More than three years before a Louisiana woman was arrested last week for the death of a television reporter in New Orleans to cover the Super Bowl, a man who visited the city from outside the state accused the woman, Danette Colbert , to drug him, steal his savings and leaving him for dead.
Colbert, 48, was sentenced in October of computer fraud, theft and illegal transmission of monetary funds, and David Butler said in an impact statement of the victim who shared with NBC News that his “continuous contempt for others” should have turned out in a maximum prison sentence.
The judge suspended a combined sentence under which he would have spent years behind bars and, instead, ordered Colbert to pay restitution and remain on probation for five years, as shown by the judicial records.
“If the court had acted decisively imprisoning Mrs. Colbert or applying stricter conditions for her release, Mr. Manzano is still alive today,” Butler said about Telemundo Adan Manzano, 27, who He was found dead in his hotel room last week.
A spokesman for the Criminal District Judge of Orleans, Nandi Campbell, who presided November.
Colbert’s lawyers in both cases did not respond to comments requests. Nor a spokesman for the Office of the District Prosecutor of the Parish of Orleans.
Similar accounts reported after death
Colbert has been accused of fraud and other crimes related to theft in relation to Manzano’s death. Police in Kenner, west of New Orleans, said in a statement on Monday that investigators discovered additional evidence and are working with forensic experts and the forensic office to determine if Colbert should be accused of additional crimes.
The results of a toxicology test can take weeks, authorities said.
Since the announcement of Colbert’s arrest last week, people who claim to be victims of Colbert or who report deaths similar to Manzano’s have communicated with the Police Department, according to the statement.
In Nevada, the judicial records in two cases show that Colbert was accused in 2022 of a largeft and administering a medicine to help in the commission of a serious crime. Both cases were dismissed after the victims said they did not want to testify in the Court, Associated Press reported.
In the parish of Jefferson, Louisiana, Colbert declared fraud in 2019 after the authorities accused her of accessing a man’s device and stealing more than $ 1,000, as shown in the judicial records. In the same parish two years earlier, Colbert declared himself guilty of three fraud charges in a similar case.
“I knew I wouldn’t stop ‘
Butler, 52, who did not want to share his location for privacy reasons, said he was among those who communicated with Kenner’s police department after he learned of Manzano’s death. He had been regularly monitoring Colbert online since 2021, “because she knew she wouldn’t stop.”
In November of that year, Butler met Colbert while he was in New Orleans renewing a property that he owns. After a long day of work, Butler said, he went out to a French bar when Colbert and another woman approached him and asked if he wanted a drink. He agreed, he said, and after he briefly moved away from his table, he returned, finished his cocktail and quickly began to feel disoriented.
Butler said he took Colbert to an offer to help him get home.
“She took me to a kind of black suburban that was literally there,” he said. “And that is the last thing I remember that night.”
Butler said he arrived at a mattress on the floor of the house he was renewing. He said that he had no idea how he got there and that his property administrator had to shout repeatedly and shake him to wake him up.
Butler soon discovered that his phone and wallet were gone, he said. The “Find My iPhone” function of the device had closed, he said, and his credit cards had been used to collect thousands of dollars in stores such as Best Buy and Walmart. More than $ 80,000 that had been hidden for retirement in a cryptocurrency account was also gone, he said.
Months later, when the New Orleans police took out a poster that identified Colbert as a suspect in the case, the Police Department said it was sought for the theft of more than $ 134,000.
“The terrible experience,” Butler said later in his victim’s impact statement, “devastated my life.”
Butler said he did not go to the hospital and that he does not know what his drink had shot. He regrets that decision, but said that at that time, he was focused on trying to discover who had stolen his things.
Butler said he could help identify Colbert through the theft of his cryptographic savings. He looked for the unique identifier associated with the account to which his money had been transferred – “Queentx100” – and met Colbert’s Facebook page, which uses the same name and included a photo of the woman he had met in the neighborhood French.
Butler provided those details to the police, he said in an interview. His account and accusations track his impact statement of the victim that was read in the Court.
A police spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comments, and the Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for public records for the case.
After Colbert took the case to trial and was convicted, the judge ordered Butler to pay $ 50,000 in restitution, with monthly payments of $ 834 for five years, according to judicial records. Until now, Butler said, he has not received money.
In a message to the Campbell office in December, Butler wrote that he had “serious concerns” about Colbert’s judgment.
“The minimum fines and the lack of significant imprisonment for crimes that could have caused serious injuries or loss of lives are, frankly, an insult to public safety and justice system,” Butler wrote in a message that he shared with NBC News . “If someone dies due to their actions in the future, their blood will undoubtedly be in the hands of those who allowed him to escape real responsibility today.”
Butler said he did not receive an answer.
