Savannah Guthrie said on Thursday morning that she believed her mother’s abduction was a kidnapping for ransom, speaking in her first interview since her mother, Nancy, disappeared in Arizona nearly two months ago.
The interview with Ms. Guthrie was conducted by her friend and colleague Hoda Kotb, who has been filling in for her on NBC’s “Today” show. Portions of the interview will continue to air later on Thursday and on Friday.
In it, a tearful Savannah Guthrie said that the family still did not know for sure what might have motivated the kidnapping of her 84-year-old mother more than 50 days ago. But she said she believed the two ransom notes that were sent to news outlets and demanded payment in Bitcoin were most likely from her mother’s abductor.
Ms. Guthrie, one of the morning show’s hosts, has pleaded several times in videos on Instagram for people to provide tips that could lead to her mother’s captor and for the abductor to return her. And on Thursday she reiterated that it was “never too late to do the right thing.”
But significant developments in the investigation haven’t emerged for weeks. The Guthrie family is offering a $1 million reward for information that leads to Nancy’s return.
Ms. Guthrie described feeling guilt over the fact that her celebrity status may have, in a way, led to her mother’s abduction.
“To think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me,” Ms. Guthrie said, frequently dabbing at tears. “I’d just say, ‘I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry.’”
Nancy Guthrie was taken from her home just north of Tucson, Ariz., early on Feb. 1. The abduction quickly captured the nation’s attention and has stumped investigators.
She was most likely taken around 2:30 a.m., when her pacemaker lost contact with her cellphone, which was left in the house. About 45 minutes earlier, her doorbell camera had captured a man wearing a ski mask approaching her front door with a holstered pistol.
In the following days, the F.B.I. said that two potential ransom notes were sent to local news outlets and TMZ, the celebrity news website, demanding a payment in Bitcoin. It has not been established whether the notes were genuinely from Nancy Guthrie’s abductor.
Nancy Guthrie had trouble walking and took medication for other medical issues — medication her family has said she could die without. As the weeks have worn on, the Guthries have increasingly suggested that they understand Nancy may no longer be alive, but have said that they still needed to know what happened to her.
The abduction of the mahjong-playing mother of a cheerful morning television anchor has horrified the country, brought sympathetic comments from President Trump and led an army of online sleuths to scour the internet for clues — sometimes to innocent people’s detriment.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports for The Times on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice.
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