The mother-in-law of Carlos Palazuelos, the man who was detained for questioning related to the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy Guthrie, is sharing insight into his whereabouts at the time Nancy went missing.
“He works from Monday through Friday. He’s home Friday,” Palazuelos’ mother-in-law, Josefina, told NewsNation in an interview published on Wednesday, February 11, following Palazuelos’ release from police custody. “He stays home Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Goes back to work on Monday. So on the weekends, he stays at my house. He doesn’t go nowhere.”
Addressing where Palazuelos was on the night of January 31 — the night that Nancy, 84, was last seen by her family — Josefina said, “Yeah, he was here [at my house]. … I’m positive he was here at my house. He was here for his kids on the weekend.”
Josefina also said her son-in-law is a “good guy” with no criminal history.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona, with assistance from the FBI, brought Palazuelos in for questioning on Tuesday, February 10.
“Earlier today, Pima County Sheriff’s Department deputies detained a subject during a trafic stop south of Tucson,” Sheriff Chris Nanos said in a statement via X. “The subject is currently being questioned in connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation. Additional information will be released as it becomes available.”
The sheriff’s department also confirmed that it was conducting a “court-authorized search” of a home in Rio Rico.
Palazuelos was released after being questioned by authorities. In an interview with ABC15 Arizona’s Ford Hatchett, Palazuelos said his car was pulled over in Rio Rico, Arizona, south of Tucson. He was told he was being “detained for kidnapping.”
“I asked, ‘The kidnapping of who?’ and they told me this lady … I don’t know her name,” Palazuelos said before confirming Nancy’s name with Hatchett’s help. “I told [officers], ‘I work in Tucson for GLS. I might have delivered a package to your house, but I never kidnapped anybody.’”
Palazuelos denied having any knowledge of Nancy’s disappearance, which was reported on February 1.
Earlier on Tuesday, the FBI released black-and-white surveillance photos from outside of Nancy’s home the night she disappeared. The photos showed a man wearing a ski mask and seemingly carrying a firearm in his waistband.
When asked if the man looked like her son-in-law, Josefina said, “He doesn’t look like that.”
“New images in the search for Nancy Guthrie,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement. “Over the last eight days, the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department have been working closely with our private sector partners to continue to recover any images or video footage from Nancy Guthrie’s home that may have been lost, corrupted, or inaccessible due to a variety of factors – including the removal of recording devices. The video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems.”
Patel continued, “Working with our partners – as of this morning, law enforcement has uncovered these previously inaccessible new images showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning of her disappearance. Anyone with information, please contact 1-800-CALL-FBI or visit http://tips.fbi.gov.”
