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TUCSON, Ariz. — Federal prosecutors have charged a California man with sending a fake ransom note in an effort to extort Savannah Guthrie and her siblings as their 84-year-old mother remains missing in what local authorities say looks like a forced abduction from her home near Tucson.
Derek Callella is accused of demanding a ransom across state lines and using anonymous telecommunications to abuse, threaten or harass the Guthrie family.
“Did you get the bitcoin were [sic] waiting on our end for the transaction,” Callella allegedly wrote to Annie Guthrie and her husband, Tommaso Cioni.
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Nancy Guthrie is a mother of three, including NBC’s “Today Show” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, who canceled plans to cover the Olympics to return home after her mother’s disappearance.
Investigators determined the text had come through a voice over IP service capable of spoofing phone numbers.
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According to court documents, they tracked the account to Callella’s Google email account.
After being read his Miranda rights, Callella allegedly confessed to sending two messages, saying he had found the family’s contact information online and had been following news coverage of the case.
According to the FBI, he also allegedly called the family afterward.
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Earlier Thursday, FBI Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Heith Janke told reporters about the arrest but said the FBI was investigating a different ransom demand as potentially having come from the actual abductor.
Nancy Guthrie has been missing since the early morning hours of Sunday, Feb. 1 in what Pima County Sheriff Christopher Nanos has said appears to be a forced abduction from her home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood, a low-crime suburb north of Tucson.
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She was last seen the prior evening after going to dinner at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, about 4.5 miles away from her own house.
Family dropped her off at her home. Her doorbell camera was removed shortly before 2 a.m. Home security software reported that motion had been detected a few minutes later, and then her pacemaker device lost connection with her phone, indicating a time when she may have been forced out of her house.
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Police were not able to recover videos from her home security system, despite multiple cameras, Nanos said Thursday.
Police found a blood trail from her front door to the edge of her driveway.
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She hasn’t been seen since.
The senders have not provided proof of life, according to authorities, or a means of contacting them. They did, however, set a 5 p.m. deadline Thursday for their ransom demand.
Fox News’ Paul Mauro and Matt Finn contributed to this report.
