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Now a high-profile TV presenter in the U.S. is returning to work 50 days after the kidnapping
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of her elderly mother. In an emotional interview, Savannah Guthrie said she believed her mother
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Nancy's abduction was a kidnapping for ransom and that two notes demanding a payment were most
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likely genuine. She was speaking on the today program on NBC.
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The two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real.
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Really? We still don't know. Honestly, we don't know anything. We don't know anything.
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So I don't know that it's because she's my mom, but yeah, that's probably which is
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too much to bear. To think that I brought this to her bedside.
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Let's talk now to New York-based journalist Harriet Alexander. Harriet Savannah Guthrie
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is a huge star in the United States and there's been a lot of interest in this case.
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Have there been any developments in recent times?
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Well, I mean, in a word no, it's been quite remarkable really that there has been so little
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known about this case. So Nancy Guthrie, she's 84. She disappeared in the early hours of February
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the 1st and basically we don't know what's happened to her. The suspicion has always been that she
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was kidnapped for ransom given her daughter's high profile career and her daughter's wealth.
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There were these ransom notes. There was a flurry of ransom notes and actually there was an
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arrest of someone for sending a false ransom note demanding Bitcoin. But we don't know what's
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happened to her and it does seem that the investigation from from what we can judge has rather
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gone cold. We heard a little there from that interview with Savannah Guthrie. What else did she say
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about what's happened? Yeah, she said that that she didn't have any anger in her heart which,
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you know, is quite remarkable really what's given what she's been through. She said it has been
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absolute agony. She talked about how she appreciated the support from so many people around the
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country across the world really for what she was enduring. But she praised her mother. She talked
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about her as a wonderful lady who was resilient and resourceful. Her husband died when she was just
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46 leaving three children. So she raised them on her own. She was determined and she was a woman
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of faith and Savannah was very tearful throughout this interview and she said that she was praying
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and she was asking God where is she and she realized that Nancy was with him.
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She also Savannah also said that she was returning to work which I can't imagine will be easy when she's
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constantly going to have all of those eyes on her and on how she's getting on. Yes, yes she's
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going to be returning to work on on April the 6th. She said she said she doesn't know if she'll be
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able to do it but she would like to try. That's what she said. She said that work has always been
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for her a place of joy and she loves the team that surrounds her and that she wants to have a
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go and to see if she can do it, to see if she can return some sort of resemblance of normality and
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certainly there's an awful lot of good will for I think in the United States because it really is
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just so horrific what seems to have happened to her mother. Harriet Alexander in New York thank you