TMZ’s Harvey Levin Doubles Down After FBI Deems Nancy Guthrie Ransom Notes He Ran With Were Fakes: ‘Not What We Had Heard’

TMZ (X)

TMZ will not stop investigating the veracity of ransom letters allegedly sent to the Guthrie family and to news stations following the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, Harvey Levin said Wednesday—despite the FBI confirming to Reuters it believes the letters are fake.

Levin’s update comes after Reuters reported the FBI does not believe the letters are authentic. “Reuters came out with a story today saying that they have FBI sources who say that the FBI has determined that the two ransom notes, alleged ransom notes, one of which we received along with two Tucson television stations, and a second which one of those TV stations received were not legitimate,” he began.

TMZ decided to investigate whether it was true that the FBI had decided the letters weren’t real.

“So we decided that we would pursue this and see if in fact this is real that they’ve discounted it,” Levin added. “It’s not what we had heard, but it was possible, so we made calls. So, I am going to tell you that I spoke with two people in the FBI, one of whom is involved in the investigation, one of whom is an official. And the official in the FBI who asked, ‘I don’t use this person’s name,’ said this: it is more likely than not that the two ransom notes are real, are real. Further in that conversation, this person said they are more legitimate than not. That’s a quote.”

“Now they haven’t determined it is for sure real, but they definitely have not determined it is for sure fake,” he continued.

Letters sent to TMZ in which an alleged kidnapper asks for Bitcoin are likely fake, he admitted, but the FBI has “not discounted” their authenticity entirely.

“So I think this goes to the legitimacy really of the ransom notes because that’s really what’s important here,” he explained. “We have told you before that we had as many as five FBI agents on phone calls at the same time with our IT team trying to find out who sent these ransom notes or these alleged ransom notes, and they have not been able to do that. We are told today that they are still pursuing those two notes,  the two alleged ransom notes. They have not determined, I want to repeat, they’re real, but they have definitely not determined that they’re not. And they lean more toward legit than not legit.”

Part of the disconnect may be due to the fact that the FBI “is a big organization, and there are multiple agents on this case,” Levin added.

The alleged kidnappers demanded $4 million in the first letter, and insisted the amount would increase to $6 million if the first demand wasn’t met. They also threatened to kill Guthrie if nothing was paid. A second letter sent to a news station in Tucson no longer had any ransom demand attached.

“And that seems to be why Savannah [Guthrie] came out almost the next day and said ‘Look, we will pay you money to know where our mother is'” Levin explained. “In other words, to bring her body back. And it now kind of makes sense. The reason she said that is because that second letter did not ask for any money. It was almost like these kidnappers were not banking on the fact that Nancy Guthrie would die on their watch, freaked out, didn’t ask for anything, and just went underground, and she’s saying, ‘No, no, no, we will pay you’. But they were never to be heard from again.”

Watch the clip above.

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