Today show host Savannah Guthrie is speaking out in her first interview nearly two months after her mother, Nancy Guthrie, was kidnapped from her Tucson, Arizona, home.
Authorities say Nancy Guthrie, 84, was abducted from her house in the early hours of Feb. 1. They have released surveillance images from outside Nancy Guthrie’s house, but the person who took her remains unidentified.
In an emotional interview with her friend and former co-host Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie called the images “absolutely terrifying.”
“I can’t imagine that that is who she saw standing over her bed. I can’t. It’s too much,” she said.
Savannah recounted a heartbreaking conversation with her brother when she asked him if their mother’s abduction could have been because of her.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry sweetie, but yeah, maybe,'” Savannah recalled through tears.
She told Kotb that it’s “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,” Savannah said.
And to her family, she apologized through tears, “If it is me, I’m so sorry.”
But she added, “We still don’t know. … Honestly, we don’t know anything.”
Savannah also commented on the speculation early in the investigation that one of her family members could have been involved, calling that “unbearable.”
“It piles pain upon pain,” she said.
Authorities announced on Feb. 16 that they cleared the Guthrie family as suspects.
“No one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law, and no one protected my mom more than my brother,” she said. “And we love her and she is our shining light. She is our matriarch. She is all we have.”
In the days after Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, various ransom notes were sent to the media.
“There are a lot of different notes, I think, that came. And I think most of them, it’s my understanding, are not real,” Savannah said. “And I didn’t see them, but a person that would send a fake ransom note has to look deeply at themselves.”
She added, “I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real.”
While Savannah said law enforcement has worked tirelessly on the investigation, she stressed that her family “cannot be at peace” without answers.
“Someone can do the right thing, and it is never too late to do the right thing. And our hearts are focused on that,” she said.
Another part of Kotb’s interview with Savannah Guthrie will air on Friday.
Anyone with information is urged to call 911, the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI, or the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4900.
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