Divorced dad admits to stuffing Colombian DJ girlfriend in suitcase — but can’t recall killing her: ‘I put Valentina into the garbage’
A divorced Texas dad accused of killing his Colombian DJ girlfriend during sex testified on Wednesday that he could not remember strangling her while high on drugs — but he admitted to stuffing the woman’s body in a suitcase and tossing it in the trash.
John Poulos, 36, took the stand in court in the Colombian capital of Bogota and described the moment he claimed he woke up to find 23-year-old Valentina Trespalacios dead in bed next to him — with a zip tie the couple had used as a sex toy tightened around her neck, reported CBS58.
“I tried to wake up Valentina, and she didn’t respond,” Poulos said through a Spanish translator. “When I initially saw her, I knew right away that something was wrong. She was very pale.”
“I just completely broke down. This was a girl that I loved,” he added.
Poulos, a father of three working as an investor with a securities company, said he had spoken to the popular young DJ with a large Instagram following every day for nine months leading up to his ill-fated trip to Colombia to meet her family in January 2023.
Poulos met the glamorous brunette 12 years his junior on a dating app in 2022 and had planned to marry her.
“I loved her,” he told the court. “So, imagine killing someone that you loved.”
Poulos said he and Trespalacios did drugs together and washed them down with alcohol — a combination he claimed gave him a bad reaction and impaired both his judgment and memory on the night of Jan. 22, 2023.
“I’d never done drugs before I met Valentina,” he said. “My guess is what happened, I was in a drug-induced, alcohol-induced… I wasn’t completely lucid at that time, and I don’t know if I did it, I don’t know if she did it.”
Poulos, however, did admit to making a “horrible decision” to dispose of his girlfriend’s body and flee, which he blamed on his panicked state.
“I decided to try to escape and I put her body into the blue suitcase that I had brought,” he said from the stand. “That’s when I put Valentina into the garbage.”
A homeless man rummaging through the dumpster near Bogota’s main airport later made the gruesome discovery and alerted police.
An autopsy found that the 23-year-old woman died from “mechanical asphyxia,” or “strangulation,” reported The City Paper Bogota.
Poulos tried to excuse his actions by saying that he was facing a “life or death” situation.
“If I go to prison, I’m likely to be killed there,” he recalled thinking. “If I go to trial, I didn’t think my rights would be observed,” he said. “But either way, I regret making that decision to put her in the suitcase.”
After dumping Trespalacios’ body, Poulos fled to Panama, where he was busted four days later while trying to board a flight to Turkey. His alleged plan was to travel to the small Balkan country of Montenegro, which does not have an extradition treaty with either the US or Colombia.
Instead, the American was extradited to Colombia to face charges in his girlfriend’s killing.
If convicted of the charge of femicide, which refers to the killing of a woman by an intimate partner, Poulos could face up to 50 years in a Colombian prison.
