“Start From The INSIDE” Savannah Guthrie Faces Ransom Deadline After Mom Kidnapped
Millions of people across the world have been gripped, and moved, by the kidnapping of Today Show host Savannah Guthrie’s elderly mother Nancy. Investigators believe she was snatched from her home in Arizona last weekend after she disappeared and her blood was found on the porch. There’s a ransom note - but no suspect. The family is now embroiled in unproven claims amid an investigation that has alerted even President Trump. Piers Morgan delves into the case with broadcaster and legal analyst (who now running for Congress in New York) Jami Floyd, criminologist and attorney Casey Jordan, broadcaster and executive director at the Center for Missing Children, Callahan Walsh and former FBI profiler and host of the Code Red podcast, Jim Fitzgerald. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Profiler Says Kidnapping Unusual00:08:15
This is really unprecedented in U.S. history.
Look at crime statistics.
We know that it's most likely that someone that's going to harm you is somebody that you know.
So with a case like this, you have to start from the inside.
This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.
This is clearly an abduction.
It seems no ands, if, or buts about that.
The question is, is it for revenge or is it for profit?
We need to know without a doubt. that she is alive.
This is where we have our last sort of big moment of hope, right, with getting her back alive.
Millions of people across the world have been gripped and moved by the kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's elderly mother.
Savannah is a longtime host of NBC's Today Show.
Her mother, Nancy, who's 84, has now been missing for a week.
Investigators believe she was snatched from her home in Arizona last weekend.
Her blood was found on the porch.
There's a ransom note, but there's no suspect.
And the family itself is now embroiled in unproven claims and an investigation that has alerted even the U.S. president.
Savannah Guthrie may not be as well known around the world as she is in America, but the story is resonating far and wide.
And one thing's for sure, right now, nobody knows the answers to any of it.
Well, joining me to examine the very latest is the broadcaster and legal analyst, Jamie Floyd, who's now running for Congress in New York.
Casey Jordan, criminologist and host of the Criminal Appeal podcast, Callahan Walsh, the co-host of America's Most Wanted, and the former FBI profiler and co-host of Coldbread podcast, Jim Fitzgerald.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Jim Fitzgerald, let me start with you.
We don't know anything.
I mean, the bottom line is we're all speculating.
The world is speculating.
But seven days into this, we don't really know anything.
We don't even know if Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped.
We don't know if there's been any proof of life that she's still alive.
We don't know that these people who have asked for ransom money were involved in her disappearance at all.
Are they extortionists trying it on because they've seen the story in the news and so on?
In other words, we just don't know, do we?
But as somebody who's been an FBI profiler, what is your informed take on what you think we're dealing with here?
You're right, Piers, and thanks for having me on.
There are a lot of don't-knows in this case, more than I've usually worked with when I was handling similar cases, extortion, sort of human trafficking background cases in my early days in the FBI.
We would definitely know we have a victim.
We would definitely know there's money being requested, and we definitely have contact information.
None of that is known here.
The investigators themselves have a lot of puzzle pieces they're trying to put together.
And all that we can do on the outside is have some of the crumbs they're leaving behind.
But what I've said from the earliest days here publicly, starting a week ago, this is clearly an abduction.
It seems no ands, if, or buts about that.
The question is, is it for revenge?
That's on one side of my chart, or is it for profit on the other?
The revenge stuff may have been obvious early on, but the for-profit stuff didn't matter, didn't come up, I should say, until about 48 hours later.
Bottom line here for this part, this is being run very differently than other kidnappings in my historical past and certainly in the U.S. historical past.
They just don't happen in the U.S. for a reason because they're very unsuccessful.
So far, successful abduction here, unsuccessful kidnapping for profit.
We'll see where that goes in the next day or so.
I just want to play you, before I go to the other panel members, I want to play the clip of the latest family video they put out, much shorter than the first one, and seemed to be very precisely worded.
Let's take a look.
We received your message and we understand.
We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her.
This is the only way we will have peace.
This is very valuable to us and we will pay.
Now, Jim Fitzgerald, you know, watching that, you know, full disclosure, I know Savannah pretty well.
I used to appear on my Today Show quite regularly.
I actually co-hosted one of the hours of today's show a number of years ago for a few weeks.
And she is genuinely one of the nicest people I've met in show business.
I mean, without any doubt at all.
And that's been said by many people who know her.
And my heart absolutely breaks for her and her family.
I can't think of me.
My mother is around the same age.
