Influencer Murdered by “Best Friend” who was Secretly OBSESSED With Her

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Cordoba, Molly Marcelo, Neesa Sto
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Cass Lazero, Cordoba
3. 20:00 – 25:00: Cass Lazero
4. 35:00 – 40:00: Cass Lazero

Notable quotes from "Influencer Murdered by “Best Friend” who was Secretly OBSESSED With Her"

• The world. She had everything going for her in life. But then one day, she gets close to a classmate named Neesa Sto.

  about Neesa Sto · at 0:30

• Catalina Gutierrez was born on the 7th of February, 2003, and she grew up in the city of Cordoba in Argentina, where the rest of today's case takes place.

  about Cordoba · at 2:51

• As well, Catalina got herself a boyfriend, someone by the name of Lazero. And she's posting her and her boyfriend doing cute little things and like going on dates and stuff. And again, you can tell how close they are.

  about Cass Lazero · at 6:10

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Cass Lazero — Person · 3 mentions · first at 6:14
• Neesa Sto — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:34
• Molly Marcelo — Person · 1 mention · first at 3:04
  Now, growing up, Catalina had a pretty normal childhood. She lived with her parents, Nora and Marcelo, as well as her older sister, Lucia. Her dad worked as an architect and…

Places & events

• Cordoba — Place · 2 mentions · first at 2:56

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Hey everyone, welcome back. I hope you're all doing well. So, for today's case, we are heading to Argentina and we are covering a story of a young influencer whose life ended in complete tragedy. And this was 21-year-old Catalina Gutierrez. She had hundreds of thousands of followers across social media platforms. She was on Instagram Tik Tok, posting content, like lifestyle content about herself, posting about her family. She would post like lip-sync dancing videos. She would also post herself singing. She was very talented.

0:28 She did brand deals. She traveled across the world. She had everything going for her in life. But then one day, she gets close to a classmate named Neesa Sto. And he quickly became obsessed with Catalina. And Nesa was also hiding a lot of dark secrets. He had a very troubled past and it would soon all end in the most tragic of circumstances. And that is what we are covering today. So, let's jump in. And I just want to give a huge thank you to today's sponsor and that is HelloFresh. And if you guys have never tried HelloFresh before, trust me when I say this, it is a gamecher. The meals taste absolutely incredible. I recently cooked the one pot ka sweet potato doll and it tasted so so good. Like I cannot even describe how good it was. It was also incredibly easy to make. It saved me and my husband Ashley so much time.

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2:49 And now, let's jump into today's case. Catalina Gutierrez was born on the 7th of February, 2003, and she grew up in the city of Cordoba in Argentina, where the rest of today's case takes place. Now, growing up, Catalina had a pretty normal childhood. She lived with her parents, Nora and Marcelo, as well as her older sister, Lucia. Her dad worked as an architect and her mom was a stay-at-home mom. And when it came to her older sister, Lucia, Catalina and her sister were so close. They weren't just sisters. They had an incredibly strong bond. They were best friends.

3:22 They did everything together. They never argued. They never fell out. Catalina also had a huge passion for music. She loved singing, playing the guitar. She would also perform in local bars and restaurants. And she's really talented. and she inherited this passion from her dad and they would perform duets together. Catalina and her dad are also incredibly close.

3:56 They, just, seem, like, a, very, close-knit family. They all love and care for one another, but they also love to spend time with one another. And eventually as Catalina grew into her teenage years there was one thing that soon became clear and that is that Catalina was becoming a proper influencer. Because by this time, Catalina had been posting on social media for a very long time. If you just look at her Instagram page, her posts date back to 2014 when Catalina was just 11 years old. And she's just posting regular content from the beginning. She's just posting like herself and pictures of her with her dad and like performing and playing guitar.

4:34 And you can see that her posts as she's getting older, she's basically just posting about her life. She posts about partying and her friends and traveling and just regular things. She also posts a load of videos of her singing and playing guitar because that was a huge passion of hers. And her Instagram following just started to grow and grow. And something that I did notice about Catalina's Instagram page is that it doesn't look like she intended to become an influencer. That wasn't her goal. She was just using social media like a regular person, posting about her life and she just seemed to gather a following. It was very, very organic.

