Inside the patrol vehicle, the detectives asked why she seemed afraid. Hermalinda initially said she was not afraid of Nathaniel; she was frightened by the sudden attention from police and by what Nathaniel had told her on the phone. She said he believed someone was following him and that he had confronted whoever was nearby. Then the detectives told her they had evidence of an affair involving Nathaniel.
Hermalinda said she had not known about Zara until that moment. The revelation visibly upset her, but it was not the first time infidelity had entered their relationship. She told detectives Nathaniel had cheated earlier in their years together, particularly around 2015 through 2017. She also described a later incident at a party, around 2019, when Nathaniel claimed another woman had kissed him.
Hermalinda said she had hoped those years were behind them. Nathaniel had promised her he would stop cheating, and she wanted to trust him even though she admitted she could never be completely certain. When detectives asked whether she confronted the women involved, she said no. "It's not the female's fault," she told them. "It's his fault."
She explained that she was 50 years old and had no interest in calling other women to demand they leave Nathaniel alone. If he was unfaithful, she believed responsibility belonged to him. At the same time, the interview made clear that the subject still caused her considerable pain. She cried while trying to answer and repeatedly said she had hoped the cheating had stopped years earlier.
Hermalinda also described the way Nathaniel's work and hobbies gave him opportunities to be away from home. He had worked in security, including environments where women sometimes flirted with him, according to her. She said she had asked him directly whether he was cheating and he denied it. Until detectives brought up Zara, Hermalinda claimed she had accepted those denials.
The interview then shifted from relationships to firearms. Detectives asked whether Nathaniel owned guns. Hermalinda first said no and described his interest in Airsoft, saying he participated with a team and had Airsoft equipment. As the questions continued, however, she acknowledged that the two of them sometimes went to a shooting range.
Hermalinda said she personally had a FOID card and owned firearms. She stated that she did not keep them inside the house because grandchildren were present. According to her account, some of her firearms were stored elsewhere, including in the trunk of her son's vehicle. Detectives carefully documented those statements because Nathaniel had already denied owning firearms while public photographs appeared to show him handling real weapons.
When asked what she owned, Hermalinda described at least one small Glock-style handgun and said the firearms were not normally accessible inside the home. Detectives asked where her son's car was and learned he worked as a mover, meaning the vehicle was not necessarily at the residence. The questioning was not only about her guns; officers were trying to determine what firearms Nathaniel could access through people close to him. Hermalinda continued to insist that, as far as she knew, Nathaniel did not own conventional firearms.
That insistence would later conflict with more than photographs. Surveillance in Oklahoma would show Nathaniel handling multiple firearms during the couple's flight from Illinois. The discrepancy became another example of how the early interviews contained information that looked ordinary at first but became significant once objective evidence arrived. Detectives kept those statements in the timeline rather than treating them as settled facts.
Hermalinda agreed to let detectives search her vehicle. They then asked whether she recognized Zara's name. At first she said she had never met Zara and had never seen a photograph of her, but the name did trigger a memory. She recalled riding in Nathaniel's car around July when a long female name appeared on the vehicle's display or phone connection at about 4:00 in the morning.
The detectives slowed down at that point because Nathaniel had told them Hermalinda did not know about the relationship. Hermalinda said the name on the display had seemed unusual enough that she asked who was calling at that hour. Nathaniel told her it was nobody important and gave an explanation she now recognized might have been false. She admitted the incident had made her wonder whether he was seeing someone else.
When asked why she did not press harder, Hermalinda said she was tired of arguments that went nowhere. "I'm just not going to fight with him," she explained, adding that she often felt he could manipulate the conversation until she doubted herself. She stressed that she was hoping he had been honest, not claiming she knew for certain. Detectives noted that distinction.
The investigators then asked whether she had ever heard the name Alberto Rolon. Hermalinda said no. She had never met Zara, never seen a picture of her, and did not know Alberto, according to her account. She again asked the detectives not to repeat her answers to Nathaniel because she did not want another confrontation waiting at home.
