Callella sent texts seeking information about investigation, officials say
Callella, a resident of Hawthorne in the greater Los Angeles area, entered his plea Thursday in U.S. District Court in Arizona. Federal prosecutors alleged he sent a fraudulent ransom demand to Nancy Guthrie’s family in February, weeks after the 84-year-old vanished from her home outside Tucson.
According to a February complaint filed with the Arizona district court, Callella followed details of Guthrie’s disappearance on television. After the family posted a video on Feb. 4 imploring Nancy’s abductors to contact them, Callella obtained the phone numbers of Nancy’s daughter, Annie Guthrie, and her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, and sent each a text message, court documents show.
The text read: “Did you get the bitcoin were waiting on our end for the transaction,” according to the complaint. Law enforcement tracked the phone number to an email address registered to Callella.
Federal authorities said the texts were unrelated to a ransom demand that KOLD, a CBS affiliate in Tucson, had received earlier that week. That demand included a bitcoin wallet address. The family’s Feb. 4 video followed KOLD’s report.
Callella was seeking to gain information about the investigation, federal authorities said.
The FBI announced Wednesday that it continues to investigate extortion notes that may be legitimate in the Guthrie case. MSI previously reported that ransom notes sent to the family and to news media in the days after the January abduction claimed Nancy Guthrie had died.
Nancy Guthrie, mother of NBC “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, was last seen Jan. 31 at her residence in Pima County, Arizona. Inside the home authorities found her cellphone, medication and other personal items, as well as drops of blood near the porch.