5:11 But as her Instagram started to grow she started gaining a lot of followers on Instagram. Eventually, she would have over 100,000 followers on just Instagram alone. So when Catalina's Instagram following was growing and growing and she could see, oh my god, like where are all these people coming from? Like I'm becoming an influencer. Over time, her content did start to change. It did start to become more influencerlike content. So she started posting more strategically. She started posting more lifestyle content, more selfies, more like Tik Tok, Instagram trend videos more fashion content. You know the kind of content that I'm talking about. She also created herself a Tik Tok where she was posting like the lip-s sync videos and the dance challenges on Tik Tok as well. You can see content of her with her family, especially her dad. And she also posts a lot of her playing guitar and singing. And her following on Tik

6:01 Tok started to really grow as well. She actually had 60,000 followers on Tik Tok. So across the two platforms, she has a lot of followers. Around this time as well, Catalina got herself a boyfriend, someone by the name of Lazero. And she's posting her and her boyfriend doing cute little things and like going on dates and stuff. And again, you can tell how close they are. They're just like a sweet teenage couple. And one other thing that I noticed when I was going through Catalina's social media is that she has a dog called Kitty. Very adorable little dog. And she is obsessed with her dog.

6:33 She adors her dog. Her dog is a whole world. And I feel like us pet owners can definitely relate to that. Her dog definitely crops up in a lot of her social media posts. And her dog did tragically pass away, I assume, of old age because I saw that she said that her dog was 16 years old and she got a tattoo of her dog to remember her dog. And I just think that that is so sweet. And the overall vibe that I got from Catalina is that she was just a young girl. She was living her life. She was thriving and she was just like a regular person. She just seemed close with her family, close with her friends, close with her boyfriend. She just seemed very humble, very caring, very sweet, not a bad bone in her body. And people seemed to really relate to her content. The fact that she did kind of seem normal.

7:18 She didn't seem like the typical like posy influencer, if you know what I mean. She was definitely more relatable. And as her success grew, she really did turn into like an influencer. She started getting brand deals. She started doing sponsored posts. She was doing promotions for things like jewelry makeup, clothes. She was earning a decent amount of money. She then used this money to travel around the world. She was going on all sorts of adventures which again she was sharing on social media. And again, it just seems like she was thriving. And then after finishing high school, she did go on to study at university. She went on to study architecture at university. She wanted to follow in her father's footsteps and she was studying at the university in her home city. So she was still living at home and when she went to university she met a fellow classmate by the name of Neestor Sto and this is unfortunately

8:12 where things are now going to go downhill very quickly. So who was Neester Sto? Well he was born on the 20th of December 2002 making him a Sagittarius and he was from the city of Barilo which is around a 20our drive from the city that Catalina grew up in. So they are from two completely different areas of Argentina. And growing up, Neestor had a pretty disturbed childhood. His mom had to work a lot and his dad was pretty absent. His dad actually walked out on the family when Neesa was just 2 years old. So he was raised pretty much just by his grandmother. And then his uncle became kind of like a father figure to him. So he didn't have an easy easy childhood.

8:55 But apart from that, he was described as a model student, had a very bright future ahead of him. He was charming, he was friendly, his grandmother was incredibly proud of how much he had achieved. And when he was 18 years old he packed up his bags and he went to the university in Cordoba, which is obviously where Catalina is from. And she's also at that same university. And Neestor was also studying architecture the exact same course that Catalina was studying. So Nesa and Catalina, they became classmates and they hit it off pretty much straight away. They became very, very good friends. They would always sit by each other in class always help out each other with homework. They would exchange notes. And I just want to make this very clear that they are currently just friends. This relationship is completely platonic. At least it was from Catalina's point of view. Catalina already had a boyfriend.

