A Louisiana woman charged in the February murder of a Telemundo reporter who was covering the Super Bowl was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for drugging and robbing another man in 2021 after she previously had been spared jail time in that case.
The woman, Danette Colbert, 48, had her probation revoked under Louisiana’s repeat offender law, according to records filed in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.
The judge who vacated Ms. Colbert’s probationary status, Nandi F. Campbell, was the same judge who gave her a suspended sentence last November in the 2021 case, allowing her to avoid prison for what was at least her fourth felony conviction.
That decision was widely criticized after the death of Adan Manzano on Feb. 5. Ms. Colbert was the last person to be seen with him, according to security footage from his hotel in Kenner, La. She had stolen his phone and credit card, which the authorities said fit her pattern of drugging and swindling men who were visiting New Orleans.
Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, had argued that Ms. Colbert should have been behind bars and asked Judge Campbell to resentence her under the state’s repeat offender law.
“The evidence was overwhelming that this woman was a serial fraudster and took advantage of multiple tourists and innocent people over many years in the French Quarter,” Ms. Murrill said in a statement on Thursday. “I wish we could have saved the life of Adam Manzano.”
A lawyer for Ms. Colbert, who is awaiting trial on a second-degree murder charge in Mr. Manzano’s death, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Mr. Manzano, 27, was found face down against a pillow, having died from 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 a preliminary autopsy. His blood-alcohol content was .232 percent, which is nearly three times the legal driving limit.
In March, Ms. Colbert was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Mr. Manzano, a sports anchor and reporter for KGKC, the Kansas City affiliate of the Spanish-language network Telemundo.
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.
Her arrest elicited collective relief and frustration from a group of men who told The New York Times that they had been drugged, robbed of tens of thousands of dollars and had their identities stolen on nights out in New Orleans by the same woman who they had reported numerous times to the authorities: Ms. Colbert.
One of men, David Butler, 52, was the victim in the 2021 drugging case for which Ms. Colbert was resentenced to 25 years in prison.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 6, 2021, Mr. Butler went to the French Quarter to take a break from renovating a house not far from the nightlife district when Ms. Colbert approached him outside a bar and invited him for a drink, he recalled in a victim impact statement and in interviews.
He took her up on the offer. But after leaving his first drink unattended to buy a second round and coming back to finish it, he said, something felt off.
What little he remembered was Ms. Colbert pushing him into a waiting taxi with her and waking up about 12 hours later to find his phone and wallet missing, he said.
When he opened his laptop, a flurry of fraud alerts popped up, he said: $85,000 in Bitcoin and Ethereum funds had been transferred from his Coinbase cryptocurrency wallet to an account that he traced to Ms. Colbert.
Other alerts showed an attempt to withdraw an additional $50,000 from his Chase Bank account, and to make purchases totaling thousands of dollars at stores, including Walmart and Best Buy, using his credit cards, he said.
Two years passed until Ms. Colbert was charged with several felonies in connection with the thefts reported by Mr. Butler, who created a group text message chain where he and other men vented and shared updates about the woman who they said had victimized them. They started it before Mr. Manzano’s death.
“Had Ms. Colbert been incarcerated at the time, his life might have been spared,” Mr. Butler said in a text message on Friday.
Mr. Butler continued to criticize the suspended sentence that Ms. Colbert received last November from Judge Campbell, who had ordered her to pay him $50,000 in restitution.
“For years, she has gotten away with drugging, robbing and traumatizing men — leaving behind a trail of broken lives,” he said. “Her past has finally caught up with her.”
Judge Campbell declined to comment on Friday.
In May, Rickey White, whom the authorities described as an accomplice of Ms. Colbert, was also charged with second-degree murder in Mr. Manzano’s death.
Second-degree murder in Louisiana carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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