On November 27, 1989, Avianca flight 203 took off from Bogota International Airport on a routine flight. Five minutes later, the Boeing 727 was ripped apart by a massive explosion. All 110 people on board were killed. Investigators soon discovered it was no accident.
A cassette recorder had been rigged with explosives, and the target was presidential candidate Cesar Gaviria, who had canceled his flight at the last minute. Gaviria had staked his political career on denouncing Colombia’s most infamous drug lord, Pablo Escobar. Two of the dead held US passports, and Escobar’s indiscriminate slaughter opened him up to the full weight of American justice. For the first time, he could be charged with terrorism, giving US authorities much greater jurisdiction.
Escobar’s brutal career began when he was just a boy in the dangerous streets of Medellin. He started by robbing gravestones from cemeteries, shaving off the names, and reselling them. He was known to local law enforcement as a car thief and a thug. But he soon realized there was a better way to make big bucks: smuggling cocaine.
At the time, cocaine was grown and processed in Chile, Peru, and Bolivia. Colombian marijuana smugglers began to take an interest in this more profitable drug, bringing it in from Peru and Bolivia, converting it into cocaine hydrochloride, and using Caribbean islands as transshipment points into the United States, principally southern Florida. By 1985, eight million Americans were hooked on cocaine flooding into the country. The 1980s were the boom era of cocaine in the US.
It became a status symbol, a fad. Colombian criminals, some of the most astute in the world, opened distribution points throughout the US. There was a market, and Colombia jumped in because they were well positioned geographically and had the infrastructure and know-how. At 26, Escobar entered the cocaine business and rose quickly from smuggler to trafficker to producer.
Nothing and no one got in his way. He was arrested in the early 1980s with 18 kilograms of cocaine, but he was let go because he threatened the judge. Then he went after the police officers who had arrested him and had them all killed. By the mid-1980s, he was head of the powerful Medellin Cartel.
His organization was huge. Forbes magazine listed him near the top of the richest men in the world. He was a billionaire. Escobar flaunted his fortune by building a vast luxury estate in the hills near Medellin.
The ranch had nine man-made lakes, water slides, and life-size fiberglass dinosaurs. He easily spent about $10 million constructing it. It made me angry because I knew the mortar and concrete of that entire structure had come from blood money. Escobar’s tainted millions bought more than fancy homes.
He used them to win the hearts and minds of the poor, paying for food banks, hospitals, and homes for slum dwellers. He exploited poverty, but not for altruistic reasons. He wanted to make sure the people weren’t selling him out, that they looked upon him as Robin Hood, and that he had places to hide if necessary. Escobar was so convinced his Robin Hood image made him untouchable that he entered politics.
He wanted to be elected to office to bring legitimacy to himself. His money bought him so much popular support that he was a shoo-in as a local representative to the Colombian Congress, a position that guaranteed immunity for past crimes. But then the roller coaster hit the buffers. In April 1984, Justice Minister Lara Bonilla accused him outright of bribery and corruption.
He signed his own death warrant. Lara Bonilla left his office, and a motorcycle wove up to his car. The shooter, just 16 years old, opened up with an Ingram and shot Lara Bonilla several times in the head. The driver was 19.
It was like very young teenagers assassinating the Attorney General of the United States. Lara Bonilla’s murder sent shockwaves through Colombia. Escobar had directly attacked the Colombian government, and no sitting government could tolerate that. He realized he had lost his protection, and that’s when he turned to violence big time.
It was almost like he lost his mind. Violence became his cause celebre. If you were in his way, you were getting shot. Escobar began a reign of terror in his Medellin stronghold.
The once booming commercial city became a killing field. When I arrived in Medellin, I saw it was a beautiful, progressive city with skyscrapers and construction. But after a month, I started to see bodies throughout the city. I would leave my house early in the morning and see cadavers on the side of the road.
When I returned in the evening, many were still there because the police couldn’t keep up with the number of killings. It was known as the murder capital of Colombia. But one thing still spooked the king of Medellin. The only thing Escobar really feared was extradition to the US.
He feared the DEA. He felt he could work his way around everything else. Escobar had been on the DEA’s radar since the early 1980s, but agents needed an ironclad case to guarantee his extradition. He used his muscle and money to derail their investigation.
