“Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie slipped into the past tense while talking about her missing mother, Nancy Guthrie, on the September 10, 2026, broadcast of the show — seven months into a search that has turned up two ransom notes the FBI has partly disowned, no suspect and no body.
The moment arrived inside an upbeat segment. Guthrie, 54, had just told viewers that “Today” would broadcast from Kenmare, County Kerry, on Friday, October 16, from Sheen Falls Lodge — the first time “Today” will broadcast from Ireland. Then she turned to her own family.
“My mother’s family — my mother was Irish, her grandmother,” she said in the past-tense remark. “They were from Galway.”
The set went quiet. Guthrie held her smile and turned to Carson Daly: “You have some Irish, right?” The tense did not get past viewers. 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 agency has declared her dead.
Missing Since February 1
Nancy Guthrie, 84, lived alone in Catalina Foothills, north of Tucson, Ariz. After dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s house, her son-in-law dropped her at home at about 9:50 p.m. on January 31. The next morning she missed a virtual church service, and her family called 911 at 12:03 p.m.
The doorbell camera at her front door had been disconnected at 1:47 a.m., though its software still detected a person at 2:12 a.m. The camera carried no video subscription, so the FBI pulled the pictures from residual data in the manufacturer’s systems and released four images on Tuesday, February 10, showing a masked, gloved figure with a backpack. A description followed two days later: a man of average build, about 5 feet 9 or 5 feet 10, carrying a black 25-liter Ozark Trail backpack. Blood at the entrance to the house matched her DNA.
Investigators believed she had been taken against her will, Sheriff Chris Nanos said. Her relatives were cleared. Detectives followed the backpack brand through Walmart and weighed running the DNA through genealogy databases. Neither a suspect nor a person of interest has been publicly identified.
Two Notes, and a Dispute Over Them
Savannah Guthrie and her siblings went on camera on February 4 to ask for proof their mother was alive. Three days later, in a 20-second video with her brother, Camron, and her sister, Annie, she said the family had received a message and would pay.
Both notes came in to Tucson television station KOLD through its news tip line, and the station handed them to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. The department and the FBI released their contents on Friday, July 31, saying it hoped that would produce a breakthrough.
Sent February 2, the first note demanded $4 million in bitcoin by 5 p.m. on February 5, rising to $6 million by 5 p.m. on February 9, and said she would be killed if it went unpaid. The second read as an apology: it said she had perished shortly after she was taken, from a suspected heart problem, and was buried in nature.
The department said nothing about the bureau having already tested the first note. Reuters reported on June 30 that the FBI had found the notes to be fake after agents deposited a small amount of cryptocurrency to see whether anyone would collect it. No one did. The next day, the FBI’s Arizona office said some of the notes “have been deemed to be extortion attempts without legitimacy,” while “other ransom demands may potentially be legitimate and are still being investigated as such.” The case, it said, “continues to be investigated as a kidnapping for ransom case.”
Prosecutors have already brought a case over one fake. Derrick Anthony Callella, 42, of Hawthorne, California, texted Guthrie relatives two days after she was reported missing to ask whether they had the bitcoin. In July he pleaded guilty to two counts of harassment using a telecommunications device, and a federal court in Tucson sentenced him to five years’ probation on Monday, August 31. He blamed methamphetamine.
Nanos’ own handling of the case drew attention as well. “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,” he told reporters on Thursday, July 30. His office released both notes the next day. He has since said he treats them as genuine until he is shown otherwise.
Where the Search Stands
Guthrie went back to the anchor desk on April 6 and has said little about the case since, stepping away several times and returning most recently on Tuesday, September 8, after two weeks off. In an Instagram post on August 1, the six-month mark, she said the family 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 surfaced on August 17 in desert scrub roughly 15 miles from her home, near West Ajo Way and South La Cholla Boulevard. “At this time, there is no indication they are connected to the Nancy Guthrie investigation,” the department said of the remains, offering no explanation of how it had ruled them out.
The department calls the investigation active. The family posted a $1 million reward on February 24 and, the same day, gave $500,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; the FBI is offering up to $100,000.
Allison Janney, who had just won a supporting-actress Emmy for “The Diplomat,” raised the case unprompted in the Emmys press room on September 14. “I honestly can say I think about her every day and think about the loss and what Savannah and her family are going through,” she said. Willie Geist played the clip the next morning.
“I was so touched to see her do that,” Guthrie replied, and 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, are in such pain. We need help.” She added: “We just want our mom home, give her a proper goodbye. That’s all.”
Tips can go to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4900, the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or 88-CRIME.