Woman found guilty of negligent homicide in death of Super Bowl reporter
Adan Manzano was found dead in his Louisiana hotel room on Feb. 5, 2025.
A Louisiana woman was found guilty in the death of a Telemundo Kansas City reporter covering the 2025 Super Bowl who prosecutors said was the victim of a criminal enterprise that targeted men in New Orleans by drugging and stealing from them.
Danette Colbert was found guilty of negligent homicide in the death of 27-year-old Adan Manzano, a reporter for KGKC Telemundo Kansas City and Tico Sports, who was found dead in his hotel room in Kenner on Feb. 5, 2025, days before Super Bowl LIX.
Colbert, 49, and her co-defendant, Rickey White, 35, were also both found guilty of racketeering.
Prosecutors said Colbert posed as a prostitute and plied her marks with alcohol or drugs to render them unconscious and then stole their phones, credit cards, cash, jewelry and other valuables. White served as her pimp, providing "instruction" and helping them access and distribute the stolen property, prosecutors said.
Manzano was their last known victim, prosecutors said. He died from the combined effects of Xanax -- an anti-anxiety medication -- and alcohol along with "positional asphyxia," according to the Jefferson Parish coroner. Police found him face-down on his hotel bed after colleagues requested a wellness check, according to prosecutors, who said the drug and alcohol in his system rendered him unconscious and unable to move.
Colbert was the last person seen with Manzano, prosecutors said. Video evidence showed her with him in the French Quarter before entering his hotel room, where she made "numerous videos of herself" in which she practiced opening Manzano's cell phone and tried to log into his bank accounts on his phone "while he lay dying or dead," prosecutors said.
The Jefferson Parish jury deliberated for over five hours before returning with their verdicts on Thursday.
Both defendants had been charged with manslaughter. The jury found Colbert guilty of the lesser charge of negligent homicide and White not guilty of manslaughter.
The investigation into Manzano's death "yielded tens of thousands of text messages, images and videos that showed how Colbert, White and others had engaged in a criminal enterprise in which they targeted men," prosecutors said in a press release.
Other victims of the yearslong scheme testified during the trial, including a man who said he lost $100,000 after encountering Colbert.
A third person charged in the criminal enterprise, Christian Dean Anderson, also testified against the two about the workings of the scheme after entering into a plea agreement with prosecutors. Anderson, 35, pleaded guilty to simple robbery and access device fraud and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Colbert and White are scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 28. They face up to 50 years in prison on the racketeering charge. The negligent homicide charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Jefferson Parish Assistant District Attorney Jenny Voss said she believes the verdicts delivered justice to the family of Manzano, a widower who was the father of a young child.
"We knew that this was a difficult case going in with a lot of complicated law, and we really feel like they took all of that into consideration, and justice was served," Voss told reporters following the verdict.
Stavros Panagoulopoulos, Colbert's defense attorney, said that he believed this was a "compromise verdict."
"One thing to consider is the fact that negligent homicide's a far cry from manslaughter," he told reporters. "Not only that, given the nature of the questions that were given during the course of deliberations, suspicion is that this was most likely a compromise verdict."
The Kenner Police Department, which conducted the death investigation along with other agencies, said the verdicts "provide a measure of justice and closure to the family of Adan Manzano and to the victims and families affected by the criminal activity uncovered during this investigation."
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