I finally had to leave the Medellin office because of threats to kidnap me. In August 1989, presidential candidate Luis Galan made it clear that if elected, Escobar would be on the first plane out of Colombia. But Escobar struck first. Galan’s murder launched open warfare between Escobar and the Colombian government.
I had never seen organized crime try to take down a sovereign government the way he did. It was unprecedented. Escobar’s attack on the authorities went hand in hand with a tidal wave of cocaine reaching the US. The more that came in, the more the price went down until millions were hooked.
Addiction rates skyrocketed. Cocaine became an epidemic of tremendous proportions. The order went out to the DEA to focus all efforts on taking Escobar down. Special Agent in Charge Joe Toft found himself leading the hunt.
I thought I was well prepared for Colombia, but it didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t. The seizures and bombings were much greater than I thought. Joe Toft was a hard-ass, a compassionate hard-ass, but he demanded success. He made sure no stone was left unturned.
The DEA had no authority to arrest Escobar in Colombia. Instead, they worked hand-in-hand with an elite new Colombian police unit, the Bloque de Busqueda, or Search Bloc. To be a member of the Colombian National Police assigned to the Search Bloc in the search for Pablo Escobar was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The unit needed a leader completely committed to the cause, someone who knew Escobar would try to hurt him through his family.
They found that man in Colonel Hugo Martinez. Martinez had a personal score to settle: in 1989, Escobar’s men had murdered his best friend. His task was immense. Informers working for Escobar inside the Colombian National Police threatened to reveal every move.
But Martinez was a fine, noble man, a great leader, a man of undoubted integrity, and that helped keep a lid on the confidentiality of what they were doing. The DEA team believed the writing was on the wall for Escobar, but he had lost none of his ruthless instincts. When I arrived in Colombia, I was optimistic. I thought within a year or two we’d get him.
But as time went by, it became clear that the corruption and intimidation made normal police work unlikely to succeed. Despite Martinez’s efforts, Escobar was tipped off by his sources in the police again and again. Local units were completely penetrated by Escobar’s people. Using informants, wiretaps, and surveillance, the DEA built a complete picture of his network.
If they couldn’t get him, they could get what he owned. They attacked his wealth and assets. Starting with his lavish ranch, all his property was taken over by the government. Then they seized his cash and his cocaine.
We had record seizures: 60,000 kilos of cocaine, and dozens of Escobar’s top men were grabbed. Escobar’s retaliation was swift and lethal. He put a $700 bounty on every police officer killed. They started killing police officers like it was going out of style.
That started a savage war. There was slaughter on the streets. Medellin became a battleground. Escobar’s thugs killed 30 Search Bloc officers in just 15 days.
By 1991, a total of 457 police had been gunned down in Medellin. The police officers we trusted and worked with were incredible. They put their lives and their families’ lives on the line every day. For Joe Toft, the loss of so many Colombian colleagues was almost unbearable.
I remember one particular funeral. I was right close to the casket. The stench was awful because they don’t use embalming. I saw this poor woman, probably eight months pregnant, hanging onto the casket as they brought it out, crying, with a little two or three-year-old baby she was dragging with the other hand.
I went home and cried. It was horrible. Escobar wasn’t just targeting Colombian police officers. At the top of his hit list was the DEA chief himself.
There were two occasions where he put a price tag on my head. The DEA wanted to pull me out of the country. The ambassador said, “You’re done here. ” But I fought it.
Here I was working with the Colombians, providing them intelligence, and they were getting killed. Then there’s a threat on my life, and I’m going to leave? I couldn’t do that. Escobar had always been able to kill or threaten his way out of trouble.
But the blood flowing in the streets of Medellin turned the tide against him. His misbegotten thought was that by doing that, he would buy time or scare off the authorities. In fact, quite the opposite happened. It just angered people that much more, and they were going to get him one way or the other.
In Bogota, Escobar had a relentless enemy. I didn’t want to leave Colombia without Escobar being either in jail or dead. As the DEA and Search Bloc stepped up the pressure, Escobar blindsided them with a move no one expected. On June 19, 1991, he handed himself over to the Colombian authorities on the condition they deny US extradition requests.
The DEA could only watch as a helicopter flew him out of their reach to a private prison. When Escobar turned himself in, we were extremely disappointed because we felt we were really getting close. It was just a matter of time. Sentenced to just eight years on a minor drugs charge, the authorities thought Escobar would be harmless behind bars.
