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We are just shy of 100 days since Nancy Guthrie’s violent kidnapping.
Many believe that we are months past any kind of happy resolution to this family tragedy.
However, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped as a young teenager and spent months as a captive before finding freedom again.
She wants to emphasize that Nancy could be alive, despite everything.
Nancy Guthrie has been missing since the end of January
This week, Smart sat down for an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.
Most of what she discussed was her recent passion for bodybuilding.
(The disordered eating and fitness behaviors that bodybuilding requires are common long-term consequences of childhood trauma.)
However, Burnett also referenced Smart’s expertise in the area of long-term kidnapping.
“I want to ask you about one thing, separate from all of this,” Burnett posed,admitting that she “was just thinking about it with Nancy Guthrie and being missing.”
As delicately as possible, she continued.
“When you were missing and the reason everyone knows your face, everyone wondered,” Burnett acknowledged.
“And then it was, well, it’s been months, and maybe the worst has happened,” she recalled.
Burnett added: And you came back, and here you are.”
With that in mind, she asked Smart if she believes that “there’s any chance” that Nancy “still could have gotten through it” despite being missing for months.
‘Absolutely’
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Smart replied.
“She could absolutely still be alive,” she emphasized.
“There are cases that span many more years than mine does and they came back alive,” Smart acknowledged.
“And we’re talking years and years,” she continued.
Smart reiterated: “So she could absolutely still be alive.”
To be clear, Smart is not in denial.
“Of course there is the alternative,” she acknowledged.
She is very delicately alluding to the widespread belief that Nancy has died — that she likely passed away very early into her abduction, either due to a lack of her medication or to injuries sustained in the kidnapping.
“But until we know, we have to keep looking,” Smart affirmed.
She very accurately pointed out that Nancy “deserves, either way, to be brought home.”