I can't think of anything more horrific than your elderly mother being snatched from her bed.
So this whole thing to me is horrifying on a level.
I can't remember anything like this.
But when you look at that video, Jim Fitzgerald, again, with your former FBI hat on, the wording of it seemed very precise.
What's your reading of the wording?
One key word is humanize, and that is make the mother seem like a real person, a loving person, a caring person.
As a profiler, working with our crisis negotiators and other type of situations, hostage situations similar to this or even dissimilar, but someone's being held against their will.
We try to humanize the person being held.
We're persons plural.
And that's what they're trying to do here.
They're also saying they're willing to sort of play ball.
We're willing to pay.
But in so many words, and I hope whether directly or intimating it to her, they want proof of life.
And they should really be asking for proof of life and not something AI arguable.
This case is so different in that the letter wasn't left at the doorway or on one of the tables in the house.
There's no definitive proof that the woman is still alive.
Even if they know something that was in the house the day of the kidnapping, we don't know a week, eight days later, nine days later now, if she is still alive.
They should ask for a proof of life, very current to, you know, within an hour or two of any demand being paid.
So they're trying to make her humanize, trying to keep her alive.
And let's hope it works.
And if this is a kidnapping, which I'm not locking into here, let's hope the kidnappers are looking at this with some level of humanity and get her out of there and home in one piece.
Jamie Floyd, welcome to Uncensored.
You're a broadcaster and legal analyst.
You're running for Congress in New York.
This is such a sort of macabre and fascinating and heartbreaking story on so many levels.
It just seems inexplicable.
And also, as I said at the start, because we don't know the answers, it's very hard to understand the motivation, the reality of where the investigation is.
Have these kidnappers, if they are kidnappers, actually made any direct contact that makes the family or the FBI think that this is actually a kidnapping where Nancy Guffey is still alive and so on.
All these unanswered questions make it extraordinarily difficult to really assess properly.
Yes.
And Piers, I want to say also in full disclosure, like you, I know Savannah quite well.
We started out together at court TV where we covered these kinds of cases.
And I will say that she is, as you've pointed out, a kind and well-loved person in an industry full of people who are not kind and not well-loved.
But she's also tough and smart and spunky.
And she knows to work with law enforcement in this moment.
So you're right to parse the words of those videos and her with her siblings, her choices about what to say in this moment.
But to your question, It is an incredible case and it's very much unlike kidnapping, as has been pointed out by our profiler, is highly unsuccessful and therefore highly unusual everywhere, but especially in the United States.
And with Savannah, I've covered other cases like this.
We covered the John Benay Ramsey case together.
Voices And Images Manipulated00:03:21
But times have changed to try to get away with something like this.
And again, we can't, we're speculating, right?
We don't really know what's happened here.
But we have the kinds of technology, the doorbell camera, for example, the fact that everything we do now in society is filmed, photographed, and tracked digitally.
And then the idea that you're going to get any sort of ransom that can't be tracked, whether it's Bitcoin or in any other form, it's nonsensical.
So this is a tremendously unique case, but I think law enforcement and the Guthrie family have a unique opportunity here to solve it and bring Nancy home.
Yeah, I mean, you make some good points there.
Kidnapping, hijacking as well used to be much more prevalent, but because the perpetrators were invariably caught or killed, it certainly seems to have gone out of criminal fashion in more recent years.
And yet here we have an apparent kidnapping with utter impunity.
I want to bring in Casey Jordan here, criminologist, host of the Criminal Appeal Podcast.
I want to play the first clip now that the family put out and then come to you after this.
Our mom is our heart and our home.
She is 84 years old.
Her health, her heart is fragile.
She lives in constant pain.
She is without any medicine.
She needs it to survive.
She needs it not to suffer.
We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media.
As a family, we are doing everything that we can.
We are ready to talk.
However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated.
We need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her.
We want to hear from you and we are ready to listen.
Please reach out to us.
You know, one of the things, Casey, that has been raised by people at NBC, actually, who from people who apparently are feeling quite bad about this is that Savannah was, you know, encouraged to do a lot of stuff with her mother on air, not just in the studio, but also at the home.
And that whether this has prompted somebody to look at the age of her mother, look at the million-dollar home she was in, it is, it may or may not be significant.
It's only about 60 miles from the border, for example.
You know, again, this is pure speculation at this stage, obviously, but it's not a sort of wild fantasy, I guess, to think that somebody may have been watching that and thought, actually, there's an opportunity there to commit this Heena's crime and potentially extort money from Savannah Guthrie.