As much as the DEA did not approve, the Colombian government was facing a situation never seen before. A man was setting off explosives, paying off politicians, killing politicians, journalists, and innocent civilians. What were they going to do? They were searching for a solution.
From day one of his jail time, it was obvious Escobar wasn’t going to suffer. The whole complex had been designed and built by his organization. Even the guards were on his payroll, and no police were allowed within 12 miles. They had a discotheque, a soccer field with lights, big TVs, and stereo sets.
There were double walls that contained weapons, money, drugs, you name it. It was not a prison; it was country club living. Joe Toft was disgusted by the one-sided deal. Everything smelled awful.
It was a complete capitulation by the government because of fear. With the Search Bloc and DEA off his back, Escobar had time to rebuild his drug empire. Thousands of kilos of cocaine were again on the move to the US. We knew that was happening.
We had intelligence and had been providing information to the government, to the president. Nobody wanted to acknowledge it. I think that was part of the arrangement they had with Escobar. A year later, protests about Escobar’s luxurious conditions forced the government to order his transfer to a high-security prison.
But nothing went right. It was a combined army and police operation that was not well coordinated. Tipped off by his informants, Escobar was not ready to go quietly. While his men tried to hold off the troops, he broke out and headed back to Medellin.
Joe Toft and his team welcomed the news. He had escaped from prison. He had violated his agreement. It placed us in a position to be much more focused and interactive with the government because they now saw that their strategy with Escobar had failed.
I remember celebrating with the police officers we trusted. It was the day, “Okay, we’re back on. The game is back on. Now we’re going to go out and get him.
”
Once again, the elite Search Bloc and the DEA were back on the hunt. We realized immediately that we would be going back to work exclusively to track down Pablo Escobar. The Colombian government realized there could be no more negotiation. The $1 million reward for his capture was increased to $2.
7 million by the Bush administration. But finding him wouldn’t be easy. Escobar entered an underground world of code names, aliases, safe houses, and ever-changing radio frequencies. He did it successfully for a while, running around in taxis with different costumes.
But a new asset helped the DEA penetrate the fog of secrecy. Code-named Centra Spike, operated by a top secret US Army intelligence unit, it was a flight of specially converted civilian light aircraft. Their state-of-the-art radio direction-finding equipment homed in on Escobar’s radio telephone calls. The role of the US in providing the high-tech capability to track the phone calls was absolutely crucial.
Toft and his team fed information from Centra Spike to Colonel Martinez and the Search Bloc to help locate his hideout. Sensing his pursuers closing in, Escobar ratcheted up the violence. On January 30, 1993, he tried unsuccessfully to kill the head of the Colombian security service with a car bomb. His car was bulletproof, and the bomb blew it to one side.
There were half bodies of children and people all over the street, waiting for the school bus. When you see that and you still think the guy is right, it’s hard for me to understand. Twenty-one people were killed, many of them children, and dozens more were terribly injured. By now, Escobar wasn’t only being hunted by the DEA and the Colombian government.
Rival drug traffickers wanted him taken down too. The Cali Cartel was furious with him because he had brought so much unwanted publicity. They were actively hunting him. Besides the Cali Cartel, another murderous group was out to destroy him.
They called themselves Los Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar, those persecuted by Pablo Escobar, or Los Pepes for short. Escobar could thank his own brutality for bringing Los Pepes into existence. He had made enemies of his closest lieutenants by having their legs sawn off with chainsaws in his presence. That obviously made enemies of their families and those around him.
The fact that many Los Pepes killers had been part of Escobar’s organization gave them a huge advantage. They knew about his infrastructure, knew most of the people who worked for him, knew pretty much everything about him. They systematically went out and hunted down Escobar’s entourage and remaining followers, either taking them out of commission or killing them outright. For every one of Escobar’s attacks, there was a Los Pepes revenge killing.
Walls started to crumble for Pablo. His attorneys were killed. His associates were killed. Other members of his distant family were killed.
For the DEA, Los Pepes added a volatile new factor. When we became aware of who Los Pepes were, it was very important for DEA to recognize that and not in any way get tainted by them. I made sure every day as we shared our intelligence with the cops, I asked them to make sure it did not end up in the hands of Los Pepes. I could just see DEA providing intelligence that results in the killings of these people.
