Eight
OUR SURRENDER IN 1991 WAS THE BEGINNING of the final end of the story of Pablo Escobar. We had spent the three months before the surrender at a farm called Skinny Dog. Pablo had given it that name on the day it was bought, when he saw the owner’s skin-and-bones dog. He insisted that this ordinary dog be part of the deal, and the farm was named for him. It was high enough on a mountain in Envigado to provide a long-distance view. We had a quiet time there—long enough for the skinny dog to grow fat.
On the morning of Pablo’s surrender he woke up much earlier than usual, at 7 A.M. We ate breakfast with our mother, then Pablo began making plans to meet the helicopter that would take him to the Cathedral. The surrender would begin as soon as the Assembly voted to outlaw extradition. That vote was taken right after noon. The war was won. We all got ready for the move.
I think the whole country was waiting.
We drove in a convoy to a soccer field in Envigado. A big crowd of our people was waiting there to offer protection. Pablo was dressed as always in blue jeans, blue socks, sneakers, and a simple white shirt. He was wearing a Cartier watch and carrying his Sig Sauer and a Motorola radio with two bands of twenty-five frequencies. By the time we got to the field the helicopter was landing. He hugged me and climbed on board for the flight. Father García and the journalist Luis Alirio Calle were waiting inside to fly with him. There was still great danger; there were many groups that did not want Pablo free to talk to the government. So the defense minister closed all the airspace in the region, writing in his own diary, “Not even birds will fly over Medellín today.”
When the helicopter reached the top of the mountain Pablo got off and walked directly to the entrance. He handed a soldier his pearl-handled gun as a symbol of the end of the fighting—but people who were there told me that as soon as he got inside he took another gun. It took a few more days before all of us had surrendered and were safely inside. Officially there were fourteen of us.
The first few days there were very busy. Among our first visitors was our mother, who arrived with a rosary and a pot of cooked meat, Father García, who took our confession—we asked God to allow us to get out of this situation and protect our family—and friends like Colombia’s famous soccer star René Higuita. Pablo had helped discover him as a young player and brought him to the notice of the professional teams. They had stayed loyal friends. The media tried to make a scandal from Higuita’s friendship with us, but no one paid attention; he didn’t even lose his TV endorsements of products.
There were many other things that had to be done quickly. While Pablo’s people living outside would continue the business and pay whatever bribes had to be paid, we needed to have our own access to money. As much as $10 million in cash was packed tightly into ten milk canisters, which were covered with salt, sugar, rice, and beans, even fresh fish. We told the guards that these canisters contained our weekly food ration, so they let them inside. Eventually they were buried near our soccer field. Other money was stored in tunnels hidden under our bedrooms that could be reached only by trapdoors under the beds. Weapons that we might need to protect ourselves were also brought in that way.
To communicate with our associates outside we also installed eleven telephone lines, a cell telephone system—which was now available—a radio-telephone system, and nine beepers. It was written that we had carrier pigeons to carry messages, but that wasn’t true. We had the lighting system prepared for our needs, so that if planes flew overhead we could quickly turn out all the internal lights with a remote control that I built—or when we needed to slip outside we could do the same thing.
Security was always the primary concern. In addition to our bodega watching post, there were four guard stations along the twisting mountain road to the Cathedral. These were manned by the army, who were never permitted inside the gates, but in truth we were allowed to hire half of the jail guards, and the good mayor of Envigado hired the other half, so these guards mostly were friends of ours. The government paid them very little, so they were often persuaded to work with our needs in exchange for additional cash payments, good food, and colored pieces of paper. An arrangement had been made so that these pieces of paper could be exchanged in Envigado for home appliances, electronics, clothes, and even Colombian cash, and the owners would be paid by our people.
When our protection was done, we prepared the Cathedral for our pleasure. When we arrived it was a simple place. It wasn’t like a regular prison with bars and cells, but it wasn’t especially comfortable either. With the help of my son Nico, we changed that situation. Nico had acquired a soda truck and received permission to bring cases of soda to the prison. But the crates of soda formed walls and inside those walls was whatever we wanted. He brought in Jacuzzis and hot tubs, television sets, the materials needed to build comfortable bedrooms, whatever we wanted—including the first of the many women to stay there. It was a hectic period and much was done to transform the prison into a much more tolerable place.
