The family of Lina Marulando, the Colombian TV host and fashion model who tragically fell to her death from her apartment balcony in April, have spoken about their loss to Cromos magazine, reports Caracol Radio.
The 29-year-old is thought to have committed suicide after facing a series of personal problems, including a divorce from her second husband.
Lina’s mother, Beatrice, and her sister Paulina said that they wanted to talk “to bring peace and clarity to the memory of Lina,” and that they were “grateful for the good words they received in the press, but also annoyed by the lurid and unsubstantiated rumours.”
Cromos asked Paulina “what has been said about her that is not true?,” to which she responded that “it is a lie that she fought with my parents, it is a lie that she was with the psychologist, that she had a disease is a lie. Everything is a lie. The only certainty is that it was sad.”
Beatrice said that Lina “had no support from anyone. All people wanted was to make her a big name or make her famous, whatever you want to call it, while knowing that she had no friends … she was the loneliest person in the world.”
According to Paulina, “my sister told me that everyone thought she was sick, that she had something, but nobody knew that what she had did not have a cure, the disease was much more severe than that. Every time she read the Bible, she would calm down and say ‘I have God.'”
Lina read the Bible every day in her last month, according to her sister.
Paulina also said that Lina had refused to take the pills prescribed to her by her psychiatrist because “she was a very strong woman. He gave her pills to relax her, but they had the opposite effect. She asked the doctor ‘why give me those when I can sort myself out?’ and, after taking one, said ‘no more.'”
Lina was troubled by her body weight and was “obsessed with the gym”, which “ended up damaging her self-esteem,” said Paulina. “Many times she would call me up crying and saying ‘I’m fat’ and that she had refused to leave the house for fear of being teased.”
According to Lina’s mother, she had wanted to open her own business, La MisceLina, and publish a book about her life. She also wanted to open an institute to help people who suffer from depression.
She was very fond of Paulina’s 2-year-old daughter Hanna, but “she said it was her daughter, not mine. She called me up to tell me what had happened and to send her photos. It was a disease, she saw the girl and went crazy.”
Paulina explained that Lina had been mortified by problems with her business partners, with whom she’d been involved in a lawsuit regarding the closure of her company. “It’s like when you have an illusion and you put all your will and force into it and suddenly everything falls apart.”
Although she wanted to leave her problems in Colombia behind her and move away to India, she couldn’t because of the legal proceedings with her partners, said Pauline.
According to the Caracol article, Lina had spoken to her husband, whom she was divorcing, and felt happy about meeting up, but she wanted to wait two weeks.
“All her work and life savings amounted to nothing and that pained her. She’d worked hard and with great care for twelve years, because she wanted to do the right thing. That affected her relationship with Carlos Onate, her husband,” said Paulina.
The sister added that Carlos has been deeply affected by Lina’s death. “I talk to him a lot and tell him not to feel guilty because there are things in life that no one can prevent.”
On the day of her death, she got up at 6:00AM, ate a breakfast prepared by her mother and said “Today I have a parade and, as I have not slept well, I am going to bed for a while,” said her mother. At 9.30AM, when her assistant, Carolina, arrived, she knocked on the door but Lina asked to sleep for longer. At 11:00AM there was an awful noise and Beatrice and her husband went to look. “I could not believe it,” she said. Lina had fallen from the balcony of her 6th floor apartment in Bogota.