Nancy Guthrie Case Update: What Savannah Guthrie’s Interview May Reveal

I recently watched Savannah Guthrie’s three-part interview on the Today show where she discussed the case, and I wanted write an update to my earlier post on the case.

If you haven’t read my earlier post outlining a possible theory about what may have happened, you can read it here.

This update looks at several moments from Savannah’s interview that may shed new light on the case. One detail appears to strongly support the theory discussed in that earlier post, while another suggests I may have been wrong about one piece of how the events unfolded. The interview also sparked some discussion online about the timeline of when family members learned Nancy was missing, which is worth examining more closely.

🕯️ Love exploring the eerie? Join the Eerie Dispatches newsletter for atmospheric, cozy-creepy, immersive stories about horror and true crime topics. We’re drawn to the mysterious, the unexplained, and the darkly fascinating. Come explore with us.

Savannah Guthrie Interview

On March 26, Savannah Guthrie sat down for an interview on the Today show to discuss her mother Nancy’s disappearance. During that interview, Savannah shared several details that I believe directly support the theory I outlined in my earlier post about what may have happened.

Before discussing that further, here is the portion of the interview that stood out to me the most.

Hoda Kotb: “The ransom notes or ransom requests came. Did you believe those to be real?”

Savannah Guthrie: “There are a lot of different notes I think that came and I think most of them, it’s my understanding, are not real and I didn’t see them… But I believe the two notes we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real.”

There are two important things happening in this short exchange, and I want to walk through them carefully because they may clarify a point that has been widely misunderstood about the ransom notes in this case.

First, Savannah confirms that multiple ransom notes were circulating, but that her understanding is that most of them were not real. She also mentions that she never personally saw many of those messages. Based on how the case has unfolded publicly, it seems very likely that the notes she is referring to here include the letters that were sent to media outlets, such as the ones reported by TMZ.

But then Savannah makes a very important distinction.

She says “the two notes we received that we responded to.”

That wording strongly suggests that two ransom messages were sent directly to the family, not to the media. It also indicates that the family took those communications seriously enough to respond to them.

This distinction is significant because in my original post I suggested that the ransom letters reported by TMZ may not be genuine, and that it was possible the public was seeing only a fraction of the communications that had actually occurred in this case. Savannah’s comments appear to support that possibility.

If two ransom messages were sent privately to the family, and the family responded to them, it would explain why the public reporting about ransom notes has been confusing. Some of the letters circulating publicly may have been hoaxes, while other communications may have been happening privately between the kidnappers and the family.

However, there is another part of Savannah’s interview that slightly changes one piece of the earlier theory.

In my original post, I raised the possibility that a ransom note may have been left at Nancy’s home during the abduction, potentially instructing the family not to contact law enforcement. But Savannah’s description of the initial moments after Nancy was discovered missing suggests something different.

In the interview, Savannah explained that when her siblings first realized Nancy was gone, they initially believed she might have had a medical emergency and been taken to the hospital by paramedics. The back doors were propped open and Nancy’s belongings, including her phone and purse, were still inside the house, which led them to begin calling hospitals in an attempt to locate her.

That early confusion suggests that a ransom note was likely not left at the scene, since the family did not immediately interpret the situation as a kidnapping. Instead, the realization that something far more serious had occurred seems to have developed as more details emerged, including the discovery of blood and the missing Nest camera.

But Savannah’s interview does clarify one important point: the family received at least two ransom communications that they believed were credible enough to respond to, even while other ransom notes circulating publicly may have been hoaxes.

As always, these observations are not conclusions. They are simply attempts to examine new information carefully as it becomes available.

A Note on the Timeline Discussion

To switch gears slightly, there’s another detail from Savannah’s interview that some people online have been discussing.

In describing the moment she learned her mother was missing, Savannah said she and her children had been at a friend’s house all day and they had just arrived home when her sister Annie called to tell her Nancy was gone. She also mentioned that Annie and her husband had already called local hospitals prior to calling Savannah.

Public reporting indicates that the 911 call from Nancy’s home occurred around noon Tucson time, which would have been mid-afternoon in New York where Savannah lives. Some observers have interpreted Savannah’s description of having just returned from “a beautiful, fun night” with her kids to mean that she may have been informed several hours after the initial discovery.

While some people have suggested that a delay of a few hours in contacting Savannah appears suspicious, I personally don’t think it is suspicious at all. These kinds of small details are often things the public fixates on as signs that a specific person or persons may be involved in the crime, when in reality they may be completely innocuous.

If Annie or her husband Tomaso were somehow involved in the crime, there would be little to gain from delaying a phone call to Savannah. By that point, they had already called 911 and law enforcement was on the scene. A short delay in notifying Savannah would not meaningfully create time to destroy evidence, coordinate a story, or accomplish anything else that would benefit someone involved in the crime.

There are also several ordinary explanations for why Savannah may not have been contacted immediately. With police already at the house, Annie was likely being interviewed by and dealing with police and investigators. At the same time, she and her husband were calling local hospitals because they initially believed Nancy may have had a medical emergency and been transported by paramedics.

In a moment of panic, people naturally reach for the most hopeful explanation. Confirming whether Nancy might simply be recovering in a nearby hospital would likely feel like the most urgent task. Calling local hospitals in Tucson probably would not have taken very long, and hoping that Nancy might be safe somewhere would have been the best possible outcome in that terrifying moment.

It’s also important to remember that Savannah lives across the country. Even though she is a well-known public figure with resources, she could not physically assist with the immediate search or with speaking to police in Tucson. If Annie was already dealing with investigators and trying to locate Nancy at hospitals, it’s easy to see how informing Savannah might not have happened until those first frantic steps were underway.

These are just some possible explanations for the delay in calling Savannah. There could be many others. Another possibility that comes to mind is how difficult it would be to make that call. The moment you have to call a sibling who lives thousands of miles away and tell them that Mom is missing is the moment when the situation truly becomes real. It’s the moment when the possibility that she might simply be recovering in a nearby hospital begins to fade, and the situation starts to feel far more serious.

Most of us have experienced flashes of this kind of panic, often with our children. You look away for a moment, then look back and they’re gone. My daughter was particularly skilled at this when she was little. She was a fearless explorer, always ready to chase after whatever caught her interest. Once, she wandered away from a neighborhood block party and the entire neighborhood spent more than thirty minutes searching for her before we finally found her. Those moments are some of the most terrifying you can experience, and in the midst of them you cling to the hope that there is a simple explanation and that your loved one is safe.

But the moment you have to start calling relatives who live far away and telling them they should come because something serious has happened—that is a very difficult call to make. It’s just another possible explanation for why the call to Savannah may not have happened right away.

Unfortunately, details like this delay in calling Savannah can sometimes take on a life of their own online, where people attempt to read deeper meaning into details that likely reflect nothing more than the chaos and fear of a family confronting an unimaginable situation.

As someone who follows a lot of true crime, I understand why people tend to look closely at the family. When someone is murdered or goes missing, the person responsible is sadly often someone close to them. But minor details like this don’t really point to guilt. Questioning every decision someone makes while they’re going through something traumatic just doesn’t make much sense. It’s far more helpful to focus on the known evidence, and based on what has been publicly reported, the evidence still points most strongly toward a kidnapping carried out by someone outside the family, while the family was investigated and cleared.

For now, many questions remain unanswered. But Savannah’s interview does offer a few important details that help clarify how the events surrounding Nancy’s disappearance may have unfolded. As more information emerges, those small details could prove to be more significant than they first appear.