I also brought two bicycles inside with me, a stationary bike and one of my own Ositto riding bikes, so I could keep in shape. Among the things that Pablo brought with him was a large record collection, including classical music, Elvis’s records he’d bought when we had visited Graceland, and his signed Frank Sinatra records that we’d received when visiting Las Vegas. For reading he brought in a collection of books, from five Bibles to the work of Nobel Prize winners. The books I brought included a text on having a super-memory, and books on horses, cancer, AIDS, and bicycles. We also had a large collection of videotapes, naturally including the complete set of The Godfather movies and Steve McQueen movies, including Bullitt.
Eventually we turned the prison into a comfortable home. We had all the necessary electronic devices, including computers, big-screen televisions with video systems, beautiful music systems, even a comfortable bar with the best champagne and whiskey. Outside we had a good soccer field with lights to play at night, paths to walk where we could be hidden from the air by thick trees, and good places to exercise. Within a couple of months we had made it a reasonable place.
Immediately there were stories written that we were living in luxury, that the faucets in the bathroom were gold. That it was just like Napoles. That wasn’t true at all. It was safer for us than moving between hiding places, and we made it comfortable—it wasn’t an ordinary prison, but still it was a prison. We no longer had the freedom to make our plans to go where we wanted or see whoever we wanted when we wanted to see them. Everything required planning. But soon we had settled in. We fixed the kitchen and brought in two chefs to prepare international foods for us—we knew them as the Stomach Brothers. We had sufficient entertainment, sports and exercise facilities, security, arms, and a lot of money.
But it was not luxury. Some of our mattresses were on cement. The furniture was simple; the walls were decorated mostly with paper posters, although Pablo did have a couple of nice paintings. And our clothes were basic. In Pablo’s closet, for example, were his jeans and shirts, and many pairs of sneakers—some of them ready with spikes on in case we had to move quickly.
The difference between this prison and the world we’d lived in for the past few years was that now our enemies knew exactly where we were, but they couldn’t get to us. Instead of tracking us and trying to kill us, the government was responsible for protecting us. It was a difficult political situation.
President Gavíria had his own needs. To restore Colombia as a safe place for foreign companies to do business the Gavíria government had to have peace in the streets. People had to feel safe to come here. Ending the war was the beginning of that.
I spent the first months there without being charged with a true crime. After several months a government prosecutor came to the prison to accuse me. “The charge against Roberto is that he has accounts outside Colombia with millions and millions of dollars in them.”
At that moment there was no law in Colombia against keeping money in foreign banks. I told the judge, “That isn’t illegal, and if you read the law you see that I have the right to negotiate an agreement with you. I’ll give you half the money and then you make the other half legal for me.”
The judge refused this offer. Instead the Colombian government made an agreement with other countries to freeze the bank accounts. Some of these accounts are still frozen.
Meanwhile, outside the prison the drug business continued to prosper. The arrest of the legendary Pablo Escobar did nothing to change that. Members of our organization continued to do their deals, the Cali cartel stayed in serious business, the other cartels kept working. When someone fell, other people stepped forward to take his place. What was different was that the violence had abated.
While we were there we did try hard to change our situation. Pablo had as many as thirty lawyers working most of their time in our effort inside the judicial system. The soccer star Higuita volunteered to try to make peace between us and Cali. Eventually with the help of Father García he spoke with the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, but to no good. They were too stubborn. Pablo told me, “I don’t believe in the word of those two.” As we discovered later there was good reason for that. A DAS agent who was helping run the prison security discovered that Cali had bought four 250-pound bombs from people in El Salvador and was trying to buy a plane to drop them on us. They were not able to, but on occasion our guards suddenly would begin firing their weapons at airplanes hovering too long in the area or coming too close to the Cathedral.
Time passed very slowly. I exercised, rode my bicycle, continued to read everything possible about AIDS and making my research, and I worked with my brother. Pablo would spend his days on the telephone, reading, and visiting with his attorneys. He even began studying Mandarin. In the evenings we would sit in rocking chairs watching the lights come on in the buildings of Envigado. At those moments, when we watched the normal life of others, it was hard not to think about people being with their families in an ordinary but comforting way.
