Source : the age
Tucson: US Today show host Savannah Guthrie has made an emotional appeal to viewers to come forward with any information about her missing mother, a day after news organisations said a ransom note received months ago had indicated that the 84-year-old was dead.
“We are in agony, and we cannot be at peace,” Guthrie said at the Today desk in New York on Tuesday, holding a tissue in her left hand. “We love our mom. We’ll never stop looking for her.”
Nancy Guthrie, who lived alone, was reported missing from her Tucson-area home on February 1.
The FBI released video more than a week later from a camera outside her front door showing a masked stranger.
Authorities believe Guthrie was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will, after finding blood near her front doorstep. The case remains unsolved.
Some media outlets had previously reported receiving ransom notes in the days after Guthrie’s disappearance but had not disclosed the details while the investigation was at an early stage. Guthrie’s family was aware of the notes.
CNN reported on Monday (US time) that one of the notes revealed that Guthrie was dead, and those who kidnapped her did not mean to kill her, but she died shortly after her disappearance.
CNN said it knew the contents of one such note, and that a Tucson TV station had received two notes.
Both networks agreed to hold off on sharing the contents of the notes publicly so any future communications with the kidnapper or kidnappers could be authenticated, CNN reported.
Tucson TV station KOLD said on Monday that it had received two notes, one demanding millions in Bitcoin in exchange for Guthrie’s return and another that said she had died. Separately, CNN cited law enforcement sources in reporting on the contents of the notes.
CNN said a note indicated that those who kidnapped Guthrie did not mean to kill her but that she died shortly after her disappearance.
“I don’t have any comment on this story. I’m not involved in our coverage,” Savannah Guthrie said on Tuesday, referring to NBC News.
“But I can’t pretend I’m not here. And since I am, I want to just take the opportunity to ask people – really to beg people – to come forward. Somebody knows something.
“This is a news story today that is on your radar, but this is the life that my sister lives, that I live, that my brother lives, that our extended families live, that our children live, every day.”
Jessica Bobula, news director for the Tucson TV station KOLD, said on Monday that the station received several notes after Guthrie disappeared.
It notified authorities and had shared only what the FBI had released about the notes, she said.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department referred questions about the ransom notes to the FBI, which declined to comment.
Volunteers and search teams scoured the nearby desert terrain filled with cactuses, bushes and boulders in the weeks after Nancy Guthrie vanished. A group recently conducted a search near the Arizona-Mexico border but didn’t report finding her.
Savannah Guthrie and her siblings occasionally appeared in social media videos earlier in the saga, urging the public to come forward with tips. She asked people to “raise your prayers with us” and acknowledged that her mother might be in heaven dancing “with our daddy.”
AP
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