Feb 24 – The Guthrie family is offering up to $1 million as a reward for information that leads to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie, according to a video posted on Instagram on Tuesday by her daughter, NBC’s “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, which for the first time addressed the possibility the missing woman is dead.
There has been no sign of the frail 84-year-old since the early morning of February 1, when a doorbell video camera at the front door to her Tucson house captured footage of a man wearing a ski mask, backpack, gloves and a holstered gun tampering with the camera. Soon after, Guthrie’s pacemaker lost contact with her phone line.
Guthrie’s disappearance has drawn intense public interest worldwide. Although two purported ransom notes were delivered to news media outlets, there has been no known direct contact between any suspects and Guthrie’s family or authorities.
In Tuesday’s video, one of several released by relatives since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, a tearful Savannah Guthrie offered “a family reward of up to $1 million for any information that leads us to her recovery.”
She said her family was “blowing on the embers of hope” that Nancy Guthrie was still alive, but recognized that “she may already be gone.”
“If this is to be, then we will accept it, but we need to know where she is,” Savannah Guthrie said in the video. “Someone out there knows something that can bring her home.”
A $100,000 FBI reward offered earlier in February for information leading to the location of Nancy Guthrie also remains active, according to the agency.
Hopes for a major break in the case were last dashed on February 17 when authorities said DNA from a glove found near her Arizona home failed to match any known genetic profiles in a national database.
In Tuesday’s video, Guthrie also said her family had donated $500,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the national clearinghouse for reporting child abuse content to law enforcement, to help other families who have endured the agony of a missing relative.
(Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Donna Bryson, Rod Nickel)
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