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Surveillance video footage has revealed the last moment alive of a Colombian DJ a day before she was allegedly beaten and strangled by her Texas boyfriend, who is reportedly married with three children.
The footage shows Valentina Trespalacios, 23, getting out of a taxi with John Poulos, 35, early Saturday morning, a day before she was found stuffed inside a taped-up suitcase that was abandoned in a dumpster in the south side of Bogota.
Trespalacios’ body was found in a luggage bag Sunday around 2:00 p.m. by a homeless man looking for recyclable materials.
A security camera caught Trespalacios holding Poulos’s hand as he walked down a hallway before approaching the DJ booth for his performance at the Nexxus nightclub.
The young Colombian woman greeted the DJ and several other people who were behind the turntable while Poulos was in the background.
John Poulos (left) had plans to live in Colombia full-time and marry his DJ girlfriend, Valentina Trespalacios (right). He was arrested in Panama on Tuesday, two days after his body was found inside a suitcase in a garbage dump in the Colombian capital of Bogotá. Poulos is awaiting his extradition to Colombia
Valentina Trespalacios (right) behind the record player on Saturday, the day before she was found dead inside a suitcase.
Valentina Trespalacios’ body was found inside a blue suitcase (pictured) that was dumped inside a garbage container in the Colombian capital city of Bogotá.
Valentina Trespalacios accompanies her boyfriend, John Poulos, at the Nexxus bar before entering the DJ booth for the last time early Saturday morning, a day before she was found dead inside a suitcase that was left in a garbage container.
Valentina Trespalacios performed her last DJ concert early Saturday morning in Bogotá
Trespalacios finished her performance shortly before 5 a.m. and could later be seen leaving the nightclub owner’s office while Poulos was in the bathroom.
Friends told local media that the couple took a taxi ordered through a ride-sharing app and headed for the apartment on the north side of the capital city that Poulos had rented where they moved in on Friday.
Poulos was arrested Tuesday night at the Tocumen International Airport in Panama City, Panama, moments before boarding a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul, Turkey. He also had a ticket for a connecting flight from Istanbul to Montenegro, where there is no extradition treaty with Colombia.
As part of an attempt to launch the international manhunt for Colombia, Poulos had also purchased a flight from Panama City to São Paulo, Brazil. All the tickets were bought with cash as a way of not leaving any evidence behind.
Surveillance camera showed Valentina Trespalacios (middle of circle) and her boyfriend, John Poulos (right side of circle), entering the Nexxus bar in Bogotá, where she worked her last gig as a DJ early Saturday morning before They will find her dead the next day. day
A mugshot released by Panama’s immigration agency shows Poulos with a scratch on the left side of his face, a possible indication Trespalacios attacked him while she was being beaten.
The Wisconsin native, who according to the Colombian press is married with three children, told authorities that he had fled to Panama because the Medellin Cartel wanted to kill him.
Valentina Trespalacios (pictured) had been dating her boyfriend, John Poulos, for eight months. It has been revealed that he is the father of three children and also married in the United States
John Poulos (pictured) told authorities that he fled Colombia to Panama because the Medellin Cartel wanted to kill him and also blamed the criminal organization for the murder of his Colombian DJ girlfriend, Valentina Trespalacios.
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.
In addition, Poulos told authorities that the cartel was behind the murder of Trespalacios.
According to the newspaper El Tiempo, Trespalacios’ family said Poulos had ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, the Mexico-based drug cartel that was founded by jailed drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.
High-ranking Colombian law enforcement officers flew into Panama City Wednesday afternoon after a court granted the Attorney General’s Office an extradition request for Poulos in connection with the Trespalacios slaying.
Poulos was handed over to Colombian authorities Wednesday night and taken back to the South American country.
In the copy of the arrest warrant obtained by El Tiempo, the Colombian authorities identify Poulos as the ‘presumed perpetrator of the violent death of Valentina Trespalacios Hidalgo, who was found in a blue travel suitcase inside a garbage container in the town of Fontibón.
Victoria Jimenez, a hairdresser, told DailyMail.com that Trespalacios had met Poulos through an online dating app and was planning to travel to Colombia in February to settle there as part of her plans to marry her close friend.
An autopsy report showed Colombian DJ Valentina Trespalacios was strangled and beaten
One of John Poulos’ mug shots shows he has a scratch on the left side of his face, perhaps a sign that his girlfriend, Valentina Trespalacios, fought for her life before she was killed.
Turkish Airlines ticket purchased by John Poulos to travel from Panama City, Panama, to Istanbul, Turkey. The 35-year-old Texan also had a connecting flight to Montenegro.
Laura Hidalgo said her daughter had been dating Poulos for eight months. She said that he had become jealous of her daughter and that he had hired a private investigator to follow her.
‘He was the one who hurt my daughter and he doesn’t deserve to be around like nothing happened. I want justice to be done,’ Hidalgo told Semana magazine. ‘It’s not fair that a foreigner comes to excite a Colombian and ends up like this. I hope this case does not go unpunished. He was the last person to see her alive and he didn’t have to hurt her.
Noticias Caracol reported that Poulos had traveled to Colombia three times in 2022. In May he visited for a day and then traveled with Trespalacios to Cancún, Mexico.
Bogotá security chief Aníbal Fernández told La FM that authorities were investigating the possibility that a second man may have been involved in the gruesome crime.