Family Viciously Massacred After Woman Catfishes Her Cheating Fiancé
Family Viciously Massacred After Woman Catfishes Her Cheating Fiancé
“Hello, hello, hi, Malinda. My name is Detective Garcia from the Romeoville Police Department. This is Detective Wagner.”
“I know you know what’s going on and why you were here, okay, um. I know you were talking on the phone with your husband right now.”
“Husband? Boyfriend? He’s just a friend, okay. Does he live here with you? How long have you guys been together?”
“2015, okay, okay. We’re investigating a murder, okay, murder. So, we have in our possession some phones, okay, and in those phones, we’re doing what is called a phone dump. So what happens is if anybody’s talking on a text app that you can download, for example, TextNow, we can retrieve those messages, okay? We have retrieved those messages, all right. We threw them. They’re pretty clear that somebody’s pretty upset at, um, at the victim, okay. Is there any way that these text messages are going to come back to you or your name or your phone or anything associated with that, okay?”
“You would like to speak with you without him present? Are you okay with it?”
“Sure, do you want to walk away wherever you’re comfortable, wherever you’re comfortable, right? Well, the dogs are all around, so, oh, yeah, but we’re out front of the house in the backyard, right? I’m not saying go in the house, but we can talk with you out over here, okay with that? We can go over by my car if you’d like.”
“Sure.”
“This is Hermalinda Palomo. She lives in Streamwood, Illinois, with her fiancé, Nathaniel Huey Jr. It’s September 18th, 2023, and Romeoville police are trying to get more information from Hermalinda about Nathaniel.”
“Okay, no, you can have a seat in the front passenger. It’s on. I want him to come out.”
“Malinda, do you mind if we walk, if we drive down the street? If he comes out, he’s probably going to tell you to go back inside. Are you going to do that, or what do you want to do?”
“Well, you guys obviously have me. You can’t really say much, right?”
“Well, it’s what we want to talk to you alone, separate from him. That’s what we’re trying to… that you’re safe. Can we go by the park?”
“Sure, yeah, down that way, okay, um. You want to… what I’m going to do is I just got to document mileage and stuff, okay? We got body cams on. Just tell me where we’re going.”
“Want to text?”
“Yeah, I’m not going to cry. Going to cry. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right. If I’m saying it’s okay if you cry, I’m sorry. This kid is moving.”
“Do you want to… this… do you want to go to the Streamwood Police Department? Isn’t that down the street, or no? Would you rather just… just lay here by the park?”
“You do what you can. Park in front of the park, okay? Oh, sunny down. We’re on this side here, yeah, okay. So, Sunnydale and Surrey Drive. Surrey Park, okay?”
“Okay, left, yeah. How long have you known Kwi?”
“Since probably 2015, okay.”
“Why are you scared of him?”
“Oh, I’m not scared. Well, okay, why are you scared right now?”
“Because when I called him, because I was scared, I didn’t know where he was, okay. He said, ‘Someone’s following me,’ okay? So I called and I called, and then I heard him say, ‘Why are you following me? Do you want to search the car?’ And then, and then someone said to him, ‘There are messages from you, and it’s because her husband found out you were having an affair,’ and I didn’t know that. You didn’t know why, but he was having an affair, okay?”
“When did you find that out?”
“Right now.”
“Right now, okay. When’s the last time that he had… because I know this is not the first time?”
“No, it’s not, okay.”
“When’s the last time you knew he had an affair?”
“When we first started dating, 2015. 2015 to maybe 2017, you know, what? His son was born, and he said, ‘I’m not having any more affairs. I’m not cheating on you,’ okay? Stupidly, okay.”
“Do I know if he stopped?”
“No, I don’t know, okay. So, the last time you… well, so then I had a party at my house, mhm, and I fell asleep, and apparently he said someone kissed him, and that was the… so I don’t know, maybe it was 2019, okay? And he said, ‘No, she kissed me, and that was it. Come on, we’re all drunk,’ you know him better than we do. So, anyways, he said that he was no longer going to do that, okay? That’s why I’m upset.”