Million Dollar Home Suspect00:15:23
Correct.
And there are people who even think that that televised content with Savannah and her mother could have given the clues about the interior of the house that the extortionists are putting in these communications where they're talking about a dangling floodlight and other details trying to validate that they've been in the house.
Many people also speculate they've never been in the house and that everything that they're saying has been derived from Google Maps or from either maybe police report leakage or service providers who have been in the house.
But the most important thing about the video that you just played, that was the first released video by the three siblings.
And that is exactly what Jim Fitzgerald said that they should be doing is humanizing their mother.
They talk directly to their mother.
They tell her how much they miss her and want her home and they use very key concepts like pain and suffering and how her health and her heart are fragile.
That is dynamically different than the sibling video that was just released on Saturday, where they are not asking for proof of life and any hopefulness is gone from their faces.
So we have to wonder what was in that second communication that came in to those Tucson news agencies that seems to have turned the tables.
We know that there was a lot of specifics, but I get the feeling that whoever has control of Nancy Guthrie is not offering proof of life, but they are holding a deadline.
And there was no effort to humanize her in the latest video.
That concerns me.
Let me bring in Callan Walsh, co-host of America's Most Wanted.
Callan, welcome to Uncensored.
There's an interesting thing about that video is in the wider, longer clip, there's one part of it, which is almost word for word, identical to what we saw in the movie Silence of the Lambs, when you have a senator making a direct appeal.
Let's take a look at this.
She is full of kindness and knowledge.
Talk to her and you'll see.
Catherine is very gentle and kind.
Talk to her and you'll see.
And I guess that is just further evidence that there is a kind of playbook here by the FBI where certain wording is deliberately designed to try and appeal to whatever semblance of humanity the captors may have.
You're absolutely right.
And it's because this is where we have our last sort of big moment of hope, right, with getting her back alive.
If this was a case that she wandered from the house and wasn't able to make it back, the temperatures have been way too cold to survive out there.
If it was an abductor who took her that have nothing to do with the ransom letters, there's a likelihood that she's deceased as well, unfortunately.
But if she's been held captive because there's a ransom, that's hope that she's still alive.
And that's what this family is clinging on to.
When my parents were looking for my brother in 1981 when he was abducted, they said that not knowing was the hardest part.
And they would do anything, anything that they could to see him again.
And with this hope being dangled in front of the family, of course, they're going to do everything that they can to seize upon that moment and hope that they get their mother back.
We've seen a lot of speculation, like I said.
The broadcaster, Ashley Banfield, who I used to work with at CNN, made a claim earlier in the week that Savannah Guthrie's brother-in-law might be somehow a suspect.
This is in relation to a vehicle which he drove.
There's no outside evidence to support this.
And it could just be completely wrong, obviously.
But this is what I guess happens in a story like this.
And there are, of course, myriad examples of these kind of crimes where friends or family members do end up being connected in some way.
Do you think there's any possibility that that could be what we're looking at here?
Absolutely.
Look at crime statistics.
We know that it's most likely that someone that's going to harm you is somebody that you know.
We know that with missing kids and adults as well, too.
And so with a case like this, you have to start from the inside and then start making those circles wider and wider.
Talk to everybody that knew Nancy, family, friends, neighbors, service workers that came to the house.
You know, you really got to look closely at these families and eliminate them, and then you're able to move on.
So is it possible?
Absolutely.
You know, I don't have the sources that Ashley has.
I've known Ashley for a long time.
I don't think she would put out something out there that she didn't think was correct.
But time will tell.
Law enforcement is grasping at straws.
They're putting up billboards.
They're re-looking in places they should have looked to begin with, like that septic tank that we've seen.
They're going back to the sister's home, things that they should have crossed off the list very early on.
Piers, I've known Ashley a long time.
I've known Ashley a long time too.
Let me insert here.
She's not a lawyer.
I am.
We have a long history in this country of convicting people in the court of public opinion before a charge has been filed in a court of law.
We have a long, ugly history that goes back to the colonial period when you were the mother country of ugly public trials that happened long before anyone's ever been charged.
We got to be careful not to speculate and certainly not to accuse people before they've been charged with anything because it does ruin lives.
And we have a healthy history in this country of wrongful convictions of people.
And I've made my career, a big point in my career, of standing up for people when they are at risk of being wrongfully accused.
So I want to be really careful in this case.
