Just hours before she was murdered, Landy Párraga, a former beauty queen, had attended a friend’s wedding party. Her Instagram stories show her smiling next to her boyfriend, enjoying the reception. Less than 24 hours after that last happy night, in a restaurant in Quevedo, a city on the Ecuadorian coast, Párraga was murdered by two hitmen, who shot her repeatedly in front of her boyfriend.
Párraga, 23 years old, was a model and was vicereine of Quevedo. She also, in 2022, participated as a candidate for Miss Ecuador. However, her name has not only been linked to beauty contests but also appears in the conversations of the also murdered drug trafficker Leandro Norero.
The name of the model appears in the communications of July 13, 2022 between Norero and Helive Angulo, alias Estimado, a trusted man of the drug trafficker and now prosecuted in the Metastasis case. In that dialogue, Norero and Angulo discussed the money laundering case that the Prosecutor’s Office was pursuing against the boss. Angulo, who had police officers infiltrated into the investigative team, told Norero that the Public Ministry ordered an investigation into an importing company owned by Párraga. Norero then explained that the importer did not belong to the model but to “a man of the hand” named César.
The conversation develops with Norero asking Angulo to eliminate Párraga’s name from the investigation because the drug trafficker did not want his wife to know about her: “Where my wife leaves with something of hers. I’m screwed,” she reads in the messages. According to the drug traffickers’ chats, Párraga would have introduced César Litardo, former president of the National Assembly between 2019 and 2021, and “some generals for matters of the reign,” Norero wrote.
“Please, that man has to be removed from the entire process. Otherwise the world will come crashing down on me” (sic.), Norero asked Ángulo.
As published by Primicias, Párraga’s name appears again in the chats between Norero and Mayra Salazar, the former relations officer of the Provincial Court of Guayas, prosecuted for the Metastasis case and a key piece of the Purga case. According to the Public Ministry, “Salazar was working to pay bribes to José Luis Segovia and Santiago Zumba (now prosecuted), judges of Cotopaxi, who were substantiating a habeas corpus to free Norero’s sister,” the platform reads. Ecuadorian.
On July 31, 2022, Salazar, who managed the bribes on behalf of Norero, told the boss that the ruling could not be issued in favor of his brother. Then, Norero asked that the judges return USD 6,000 that he had advanced to them as part of the bribe. According to the case file, of the USD 6,000, USD 2,000 were deposited into Landy Párraga’s account. Also, there are other deposits for USD 3,000 and USD 4,000, as published by Primicias.
Landy Párraga was Queen of the Venus del Río Quevedo parish, Miss Tourism of Quevedo 2019 and Miss Mesoamérica Ecuador 2022. In addition to her career in modeling, Párraga also ventured into the field of social communication and stood out as an influencer, especially on Instagram where she shared photographs from photo shoots, stories of her daily activities, as well as exercise routines and recipes. Additionally, according to Primicias, Párraga served as a volunteer at the Quevedo Gerontological Center, providing support and company to older adults in the community. In addition, she actively participated in humanitarian aid work, being part of the team that collected pallets for the construction of solidarity shelters in Manabí, after the devastating earthquake of 2016.
Despite appearing among the chats of the Metastasis case, Párraga was not linked by the Prosecutor’s Office and nor did she comment on said conversations.
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