Trump calls Savannah Guthrie and vows to help Today star find her abducted mother Nancy, 84, as search intensifies
President Donald Trump called NBC Today host Savannah Guthrie to support the search for his missing mother.
The call came Wednesday as the search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie entered its fourth day, according to Fox News.
NBC News anchor Tom Llamas accepted the call live on air shortly afterwards, saying: ‘We would also like to point out that the president called and spoke with Savannah Guthrie following our interview.’
Llamas said the president took the time to ‘offer words of support for himself and his family as he searches for his mother.’
The call came the day after Trump announced additional federal support for the search, as he told reporters in the Oval Office that he planned to call Savannah and that his thoughts were with his host amid the “terrible” situation.
“I’ll call him later, I think this is a terrible thing,” Trump said. ‘It’s very unusual, but we’ll find out.’
The 84-year-old woman disappeared after having dinner with her daughter on Saturday night and was reported missing the next morning when she did not show up for church.
Police said evidence at the house showed Nancy had been ‘kidnapped’ during the night, including traces of blood from the doorway and the removal of the camera from the doorbell.
On Tuesday, the case took a different turn when TMZ and local Tucson outlet KOLD said they received apparent ransom notes demanding millions of Bitcoins in exchange for Nancy’s return. Authorities have not confirmed the legitimacy of the notes.
As of Wednesday, the search for Nancy has yet to lead to any suspects or arrests; Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said he hasn’t given up hope that Nancy will be found alive.
Today’s host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy, disappeared from her Arizona home over the weekend, and efforts are on to find her.
On Wednesday, President Trump called Savannah Guthrie to offer his support. The two were seen together in September 2016
Sheriff Nanos offered an optimistic outlook on the search, telling NBC on Wednesday that he believed Nancy was still alive.
“We have nothing but to believe he’s here,” Nanos said. ‘He’s here. ‘He’s alive and we want to save him.’
He stated that his department takes all tips and referrals very seriously.
‘Incoming potential customers are critical to us. “These are valuable and we are sharing them with the FBI and others,” Nanos said.
Nanos said the last people to see Nancy alive before she disappeared were her daughter, Annie, and her husband, Tommaso Cioni, with whom she had dinner Saturday night.
Exclusive Daily Mail footage showed Annie and Tommaso looking nervous during their first sighting on Tuesday evening, with Annie trying to hide her face from passersby.
It is believed that Savannah was staying with them at her home.
FBI agents visited the property around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday as they continued to investigate the abduction of Savannah and Annie’s mother, Nancy. They left two hours later.
Image: Aerial view of Nancy Guthrie’s house where she was kidnapped
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos (left) told reporters at the press conference that investigators were “following all leads” when asked if Nancy’s kidnappers had demanded any ransom.
Blood spotted on the sidewalk of Nancy’s $1 million Tucson, Arizona, home
Nancy’s Ring doorbell camera was also missing, but it’s unclear if it was removed before her disappearance
Although no suspects were named by authorities, former NYPD hostage negotiator Wallace Zeins speculated that the raid may have been carried out by a coordinated group of criminals.
“I believe it’s possible there could be more than one person,” Zeins told CNN.
‘Weighs 150 pounds, 6 feet tall, wakes up in the middle of the night, is in poor health; ‘He can’t walk or run, so I think more than one person is involved in this crime.’
Although no suspects have been identified, reported ‘ransom notes’ sent to TMZ and local Tucson store KOLD could be a gift to investigators by offering new clues, the law enforcement expert said.
Stating that the authorities did not verify the legitimacy of the notes, Zeins said that if the notes were legitimate, they could provide forensic evidence that could lead to the criminal.
He added that the banknotes requested payment via Bitcoin and that this was ‘some kind of group that knows what Bitcoin is about and social media and says they know the system.’
Zeins said if the notes were handwritten, they could provide DNA evidence, whereas ‘if they were written on a computer, that works too, because the FBI is very good at what they do when it comes to electronic surveillance and electronic things like that.’ he said.