“This chilling story begins on September 17th, 2023, when Romeoville police are called to do a welfare check on a family who hadn’t been heard from in days.”
“Hey, I got a TV knocked over and a coffee table knocked over.”
“Can we get another unit to Camden, please?”
“Everything’s done for.”
“Get on the phone with the 17 and call and figure out more information on this call.”
“You see the TV in the… yeah.”
“Hey, hold on, wait. You look in this window room. I could see anything in the room? Nothing.”
“Are you able to see all that? Shine here. Wait, keep shining so I can kind of see a little bit better now.”
“Okay, now just a… oh, wait, lights are all off.”
“There’s a… nothing in this room. Lights are off.”
“It’s 9:00 on a Sunday, and… no, there’s lights on the back. You can see it through that second…”
“Come to the back here. Real. Keep an eye in that garage, yeah.”
“Want to try that door real quick? Run. Let’s go see if you can… this peek in the back. There’s a window right… window, yeah. Here, I’ll go this window. This window’s open. No, it’s not… oh, oh, God, dogs are dead! Two dead dogs! I need more units here!”
“I got two dead dogs. TV’s knocked over and a coffee table knocked over in the front room.”
“Units from 367, I’m waiting for at least one more to make entry.”
“We’re going to make entry through the back door. No, but I got two dead dogs. TV’s knocked over and a coffee table was flipped over in the front room. That light was on. We came up, right, you can see the light from that other room back there.”
“You want the shield? You want… you know what, I kind of want to grab my rifle.”
“Grab your rifle. You go grab the rifle. You want me to take the shield?”
“Yeah, I’m going to be your lethal cover, run, though. Stand… hey, Drake, I need the keys. Can you have fire stage?”
“Any luck on that Ram?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t check. I’ll be there one.”
“No worries. I’m going to force entry to the back. I got enough units here. We’re going to get going. You want me… you guys hold the front, okay?”
“No cover, please. I don’t know if anybody’s in there or not.”
“You got another door right here.”
“Hey, you know what? Hey, uh, I want one of you guys holding this one, one of you guys holding the front.”
“There were no other side doors, right?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Hey, Ron, yeah, here’s what we’re going to do, okay? I’m going to boot it. We’re going to go nice and slow, all right, guys? Right on me. Drake, you stay behind me.”
“One dead dog, got get…”
“Hey, no, no, you’re behind me, okay?”
“Second dead dog.”
“You stay in the back of the stack. You watch our six as we move through the house, okay? Cory, come up here. Cover this door, this window.”
“Got it.”
“This light’s… no, I got one. I got one. Check the door here. Cover the window.”
“What do you see, Cory? Move up, move up.”
“We got one dead dog right here. We got a second dead dog over…”
“They make a heartbreaking discovery. They find Zoraida Balasko, her husband Alberto Rolon, their two young boys, and the family’s dogs all deceased. At first glance, crime scene photos indicate that it looks like the horrific event could have been a result of a robbery gone wrong, but after investigators search the victims’ phones, a deceitful twist emerges, and this is why police are now speaking to Hermalinda Palomo.”
“Do you know any of the names of the affairs that he’s had in the past? Any of the female names?”
“He… he was with his… don’t know names. I know that they said one time to me that he was… he was probably a lot of… he’s probably with a lot of people, okay, um. But he had recently said, ‘I haven’t been with a lot of people.’ I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I obviously can’t trust him, no, can I?”
“But you said you believe he’s had multiple, many affairs while you two have been together.”
“I was hoping that they were done because I was hoping to trust.”
“Police reports show that Nathaniel was having an affair with Zoraida. The reports also reveal something else: Hermalinda knew about the affair together, but when questioned by police, she claims that she had only just found out about the affair that day.”
“When you find out about them, like, what happens? You guys get in arguments? Do you talk to the women that he’s having affairs with?”
“No, for what? I don’t know. ‘Leave your man alone’ kind of thing? No, I’m too old for that. I’m 50 years old. There’s no reason for me to like… no. And quite honestly, it’s not the female’s fault. It’s his fault, right? So, no, no. I mean, obviously you get upset over it, um.”