It would have been horrible. But there was no denying that these lethal vigilantes were crippling Escobar’s network in a way the DEA and Search Bloc couldn’t. Los Pepes were tremendously effective. They were key in isolating Escobar fairly rapidly.
They pretty much stripped him of much of his organization. It was to our advantage. You got to give Los Pepes a lot of credit for Pablo Escobar’s demise because they are the ones who waged the dirty war. They are really responsible for the fact that at the end, Pablo Escobar was pretty much alone.
Under attack from all sides, Escobar disappeared into the maze of Medellin’s backstreets. To stay in control of his organization, he used a radio phone despite the risk of being tracked by police radio location teams on the ground and in the skies overhead. Escobar was very streetwise. He knew what we were doing.
He knew we were using directional finding equipment and monitoring his conversations. He never would speak from one place. Whenever he was talking on a phone, he would always be moving because triangulation is impossible if you’re moving, and he knew that. Again and again, the Search Bloc raided Escobar’s suspected hideouts, but every time he was tipped off before they could get him.
The man was always prepared. He always had an escape route. He never stayed in a place more than a couple days because he knew sooner or later intelligence would leak out as to where he was. Then on October 11, 1993, Centra Spike intercepted a call from Escobar to his wife.
Triangulating on the signal, they pinpointed the location to an isolated farmhouse. Immediately, Colonel Martinez ordered his Search Bloc to mount an operation. Journalist Simon Strong got caught up in the action. He said, “Simon, we’re going now.
We have a bead on where Escobar is. ” It was a slow afternoon, and suddenly one’s drawn into the operation going up a mountainside. As the ground force closed in on his hideout, US monitoring aircraft could still hear Escobar on the phone. The assault team got the command.
Go. The keyed-up troopers burst into the house ready for an intense firefight. But there was no sign of their prey. There were a lot of days that I thought this is going to be the day we get Pablo, and it ended in disappointment.
Escobar had gone to nearby woods to get a better signal for the call to his family. The brutal killer just wouldn’t cut contact with his wife, Maria Victoria, 16-year-old son Juan Pablo, and 9-year-old daughter, Manuela. This gave Joe Toft a crucial tactical advantage. Focusing on his family, preventing the family from leaving Colombia, was a very key factor.
Once we recognized that and emphasized that, we could see the end coming around. But the Los Pepes death squads had his family in their sights. On October 12, Los Pepes detonated a massive bomb outside the family’s apartment in Medellin. They escaped with only minor injuries, but it was too close a call.
Escobar was desperate to get them out of Colombia. His next move stunned the hardened DEA team. One day, the ambassador calls me and says, “Joe, you’re not going to believe who’s downstairs. ” I said, “Who?
” He says, “Pablo Escobar’s son. ” So I went down and met with him. The team watching Juan Pablo walk into the embassy was surprise enough, but the deal his father proposed took Toft’s breath away. I was very impressed with the young man, with his maturity.
He basically said, “Myself, my mom, and my sister are afraid that we’re going to get killed here by the Cali Cartel. Would you please help us get out of the country? We would like to get a visa to the United States. ” I basically told them, “If you came in here with a platter with the heads of the Cali cartel members, you still couldn’t get a visa.
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Escobar realized there was no chance of his family escaping to the United States. Europe seemed their best chance to stay out of Los Pepes’ reach. A last-minute tip-off alerted Toft that the Escobars were on the move. Agent Ken McGee raced to the airport.
We received intelligence that they were going to fly either to London, England, or to Frankfurt, Germany. The planes were departing within 10 minutes of each other. We had tickets to jump on board either plane. With no power to arrest or detain the Escobars in Colombia, the DEA had to work behind the scenes to convince other nations to turn the family away.
It was in our interest as investigators trying to find Pablo Escobar that his family remain in Colombia. Therefore, by providing this information to the host government of Germany, we would have the Escobars sent back to Colombia. During the flight, McGee secretly photographed the Escobars. He had to make sure they had no contact with other passengers.
When I saw Pablo Escobar’s young little daughter, I felt for that child. She was just an innocent young girl whose father was one of the most violent criminals on the face of the planet. When they landed, it was obvious the German authorities had been warned about their unwelcome guests. When I arrived in Frankfurt, they stopped the aircraft in the middle of the runway.
