"Today" host Savannah Guthrie teared up Tuesday as she pleaded for the public’s help amid reports that a ransom note suggested her mother may have died months ago.
“I don’t have any comment on this story, and I’m not involved in our coverage, but I can’t pretend that I’m not here, and so since I am, I wanted to take the opportunity to ask people — to really beg people — to come forward. Somebody knows something,” she said.
In the last 24 hours, multiple news outlets have reported that the contents of one of the ransom notes received by Guthrie’s family months ago indicated that her mother had died.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, went missing in February after FBI investigators said she was kidnapped from her Pima County home in Arizona. Footage extracted from her doorbell camera revealed a masked man with a gun had been tampering with the camera at her front door around the time she disappeared.
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“This is a news report today that is on your radar,” Guthrie said during the morning show, “but this is the life that my sister lives, that I live, that my brother lives, that our extended families live, that our children live every day, and we are in agony.”
Guthrie and her family received multiple anonymous messages following their mother’s kidnapping. Various news stations, including Scripps News Group’s Tucson station, KGUN, also received ransom notes, some demanding Bitcoin.
In one message received by the Scripps Tucson station in the early days of the search, the sender referred to Nancy Guthrie as “safe but scared.”
Later messages sent to other outlets took a different tone. It is not known if many of those messages were authentic or from whom they were sent.
According to a TMZ post on X, a messenger who was demanding payment for information related to the kidnapping also indicated Guthrie had died. “Early on, he said, ‘Time is of the essence,’ and then a few days after the kidnapping, he said, ‘Time is no longer of the essence,’ meaning that she wasn’t alive,” Levin said.
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“We cannot be at peace,” Savannah Guthrie said on her morning show Tuesday. “No matter how much I try to come out here and smile and find that joy – and I promise I will – this is a moment to tell you that we need your help. We’re begging for your help.”
The Guthrie family and the FBI are offering rewards totaling a combined $1.1 million for the return of Nancy Guthrie.
Scripps News reached out to the FBI about the case, but the agency declined to comment.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Office, which is also investigating the case, said the following:
The investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie remains active and ongoing. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department continues to work closely with the FBI as investigators follow up on leads, review information, and pursue the facts surrounding this case.
