Savannah Guthrie’s Interview About Missing Mom Nancy: Key Takeaways

Savannah Guthrie sat down for her first interview since her mom, Nancy Guthrie, was kidnapped.

In a two-part pre-taped interview with Hoda Kotb on Today, which aired on March 26 and 27, Savannah grew emotional as she shared the whole family is “in agony” amid the matriarch’s disappearance.

“It is unbearable. And to think of what she went through. I wake up every night in the middle of the night — every night. And in the darkness, I imagine her terror, and it is unthinkable — but those thoughts demand to be thought. And I will not hide my face. But she needs to come home now,” she told Hoda.

Things reportedly “didn’t make any sense” since Nancy’s phone and purse were still at home.

“My sister called me and I said, ‘Is everything okay?’ And she said, ‘No, Mom’s missing,'” she said of Annie Guthrie informing her of what happened. “I said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘She’s gone.'”

They began calling different local hospitals in the hopes of locating their mother.

“From the very early moments Annie and Tommy [Tommaso Cioni] were saying, ‘This isn’t that case that you are used to where someone wanders off. She can’t wander off,'” Savannah added. “My mom, she was in tremendous pain. Her back was very bad… on a good day, she could walk down to the mailbox and get the mail, but most days not. So there was no ‘wander off.’ And the doors were propped open and there was blood on the front doorstep and the Ring camera had been ripped off, and so we were saying, ‘This is not okay. Something is very wrong here.'”

Savannah’s brother, Camron Guthrie, became the first consider a possible kidnapping.

The journalist said Camron “spent his career in the military and worked in intelligence and is a fighter pilot and just brilliant, and he saw very clearly right away what this was.”

“And even on the phone when I called him, he knew. He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom,'” she continued.

Elsewhere in the interview, the mom-of-two noted her 11-year-old daughter, Vale, has a heartbreaking reaction to her grandmother’s disappearance.

“It’s so hard with kids, you know, because you want to protect them,” Savannah admitted. “Vale would write me all the time, ‘Mama, any leads? You hear anything? Any hope?'”

The broadcaster said she and her husband, Mike Feldman, “try to talk to” their kids and “give them a little more certainty than we have, to let them grieve.”

She also acknowledged how it has been particularly difficult for Annie and Tommaso since they live near Nancy’s Tucson, Ariz., home.

“There’s just a way in which this is even so much harder on Annie and Tommy and Omo because they’re there,” she told Hoda. “And they were there every day for my mom. They made it possible for her to stay in the house we grew up in that she loved so much.”

During the Today interview, Savannah indicated she believes the ransom notes given to her family may be real.

“There are a lot of different notes, I think, that came,” she said. “And I think most of them, it’s my understanding, are not real. And I didn’t see them. But 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.”

For what it’s worth, multiple ransom notes were sent in the first week after Nancy disappeared.

Hoda asked Savannah about the speculation that a family member could have been responsible for Nancy’s disappearance.

“When you talk about the cruel speculation, the whispers, the innuendo that it was somebody in your family, how did you weather that?” Hoda queried.

“It’s unbearable,” Savannah remarked “And it piles pain upon pain. There are no words, there are no words. I don’t understand and I will never understand.”

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos released a statement on February 16, saying the Guthrie family members had been cleared as possible suspects in the case.

Amid the investigation, Savannah admitted she wondered whether her fame put her mother at risk.

“I hope not. I mean, we still don’t know,” she said as she got emotional. “Honestly, we don’t know anything. We don’t know anything. So I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘Oh, that lady has money, we could make a quick buck.’ That would make sense, but that’s probably… which is too much to bear. To think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me? Can I just say, I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and Tommy, my brother-in-law. I’m just so sorry. I’m so sorry. If it is me, I’m so sorry.”

In the first part of the Today interview, Savannah reflected on the fact that her mom remains missing as the search entered its second month.

“Well, it’s still going and people have worked tirelessly, tirelessly,” Savannah said. “And we see that. But we need 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. And our hearts are focused on that.”

Savannah described her mom Nancy as a “noble creature” who “walks in faith” — and she learned so much from her.

“She taught me to be strong, because she taught me to be true, for my faith is strong and resolute. Early on, I felt that I heard — for one of the very few times in my life— I did hear God speak to me,” she said.

Savannah added, “As I said to myself, ‘I can handle anything, God, I can handle anything. I just can’t handle not knowing. We can’t handle not knowing. I have to know.’ And I heard a voice. And it said, ‘You do know where she is. She’s with me. She’s with me.’ So whether she’s on this side still or whether she is in heaven, I know where she is. I know who she’s with. But we need to know.”