A Louisiana woman accused in a string of druggings of men whom she defrauded was charged on Tuesday with second-degree murder in the death of Adan Manzano, a Telemundo reporter whose body was found in a New Orleans hotel room in February while he was in town to cover the Super Bowl.
The woman, Danette Colbert, 48, was the last person to be seen with Mr. Manzano before his death on Feb. 5, security camera footage from his hotel showed. She was arrested the next day by the police in Kenner, La., and initially charged with the theft of his cellphone and one of his credit cards, which the authorities said she had used to make several purchases.
Mr. Manzano, 27, died from the combined toxic effects of the prescription drug Xanax and alcohol, in addition to positional asphyxia, which is when someone’s physical position prevents them from breathing, according to the results of a preliminary autopsy that were released during a news conference on Tuesday.
His manner of death still has not been determined, said Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich, the Jefferson Parish coroner. He said that Mr. Manzano, who had been slated to cover his third straight Super Bowl, had been found with his head face down in a pillow and that his blood-alcohol content was .232 percent, which is nearly four times the legal driving limit.
Second-degree murder in Louisiana carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“We don’t want Ms. Colbert to see the light of day again,” Keith Conley, the Kenner police chief, said during the news conference.
Investigators said that they had uncovered critical evidence linking Ms. Colbert to Mr. Manzano’s death, which they said suggested that she commonly used Xanax in druggings. They declined to elaborate on the murder investigation, but said that they had found Xanax at her home in Slidell, La., the day after Mr. Manzano died.
A lawyer for Ms. Colbert was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
During the news conference on Tuesday, the authorities also said that they had arrested an accomplice of Ms. Colbert in connection with Mr. Manzano’s death. The man, Rickey White, 34, whom the police described as a transient with a last known address in Gretna, La., was charged with simple robbery, access device fraud, illegal transmission of monetary funds, bank fraud and computer fraud. He was taken into custody in Hollywood, Fla., on Friday and was awaiting extradition to Louisiana. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. White had a lawyer.
Ms. Colbert was on probation at the time of Mr. Manzano’s death and was serving a 10-year suspended sentence in connection with the 2021 drugging of another man. She was convicted of multiple felonies in that case last October and was ordered to pay the man $50,000 in restitution for money that she had stolen from him.
But the decision not to impose a prison sentence on Ms. Colbert, who court records show has a lengthy criminal history, has been intensely criticized in the weeks since Mr. Manzano’s death.
Representatives for the judge in the earlier case, Nandi F. Campbell of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Keith D. Lampkin, a spokesman for the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office, which handled the case, said in a recent email that, after Mr. Manzano’s death, prosecutors filed a motion to revoke Ms. Colbert’s probation sentence.
Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, has argued that Ms. Colbert should not have received probation and asked Judge Campbell to resentence her under the state’s repeat offender law.
Mr. Manzano was a sports anchor and reporter for KGKC, the Kansas City affiliate of the Spanish-language network Telemundo, which called him a “rising star” in a post on its website and on social media. He was in New Orleans covering Super Bowl LIX for the station and for Tico Sports, which carries Kansas City Chiefs games in Spanish. The Chiefs lost 40-22 to the Philadelphia Eagles, denying them their third consecutive championship.
A profile before last year’s game by the NBC television station KSNT said that Mr. Manzano, a Mexico City native and Kansas State University graduate, had covered the Chiefs’ victory the previous year. He lived in Topeka, Kan., according to the station. Mr. Manzano told the station that he was proud of his role expanding the Spanish-speaking audience for football games.
“Styles, cultures, they get their own culture,” he said. “The phrasing, the rhythm, the tone of voice that you use — the moment of the game.”
In one of his final Facebook posts, on Jan. 6, Mr. Manzano shared a photo of himself and his wife, Ashleigh Boyd, celebrating their daughter’s first birthday. Ms. Boyd, 24, an elementary schoolteacher, was killed in April 2024 in a head-on crash in Kansas that also injured the couple’s daughter.