As before, Pablo continued to try to help the people who most needed it. He received hundreds of letters every day. The world knew he had surrendered and wrote to him with their requests. Letters came from around the world, from Europe, Asia, and basically everywhere else, and most of them asked for money or advice on how to make money. Four or five of our employees did nothing but organize these letters. They were put in piles for family, for friends, for people who needed help with their health especially with cancer, for students needing money for education, and for business letters. Pablo would read most of these letters and often send a crew to investigate the cases and verify the information. If it was real they would hand money to the people.
I remember a few of the letters. One odd letter came from a man in Africa who owned the elephant that was the mother of the elephant we’d had at Napoles. It was his idea to have the mother and daughter together living at Napoles. He included a picture of his elephant and his request for money.
A person wrote from America that he had seven different bank accounts and would be very happy to hide Pablo’s money in his accounts.
There was a letter addressed to myself and Pablo; it included a photograph of a gorgeous seventeen-year-old blonde wearing a wedding dress. She wrote something like, “I’m a good girl. I have just finished high school and my dream is to be an attorney but I don’t have the money. I am a decent girl, but it would be an honor if one of you can take me. I am a virgin and that is all I can offer. I am not a whore, but I need the money for my college career.”
Pablo sent a representative to her house. Although we never became involved with her in any way, we did pay for her college. But that was typical. The pleading letters were hard to read: I am dying and my children have nothing . . . I need an operation so I can walk and support my family . . .They are coming to take away our house . . .The government helped none of these people, so their only hope was Pablo.
Countless other people would gather at the first gate at the bottom of the mountain and send handwritten notes, boletas, with the guards to ask for assistance. Sometimes they wanted money but other times they just wanted Pablo’s advice about the problems of their life. To them, Pablo was a man of the streets like they were who had risen to the very top of the mountain.
Most important for our daily lives was the fact that we were able to receive visitors regularly. This was not supposed to happen, the only official visiting days were Wednesday and Sunday when our families came, but it seemed like there were always people there. We had bought two trucks, a Chevrolet and a Mazda van. In the back of them we built a fake wall, leaving a space we called the tunnel that was big enough to hide as many as twenty people. The people who used this method to come see us were those who did not want their visit known publicly, others who had committed crimes and were not legally allowed to be there, or people we did not want our enemies to know were there. Usually they would be picked up in the night and driven to our bodega. From there those people who could show ID to guards were placed in the seats and those who could not were put in the hidden tunnel. At the checkpoint the guards would ask, “What are you taking there?”
The password was “Materials.”
Each time a truck left the bodega we were called and told who was coming up.
In addition to our family and friends, politicians visited us, businessmen, priests, the greatest soccer players, and some of the most beautiful women in the world. There were many parties and in attendance were the beauty queens of Colombia and other countries, including famous actresses, models, and the prettiest girls at the universities. We would see a beautiful woman on television or in the newspapers and she would be invited. There was never any danger to them and for their visit they would receive a very nice gift. Often by their own choice they would stay the night, and leave after breakfast the next morning in the tunnel. In fact, between many of our bedrooms we had built small hideouts, so the girls could stay there without anyone being suspicious.
No one was ever pushed to come if she felt uncomfortable. One of the girls at the university remembers being approached by a friend who asked her if she wanted to go to a lovely party, for which she would be well paid. “What do I have to do?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just be beautiful.”
There is a magazine in Colombia called Cromos that publishes pictures of beautiful women. We would pick out women from the pages and invite them to the parties. One of the very first women to stay at the Cathedral was a twenty-year-old beauty who had just been fourth in the Miss Universe pageant who I had invited—she arrived there and stayed for five days. From these visits several people fell in love and there were some marriages at the Cathedral. And one of these women I fell in love with, she was a beauty queen and we had three beautiful children together before our marriage had a bad end. As I learned eventually, she had not fallen in love with me, but instead with my bank account.
It should not be surprising that there was a lot of sex at the Cathedral. We were young men, many of us rich, and confined inside the walls of a prison. Who could protect a woman better than the men of Pablo Escobar? Even our parties were moderate, with nice music and dancing.
Later, photographs found at the Cathedral after we’d escaped, of blow-up sex dolls and some of our men dressed as women, were printed in magazines to try to embarrass us. The impressions of those photographs were not true at all; these toys were jokes, the dress-up part of a costume day we had as our entertainment.
