Editor’s note: This article is based entirely on publicly reported accounts of the Valentina Trespalacios case, primarily the reporting of Latin America Reports, which drew on Colombian press outlets and official statements. It is not a judicial record and does not claim to establish facts beyond what has been reported. John Poulos was convicted by a Colombian court; the details below reflect what prosecutors, witnesses, and the press reported during and after his trial.
On the morning of January 22, 2023, police in Bogotá found the body of a young woman inside a blue suitcase left in a dumpster in the Los Cámbulos neighborhood in the city’s northwest. According to press reports, she was Valentina Trespalacios, an up-and-coming DJ from Bogotá whose relationship with an American man named John Poulos would become one of the most closely reported femicide cases in Colombia’s recent history.
Trespalacios was 21, according to Latin America Reports. Her mother, Laura Hidalgo, told reporters that her daughter had accomplished many of her goals at a young age — “My daughter was only a 21-year-old girl,” Hidalgo said, in remarks carried by Colombian media. Hidalgo also described the relationship that would end her daughter’s life: she said Trespalacios “lived with constant anxiety because she had to report to Poulos.”
The two had met through social media, according to reports, and had been in a relationship for roughly eight months. According to Hidalgo, Poulos became progressively more jealous and controlling over that period — and, according to the prosecutors’ investigation, he hired a private investigator to follow his then-partner.
The night of January 21
Trespalacios was killed on January 21, 2023, after going to a nightclub with Poulos, according to reports. What happened next was described by the driver who picked the couple up and drove them back to their apartment. According to the driver’s account, cited by Noticias Caracol and relayed by Latin America Reports, Trespalacios showed him a note on her phone reading “Help, I am in danger” — before Poulos got into the car.
The driver asked her if she was okay. Then, according to the driver’s account, Poulos asked if everything was alright. Trespalacios did not respond. It was, as far as public reporting goes, the last cry for help she is known to have made.
The suitcase
The following day, her body was found inside the blue suitcase in the Los Cámbulos dumpster. According to reports, it was the same suitcase that surveillance cameras had recorded Poulos leaving with that same morning — the morning her body was discovered. Police found, per forensic reports, that Trespalacios had died by mechanical asphyxiation, with bruising reported on her neck, nose, and mouth. Those findings, according to reports, supported the police theory that she had been beaten and strangled.
By then, Poulos had left Colombia. Colombian authorities announced a 20-million-peso reward — roughly $5,000 USD — for information leading to his capture, and Interpol issued a red notice. According to reports, he was arrested in Panama on January 25, before he could board a flight to Istanbul, and was extradited to Colombia. Investigators noted he had purchased two tickets — one to Istanbul and another to Brazil — which some said was an attempt to mislead them.
Initially, according to reports, Poulos claimed in an unofficial statement that Trespalacios had been murdered by drug cartels, and that he had fled to Panama because his own life was in danger.
The trial
The official trial began on October 23, 2023, nine months after Trespalacios was killed. According to reports, Poulos initially refused to participate, sending a note from Bogotá’s La Picota prison — but later began appearing in court as the judge requested. His defense maintained he had not committed femicide nor planned to kill his partner, arguing instead for culpable homicide, the reckless and unintentional killing of a person.
On March 6, 2024, according to reports, Poulos admitted his role in Trespalacios’s death, telling the court it had resulted from what he described as the couple’s routine practice of erotic asphyxiation. He claimed they had engaged in sexual activity after consuming drugs and alcohol, and that the following day he unsuccessfully tried to wake her. He admitted that stuffing her body into a suitcase — which he said he did out of fear of Colombia’s justice system — had been a mistake.
The judge rejected the defense’s framing. “How can they say that it was involuntary homicide? It was a homicide for domination, for control,” the judge stated, according to reports. The judge pointed to a dead woman found at Poulos’s bedside with bruises on her face, head, and forearms, and said panic about being caught — not grief — was what made him start planning his escape, after first making sure to hide evidence and stuff her into a suitcase.
Poulos was found guilty of aggravated femicide, concealment, and alteration or destruction of evidence, and sentenced to 42 years in a Colombian prison. He will receive no judicial privileges such as house arrest or conditional freedom, and will be deported from Colombia once he has served his sentence, in 2067.
A national crisis
The Trespalacios case unfolded against a backdrop Colombia’s own institutions describe as a femicide crisis. Colombia introduced femicide as a judicial term in 2015; according to law professor Farid Samir Benavides Vanegas of Universidad de Los Andes, cited by Latin America Reports, the law recognizes homicide as carrying an aggravating factor when it is committed simply and solely because the victim is a woman.
The numbers behind the alarm are stark. According to an Externado University investigation, the monthly femicide average in Colombia between January 2018 and March 2023 was 51 women; from January to April 2024, the Colombian Femicide Observatory registered 271 femicides, raising the average to 67.8 per month. In May 2024 the government signed Law 2356, establishing that those convicted of femicide will not be entitled to benefits.
For readers of this site — people who travel, date, and build relationships across borders — the reported details of this case carry a warning that has nothing to do with geography. The controlling behavior described by Trespalacios’s mother, the private investigator allegedly hired to track her, the phone note shown to a stranger in a moment of fear: these are escalation patterns the reporting puts in plain view. A partner who demands constant check-ins and monitors a woman’s movements is a partner to name, out loud, before a trip, before a move, before it is too late. Valentina Trespalacios told a driver she was in danger. It is worth asking, every time we read a story like hers, who in our own circles might need to hear that they are believed.
Disclosure: This article is based on publicly reported accounts, including the reporting of Latin America Reports and the Colombian press outlets it cited. Nothing here is stated as independently established fact. John Poulos was convicted of aggravated femicide in a Colombian court; the case details above reflect what was reported by prosecutors, witnesses, and the media. If you or someone you know is experiencing controlling or abusive behavior from a partner, local domestic-violence resources and hotlines can help.
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