On the September 10, 2026, broadcast of “Today,” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie used the past tense in speaking about her missing mother, Nancy Guthrie — seven months into a search that appears to have stalled.
It happened in the middle of an upbeat segment. Moments after the hosts revealed that the crew would film a live episode in County Kerry, Ireland, Guthrie turned to her own family. Per an NBC press release, that episode will air live on Friday, October 16, from Sheen Falls Lodge in County Kerry, with Guthrie and “Today” colleagues Craig Melvin, Al Roker, Carson Daly, Dylan Dreyer, Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones making the trip, which Tourism Ireland is sponsoring. Bush Hager delivered the news on air Thursday, September 10: “We’re heading to Ireland!”
“My mother’s family w-, my mother was Irish, her grandmother,” Guthrie said. “They were from Galway.”
Silence settled over the other hosts. Seated between co-hosts Al Roker and Craig Melvin, the rest of the morning show crew around her, Guthrie held on to her smile and her energy, then handed the conversation to fellow host Carson Daly: “You have some Irish, right?”
Viewers caught the tense. A source close to “Today” and to Guthrie said the shift to the past tense was not an acknowledgment that Nancy Guthrie had died.
Missing Since February 1
Nancy Guthrie, 84, lived alone north of Tucson, Arizona. She was reported missing around noon on February 1, when she did not appear for a virtual church service. Her son-in-law had dropped her at home the evening before, after dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home, and no one saw her after that. Inside the house, investigators found blood matching her DNA, and surveillance video from the morning she vanished captured a masked, armed person on her porch. The FBI released footage from a camera at her front door more than a week after the disappearance; it showed a masked stranger. Blood was found on the porch as well.
Investigators believed she had been taken, possibly in the middle of the night, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office said, and kidnapping or abduction were among the possibilities they treated as live. No suspect and no person of interest had been identified, the office said in a February 4 statement, and authorities said no credible information showed that a possible abduction was a targeted incident. Investigators reportedly weighed using genealogy databases to search DNA evidence, and they worked with Walmart on backpack leads.
Volunteers and search crews spent the weeks after she vanished pushing through desert terrain thick with cacti, bushes and boulders. A separate group combed an area near the Arizona-Mexico border and did not report finding her.
Two Notes and a Deadline
Savannah Guthrie posted a 20-second video on February 7, seated alongside her brother, Camron Guthrie, and her sister, Annie Guthrie, holding her siblings’ hands. The family had received a message, she said; she pleaded for her mother’s return and said the family would pay.
At least three news organizations received a possible ransom note. No law enforcement agency had substantiated it.
Tucson television station KOLD received two notes — the first through the station’s news tips system on February 2, the second just before noon on February 6. The first carried two deadlines and a request for funds, and it indicated Guthrie could be harmed, KOLD news director Jessica Bobula told NBC News. The second demanded no money and, she said, differed from the first in nearly every respect, though whoever wrote it appeared to be trying to establish that the two messages came from the same sender. Both notes went to the sheriff’s office, along with the IP information.
Once the notes became public, KOLD said two had reached it — one demanding millions in Bitcoin in exchange for Guthrie’s return, the other saying she had died. One of the notes claimed her abductors never intended for her to die, law enforcement sources said, though her death came soon after she vanished.
From the “Today” desk in New York, a tissue in her left hand, Savannah Guthrie said she would not comment on NBC News’ coverage of the case, then used the moment to urge anyone with information to speak to investigators. Her family was in agony, she said, and would never stop looking for her mother. The sheriff’s office referred questions about the notes to the FBI.
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 addressed the case sparingly since. She had stepped away from the show several times after that April return, most recently coming back on Tuesday, September 8, following a two-week vacation. She has asked the public to raise their prayers with the family, and she has said her mother might be in heaven, dancing with her father.
In an August Instagram message to her mother’s kidnappers, she wrote that the family wakes up every day and tries to be strong and go on, because that is what their joyful and resilient mother taught them to do. “But make no mistake — our hearts are in ruins,” she wrote.
Remains found near Nancy Guthrie’s home were reported not to be connected to the case “at this time.”
The sheriff’s office calls the investigation active and ongoing and says it is working with the FBI. Laboratories across the country are still supporting DNA and video analysis, the office said in a September 10 statement, adding that advances in technology are aiding the work and that 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.
Actress Allison Janney won the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Emmy for “The Diplomat” on September 14, and in the press room afterward a reporter raised her concern for Guthrie. “I honestly can say I think about her every day and think about the loss and what Savannah and her family are going through,” Janney said. Guest co-host Willie Geist played those remarks on air, calling them a “beautiful expression of sympathy,” and Guthrie responded: “Yeah, I was so touched to see her do that.”
Guthrie renewed her family’s public appeal for help finding her mother during the September 15 “Today” broadcast. “We’re in such pain. We need help,” she told viewers, and: “We just want our mom home, give her a proper goodbye. That’s all.” She also said of her mother: “I never let a moment pass, if I get one, to talk about my mom and how much we miss her and love her.”