In her first televised interview since the disappearance of her mother in early February, a tearful Savannah Guthrie shared the agony her family has been experiencing since Nancy Guthrie went missing.
“It is surreal,” she told Hoda Kotb, her former Today co-host, during an interview on NBC. “How is it possible that we are having to make a video speaking to a kidnapper who took an 84-year-old woman in the dead of night in her pajamas with no shoes without her medicine...And to beg for mercy?”
Guthrie told Kotb she learned of her mother’s disappearance when her sister, Annie, called her. Annie lives near Nancy Guthrie’s Pima County, Arizona home.
“She was in a panic,” Savannah Guthrie said.
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Initially, she said they wondered if their mother had had a medical emergency and had been transported to a hospital, but things didn’t add up.
“The doors were propped open, and there was blood on the front doorstep, and the Ring camera had been yanked off, and so we were saying, this is not okay...Something is very wrong here,” she told Kotb.
More than a week after Nancy Guthrie disappeared, the FBI released photos and videos that had been recovered from her front security camera. The images showed a masked and gloved person, armed with a gun, tampering with the camera.
“It’s just absolutely terrifying,” Guthrie said of the footage. “Imagine that that is who she saw standing over her bed. I can’t. That’s too much.”
Guthrie said she wondered if her status as a high-profile news personality might be a possible motive for a kidnapper. She said the idea is “too much to bear.”
“I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘Oh that girl – that lady has money, we could make a quick buck.’ That would make sense, but we don’t know,” she said, crying and apologizing to her loved ones.
“I’m so sorry Mommy. I’m so sorry,” she said.
"We love her. She’s our shining light. She’s our matriarch,” she said.
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Guthrie said many ransom notes had been sent to media organizations through the course of this investigation, and she believes that most of the notes were not legitimate.
“I didn’t see them,” she said. “A person that would send a fake ransom note really has to look deeply at themselves.” Guthrie said she believes the two notes that her family received and responded to were real.
She said her family knows that people have worked tirelessly to find her mother.
“We see that, but we need answers,” she said. “We cannot be at peace without knowing. And someone can do the right thing, and it is never too late to do the right thing.”
The FBI has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie, and the Guthrie family has offered a separate $1 million reward. Anyone with information about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie is urged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or visit tips.fbi.gov.
