Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case

In early 2024, 84‑year‑old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Catalina Foothills home near Tucson, Arizona, after a masked individual was seen tampering with her doorbell camera. The FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Office launched a kidnapping investigation, and multiple ransom notes demanding several million dollars in Bitcoin were circulated, though many were judged to be hoaxes. Public appeals by her daughter Savannah Guthrie and advocacy groups kept the case in the national spotlight, but no suspect, body, or definitive ransom demand was confirmed.

In July 2026, a California resident, Derrick Cajera (also reported as Derrick Callella), pleaded guilty in federal court to sending a fraudulent ransom note demanding Bitcoin. He was convicted of two counts of harassment using a telecommunications device and faced five years of probation with sentencing pending. The FBI continued to treat the disappearance as a kidnapping and indicated that some ransom communications might be genuine while others are extortion attempts, with no suspects publicly identified.

The case remains under active investigation, and authorities have not ruled out the possibility of a legitimate ransom demand despite the recent guilty plea for a fake note.