“Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie spoke about the ongoing search for her mother, Nancy, and what her family has experienced Thursday in her first interview following the potential kidnapping. Nearly two months after the investigation began, she apologized to her family for the possibility that her celebrity could have inspired her mother’s potential abduction, recalling a conversation with her brother.
“He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom,’” Guthrie said through tears. “It sounds so — how dumb could I be? But I didn’t want to believe. ‘Do you think because of me?’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe.’”
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was reported missing on Feb. 1. She was dropped off at her house the previous night around 9:45 p.m. after attending a game night at her daughter Annie’s house. A vast search through the Tucson neighborhood where she resided and extensive media coverage followed. The FBI and the Pima County sheriff’s office on Feb. 10 released photos and videos of an “armed individual” wearing a ski mask and a backpack at the house’s front door.
“I can’t imagine that is who she saw standing over her bed,” Guthrie said about the figure seen in recovered security footage. “I can’t. It’s too much. I’m glad and grateful to the investigators and technology companies that were able to find that video to, I hope, at least with people of good heart and compassion, stop the irresponsible and cruel speculation that had started to swirl.”
Speaking with Hoda Kotb in an interview that premiered on “Today,” Guthrie recalled several initial thoughts that she and her siblings, Annie and Camron, cycled through. They had told Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos that their mother suffered from back pain and couldn’t have “wandered off.” Another portion of the interview will air Friday.
“We thought she must have had, like, some kind of medical episode in the night and that somehow, you know, the paramedics had come because the back doors were propped open, you know. And that didn’t make any sense,” Guthrie said. “We thought maybe they came and there was a stretcher and they took her out the back. But her phone was there and her purse was there and all her things. It just didn’t make any sense.”
In late February, the Guthrie family offered a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to an arrest or Nancy Guthrie’s recovery. In her conversation with Kotb, Guthrie noted that she has worked hand-in-hand with her siblings, adding that she “haven’t posted one thing or said one thing that the three of us haven’t decided together.” Tips and purported ransom notes flooded in but no investigative breaks.
“There are a lot of different notes that came, and I think most of them, is my understanding, are not real,” Guthrie said, noting that she and her siblings believe two notes have come from their mother’s captor. “I didn’t see them but, you know, a person that would send a fake ransom note has to look deeply at themselves.”
The case has brought intense public attention, with some social media users speculating that the Guthrie family was involved with the potential kidnapping. Guthrie took the interview to speak about how “unbearable” conspiracy theories have affected her family.
“It piles pain upon pain,” she said. “There are no words. I don’t understand. I’ll never understand. No one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law. And no one protected my mom more than my brother. And we love her, and she is our shining light; she is our matriarch.”
Guthrie, 54, has been the co-anchor of NBC’s morning show “Today” since 2012, making her one of the most recognizable people on television news. After her mother’s disappearance, Guthrie took leave from the show, visiting her colleagues on set in March. A spokesperson for NBC said in a statement that Guthrie planned to return to “Today” but was focused on supporting her family.
In the interview, Guthrie compared her family’s pain to what they experienced when her father, Charles Guthrie, died in 1988. Following her mother’s disappearance, Guthrie stayed with her family near Tucson. Guthrie added that, early on, she felt that she heard God speak to her.
“As I said to myself, ‘I can handle anything, God, I can handle anything, I just can’t handle not knowing, I have to know.’ And I heard a voice and it said, ‘You do know where she is. She’s with me,’” Guthrie said. “So whether she’s on this earth still or whether she’s in heaven, I know where she is. I know who she’s with.”
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