TUCSON, Ariz. — The FBI has determined that all three ransom notes circulated in connection with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of "Today" show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, are fraudulent, a bombshell development first reported Tuesday by Reuters that strips away the central kidnapping-for-ransom narrative that has dominated five months of public coverage and family appeals.

An anonymous FBI official told Reuters the FBI assessed the authenticity of two ransom notes reported in early February, just days after Guthrie vanished, and a third, more recent ransom note that claimed to know the identities of her kidnappers.

"None of the ransom notes are believed to be genuine," the FBI source told the publication.

A second law enforcement source familiar with the matter confirmed the FBI's assessment that the ransom notes were not genuine. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, and the FBI did not elaborate publicly on the specific methods used to reach its conclusions.

The revelation fundamentally reshapes the publicly understood picture of what happened to Nancy Guthrie after she was last seen at her Tucson, Arizona, home on the night of Jan. 31. The Guthrie family, responding to what they believed were genuine communications from kidnappers, made repeated public pleas to the alleged abductors in the weeks following her disappearance, with Savannah Guthrie telling them in one video message posted to social media, "we will pay." Those appeals, posted alongside her siblings Camron and Annie Guthrie, were premised on the assumption that the ransom demands were real and that Nancy Guthrie was alive in the custody of those who had taken her. The FBI's........

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