FBI Director Kash Patel has revealed that the agency and local law enforcement are looking at multiple persons of interest in the search for Nancy Guthrie. Patel spoke after the FBI released surveillance video and images showing a masked individual outside the front door of Nancy Guthrie’s home around the time she vanished.
“Without polluting the investigation, I will say we have made substantial progress in these last 36-48 hours, thanks to the technical capabilities of the FBI and our partnerships, and I do believe we are looking at people who, as we say, are persons of interest, but as you know with any investigation, you’re a person of interest until you’re either eliminated, or you’re actually found to be the culprit or the culprits involved, and that’s the stage we’re at right now,” Patel said during an interview on “Hannity.”
“We were able to execute lawful searches and go to these private sector companies and expedite results and then go into their systems and actually excavate material that people would think would normally be deleted and no one would look for,” Patel said.
WATCH:
Patel’s comments come after a man detained by Arizona police in connection with Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance spoke out following his detention.
Carlos Palazuelos informed Fox News’s Matt Finn that police questioned him about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, but he denied any involvement.
Police stopped Palazuelos for a traffic violation and questioned him about his recent whereabouts, he told Fox News.
Palazuelos said he delivers packages in the Tucson area but wasn’t sure if he had delivered one to Nancy Guthrie’s house. He said it “might have been a possibility.”
He said that investigators showed his in-law a picture of someone wearing a mask and that “they supposedly looked like my eyes.”
“That’s it. That’s all I know,” he added.
In a separate interview, Palazuelos told Telemundo that he is a DoorDash driver and that the front and back doors of his home were damaged during a search by law enforcement, which was carried out with a warrant.
The FBI on Tuesday released images of a masked individual outside Nancy Guthrie’s front door around the time she vanished.
Police stopped the man, who only gave his name as “Carlos,” south of Tucson on Tuesday afternoon and held him by deputies from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department until midnight.
Earlier, the police confirmed that they had detained a man during a traffic stop as part of their investigation into Guthrie’s disappearance.
They also said that they were getting ready to search a place connected to him, which Carlos said was his “in-laws’ house.”
Just after midnight, Carlos told reporter Ford Hatchett that he had never heard of Guthrie before his arrest. At first, Carlos said no to the interview, but then he went back to Hatchett to answer some questions.
“They didn’t even tell me what’s going on until the detectives got here … They told me I was being detained for kidnapping, and I asked them, ‘Kidnapping of who?’” Carlos asked.
“Nancy Guthrie,” Hatchett said.
Carlos replied: “Yeah, that’s her. And I told him, I work in Tucson for GLS. I might have delivered a package to your house, but I never kidnapped anybody. They held me from like 4 p.m. [local time] to right now.”
He added that officers cited limited evidence in their decision to release him, but warned that other agencies involved in the search may want to question him.
“Like, they didn’t have no – it was insufficient evidence. Like, they only had a phone on me. That’s all they had,” he said.
Asked what went through his mind, Carlos said: “Sh*t, bro. I’m facing life. I’m going to lose everything.”
By the end of the night, he said, deputies told him he was “free to go.” He claimed Pima County had “already cleared me,” though “the FBI, they might not or something like that.”
“I’m innocent,” he insisted. “I’ll let you know that. I didn’t do anything.”
WATCH:
Immediately following his release, we spoke to a man who says he was detained by Pima County Sheriff's deputies for "kidnapping" Nancy Guthrie. @FordHatchett @dannybavaro pic.twitter.com/3jj7mxSGFO
— ABC15 Arizona (@abc15) February 11, 2026