“Well, yeah, I’m… I’m trying to hold it back right now, um. But like I said, I thought we went through years. I mean, yeah, I… I had said he was doing security, and I had said to him, ‘Are you cheating on me?’ and he said, ‘No, you know what, they… they flirt with me, but I don’t fall into that.’”
“What kind of security does he do?”
“Um, like at… at clubs, like a bouncer, yeah.”
“Is it armed security?”
“No, I don’t think he can carry arms there, okay.”
“Does he own guns?”
“No, no.”
“Has he ever been known to have guns?”
“Mhm. He has that… give me a second, please. Mhm. He goes to Milwaukee, Bristol, and there’s… it’s not paint, it’s airsoft. He plays it. He does airsoft stuff, yeah. He does airsoft. He’s in a team. I’m sorry, now, okay.”
“Do you guys have water?”
“I don’t. This is a sealed drink. I’m not taking that from you. I’m sorry.”
“Sure, okay, yeah. Because that’s… that’s a big thing, um. If you don’t want to drink, obviously you can drink. Well, throw it out when you’re done, yeah, um. And he airsoft, airsoft gun. He has an airsoft gun, that’s it, um.”
“Are you… how sure are you that he doesn’t…?”
“I’m actually very positive, okay.”
“Have you… you’ve never ever seen him with a gun?”
“Well, we go to the range and we’ll shoot.”
“So, he has a FOID card?”
“No, he does not.”
“So, how does he…?”
“I have a FOID card, okay.”
“Do you own any guns?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, the affair sparked jealousy in Hermalinda, but no one could have predicted what was coming next. It’s an unimaginable twist. It’s revealed that Hermalinda began a catfishing scheme, pretending to be a cartel leader to manipulate her fiancé into believing that Zoraida posed a life-threatening danger to him. And just when you think things couldn’t get any stranger, they do. Using fake online personas, Hermalinda builds a convincing narrative that Zoraida was conspiring against Nathaniel, telling him she was working with dangerous criminals. It doesn’t take long for Romeoville police to track down Nathaniel Huey Jr. to question him about the murders of Zoraida Balasko and her family on September 18th, 2023, just one day after police make the grizzly discovery. They locate him at work.”
“So, we were talking with the… the bosses and they said, ‘Well, we… we already went through phones. They already got one half of… of the conversation,’ and you said you talked to her on your phone, right?”
“Yeah, okay, um. So, what we’d like, or what we’re asking for, is consent to… to get the text messages off your phone between you and her, to Snapchat or whatever it is between you, so we have both sides of it, trying to eliminate you as a suspect.”
“Go on the computer, huh?”
“You can get it the computer.”
“No, we have to take the phone. We plug it in, we take it out, and then we give your phone back.”
“I don’t even have anything in there.”
“That’s even better. No, I… I believe you, but… well, yeah, I mean, just let me see it, but I mean, I believe you. It’s just the problem is… is that… that… this is all I have right there back, oh, this from this morning, yeah. Everything else.”
“So, you have to grab it from the… from the computer?”
“Well, I mean, it’ll be on there. It’ll be on your phone. Deleted still in the… in the… in the thing, in the… in the catch. When you delete stuff, it’s never actually… so, let’s just say like a 64-gig phone, you use about 58 of it, the rest is the catch. It stays in the catch. And why I asked is… is the boss is called right away. They were like, ‘Well, they’re like… um, we’d like to see if we can get the… the stuff, you know, from your end back that way and see if maybe your… you know, maybe your husband got wind of it and pulled it off something.’ So, we was going to take a look.”
“I mean, it… on our… on our side of it, we can get a search warrant, you know, to go through the phone and just take a little longer, but on… the fastest way would be, send, pull it off and give your phone back than it would be to… and again, I explained to you earlier, I’m trying to eliminate you.”
“Yeah, I mean, we have a… a deceased girl and her last fling or boyfriend or whatever is you, and… and I’m sure that… that, you know, if… if you’re an outsider looking in, who do you… who’s your suspect? I mean. And so, I’d like to eliminate that. I’d like to say, ‘Well, no, we went, we looked through stuff, he didn’t have nothing to do with it, we’re done with it.’ You guys up…?”
