“Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie slipped into the past tense while talking about her missing mother on the show’s September 10, 2026, broadcast, at a point where the search for Nancy Guthrie, seven months in, appears to have stalled.
The moment arrived inside a cheerful segment. Word had just come that the crew would film a live episode in County Kerry, Ireland, and Guthrie turned the conversation to her own family.
“My mother’s family w-, my mother was Irish, her grandmother,” Guthrie said. “They were from Galway.”
Around her, the other hosts went quiet. Seated between co-hosts Al Roker and Craig Melvin, the rest of the morning show crew filling in behind them, Guthrie kept hold of her smile and her energy and passed the moment to fellow host Carson Daly: “You have some Irish, right?”
Viewers noticed the tense. A source close to “Today” and to Guthrie described the past-tense phrasing as something other than an acknowledgment that Nancy Guthrie had died.
Missing Since February 1
A house north of Tucson, Arizona, was home to Nancy Guthrie, 84, who lived there by herself. When she did not appear at a virtual church service, someone reported her missing around noon on February 1. The last anyone saw of her was the evening before, when her son-in-law dropped her at home following dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home. Inside the house, investigators found blood matching her DNA, and surveillance video captured a masked, armed person on her porch the morning she vanished. The FBI, more than a week after the disappearance, released footage from a camera at her front door showing a masked stranger; blood was also found on the porch.
Nancy Guthrie had been taken, possibly in the middle of the night, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office said it believed, and kidnapping or abduction were being treated as possibilities. Investigators had identified neither a suspect nor a person of interest, the office said in a February 4 statement, and authorities said they had nothing credible indicating that a possible abduction was a targeted incident. Reportedly, investigators also weighed turning to genealogy databases to search DNA evidence, and they pursued backpack leads with Walmart.
Volunteers and search crews pushed through desert terrain thick with cacti, bushes and boulders in the weeks after she vanished. Ground near the Arizona-Mexico border was covered by a separate group, which did not report finding her.
Two Notes and a Deadline
A 20-second video went up on February 7 from Savannah Guthrie, who sat alongside her brother, Camron Guthrie, and her sister, Annie Guthrie, holding her siblings’ hands. The family had received a message, she said, and she pleaded for her mother’s return, saying the family would pay.
At least three news organizations received a possible ransom note. No law enforcement agency had substantiated it.
Two notes went to Tucson television station KOLD. The first arrived on February 2 through the station’s news tips system; the second came in just before noon on February 6. The first carried two deadlines and a request for funds and indicated Guthrie could be harmed, KOLD news director Jessica Bobula told NBC News. The second demanded no money, she said, and differed from the first in nearly every respect, though its author appeared to be working to show that one sender had written both. The station handed both notes to the sheriff’s office, along with the IP information.
Once the notes became public, KOLD said two had come to the station — one demanding millions in Bitcoin in exchange for Guthrie’s return, the other saying she had died. One note claimed her abductors never intended for her to die, law enforcement sources said, even though her death came soon after she vanished.
On June 23, a tissue in her left hand, Savannah Guthrie sat at the “Today” desk in New York and said she would not comment on NBC News’ coverage of the case, turning instead to a request that anyone with information talk to investigators. The family was in agony, she said, and would never stop looking for her mother. The appeal came one day after news organizations reported that a ransom note received months earlier had indicated her mother was dead. The sheriff’s office referred questions about the notes to the FBI, which declined to comment.
Where the Search Stands
More than two months after her mother disappeared, Guthrie was back at the “Today” anchor desk on April 6, and she has rarely discussed the case in the time since. The public should raise their prayers with the family, she has asked, and she has suggested her mother might be in heaven, dancing with her father.
Her mother’s kidnappers received an Instagram message from her in August, in which she wrote that the family gets up each day and tries to be strong and carry on, because their joyful and resilient mother taught them to do exactly that. “But make no mistake — our hearts are in ruins,” she wrote.
Remains found near Nancy Guthrie’s home were reported to have no connection to the case “at this time.”
Her blood had been found on the porch and the case remained unsolved as of June 23. The sheriff’s office describes the investigation as active and ongoing and says it is working with the FBI. In a September 10 statement, the office said laboratories across the country continue to support DNA and video analysis. Technological advances are aiding that work, the office added, and tips keep arriving and are being reviewed. The family has put up a $1 million reward for tips that lead to Nancy Guthrie’s “miracle” return.
Guthrie made a renewed public plea about her mother’s disappearance on September 15, sharing an appeal from her family. The wording of that plea was not available.
