Devastated Savannah Guthrie Fears Her Fame Led to Mom’s Kidnapping

Savannah Guthrie sat down for her first interview since her mother was reported missing in February.

The Today co-anchor broke down in tears as she spoke with fill-in host Hoda Kotb about her mom’s disappearance.

Part two of the interview aired Thursday, March 26. Savannah said she learned her mother, Nancy Guthrie, was missing when she received a phone call from her sister Annie in Arizona.

“My sister called me, and I said, ‘Is everything OK?’ and she said, ‘No. Mom’s missing,’ and I said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘She’s gone,’” Savannah said through tears.

She and her sister initially thought their mom might have been taken to a hospital.

“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,” Savannah said. “We thought maybe they came and there was 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 make any sense.”

Nancy, 84, was reported missing from her home in Tucson, Arizona, on Sunday, Feb. 1.

Savannah said she quickly got on a flight to Arizona to be with her siblings.

She and Hoda cried together as Savannah recalled what she saw when she arrived at her mom’s house.

“There was blood on the front doorstep and the Ring camera had been yanked off, and so we were saying, ‘This is not okay,'” she shared.

Savannah told Hoda her brother Camron spent his career in the military and worked in intelligence. He immediately suspected the worst.

“He saw very clearly what this was,” she said. “He knew and he said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom.”

Savannah didn’t want to believe anyone could be so cruel as to kidnap an elderly woman with health problems “for a quick buck.”

“I said, ‘What? Why? What?’ It sounds so, like how dumb could I be, but I just, I didn’t want to believe. I said, ‘Do you think because of me?’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m sorry sweetie, but yeah maybe.’ But I knew that. I hope not. I mean we still don’t know. Honestly we don’t know anything.”

The devastated news anchor added, “It’s just too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me. I just want to say I’m so sorry, Mommy, I’m so sorry.”

Part three of the Today interview airs Friday as the search for Nancy Guthrie continues.