A week after Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped from her Tucson home, investigators spent the weekend searching at least two residences as more details emerged about a ransom note.
The frantic search comes as Nancy's daughter, NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie, issued a second video appeal to the kidnappers. Sources told The Times that the ransom note appeared credible because it included details about a specific damaged property and the location of a fixture in the house.
The Times did not review the story, but sources said it was asking for millions of dollars in exchange for its return.
On Saturday, Savannah Guthrie made a new video plea to her mother's kidnappers, saying “we will pay” for her safe return.
“We received your message and we understand it,” Guthrie said in the new video posted Saturday afternoon. He sat next to his brother and sister. “We beg you now to give us our mother back so we can celebrate with her. This is the only way to have peace. This is very valuable to us and we will pay for it.”
Authorities were at Nancy Guthrie's home again this weekend, as well as another family member's property, sources said. Guthrie's car was also taken from his home. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
No one has been named as a person of interest or suspect.
Guthrie was last seen by her family shortly after 9:45 p.m. last Saturday, which authorities said coincided with the time her garage door opened and closed that night.
About four hours later, at 1:47 a.m., officials said the doorbell camera went offline. An empty camera frame had already been found in his house.
Then, at 2:12 a.m., Guthrie's home security camera software detected a person (or animal) on one of the home's cameras, but Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said they had been unable to recover that footage and did not know which camera recorded the movement.
About 15 minutes later, at 2:28 a.m., Nancy's pacemaker app shows a disconnection from the phone, Nanos said. It seems like that was exactly when he left his house, as he left his phone behind.
Her family came to see her at her house shortly before noon on Sunday, after she had failed to show up for church. They discovered she was missing and almost immediately called 911, Nanos said.
The kidnappers have not offered “proof of life,” officials said several days ago. But Nanos said Thursday that officials believed she was still alive.
The letter, sent to TMZ and a local TV station in Tucson, contained a first deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday and a second demand deadline of Monday, said Heith Janke, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Phoenix division. He declined to say what, if anything, was requested by each deadline, or whether there was a threat if deadlines were not met.
On Friday, the fifth day since Guthrie disappeared, Arizona news outlet KOLD reported that it received a new note from the alleged kidnapper. The station did not report details of the new letter, but said that “the new note contains information that the senders appear to believe will prove to investigators that they are the same people who sent the first note.”
Nancy Guthrie's children have been trying to communicate publicly with her kidnappers.
His son, Camron Guthrie, posted a video pleading with the kidnapper Thursday afternoon, around the time of the ransom letter's first deadline.
“Whoever is holding our mother, we want to hear from you,” he said. “We haven't heard anything directly. We need you to reach out and we need a way to reach you so we can move forward.”
