The woman in the hotel security camera video showing the final hours of a sports reporter’s life needed no introduction.

For a group of men who said they had in recent years been drugged, robbed of tens of thousands of dollars, and had their identities stolen on nights out in New Orleans, the name of Danette Colbert, who was charged with murdering Adan Manzano, had tormented them for years.

Now, with the death of Mr. Manzano, a reporter for Telemundo Kansas City who had been in town covering the Super Bowl, it was front-page news. The text chain the men had started as a kind of virtual support group erupted with relief, as well as frustration that it had come to this.

“She finally went too far,” David Butler, 52, wrote on Feb. 7, linking to an article about Mr. Manzano’s death.

One of the men replied: “So she didn’t get any time after the trial you testified in?”

One of the men had come to town on a guys’ trip. Another was visiting family. A renovation project brought another to New Orleans, where the men say they became Ms. Colbert’s victims. Over the years, they said, they had reported her to law enforcement and spent hundreds of hours trying to repair damage to their finances.