Acclaimed Rapper Who Fell From Window Was Murdered

In its October 2023 ranking of the top 50 greatest rappers in Spanish of all time, Rolling Stone gave the top slot to Canserbero, a Venezuelan rapper who died at age 26 in 2015. His name is back in the headlines, this time because his former manager has admitted killing him and his producer. The BBC reports that Venezuela's attorney general on Tuesday released a video statement given by Natalia Améstica in which she says she drugged then stabbed the men and, assisted by her brother and advised by intelligence agents, pushed Canserbero's body out a 10th-story window.

The death of Canserbero, born Tyrone González, was initially ruled a suicide, with authorities believing he killed producer Carlos Molnar—with whom Améstica was in a relationship—in a knife fight then leapt to his death. The case was reopened last month at his family's pleading. In the video, Améstica says her anger was born during the rapper's Chilean tour, during which Molnar allegedly told her she wouldn't get a cut of the profits or be paid back for the plane tickets she bought; she also reportedly learned Canserbero wanted a new manager. "This hurt me a lot and left me with a lot of internal pain," she says in the video.

Améstica says that on Jan. 19, 2015, the men came to her apartment and she made them a tranquilizer-spiked tea. She says she first stabbed Molnar, and that a worried but sleepy Canserbero witnessed the scene. "I explained that it was an attack of rage, that I hadn't been able to control myself. He collapsed on the sofa asleep and I stabbed him twice in the side." Then she phoned her brother, Guillermo Améstica.

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She says Guillermo Améstica showed up with three members of Venezuela's Bolivarian National Intelligence Service; Billboard reports the officers advised them on how to stage the scene so it would look like a murder-suicide in exchange for $1,000 each. That meant stabbing Molnar additional times and pummeling Canserbero's face with a pipe. The BBC reports Guillermo Améstica corroborated her story in his own video statement and alleged they also paid forensic detectives who found the scene suspicious $10,000 to back up their story. (More murder stories.)