The beautiful women were never invited there during the weekly family visits. During the years we’d been running we had only been able to spend brief periods with our families. Being in prison allowed us to finally spend time safely with our wives, children, and families. In fact, Pablo had three beds put into his bedroom so his whole family could sleep in that room with him when they visited. He even had a small playhouse built for his daughter and a go-kart for his son.
There were always many people there when our families visited. Pablo would stay in his bedroom, which was right off the main living room, and invite those people he wanted to see into his room. Often through one of the trusted people there with us, he would hand out cash to the family. One of those people who came to visit was his seventeen-year-old cousin, who he called Pelolindo, the girl with the pretty hair. She came there dressed in her high school uniform with her mother and sisters. Like other members of the family, they had not seen Pablo in all the years we’d been on the run. And during that time she had become very beautiful. “When we were invited into his room,” she remembers, “he looked at everybody but he focused on me.” He said he didn’t really remember too much about meeting these girls when they were children. “The way he looked at me that day, I felt shy.”
She returned a few days later, this time dressed as a young woman. At first she was invited into his room with her two sisters. Each of them spoke of their wishes, although Pelolindo asked for nothing, and then returned to the living room. As they were about to leave Pablo asked her to return to his room. Her two sisters moved with her but he stopped them, “I didn’t call you.” When they were in his room he wondered why she hadn’t asked for something. Everybody always asked him for something, he said.
“I don’t see you like that,” she said. “I’m not here to ask you for anything. I don’t like to do that.” In response he planned and sponsored her high school graduation trip to a Colombian island in the Caribbean, San Andrés. All that he asked in return was that she would call him when she returned.
When she returned from the island he invited her to come back. This time she went with her cousin. To go up the mountain they were hidden in a false area of a jeep. “I went up there because I felt something special with him. I know he felt something too. But he was always respectful to me. And it did not feel like we were in a prison; instead I felt like we were in a very private place. I was nervous and anxious. But then I began to visit him often, sometimes four or five times a week. One day with him felt like a week.” And this continued for several months.
The truth is that their relationship never was sexual. Many stories have been written about Pablo and young women, but he was very quiet about that. In public he was always a gentleman. And with Pelolindo it remained sweet and innocent. When she came to the Cathedral they would take walks and talk. As she remembers, “Sometimes at night we would go to the soccer field and he would turn on the lights, and the two of us would play soccer. He’d pretend to be the goalkeeper and he would challenge me to score a goal. Score a goal! After showing me he could stop me, he would let me score.
“Sometimes after that we would cuddle and hug and watch TV,” she tells. But there was never sex between them. “If he had not been killed that probably would have happened in time, but it did not.” This girl suggested to Pablo that he put together albums of all the political cartoons about his life, an idea he embraced, and together they began putting together these books by hand. A few hundred were done, but only ten were done by hand and those had Pablo’s signature and thumbprint in gold on the cover. One night as they were working together she said to him, “The way I know you, sweet and romantic and caring, I can’t believe the other side of you is true.”
He smiled, she said, then responded, “Do you know who I am? Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“I know. But right now I see you as Pablo Escobar.” Often he asked to give her things. Once two of his men showed up at her school with a new car for her. And Pablo gave his word that he would use his contacts to help her have a successful career as a singer. Pablo’s wife knew about these visits and was not happy about them. But there was nothing she could do—and it remained a flirtation. A happy innocence.
He never told Perolindo he loved her or he’d missed her when she wasn’t there. But each night when she left he wanted to know exactly when she was coming back.
Pablo eventually came to trust her so much that he allowed her to have the combination to the safe in which he kept many thousands of dollars and pesos. Several times he let her open the trapdoor below his bed and go down alone into the hidden room where cash was kept. There was always a lot of money going out of the room, she remembers, but it stayed full of piles of cash.
Within a few months she began cutting his hair and taking care of his nails. In fact, there was a night Pablo decided he should be a blond, so she returned the next time with blond dye—but also black in case he didn’t like it. She dyed his hair blond to hide his white hairs. He looked in the mirror and hated it. He would be even more of a target as a blonde than black-haired. “Put it back black,” he said instantly, deciding the blond made him look too much like a woman.
