‘Bad Faith’ Behavior in Nancy Guthrie Ransom Handling May Be the Reason the Bribe Was Never Paid
One of the main questions people have about the Nancy Guthrie investigation is why, if multiple ransom notes were received, the ransom was never paid. Savannah Guthrie herself said during her Today show interview with Hoda Kotb that the family believed at least a couple of those notes were real. So, why was a ransom never paid?
The answer might be very simple. During an interview with NewsNation’s Brian Entin, former FBI agent Steve Moore speculated that the communication was considered suspect from the beginning. “The problem I have here is the kidnappers—or the people demanding the ransom—were negotiating in bad faith from day one,” Moore told Entin on the April 20 episode of Brian Entin Investigates.
Related: Who are Savannah Guthrie’s siblings?
“They would provide no proof of life. They didn’t take Nancy’s safety into consideration, according to physical evidence at the scene. Everything they did was in bad faith. And so it’s like negotiating with Iran. They can say that they’re going to do something, but we sure don’t trust them to do anything because they’ve never demonstrated any bit of integrity or good faith in the investigation.”
He also added that the way the notes were sent was suspicious. “One of the main issues that makes them seem like non-serious is that they wanted the negotiations basically public. They wanted to go through TMZ. They wanted to go through TV networks,” Moore said, adding that whoever is behind the ransom notes “wanted this public.”
Several different ransom notes were sent to news outlets following Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, including ransom notes sent to TMZ and local outlets, which demanded millions of dollars in bitcoin, and notes sent from what is presumably a different person claiming to know who was behind the disappearance.
Savannah Guthrie said during her interview about the kidnapping, “I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real,” adding, “But, you know, a person that would send a fake ransom note really has to look deeply at themselves to a family in pain.”
The Today show host also spoke about the possibility that her mother was kidnapped because of her profile. “I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘Oh, that girl— that lady has money. We can … make a quick buck.’ I mean, that would make sense,” she said. “But we don’t know. Which is too much to bear, to think that I brought this to her bedside. That it’s because of me.”
For Moore, the ransom wasn’t paid because the FBI looked at the notes as a negotiation and decided not to “play the game” if someone else was dictating the terms.
Former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer wrote on X that the lack of proof of life might have been the main reason no ransom was paid. Law enforcement, “said they know the motive for the abduction of Nancy and they have known it from the beginning,” she wrote, adding, “Kidnapping for Ransom. Nancy sadly died. The kidnappers didn’t care and tortured the family with 2 notes knowing the FBI would not recommend paying a ransom without proof of life. Like most cases, this one is simple, but everyone wants to make it complex.”
