In the wake of her mother’s disappearance, Savannah Guthrie said she wrestled with painful questions about whether her mom may have been targeted because of the “Today” show host’s fame.
Guthrie, speaking to co-anchor Hoda Kotb in an emotional interview that aired Thursday on the “Today” show, recalled the moment that her family feared the worst after troubling signs were discovered at her mother’s Arizona home.
A doorbell camera had been “yanked” off, there was blood on the front steps, and the back doors of the house were “propped open,” Guthrie said, describing the scene at the house of her mother, Nancy Guthrie.
Savannah Guthrie’s military veteran brother, Camron Guthrie, immediately “saw very clearly right away what this was,” she recalled.
“He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom. And I said, What?'” Savannah Guthrie told Kotb. “It sounds so, like, how dumb could I be? But I just — I didn’t want to believe — I just said, ‘Do you think because of me?”
Her brother responded, “I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe,” Savannah Guthrie said through tears. “But I knew that.”
Still, Savannah Guthrie said there are many unknowns surrounding the case.
“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,” she said. “I mean, that would make sense, but we don’t know, but yeah, that’s probably — which is too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me.”
Savannah Guthrie added, “I’d just say, ‘I’m so sorry, mommy,'” as she also apologized to members of her family. “If it is me, I’m so sorry.”
Authorities believe that the 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her ranch-style home just outside of Tucson, in the middle of the night, nearly two months ago.
Few developments have emerged since, and local law enforcement and the FBI are still working to identify the masked and armed man who was captured on footage from Nancy Guthrie’s missing Nest doorbell camera.
“I can’t imagine that that is who she saw standing over her bed,” Savannah Guthrie said of the man seen on the footage.
Purported ransom notes were sent to local and national media outlets in the days following Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
Savannah Guthrie, speaking to Kotb in her first interview since the ordeal, said she understood that most of the notes were bogus.
“The two notes that we received, that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real,” she said.
Amid the search for Nancy Guthrie, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings made gut-wrenching video pleas speaking directly to those who may have their mother.
“It is surreal,” Savannah Guthrie told Kotb. “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.”
A final part of Savannah Guthrie’s interview is set to air on the “Today” show on Friday.
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