“I agree with you, but… but again, there’s… um, it… it takes… it would take us, you know, a couple hours to pull information out the phone that could eliminate you as a suspect right from the start. It’s up to you.”
“It feels like you’re pretty suspecting of me.”
“Well, I mean, I’m not joking with you. We… anytime somebody dies, you look at the husband, the boyfriend, if it’s a girl, if it’s a guy, you look at his wife and any kind of lovers he had. And we look, that’s what we look at. We start there. And then this person was at work, so we eliminate that. This person was… you know, we went through the phone, there’s nothing between those two, no threats. I mean, you’re telling us there’s no threats, but… but I can’t go to… you know, to our… I can’t go to a state and say, ‘No, I verified that there… there’s no threats.’ I have to… I can verify and say, ‘No, I went through this phone, there’s no threats, there were… seemed to be good together, there was no threats, there was no animosity between the two of them, there was no fighting, there was none of that stuff.’ Eliminated.”
“Just go on the computer. I don’t… I give up my phone, you know what I’m saying?”
“I understand. I’m just telling you, it’s… I like… I… I completely understand what you’re saying, and I’m not even trying to give you guys a hard time, but like taking my phone and all that, like… and… and you already told you can get it, you can get it from… we can get her side of it. I can’t get your side of it. That’s the problem. So, I can get her side of it, um, if you know where she’s got it in her phone, I can get that side of it.”
“How about this? How about I come see you guys later today after work or something like that, cuz I… I got other in there that I don’t necessarily want you to be like looking at, you know what I’m saying?”
“Understand, but… but again, we… I promise you, I don’t care what you look at.”
“No, no, it’s not like… not like… like free-like that or anything like that. I’m saying even if… even if we… yeah, I mean, if you… again, I’m asking for consent. The consent means that… that… that we plug it right in, we dump it, because you’ve told us it’s okay. Without that, then we have to get a search warrant. If we get a search warrant, then we have to type that up and it’s going to take longer.”
“I can bring it down to you guys and you can dump it all you want to that.”
“Yeah, we’ll be there. The address is on the card.”
“Well, let me… let me step out right after work.”
“Yeah, that’s… that’s… we’ll have to do that. Yeah, but I mean, you do understand how that kind of defeats the purpose, though, like we’re looking for… for, you know, like Snapchat stuff, and then you delete Snapchat stuff, it’s going to kind of look like you’re guilty, you know what I’m saying?”
“Nathaniel and Zoraida met at work, and that’s where the affair took off. They’d secretly meet in hotel rooms and keep their relationship under wraps. When Nathaniel met Zoraida, his criminal history was already pretty extensive. We searched Truthfinder.com to uncover more about Nathaniel Huey Jr.’s background. It’s easy to do. We just typed in his name and the city where he lived, and in under a minute, the subscription service gave us access to possible contact information and location history. You can see that Nathaniel Huey has a long list of traffic violations and criminal records. All of this information comes from public reports available on Truthfinder.com. In these reports, we can see that he also received multiple violations for driving under a suspended license, driving while under the influence, and driving with a suspended registration, just to name a few. Reports like this and more are available to anyone with a paid subscription. Law & Crime partners with Truthfinder.com so our writers and reporters can research cases and reveal real information. Truthfinder.com is for anyone, not only reporters, and can give you peace of mind when you do these unlimited public record searches for the people around you. Search for sex offenders in your area, look up your next-door neighbor, or find out if that person you’re chatting with online is real. It’s as easy as just typing in their name on Truthfinder.com. If you’re watching this episode of Law & Crime Investigates, you can get 50% off your first confidential background report at Truthfinder.com/ELCInvestigates. The link is in the description.”