9:49 She had no romantic feelings towards Neestor at all. She was just very good friends with him. And the two of them they grew closer and closer. They really were fast becoming best friends. They were always found on campus together studying. Catalina would also pick Nesa up every single day to go to university because Nester didn't have a car. And Catalina also knew that Nester, he pretty much didn't know anybody in the city. She knew that he had moved from quite far away. He had no friends, no family in the city. And Catalina kind of just took him under her wing. She never wanted him to feel lonely and like he didn't have anybody. So she would take Nester over to her family home. And he was at her family home quite a lot. He would spend evenings there. He would have dinner there. Nester also got along with Catalina's family, her mom, dad and sister. Nester would actually sing duets with Catalina's dad. Catalina's

10:41 boyfriend also came over quite a lot as well. And there was no jealousy there. There was no love rivalry, love triangle going on because Catalina just saw Neesa as a friend. They were just friends. So Catalina's boyfriend didn't have anything to worry about. Her boyfriend didn't get jealous at all. And things at this moment are great. Everyone just seems to be getting along. Neesa and Catalina are fast becoming the best of friends. Nester seems like a great person. However, would it stay like this? No. No, it wouldn't. Because unfortunately, Nesa's actually not a great person. Because at this moment what Catalina didn't realize is that Neestor was hiding a very big secret.

11:25 And this is probably no surprise to any of you. You probably all saw it coming because I kept stressing over and over again that Catalina and Neesa are just friends. It's just platonic, especially from Catalina's point of view. Well, if you haven't guessed it already, Neesa is completely obsessed with Catalina. He is infatuated with Catalina. Pretty much in love with her. In his eyes, their relationship was not platonic at all. He was not in the friend zone. He was utterly obsessed and in love. And not that I should have to make this clear, but Catalina had never given him the impression that she felt the same. She never led him on. She never did any of that, so it's all one-sided. Neestor fantasized about a relationship with Catalina. He was constantly viewing all of her social media content. He would spend pretty much every hour that he could, pouring over her social media, obsessing over

12:26 her. He was pretty much online stalking her. There's no other way to describe it. That is all he would do on social media. He would just look at Catalina's social media pages. He would also write private love notes to her in his phone saying things like, "I don't know how I got so much affection for you. How did things turn out this way?" He also felt very sorry for himself in these notes. He referred to himself as the invisible friend of Catalina's. And he said that she didn't notice him in the way he saw her. And he started to spend every moment that he could with Catalina.

13:03 every single moment she had free time he would be there. He would pop up. It's almost like in his mind, he thought the more time he would spend with her, the more in her face he was, she would eventually fall in love with him. So, he was constantly asking for lifts here there, and everywhere just to occupy her time and take advantage of her good nature. Because Catalina, she was such a good person. She was such a good friend. She always took him anywhere that he wanted. again knowing that he was pretty much on his own in this city, knew that he had no one else to turn to but her.

13:37 So, she wanted to be that person for him that he could turn to. And Catalina didn't have a clue about this obsession that Neesa had with her. Like I've said a million times already, in her eyes they were just very good friends. And Nestor kept all of his feelings a secret because he knew that Catalina currently had a boyfriend. And if he confessed his feelings to her, he was worried that she would reject him. So instead, Neesa was just biding his time. He was just waiting for the boyfriend to disappear for them to break up, and then he was going to swoop in, be the night in shining armor. Catalina would see what was in front of her this whole time, and then they would be together, and it would be happily ever after. But Nesa being absolutely obsessed with Catalina was not the only dark secret that he was keeping because Catalina was not the first and only girl that Neesa had become obsessed with. Oh, no. No. He had

14:32 a pattern of this behavior. First of all, he did have a very obsessive personality and he had been becoming obsessed with girls for years and years. Catalina was just one name in a long list of girls that Neesa had become obsessed with. And this went as far back as when Neesa was in high school. There was one girl in his high school that he told her that he was in love with her she rejected him. And in response to this, he became an absolute nightmare for this girl. He would follow her all around the school. He was harassing her.

