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 morning, Savannah sat down with her former TODAY show co-host Hoda Kotb for an interview. There, Savannah burst into tears as she issued an apology to her mother. Indeed, she said that she’s “so sorry” if Nancy was taken because of her own fame.
Afterwards, Whoopi Goldberg could not help but become emotional as she discussed Savannah’s interview on The View.
Whoopi Gets Emotional About Nancy Guthrie Disappearance
Whoopi, 70, described Savannah’s interview with Hoda as being one of “the hardest interviews I think I’ve ever seen.”
“To have a family member just up and disappear — I mean, any one of us, I think, would be out of our minds,” Whoopi lamented. “I know they don’t want this story to go away, because we get so much to talk about a daily basis. But this is a story we all have to remember is still ongoing, and we have to be vigilant and keep our eyes open, I think.”
Co-host Sara Haines, who previously worked with Savannah on the TODAY show, revealed that she reached out to her former co-worker after Nancy went missing.
“What just kills me is you see a little girl whenever you see her face, and every pain and emotion is something that’s so relatable,” Sara said of the interview. “But I hope she knows that her mom would never ever want her to think any of those thoughts. I can almost hear a mom saying, ‘Please, don’t do that.’ That’s the one thing that could break her. It would break her mom’s heart to know how much pain she’s going through, so I hope she can find a little strength through that.”
Guest host Abby Huntsman, 39, chimed in to say, “It makes you want to go hug your mom.” Sara responded to this by saying, “It makes me want to hug Nancy Guthrie.”
Joy Behar Weighs In
Co-host Joy Behar, 83, spoke up to say that the “worst part about all of this is there may not ever be any closure, that she will always have to live with the idea of what happened.”
“It’s like when a child goes missing,” she continued. “To me, that is worse than anything that could happen to you on this planet. People who believe in hell, that is, to me, what hell must look like.”
Goldberg ended the segment with an emotional message to viewers.
“That’s why these stories, they’re hard,” Goldberg concluded. “They’re really hard, and they’re hard to watch. But we have to keep this going so that people don’t forget because so often — as you said, Joy — when kids disappear, girls disappear, women, in particular, women of color disappear, you hear about it, then it’s gone. So, let’s break that chain. Let’s not forget what’s going on.”
Check out this full segment for yourself in the video below.
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.
Savannah’s Emotional Interview
During her interview with Hoda, Savannah could not help but break down in tears over the thought that Nancy may have been targeted because of her wealth.
“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.”
This has clearly been an incredibly devastating few weeks for Savannah and for her entire family, Please join us in saying a prayer for the return of Nancy Guthrie.