Savannah Guthrie again made a plea for information as she sat down for her first interview since her mother’s disappearance, telling Hoda Kotb on NBC‘s Today that “we cannot be at peace without knowing.”
“Someone can do the right thing, and it is never too late to do the right thing, and our hearts are focused on that,” Guthrie told Kotb.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen on the evening of Jan. 31 as a friend was dropping her off at her Tucson home. She was reported missing the next day, and although investigators have come up with camera video of a masked person at her front door, they so far have no suspects. The Guthrie family is offering a $1 million reward for information, and Today featured the tip line, 1-800-CALL-FBI.
In the highly emotional interview that aired on Thursday, Savannah Guthrie talked about that initial weekend, as she learned from her sister that her mom had disappeared.
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Guthrie said, “We thought that she must have had some kind of medical episode in the night and that somehow the paramedics had come because the back doors were propped open. And that didn’t make any sense. We thought maybe they came and there’s 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 made any sense.”
She flew to Tucson, and she and her family ruled out the notion that their 84-year-old mother had wandered off.
“The doors were propped open, and there was blood on the front doorstep, and the Ring camera had been yanked off. And we were saying, ‘Do something. This is not OK. Something is very wrong here.’”
Guthrie described talking to her brother, who had a career in the military and worked in intelligence, and “he saw right away very clearly what this was.”
“He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom.’ And I said, ‘What? Why? What? And it sounds so, like, how dumb could I be, but I just didn’t want to believe. I said, ‘Do you think because of me?”
In the interview, Guthrie talked about blaming herself.
“I mean, we still don’t know. Honestly, we don’t know anything. We don’t know anything, so I don’t know. Then it’s because, she’s my mom, and somebody thought, ‘Oh, that girl. that lady, has money and we can get, make a quick buck. I mean, that would make sense, but we don’t know.”
She said that it was “too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me. 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. I’m just — I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. If it is me, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”