15:09 He was touching her without her consent. He was just harassing her, trying to get her to change her mind, to go out on a date with him. And he was just being incredibly inappropriate. He was basically stalking her. And the girl kept saying no. But Nesa would not leave her alone. He actually started threatening violence against her, saying that he would do anything to get her to go out on a date with him. And when this poor girl complained to her school that Nester was pretty much stalking harassing her, and threatening her, they couldn't care less. They actually said that it's just a boy thing. That there's actually nothing wrong here and that he will leave her alone eventually. And I'm like, are we being serious now? And it's like, no, no, no, no. This is complete harassment. This annoys me more than anything the saying, oh, boys will be boys. It's like, no, no, no. In no world is harassment, stalking, threatening

16:00 anybody acceptable from anyone. This is just teaching young boys, teenage boys that it is okay to sexually harass young girls. And it's also teaching girls that they just have to expect it and that there is nothing anyone can do about it and that there will be no consequences because it's just a boy thing. They'll grow out of it. It makes my blood boil. And this behavior from Nester, it continued because this was not the only girl that he did this to in his high school. He pretty much would pick a different girl every single week to become obsessed with, fall in love with and then stalk and harass that girl. And he used incredibly vile, disgusting language towards these young girls when they would reject him. He was incredibly misogynistic. He would comment negatively about girls appearance. He would say that girls were fat or ugly.

16:47 He would just put them down to make himself feel better. And whenever any of these girls reported him, reported the disgusting, vile things that he was saying, the school or whatever authority that they have reported him to would just say, "Oh, it's just a kid thing. Oh, just get over it. It's not a big deal. You just need to learn to ignore it. But the point is here is that nothing he's ever done about Nester and his behavior, and it's absolutely disgusting. So, from a very young age he learned that he could just get away with this. There was even one time when Nester went on a school trip. They went camping. And late one night when all of the students were asleep in their separate tents, Neestor snuck into the tent of a female student that he was currently obsessed with and he forced himself on this girl. Yeah, that's right. It really is going one step further now. He is now forcing himself

17:39 on another girl. So, he's possibly intending on sexually assaulting this girl, possibly raping this girl. And the girl screamed. Nester then got scared and ran out of the tent and thankfully no harm came to the girl. The girl did report Nester and this is pretty serious now. God knows what he could have actually done in that tent. But again she reported him and they could not have cared less. And I'm just like, you can't just ignore this behavior anymore. This is not just mean words being exchanged anymore. He is literally forcing himself on another human being. Why is nobody caring? Why is nobody doing anything?

18:15 And this creepy behavior, because he's getting away with it, it just continues. And it continues right up until he attends university. Because before Nester became obsessed with Catalina, he became obsessed with a string of other girls at the university before Catalina. And this next thing is just so so creepy. So the female students that he became obsessed with, he had all of their timets written on his wall in his bedroom and he would study their timetables. so he knew exactly where they were and that he could show up wherever they were. He was stalking multiple of his female classmates. He would just be following these young girls show up outside of their classrooms when their class finished.

18:56 Somehow, and I don't know how, but somehow he did get a girlfriend at the beginning of university, a young woman called Julia. And Julia has described Neestor as incredibly controlling and possessive. Because Neestor was pretty much stalking his own girlfriend. He would be following her pretty much every minute of every day. He would show up wherever she was. He always seemed to know where she was. And eventually Julia was just like, "Hell no, no, no no, no, no. I'm not dealing with this." And she broke up with him. So, in retaliation to her breaking up with him Nester created multiple social media accounts to harass her and stalk his ex-girlfriend online. And of course Julia knew that it was Nester doing this. She had to block a number of different social media profiles. She literally could not get rid of Nester.

19:43 So then after things finished with his girlfriend, Nester actually became obsessed with one of Catalina's friends first. So yeah, he became obsessed with one of Catalina's own friends before he became obsessed with Catalina. He would pester Catalina's friend all of the time, constantly asking her out on a date. The friend kept rejecting Neestor but he just would not take no for an answer. and he would get extremely angry and jealous whenever any of the girls that he was obsessed with, whenever they got a boyfriend, he did not like this at all. He did not approve of the boyfriends. He didn't like them at all.

