TMZ founder Harvey Levin addressed circulating reports on Monday regarding the contents of ransom communications and his recent dealings with federal investigators in Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
The 84-year-old mother of Savannah Guthrie was last seen on January 31 at her Catalina Foothills home.
No one has been arrested in her disappearance.
A ransom note emailed to media outlets six days after Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance indicated that she had died, according to a report by the news website AirMail.
According to reporting by NBC News, a second ransom note indicated that Nancy Guthrie had died. NBC also reports the note did not apologize for taking Guthrie and did not request any money.
The first of the two emails sent by the apparent abductors had demanded a $4 million ransom in Bitcoin.
The FBI did not respond to AZPM’s request for comment.
Levin [addressed suggestions that a ransom letter](
contained an apology to Savannah Guthrie’s family or a confirmation of Nancy’s death. While he acknowledged that TMZ received a ransom note, he denied it contained that information.
“That was not in the ransom note we received…. It is not in that ransom note at all,” Levin said.
Levin said the confusion stems from a separate individual who sent TMZ a dozen emails claiming to the know the location of Nancy Guthrie and her kidnappers. He said this person initially demanded $100,000 in exchange for information, claiming he knew the kidnappers well but feared they would “exact revenge” if they spoke to authorities.
Levin said the FBI took this person seriously enough to maintain ongoing communications with Levin but never authorized payment to the tipster.
Levin also said the FBI attempted to track the actual kidnappers by depositing $270 into a Bitcoin account, though the effort to trace the recipient was unsuccessful.
After initially stating that “time is of the essence,” the individual later wrote that time was “no longer of the essence,” implying Guthrie was no longer alive, Levin said.
“For him to say ‘It’s no longer of the essence,’ to me, it felt more truthful because he was taking away the urgency to pay the money,” Levin said.
Savannah Guthrie posted a video of her with her siblings, Annie and Camron, to her social media on February 7.
“We received your message and we understand,” Savannah Guthrie said. “We beg you now to return our mother to us so we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we can have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
The investigation has not yielded publicly released updates in recent months.
Levin stated that he proposed a TMZ documentary where the outlet would pay the informant to see if he could lead them to a location, providing resolution for the Guthrie family. After initially showing interest, Levin says the bureau has stopped communicating with him entirely.
"For some reason the FBI has gone radio silent on me," Levin said. "They’ve ghosted me and I don’t know what that’s about.”
Levin said he has called the FBI about a half-dozen times in the last two weeks without a response.
"I'm not suggesting that the FBI is doing anything wrong because they've really tried to solve this,” Levin said. “But it's just curious to me that this one guy... it's just somebody that I felt knew something but for whatever reason this has all kind of evaporated into thin air."
