Venezuelan rapper Canserbero, considered by Rolling Stone magazine as the best rapper in Spanish, did not commit suicide in 2015, but was murdered, the prosecution revealed on Tuesday, after reopening the case.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab presented to the press videos containing the confessions of the “two assassins” of Tyrone Gonzalez, known as Canserbero, and explained in detail the circumstances of the musician’s death at 26 years old.
The prosecution reopened the investigation in November. The exhumation of the singer’s body and a new autopsy determined that Canserbero had not thrown himself from the 10th floor of a building in Maracay (north-center), just after stabbing his friend Carlos Molnar during a fight.
In one of the videos released by Mr. Saab, Natalia Amestica, Carlos Molnar’s wife, describes drugging them both, then stabbing them several times.
She then called her brother Guillermo to “help” her cover up the double murder. The two staged a fight between Canserbero and his friend – hitting his corpse – then threw Canserbero’s body into the void.
The sister and brother paid bribes to the police officers who arrived on the scene to support the suicide theory, according to the prosecutor.
“Everything was done, in cold blood, with premeditation,” he said.
According to him, the new investigation made it possible to determine that the motive for the crime was a dispute over a large sum of money after a tour of Argentina and Chile financed by the Amestica.
Six people are in custody and several are on the run, according to the prosecutor.
The prosecution notably issued arrest warrants against six of the seven police officers who first arrived at the scene of the crime. The seventh police officer involved died in 2018.
“They received $10,000, changed the site — the crime scene” and acted “to favor the suicide theory,” Mr. Saab said.
The prosecution also ordered the arrest of a forensic doctor and two prosecutors who had participated in the initial investigations.
A trial will take place, but Mr. Saab did not specify a date.
“Canserbero can rest in peace,” he concluded, making a comparison with the murder of American rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996 in the United States.
“What a difference with the debt that the American judicial system owes to an artist, a musical genius, like Tupac Shakur (…) Here, the Venezuelan judicial system solved the problem, it brought to justice all the actors of this case,” he said.
In November in the United States, the suspect in the hip-hop legend’s murder pleaded not guilty, after being charged in September. The trial is scheduled to take place in 2024.