20:18 Like, he had some sort of right over these girls. He would also make a lot of misogynistic and homophobic comments in front of these girls. And just overall Nester is not a nice person to be around. And there was one time where one of the friends did get a little bit closer to Nester. So, they were at a nightclub. They had been drinking. Nester and the friend had started kissing and they both went back to Nester's home and the friend said that it eventually quote turned into more than kissing, but they definitely did not have sex. So, they kind of just fooled around a little bit. And after that night, Nester thought that this girl was his girlfriend, was basically his property, even though they had barely even hooked up. He became incredibly possessive over this girl. He would not allow her to be around other boys. He became insanely jealous of anyone that spoke to her. And he wasn't even in a relationship with her. He just

21:11 thought that it was his god-given right to have control over this woman because they had fooled around a little bit. But anyway, we now get back to the relationship between Neesa and Catalina. And it is now 2024 at this point. They are both 21 years old and they have both been attending university together for a few years now. So, they've been friends for a few years. And this is when something extremely significant happens because Catalina gets herself a new boyfriend. She broke up with her teenage boyfriend Lazero, who she had been in a relationship with for a few years at this point. And in February of 2024, she starts dating a new guy by the name of Ezekiel. And Catalina and Ezekiel became really, really close. They started spending a load of time together. And guess what? Nester was furious about this. He was like, "How dare she get a new boyfriend?" I have put in the time and the effort. I have been waiting for

22:05 the perfect moment for myself to be her boyfriend. How dare she start dating somebody else when I am right here. In Nesa's mind, he had been putting in the time and the effort to deserve to be Catalina's next boyfriend. He had been putting up with Catalina's previous boyfriend for years. It was now his time. Even though Catalina wasn't interested him in that way, she had never even insinuated that she was. She wasn't stringing him along. In her eyes they were really good friends. And that is what they had been from the beginning. She had never led him to believe anything else. So, because Neesa is furious, he's very angry, he's very bitter. He now starts making Catalina's life a nightmare. He was constantly putting down her new boyfriend, trying to create a rift between the two of them, tried to make Catalina break up with her new boyfriend. He also started saying that she was spending way too

22:58 much time with her new boyfriend and she was neglecting Nester. He then also started to become horrible to her in public. He started insulting her in front of the other students on the university campus. He started calling her a in front of people. He also started harassing her on WhatsApp groups, on social media. He was just being absolutely vile to her. In fact Neesa had even found a way to track Catalina's movements and where she was through the Find My iPhone app. So now he's also stalking Catalina, showing up everywhere that she goes. And Catalina was completely torn apart by this. She couldn't believe that Nester was treating her this way because she saw Nester as one of her closest friends.

23:40 She loved and adored him. She almost saw him as like a brother. Nester had also spent a load of time around her family. Her whole family loved Nester as well. In fact, Nester was so close to the family that whenever the family went on vacation, they asked Netor to look after their dogs. That is how much Nester was almost a part of this family. They had really welcomed him. So, Catalina, she tried to pander to his demands. She tried to make him happy. She tried to get back the friend that she thought that she had. And she just really truly hoped with all of her heart that he would stop, that he would go back to just being the best friend that she once had. And I think that this is why Neesa became so obsessed with Catalina to begin with because obviously we now know that he has been obsessed with so many girls. But it seems like every other girl that he became obsessed with, all of them rejected him straight away or

24:32 they distanced themselves from him pretty much straight away. Didn't really give him the time of day. Whereas Catalina was different. She felt sorry for Nester when she first met him because he had moved to a new city. He didn't know anybody. And Catalina took Nea under her wing. wanted to be his friend. And I think in Netor's eyes that gave him hope that she did like him. Not that Catalina did anything wrong. Oh, no, no, no. She has done absolutely nothing wrong. She has never once insinuated that they are anything more than friends. But for Neesa because every other girl had rejected him, Catalina didn't do that. So, I think he almost thought that he had a chance at one day becoming her boyfriend. And it's almost like it's only now just dawning on him that Catalina does not feel the same. But despite Catalina being nice to Neesa, he did not stop. He continued to be very disgusting towards her. Vile. Catalina's

25:22 friends kept trying to tell her that this friendship had now turned toxic. And they pleaded with Catalina to cut Nester off. And Catalina actually tried to do this, but Nester was relentless. And he kept emotionally blackmailing her, making her feel worthless. And he kept managing to worm his way back into her life. And this all just kept building and building. And it was just slowly getting worse. We are now in July of 2024, which is five months after Catalina got her new boyfriend. And things would now end in tragedy because it is now the 17th of July, 2024.