This is a ripe case for that kind of error to happen.
I completely concur.
And in fact, these things run riot on social media.
And obviously, if there's no basis to it, it's unbelievably cruel and unfair on the family members concerned who get called suspects.
The local police have hit back at that claim, although Ashley has stood by it.
They said, we don't have anyone here listed as a suspect.
No one's eliminated, but we just don't really have enough to say, this is our suspect.
This is our guy or our gal we don't know.
It's kind of reckless to report that someone's a suspect when they could be a victim.
Jim Fitzgerald, let me come back to you.
Billy Bush, who also worked with Savannah at NBC, he said this about the ransom.
The report is that there's Monday by 5 o'clock, they want a $6 million Bitcoin ransom.
That means that Nancy Guthrie is well.
And, you know, $6 million for NBC is a quick stroke of a quick hit send.
And they should be able to get that done very easily.
So, Jim, what do you make of that?
That NBC, obviously, you've got very deep pockets, that they should come forward and pay that ransom, whatever it is.
Well, this gets pretty complicated.
And Piers, as we've all kind of agreed here, Tracy Jordan, your other guest, this is really unprecedented in U.S. history.
The last paid, or I should say, for-profit kidnapping of which I am aware anywhere in the West was outside of Oslo, Norway.
A woman named Ann Hagen.
But the note was left in the house when she went missing, and she's still never been recovered.
The husband was arrested, as your last guest just said, but then those charges were dropped.
So, but back to the Billy Bush thing, I mean, we get too many people involved here.
It can start mucking up the works.
I'd rather keep this.
And obviously, we're all here talking about this too.
Part of what I'm doing, this is to educate the public and also to tell people to protect their mothers, keep those cameras up, get subscriptions on these things.
You know, $6 million in 1992, I helped the Newark division.
I was in New York City.
There was a kidnapping of an Exxon executive named Sidney Riso.
They wanted $18.5 million from Exxon to free him.
It so happens he died the fourth day in captivity, but for the next 53 days, the kidnappers, actually a husband, a wife team, kept the facade going that he was still alive.
But they did send his credit card in the very beginning.
I don't think we even have that to prove Mrs. Guthrie is alive.
And there's a pragmatist part of me.
If this was my mother, you know, that's the emotional part.
The investigators, another part, asked for proof of life almost every kidnapping, but going back to Lindbergh, Frank Sinatra Jr., and others since then have had some kind of a proof of life element involved in it.
And we don't see that here.
And could it be, Jim?
I just don't know how to do it.
Could it be, Jim, that the FBI have had some form of proof of life, which is why they're taking the ransom seriously, but they've chosen not to share that with the public?
That's very possible.
And I would not expect anything otherwise.
And we don't have as many news conferences, probably by design, from the sheriff anymore that were every day and we're getting all kinds of conflated and conflicting information.
So there's no doubt they're holding back and they're going to know the best way to go.
But I will tell you this too, and nothing against critiquing my former colleagues.
There's no one in law enforcement today that's ever worked a for-profit kidnapping.
They just haven't.
There's some retired agents and investigators have.
I'm not talking about child custody or the Elizabeth Smart type of things.
All bad stuff, don't get me wrong.
Or like back in New York, we'd have Chinese people bring in an indentured service.
They have to work for three years.
Then they finally get released.
Well, they take off after a year and they go and kidnap a family member.
We usually resolve those within 48 hours.
Those things aside, this kind of stranger for-profit kidnapping, no one out there has ever worked these before.
And even the family is relying on movies from the early 90s, Silence of the Lambs, to put out their appeal.
And I'm not knocking them for that.
I'm not tying anything into that negative.
They're doing what's best for them, consciously or subconsciously.
So this is uncharted territory for a lot of people working this case.
And I'm not ruling out again, an abduction was successful for whatever reason.
And then someone else possibly is an opportunist from another continent taking advantage of this situation, trying to get money for it.
And that would be the saddest of all situations.
And the FBI has to know that and realize it.
And the family has to make the final decision.
And we've already had, Casey, other hoaxes who've been arrested for making fake ransom demands.
And I hope the full force of the law is brought to bear on them, obviously.
You know, I come back to, again, the proximity of the home to the border.
You know, it wouldn't be that difficult for somebody to take Nancy and get her out of the United States quite quickly.
It was 50, 60 miles.
You know, how big a possibility do you think that is?
I think it's something that the FBI and the police are absolutely considering.
