The second ransom note originally sent in the Nancy Guthrie case allegedly stated that the missing family matriarch was “buried in nature” following her supposed death, reporter Briana Whitney tells Us Weekly.
Speaking exclusively to Us on Tuesday, June 23, Whitney, a former Arizona’s Family TV reporter, reflected on reading the disturbing note while covering the 84-year-old’s disappearance in February.
Whitney’s role at Arizona’s Family TV involved covering the Nancy Guthrie case for several months. “I’ve seen them with my own eyes, so I want to actually provide more context as to what that second note said,” she told Us.
“In the [second] note it says she’s ‘buried in nature’ and that’s what I read,” she shared, adding that she found it “interesting they used that specific phrasing and also referred to the fact that she [Nancy] ‘perished’ shortly after she was taken.”
Whitney, who joined the “Crime Junkie” podcast in May, spoke to Us just hours after multiple outlets reported that the second ransom note, believed to have been sent by Nancy’s abductors, acknowledged that her apparent death was “unintentional” and that she was “buried with nature now.”
News of the ransom notes originally broke in February after they were sent to multiple media outlets, however the contents of each note were not publicly revealed in full at the time.
The notes were sent to outlets in the week that followed Nancy’s February 1 reported disappearance. Nancy, who is Today host Savannah Guthrie’s mother, was last seen alive when she was dropped off at her home by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, on the night of January 31. She was reported missing the following day after a friend alerted the Guthrie family that Nancy did not turn up as planned for a virtual worship service.
Briana Whitney Briana Whitney/YouTube
After reviewing both the first and second ransom notes herself, Whitney told Us that the second note’s “verbiage” seemed unusual to her. “I thought it was interesting that the term ‘we’ was used, and that it could be somebody trying to fool people that it’s more than one person,” the journalist told Us. “But that’s how it was written. It [was] kind of offbeat and odd … not a way that we would typically write something. That stuck out.”
Whitney added that the second note mentioned that nobody could have done anything to have “changed the outcome,” and that the note’s writer, or writers, stated that they were “truly” sorry.
“That stood out to me because it seemed so final. It almost felt like that was the end of it all, and even though we know that it continues to unfold, and … everything kept going on, especially in that heightened sense of that first month, the investigation was ongoing,” Whitney told Us. “Really, when it comes to anything more from whoever potentially did this, it felt like it all ended after that second note.”
One of the reported demands for Nancy Guthrie’s safe return has been revealed. The person or people who allegedly took Today cohost Savannah Guthrie’s mom, 84, have asked for the family to pay them millions of dollars in bitcoin, according to a local news station who reportedly received one of the ransom notes that were […]
Whitney also said that she believed Nancy’s abductors may not have expected that Nancy would die. “If you look at the notes, and especially the way that the second note was written, and we know that there was Bitcoin demanded in the first one from reading the notes, you can look at this and theorize that they didn’t expect Nancy Guthrie to pass away, or that her death was not planned,” she told Us. “So there was no proof of life to be had to prove to the Guthrie family that they had Nancy to then pay the money.” (AirMail reported on June 20 that a first random note was sent to investigators one day after Nancy’s disappearance and asked for $4 million to be paid into a Bitcoin account “or else.”)
Whitney noted, “We know that there was one Bitcoin transaction, a very low amount in the Bitcoin wallet [as] seemingly testing to see if they could communicate with whoever this person is, but that didn’t seem to come to fruition. When there was no proof of life ever given of Nancy, it feels that the second note was kind of like, ‘Well, we didn’t plan for this to happen, and you couldn’t do anything, and this is it, and we’re sorry.’ I think that’s where the financial part of this ended.”
Savannah, 54, addressed Tuesday’s news while hosting Today that morning, appearing emotional as she pleaded with her audience to “beg people … to come forward.”
She said during the show, “Somebody knows something. This is a news story today that is on your radar, because this is the life my sister lives, that I live, that my brother lives and our extended families live, that our children live every day. We are in agony. We cannot be in peace.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.usmagazine.com ’