25:58 Catalina had arranged to go bowling that evening with her friends. And who was one of the friends that she was meeting? Well, of course, it was Nester. Because Catalina, despite how bad Nester was Catalina was loyal. She was a good friend. and she still didn't want to exclude Nesa, so she invited him along. So, Catalina, she goes about her day at university and she starts preparing for her evening out with friends, which was supposed to be a fun evening. But she starts to get a load of messages from Nester saying that he wanted to meet up with Catalina early. He wanted to meet her at the mall an hour earlier so he could get some one-on-one time with her because, you know, he's emotionally blackmailing Catalina, making her feel like she's not spending enough time with him and spending too much time with her boyfriend. So Nester making demands like this was actually pretty normal. But Catalina being the very good friend that

26:50 she was, she agreed. She wanted to do everything that she could to repair her friendship with Netor. And Catalina agreed to meet Nester an hour earlier at the mall. She agreed to his demands because she was worried that if she didn't, he would fly off the handle. He really was the most toxic friend you could have. So 9:00 p.m. now rolls around, which is an hour before the bowling game was supposed to happen. So Neestor is waiting for Catalina at the mall. But after waiting a short period of time, Catalina doesn't show up. And Nesa is furious about this. He starts blowing up Catalina's phone, demanding where she is. And Catalina answers and she says, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for being late. She got delayed doing some work." Which was the absolute truth. She wasn't just making excuses.

27:39 Catalina was actually making some Instagram content for a sponsor post with a brand, which is work. She had deadlines to meet and clearly the content had taken longer than she was expecting. But Nesa didn't care. He didn't care to hear her out. He started ranting and raving. He started berating Catalina. and he just made her feel like an absolute terrible human being. He was like, "How dare you stand me up? How dare you leave me like this? You're such a bad friend." And he told Catalina that he was going home because she had completely ruined his evening. And following this, Catalina felt absolutely terrible. She actually did feel like a bad friend, which in this circumstance dealing with someone like Neesa, she is definitely not a bad friend. Nester is just completely unreasonable. and he has been treating her like absolute crap for so many months. But Catalina felt so guilty. She was such a caring person and

28:32 she still did care about Nester. All she wanted to do was to make people happy especially people that she considered her friends. So following this phone call, Catalina actually drove to Nester's house because she wanted to try and make it up with him. But Nester, he was so furious when Catalina arrived, he just started berating her again, over and over again. He started ranting and raving about her new boyfriend, about how Catalina was such a bad friend, that she was spending too much time with her boyfriend, and she didn't focus on Neestor, her friend. She no longer paid Nester any attention, and that she quote always left him hanging. He also said that Catalina was a horrible person, and that all she ever did was hurt people and that she didn't care about his feelings. And this is when something inside of Neesa flipped. He became filled with so much rage and anger. And this is when he launched a sudden and

29:20 vicious attack on Catalina. He just started punching Catalina in the head over and over again. He was punching her repeatedly in the face. He caused bruises to her eyes, damaged her cheeks until Catalina collapsed to the floor and she completely blacked out. And I just cannot believe that he has launched such a sudden and vicious attack on Catalina. Was he always planning to do this? And Nester could have stopped there, even though what he already has done is absolutely despicable to launch such a vicious attack on an innocent person when all that person has ever done is try to be a good friend to Netor. So, he could have stopped there.

29:57 He could have reflected on his actions realized that he had gone too far, and it could have ended there. But tragically, that's not what happened because he now got on the floor. He pulled out some adhesive tape and he started to bind Catalina's hands together in order to stop her from escaping. And Catalina at this point had actually started to stir. She was waking up and again Nea could have let her go. He could have in that moment realized "What am I doing? Like, why have I just attacked somebody that has only ever been nice to me? Why am I now binding them up?" He could have just let this poor innocent girl go and get on with her life. But instead, he climbed on top of Catalina. He put all of his weight on top of her and he pulled out a piece of rope. He wrapped it around Catalina's throat and he started to strangle her.