“When Hermalinda Palomo discovered the affair, she wanted to make sure he’d never cheat again. Police documents reveal Hermalinda began a series of manipulations, assuming fake online identities to control Nathaniel emotionally. Hermalinda would convince him that Zoraida and her family posed a grave threat to him. Hermalinda used fear as her main weapon, constructing an elaborate web of lies that convinced her fiancé that Zoraida was plotting to harm him. For months, Palomo maintained these fake identities and fabricated conversations, creating a convincing illusion that he completely falls for. Through this false narrative, Nathaniel Huey Jr. was led to believe that Zoraida and her family had to be eliminated to protect his life and livelihood. Hermalinda’s level of control over Nathaniel’s actions was deeply rooted in her ability to manipulate him. She persuaded him that murder was the only option to escape the danger she had fabricated in his mind. According to the hundreds of pages in the police report, Hermalinda sent Nathaniel a message using the Pinger mobile messaging application. Their alias began planning Zoraida’s murder. Palomo tells Huey to cause damage to make the scene appear to be a burglary committed by kids. She reassures him by saying many murders go unsolved, the report states.”
“On September 16th, 2023, around 3:17 a.m., Hermalinda drives Nathaniel to Zoraida’s residence in Romeoville, Illinois, according to home surveillance footage later obtained by investigators. Before entering the home, Nathaniel cuts through window screens to make it appear as though a break-in had occurred. He then enters through an unlocked door. Zoraida’s husband, Rolan, was the first to encounter Nathaniel. He attempts to protect his family, but he was shot multiple times as he tried to reach his loved ones. Nathaniel then moves to the bedroom where Zoraida and her two children were hiding, shooting through the door and murdering them in cold blood. It’s a devastating scene, an entire family slaughtered within minutes. Even the family’s dogs aren’t spared from the violence. The next day, Nathaniel Huey returns to his regular routine, showing no outward signs of guilt or remorse. He goes to work as usual, and that’s when police speak to him for the first time.”
“I understand. I mean, we’re married. I understand why you want to keep it on the down low, so we’re just… yeah, we’re just trying to figure out… it’s not like she’s like… just to you know, like I know, just get close, connect with…”
“All right. What kind of car do you drive?”
“Yukon Denali.”
“Denali, like a… like a SUV?”
“Yeah, okay, um. Oh, okay. So… so… um, and you said you’ve never had contact with her husband? Like he’s never sent you a message or called you or contacted you?”
“No.”
“All right, um. Do you have any of, like, information, like, uh, like any saved text messages or Snapchats or anything from her?”
“Okay, well, before I… I’m running myself, right? Before I… I forget everything, oh, all right. So, your first name is Nate, what’s your last name? You spell… H-U-E-Y? Is it Nathaniel?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your birthday anymore?”
“All right. Do you have a phone number? What’s your cell phone?”
“All right. Well, I’m not trying to ruin your marriage or life, so I’m not, like, I’m going to… I’m going to, you know, I’ll try to keep this if we can, you know, from just with us in this room talking, but we’re trying to figure out what happened at that house, yeah, um. Has she ever told you about any other, like, romantic relationships she had out of her marriage? He or her? She say her husband cheating on her, or is she say she in PA, anything?”
“When you leave this room, we’re not telling your work anything. It’s none of their business. This is our conversation, so it’s up to you whenever you want to tell them. Obviously, we talk to her family, we talk to friends and stuff, hence why… why we’re here, and that’s why we’re sitting in this room talking to you, and, like, I got to ask, do you have anything to do with this?”
“No.”
“Okay. You know I have to ask, and you know that your number is going to be in her phone, and we’re going to find your text messages, and we’re going to find that stuff, and I want to get a surprise later on that you guys were fighting or that there was something going on between you two, or to three of you. I don’t know about, you know… nobody was threatening anybody, we weren’t fighting like, Angel, you know what I’m saying?”
“Okay.”
“Said we… we, you know, we’re… this is so new to us investigation-wise. We have tons of videos to go through and license plates readers and, like, text messages, Snapchat messages and all that stuff, so we’re… so it’s… so in beginning of this investigation that we’re just kind of reaching out to talk to all her family, friends and everybody like that, and that… that’s why we’re here talking to you. In… um, I just told, I mean, in your head, if you could think of something like, ‘Oh, you guys should know about this,’ it’s the time to tell us now before we find it later on, you know, in a computer, we find it in a phone message or something.”
