ransom

On Friday, exactly six months after Nancy Guthrie was abducted, police released two ransom notes in the hope that they would help identify her kidnappers.

From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026

A ransom note sent electronically falls under the jurisdiction of federal law enforcement.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026

Six months after the publicly released two previously withheld ransom notes while the family renewed its plea for anyone with information to come forward.

From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026

For months, The Times and other outlets have released portions of the ransom notes based on information from law enforcement sources, but Friday marked the first time the letters were fully made public.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026

A scene like this, a ransom scene, calls for a noirish mood: shadows, sinister silhouettes.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

It was definitely not cheap paying off these pirates, whether it was ransoms or tariffs.

From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026

Details about the release of the 100 schoolchildren remain unclear, including whether it was secured through negotiation or by force, and whether any ransoms were paid.

From BBC ● Dec. 8, 2025

In fact, it is illegal to pay ransoms in Nigeria.

From BBC ● Nov. 29, 2025

The payment of ransoms has been outlawed in an attempt to cut the supply of money to the criminal gangs, but to little effect.

From BBC ● Nov. 24, 2025

"Knights and lordlings, they take each other captive and pay ransoms, but they don't care if the likes of you yield or not."

From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin

King Richard was captured on his way back from the Middle East and ransomed for 150,000 silver marks—approximately three times the annual income of the English Crown.

From Barron's ● Mar. 19, 2026

After a nearby hospital is hacked and ransomed, the higher-ups decide to defend its system by shutting it down, which means business must be conducted in the old-fashioned, paper-and-clipboards way.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 5, 2026

This thriller — in which a flight attendant is on a plane to Sydney when her 5-year-old daughter is ransomed — is notable for its capacity to get into the heads of its characters.

From New York Times ● Mar. 11, 2022

When Lele Pons was 5 years old, she and her mother, who is Italian and a pediatrician, were kidnapped and ransomed, a common occurrence in some parts of Latin America.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 2, 2019

After twelve years among the Southern Hsiung-nu, Ts’ai Yen was ransomed and married to Tung Ssu so that her father would have Han descendants.

From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Talmud, a set of commentaries on the Torah, specifically condones ransoming of hostages as a communal responsibility, and many ancient scholars considered being hostage a fate worse than death.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 4, 2023

Experts say the trend towards ransoming sensitive private information could affect companies not just operationally but through reputation damage.

From BBC ● Mar. 30, 2021

Heinkel and Borelli are accused in a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court in late March of improperly impounding Bird’s scooters and then ransoming them back to the $2 billion company.

From The Verge ● Jul. 24, 2019

Simone’s situation sounds dramatic enough to hold an episode of “Homeland” — in fact, the ransoming of Carrie Mathison’s top-secret computer files drove a plot point on the Showtime series last season.

From Fox News ● Oct. 12, 2018

Some of the poor creatures were already dead, some had escaped, or had passed to other owners, but Mr. Porter succeeded in ransoming the rest.

From Chatterbox, 1906 by J. Erskine (John Erskine) Clarke