Colombian authorities are searching for a 35-year-old Texas man after the body of his girlfriend DJ was found dead in a dumpster

Colombian authorities launched a manhunt for a Texas man who fled the country before his girlfriend DJ was found stuffed in a suitcase that was dumped in a dumpster in the capital city of Bogota.

Valentina Trespalacios, 23, met John Poulos, 35, at his home on Friday and spent the weekend dining and partying with him before a homeless person looking for recyclables made the gruesome discovery on Sunday.

A preliminary autopsy report indicated that Trespalacios was strangled.

Her family has asked the Colombian government to carry out an international search for Poulos, who they believe killed her.

Trespalacios and Poulos had been dating for eight months despite the English-Spanish language barrier and used translation apps to communicate, although Trespalacios spoke some English.

A homeless man was looking in a garbage container in the Bogotá neighborhood of Los Cámbulos when he found the suitcase with the body of Valentina Trespalacios.

The Colombian National Police said investigators have been analyzing surveillance video showing the moment a man threw the suitcase into a construction dumpster in the Bogotá neighborhood of Los Cámbulos and disappeared.

Authorities have yet to identify the person in the images, which had not been made public as of Tuesday afternoon.

A government official from Colombia’s migration agency confirmed to Caracol TV that Poulos boarded a flight to Central America.

The newspaper El Tiempo confirmed that Poulos spent a week in Colombia before fleeing.

A rideshare app driver who took the couple to a nightclub told Caracol TV that he sensed Trespalacios was in danger when she showed him a message on the company’s app that read: “Help, I’m in danger “.

The driver, whose name was not released by the outlet, said Trespalacios started making hand gestures and Poulos got to the car and asked her if everything was okay before she said yes three times.

The couple got into the car and Poulos asked if she spoke English. The man said yes, adding that Poulos had remained silent the entire trip. He said that Poulos and Trespalacios exchanged messages on WhatsApp. He dropped them off at a club at 3:48 am.

A preliminary autopsy report showed that Colombian DJ Valentina Trespalacios was strangled

A preliminary autopsy report showed that Colombian DJ Valentina Trespalacios was strangled

On Friday, Valentina Trespalacios sent a video to her mother, Laura Hidalgo, showing the couple listening to music in a vehicle driven by Poulos.

During the recording, Trespalacios points the cell phone camera towards the back of the car and tells his mother that he had loaded all his belongings and that he was going to go home on Saturday.

Hidalgo told RCN Noticias that his daughter was going to move into an apartment with Poulos.

In an interview with Caracol TV, Hidalgo said that Poulos met Trespalacios at a party where she was hired to play and that he planned to move to Colombia and marry her.

“He had good intentions, he met us, his brothers, he intended to get married, make a life here in Colombia with her, invest in Colombia,” Hidalgo said. ‘He supposedly came all the way to Colombia, I don’t know what happened.’

According to a recently deleted LinkedIn page, Poulos was hired as a financial advisor by Vanguard in 2022.

Colombian DJ Valentina Trespalacios (pictured) was found dead in a suitcase that was dumped inside a garbage dump in Bogotá. Her family suspects that her boyfriend from Texas, John Poulos, killed her.

An official with Colombia’s migration agency confirmed that John Poulos fled the South American country on a flight to Central America on Sunday, hours before the body of his girlfriend, Valentina Trespalacios, was discovered inside a suitcase.

The distraught mother described Poulos as someone who “didn’t seem like an aggressive person, he seemed calm, very calm.”

However, she noticed that he had become jealous of Trespalacios.

“He became very obsessed with my daughter and was a bit jealous. He had an argument in December with my daughter and it was out of jealousy, because my daughter had many suitors because she was very beautiful.

Trespalacios’ family said Poulos had deleted his social media pages and stopped responding to his messages.

Still image from a video sent by Colombian DJ Valentina Trespalacios (left) on Saturday as her boyfriend from Texas, John Poulos (right), was driving in Bogotá hours before she was found dead stuffed in a suitcase abandoned in a dumpster. Poulos, according to Colombia’s migration agency, fled the country on a flight to Central America on Sunday before his future wife was found by a homeless person looking for recyclable materials.

Valentina Trespalacios had DJ opportunities in Chile, Mexico and Brazil, her family said

Her uncle, Carlos Trespalacios, told Blu Radio that the couple seemed to be having a good time, as evidenced by the photos she shared of them smiling on her WhatsApp status.

The vehicle Poulos was driving was found near El Dorado International Airport.

“It was in a suitcase, dismembered with the pajamas in which he used to sleep and we are asking the authorities to expedite this part,” he said.

“She was out partying with her American fiancé on Friday and Saturday, so much so that she shared WhatsApp messages while at the club. There is no doubt that they were (hanging out), so we want him to show up, to show his face, to give us his version, to tell us where he left her, what happened to him?’

Daniel Felipe Trespalacios recalled having spoken to his sister while she spent her first night in the apartment located in the northern part of the Colombian capital.

The 13-year-old said his mother felt something was off when his sister texted him: “Mommy, life isn’t easy, everything has a price.”

“My mom took it as the guy treated her badly or something like that and told her ‘daughter, you don’t need that, you don’t need to give us more, you already give us a lot,’” said Daniel Felipe Trespalacios.

He said the family had nothing but warm feelings for Poulos and never expected him to be involved in his sister’s murder.

“He had already gone to Mexico with my sister,” she said. ‘We didn’t mistrust him because it seemed to us that too much had happened for us to mistrust him. If he loved her as they say, he would be the first to be here showing his face to see what is happening with my sister.