“At this point, Hermalinda Palomo also provides a false alibi for Nathaniel, further complicating the investigation.”
“Have you ever met S?”
“No.”
“You’ve seen a picture of her?”
“No.”
“So that name comes up to you because you saw it?”
“Well, really, that name stuck in my head because that night I thought, ‘Are you cheating on me?’ was the person calling. They’re calling in, okay, more than once, and it was a long name. I thought it was Bartholomew, actually, mhm. It was a long name, but… so, when we asked your husband if he knew this person S, he said, ‘I’ve never heard that name.’ Why… why would he be lying to us?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Should I believe him?”
“I don’t know. Please don’t tell him I told.”
“We’re not going to tell him anything. I don’t… I thought that you guys said to him he was having an affair.”
“Somebody said he’s having an affair, okay. Well, that’s… that is probably very accurate, but we’re not here to put him on a trial on whether or not he had an affair, okay? We have a matter of someone lost their life, so him having an affair is the least of my worries.”
“I understand what… what you’re saying.”
“Suck it up. It’s not… it’s not your problem. I get it. You didn’t do it, he did. I’m just… right, again, I understand, okay.”
“I know… I talk a lot and I know what… what you guys are here for, something else, and I’m making it about cheating, and it’s not.”
“Well, I mean, it could be. I mean, so are you guys saying that you’re trying to find out if he killed the husband?”
“We’re trying to find out who was involved, so we’re talking to everyone. We’re talking to you, we’re talking to him, we’re talking to other people, because, as you may be aware, people like to… the police, right? So, we don’t know who’s lying, true, um. What I would like to ask you is, um, either Friday or Saturday night, did he go out with his friends?”
“No.”
“Did he work Friday night?”
“No, he was with me.”
“Saturday night?”
“No, no, okay. This is what happened when I get a chance to be with him, I’m with him, okay? So, Friday night we started drinking and we were at home and we were drinking and drinking and drinking. We drink a lot, okay, okay? We probably fell asleep. He sleeps in the garage, I sleep in my room.”
“Why does he sleep in the garage?”
“Because he says that he’s more comfortable in the garage.”
“Is there a bed in there?”
“No, it’s a couch. He sleeps on a couch in the garage.”
“Garage isn’t finished?”
“Mhm.”
“Okay, I know, but that’s not why we’re here, um. And I don’t mean to be rude.”
“You’re not being rude at all. I’m just saying I’m not going to get in and now I know, um. So, we were drinking, and then, um, we woke up and we were hung over on Saturday, uh-huh. So, um, he said, ‘We got to move.’ I said, ‘Okay, I really want to go to Ross. I want… I want to buy some jeans.’ And then he said, ‘Let’s get something to eat.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ He… I said, ‘You decide.’ He said, ‘Okay, let’s go to Jersey Mike’s.’ This was… it was still day, and I got home, I fell asleep. Apparently, I woke up and yelled at everybody.”
“What time did you fall asleep at?”
“Oh, I don’t even know. It was day still, but he was with the kids playing GTA, and then, um, my daughter had said to me… my daughter, I said, ‘Did you wake up in the middle of the night?’ and I said, ‘No, why?’ And she said, ‘Well, I was just wondering, cuz you were yelling at everybody and it seemed like you were just sleeping, and I think I heard you talking in your sleep.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ And then I said, ‘Maybe it was Nate that was talking in his sleep,’ and she said, ‘No, Nate was snoring,’ because the door was open and everybody was hearing him snore. I said, ‘I didn’t hear that.’ And then, um, I think we woke up Sunday like 9:00, and I said, ‘We need to do laundry, I want to return my shoes, and I would like to go to the grocery store, but I do not have all the money for that, can you help me?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ That’s what we did, and then, um, Sunday we went to sleep probably like 9:00, woke up this morning, went to work out, um, he went to work, I went to work, and this is what I’ve coming home to.”
“So, on Saturday night, did you guys drink?”
“Mhm, no, we were sleeping. We were hung over. I can’t… I know it’s not your business, but I personally can’t drink two nights in a row, and I get very, very hung over.”
“What about him? Could he drink two nights in a row?”
