Transcript
Savannah Guthrie (0:00)
Foreign.
Podcast Host (0:04)
Hey everyone. Happy Easter. It is Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026. As I record this late at night, I've had a very long day, had a lovely Easter with my husband and saw the little girls who lived next door and wished them happy Easter and they brought eggs, which was so cute. I say all these nice things because I'm going to talk about the Nancy Guthrie case, but there is an Easter connection. Couple things you should know that I'm going to talk about. First of all, Savannah's probably having a really tough time going to sleep tonight because it's her return to the Today show in the morning. And if you know the morning show schedule it means you get up at 3, if you're really late 4am and you get into work and you're on the air at 6 and you know girls hair and makeup takes longer than the guys so we usually have to get in earlier. So I am thinking about her on the eve of her return. It is going to be really hard to go live in front of millions of people when you are feeling as emotionally brittle as she is at this time. And maybe to ease into it, Savannah did something really interesting today. She gave an Easter message and she gave the message in the same venue that her mom attended religious services on Sundays ever since COVID you may not know about Good Shepherd. It is a church in New York and they offer in person services but they they also offer a digital service. And this is the service that Savannah did her taped message. It's really interesting. I watched the service and I don't typically do that. I'm not very religious anymore. Grew up as an Anglican, I was christened, baptized, I was confirmed in the church. I traveled all over the holy world. Most special sites for Christians, Jews and Muslims. And I have all my questions and I have sort of become more agnostic in my older age. But I'm fascinated by the history of religion and the politics of religion. That aside, Savannah's Easter message and as I watched this service was super interesting. For starters, the service is all digital. So there are people who appear in an empty church and they deliver their readings either reading off their phones or reading off a printed script or extemporaneous and their messages of, well, whatever they choose. Easter message, message of hope, message of love. And then there is like extraordinary well produced music by a very fulsome and energetic band. Great singers, great musicians, all doing these fabulous hymns and modern music and it's a really, really good service. I really actually enjoyed listening to it and watching it and I was super interested in Savannah's mess. I'm gonna play you her message, and it's really heartfelt, and I can see her holding back tears in a lot of these spots. It's about eight minutes long, and I want to make sure that, you know, one thing before you cut. If you cut off too soon. Before the end of her message. In the summary here, she just. You know, she addresses the elephant in the room, obviously, like, happy Easter. And how am I supposed to be happy? You know, I'm sitting in this. This torturous mystery in my life. I don't know where my mom is. Police don't know where my mom is. No one knows where my mom is. All we know is that there's blood on her front door and a terrifying man in a ski mask on her camera. And so she rests on her faith and questions her faith. And she's a very faithful woman. We know this because she's written a book about her faith. And what she does is she sort of says, I question God and Jesus. Have you ever had a circumstance where you've just been living in the horrifying unknown? And she asks that because she says, at least Jesus knew. He talked to people about what. What his fate was going to become. You know, what, that he was going to be betrayed. And so she said, I seriously questioned there whether God and Jesus even knew what it was like to live in this. This kind of human condition, because, you know, they were the embodiment of the human condition, sending Jesus to live among us and suffer among us. And then she answers that question in the affirmative, where she says, you know, after three days, he was in that tomb. He rose again, according to scripture, and he didn't know in that tomb how long he'd be there. Days, weeks, years, thousands of years. So there was the unknown for him, and then there's the unknown for all of us. If you believe in religion, if you believe in Christianity, if you believe that there will be the second coming of the Lord, we're still in that ambivalence. We don't know right from his resurrection to the second coming, we're still living in the unknown. So I just wanted you to know that that's her end message. Because I don't want. I don't want anyone to misinterpret. If you only listen to a certain point and drop off. I know that there's been some criticism online. I, for one, think it was an extraordinary message that she delivered. I couldn't have done it. I'd be a puddle I couldn't have done half the stuff that Savannah's been doing. And I certainly don't think I could have returned to work the way she's going to. So I'm gonna play that for you in a moment. I also wanna give you a little bit of news as well. Cause it's Sunday and I don't always work on Sunday. I don't always work on Easter Sunday, but I thought it was important on the eve of Savannah returning back to work. And then of course, this incredible message that she delivered in the same service that her mom used to attend with her friends. I think if you remember, she missed that gathering with her friends to attend this digital service. And the friends reached out to. To the Guthrie family, to Annie and her husband Tommy. And they went over and found she wasn't there and saw the blood. And they opened doors and called the police. And then we know what happened from there. And then we don't know what happened, but there was Savannah doing the same service that her mom, you know, used to attend. You know, in, In. In the. At home setting. I'm going to play Savannah's comments in just a moment. Cause I think you need to hear them. Really, you do. But also I just want to get you up to speed on a couple of other things that are happening right before that. So during all of this, a few things have happened. You probably saw the criticism if you watched my podcast. I think it was last week or Monday. I can't remember when I told you that. I learned that the lead detective in the case had all of two years under his belt as a homicide detective. That's real concerning. Right. Leading the case. I have since learned that he didn't always attend daily briefings. Don't know why. Could have been different reasons. Maybe he was on location. I do not know. Just learned that line alone. Giving it to you as a piece of the puzzle. It's not the answer. And then Brian Anton did a report saying that the homicide sergeant. And that would be the guy who oversees sort of the. The homicide division. Right. He's also kind of a newbie in homicides. He's not a newbie to the force. Guy looks like he's probably in his 50s, been around the block a little in, you know, sheriff's department and in policing. But as far as Brian Enten reported, when he landed on Nancy Guthrie's front doorstep, he'd never done a homicide. I don't know what that means. If he was in charge of the department, he certainly had some experience with with homicides, but whether he'd handled one himself or been a lead detective himself, that's what seems to be the criticism here. I think the overall message here is that there were a lot of newbies in the homicide unit in the Pima county sheriff's department, and some of the older guys are really critical of it, saying, look, all the old guys are gone and the new guys are in. And the criticism from the outside is that nanos is putting his friends in high places, not maybe the most deserving, not necessarily a meritocracy is the criticism to that. Sheriff nanos came out pew, pew, pew. Guns a blazing. But again, cherry picking the interviews and giving it to his friends in the local press and saying, we don't believe that there were any mistakes made. The sergeant been a homicide supervisor for two years and basically saying that the, the criticism is unfounded and unwarranted. And he can say that, and maybe there are certain pieces of the criticism where he's right, but there's been a lot of criticism. And I gotta say, yeah, why was the lead detective only a two year vet? Right. Why was the sergeant only leading up homicide supervising for two years? One of the older guard who's retired said nobody was brought back in, deputized. Like you can do that. Apparently you can go out to the diaspora, the guys who have retired and say, hey, we need your smarts, we need your savvy, we need your experience. We got a young department, we got a real bitch of a case. Yeah, Real vexing case. No answers. And it's. The pressure's on, it's the international spotlight, national spotlight, local spotl like, but to these other folks, knowledge. There wasn't anybody brought in with all that expertise, you know, the decades under their belts and deputized and brought back in to pinch it for a while. Not even pinch it. Just add to the force, add to the knowledge base. Why wasn't that done yet? 400 people working on the case at one point. Maybe he should have gotten some of the guys who've been around the block, you know, Anyway, so if you want to see it, you can find the sheriff's message. I think he gave it to kvoa. You can check that out. Here's a little snippet of it.
