A Venezuelan rapper whose sudden death in 2015 was blamed on suicide was actually drugged, stabbed, and tossed out a window by his then-manager, according to video statements released by Venezuelan Attorney-General Tarek William Saab.
Natalia Améstica, the former manager of rapper and singer Canserbero, and her brother Guillermo appeared in video testimony this week apparently confessing to having staged the star’s death as a suicide. The bombshell twist comes eight years after the case was officially ruled a murder-suicide, with shocked fans told Canserbero had murdered his producer before leaping to his death from the 10th floor.
The investigation into the 26-year-old’s death was reopened last month.
“I am making this video to publicly confess my responsibility for the double homicide of Carlos Molnar and Tirone González ‘Canserbero,’” Améstica says in the first video. She goes on to say that she’d become infuriated when she learned from the rapper’s producer Molnar that she wouldn’t be getting paid for his tour in Chile, despite organizing it, and that Canserbero wanted to fire her as manager.
“This hurt me a lot and left me with a lot of internal pain,” she said, explaining that soon after, the “chance arose” to make tea for both Canserbero and Molnar when they visited her at home.
That’s when she said she laced the tea with a tranquilizer, one that prosecutors said led to both men “falling asleep within minutes” after drinking it.
She then stabbed both men repeatedly, according to her testimony, telling a “sleepy” Canserbero beforehand that she wasn’t “able to control myself.”
“He [Canserbero] collapsed on the sofa asleep and I stabbed him twice in the side,” she said, adding that she then called Guillermo to ask for help cleaning up the scene. He struck the rapper with a pipe, disfiguring his face in an attempt to make it appear as if Canserbero and Molnar had been involved in a fight with each other.
“Then we were told how to throw him out of the window to complete the murder-suicide scene,” Améstica said, claiming three officers from the Sebin intelligence agency helped them manipulate the scene in exchange for a fee. Guillermo, in his own videotaped statement, backed up her version of events.
Saab said several members of law enforcement are subject to arrest warrants for allegedly covering up the crime.
Claudia Améstica, Guillermo’s daughter, and Natalia’s niece, disputed the claims shared by prosecutors, alleging in a video shared on social media that her relatives had been coerced into giving false confessions.
“I am addressing the media to strongly reject the statements given by the prosecutor today. Mr. Prosecutor, you know that those statements that you made, both from my aunt and my father, are false. You know it,” she said.