“I guess he could, but if nobody was there, so he was… he was sleeping, cuz we were up pretty… I want to say, my daughter said… no, her boyfriend said, ‘I heard Nate Saturday morning, I think he was still drinking, he was going to work,’ and it was 5:00 a.m. My… my daughter’s… my daughter’s boyfriend was going to work at 5:00 a.m., and, um, that… a Saturday morning or Sunday morning?”
“Saturday morning.”
“And then, I… when I woke up for a brief moment, Saturday maybe like 1:00, 2:00, he was still sleeping, and so I went back to bed, and then I don’t know what time he went to Ross.”
“How do you know he was still sleeping if you guys sleep?”
“And I saw him. He had the garage door open. Remember, I said my daughter heard him snoring, mhm? He had the garage door open, so I got up, I looked, and he was on the couch.”
“Well, you’re right, maybe he was facing the couch, not sleeping, okay?”
“If he were to leave in the middle of the night one day, would it be safe to say that you probably wouldn’t have not known?”
“No, I think everybody would knows when he leaves, because when you slam our door, the front door, you don’t even have to slam it, like you hear it, and the house is, I mean, it’s fragile, you hear everything. So, no, especially, like, maybe if I would have… like, Friday night, maybe, because we were drinking, and if I would have passed out on Friday, Friday to in the morning, maybe he could have done that, but I was already had been sleeping off my hangover.”
“So, did you go anywhere Saturday night, then?”
“No, I was home. Well, I… it wasn’t night, it was afternoon. No, I did not. I was here.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“Yeah, 100%, yeah. You wouldn’t be covering for… for Nate at all?”
“No, he was here. Even my daughter said he was here.”
“But investigators aren’t buying it, and the case continues to build against Hermalinda Palomo and Nathaniel Huey. Meanwhile, the couple flees Illinois, leading to a nationwide manhunt. Initially, police believe that Hermalinda might have been an abduction victim, as she was reported missing by her family, but it soon becomes clear that she was complicit in the crime and had fled willingly with her fiancé. The manhunt sends police 9 hours south to Catoosa, Oklahoma, where Huey and Palomo are spotted at a Walmart. Surveillance cameras capture the couple smiling, seemingly unaware that their escape is nearing its end. West police prepare to confront them, but when they approach the couple’s vehicle, that’s when all hell breaks loose.”
“We’re still trailing 63 1834.”
“A police chase ends in a fiery crash. Huey’s SUV catches fire.”
“Fire! Get out of the car! Watch your… watch your background! Get out of the vehicle! Get out!”
“And in a tragic final act, Huey shoots Palomo in the head. He attempts to shoot himself under the chin, but that fails. He then manages to fire a second fatal shot before authorities can apprehend him.”
“Want to in? Yes. On your right. Move up to your right. Behind you, I got door. Do not see movement, no movement. Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out now! Come out now!”
“Maybe. I don’t see anything.”
“Got your cover? Cover, cover. Got it, got it. Nothing. Floorboard, floorboard. Get her, got cover, got cover. Grab belt, grab her belt. Grab her belt.”
“You got that door? See… see, where’s fire? Fire extinguisher at least behind you. I got driver door. Get a baton. Moving to your left. Go ahead.”
“After the crash, the full extent of Palomo’s manipulation is revealed. The case highlights the devastating effects of emotional manipulation and how a toxic relationship can spiral out of control. The Hermalinda Palomo case is a harrowing example of how jealousy and manipulation can lead to unimaginable violence. Four innocent lives were taken as a result of Palomo’s deceit and Huey’s blind trust in her fabricated narrative. The case serves as a stark reminder of the importance of addressing jealousy and emotional manipulation in relationships before they spiral into destructive behavior. Zoraida Balasko, her husband Alberto Rolon, and their two children, whose lives were tragically cut short, live on in the memories of their surviving family. Romeoville Police Chief Brandon Romadka said in a release, ‘Nothing can prepare a person for such an incident, and nothing can justify such a senseless act of violence.’ Although finalized, the finality of this case unfortunately does not mean closure for so many continuing to grieve.”