As they became close, they talked about the hardest topics. One night he asked her, “What are you going to do if they kill me?”
She was surprised at that question. Pablo thought about life, not death. One time he had showed her the photograph of himself and Juan Pablo taken in front of the White House and told her that in the future he was going to go there and do business with the American president. He said, “After I get back on track, I’m going to be president of Colombia.” So she hadn’t expected a question about death. She tried to laugh it away. “Oh Pablo, I don’t think you’re going to get killed. If they take you to another prison I know with the power you have you’re going to escape from there.”
“I’ll try,” she remembers him saying. “But if something happens to me what are you going to remember most?”
“I will remember the way you look at me. The intenseness of your eyes, because I know you don’t look at me as your cousin.” To that, Pablo did not respond.
Their relationship changed because of a second cousin. This cousin was killed by Pablo’s enemies when they got of ahold of him and he would not snitch on Pablo. For that he was killed. That event scared Pelolindo and she suddenly stopped going up there. Instead she had excuses. When Pablo called her home her mother would tell him, “She has gone to a party.” After a week of such excuses he said he needed to talk to her immediately. She came up to the Cathedral but Pablo could see there was a distance. “You’re afraid,” he said.
She admitted that she was. Pablo explained that there was no reason to worry, and promised to keep her safe and help her build her singing career. And he gave her a gold comb with “Pelolindo” inscribed on it. She admits, “That was the first time I spent through the night. It wasn’t a night of passion, but the feelings were very deep. I felt loved that night. I told him that love isn’t only sex, that I would make love to him in my own way. I kissed his face and his hands and that night I saw tears in his eyes. I asked him why. ‘After all this that I’ve been through this is what I wanted, this is love. I know my wife loves me, but I don’t think in the same way.’ He asked me, ‘Are you ready for something?’
“‘What for?’ I said. I thought he wanted to have sex, but it wasn’t that.
“‘Are you ready to approach the family?’
“‘No,’ I told him. ‘No, I’m not going to do that. Are you crazy?’ Eventually though, in a different time and a different place, I know we would have had physical love together.”
After leaving the Cathedral in the morning, she went to collect a $2,000 payment for a singing job she had done. She was with a male friend of hers, and on the road called Las Olmos they were kidnapped by four police in uniform, driving in two taxis. These men took everything from them as well as all the equipment in their car. That evening, when Pablo’s man went to her house to pick her up, her mother explained that she had not come home since the morning. Pablo put out the word.
The kidnappers received a phone call telling them, “This is Pablo Escobar’s cousin that you’re f*cking with.” They returned the money and gave them back the car. Then they left quickly. The second she got to her home the phone was ringing and Pablo told her, “You have to come here now!” When she arrived she told him the whole story, and learned about his own phone calls to find her.
“I told him, ‘You are my Superman.’ He didn’t say anything, but it was one of the few times I saw him smile. And that was the last night I ever saw him, because at that moment we didn’t know that the government was planning to take him away from there.” This was June 20, 1992.
We spent 396 days inside the Cathedral. We celebrated many events there, including holidays, marriages, and birthdays. Pablo turned forty-two there and we enjoyed a feast including caviar and pink salmon. Musicians played for the guests and our mother gave him a special Russian hat she had bought during a recent trip there. But when I think of it all maybe most memorable were the days Pablo’s beloved soccer teams visited us there.
René Higuita’s Nacional team arrived first, on the celebration of Las Mercedes, the patron saint of prisoners. Pablo wanted us to play a real game against them, except as he warned them, “Games here last about three or four hours, without rest and only two changes are allowed. A tie is settled with penalties.” They wore their official uniforms; we wore the colors of the German team. Pablo was a good player but he was guarded hard by Leonel Alvarez, and when Pablo complained, Alvarez told him, “This is how we play soccer, brother.” Nacional went ahead 3–0, but eventually the game was finished 5–5. In penalty kicks I believe René helped us, missing his own attempt, then allowing my brother’s left-foot kick to get into the goal for our victory. There was no consideration of the fact that maybe they had played easy with us. We won, that’s what mattered.
Within a few days the professional teams from Medellín and Envigado also came to the Cathedral to play against us—and they also could not beat us! From those days until our stay there ended, the flag of one of those teams always flew outside the perimeter. And if that flag was not that of Pablo’s favorite Medellín team, after everyone went to bed he would quietly make certain that it was.
