Idols of Vallenato and Assassins: Figures of Colombian Music Involved in Horrible Crimes

Last week, Two singers of the traditional vallenato genre have been involved in homicide investigations which, of course, has become a matter of national importance. It is about Andrés Alfonso Zuleta, son of poncho Zuleta and Alberto & # 39; Beto & # 39; Zabaleta. Their cases are reminiscent of legal problems similar to those faced by other idols of Colombian popular music, some of which have been condemned.

A few days after the legendary festival of Vallenata, the most recognized of this kind and cultural heritage of the country, Caesar's police confirmed Assbadination of Ilina Guerra, 38 years old. The woman was returning home after leaving a gym on her property, when she was intercepted by a motorcyclist who shot her. The crime shocked the city and many more after they accused Zuleta.

After the broadcast of the news, the journalist Gonzalo Guillén wrote on his Twitter account that Andrés Alfonso Zuleta, son of singer Poncho Zuleta, He had threatened to kill Guerra during the festival, publicly, accusing him of infidelity. Several national media claim that they had a sentimental relationship, although the accused denies it and is ready to cooperate with the authorities.

On the other hand, a few weeks ago, it was learned the murder of the farmer and businessman José & # 39; Ñeñe & # 39; Hernández, husband of the former Colombian Miss María Mónica Urbina, Brazil. Police in this country claim that the crime was committed in the midst of a robbery aimed at stealing a Rolex watch, during which the 53-year-old man was shot by a bullet in the belly .

But this is not the only time Hernandez has experienced a similar situation. On three occasions, he had already survived three attacks in September 2011 before marrying Urbina. And although the couple has already been a victim of Rolex robbers in Bogotá, the Colombian authorities have badyzed another hypothesis in which he and the singer Alberto & Beto & # 39; Zabaleta They are the subject of an investigation for the murder of Oscar Rodríguez, son of the lender of Valledupar, Carlos Rodríguez.

"There are people who know each other and who are indebted to me, they are people from Cesar and La Guajira, they call themselves José Hernández, alias El Ñeñe, Alberto López and Mr Alberto Beto & Zabaleta, "said Rodríguez. at the prosecutor's office according to the newspaper The heraldor In the same case, the capuco Marquitos Figueroa, who had instructed the gang under contract to kill the lender, and who had killed his son by mistake.

These cases are reminiscent of other criminal investigations into homicides involving two vallenato singers, such as Jorge Oñate and Diomedes Díaz, as well as other popular Colombian genres, such as Lisandro Meza and Carlos Humberto Valencia.

The most controversial and most memorable case is the death of the young man. Doris Adriana Niño in 1997, one of the couples of the deceased singer Diomedes Diaz, who was at the time already one of the Colombian artists who sold the most records in the history of the country and who, to this day, remains one of the most representative figures of vallenato.

Diomede was a proud womanizer, an alcoholic and a cocaine addict. He had many legal problems related to the maintenance of several children, the exact number of which is unknown so far, as there are some who have never recognized him. He had other financial problems due to the non-respect of the contracts in the concerts presentations. And he maintained a public friendship with drug traffickers and paramilitaries.

That was not enough for Niño to stop admiring him. A singer's musician introduced them and they established a relationship despite the fact that Díaz kept another one with Luz Consuelo Martínez. On the night of May 14, 1997, an escort of Diomedes sought her home in Soacha, south of Bogotá, to lead her to a meeting in the luxurious apartment vallenatero. It was the last time his family had seen him.

Early in the morning of May 15, three peasants reported to the police that they had seen a man get off a white car to launch a bulge that looked like a person and some clothes, by the side of the road which connects the municipalities of Tunja and Cómbita. The authorities have found the body of a woman without identification, to whom Sandra was put, and they gave him as a prostitute. A few days later, a group of bad workers claimed the body so that it would not be buried in a mbad grave nor be buried.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Niño, the brother of Doris Adriana, began to announce in the media his disappearance and appointed the famous singer Diomedes Díaz for being the last to see her alive. In the midst of reports, one of the prostitutes recognized the body and warned a television channel. A photo that was based in Legal Medicine confirmed that "Sandra" was actually the lover of Vallenatero.

The body was exhumed in a press release published on national television and the opinion of Legal Medicine determined that Doris Adriana had died as a result of a cardiac arrest following a cocaine overdose. But two years later, his family asked them to review the badysis and they determined that she had died of mechanical suffocation and had the sperm of three different men in her bad and anus.

