Someone Finally Asks Good Questions

Todsy's post was delaywd due to network issues.

As investigators continue to find nothing new in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping, amid non-stop breathless coverage that might have been customn designed by Savannah's and NBC's publicists, Fox News interviews Former NYPD officer Tom Smith at 2:50 in the video above and actually asks some real questions:

Q: Can you say now with certainty that these ransom notes are authentic, or could they still be fraudulent?

A: Oh, they could definitely still be fraudulent. I'm not sold on them 100% at all. . . . When you have a kidnapping, kidnappings are quick. Get them, negotiate, give me the money, get the person back. That's how kidnappings happen, because even the perpetrators don't want to hold onto the victims too long, because that enables police to track them down quicker. So the length of time is concerning. And how much deadline after deadline after deadline is going on, so it's sort of desperation as well.

. . . Q: Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker questioned whether this is even a kidnapping in the first place. Tom, if not, what is this?

A: Exactly, and I've said this from day one, what's the end game in this? What's the advantage of taking an 84 year old woman out of her home? Yes, the connection with Savannah, I get that, why do it? Going on Chris's thought, the kidnapping was a secondary thought, something happened in those 40 minutes in that house that prompted them to go to the extra step and take her from that house.

Or the whole thing was an inside job done for publicity. Why else did the sheriff search Savannah's sister Annie's house on Saturday? Why is the whole negotiation being played out via letters sent to TV news? -But now it seems like everything they've been getting is a hoax.

"Hour of Desperation"

Savannah Guthrie in new Instagram video: "We believe our mom is still out there. We need your help." Thanks public for prayers, urges reporting anything strange to law enforcement even if far from Tucson. pic.twitter.com/qDNcRt3pUK

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) February 9, 2026

And where is the FBI? Here's a clue:

Savannah Guthrie eerily uttered the exact same words used in the hostage-negotiation scene from the iconic horror film “Silence of the Lambs” in the gut-wrenching video she posted earlier this week pleading for her mother’s safe return.

The “Today” show star, her sister Annie, and her brother Camron, issued a tearful video plea to their mother Nancy’s captors on Feb. 4, with Savannah sharing a pointed message.

“[Nancy] is full of kindness and knowledge. Talk to her and you’ll see,” Savannah said in a quivering voice.

A nearly verbatim message was used in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning 1991 film, in a scene where a a senator is coached by the FBI to speak to the captor of her daughter in a live televised address. The goal was to get the monstrous kidnapper to see his victim as a human being.

The best explanation I've heard, piecing things together from various sources, is that this was a suggeszted line in the FBI's kidnapping manual that would date from before The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991, and it was used in the film for authenticity. So this is the FBI procedure from at least 35 years ago, and they've never updated it, because there have been so few kidnappings.

In addition to the Lindbergh Baby and JonBenét Ramsey, others that come to mind are John Paul Getty III in 1973, whose grandfather thought it was a hoax until the kinappers sent him John Paul III's ear; and Patricia Hearst in 1974, in which the victim became the center of a massive media circus -- of course, she was a Hearst.

One lesson seems to be that these things seem to go the worst when the family tries to control the investigation. In a 1963 case, Frank Sinatra Jr,

19 years old, was kidnapped from Harrah's Lake Tahoe (Room 417) and held for ransom.[7] He was released two days later after his father paid the $240,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers (equivalent to $2,460,000 in 2024). . . . [Kidnappers Barry] Keenan, Johnny Irwin, and Joe Amsler were soon captured, prosecuted for kidnapping, convicted, and sentenced to long prison terms, of which they served only small portions. Mastermind Keenan was later adjudged to have been legally insane at the time of the crime and hence not legally responsible for his actions

But whether or not tne mastermind was insane, this seems to have gone the most smoothly of any, including the capture of the perps. But that was under J Edgar Hoover's FBI. I still sense in this case that at minimum, Savannah Guthrie's publicists will earn a bonus.