Savannah Guthrie is sharing the shattering fear and heartache she’s experienced over Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance and the possibility that her mother may have been targeted because of her fame as a “TODAY” co-anchor.
“I don’t know that 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,” Savannah Guthrie told Hoda Kotb in her first interview since her mother went missing. “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.”
Watch the rest of Savannah Guthrie’s interview Friday on “TODAY.”
It’s been more than seven weeks since Guthrie, 84, disappeared from her home near Tucson, Arizona. She was reported missing Feb. 1 after she failed to attend a virtual church service at a friend’s house, authorities said. She was last seen the night before, around 9:45 p.m., after eating dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home.
Shortly after they realized they didn’t know where their mother was, the Guthrie family knew something deeply troubling had unfolded. Savannah Guthrie said she feared her position as one of the most recognizable faces on broadcast TV could have played a role.
She said it was her brother — whom she described as “brilliant” with a military career background — who “saw very clearly right away what this was.”
“Even on the phone when I called him, he knew,” Savannah Guthrie said. “He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom.’ And I said, ‘What? Well, why? What?’”
“It sounds so, like, how dumb could I be? But I just — I didn’t wanna believe. I just said, ‘Do you think because of me?’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe.’ But I knew that,” Savannah Guthrie said.
Investigators have not yet publicly identified a suspect or a motive in the disappearance.
“I’d just say, ‘I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry.’ I’m sorry to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and Tommy, my brother-in-law.” Savannah Guthrie said.
“If it is me, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Savannah Guthrie described the moment she learned her mother was missing — a dreaded phone call at the start of a missing persons case that has gripped the nation.
“My sister called me … I said, ‘Is everything OK?’ And she said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Mom’s missing.’ And I said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘She’s gone,’” Savannah Guthrie said. “She was in a panic. I was in a panic.”
Her sister and brother-in-law knew from the get-go that Guthrie had not simply wandered off.
“From the very early moments, you know, Annie and Tommy were saying, ‘This isn’t — this isn’t that case that you are used to where someone wanders off. She can’t wander off,’” Savannah Guthrie said, noting that her mother has a “bad back” and lives with “tremendous pain.”
“On a good day, she could walk down to the mailbox and get the mail, but most days not,” she said. “So, there wasn’t a wander-off. And the doors were propped open, and there was blood on the front doorstep, and the Ring camera had been yanked off.”
Initially, the family thought Guthrie might have suffered a medical episode and paramedics had come to the home.
“The back doors were propped open, you know, and that didn’t make 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,” she said.
Within hours, Savannah Guthrie was on a plane to Tucson.
It’s been weeks since then, and a massive investigation with state and federal agencies continues. Thus far, the probe has included land searches, requests to neighbors for video surveillance and reported ransom notes.
Savannah Guthrie believes two ransom notes are legitimate.
“There are a lot of different notes, I think, that came. And I think most of them, it’s my understanding, are not real. And I didn’t see them. But, you know, a person that would send a fake ransom note really has to look deeply at themselves, to a family in pain. But I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real,” she said.
Last month, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings posted a tearful video on Instagram begging for more information from their mother’s possible kidnapper and saying her family is “ready to talk.” The family has also offered a $1 million reward for her recovery.
In February, authorities released video of a person whom they have described as a suspect, showing a masked, armed figure appearing to tamper with a security camera at Guthrie’s home.
“It’s just totally terrifying. And I can’t imagine that that is who she saw standing over her bed. I can’t,” Savannah Guthrie said about that footage.
There has been unsubstantiated speculation about family members’ possible involvement in Guthrie’s disappearance, which Savannah Guthrie described as “unbearable.”
“It piles pain upon pain. There are no words. There are no words. I don’t understand. No one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law,” she 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 have cleared all members of the Guthrie family as possible suspects. “To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said. “The Guthrie family are victims plain and simple.”
Savannah Guthrie said she and her siblings have navigated their heartbreaking search for their mother as “a unit.”
They stayed together in Arizona for weeks as the media frenzy intensified, and were forced to move locations several times.
“There was a night we had to leave in the dark in the desert, holding hands, me and my sister and brother and I, get into a car waiting for us ’cause the people outside were closing in,” she said. “Those days are a blur. Crying and praying.”
Savannah Guthrie said that people “have worked tirelessly” in the search for her mother, but that the family is desperate for answers.
She stressed that her family cannot be at peace until they know what happened.
“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.”
Another layer of pain for her family, she said, is that her mother vanished from their childhood home.
“It’s the house where I came home on a Friday night at 16 and my mom and sister were on the couch praying, and told me that my father had died,” she explained. “It’s the house where all of our memories are, good and bad. So it’s hallowed ground.”
“It’s really hard to see that violated. And the terror. The terror that she must have felt is unbearable,” she added.
Despite her heartache, Savannah Guthrie said she’s been “amazed” at the outpouring of support and she feels the prayers.
Now, she’s holding on to her mother’s pearls of wisdom on grief.
“I remember my mom saying in those early days when Daddy died, like, ‘You have to get up and decide and do. Just decide and do.’ She had read that in a book that meant a lot to her and her grief,” she said. “So I’m trying to decide and do.”
Savannah Guthrie also reflected on her mother’s life: Guthrie lost her husband when she was 46 with three kids, had to find a job to provide for them and cared for her brother with Down syndrome.
“She taught me to be strong but she taught me to be true. And my faith is strong and resolute,” Savannah Guthrie said.
In an emotional moment, Savannah Guthrie revealed she felt God spoke to her as she was telling herself she can’t handle not knowing what happened to her mother.
“And I heard a voice, and it said, ‘You do know where she is. She’s with me. She’s with me,’” she recalled through tears. “So whether she is on this Earth still or whether she is in heaven, I know where she is. I know who she’s with. But we need to know.”