The DNA tests confirmed that the sperm belonged to Diomedes Diaz and his two bodyguards. In the singer 's version, Doris Adriana had become furious to learn that Luz Consuelo had become pregnant and had left her apartment in a state of intoxication. But the evidence and inconsistencies in the evidence have proven otherwise. The singer was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

So Diomedes decided to flee, and he was on the run for two years, they say he was protected by paramilitaries. He surrendered and a Valledupar judge reduced his sentence to six years, he only paid 3 years and 7 months under house arrest. Luz Consuelo Martínez, mother of three of her children and heiress of most of her fortune after her death in 2001, and the two escorts of the night were paid 10 months in prison for concealment.

In 2014, the singer Jorge Oñate was named by a witness at the trial by the badbadination of his cousin and politician Efraín Ovalle, who received several shots at the door of his house on February 25, 2012. The crime was committed two months after Nancy Zuleta, wife of the vallenatero, lost the elections to the mayor of the municipality of La Paz, in the department of Caesar. , which the victim refused to support.

"What they told me was that the dead were paid for by the Oñate, including the singer," said Manuel Ricardo Benavides, a man who managed the finances of the criminal group Los Urabeños, who was offered homicide money Another man who was offered the same work confirmed his statement. And the deceased's children also reported alleging "political purposes"

According to them, Oñate would have asked Ovalle, then deputy of Caesar, political support for his wife to remain as mayor, but he refused because he had already offered his support to another candidate. "One week after the elections, Jorge Luis entered our house and withdrew the insurance of a pistol and told us that he was going to kill us," said Efraín Ovalle Jr. at the trial. .

After an arduous investigation, the authorities confirmed that the crime was due to the political reprisals of opponents of Mr. Ovalle, by not supporting a candidate for mayor of La Paz, which had aroused the disagreement of several sectors of the region. But they failed to determine the responsibility of Jorge Oñate. The man-murderer, Jesús Villamizar Ibarra, said the "singer", was sentenced to 36 years and 4 months of imprisonment.

In 2008, Lisandro Meza, representative of coastal folklore, including vallenato, was arrested by the crime of Isabel María Pérez Guzmán, then the Morroa register of the Sucre Department, committed by badbadins on the 28th of June, 2001. In principle, the crime was tried at the FARC front line. but later, his relatives reported an altercation for an election in Palmito in October 2000.

Luz Maria Dominguez, wife of Meza, bid candidate for the city of Palmito, asked Perez for a favor with some paperwork in connection with a seemingly illegal procedure. The director of registration refused. Since then, he has received several death threats, according to his relatives. This was determined as the motive of the crime, which the singer would have ordered.

"When I spoke with the judge and said," You know me, I'm a singer, an artist, is not it? I am not a criminal, you must defend me. "Doctor, if you hurt me, I will kill you myself," recalls Meza during the show "Se tell me" from Caracol Televisión case A few days after his capture, the singer was released because his involvement in the murder was not proven.

In this same program, what Meza accepted was his friendship with the late capo Pablo Escobar, a leader of the Medellín cartel, whom he remembers helping him lift his family out of poverty and for whom he had entertained several of his parrandas. "A guy who has offered me so much has won, but I was in my music, I do not want to know anything about it, Pablo was rebellious, but he was a big humanitarian guy," he declared.

These are the most well-known and media related cases of the vallenato genus. But there are others that connect the singers of other popular music of Colombia. One of them is the Carlos Humberto Valencia, nicknamed by the media as the & # 39;singer of FARC & # 39;because at the beginning of his career he had been captured by the authorities who had at least threatened him 30 homicides took place in Bogotá, as hitman of this guerrilla.

Valencia, 25, joined the ranks of the insurgency at the age of 13. He is from Cartagena de Chairá, in the department of Caquetá. In 2005, he demobilized and began his career as a music singer. He charged an allowance that the state provided him for his entry into the reintegration program. At the same time, he was a paid badbadin and collector of extortions against merchants and transporters in Bogotá.

Another case is that of young people Juan Pablo Gutiérrez Molina, who at that time had already appeared in the national media, until he was found guilty of murdering his 78-year-old director, identified as Humberto Aristizábal Acosta. The neighbors of the apartment they shared said they heard a loud argument and beatings, then saw the singer lean out of the balcony with a half-Christ in his hand, bleeding and shouting that He had "killed the old man to bring out the demon".