{"id":725355,"date":"2026-08-03T02:58:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T02:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/725355\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T02:58:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T02:58:23","slug":"how-ransom-notes-could-help-catch-nancy-guthries-kidnappers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/725355\/","title":{"rendered":"How ransom notes could help catch Nancy Guthrie’s kidnappers"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, exactly six months after Nancy Guthrie was abducted, police released two ransom notes<\/a> in the hope that they would help identify her kidnappers. <\/p>\n

Guthrie, the mother of US news presenter Savannah Guthrie, was 84 when she went missing from her Arizona home in January.<\/p>\n

Her disappearance sparked a months-long investigation which has turned up few apparent leads and fewer suspects.<\/p>\n

So how could Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper, or kidnappers, be caught from these brief ransom notes?<\/p>\n

The first of the notes, which are being treated as apparently credible, demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin. The other claimed Guthrie died shortly after she was taken.<\/p>\n

While the language in the notes might seem straightforward, police said the writer’s “distinct linguistic characteristics” may be recognisable.<\/p>\n

“There are a number of pieces of information in these notes that just might jar someone to say ‘you know, I’ve heard that’,” said Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos.<\/p>\n

A forensic linguist told the BBC it’s possible to glean crucial information about a person from just a few sentences.<\/p>\n

“It’s built upon the premise that we each carry an idiolect, or a word print, of our own that distinguishes our language from others,” said William Eggington, a retired linguistics professor from Brigham Young University who is now a forensic consultant.<\/p>\n

But, he said, investigators have to hold scientific scepticism when they analyse notes like this – especially when they have so few words to work with.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, they have to account for the possibility that the person may be trying to disguise their natural writing voice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, exactly six months after Nancy Guthrie was abducted, police released two ransom notes in the hope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-725355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}