Tucson authorities are still without a suspect in the Nancy Guthrie disappearance case after a delivery driver was detained by law enforcement Tuesday night but released after several hours in custody.
Cable news outlets were ripe with speculation of a big break in the case Tuesday night after there was word of an arrest south of Tucson hours after the FBI, using high tech recovery methods, released video from a doorbell camera showing a masked intruder outside the home of Today show host Savanah Guthrie’s mother the night of her disappearance.
The freed man, who had apparently been detained in a traffic stop and had his home searched, wasted no time in going before news cameras and declaring his innocence.
Identified by the New York Post as Carlos Palazuelos, the 36-year-old man said he’d never heard of Guthrie or even her daughter and said he “never follows the news.”
“What the fuck am I doing here?,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. To be honest, I’m innocent.”
Authorities have yet to explain how Palazuelos came under suspicion and why he was detained.
Standing outside his home in Rio Rico, a small border community about an hour south of Tucson, Plazuelos said he noticed police were following him as he was traveling with his wife in his car Tuesday night. So the couple pulled over, he got out, and soon found himself in the back of a squad car.
He claimed police hardly questioned him and that he was “held against my will.”
Palazuelos said he works in Tucson for a parcel delivery service, but doesn’t recall encountering Guthrie, who was reported missing on Feb. 1.
“I told them, I work in Tucson for GLS, I might have delivered a package to her house but I never kidnapped anybody,” he told ABC15 in a separate interview. “They hold me from 4 p.m. ’til now.”
“I hope they get the suspect, because I’m not it,” he told reporters outside his home. “And they better do their job and find the suspect that did it so they can clear my name. I’m done.”
While he was in police custody, authorities searched Palazuelos’s home. His mother-in-law told ABC 15 they showed her the video of the intruder outside the Guthrie home.
“They showed me a video to see if it was him, to see… if I recognize the things he was wearing. He doesn’t have any of that. He doesn’t have anything that comes in the video,” the mother-in-law told the outlet.
Pima County Sheriff’s Department has been tight-lipped about the incident, saying only in a statement that the man was being “questioned in connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation.”
Earlier Tuesday, the FBI released photos and video of a masked and armed intruder outside the elder Guthrie’s home on the morning of her disappearance. It was previously thought the doorbell camera had not captured any video.
However, the FBI, working with “partners” in the private sector, tech experts were able to find the images, though Guthrie did not have a subscription to the security service connected to the device.
In one of the more bizarre abduction cases in recent history, the case has included purported ransom emails and demands sent to TMZ and local news stations, but with no “proof of life” that the writer indeed had the Today host’s mother.
In recent days, police have been seen searching in and around the home of Nancy Guthrie’s oldest daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni, as well as talking to their neighbors and searching their properties as well.
Annie and Tommaso reportedly were the last to see Nancy Guthrie alive after she was dropped off at her home on the evening of January 31 after have dinner at the couple’s home.
Authorities have said that digital footprints from Guthrie’s watch and pacemaker point to her being taken from her home between the hours of 1:47 a.m. and 2:28 a.m.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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