30:44 And he did not stop. He continued to strangle Catalina. And he watched the life drain out of her eyes. And Catalina, she was fighting, but it got to a point where she couldn't fight anymore. She had no strength left in her. And tragically, this is when 21-year-old Catalina Gutierrez passed away, which is heartbreaking. She only went over to his house to make it up to him. To make it up to him for something that was not really actually her fault. She didn't have to do that after the way Neesa had treated her for months at this point. She could have just been like, "I don't really care. I don't really care about Nesa's feelings." But that's not how she thought because she's such a caring person. She cared about Nesa's feelings. She felt guilty that she possibly had ruined his evening and she wanted to make it up to him and he just viciously attacked her and now murdered her. And was this premeditated? Was he

31:34 always planning to do this at some point? Possibly. I do find it very suspicious that he just pulled out a piece of rope. It's not exactly an item that people tend to have nearby ready to pull out. But after this murder, Nester started doing everything in his power to try and get away with it. He changed his clothes and he dumped them outside along with the rope that he used. He then started messaging all of his and Catalina's friends on WhatsApp, saying that Catalina had ghosted him and that he had not seen her all evening and that she had cancelled their friend bowling session. He then wrapped Catalina's body in black plastic bags before carrying her body out to her car, which was a silver Renault Cleo. And then he drove off in her car with her body inside to a remote location. He poured alcohol on the inside of the car and then he set fire to the car and fled the scene. So then later on that same evening, people

32:30 started noticing that Catalina was nowhere to be seen. Her boyfriend Ezekiel was actually the first to notice because Catalina had said that she was going to phone him later. And Catalina always stuck to her word. She always phoned her boyfriend. So when she didn't phone, Ezekiel found this strange. So Ezekiel was trying to get in touch with Catalina, but she wasn't answering her phone. She wasn't responding to messages. She wasn't answering. So, he then contacted Catalina's parents who realized that Catalina hadn't returned home from the evening because they were obviously under the impression that she was going to be out bowling with her friends, so she possibly wouldn't be home early. But now they realized, hang on a minute, Catalina hasn't returned home. So, they became extremely concerned as well, and they went straight to the police and reported Catalina as a missing person. All of

33:15 Catalina's family were at the police station along with her boyfriend Ezekiel. And guess who else showed up at the police station? None other than Nester. Oh yeah. He pretended to be the very concerned friend. He rushed over to Catalina's family and he was like, "Oh my god, I've just heard that Catalina's missing. What can I do? I'm so devastated." And it's just like, oh my god, he is so sick and twisted. He has literally just murdered her and he runs up to her family pretending like he's all concerned and he's trying to comfort Catalina's parents. Yeah, he's trying to comfort them when he is the one responsible for her murder. It's so sick and twisted. And I think he probably thought that if he inserted himself into the search party/investigation that no one would suspect him. And things actually quickly move forward from this moment. So, they were planning on putting together a search party for

34:11 Catalina. However, Catalina's sister suddenly realizes that she can track Catalina's phone through the Find My iPhone app. So, she does just this. They manage to track Catalina's phone and it leads them to a remote location. They hand that location over to the police. The police go out to the location and this is when they discover Catalina's car. Now, if you remember, Neestor set the car on fire. So, you would think that the police are going to find a completely burnt out car, but that is not what they found. Oh, no, no, no.

34:44 They found Catalina's car completely intact because Neestor, when he had lit the fire in the car, he pulled alcohol on the inside of the car, lit the fire and then he closed all of the doors, and he basically starved the fire of oxygen. So, the fire quickly went out. So, the car was not burnt to a crisp and therefore was full of evidence. And Catalina's body was inside this car completely intact. So the police searched the car and they very sadly come across Catalina's body, see that she has been murdered. So it now changes from a missing person's investigation to a murder investigation. And the police have the terrible job of informing Catalina's family that she had been murdered. And everybody was devastated.

