It’s been nearly two months since Nancy Guthrie, the 84 year-old mother of the TODAY show host Savannah Guthrie, went missing from her home in Tucson, Arizona.
On Thursday, Savannah sat down with her former TODAY show co-host Hoda Kotb for an interview. During their talk, Savannah issued an apology to her mother, saying that she’s sorry if Nancy was targeted because of her fame.
‘I’m So Sorry Mommy’
Savannah, 54, told Hoda that it was her older brother Camron who was the first to realize that Nancy may have been targeted because of her fame and wealth.
“My brother, he was in the military, he saw right away what this was. He said: ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom,'” Savannah recalled. “I said ‘Do you think, because of me?’ He said ‘Sorry sweetie, yeah, maybe.’ But I knew that.”
Savannah could not help but break down in tears over the thought that Nancy may have been targeted because of her own wealth and fame.
“I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought oh that girl, that lady has money, we could make a quick buck,” Savannah said.
“Too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me. I just have to say, I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry,” she continued. “I’m sorry to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and Tommy and my brother-in-law, just, like, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Savannah went on to say that the speculation that her brother-in-law Tommaso Cioni was involved in Nancy’s abduction is “unbearable.”
“It piles pain upon pain. There are no words. There are no words,” Savannah lamented. “I don’t understand, I’ll never understand, and no one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law. No one protected my mom more than my brother. We love her and she is our shining light. She’s our matriarch. She’s all we have.”
Nancy Goes Missing
Nancy was last seen on the night of Saturday, January 31. That evening, she had dinner with her daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso. They dropped her off at home afterwards at around 9:45pm, and she tragically hasn’t been seen since.
A masked intruder was captured on Nancy’s doorbell ring camera in the early hours of February 1. He managed to cover the camera with some plants before moving forward with the kidnapping.
It has since been revealed that the masked man had been seen in the doorbell ring camera prior to the night Nancy was taken. This indicates that he may have been casing out her home.
In her TODAY interview, Savannah recalled the moment she learned that Nancy was missing. She remembers Annie calling her in a “panic.”
“My sister called me and I said ‘Is everything okay?’ and she said ‘No, mom’s missing,'” Savannah recounted.
Though they initially thought Nancy had suffered some sort of medical episode in the night, they soon realized that something far more sinister went down.
“Her phone was there and her purse was there and all her things, and it just didn’t make any sense,” Savannah stated. “I started calling the hospitals and the police were there and talking to her at the same time and it was just chaos, and disbelief.”
When asked about the doorbell camera footage showing her mother’s likely abductor, Savannah replied,
“It’s just absolutely terrifying. And I can’t imagine that is who she saw standing over her bed.”
“I can’t. It’s too much,” she added.
‘We Are In Agony…’
Nearly two months later, Savannah says that her family is suffering in a big way.
“We are in agony,” she lamented. Savannah then said that she wakes up in the middle of each night thinking about the pain that Nancy suffered.
“To think of what she went through. I wake up every night in the middle of the night, every night,” Savannah said as tears streamed down her face. “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.”
This has clearly been a nightmarish few weeks for Savannah and her entire family. Please join us in saying a prayer for the return of Nancy Guthrie.