Retired FBI agent: Guthrie disappearance likely not a random act

TUCSON — As Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie offered an emotional response Wednesday to reports of a ransom note in her mother’s disappearance, a retired FBI agent said he did not believe a potential kidnapping was done at random.

Nancy Guthrie was reported missing from her home Sunday afternoon, and sheriff's investigators have since said they believed she was taken "possibly in the middle of the night, and that includes possible kidnapping or abduction."

Guthrie in a prepared statement circulated on social media addressed a reported ransom letter sent to media organizations.

“We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media,” Guthrie said. “As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk. However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know without a doubt that she’s alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you, and we are ready to listen.”

While the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ of the investigation remained very much unclear on Wednesday, retired FBI agent Greg Rogers said he did not believe the possible abduction happened at random.

“It’s not someone who doesn’t know anything about the family,” he said during an interview with KSL. “This wasn’t a random act where they just showed up at her place, you know, without any knowledge of who she was.”

Rogers said despite Tucson’s proximity to Mexico and the fact there are groups in Mexico who kidnap and ransom people for a living, he was skeptical those groups were responsible in this case.

“They’re very good at it, they’re using drop phones that they’re making one call on and pitching that phone,” Rogers said. “This would be new. Those groups haven’t done this. They’ve done it in the States, but they’ve done it with narco-trafficking families and maybe kidnapped kids of some competitors — things like that — but they haven’t done it outside their wheelhouse, if you know what I mean. They haven’t really gone after just American citizens. That’s a very dangerous thing for them to do. They know that.”

Rogers said he believed investigators likely knew more than they were showing publicly, as indicated by a lack of a push for tips in the case.

He said he also believed FBI agents were giving the supposed ransom note a very close look as part of “psycholinguistic profiling,” where investigators evaluate everything down to vocabulary, syntax and punctuation to make determinations about education, nationality, intellect and ability.

“Law enforcement can determine very quickly how savvy the people making the ransom demands are,” Rogers said.

He said sending a ransom note to media organizations instead of the family didn’t necessarily track with supposed kidnappers' intent on seeking a ransom.

“That’s not smart,” he said. “I’ll be very interested to see if the individuals who did that really had anything to do with this case.”

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