35:26 Everybody was so confused. Like how had this happened? They just couldn't figure out who would have murdered their daughter. their daughter who was the kindest person in the world. And I just feel so sorry for them. My heart truly breaks for them to have to go through that. And Nester, he was still there when they found out that their daughter had been murdered. Nester was still there trying to comfort Catalina's parents. It's just so sick. So, the police start their investigation. They speak to all of Catalina's friends their families. They're trying to get alibis off everybody. And obviously they start questioning the people closest to Catalina cuz a lot of the times murders do happen by somebody that the person knows and everyone had an alibi. So then the police speak to Nester and his alibi was shaky because the first alibi Nester gave he said that he was home all evening but then he changed his story.

36:16 He then said that he was out all evening with friends and then he changed his story again and he just seemed to keep changing his story or just adding little details here and there and it was suspicious. The police did not trust Nester one bit. So the police asked Neestor if they could look at his phone to rule him out as a suspect and Nester handed his phone over because he didn't think that there would be anything incriminating on his phone. But when the police looked at Neestor's GPS location they realized that he had been in the exact location that Catalina's car had been discovered. And this was obviously a massive red flag cuz why else would Nester be in this incredibly remote location? So Nester quickly became suspect number one. The police confronted him about this and told Nester that they believed that he had been involved. And it didn't take long for Nester just to completely break

37:14 down. He completely caved under the pressure and he broke down and he gave a full confession to the police. He told the police all about his secret obsession with Catalina and something inside of him that evening just snapped and Nester was promptly arrested and taken straight into custody. And the story broke in the media. It was huge news across Argentina. Everyone was talking about this young influencer that had been murdered. And there was an outpouring of love for Catalina. She was loved by so many people, friends family, even her ex-boyfriend Lazero made posts on social media saying how devastated they were. And eventually in March of 2025, this is when Neestor went to trial. And so many people came out to testify against him. All of the girls that he had stalked and harassed in high school, they all gave testimony. All of Catalina's friends gave testimony. The ones that had witnessed his creepy

38:10 behavior firsthand. And the ones that had witnessed with their own eyes how he had treated Catalina. And a picture of the true Nester started to come to light. All of his dark secrets and his obsessive behavior, his stalking and harassing, that he was somebody that was on the brink of snapping. And he had also never been held accountable his whole life for how he treated women. And he showed no remorse during the trial. He laughed at Catalina's family. He was completely vile and disrespectful. His true colors came out in that trial. He no longer had to pretend that he was this nice guy because he didn't need to butter anybody up. And Netor Sto was soon found guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison and he has to serve a minimum of 35 years. And I now want to end this video focusing on the victim of today's case. Catalina Gutierrez was described as a kind, beautiful, and caring young woman. She loved her family

39:08 more than anything, had an incredible bond with her sister, was always performing with her dad, and cared so much about her mom. She had an extremely bright future, was looking forward to becoming an architect. She was also a budding young influencer. She had so many opportunities waiting ahead for her. She was taken far, far too soon. She was only 21 years old and my heart goes out to all of Catalina's family friends, everyone that loved her. She was such a light in this world and I feel so sorry for everything that they had to go through, especially by somebody that they thought that they could trust, somebody that was supposed to be Catalina's friend and I just hope that they're all doing well and I wish them all the best. And that brings us to the end of today's heartbreaking case.

39:49 As always, let me know your thoughts theories, and opinions. And don't forget to leave me your case suggestions in the comments down below because I always want to know what you want to hear next. Thank you again to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video and I'll see you all in my next one. Bye.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Influencer Murdered by “Best Friend” who was Secretly OBSESSED With Her"?

In order: 0:00 Cordoba, Molly Marcelo, Neesa Sto; 5:00 Cass Lazero, Cordoba; 20:00 Cass Lazero; 35:00 Cass Lazero.

What is mentioned in this Danielle Kirsty episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Cass Lazero, Cordoba, Neesa Sto, Molly Marcelo. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Influencer Murdered by “Best Friend” who was Secretly OBSESSED With Her"?

The episode runs 40 min; the transcript is about 7,499 words in 53 timestamped sections.

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