Mother told court ‘I’ll never overcome it’; judge called pattern ‘alarming’
Louisiana state court Judge Nancy Miller on Monday sentenced Danette Colbert to 60 years in prison and co-defendant Rickey White to 45 years in connection with the February 2025 death of Adan Manzano, a Telemundo Kansas City reporter who was in the New Orleans area to cover the Super Bowl.
Colbert, 49, received 50 years for racketeering plus a consecutive 10 years for negligent homicide. White, 35, received 45 years for racketeering. The sentences came days after a jury in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, convicted both defendants on the charges, according to The Guardian.
Manzano, 27, was found dead in his hotel room in Kenner, Louisiana — the suburb that contains New Orleans’ international airport — days before the Kansas City Chiefs lost the Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles on February 9, 2025. The Jefferson Parish coroner’s office ruled the cause of death as positional asphyxiation; an autopsy found Xanax and alcohol in his system.
Prosecutors said the death was connected to a yearslong criminal enterprise that had targeted tourists in New Orleans’ French Quarter since 2012. The group allegedly lured victims with promises of sex before drugging and robbing them. A co-defendant, Christian Anderson, testified against Colbert and White at trial.
Manzano’s family addressed the court at Monday’s sentencing via videoconference. According to a statement from Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick’s office, Manzano’s father asked the court to impose the sentences the defendants deserved.
“May the laws of this country lock up the people that destroyed my life,” the father testified, according to the DA’s statement. “I respectfully ask that you give them the sentencing they deserve.”
Local news channel WVUE reported the father added: “They snatched his dreams, life and family as we were seeing him happy and successful.”
Manzano’s mother told the court: “I don’t want to say anything to the people that committed this crime, because they are beings of darkness, beings that don’t have God in their lives. But I don’t think they should go on with life causing harm and killing people — because I still can’t accept that Adan is not here … This loss, I’ll never overcome it. I don’t wish this on anybody, on any family.”
Cousin Carlos Castillo said, according to the Guardian: “I want to look you guys in the face and say that you should pay your entire life for this … Every time the cell opens and you cannot see the light, you think of my cousin.”
Manzano’s wife, Ashleigh Boyd, was killed in an April 2024 car crash in Topeka, Kansas. A Topeka judge found Todd W. Armstrong guilty of vehicular homicide, speeding and driving on the wrong side of the road after a one-day trial on September 21, the Guardian reported. The Kansas conviction came four days after the Louisiana jury’s verdict. Manzano and Boyd’s daughter, Eleanor, now three, is being raised by her maternal grandparents.
Months after Manzano’s death, Colbert had already received a separate 25-year prison sentence after being classified as a habitual offender for violating probation on a prior theft and fraud conviction.
At Monday’s sentencing, Miller told Colbert that her “behavior in this matter [is] quite alarming,” according to WVUE.
“You were indifferent to the impact that your actions had,” Miller said. “That is evident by your consistent pattern in your criminal history. Apparently, you’ve been doing this for quite some time. It’s finally caught up to you with the death of one of your victims.”