A woman who has faced repeated allegations that she robbed men after drugging them was arrested Thursday in New Orleans in connection with the death one day earlier of a reporter for Telemundo Kansas City who was in town to cover the Super Bowl, the authorities said.
The woman, Danette Colbert, 48, of Slidell, La., was the last person who was seen with Adan Manzano, 27, before his body was discovered on Wednesday in his hotel room, Keith A. Conley, the police chief in Kenner, La., said on Friday during a news conference.
She also had stolen Mr. Manzano’s cellphone and one of his credit cards, using it at several stores in the New Orleans area, the chief said.
Investigators said that they were still waiting for the results of an autopsy to determine how Mr. Manzano, who lost his wife in a car accident last year and had a young daughter, had died.
The Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for information on Friday about the status of Mr. Manzano’s autopsy.
Still, Chief Conley said that the methods of Ms. Colbert, who so far is charged with fraud and theft-related offenses, fit a pattern of targeting men.
“She plays the confidence game,” he said. “She’s definitely a career criminal.”
In 2022, Ms. Colbert was charged with several felonies in Nevada after two men told the police that they had been drugged and robbed while staying at casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported at the time.
One of the men told investigators that, after inviting Ms. Colbert and another woman to his room, he woke up with a bloody nose and was missing $50,000 cash, a Rolex watch worth $30,000, $11,000 in casino chips, a $5,000 Louis Vuitton bag, his iPhone 11 and a $2,000 satchel, the newspaper reported. The other man said that he had gone through a similar ordeal: His Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watch worth $60,000 was missing, in addition to $1,500 in casino chips and his credit card.
Court records showed that both cases, which the authorities mentioned at Friday’s news conference, had been dismissed. It was not clear why prosecutors did not proceed with the charges against Ms. Colbert, whom the police in Kenner said had been involved in another drugging case two years ago in Jefferson Parish, La. Information on the outcome of that case was not immediately available on Friday.
It was not immediately clear whether Ms. Colbert, who was taken into custody on Thursday night in New Orleans, had a lawyer.
During Friday’s news conference, the authorities said that surveillance videos taken at the Comfort Suites in Kenner showed Mr. Manzano entering his hotel room with Ms. Colbert around 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday. A short time later, Ms. Colbert left the room and then returned, staying until about 6 a.m., the police said. Mr. Manzano never appeared again in the video. His body was discovered later on Wednesday during a wellness check after he failed to show up for an appointment.
Chief Conley said that law enforcement officials in the area were already familiar with Ms. Colbert.
“She was stopped quite frequently in the French Quarter,” he said, “and she’s known for these fraud schemes.”
When investigators searched Mr. Manzano’s wallet, the chief said, they noticed that the credit card that he had used to check into the hotel was missing. So was his cellphone, which the chief said was found with the stolen credit card at Ms. Colbert’s home.
“This brings to light that there are people out there that prey on other people and bring them into their confidence and victimize them,” Chief Conley said. “These are the kind of things that can happen if you’re out in any city by yourself.”
Mr. Manzano was a sports anchor and reporter for KGKC, the Kansas City affiliate of the Spanish-language network Telemundo, which called him in 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, who are going for their third championship in a row, will play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.
This would have been Mr. Manzano’s third time covering the Super Bowl. 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 of 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 an April 2024 head-on crash in Kansas that also injured the couple’s daughter.
Steve Downing, the general manager for Telemundo Kansas City, said in an email on Friday that the station was aware that an arrest had been made in connection with Mr. Manzano’s death. He said that Mr. Manzano’s family had requested privacy and had no comment.
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