I remember taxiing down the runway and seeing tanks and police cars lined along the airstrip. They escorted the Escobars off the aircraft and took them into a quarantined area, so to speak, in regards to determining what they were going to do with them. Thanks to top-level contact between the German and Colombian governments, it didn’t take long for the Escobars to be given the news. Their plea for asylum was rejected.
When he got the news, Escobar went into meltdown. The minute he heard that Germany had denied the request, he was on the phone making threats, calling the German Embassy, saying he would kill people, saying he would blow things up. There was no telling what would happen. When they got back to Colombia, Escobar’s family were taken to a hotel in the capital Bogota under heavy police guard.
As expected, Escobar immediately called his wife. The plan to take him down was on a knife edge. The walls were caving in around Pablo Escobar. He was taking more risks.
He was making more phone calls. He was also becoming more threatening in his tones. His acts of desperation made us feel that we were getting closer and closer. The noose was tightening around Colombian drug overlord Pablo Escobar.
On December 2, 1993, a police radio location team intercepted a call he made to his son. He was so angry that his family had been allowed to leave the country that he started calling from one site, and that’s how the police was able to triangulate and find him. The commander of the Search Bloc, Colonel Hugo Martinez, was given the job of tracing Escobar’s calls to the one man he knew he could trust absolutely: his own son. So you have father and son in the world of criminal organization, and you have father and son in the world of law enforcement.
Good versus evil. The phone trace led the younger Martinez to a quiet residential street. Suddenly, he saw a figure at a second-story window. Every man in the Colombian police and DEA knew that face.
It was Escobar. We immediately contacted his superiors, to include his father, to say exactly where he was at and what he had found. With just two men, Martinez called urgently for backup. Search Bloc patrols raced desperately to Martinez’s location.
When they got there, they didn’t waste a second. They arrived at this location and immediately hit the place. Even when cornered, Escobar showed how dangerous he could be. He was armed with two semi-automatic pistols.
Escobar jumped from a back window to the roof of another house. He had no idea that the place was surrounded. He jumped out onto the roof. He was shooting back at the window thinking that he was being chased.
He was hit three times. He was wounded. He continued fire. Escobar went down in a hail of fire.
Pablo Escobar that day lived up to his reputation as a notorious cold-blooded killer that fought to the very end. At 3:03 p. m. , a Search Bloc officer was the first to reach Escobar’s body.
When Pablo Escobar was killed on that rooftop, the very first message transferred over the radio was “Viva Colombia. Matamos a Pablo Escobar. ” “Long live Colombia. We’ve just killed Pablo Escobar.
”
The men of the Search Bloc had at last settled the score. They were elated. They were ecstatic. They were jubilant.
You could use many words to describe how they felt, but one word most importantly is that they were proud. 150 miles away in Bogota, Joe Toft got the news he had been waiting to hear for six long years. “It’s green, I say. Pablo is dead.
Pablo is finally dead. ” I was static. The news of Escobar’s death was flashed to Washington, and for the DEA, it was mission accomplished. He had become a cancer to Colombia, and people were tired of his brand of terrorism because he was a narco-terrorist in every sense of the word.
Escobar was a monster. I wish he would have spent the rest of his life in prison. That’s what I wanted. But he deserved what he got.
Even for Joe Toft, the successful end to the Escobar case had its downside. I have three kids that I left behind. To this day, I feel guilt for my first marriage, for having left them. If I had to do it over again, I would not have gone because of my kids.
Other than that, I had the greatest job in the world. I was the head of the office going after Pablo Escobar. I think every DEA agent would have liked to have had that job. The death of Pablo Escobar gave new life to Colombia.
There are many people that think of Colombia, and the first thing they think of is Pablo Escobar and drug trafficking. But that’s not true. He was a major deal in Colombia, but Pablo Escobar is not Colombia, and Colombia is not Pablo Escobar. The people of Colombia are wonderful people.
Escobar’s cocaine empire left a trail of death from Colombia to the USA and across the globe. Pablo Escobar was the biggest criminal on the face of the planet, and the world will never see a criminal that big. There will be drug traffickers, there will be other criminals, but no one will grow to have that amount of power.
