Today show host Savannah Guthrie is opening up about the day her mother Nancy Guthrie went missing in the first part of an interview with Hoda Kotb, after an earlier clip was released on Wednesday.
Nancy was reported missing on Feb. 1. Authorities believe the 84-year-old was abducted or otherwise taken against her will. The FBI previously released surveillance videos of a masked man who was outside her front door the night she vanished.
Savannah recalled the moment she received a phone call from her sister Annie Guthrie, who told her that her mom was “missing,” during the Thursday segment of Kotb’s Today show interview.
“I said, ‘Is everything OK?’ And she said, ‘No, Mom’s missing.’ And I said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘She’s gone.’ She was in a panic. I was in a panic,” Savannah told Kotb. “We thought that she must have had some kind of medical episode in the night, and that somehow the paramedics had come.”
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1:57
‘Do the right thing’: Savannah Guthrie makes new plea for mother Nancy’s return
Savannah said her mother’s back door was propped open, which “didn’t make any sense.”
“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 and it just didn’t make any sense,” she added.
Her sister and brother-in-law Tommy Cioni told authorities their mother wouldn’t have just left on her own.
“She can’t wander off. My mom, she was in tremendous pain. Her back was very bad. You know? On a good day, she could walk down to the mailbox and get the mail, but most days, not so was there was no wander off. The doors were propped open. There was blood on the front doorstep. The Ring camera had been yanked off,” Savannah said.
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Savannah’s brother Charles Camron Guthrie, whom she described as “brilliant” with a military background, was the first to suggest that their mom was kidnapped for ransom.
“Do you think because of me?” Savannah recalled saying to her brother. “And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe.’ But I knew that. We still don’t know, honestly, we don’t know anything.
“But it’s because she’s my mom, and somebody thought, ‘Oh, that girl, that lady has money, we can make a quick buck.’ I mean, that would make sense, but we don’t know, which is too much to bear, to think that I brought this to her bedside. That it’s because of me. And I just say ‘I’m so sorry, Mommy.’
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“I’m sorry to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and Tommy, my brother-in-law,” a tearful Savannah said.
Savannah shares details of the ransom notes
In the days that followed Nancy’s disappearance, police began investigating the legitimacy of several suspected ransom notes sent to media outlets around the Arizona area, where the 84-year-old woman disappeared.
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At least three media outlets — TMZ and two of CNN’s Tucson affiliates, KOLD and KGUN — reported receiving the purported ransom notes demanding millions in bitcoin for Nancy’s release.
“There were a lot of different notes, I think, that came and I think most of them, it’s my understanding, are not real,” Savannah shared. “I didn’t see them but, you know, a person that would send a fake ransom note really has to look deeply at themselves. But I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real.”
When asked how she felt when she saw the surveillance video released by authorities of a person whom they described as a potential suspect in her mother’s disappearance, Savannah said, “It’s just totally terrifying. And I can’t imagine that that is who she saw standing over her bed. I can’t. That’s too much.”
0:32
Nancy Guthrie kidnapping: FBI releases surveillance photos of potential subject in investigation
“I’m glad and I’m grateful to the investigators and the technology companies that were able to find that video,” she said of the footage.
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Savannah also commented on the speculation that one of her family members could have been involved in the disappearance.
“Do I hope at least with people of good heart and compassion stop the irresponsible and cruel speculation that had started to swirl? I’m glad that people saw what came to our door,” she told Kotb.
“When you talk about the cruel speculation, the whispers, the innuendo that it was somebody in your family, how did you weather that?” Kotb asked.
Savannah said there are “no words” and she doesn’t understand how others could think that.
“It’s unbearable. And it piles pain upon pain,” Savannah said. “And no one protected my mom more than my brother. And we love her and she is our shining light. She’s our matriarch. She’s all we have.”
Arizona officials cleared all members of the Guthrie family as possible suspects, which includes “all siblings and spouses.”
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said last month that the Guthrie family has been co-operative and gracious as authorities investigate the kidnapping.
“To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel,” the statement said. “The Guthrie family are victims plain and simple.”
Savannah said her family cannot be at peace until they know what happened.
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“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,” she said. “And our hearts are focused on that.”
Savannah Guthrie said her family is in ‘agony’
In the Wednesday preview clip for Savannah’s interview, the Today show host had said her family is in “agony” as the search for her mother enters its eighth week.
Savannah said “someone needs to do the right thing” and come forward with information to help the investigation.
“We are in agony. It is unbearable and to think of what she went through,” a tearful Savannah said in a portion of her first interview shared on the Today show Wednesday.
“I wake up every night in the middle of the night and in the darkness I imagine her terror and it is unthinkable but those thoughts demand to be thought,” Savannah said. “And I will not hide my face. But she needs to come home now.”
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4:09
Savannah Guthrie offers $1M reward for information on mother’s disappearance
Both Savannah and Kotb were crying during the brief portion of the interview aired on Wednesday. Kotb, Savannah’s former co-host, has returned to Today while her former colleague has been away.
While speaking about the interview, Kotb said there is a “desperation and also a steeliness about Savannah.”
“She’s hoping that somebody, whoever this person is, will see something and say something. And as you’ll see in the coming days, she talks about so many things,” Kotb added of the interview.
— with files from The Associated Press
