ESPN: Pennel knew woman whose body found

T.J. Quinn and Juan Recio

Jun 18, 2026, 05:22 PM ET

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- NFL veteran Michael Pennel Jr. had an ongoing relationship with a young woman whose body was found on a property he owned when she went missing, an ESPN investigation found, contradicting Pennel's claim through his attorney that he did not know her.

According to interviews with people close to the victim and police records reviewed by ESPN, Pennel and Carli Franchesca Guzmán Roche frequently spent time together when Pennel was in the Dominican Republic, where he owned a property in the resort area of Puerto Plata until 2025. Her family reported her missing on Sept. 11, 2021, but her body was not found until January 2026, when the new owner was doing excavation work.

Records also show that several people told police early in the 2021 search that Pennel had connections with Guzmán worth investigating. But investigation records show no indication that police interviewed him, despite having visited his property with several of her family members days after she was reported missing.

During that September 2021 visit to Pennel's neighborhood, Guzmán's grandmother and a family attorney told ESPN, a strong odor of decay was obvious, but police told the family the smell probably was from a dead animal, and they did not expand their search to the place from where the smell was emanating -- Pennel's backyard.

Guzmán's body was identified last March. Dominican officials reopened the case at that point and told ESPN that Pennel is a "person of interest" in her death.

Prosecutors say they are pursuing the case as a homicide, although no cause of death has been released.

Pennel and his lawyer in the Dominican Republic, Alexander Valbuena, did not respond to several messages seeking comment.

Pennel's lawyer in the Dominican Republic, Alexander Valbuena, told ESPN in April: "Our client informs us that he did not know, nor had any connection to, the person reported as having been found dead."

He also said Pennel was out of the country at the time Guzmán was reported missing but offered no theory as to how her body ended up on the property.

Pennel said in an April text in reference to the identification of Guzman's body: "This isn't a story. I'm not legally involved. This is fake news being reported. I'd advise you to speak with my agent/lawyer ... before writing a false story. Damaging my reputation."

Valbuena did not respond to requests by ESPN asking for documentation that Pennel was indeed out of the country when she went missing.

Pennel signed with the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 15, 2021. The police search got underway when she was officially declared missing on Sept. 13.

ESPN also reviewed a confidential police report that shows no reference to any police interview with Pennel. The documents did show:

Guzmán's grandmother was so insistent with police that Pennel's property could contain clues to her whereabouts that they let her accompany them to his address.

Two American friends of Pennel, identified as LeAndre Kemont Jefferson and "Davis Tyree Lamonte" (identified in U.S. records as Tyree Lamont Davis), were interviewed by police. Jefferson's local address was in the same gated community as Pennel's. Neither man could be reached for comment.

The man identified as Lamonte told an investigator that Pennel and Guzmán were friends and Pennel had last seen her in January 2021 at the airport in Santo Domingo before they departed together in a taxi.

ESPN determined that the mobile phone number Jefferson provided to police as his own was actually registered to Pennel.

Valbuena, Pennel's attorney, told ESPN through an associate on June 9 that they had not heard from investigators recently.

According to media reports in the Dominican Republic, Pennel had a previous encounter with Dominican law enforcement. Reports said that Pennel and two different American men, Torrey Johnson and Jabrion Burnside, were arrested for possessing a 9mm pistol in May 2021.

The two men could not be reached, and law enforcement officials would not release an arrest report, saying it was confidential under Dominican law. (The young sex worker who reported them to police was killed in a hotel room in Punta Cana a year later in an apparently unrelated case).

Multiple sources told ESPN that the case has been deeply sensitive within the Dominican Republic, which relies on foreign tourists and has worked in recent years to promote an image as a safe vacationing site and shed a reputation for political and law enforcement corruption.

Sitting in her home with two ESPN reporters, Guzmán's grandmother, Paula González, said Guzmán used to talk about Pennel, usually referring to him as "el futbolista," or "the football player," and that when he would come to the island, he usually sent a taxi for her to come spend time with him.

González said she once saw Carli talking to Pennel over FaceTime, and that González had seen him in person. Shown a picture of Pennel, González said, "Yes -- no doubt. Strongly, no doubt" that he was the person her granddaughter was seeing.

In September 2021, González said, Carli Guzmán told her she was going back north to be with "her athlete friend." She said her granddaughter called her Sunday, Sept. 5, and said she was still with Pennel. She said she was fine but that she wasn't feeling well and would come back home Monday morning, González said. By late the next day, no one had heard from her, and the family became concerned.

González said she called a friend of her granddaughter, who according to investigation records told police she wasn't with Guzmán but believed Guzmán had been with Pennel in recent days. González said she then called police, telling whoever answered the phone that her granddaughter was missing.

"He said, 'Look, you should come here, because this smells fishy. Here in Puerto Plata ... this is a cemetery. Here is where young girls disappear,'" González said.