An American man on trial in Colombia for the murder of his girlfriend DJ told a judge that he stuffed her body into a suitcase and abandoned it inside a trash container in a panic before fleeing the country.
John Poulos, 36, is accused of strangling Valentina Trespalacios, 23, in a house he rented in Bogotá during his visit there in January 2023.
He participated in a hearing held Wednesday inside a conference room at the jail where he is being held and said: ‘I’ve been here for a year and I haven’t been able to tell my side.’
Poulos revealed that he and Trespalacios used drugs together and that he strangled her with jewelry around her neck while they had sex. He then used a knife to cut the accessory.
Poulos, a divorced father of three from Wisconsin, told the judge he woke up to find Trespalacios dead in the bed next to him. He admitted to being high on drugs and alcohol and claimed that in his confusion he panicked and tried to hide the body from him.
The American met Trespalacios on a dating site in 2022 and went on vacation with her to Cancún before starting a long-distance relationship and flying to Bogotá to meet her family for the first time last year.
John Poulos (left) faces charges in Bogotá, Colombia, for the murder of his girlfriend Valentina Trespalacios (right) on January 22, 2023. He appeared before a judge on Wednesday and confessed to putting her body in a suitcase and then abandoning it in a garbage container before fleeing the country.
Valentina Trespalacios was beaten and strangled to death before being stuffed into a suitcase that was dumped in a construction waste container near a park in Bogotá, Colombia, on January 22, 2023.
He recalled accompanying Trespalacios to a DJ performance at a club on the night of January 21, 2023, and returning to the rented venue during the early morning hours of January 22 to have sex.
Poulos told the judge he did not know how the couple returned to the apartment on the north side of the Colombian capital.
‘I don’t remember how I got to the apartment. “I remember waking up with my clothes and shoes on,” she said. ‘Valentina was by my side… I was in a drug and alcohol induced state.’
Poulos said he got out of bed to take a shower and noticed Trespalacios was unresponsive when he returned to his bed.
‘I saw Valentina, I tried to wake her up, but she didn’t respond. He was devastated, he loved her, he had been with her for nine months. Imagine killing someone you love. The room was spinning,” she said.
An autopsy report showed that Valentina Trespalacios was strangled and beaten
A homeless man was searching through a garbage container (seen here) in the Bogotá neighborhood of Los Cámbulos when he discovered the suitcase with the body of Valentina Trespalacios on January 22, 2023.
Poulos acknowledged that he had made ‘a horrible decision’ when he noticed that the young woman had no vital signs.
A surveillance camera mounted near the elevator showed Poulos pushing a cart containing luggage, including the suitcase where he used to hide Trespalacios’ body.
“I tried to escape from her and put her in the blue suitcase,” he said. “I regret that decision.”
A homeless man looking for recyclable materials made the gruesome discovery and alerted the police.
Poulos described the period between the time he hid Trespalacio’s body in the suitcase and fled the country as “a day of panic” and that he had “never been in a situation like that before.”
He walked away with the suitcase in the trunk of the car, wondering what to do with the body of the Trespalacios, who wanted to marry him.
“I thought about what to do with Valentina’s body,” Poulos said. ‘I headed to the airport. I passed the car rental place, saw a dumpster, stopped to see if there were any cameras. I put Valentina’s body there.
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 January 24, 2023, two days after his body was found inside a suitcase in a garbage container in the Colombian capital, Bogotá.
Valentina Trespalacios (pictured) was dating John Poulos for almost a year before his violent death in January 2023. The couple met online in 2022 and later met in person in Cancun.
After throwing the suitcase in a trash container in southern Bogotá, Poulos told the judge that he went to buy a new suitcase and then returned the rented one.
He went to El Dorado International Airport, where he bought a flight to Panama City, with a connection to Istanbul. Once in Istanbul, he had plans to board another flight to Montenegro, which does not have an extradition treaty with Colombia.
However, authorities spotted him at Tocumen International Airport on January 24 and arrested him before extraditing him to Colombia.
“There is a perception in the United States that in Colombia the justice system and the police are very corrupt and I felt that I was not going to have a fair trial,” he said. ‘I was still under the influence of alcohol and drugs, but I thought about saving my life, that’s why I tried to escape.’
Poulos’ surprising comments come just over a month after he gave an interview to Colombian weekly Semana and claimed he was “in love” with Trespalacios, adding that he had evidence that would allow him to be acquitted of any crime.
During a hearing in September 2023, Poulos told a judge that he was not responsible for Trespalacios’ death, claiming that his family and his acquittals, who were interviewed by prosecutors, had been lying all along and wrongfully accusing him of be responsible for the gruesome murder. .
Prosecutors have always alleged that Poulos had sexual relations with Trespalacios in the early morning hours of January 22, 2023 and then beat and strangled her to death.
They have accused Poulos of aggravated femicide and concealment of evidence and are asking for a 50-year prison sentence.