In the late afternoon on Feb. 7, Savannah Guthrie posted a 20-second video to her Instagram.
“We received your message, and we understand,” Guthrie said, holding onto her brother and sister, who sat beside her. “We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
The brief message seemed cryptic at a time when only six days had passed since Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her home under the darkness of night.
With those six days having turned into six months, the message seems clearer.
First note: Ransoms and a deadly threat
Before the Feb. 7 video, media outlets had received two notes from Nancy Guthrie’s purported kidnappers.
The first was a ransom note sent to media outlets
on Feb. 3.
“Hello Savannah. We have your mother, Nancy,” the note said, according to Brianna Whitney, who read the note aloud on an episode of the “Crime Junkies” podcast. “She is safe, but scared.
“She will be held for ransom and once payment is received will be released unharmed. We will be holding her for a maximum of seven days.”
Whitney gave the exact dollar figure. The first deadline was Feb. 5 with a demand of $4 million in Bitcoin. The second deadline was Feb. 9, with a ransom demand of $6 million.
Nancy would be dropped off at a safe location in Tucson within 12 hours after receiving payment, the note promised. If the second deadline passed without a payment, her captors would kill her.
“It is in the best interest of everyone to have this completed as soon as possible,” the note said, according to Whitney. “You will not be able to contact me from here on out. There will be no negotiation. Do not play games. Law enforcement will not be able to help you.”
The note ended, Whitney said, with two details that only the kidnapper would have known — that Nancy Guthrie’s smartwatch was on the floor near her bed, and a floodlight in her backyard had been destroyed.
An FBI agent would later confirm that the note mentioned a smartwatch and floodlight but refused to elaborate beyond that.
However, those details were enough for law enforcement to take the note seriously.
Savannah and her siblings posted a video on Feb. 4 with a tearful plea for their mother’s return and evidence she was still alive.
“We are ready to talk," Guthrie said in the video. "However, we live in a world in which voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know without a doubt that she's alive and that you have her.”
Guthrie would later recall the surrealness of filming a video addressed to her mother’s kidnappers.
“How is it possible that we are having to make a video speaking to a kidnapper who took an 84-year-old woman in the dead of night in her pajamas with no shoes, without her medicine?” Guthrie recalled during a sit-down interview with her former Today co-host Hoda Kotb, who temporarily returned to the job while Savannah was with her family in Tucson. “This little person — and to beg for mercy.”
Second note: An apology for Nancy’s ‘unintended’ death
A second note sent to media outlets, including KOLD-TV, on Feb. 6 adopted a starkly different tone from the first.
According to Whitney, the second note said: “We did not fully grasp the seriousness of her physical conditions. We never intended to hurt her. That was not our intention.
“She perished shortly after she was taken. We believe it was heart-related. She is buried in nature now.”
The note ended with an apology.
“Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome,” the note said, according to Whitney. “We are truly sorry.”
The note also suggested a monetary transaction of some kind in exchange for her body, according to the outlet Air Mail, though Whitney didn’t mention it.
With key details of both notes now known months later, the 20-second video Savannah and her siblings released a day after the second note is less ambiguous.
They knew their mother was likely dead and were willing to pay for her body’s return — or at least its location.
Savannah would later tell Kotb that she had a conversation with God early in the investigation.
“As I said to myself, ‘I can handle anything, God. I can handle anything, I just can’t handle not knowing, we can’t handle not knowing — I have to know,’ Savannah said. “And I heard a voice. And it said, ‘You do know where she is — she’s with Me.’
“So whether she’s on this Earth still or whether she’s in Heaven, I know where she is,” Savannah said. “I know who she’s with.”
No suspect identified despite doorbell camera footage
A few days later, the FBI announced its first — and so far only — public breakthrough in the case.
The agency released photos and videos from Nancy Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera that captured an armed, masked man of medium build approaching her front door.
The FBI has since described the man as being between 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-10 inches tall, with an average build. The agency identified the man's backpack as a black, 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack.
Ozark Trail is a brand sold exclusively at Walmart.
Nancy Guthrie had written on a neighborhood chat that she had wanted the cameras not for security reasons but to record the wildlife outside her home. She did not pay for the service that would have stored the footage long term.
Despite obtaining some of the footage, law enforcement officials have not identified a suspect tied to Nancy Guthrie’s abduction.
The investigation remains “active and ongoing,” according to Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Angelica Carrillo, who confirmed a joint task force between it and the FBI is still committed to finding Guthrie.
“The analysis of DNA and digital evidence has been underway for the past six months,” Carrillo said. “This work is complex and time-intensive, but investigators continue to pursue every credible lead.”
Carrillo encouraged anyone with credible information to contact 1-800-CALL-FBI or 88-CRIME. Callers to the latter can remain anonymous.
FBI spokesperson Kevin Smith said the agency wasn’t planning to give a statement about the investigation now spanning six months.
Nanos scrutinized over his handling of the investigation
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has faced national scrutiny for his handling of the investigation.
FBI Director Kash Patel accused Nanos of keeping the bureau at arms’ length in the early days of the search, and a Pima County official said the sheriff scolded her for providing information the FBI requested.
Nanos, an elected Democrat, has denied any tension between his department and the FBI.
The sheriff’s handling of the case also colored a failed effort to push him out of office. A bipartisan pair of Pima County supervisors tried to remove Nanos after The Republic reported that the sheriff had misrepresented his early work history in a sworn deposition, on his public résumé and in a radio interview.
Nanos did not respond to The Republic's request for comment about the investigation reaching the six-month mark.
‘That beautiful desert that she loves — where are you?’
Savannah later revealed that her brother, Camron, who was a retired fighter pilot for the Air National Guard before working in the defense industry, immediately clocked their mother’s disappearance as a kidnapping for ransom.
“I just said, ‘Do you think because of me?’” Savannah to Kotb during the “Today” interview.
“And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe,” Savannah continued. “But I knew that.”
Savannah clarified that she didn’t know for certain that her mother had been targeted because of her daughter’s wealth and celebrity while lamenting how little the family actually knew.
“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 told Kotb. “I mean, that would make sense, but we don’t know.”
She added that even the possibility that scenario was true was “too much to bear” before offering a tearful apology to her missing mother and family.
It’s possible the second ransom note announcing Nancy’s death and that she was “buried in nature now,” weighed on Savannah’s mind as she flew back to New York.
“I looked out the window of the airplane and just thought, ‘Where are you?’” Savannah recalled. “That desert, that beautiful desert that she loves, ‘Where are you? How could I leave you?’”
Coming to terms with Nancy’s likely death
As days turned into weeks and weeks into months, Savannah’s comments have indicated she’s developed a solemn acceptance that her mother is no longer alive.
Savannah discussed how she’s leaned on her faith in God as she and her family persisted through the miasma of grief and sorrow.
“It’s so hard with kids,” Savannah told Kotb. “Because you want to protect them.”
“We tried to give them a little more certainty than we have,” Savannah said. “To let them grieve.”
And despite the grief and hardship Savannah and her family have borne, she insisted she would not crumble.
“I will not let whoever did this take my children’s mother from them,” Savannah said. “I will not let them take my joy. They will not take my sister’s joy. They will not take my brother’s joy.”
Stephanie Murray covers national politics and the Trump administration for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. She co-hosts “The Gaggle,” The Republic’s weekly politics podcast. Reach her at stephanie.murray@usatodayco.com, on X and TikTok @stephanie_murr and on Instagram @stephaniemurray.news.
Reach reporter Perry Vandell at perry.vandell@arizonarepublic.com or 480-341-9433. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @PerryVandell.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why Savannah Guthrie's videos about her missing mom make more sense now
