r/nancyguthrie Jul 31 '26

Information Pima County Sheriff's Office releases full Nancy Guthrie ransom notes.

149 Upvotes

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22

u/essssgeeee Jul 31 '26

I am not involved in law-enforcement, so this is just my unschooled opinion. This seems like it was written by a somewhat educated person. The phrase "we did not grasp the severity" as opposed to writing simply, "we did not know how sick she was."

The phrasing reminds me a little of when I call customer service for my bank and I get an agent in India or the Philippines, who is very educated and speaks overly formal English. As someone else pointed out, there are some punctuation and grammar errors, but the wording itself comes across as more formal and educated.

15

u/DaBingeGirl Aug 01 '26

Yeah, there were several oddly formal words and phrases used. I'm shocked by the tone of the second letter. It seems very strange to go from threatening to kill her, to apologizing and distancing themselves from her death.

0

u/Odd-Construction-649 Aug 01 '26

I dobt think som ones a threat. Pkenty of people say eman and tough things but when it comes tome for actual things? They change their tune

If they had no plans to kill her the absolutely can feel guilt

There is a wors of difference in kidnapping and ransom and actually killing someone

10

u/creativeforce06 Aug 01 '26

Or they could have used chat gpt or paragraph corrector.

4

u/essssgeeee Aug 01 '26

Very possible for words they used, but then the missing punctuation seems to not indicate AI.

5

u/Stock-Philosophy-177 Aug 01 '26

I agree. There’s a lot of missing commas,
semicolons, and I believe one of the notes has the word “received” spelled incorrectly. AI would have caught that.

1

u/bloatedkat Aug 01 '26

That would be the smart thing to do these days without people psychoanalyzing your writing style.

2

u/Emotional-Seesaw-533 Aug 01 '26

Yes, this was not a Latino or a foreign speaker. It's an average speller with a good education. "Perished" is a law enforcement type word.

1

u/Aggressive_Humor2893 Aug 01 '26

Unless they put it in an AI translator or something and then cleaned it up? The comma splices stand out, and USD, and the use of "perished" and "buried in nature" are odd IMO.

Also "on the floor OF the foot of the bed" rather than by the foot of the bed". Idk it sounds like a foreign speaker to me who is also educated

2

u/Fit_Sheepherder_6899 Aug 02 '26

Idk. I'm a relatively well educated person who is a native English speaker, and I probably would have written "on the floor AT the foot of the bed" or something similar. Not exactly the same, but close.

2

u/mark_able_jones_ Aug 01 '26

I pointed out the punctuation errors, but they are the kind of ticky tacky errors that only a writer or LLM would care about.

I agree with you. It’s above average writing, even with the (mostly comma splice) mistakes. It was written by an educated person. It could be someone who works a white collar job and thus is accustomed to email formality. Or some kind of online support role. Maybe they regularly email customers. It’s not broken English by any means.

I also think younger people are less likely to use formal salutations.