The Real Reason Nancy Guthrie’s Ransom Was Never Paid After Savannah Faced ‘Attacks’ for Not Giving in to the Kidnappers
Savannah Guthrie’s Today interview about her mom’s disappearance left people with one big question. If the Guthries believed at least a couple of the ransom notes they received were legitimate, why was the ransom not paid? And which of the notes they received were credible?
The answer, according to legal analyst Nancy Grace, is probably complicated. During an interview on the Hang Out with Sean Hannity podcast shared by Parade, Grace said,“[There’s] a lot of people attacking Savannah—’Why did you pay the ransom? Why didn’t you pay sooner? Why didn’t you this, that?’ There’s no script for what you’re supposed to do. I think Savannah and her brother and sister, Annie and Camron, did everything they were physically able to do at that moment. Savannah, in her interview [on Today], stated that they got many, many quite fake ransoms, but that she believes those two to which she responded—she believes they were real.”
Related: Who are Savannah Guthrie’s siblings?
“I know Savannah well enough that when she gave a response—twice, she responded—she would not have done that if she did not believe the ransom notes were real,” Grace added.
Grace and Hannity then discussed the Instagram videos posted by the Guthrie siblings, where they said they would pay the ransom.
“There are a lot of different notes, I think that came. And I think most of them, it’s my understanding, are not real,” Guthrie told Hoda Kotb in an interview that aired on the Today show. “But I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those were real.”
But, Grace explained, there’s likely a simple reason they didn’t pay. “I think the reason they didn’t pay—if, in fact, they didn’t, and I don’t believe they did—is because they never got proof of life. I mean, you and I knew at the beginning something was off, in that the ransom was not requested immediately. You take somebody—you want to feed them for a week and then ask for the money? No. You want the money, then you want it to be over with—you want to get the hell out of town,” Grace told Hannity.
Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped at some point in the early hours of February 1. The investigation into her disappearance has seen police release surveillance photos and videos of one suspect, but no suspect has yet been identified. Police also reportedly recovered DNA from the scene, which is still being processed. Law enforcement and the FBI have also spoken to neighbors, investigated the likelihood that an empty house near where Guthrie lived could have been used as a base of operations, and looked into a possible internet outage the night of the disappearance.
Despite all of this, no motive has been disclosed, and there are no details about what exactly happened. The reward for information about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance is up to $1 million.
