Three years before she was linked to the death of a journalist covering Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, Danette Colbert reportedly faced charges of drugging a man as well as stealing $100,000 in cash, jewelry, upscale luggage and casino chips from his Las Vegas hotel room.
Colbert made bond – then allegedly drugged another man and stole his $60,000 watch, casino chips and credit cards after he invited her to his hotel room in Las Vegas.
Neither of those criminal cases – nor various others against her – led to substantial consequences for Colbert, 48, a resident of the suburban New Orleans community of Slidell. Now police are trying to figure out whether she fatally drugged the television sports reporter Adan Manzano, 26, who was found dead and robbed in his hotel near the New Orleans airport four days before the Super Bowl.
Police in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, site of the city’s international airport, have said Manzano’s path had crossed that of Colbert’s by early Wednesday. The two had met in New Orleans’ downtown area before going to Manzano’s hotel room about 13 miles (21km) away at the Comfort Suites Airport in Kenner.
A sworn court statement later filed by Kenner police said Colbert eventually left alone. Manzano – a widower with a two-year-old daughter, and a native of Mexico – missed a meeting the next day pertaining to his work for the Spanish-language television channel Telemundo Kansas City covering that city’s team, the Chiefs, playing the Philadelphia Eagles in Sunday’s Super Bowl at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome.
The hotel’s staff checked on Manzano, found him dead and called authorities. Investigators established that the credit card he had used to check in to the hotel was missing, as was his cellphone.
After identifying Colbert as the woman seen at the hotel with Manzano, police tracked Manzano’s cellphone to within about one-tenth of a mile from her known address. Authorities obtained a judge’s permission to search her home, about 40 miles (64km) north-east of Kenner, where they found Manzano’s cellphone.
They also recovered his credit card, which had been used to charge $8.48 at a gasoline station on the edge of downtown New Orleans after the time Colbert had left Manzano’s hotel.
Randy Smith, the sheriff whose jurisdiction includes that area of Slidell, said investigators had discovered Xanax along with other drugs in Manzano’s hotel room. Officials are examining whether any of those drugs may have been used to incapacitate the reporter before his death.
“I realize that it is everybody’s suspicion that the victim was drugged,” said Gerry Cvitanovich, the coroner of Jefferson parish, Louisiana, which includes Kenner. “But I can’t confirm that until I get [the results of toxicology tests conducted on Manzano] back,” adding that that could take several weeks.
Though the cases had substantial differences, at least some local officials were reminded of an unrelated, deadly 2017 drugging and robbery in Metairie, Louisiana, which is adjacent to Kenner, that sent a couple to federal prison and generated national headlines.
Kenner police stopped short of accusing Colbert of causing Manzano’s death. After she was arrested outside a wig shop in eastern New Orleans on Thursday, Colbert was booked on charges related to theft and credit-card fraud, the Kenner police chief, Keith Conley, said.
But Conley’s agency did not deny that its theory of what happened had been described by Cvitanovich. A sworn statement laying out the Kenner police department’s decision to arrest Colbert alluded to news stories documenting allegations of her having drugged and robbed men in Las Vegas.
As the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote in January 2022, police alleged that a man had invited Colbert and another woman to his hotel room. The man was purportedly drugged, lost consciousness and woke up to find nearly $100,000 in cash, fancy luggage, jewelry and casino chips missing.
Colbert denied the allegations, made bond – and then again was invited alongside another woman to a man’s hotel room at a Las Vegas casino. That man recounted being drugged, passing out and waking up to find his $60,000 watch as well as $1,500 in casino chips missing. His credit cards were missing, too, and they had been used for unauthorized purchases, the Review-Journal reported.
Once again, Colbert made bond. Then, police arrested her on allegations that she had driven a car through a Las Vegas school zone at nearly 100mph, leading to charges of speeding, aggressive driving and lacking insurance or a driver’s license, the local news outlet KSNV reported.
Prosecutors in Las Vegas ultimately dismissed the theft and drugging cases, according to court records first reported by People.com. The school-zone speeding case remains unresolved, and Colbert was wanted on a warrant at the time of her arrest in New Orleans for having missed a January 2023 court hearing.
Kenner police noted that Colbert had been given probation in at least four cases in the New Orleans area for a range of allegations including theft, aggravated battery and credit card fraud, among other issues.
The agency also said it had been contacted “by individuals claiming to be victims or reporting suspicious deaths under similar circumstances”.
“All of these complaints will be referred to the appropriate jurisdictions for further investigation,” Kenner police said in a statement.
The death of Manzano – who was originally from Mexico and graduated from Kansas State University – prompted an outpouring of condolences for his loved ones and colleagues. His wife, Ashleigh Boyd, had been killed in a car crash in Topeka, Kansas, on 11 April 2024. The couple’s survivors include their two-year-old daughter.
An emotional TV segment in Spanish on Telemundo Kansas City on Friday said Manzano had covered that market’s professional sports franchises with zeal.
In addition to his work covering the Chiefs, his Facebook page showed him smiling broadly while covering Kansas City’s Royals baseball team and its Sporting Kansas City soccer club.
In August 2023, Manzano’s favorite Mexican soccer league team, Toluca, had played Sporting KC in Kansas City. When Toluca won the match 4-1, Manzano wrote on social media: “YES SIR!!!”
Telemundo Kansas City’s segment on Manzano reported that his mantra had been: “Don’t fear success.”
Battling tears, the Telemundo Kansas City anchor Gustavo Jaimes concluded the segment by saying: “The world hasn’t just lost an unrivaled journalist. It also lost a father, a son, and a friend. All our solidarity for the family of Adan Manzano, and to him, a hug wherever he is.”
