E-Paper
Who is Zulma Guzman Castro? Shark Tank contestant accused of killing teens with poisoned raspberries arrested in London
Zulma Guzman Castro, 54, was pulled alive from a freezing river in a dramatic capture after she allegedly murdered two teens with poisoned raspberries.
A former Shark Tank Colombia contestant has been arrested after allegedly murdering two teenage girls with poisoned raspberries. Zulma Guzman Castro, 54, was fished from the Thames River and taken into custody.
Castro was taken into custody in London on Monday, January 5, after being pulled from the freezing river by the Battersea Bridge on December 16, the Daily Mail reported. She had been in a psychiatric hospital since her leap, which happened eight months after she goofed while targeting her ex-lover, one of the girls’ fathers.
Castro is being held by UK authorities till she can be extradited to Colombia. She is wanted there for the murders of 14-year-old Ines de Bedout and 13-year-old Emilia Forero in Bogota in April.
Who is Zulma Guzman Castro?
Castro, a carpool-business founder, appeared on Colombia’s version of Shark Tank in 2021. A businesswoman from Bogota, she went to Los Andes University in Colombia’s capital, where she studied economics between 1989 and 1995, as reported by The Standard. Castro later enrolled in a masters in environmental and natural resources economics, and then studied environmental economics for another year at the universities of Cologne, Germany, and Gothenburg, Switzerland.
Castro went on to work at the Colombian Environment Ministry. There, she rose to serve as advisor to the vice-minister, and as the president of a firm called Integra Security, which sold alarm systems. She later began planning and redevelopment firm Urbia in 2007.
Castro later went back to university to retrain in architecture. She also studied a two-year entrepreneurship MBA based out of both The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University in New York City. She established an electric car rental company, CarB, in Bogota in 2015.
Castro said of CarB during her appearance on Shark Tank, “CarB is the first car-sharing service in Colombia. It's a platform that allows you to rent electric and gasoline-powered cars by the hour through an app. We also currently have electric cars in partnership with a large retailer and an energy company.”
What is Zulma Guzman Castro accused of?
Castro allegedly tried to murder Ines’ father, Juan de Bedout, by lacing and sending him the poisoned chocolate-covered berries. She had been secretly seeing the dad for years, but the two had recently broken up, People reported.
However, the girls ended up eating the berries, which had been laced with tasteless, odorless thallium poison. Both of them died four days later.
Read More | Who was Trey Dean Wright? 9 teens arrested for South Carolina teen's brutal murder, including his girlfriend
The poisoning left another teen girl with life-changing injuries. The 21-year-old brother of one of the victims was also hospitalized, according to officials.
Castro is believed to have fled the South American country on April 13, less than a week after the teens died. She arrived in the UK sometime in November.
Castro even appeared for an interview in December despite already being a suspect, where she denied the allegations against her. She alleged that she was being blamed for the murders because her affair with Bedout made her an easy mark, according to the Daily Mail.
Emilia’s father paid an emotional tribute to his daughter in August, on what would have been her 14th birthday.
“Daughter, you will always be the greatest love I as a father can ever feel. There is no girlfriend or wife that can generate the love I had when I had you, and with this love I will go until the last day of my life,” Pedro Forero wrote on social media.
“I love you and I will love you for the rest of my life. I cry for the stories we won’t be able to live. I appreciate who you were and what you taught me. You were and will be the cutest thing I had in my life,” he added.
