Savannah Guthrie says she plans to return to NBC's “Today” show next month, ending a two-month absence sparked by the apparent abduction of her 84-year-old mother from her Tucson home.
Hoda Kotb said after her emotional interview with her former co-host aired on Friday that Guthrie will return April 6.
Guthrie said it’s hard to imagine returning to a place of joy and lightness.
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie went missing from her home in Tucson on February 1 in what investigators believe was an abduction.
Arizona Daily Star photographers are covering the story.
While she doesn’t know if she can do it or if she will belong anymore, Guthrie said she wants to try.
“I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back, because it’s my family,” Guthrie said. “I think it’s part of my purpose right now. I want to smile and when I do, it will be real and my joy will be my protest. My joy will be my answer. And being there is joyful and when it’s not, I’ll say so.”
In a separate segment of the interview that aired on Thursday, Guthrie told Kotb that the back doors of her mom's Catalina Foothills home were found propped open, and her phone and purse were still at the home when the 84-year-old disappeared.
Given the tremendous pain their mother suffered from, Guthrie said she and her siblings knew it wasn’t a case of a person wandering off.
Then there were the propped doors, blood on the front doorstep and a camera yanked off.
A banner with notes from hundreds of well-wishers for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, is displayed outside of Tucson's KVOA TV station.
“So we were saying, ‘This is not OK’” Guthrie said. “'Something is very wrong here.”
Her brother immediately realized that their mother had been kidnapped for ransom.
“I said, ‘What?’ And then, I mean, it sounds so, like, how dumb could I be? But I just, I didn’t want to believe. I just said, ’Do you think because of me?’” Guthrie recounted, choking up and wiping away tears. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but, yeah, maybe.’”
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on Feb. 1 from her longtime Tucson home.
Authorities believe the 84-year-old was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will.
The FBI released surveillance videos of a masked man who was outside Guthrie’s front door in Tucson on the night she vanished. The Guthrie family has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of their mother.
The longtime “Today” show co-anchor said in the interview that they don’t know that their mother was taken because of her, but acknowledged that it would make sense.
“Which is too much to bear, to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me. And I just say, ’I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry,′” Guthrie said. “If it is me, I’m so sorry.”
In this March file photo, Savannah Guthrie visits the "Today" show at Rockefeller Plaza in New York. On Friday, co-host Hoda Kotb said Guthrie will return to the show April 6, ending a two-month absence since the apparent abduction of her mother in Tucson.
Some of the purported ransom notes were fake, Savannah Guthrie said, but she believed the two notes that she and her siblings responded to were real.
But the circumstances were surreal.
“How is it possible that we are having to make a video speaking to a kidnapper who took an 84-year-old woman in the dead of night, in her pajamas, with no shoes, without her medicine?” Savannah Guthrie asked.
Seeing the images of a man in a ski mask from the porch camera was terrifying, Guthrie said, but after “cruel speculation” that a family member might be involved began to swirl, she was “glad that people saw what came to our door.”
Guthrie said she will never understand that speculation.
“No one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law. And no one protected my mom more than my brother,” Guthrie said.
Investigators have worked tirelessly, but the family needs answers, Guthrie said.
“We cannot be at peace without knowing and someone can do the right thing," she said. "It is never too late to do the right thing and our hearts are focused on that.”