I mean, we're talking about tens of thousands of hours of video footage that they have got to pour through looking for anything, an equivalent amount of digital evidence for cell phones that could be pinging off the local towers.
This is a massive undertaking.
So I don't think anyone is holding the FBI or the local police, you know, in criticism.
But the bottom line is that we have not, as Jim pointed out, seen anything like this.
We do not usually see kidnappers for profit communicating through news stations.
I mean, that just, why would you?
You want to get directly to the family.
And doing anything else really muddies up the water and keeps the channel of communication clogged, if you will, because everything is going through a news director who's turning it over to the police, who's turning over the FBI, who's turning over to the family.
If you want to get your money, you go directly to the family.
So yeah, at this juncture, we know we have a 5 p.m. deadline tonight, but we don't know exactly what it's for.
We presume it is for the $6 million in Bitcoin.
But we also know that the Guthries demanded proof of life, and we don't have any clue, any inclination that they have received it.
So that takes everything in a new and different direction because there seems to be, based on the latest video, this idea that they will take her back in any condition just to have answers, which is so important when you don't know that the torture of not knowing is probably worth this money to them if they just know the answer.
And I think they're willing to pay that.
And I don't think it matters whether it's Savannah or NBC.
I do worry that if the money gets paid, because there is no honor among thieves or extortionists or criminals or murderers, there is no honor among thieves and there are no guarantees.
You could pay the money and still have radio silence on the other end.
They take the money right off into the sunset.
We still don't know what happened to Nancy.
So then, of course, it's open season on all vulnerable relatives of wealthy people that kidnapping and extortion.
And again, I agree with Jim.
We don't know that the people who are responsible for Nancy's disappearance are the same people demanding a ransom.
We have no idea.
This could be opposite oranges.
Yeah, let me finally bring you back, Callan.
You've been through a similar horror story with your family.
I mean, for those who don't know your story, how did that end?
My parents looked for Adam for two weeks.
Adam's case captured the nation's attention, similar to this case.
Adam's remains were found two weeks after his abduction in a ditch here in South Florida.
It was an unfortunate turn of events.
But as I said, the not knowing, my parents always said, was the hardest part.
Once they knew Adam was deceased, they could bury him.
They could end that chapter in their life and start writing new chapters.
And they changed the way we look for missing kids in America.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we've helped recover over 480,000 missing kids, all in honor of my brother.
And we still continue to fight.
But as mentioned earlier, even all those cases that we deal with day in and day out, we don't see ransoms.
Children Abducted By Family00:02:40
This is not something we see.
And of course, kids go missing all sorts of different ways.
Stranger abductions are actually the least common way a child goes missing.
Many children run away.
Many children are abducted by family members or non-custodial parents.
And what bothers me in this case is that they are putting up billboards.
I think they're trying everything.
You have to throw everything at the wall in a case like this, but I think it shows that they really don't have an avenue that they're really pursuing because they're trying everything that they can.
They don't have the regular investigative tools that law enforcement relies on, like tracking a cell phone, license plate readers, tracking credit cards.
All that was left at her home.
The DNA came back to Nancy's.
That doesn't bode well for her, but that doesn't tell us anything about a possible abductor.
And so law enforcement has to go outside the box and really try everything.
We saw them going back again to the crime scene, revisiting places that they should have before.
And they really do need to think outside the box, really start trying every little thing that they can in hopes that something, something pans out.
It does seem quite extraordinary that an 84-year-old woman can be snatched from her bed, from a property of that kind, in that kind of neighborhood, and there is no technological tracking at all, which they seem to have been able to find in the whole journey of wherever she was taken.
It just almost defies belief.
And of course, there's also the ticking time bomb of her medication, which we're told is very important.
And without it, she would really struggle health-wise to survive very long anyway.
We don't know whether she took any medication with her, had any medication on her.
You've got to assume probably not if she was taken out of her bed.
So these are all more unanswered questions.
But look, I've got to leave it there.
Thank you all to my panel.
Some great expert opinion, albeit I think we're all agreed.
It remains just an extraordinary mystery.
And that is what is captivating the world.
I can tell you over here, people wouldn't have known who Savannah Guthrie is, but they do now.
This has touched a lot of people and made a lot of people very, very fearful, I think, about what this means about family members of television personalities and so on.
But again, we don't know the motive.
So we don't know what's happened or what the motive is.
So to try and jump ahead to that is probably a little foolhardy.
But thank you all very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Good to be here.
Motive Remains Unknown00:00:25
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