Hermalinda said she asked Nathaniel who the person was. He dismissed it as a false or meaningless call, and she chose not to push the issue because arguments with him often ended with her feeling manipulated. She said she had thought at the time that he might be cheating again. She also said the name was long enough that she had initially remembered it incorrectly, but detectives' mention of Zara made the incident come back to her.
That answer mattered because Nathaniel had told investigators he did not believe Hermalinda knew anything about Zara. Hermalinda now had a reason to remember Zara's name, even if she claimed she did not know the woman personally. When detectives asked about Alberto Rolon, Hermalinda said she had never heard his name and had not met him. She asked the investigators not to tell Nathaniel what she was saying.
The detectives reassured her that the interview was focused on establishing facts, not carrying messages back and forth between the couple. They then turned to the most important question: where was Nathaniel during the period in which Zara and her family were killed? Hermalinda began giving a detailed account of the weekend. The more detail she supplied, the more detectives noticed that some parts were difficult to reconcile.
Hermalinda said she and Nathaniel had spent Friday night drinking heavily at home. According to her, they bought food and alcohol, went back to the house, and drank enough that both were badly hung over the next day. She said Nathaniel often slept on a couch in the unfinished garage while she slept in her bedroom. That arrangement immediately created a problem for any airtight alibi because the two were not necessarily in the same room overnight.
For Saturday, Hermalinda said she woke still feeling the effects of the previous night's drinking. She remembered wanting to shop at Ross, buy jeans, get food, return shoes, and handle errands. Nathaniel was with family members and, at one point, she said he was playing a video game with the children. Hermalinda herself fell asleep for part of the day.
Her account moved back and forth between Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday, and detectives repeatedly asked her to anchor the story to specific times. She said her daughter's boyfriend had left for work around 5:00 a.m. Saturday and remembered hearing Nathaniel. At another point she said Nathaniel may still have been drinking early Saturday morning. The details made it difficult to determine exactly when anyone was awake and able to observe him.
Hermalinda said that later Saturday she wanted to go to Ross and also talked about getting food from Jersey Mike's. She remembered being hung over enough that she eventually fell asleep again. Her daughter later told her she had been yelling or talking while sleeping. Hermalinda used those family observations to support her belief that Nathaniel remained around the house.
Detectives focused on the garage because Nathaniel slept there separately. The garage was unfinished and had a couch rather than a bed. Hermalinda said the door was sometimes open and that people inside the house could hear him snoring. She believed that made it unlikely he could leave unnoticed, but the investigators kept asking whether belief was the same as actually seeing him continuously.
She said her daughter later told her that Nathaniel had been snoring in the garage. Hermalinda initially used that statement as proof he remained home. When detectives asked how she could know he had been asleep if she was sleeping elsewhere, she said she had briefly gotten up, looked into the garage, and seen him on the couch. Then she conceded that she could not know every moment of the night with absolute certainty.
One detective asked directly, "If he left in the middle of the night, is it possible you wouldn't have known?" Hermalinda said the house was fragile and noisy enough that people normally heard the front door whenever someone came or went. She still acknowledged that on Friday night, when everyone had been drinking and she might have passed out, it was possible she could have missed something. On Saturday night, though, she repeatedly insisted Nathaniel was home.
"Are you telling me the truth?" a detective asked. "Yeah, one hundred percent," Hermalinda replied. "You wouldn't be covering for Nate at all?" "No. He was here. Even my daughter said he was here."
The detectives did not accuse her of lying at that moment, but they continued testing the timeline. Hermalinda said Friday afternoon Nathaniel had been home sick from work, and after she got off work they went to dinner. She said they later went home with beer and drank heavily. By her account, Nathaniel was home Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, and into Sunday.
She also said the Ring doorbell at the house no longer recorded video. It had been broken for perhaps two or three years and functioned only as a doorbell. That meant it could not independently confirm whether Nathaniel had left. Hermalinda nevertheless kept repeating that family members would have noticed his absence.