{"id":740235,"date":"2026-07-03T04:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740235\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T04:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:54:09","slug":"derrick-callella-pleads-guilty-to-making-fake-nancy-guthrie-ransom-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740235\/","title":{"rendered":"Derrick Callella pleads guilty to making fake Nancy Guthrie ransom demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — A Los Angeles County man has pleaded guilty to making a fake ransom demand in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.<\/p>\n

Derrick Callella is charged with two counts of telephonic harassment.<\/p>\n

His plea deal in Tucson Federal Court calls for five years of probation on each count, to be served at the same time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors say the Hawthorne man sent the Guthrie family two text messages and made a phone call shortly after “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother disappeared.<\/p>\n

Callella is due back in court for sentencing in September and for now has been ordered into residential drug treatment.<\/p>\n

Savannah Guthrie made an emotional appeal to viewers last month to come forward with any information about her missing mother, a day after it was reported that a ransom note received months ago had indicated that she was dead.<\/p>\n

“We are in agony, and we cannot be at peace. … We love our mom. We’ll never stop looking for her,” Guthrie said at the “Today” desk in New York, holding a tissue in her left hand.<\/p>\n

Nancy Guthrie, 84, who lived alone, was reported missing from her Tucson-area home on Feb. 1. The FBI released video more than a week later from a camera outside her front door showing a masked stranger. Her blood was found on the porch, but the case remains unsolved.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (KABC) — A Los Angeles County man has pleaded guilty to making a fake ransom demand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[318240,23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-740235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-318240","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}