Javier Pena, Stephen Murphy Spin Hair-Raising Stories of Pablo Escobar’s Terror

Pablo Escobar was trapped. The murderous drug cartel lord, and one lone bodyguard, were holed up in a Medellin, Colombia, house, and the Bloque de Busqueda or “Search Bloc”— special operation units of the country’s national police — were closing in.

Javier Pena and Stephen Murphy, retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents, and consultants and inspiration for the Netflix show, “Narcos,” told Escobar’s sordid story, and their parts in his demise, during the Tuesday afternoon General Session.

“Pablo grew up poor in Medellin,” Pena said. “He started experimenting [with selling] one, two kilos of cocaine. Before it was all over, Pablo Escobar was producing and sending 80% of the cocaine that was reaching the world. … We called him the inventor of narcoterrorism.” At any given time, Escobar had 40 to 50 tons of cocaine ready to sell. During Escobar’s heyday, Forbes ranked him the seventh-richest person in the world, Murphy said, with estimated total worth of $8 billion to $30 billion.

Assassination and bombings
Some of Escobar’s lieutenants, Pena said, included Griselda Blanco, head of the power base in Miami; Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez-Gacha, who helped launder cash through the emerald trade; and Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, and his brothers, Juan David and Fabio. The Ochoa brothers recruited former TWA pilot, Barry Seal, who smuggled tons of cocaine into the U.S. The DEA eventually used Seal, who had been arrested, to be an informant. (The Ochoa brothers later assassinated Seal.)

Escobar had at least 500 “sicarios” (or hitmen) working for him. “We used to have to drive with our guns by our chests because of the sicarios,” Pena said. “I interviewed one sicario. … He said ‘I will die for Pablo Escobar. I owe my life to him. He’s taken me out of poverty. … He was 15 years old. He said, ‘I’ll be dead by 22 or 23.’ You multiply that attitude by 500. That’s what we were dealing with.”

Escobar’s chief assassin, Dandeny Munoz Mosquera, was responsible for the 1989 bombing of Colombian Avianca Flight 203, which killed 110 civilians. “Two were U.S. citizens so that gave us a jurisdiction. … We arrested him in New York City,” Pena said. “He was going to try to assassinate the new president of Colombia who was going to speaking at the United Nations.

“The terrorism we encountered was just unbelievable. Anybody [in Colombia] that talked about extradition [to the U.S.] Escobar had killed. He started putting car bombs, 10 to 15 car bombs daily … in malls, shopping centers. He put one in a bookstore where parents and kids were getting supplies to go back to school.

“He started putting bounties on police officers. One hundred dollars a head on a police officer. Thousands of police officers lost their lives. … It was a violence we had never seen before. Any politician or judge that talked about extradition, Escobar had killed. … He killed between 10,000 to 15,000 innocent people. … The number could be closer to 50,000.”

In 1989, Escobar ordered the assassination of Luis Carlos Galan, the shoo-in for president, who was campaigning on a platform of extraditing Escobar and destroying his cartel. He was shot onstage during a campaign event.    

Because of the outrage of Galan’s killing, the president of Colombia brought back extradition as a country doctrine. The DEA then began in earnest to route the cartel. “The next day we brought in agents, analysts. We started raiding, arresting anybody associated with Pablo. We were able to extradite 30 of his top traffickers to the United States. Then Escobar declared war,” Pena said.

Escobar’s hitmen told a judge that he could have a briefcase full of money if he dropped some drug charges against cartel members. He didn’t, and the hitmen killed him and his family. Judges throughout the country began accepting the briefcases, Pena said.

Escobar’s labs daily produced 1,000 pounds of cocaine, Pena said. At that time, a kilo cost about $5,000 to produce. They would send it to Miami and sell it for $80,000. “They would use trade-based money laundering and black-market peso exchanges,” Pena said.

Murphy said Escobar would smuggle powdered drugs in grapefruits, Coke cans, fanny packs and via human mules who’d ingest condoms of cocaine. He said Escobar’s men would fly planes full of cocaine from Colombia to islands and land on the water. Boats would swoop in and unload the drugs before the planes would sink. The planes still rest in the shallow waters.

Luxurious prison, escape and demise
In 1991, Escobar called up the president of Colombia and said he’d be willing to stop his violence and surrender in exchange for no extradition and a five-year sentence in a self-built prison, protected by his henchman, Pena said. Oh, and he’d be able to keep his riches. The Colombian government took the deal, and Escobar moved to the luxurious compound outside of Medellin, which he coined “La Catedral.” “Escobar had won, and we had lost,” Pena said.

A year into his “sentence,” Escobar escaped La Catedral after he violently killed some traitors and authorities tried to move him to an actual prison. Eighteen months later, on Dec. 2, 1993, he and his lone bodyguard died in a shootout on the roof of a Medellin house he was briefly staying in.

Colombian Brigadier Hugo Martinez, and his electronic surveillance team, had triangulated Escobar’s telephone signal as he was talking with his son. Police blasted through the front door. Escobar and his bodyguard, the last sicario, escaped through a third-story window, but both died in a hail of bullets. The cartel didn’t retaliate that evening because the Colombian National Police and vicious attacks by “Los Pepes,” a vigilant group, had decimated it.

“In 1992 and 1993, Medellin, Colombia, was the murder capital of the entire world,” Murphy said. “A few months later, the murder rate had dropped almost 80% because of one man’s death.”

Regardless of the country’s troubles, Pena and Murphy told attendees that they should visit beautiful Colombia, which is filled with gracious, friendly people. Murphy and his, wife, Connie, adopted two Colombian girls, who are now grown and have families of their own.