Mike Pennel Jr., the former Kansas City Chiefs defensive lineman and two-time Super Bowl champion, is at the center of a homicide investigation in the Dominican Republic after a new ESPN report found that witnesses told police in 2021 he had an ongoing relationship with a woman whose body was later found on land he owned.
The report directly contradicts Pennel's repeated denials, and even his own attorney now says he expects Pennel to be charged.NFL champ Mike Pennel had a relationship with a woman found dead on his property — his own lawyer expects chargesThe woman has been identified as Carli Franchesca Guzmán Roche, 22, who was reported missing by her family on September 11, 2021, after moving to Sosúa in the Dominican Republic.
Her remains weren't discovered until January 2026, when a new owner doing excavation work on the property, which Pennel owned at the time and has since sold, came across them.
Her grandmother, Paula González, told ESPN her granddaughter regularly referred to Pennel as "the football player" and that she'd seen the two of them on video calls together.
Shown a photo of Pennel, she said there was "no doubt" he was the man her granddaughter was seeing.Records reviewed by ESPN show people told police as early as 2021 that Pennel's connection to Guzmán was worth investigating, and that investigators visited his property with her family days after she vanished, where a strong smell of decay was reportedly noticed but written off as a dead animal.
