Inside the Unsolved Disappearance of Nancy Guthrie

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Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:50)
Valerie Bauerlein is the author of a fabulous book. A fabulous book. The Devil at His Elbow, Alex Murdoch and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty. When she's not writing best sellers, she covers national affairs for the Wall Street Journal. She does so from Raleigh, North Carolina. She's got a special interest in small town America and southern politics, economics and culture.
Valerie just shared the byline with a great Wall Street Journal piece under the headline, How Can Someone Vanish Without a Trace? It's all about the Guthrie case. Valerie is back to discuss it. Nice to see you. We love it when you're here.

**Valerie Bauerlein** (1:30)
Thanks for having me, as always.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:32)
So, Valerie, you point out, and I talked to TC about this ahead of the program. I don't watch The Today Show. I'm on at the same time as The Today Show. I didn't realize what a presence Nancy Guthrie had on The Today Show through Savannah Guthrie, including the fact, as you point out, in November, meaning November before this all went down, she had played a very prominent role, meaning she had a profile. People knew who she was and knew that was her daughter.

**Valerie Bauerlein** (2:00)
You know, to some degree, and I think we have this expectation of the people in these roles, right? They're people that are in, and you're much the same, or that you're, they're in our home in the morning when we're having coffee.
You know, we see Savannah and Craig Melvin on Thanksgiving while we're making turkey, and they're hosting the parade. They're people we know. And to some degree, you're right, Nancy Guthrie had a presence as a person with a starring role in Savannah's life. But in fairness, she was only featured on The Today Show maybe a half dozen times and over the course of 14 years. But one of the most prominent times was in November, when Savannah Guthrie went home for a homecoming segment, an eight-minute segment about Tucson, where she grew up, and spent time with her sister and her mom at this restaurant that was their tradition. And so, yes, she'd been featured several times in a prominent way on the longest-running morning show in America.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:58)
I don't accept this, but I took note of the fact that in the comments appended to this particular story, there was some negativity about, well, she had a profile and yet she was living alone, or she had a profile and she was living alone and she needed to have a burglar. In other words, they were sort of casting aspersions upon the lack of protective measures taken in view of the fact that this was Savannah Guthrie's mom who had a profile.

**Valerie Bauerlein** (3:24)
You know, I think there were some comments to that effect. I think there were other comments, many of which I read too, that said, gosh, our parents are living longer, our grandparents are living longer, we live so far apart from one another, we were tired to warm places, and in this case, a warm place that backs up to the desert. But I think that, from my reporting shows, that Nancy Guthrie was a fiercely independent, very sharp woman who wanted to age in place. And this was the home that she lived in for 50 years. This is the home that Savannah grew up in. And her older daughter, Annie, lives in Tucson, about four miles away. And they saw each other, if not every day, almost every day.
And Nancy was very active with her friends. So I did see some of that commentary, but I think it, there is so much, I think one of the notes that really resonated with our readers was, how do you safely live independently? And I think the measures were in place, very much so for her to have the life, this independent life that she saw.