Savannah Guthrie is speaking out about the devastating guilt she feels after her mom’s disappearance.
In her first interview since her mom, Nancy, was reported missing February 1, Guthrie broke down sobbing at the idea that her family was targeted because of her fame as a Today show co-anchor.
“I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘Oh...That lady has money and we can make a quick buck.’ I mean, that would make sense,” Guthrie, 54, told Hoda Kotb on NBC’s morning show.
“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,” she said through tears.
“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.”
Nancy was last seen at her Arizona home the night of January 31. She was reported missing the next day in what police believe is an abduction after a masked person was recorded at her front door. No suspects have been identified in the case.
The 84-year-old was in fragile health when she went missing. Her family said she relied on daily medication that could have “fatal” consequences if she doesn’t take it. 911 dispatch audio from when she was reported missing revealed she also has high blood pressure, a pacemaker and cardiac issues.
Guthrie — who has stepped away from her Today hosting duties in the months following her mother’s disappearance — spoke about the first weekend after her mother went missing in her interview, which aired Thursday before its second part comes out Friday.
“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,” the anchor said. “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.”
Guthrie flew from New York to Tucson to join her siblings. Along with police investigators, they found that there was blood on the doorstep of Nancy’s home, and that her Ring camera was pulled off the wall.
She said her brother “saw right away very clearly what this was.”
“He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom,’” Guthrie recalled. “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?”
Police do believe Nancy was targeted. The Guthrie family is offering a $1 million reward for information and Nancy’s return. The FBI has separately offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to her recover, or to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.
“Someone needs to do the right thing,” Guthrie said through tears. “We are in agony. It is unbearable. And to think of what she went through.
“I wake up every night in the middle of the night, every night,” she continued. “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 added.
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