TUCSON, Arizona — The clock is ticking in the hunt for “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother after a purported ransom note demanded millions of dollars in bitcoin ahead of two ᴅᴇᴀᴅlines, cops revealed Thursday – the clearest indication yet that investigators believe 84-year-old Nancy was kidnapped and is being held against her will.
A ᴅᴇᴀᴅline of 5 p.m. local time Thursday pᴀssed — with no sign of Nancy, proof of life or public knowledge that her alleged captors have made contact with her reeling family.
“Right now, we believe Nancy is still out there. We want her home,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said at a press conference earlier in the day.
A second ᴅᴇᴀᴅline of Monday was also provided with the note, which was sent to TMZ and two Arizona news outlets this week after Nancy was snatched from her Tucson home early Sunday.
Police did not disclose what the note warned would happen to Nancy if the demands weren’t met on time. But TMZ reported that missing Thursday’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅline would lead to fresh demands — and that there would be graver consequences if Monday’s pᴀssed with no agreement.
Other chilling clues were revealed by police Thursday in the baffling case:
- Blood found splattered on Nancy’s front stoop was confirmed to be hers
- An extensive timeline of Nancy’s known movements the night she vanished included a 40-minute period during which the matriarch may have been abducted
- There are still no suspects in the case, and no persons of interest
- Nobody, including Savannah’s brother-in-law, is being ruled out as a possible suspect
- Nancy’s home security camera detected a person moving around 2 a.m. Sunday, but did not record video
- A $50,000 FBI reward has been issued for information leading to Nancy’s return
- A California man was arrested for sending a hoax ransom demand to the Guthrie family
- The family made a new plea to the ransom note writers as the ᴅᴇᴀᴅline expired.
FBI Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Heith Janke issued a sobering warning to anyone who may be involved in Nancy’s apparent kidnapping.
“Do the right thing,” he said. “This is an 84-year-old grandma. This is an 84-year-old grandma that needs vital medication for her well being. You still have the time to do the right thing before this becomes a much worse scenario for you. Please return Nancy home.”
The ransom note also included no proof that Nancy was alive and well, but did offer details about her home that were apparently intended to corroborate its veracity – including a reference to a floodlight at the house and Nancy’s Apple watch, police said.
Janke, however, noted that the person who sent the ransom note has not contacted anyone since.
“In a normal kidnapping case, there would be contact by now trying to discuss that,” he said, adding that “any action taken on any ransom is ultimately decided by the family.”
Despite revealing so many details about the ransom note, police cautioned it still has not been authenticated — and could wind up to have “nothing to do with her.”
The grim revelations came after Savannah, her brother and sister issued a heart-wrenching plea to Nancy’s possible captors Wednesday night — expressing willingness to talk about ransom terms if they could just see that their mother was OK.
“We need to know, without a doubt, that she is alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you, and we are ready to listen,” Savannah, flanked by her siblings, said in a video statement the FBI helped prepare. “Please, reach out to us.”
Savannah’s brother Cameron released a new message as the 5 p.m. MT ᴅᴇᴀᴅline expired Thursday, begging the ransom note writer to get in touch.
One person – Californian Derrick Callella — has already been charged with sending a bogus ransom note directly to Savannah, while at least one other fake has been sent to her sister, Annie.
Callella was previously charged in an overtime unemployment benefits scam, records show.
But the threat to Nancy is real, police cautioned, explaining that expedited DNA analysis had determined spattered blood found trailing out her front door belonged to her.
“We rushed what we thought was the best target for DNA, we did a rush through, and got some of that back,” Nanos said. “The blood on the porch, that was one we did, it came back to Nancy. That’s what we know.”
While said to be “sharp as a tack” mentally, Nancy, who has a pacemaker, has limited mobility and requires life-saving daily medication, police have said.
That DNA was just one of several forensic samples police took from Nancy’s home and submitted for analysis through the FBI labs – but so far, only analysis of the porch blood has been completed, according to police.
“There’s still more items that have been submitted, we just haven’t got them back,” Nanos said.
No suspects have been identified as of Thursday, and police gave no indication that they were close to identifying anyone as Nancy approached six days missing.
But they also refused to rule anyone out — even when asked directly if Nancy’s son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, was being eyed.
“We’re actively looking at everybody we come across in this case. We would be irresponsible if we didn’t talk to everybody,” Nanos said when asked about Cioni.
Cioni – Annie’s husband – was the last known person to see Nancy alive when he drove and dropped her safely home on Saturday night after a dinner with him and Annie in Tuscon. Police said they spoke to the Uber driver who drove Nancy to their home.
That dropoff was noted on an extensive timeline of the night of Nancy’s vanishing that police released Thursday, with Cioni last seeing her around 9:50 p.m. when her home’s garage door closed.
What happened after that is unknown, but a doorbell camera on Nancy’s property was disconnected at 1:47 a.m. Sunday morning.
Nearly half an hour later at 2:12 a.m. software from a home camera detected movement – but Nancy did not have a paid subscription to the software, so the footage overwrote itself, police said.
About 15 minutes later at 2:28 a.m. Nancy’s pacemaker disconnected from her phone, which had been left behind at the house.
She was reported missing just after 12 p.m. Sunday when she failed to show up for church, and police arrived at her house within minutes.
Nancy’s health – which includes a serious heart condition – has also alarmed investigators, as it is unknown if she is receiving vital medication she needs to take every 24 hours, and could die without.
“She is 84 years old, her health, her heart, is fragile. She is in constant pain. She is without any medicine.” Savannah said in her video plea. “She needs it to survive. She needs it not to suffer.”
“Mommy, if you are hearing this, you are a strong woman. Everyone is looking for you, Mommy. Everywhere,” Savannah added, choking back tears. “We will not rest. Your children will not rest until we are together again.”
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
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