Savannah Guthrie will resume her co-anchor duties on Today on Monday, more than two months after her mother, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, went missing. Her return comes as investigators continue to probe Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance; she was last seen the night of Jan. 31.
In a recent interview with colleague Hoda Kotb, Guthrie said her mother inspired her decision to come back despite her grief. “I won’t let sadness win. For her,” she said. Guthrie described how her mother raised three children alone after the early death of her father, Charles Guthrie, at 49. “I saw her grieve, I saw her world shatter. I saw it, and I saw her get up,” Guthrie said, and she acknowledged the support of NBC colleagues as she prepares to return to a workplace she called “such a place of joy and lightness.” She added, “But I can’t not come back, because it’s my family.”
Guthrie had been scheduled to help cover the Winter Olympics in Milan, but on Feb. 1 the family announced that Nancy had been abducted. Investigators have focused on the hours after Nancy returned home from a family dinner on Jan. 31. When Guthrie arrived from New York to her mother’s home north of Tucson, Arizona, she said she found signs that something was “very wrong,” including blood on the front doorstep and a removed Ring camera.
Police-released surveillance footage shows an armed man wearing a mask and gloves approaching and tampering with a doorbell camera in the early hours of Feb. 1. The family has publicly responded to ransom notes with video messages offering to pay for Nancy’s return but has received no reply.
Guthrie has asked anyone with information to come forward: “We need an answer, and someone has it in their power to help. It is never too late and when you do, the warmth of love and forgiveness that will come will be greater than can be imagined,” she said.
The search has continued since February with no major breakthroughs. The family is offering a $1 million reward for information that leads to Nancy Guthrie’s return.