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 has produced two ransom notes, no suspect and no body.
It happened in the middle of an upbeat segment. Jenna Bush Hager had just told viewers the crew was going to Ireland; NBC’s release put the live episode on Friday, October 16, from Sheen Falls Lodge in Kenmare, County Kerry, sponsored by Tourism Ireland and the first the show will broadcast from the country since its 1952 debut. Guthrie, 54, turned to her own family.
“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 Al Roker and Craig Melvin, Guthrie held on to her smile and her energy, then handed the conversation to Carson Daly: “You have some Irish, right?”
Viewers caught the tense. A source close to the show and to Guthrie told the New York Post the shift was not an acknowledgment that Nancy Guthrie had died. No one at NBC has said so on the record, and no agency has declared her dead.
Missing Since February 1
Nancy Guthrie, 84, lived alone in Catalina Foothills, north of Tucson, Ariz. Her son-in-law dropped her at home late on January 31 after dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s house. She was reported missing around noon the next day, when she failed to appear for a virtual church service.
The doorbell camera at her front door was disconnected at 1:47 a.m. that morning. The FBI released its footage on February 10, more than a week after she vanished: a masked, armed figure in gloves, average build, carrying a 25-liter backpack. Blood was found at and near the entrance to the house, and testing matched it to her.
Sheriff Chris Nanos said investigators believed she had been taken from her home against her will, possibly in the middle of the night. Her relatives were cleared. Detectives weighed using genealogy databases to run the DNA evidence and worked with Walmart, which sells the backpack brand, to trace it. No suspect and no person of interest have been publicly identified.
Volunteers spent the following weeks pushing through desert thick with cacti and boulders, and a separate group combed an area near the Arizona-Mexico border. Neither found her.
Two Notes and a Deadline
Savannah Guthrie appeared on camera with her brother, Camron, and her sister, Annie, on February 4, asking for proof their mother was alive. Three days later she posted a 20-second video saying the family had received a message and would pay.
Both notes reached Tucson television station KOLD through its email news tip line, and the station forwarded them to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which shared them with the FBI. The department released their contents on July 31, saying it hoped publication would produce a breakthrough.
The first, sent February 2, said Guthrie was being held and demanded $4 million in bitcoin by February 5, rising to $6 million by February 9, with a threat to her life if it went unpaid. It described details of her house. The second was written as an apology: it said she had died of a heart-related medical emergency shortly after she was taken, and had been buried, in its phrase, in nature. Nothing has corroborated that account, and investigators have not confirmed her death.
The department’s own handling of the second note became a story. On August 2, Nanos told reporters: “I have nothing to indicate she’s dead. I don’t have a body. I don’t have a burial site. I don’t have any note.” His investigators released both notes the following day. Nanos has since said he treats them as genuine until shown otherwise. A California man was arrested on February 5 for posing as the abductor in a separate message.
Where the Search Stands
Guthrie returned to the “Today” anchor desk on April 6, a little more than two months after her mother disappeared, and has addressed the case sparingly since. She has stepped away several times, most recently coming back on Tuesday, September 8, after a two-week break. She wrote on Instagram in August that the family wakes up and tries to be strong because that is what their mother taught them. “But make no mistake — our hearts are in ruins,” she wrote.
Human remains turned up on August 17 in desert scrub near West Ajo Way and South La Cholla Boulevard, roughly 15 miles from her home. They appeared to have been there a long time. “At this time, there is no indication they are connected to the Nancy Guthrie investigation,” the sheriff’s department said, without explaining how it had ruled them out.
The department 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, it said in a September 10 statement, adding that tips keep arriving and are being reviewed. Rewards now total $1.1 million, including $1 million put up by the family.
Allison Janney won the Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for “The Diplomat” on September 14 and raised the case unprompted in the press room. “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 the clip the next morning, and Guthrie replied: “Yeah, I was so touched to see her do that.”
She used the moment to renew the family’s appeal. “My whole family, my sister and my brother and I and all of our extended families, we’re in such pain. We need help,” she said, and: “We just want our mom home, give her a proper goodbye. That’s all.” Of her mother, she added: “I never let a moment pass, if I get one, to talk about my mom and how much we miss her and love her.”