Two ransom notes connected to the suspected abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, on February 1 contain a pattern of distinctive grammatical habits that a retired Colorado investigator says could be the key to identifying whoever wrote them, and possibly to breaking open a case that has gone unsolved for more than six months.
Lisa Miller, a retired Colorado investigator, analyzed the two letters that the Pima County Sheriff’s Department released to the public last month, six months after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her home in northern Tucson. The first note demanded millions in Bitcoin cryptocurrency for her return. The second claimed she had “perished” and was “buried in nature.” No suspects have been named publicly, and her whereabouts remain unknown.
A Consistent Hand Across Both Notes
Miller’s central finding is that the writing in both letters reflects a single, consistent voice. Comma splices — a construction in which complete sentences are connected by commas instead of being divided by periods — appear repeatedly in both notes. That repetition, she said, points strongly toward one author.
Miller told Fox News Digital that the repeated use of this grammatical pattern across both messages suggests with strong probability that a single person authored them.
Miller also identified recurring patterns of open compounds — words that most writers render as a single unit but that the note’s author consistently split into two. The word “smartwatch,” for example, appears as two separate words. So does “floodlight.” The phrase “heart related” appears without the hyphen that standard usage requires. Taken together, these are not random errors, Miller said — they are habits, and habits leave fingerprints.
Miller noted that the writer uses both a dollar sign and the abbreviation “USD” when referencing the ransom amount, and that dates and times are formatted in a unique way — details she described as further markers of a distinctive personal style.
Idiolect and the Psychology of the Writer
Miller explained a concept that she believes is at the heart of the linguistic analysis: idiolect, the unique way each person communicates based on their life experiences. Where someone grew up, the neighborhoods they have lived in, the slang they have absorbed — all of it shapes the way they put words on a page.
Miller said the unusual word choices in the second letter — “perished” rather than “died,” and “buried in nature” — feel specific to a particular person’s background, possibly shaped by religious upbringing or literary influences. She also raised another possibility: that those softened, distancing terms reflect a psychological pattern common among offenders, who tend to minimize their own wrongdoing, shift blame onto others, and avoid confronting the full weight of what they have done.
Miller also said she does not believe artificial intelligence was used to compose the messages. The notes contain at least one typo, and their sentence structures lack the fluid, even cadence that AI-generated text typically produces. The rough edges, she suggested, are themselves informative.
Crowdsourcing a Clue
Miller said the Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s goal of finding someone who recognizes the sender’s “unique linguistic style” is achievable precisely because idiolect is not something people can easily switch off — and because people who know the writer may recognize these patterns without realizing they hold a piece of the puzzle.
Miller said people should consider whether anyone in their circle uses unusual phrasing or comma splices in their writing, whether in letters or emails, as these recognizable patterns could help investigators.
Publishing the notes may also serve a second purpose, one rooted in the psychology of people who have committed crimes. Miller said the public release creates pressure on whoever authored the messages — a pressure that can produce what she called behavioral leakage, meaning subtle changes in demeanor or behavior that people close to the suspect might notice even if they cannot name what they are seeing.
What Investigators Have So Far
Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her northern Tucson residence during the early morning of February 1 after a masked intruder was captured on her doorbell camera appearing on her front steps. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department released that footage to the public, and DNA recovered from the scene was sent for testing at the FBI lab in Quantico. Despite those leads, no suspects have been publicly identified and Nancy Guthrie has not been located.
Miller’s analysis suggests the notes themselves — long considered evidence of what the kidnapper wanted — may also reveal who they are. The grammatical fingerprints embedded in both letters, she said, are the kind of details that could prompt the one call investigators have been waiting for.