Some 2.8 million people tune into TODAY, NBC’s flagship morning show, every day, and for many, hearing about the latest news updates, affordable fashion trends, upcoming movies, and whatever other hot topics is a longstanding part of their daily routine, and co-anchor Savannah Guthrie isn’t just a newscaster, she’s a familiar presence, something of a friend.
Guthrie, an apple-cheeked 54-year-old who has worked for NBC since 2007 and at TODAY since 2011, is just as likely to appear at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as she is to interview Donald Trump, as she did for a town hall ahead of the 2020 election that won her an Emmy.
When her mother, Nancy Guthrie, was reportedly abducted in Tucson, Arizona last week, a global audience took notice.
Amid the scary details and the apparent ransom notes, there are echoes of another frenzied search that captivated the public nearly a century ago: the 1932 kidnapping of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.
Like the Guthrie case, the Lindbergh story was a desperate search for the vulnerable family member of an American household name, front and center in the public consciousness, and a crime that riveted a country.
Charles Lindbergh Jr. disappeared from his crib in Hopewell, New Jersey, on the night of March 1, 1932. His parents, nanny, and several other staff were in the house, and the boy’s bedroom was on the second floor. The crime immediately drew attention because of the baby’s parents: his mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was the first woman to earn a glider pilot license, and was a socialite, the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, and a writer. His father, Charles Lindbergh, was one of the most famous people in the world thanks to his 1927 flight from New York to Paris, the first successful solo transatlantic one in history. The morning after his disappearance, the New York Times rushed to remake the paper’s front page, topping four columns in the lead story slot on March 2 with the headline “LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPED FROM HOME OF PARENTS ON FARM NEAR PRINCETON; TAKEN FROM HIS CRIB; WIDE SEARCH ON.”
The attention was relentless, and especially bruising for someone like Lindbergh, a Midwesterner by birth who begged for privacy after his Spirit of St. Louis notoriety: For weeks, a garage at Pop Gebhart’s general store, near the Lindbergh house, was the ad hoc headquarters for the hundreds of reporters who flocked to the scene. Tourists gawked at the house. Thousands of Princeton undergraduates took it upon themselves to search the nearby woods, despite official concerns about contaminating potential evidence. An estimated 100,000 total people, official and private, participated in the search in the first 24 hours after the news broke. President Herbert Hoover offered the investigation support from the Secret Service, FBI, the IRS, the US Postal Service, and more. Awareness of the case was such that anyone seen with a small blonde child was looked at twice.
