Two murders shocked the world of reggaeton and urban music in Medellín a week ago, and later throughout Colombia. In the early hours of June 8, the police found the body of Daniel Alejandro Velásquez, known in the community as Dr. Velasquez. He was lying shot in the head on the couch in El Parche, a building on his estate where that night he had received The Clooy, a rising star from the capital of Antioquia. An hour later, the uniformed officers found the body of his girlfriend, Astrid Sofía Riascos. She had been murdered, also shot in the head, while she was sleeping in the main house of the estate. It didn’t take long for condolences to arrive from famous singers with whom the producer worked. Maluma, Blessd and J Balvin couldn’t believe that this was the end of Dr. Velásquez.
The butler is the main suspect. Julián Quintero was the only one who stayed in El Parche with the victim after El Clooy and two companions left at 1:30 in the morning. Although he has denied the charges that the Prosecutor’s Office brought against him on Tuesday—aggravated homicide and illegal possession of weapons—he himself confessed hours after the crime that he was the murderer. The prosecutor in the case, Andrés Felipe Franco, said during a hearing that on June 8 he asked the accused if he had anything to add at the end of an interrogation. “I was Daniel Alejandro’s right-hand man and we even loved each other a lot. “I was the one who killed them both,” the butler responded.
On June 9, Julián recounted the alleged motive for the crime. He was not only the butler, but the uncle of Dr. Velasquez’s ex-wife. He and his mother, who also lived in the house, did not get along with the producer’s new partner and his family. When Dr. Velasquez asked his mother to leave the house at the request of his girlfriend, the butler says that he became blinded with the anger he felt. “I told him to respect and I shot,” he said.
Lot 18 of La Acuarela
The music producer and his girlfriend lived on lot 18 of the La Acuarela complex, in a rural area of Envigado (Antioquia). There lived two families who had everything to get along with. On one side were Astrid Sofía’s mother and stepfather, who lived in a studio a few meters from the main house. On the other hand, there were the relatives of Juliana, ex-wife of the music producer and mother of his children. The butler Julián, Juliana’s uncle, had arrived at the beginning of 2023 and lived in another building within the same lot. His mother, Blanca Agudelo, lived on the first floor of the main house. Neither party felt comfortable with the other.
The Prosecutor’s Office made reference to the tensions, with the testimony given by the murdered woman’s brother. “My sister treated Julián very well. But obviously he felt that [ella] He was taking the place from his niece Juliana. And that was noticeable. It was obvious that Julián and Doña Blanca did not like us,” the prosecutor read. Edwin Forero, Astrid Sofía’s stepfather, commented something similar in another testimony: “I felt that Julián and his mother were uncomfortable with our presence. “With the actions they did, they made us understand that they did not like us.”
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Julián Quintero, the alleged murderer, was the boss of the estate. The general secretary of Velásquez’s production company told the Prosecutor’s Office that he was the one who gave entry to the visitors and had access to the money that was there. Although he did not have a blood relationship with the producer, but rather with his ex-wife, the guests knew him as The uncle. For them, according to testimonies collected by the victims’ representative, he had the full trust of Velásquez. He was in charge of getting the beers for the meetings and, according to testimonies, he knew where the four weapons in the house were.
The murderers
On the night of the crime there was a meeting in El Parche. Clooy arrived after nine at night with his driver and a friend. According to what one of the visitors told the victims’ representative, Julián gave them access and allegedly made them see that he was armed. The guests shared several beers with Velásquez and Julián himself, and were still there after midnight, according to the testimony of Astris Sofía’s brother, who saw them when he entered El Parche to go to the bathroom. According to the victims’ lawyer, one of the guests told him that it was a meeting different from the others: the butler did not leave, as usual, and remained armed the entire time.
There are no certainties about what happened next. The guard at the main gate of the complex told the Prosecutor’s Office that Julián called him at 3:47 in the morning to ask him to contact the Police and not let anyone out. Upon arrival, the uniformed officers saw Velásquez’s body. There was a vanilla and a projectile from a nine millimeter pistol nearby. Later, they found Astrid Sofía’s body. When she was shot, she was sleeping in her bedroom on the second floor of the main house. She had four wounds: according to the prosecutor, it is likely that she was weighing her head on one of her arms and that is why there were two entrance holes and two exit holes.
