Nancy Guthrie case takes turn as man pleads guilty

The disappearance has drawn widespread attention due to Savannah Guthrie's public profile, keeping the case in the headlines for months.

California man has pleaded guilty to harassment after being found to have sent extortion messages demanding bitcoin from the family of Nancy Guthrie, the 84 year old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, who has been missing since February 1.
The 42 year old pleaded guilty on Thursday to two counts of harassment using a telecommunications device, according to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. He faces up to two years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, or both, with an alternative possibility of probation for up to ten years under a plea deal. Sentencing is scheduled for September 10. As part of the arrangement, he was required to check in to a residential addiction treatment facility.
Court records show that the man contacted Nancy Guthrie’s daughter, Annie Guthrie, and her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, on February 4, just three days after Nancy went missing and shortly after the family had publicly appealed to her kidnappers for her safe return. In one of his messages, he wrote that he was waiting on bitcoin and asking whether the family had received a prior ransom demand.
In the press release, authorities stated that he acknowledged knowing a ransom demand had already been made before he contacted the family, and admitted his actions were intended to harass them by seeking information about the investigation.
The man’s guilty plea represents a notable development in a case that has been complicated by the volume of communications received by investigators since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance. The FBI’s Phoenix Field Office confirmed on Wednesday that agents were working to determine which ransom demands were legitimate and which were fraudulent extortion attempts. In a statement, the FBI said that several ransom demands had been received throughout the investigation, with some deemed to be without legitimacy and others still under active investigation as potentially genuine.
Nancy Guthrie went missing from her home in Tucson, Arizona, and despite ongoing investigations by multiple law enforcement agencies, her whereabouts remain unknown. The case has drawn significant public attention, in part because of her daughter Savannah Guthrie’s high profile as a co-anchor on NBC’s Today show, and has been the subject of continuous media coverage since February.
The guilty plea by the California man does not directly advance the search for Nancy Guthrie but does close one thread of the investigation that had occupied significant law enforcement resources, allowing investigators to refocus efforts on the leads still being actively pursued.