“Today” show host Savannah Guthrie believes most of the ransom notes sent to her family after her mom, Nancy Guthrie, was kidnapped from her Arizona home were just sick fakes — but two were likely genuine.
“There are a lot of different notes, I think that came and I think most of them … are not real and I didn’t see them,” the NBC star said in her gut-wrenching first interview that aired Thursday.
“But I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real.”
The family was flooded with demands — including one requesting billions in bitcoin — shortly after the 84-year-old was reported missing from her Tucson home on Feb. 1.
In response, Guthrie and her two siblings released a handful of recorded messages on social media pleading for their mom’s safe return — saying they were ready to talk but wanted proof their mom was still alive.
One of the notes sent to TMZ two days after Nancy vanished had claimed the TV host’s mom was “safe but scared.”
It demanded millions in bitcoin be turned over to avoid “consequential” repercussions.
Others were sent to various local media outlets making similar demands.
“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, this little person. And to beg for mercy,” she said.
Meanwhile, around the time the notes started coming through, authorities released chilling surveillance footage that captured a masked man loitering on Nancy’s doorstep the evening she vanished.
“I mean, it’s just absolutely terrifying,” Guthrie said of the images of the apparent perpetrator.
