An elderly mother in peril, a masked intruder, an agonised celebrity: Why Americans can’t look away

It is the crime drama that Americans cannot look away from.

The apparent kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of the television personality Savannah Guthrie, has commanded outsize public attention since her disappearance nearly two weeks ago, suffusing the national psyche even amid a torrent of other news.

Networks and news media outlets have covered the twists of the case in day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour detail, as Guthrie’s homestead near Tucson, Arizona, has become a focus of internet sleuths and a televised shrine.

US President Donald Trump has promised the “complete disposal” of law enforcement resources to solve the case, adding an all-caps prayer for her safety on February 4: “GOD BLESS AND PROTECT NANCY!”

In many ways, the interest in the case can be traced to a confluence of factors that have captured the public’s imagination – and tapped into their fears: a vulnerable victim, taken out of a seemingly safe home; an unknown perpetrator, seen lurking in a mask; and a celebrity whose agonised pleas are broadcast around the world.

“We’re fascinated by evildoers,” said veteran media critic Jack Shafer, noting the nation’s past obsessions with kidnapping cases such as the Lindbergh baby. “And then you add the celebrity quotient, and it starts to go through the roof.”

For a nation with an unceasing appetite for true-crime podcasts and fictional police procedurals, the interest in the Guthrie case may not be surprising. Still, some elements have set it apart, including the universality, and relatability, of the victim: an elderly mother in peril.

Guthrie is 84, and in need of medication and help walking. She lived alone and was dropped off at her house before being reported missing on February 1. Authorities believe she was kidnapped. And on Tuesday, the FBI and the local sheriff’s office released video and still images of the suspect, taken by Guthrie’s doorbell camera, wearing a ski mask and a backpack, trying to block the camera’s view.

The drama has been enhanced by the raw emotion displayed by Savannah Guthrie, a cohost of Today, NBC’s long-running morning show. Such programs sometimes thrive on a host’s acknowledgment of personal struggles or concerns – Katie Couric getting a colonoscopy on camera in 2000, for example, after losing her husband to cancer – in moments that cement bonds with viewers.

And the juxtaposition of Guthrie’s sunny television persona and her agonised pleas for her mother’s safe return have proved to be riveting: videos that seem perfectly formatted for television viewers and for online consumption and addressed to both the public – who might furnish leads to crack the case – and to the potential kidnappers.

“It’s too much to bear,” wrote Hoda Kotb, a former Today host who posted a Guthrie family video on Instagram, and is substituting for Guthrie during her absence. “Please bring her home.”

Photos of a smiling Nancy Guthrie – playing mahjong or sitting with Savannah Guthrie – have ricocheted around the internet, with sympathetic fans noting the similarity to their own parents or grandparents.

Danielle C. Slakoff, an associate professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento, who has studied why some crimes become newsworthy, said the parasocial connection between Savannah Guthrie and her audience was real and intense.

“People care deeply for Savannah, as well as other celebrities,” Slakoff said. “So I think for something to happen to her mum is very shocking and devastating to a lot of people.”

For some victims’ families, the trauma of a high-profile crime, and the attention it brings, is overwhelming. But Slakoff said the Guthrie family’s videos had been “masterful at humanising Nancy” for the general public.

“It’s very, very, very difficult what this family is going through right now,” Slakoff said. “And so I actually think, in this instance, Savannah likely benefits from her training and knowing that she can speak to the camera and feel comfortable.”

Allison M. Alford, author of the forthcoming non-fiction book Good Daughtering, said Guthrie’s unfiltered expressions of love and worry for her mother have also resonated with some women who have complicated relationships with their own mothers.

“She is all-in on saying: this person is so important to me,” Alford said, “I dropped everything in my life, I’ll give all my money. And it’s not a man. And it is not a child. It is her mum. And she gives the rest of us permission to care that much about our mums.”

Kidnapping is a crime that seems to affect an innate, if perverse, fascination because of its inherent suspense. Until solved, there is still hope of a positive outcome, said Coltan Scrivner, a behavioural scientist at Arizona State University and the author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away.

Cases such as Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City in 2002, only to escape nine months later, or Jaycee Dugard, who was found alive in 2009, 18 years after her kidnapping in South Lake Tahoe, California, have captured wide attention. Generations before, the Lindbergh case, in 1932, ended in tragedy with the discovery of the body of the aviator’s child in the woods near the family home, dominating all other news.

Shafer added that this case was especially resonant for older viewers who are major consumers of cable news, and who might relate to the plight of the octogenarian Guthrie.

“Mother Guthrie is in her dotage, probably trusting, in a safe environment,” he said. “And this heinous thing happens to her.”

Nancy Guthrie’s race as a white woman could also be a factor in the attention the case is getting. Some studies have found that white victims are more likely to be seen as sympathetic and more likely to have lasting press attention, a phenomenon first coined as “missing white woman syndrome” by the late journalist Gwen Ifill, who was black.

Unlike some other recent major events, such as the Charlie Kirk assassination or the Epstein files, the Nancy Guthrie case has, for the most part, not provoked political divisions in social media feeds. And Shafer said it’s also possible, in a strange way, that the Guthrie case, and hopes for a happy ending, might be offering a distraction from the incessant drumbeat of political and other news.

Spring Duvall, an associate professor of communication and media studies at Salem College and the coauthor of Snatched: Child Abductions in US News Media, with Leigh Moscowitz, said cases involving a crime in “the sanctity of our homes” were especially upsetting for people.

“Cases where the home is violated tap into a really deep sense of fear and vulnerability,” she said.

In an age in which a profusion of surveillance cameras – and cop shows – has seemingly made finding culprits quicker and easier, the lag between Guthrie’s disappearance and a denouement has been striking to some. Duvall agreed that the daily drip of information about the case has heightened the mystery, even as conspiracies and theories have promulgated, in many cases in good-faith efforts to solve the crime.

But the longer the case remains open, she said, the dialogue might become more toxic, as people seek to place blame.

Scrivner said he believed cases such as Nancy Guthrie’s were compelling because they shattered the natural sense of security that “living a fairly normal life, a safe life” often confers, suggesting “that maybe the world is more dangerous at times than we think it is”.

“Extreme misfortune can still befall them,” Scrivner said, of families such as the Guthries, adding: “Those kinds of things tend to sort of tickle the vigilance mechanisms of our mind. They break through the noise.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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