Astrid Sofía’s brother has testified that the police woke him up at 5:45 in the morning. He and the other residents of the lot were isolated while the uniformed officers carried out inspections of the bodies in El Parche and the main house. They didn’t know anything in the first minutes because neither Julián nor the police told them what was happening. When they found out, they suspected the butler. They didn’t understand why he didn’t scream for help when he found the bodies.
The most official version
Julián testified before the Prosecutor’s Office on Sunday, June 9, the day after the crime. For the accusatory entity, it is the most reliable version of what happened on June 8 because it recounts a succession of events in which he himself confesses to being the murderer of the music producer and his partner. However, the defense alleged during Friday’s hearing that there were several irregularities in the interrogation, including the advice of a lawyer who allegedly pressured him to testify what she revealed with the promise that he would not be detained.
The version provided by the Prosecutor’s Office is that the victim and his alleged murderer were left alone after the three guests left, at 1:30 in the morning. “Daniel Alejandro asked me if there was anything to drink, because he had run out of whiskey. I brought him brandy and told him that he was very excited. “He told me to sit down and asked my opinion about the meeting he had had,” the butler told the Prosecutor’s Office. Everything was going well until they changed the topic of conversation. According to Julián, the producer asked his mother to stop living with them. “I asked him why and he told me that Astrid Sofía had told him that my mother treated her badly.”
The expletives began. According to the alleged murderer, Velásquez spoke ill of his mother, his sister and his niece. He allegedly told her that he wanted them on the street and that the one he was in charge of was his girlfriend. “I was already angry, I had my drinks on me. “My mother is a 72-year-old grandmother, how could I treat her like that?” Quintero said. “I exploded, I took out the gun that was there in El Parche and I shot Daniel Alejandro. Blinded by anger and with drinks, I told him to respect and I shot.”
Then it was for Astrid Sofía, who was allegedly responsible for the music producer’s decision to kick out his family. He found her sleeping in the main house and shot her. It was then that she realized what she had done. “I reconsidered and got off quickly. Not know what to do. She was in anguish, she had already assimilated the mess she had made,” she recalled to the prosecutor. He decided to go to her house, look for a traumatic pistol and shoot it at an alleged silhouette to use it as an alibi. He threw the murder weapon into a bush and called the police.
The other versions
The alleged murderer has given all kinds of versions about what happened. The first thing he told the uniformed officers was that he had left Velásquez alone, in El Parche. The barking of some dogs made him leave the building, he said, and he saw that the lights in his house were on. He says that he went to turn them off and that, when he returned, he saw his boss dead on the couch. He then decided to go see the children, whom he found well. Then he went to Astrid Sofía’s room and saw that she “was lying down, covered, as if she were sleeping.” He argued that her blankets prevented him from seeing that she was dead. As he left, he saw the silhouette of an alleged intruder in the distance and shot him.
But that same night he gave other versions, which increased suspicions. He told the butler of the lot next door that he had found his boss dead after going to get some drinks—not to turn off some lights. He didn’t mention any silhouettes to her. He informed the manager of Velásquez’s production company, according to the company secretary, that there had been a fight in El Parche during the meeting with El Clooy and his companions. He called Juliana, her niece and the victim’s ex-wife, to tell her that he had killed Velásquez and Astris Sofía, and to ask her to forgive him.
These inconsistencies complicate their situation. For the prosecutor, the butler’s surrender “was not so voluntary” because it took several hours and he “wanted to divert the investigation” in the first moments. He only confessed when he saw that he was cornered, according to the judicial official. “He did not urgently and immediately announce what was happening. He rather made sure that the victims were dead so that he could then begin to create his story, which did not work out. Well, he invented so many that his family and friends began to suspect him,” the prosecutor remarked during the hearing.
The defense, for its part, pointed out other details on Friday that could have to do with the crime. According to the lawyer, Velásquez had received threats a year ago and had ended his contract with Blessd on bad terms. In addition, some witnesses reported that valuable items were missing when they searched the house after the two murders.
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