RIO RICO, Ariz. (KPHO/Gray News) – A person was detained for questioning Tuesday in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, hours after the FBI released surveillance videos of a masked person wearing a handgun holster outside Guthrie’s front door the night she vanished from her Arizona home.
News outlets later interviewed a man who said he was questioned and released. Authorities have not confirmed that the person they picked up was released.
Officers detained the person during a traffic stop south of Tucson, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. The department did not immediately provide details about the person or the location. The FBI referred questions to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities executed a search warrant at a home and a car in Rio Rico, Arizona, roughly 60 miles south of Tucson, near the U.S.-Mexio border.
Officials released the man detained for questioning just hours later.
Investigators did not confirm if the man detained was the same man in the surveillance video released earlier Tuesday. It is unclear why law enforcement stopped him.
“We don’t know the lead that brought law enforcement to that person. We don’t even know if that lead was derived from the public airing of the video and the surveillance photo,” Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe told CNN’s Laura Coates on Tuesday.
The man could have been pulled over for a traffic violation, he added.
“During that process, you’re going to try to talk to that person. You’re going to try to build some rapport, you’re going to try to convince them to open up and start telling you even innocuous details about their life,” McCabe told CNN. “And from that seemingly innocuous conversation, you are trying to build towards probable cause.”
Josefina Maddox told CNN that the person detained was her son-in-law, 36-year-old Carlos Alfredo Palazuelos, but claimed he had nothing to do with the case.
“They had somebody give a tip that the lady was in my house,” the woman said. “I told them you can go in and search my house; there is nobody there. I have nothing to hide.”
Maddox said investigators were going in and out of her home, taking a lot of photos. She said Palazuelos is a delivery driver, possibly for FedEx, and had been to Tucson.
She also confirmed that the silver vehicle that was stopped by authorities belongs to her daughter. That stop wasn’t far from the home, which is believed to be near Interstate 19 and Camino Agosto.
This development comes hours after new activity was recorded in the cryptocurrency wallet tied to the alleged abductors.
The transaction or transactions were made around 5 p.m. GMT to the bitcoin address that was detailed in the ransom note sent to KOLD 13 News and other outlets.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday agents are looking for more than one individual as a person of interest in the case.
Earlier on Tuesday, federal investigators released images of an armed individual seen tampering with the camera on Nancy Guthrie’s front door.
The video shows the suspect walking slowly to Guthrie’s front porch. The person, wearing a ski mask and gloves and holding a weapon, hangs their head low as if trying to hide their face.
The FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department worked with other groups to recover the images and video footage from Nancy Guthrie’s camera because the files were lost, corrupted or inaccessible due to a variety of factors.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her Tucson-area home on Jan. 31. The 84-year-old who suffers from health and mobility issues, was reported missing the following day after she failed to show up for church.
Savannah Guthrie said Tuesday in a message online that her family does “believe she is still alive.”
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information that leads to Nancy Guthrie’s recovery or the conviction of anyone involved.
