In the first part of her sit-down interview with fellow Today host Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie walked Kotb and the public through the harrowing early days of her mother Nancy’s disappearance and her reaction when she learned of the abduction on February 1. Their tearful conversation is a difficult watch, with the most illuminating aspect perhaps being how little we still know about what happened to Nancy and who might be responsible for the kidnapping. Part of Guthrie’s goal in appearing on television at this stage in the investigation is to put out as wide-reaching a plea as possible for anyone who may know something to come forward. “Someone can do the right thing, and it is never too late to do the right thing,” Guthrie says at the end of the segment. Here’s what we learned about her family’s strength and resilience during this stressful time.
Guthrie first told Kotb about the weekend of her mother’s disappearance. She and her children returned from visiting Carson Daly and his family while her husband was away playing tennis as a part of a guys’ trip she got him for Christmas. Guthrie’s sister, Annie, called and told her, “Mom’s missing.” By that time, Annie had already called 911 and the police were at the home. Annie and her husband, Tommaso, also called around to local hospitals, as they first wondered if Nancy had some kind of medical episode that led her to either wander off or need to be taken out in a stretcher. “It just didn’t make any sense,” Guthrie says.
Guthrie’s brother, Camron, was the first to consider the idea that Nancy’s disappearance might be a crime. “My brother, you know, he spent his career in the military and worked in intelligence and is brilliant,” Guthrie explains. “He saw very clearly right away what this was. Even on the phone when I called him, he knew.”
In the early days of Nancy’s disappearance, Guthrie appeared on Instagram with her siblings to read letters appealing to the kidnappers and to express their willingness to bargain. There were a number of apparent “ransom notes” demanding payment that were went to media stations, but only two of them were considered to be real. “A person that would send a fake ransom note really has to look deeply at themselves,” Guthrie says, shaking her head.
There was also early speculation that Guthrie’s brother-in-law, Tommy, was for whatever reason at the center of Nancy’s disappearance, but Guthrie says this couldn’t be further from the truth. “No one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law,” she explains, “and no one protected my mom more than my brother.”
The most brutal part of this first segment of Guthrie and Kotb’s conversation is when Guthrie speculates that her being a public figure was the root cause of her mother being targeted. Not long after Nancy went missing, Guthrie asked her brother if this was “because of her,” to which he said, “I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe.” “But I knew that,” Guthrie says as both she and Kotb wipe away tears.
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