now,” starting with the reports of an apology from the abductor.
“It does say that she’s scared but okay,” he said, which is a detail he shared back when the notes first arrived. “But the ransom note makes no reference to Nancy Guthrie either dying or the kidnappers apologizing. Now, there is a
reference to Nancy Guthrie not being alive anymore, but that is from the person who sent us multiple emails saying that he knows or knew where Nancy Guthrie was and where the kidnappers were, and he wanted money in return for information.”
Levin continued, “We passed that along to the FBI, as we did the ransom note, but this person kept sending us emails, and early on, he said ‘time is of the essence.’ And then a few days after the kidnapping, he said ‘time is no longer of the essence,’ meaning she wasn’t alive. The FBI took it seriously. They felt, at least in my communications with them, and I had numerous communications, they felt that this person might, indeed, know for some reason.”
Harvey Levin Says He Suspected the Emails That Claimed Nancy Guthrie Was Dead Were Legitimate
NBCUniversalLevin did speak about a detail of the FBI’s investigation that has befuddled him, explaining, “They never paid or never asked the Guthrie family to pay that person for information leading to the identity of the kidnappers in Nancy Guthrie’s remains.”
“I was always confused about that,” he said, “because I’m a skeptical guy, but … there’s something about those emails that made me believe that this guy may well have known who the kidnappers were. And the reason I say that is that, initially, he said in the first letter, he said ‘time is of the essence,’ meaning ‘you better hurry up, I can tell you where she is.’ But then the next day he wrote, ‘time is no longer of the essence.'”
“If somebody is scamming and wants to get money, why would they say time is no longer of the essence?” Levin asked, theorizing that if the ransom note writer was faking it all along, he would have continued the ruse so he or she could get as much money as possible and keep the request feeling urgent.
“To me, it felt more truthful because he was taking away the urgency to pay the money,” Levin said.
On June 22, NBC News also reported that the second letter from a person who claimed to know what happened to Guthrie had reported that she had died, according to three sources who spoke to the outlet. TMZ and Tucson TV station KOLD received the letters.
According to NBC, it was after that second, chilling letter was received that Savannah and her siblings, brother Camron and sister Annie, recorded a video posted to Instagram in which she told the abductors, “We received your message and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
Nancy has been missing since disappearing from her Tucson home overnight on February 1. Anyone with information on the case is encouraged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or to email online@tips.fbi.gov.
