NEW YORK (Court TV) — Anchor Savannah Guthrie is sharing new details about her mother’s kidnapping and her future in a multi-part interview with Hoda Kotb for NBC.
In this image provided by NBCUniversal, Savannah Guthrie, right, her mom Nancy speak, Wednesday, April 17, 2019, in New York. (Nathan Congleton/NBCUniversal via AP)
Savannah Guthrie was deeply emotional as she talked about learning that her mother, Nancy Guthrie, had disappeared. Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen on Jan. 31 at her home outside of Tucson, Arizona. When Savannah Guthrie first got the call from her sister that their mother was missing, she said she was confused.
“We thought that she must have had some kind of medical episode in the night, and that somehow the paramedics and come, because the back doors were propped open and that didn’t make any sense,” Savannah Guthrie said.
Savannah Guthrie described her mother as frail and in tremendous pain from a bad back. On a good day, she said, her mother could make it to the mailbox to check her mail. It made no sense that the octogenarian had simply walked away. Even more disturbing were the other details in the house: her purse and phone had been left behind, the doors were propped open, there was blood on the front doorstep and the home’s surveillance camera had been ripped off.
Investigators released videos recovered from that home security system, which showed a masked person wearing a backpack and tampering with the camera before it shut off. “It’s just absolutely terrifying. It’s just totally terrifying. And I can’t imagine that is who she saw standing over her bed,” Savannah Guthrie said.
Savannah Guthrie broke down in tears recounting a conversation she had with her brother, who first suggested that their mother had been taken. “He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped, for ransom,” Savannah Guthrie recounted to Kotb. “I said, ‘Do you think, because of me? I’m so sorry, if it is me. I’m so sorry.'”
Addressing the ransom notes the family received in the days and weeks after the matriarch’s disappearance, Savannah Guthrie said she never saw most of the notes, which were not considered credible. She said that the videos she made addressing the kidnappers directly addressed two notes that she believed to be real. “It’s surreal. 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? This little person?”
The investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance has continued with few updates from detectives. Though DNA samples were collected from gloves found near the house, nothing has matched the entries in a national database. Savannah Guthrie said she and her family are being patient and trying to have faith, but are desperate for answers. “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.”
Savannah Guthrie announced she would be returning to her role as anchor of NBC’s “Today” on April 6, though she warned she might be changed. “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I belong anymore. But I would like to try,” she said. “I’m not going to be the same. But maybe it’s like that whole poem: more beautiful in the broken places.”
