TMZ received a third email on Friday afternoon from a man claiming he knows the identity of Nancy Guthrie’s abductor, saying he contacted the outlet because he does not trust law enforcement officials.

He alleged that the FBI’s decision to increase its reward to $100,000 was intended to ‘discredit’ him, and insisted he is demanding the money himself in Bitcoin.

According to TMZ, the anonymous sender is seeking $50,000 in Bitcoin in exchange for ‘the name of the main individual,’ promising not to withdraw the funds until the suspected kidnapper is arrested.

After an arrest is made, he expects an additional $50,000 in Bitcoin.

The outlet added that while the email references Nancy Guthrie’s current condition, it would not ‘be specific.’

A forensic genealogy company slammed Sheriff Chris Nanos’s ‘devastating’ mistake in handling evidence as the search for Nancy Guthrie continues.

Kristen Mittelman, co-founder of Othram, condemned the sheriff’s decision to send critical evidence to a private lab in Florida instead of using FBI resources.

‘This is so devastating,’ Mittelman told Fox News.

‘DNA Labs International is a traditional forensic lab that consumes evidence to make an STR [short tandem repeat] profile.

‘So I don’t understand why it didn’t go to Quantico, since they can do this better and faster than anyone, and they even have a pipeline to flip it immediately to inferring identity with us.’

Nanos was blasted on Thursday after reports surfaced that he had blocked the FBI from analyzing glove evidence found near Guthrie’s home at its National Crime Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.

Instead, the sheriff sent the evidence to DNA Labs International in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

Mittelman stressed that time is ‘critical,’ the outlet reported.

A federal law enforcement source told Fox News that the evidence will need to be retested by the FBI either way.

‘It’s just the FBI developed this method and can do it so much better without destroying the evidence,’ the source said. ‘I’ve seen so many cases go to Florida and be consumed.

‘Also, they’re not as fast, and in this case, time matters.’

Othram is a forensic genetic genealogy lab based in Texas that worked on murder victim Evelyn Colon’s case after DNA Labs International wasn’t able to solve it, Mittelman told the outlet.

Nanos defended his decision after he was criticized for ‘further slowing a case that grows more urgent by the minute.’

‘Why split your evidence to two different labs that could create a conflict, but more importantly, it adds that additional step,’ he told the outlet. ‘This lab has this piece, this lab has that piece. Now they’ve got to converge those two pieces to make an elimination or identification. No, just send it to one lab, let’s go. They’re both great labs. They both have great equipment and smart people.’

Nanos added that they ‘trust the FBI’s crime lab’ and have used it before, ‘but in this case we started with that lab.’

‘It’s just that simple,’ he said.

Chris Nanos, the sheriff recently involved in the investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, made an optimistic remark on finding the missing 84-year-old.

As the search for Guthrie approaches its second week, Pima County Sheriff Nanos made an uplifting statement to the grieving Tucson, Arizona, community.

‘I believe she will be found,’ Nanos told CNN on Friday. ‘I believe we are working as hard as we can to do that as fast as we can.’

Authorities bolstered the community who are desperately in search of answers by stating that their search is far from over, the outlet reported.

Over 30,000 tips from the public have reached investigators, with each being reviewed and investigated with great consideration.

Evidence, including DNA and gloves discovered miles from her home, were recently sent for analysis, as a third ransom note surfaced.

Chris Nanos, the Pima County Sheriff who has reportedly been dismissed from the ongoing search for Nancy Guthrie, has claimed that ‘quite a number’ of gloves were discovered miles from the missing 84-year-old’s home.

Guthrie mysteriously vanished from her $1 million Tucson, Arizona, home in the early hours of February 1.

As the investigation into her disappearance inches toward the two-week mark, two gloves were discovered miles from her home.

Following a tip, investigators discovered one glove two miles from Guthrie’s home, Nanos told CNN.

The second glove was discovered ten miles away. Both were sent for DNA analysis along with other DNA evidence found at Guthrie’s home, the outlet reported.

Nanos told the outlet that the glove was discovered by a search team the other day as he debunked false whispers of the glove being found inside the property she was taken from.

‘Today we’ve gone out five, ten miles, because we found a glove. Everybody’s finding gloves. We’ve had gloves ten miles out. I can’t dismiss that,’ he said.

‘We don’t even know the true value of these gloves.’

Nanos denied that any gloves were discovered inside of Guthrie’s home following reports that he had blocked DNA testing by the FBI.

‘There’s never been a glove found at that home, in that home or around that home,’ he told the CNN.

Light showers were forecasted for the Catalina Foothills area where Nancy Guthrie’s home is located on Friday.

Rain could possibly be disruptive for evidence as law enforcement scour the area for potential new leads in her disappearance.

The National Institute of Justice says that ‘an outdoor crime scene is the most vulnerable to loss, contamination, and deleterious change of physical evidence in a relatively short period of time.

‘Destruction or deterioration of evidence due to environmental conditions such as heat, cold, rain, snow and wind are problems associated with outdoor scenes.

‘Evidence that cannot be protected under these conditions should be collected expeditiously without compromising its integrity.’

When questioned outside of the White House on Friday about the Nancy Guthrie case, a reporter asked the president if he believed the cartel were involved in her abduction.

‘You can’t say that yet,’ Trump told reporters. ‘It’s a little bit early.’

‘But it’s somebody either knew what they were doing very well, or they were rank amateurs. Either way, it’s not a good situation.’

Police are allegedly investigating new video footage submitted by a Tucson resident that lives 6.5 miles away from where Nancy Guthrie’s Catalina Foothills home is.

The video depicts a suspicious individual lurking around the porch of the neighbor’s home, intentionally trying to keep their face out of view from the camera.

The video was originally posted January 23 on Ring’s Neighbors app.

The man reportedly rang the doorbell at 5am before fleeing when he heard dogs barking.

A high-ranking law enforcement source connected to the investigation told TMZ that authorities are aware of this video treating it as a potential lead.

Fox News reporter Matt Finn revealed on X on Friday that Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos and Savannah Guthrie had been in communication.

Nanos revealed that the Today host told the sheriff she ‘has her people’ despite authorities working round the clock with the FBI to discover who kidnapped her mother Nancy from her home on February 1.

Traffic cameras may not have recorded cars coming and going past missing Nancy Guthrie’s house, investigators fear.

Authorities are looking to identify a truck that may be connected to Nancy’s abduction and is reviewing local camera footage that may have spotted it.

But there is a possibility that the so-called getaway car was not clearly recorded on traffic cameras, Fox News reported.

The City of Tucson and Arizona Department of Transportation both said they have traffic cameras in the area around Nancy’s home but that those devices do not record cars.

Pima County does have cameras that record, but officials note they are imperfect and may not actually capture license plate details.