Pablo believed he was serving his time for all the people in the organization. He had given himself up to end extradition. With Pablo Escobar in prison the government could say the war against drug trafficking was being won. This really wasn’t true.
Because we were in the Cathedral did not mean our business stopped totally. Pablo continued to know what was going on in Medellín and throughout Colombia. People would call him and tell him what was happening. Not one single load left that he did not know about. But it was expensive being there; there were still people on Pablo’s payroll who expected to be paid. Sometimes helicopters from the outskirts of Medellín would land in our prison and fly away carrying money to keep the business operating. But all of that stayed possible because the people doing business paid Pablo his fees in cash.
Two of the biggest organizations paying their percentage belonged to Pablo’s friends Fernando Galeano and Kiko Moncada. They were making a lot of money using the route through Mexico, called Fany, opened by Pablo, and thanks to him without fear of extradition. But then Pablo found out that they had done five loads without paying him a cent. They had cheated him out of millions of dollars. As business that made no sense. They were earning millions of dollars, the money they needed to pay Pablo was nothing for them. So Pablo knew that this was much more than the dollars and the lack of respect, this was an attempt to take control of the whole business. But Galeano and Moncada were friends, men he had trusted. In Pablo’s mind, men he had gone to jail for.
Pablo found out from a friend where Galeano had hidden the money and he sent people to collect it. It was more than $20 million in the coleta. Galeano and Moncada wanted it back, denying what Pablo knew to be true. He told them to come to the Cathedral to discuss the business.
They died as expected. Probably they thought they were safe coming to the prison. They were killed after they left the Cathedral. The sicario Popeye confessed that he killed Moncada and claimed that Otto killed Galeano. It doesn’t matter who killed them, they were still dead. Their families pleaded to have their bodies and they were told where to dig them up. Pablo then called all the accountants for those people and told them from now on they were responsible to him. All the properties of those families, the boats, the planes, the cash, were put in the names of Pablo’s loyal people.
Then Pablo specially called the principal people from both of those operations to come to the prison. Most of them were brought up the mountain secretly in the tunnel. “I am declaring an emergency,” Pablo told them, reminding them all that even in prison he was still the leader, the patrón, of the Medellín cartel. While the cartel of the old days was gone, Pablo meant all of the drug traffickers of Medellín. He told them that if they stayed calm nothing would happen to them—as long as they continued to pay their monthly quota, their tax.
Pablo believed he had to take these steps to protect his own interests, which were being stolen from him. This was business, the people he was dealing with were equally guilty to him, so I don’t believe he thought the government would be protective of them. But it turned out they made a good excuse for the government to take the actions suggested by the United States.
Pablo did not want to escape from the Cathedral. Inside we were all safe, outside there were many enemies waiting for all of us. It is clear to us why President Gavíria decided suddenly to take actions against us, and that was because the Cali cartel was pressuring the government through their political ties. We know letters were written from the Cali cartel to the minister of defense telling about the way all of us were living inside the prison: guests of all sorts coming at all times, good sports facilities, the fact that we had money and weapons and that Pablo had continued in the business. But it’s hard to believe the government did not already know about the way we lived inside the Cathedral. When stories about the deaths of Moncada and Galeano became known to the public there were complaints that the government was too weak to act, so perhaps Gavíria was embarrassed and felt he needed to show how tough he was. There were also comments made later that the government was forced to act when it learned Pablo was planning an escape. Pablo was not planning any escape. And then there was the pressure from the United States. The drug trafficking from our country to America had not decreased even slightly when Pablo surrendered, and when the news that he was living easy was made public the American government objected and offered even more assistance. Whatever the reasons, in July 1992, President Gavíria decided that Pablo had to be moved to a more difficult prison.
Pablo had always been nervous about this possibility. He believed that the American DEA wanted to kidnap him and bring him to the United States. He even thought some of the planes that flew over the prison had been sent by the DEA to take pictures. I remember he read a book by the Charles Manson prosecutor that said the U.S. should send commandos to Colombia to kill the drug traffickers.
I felt that this was coming two days before when the small priest came to warn me. For the first time I told Pablo the whole story, when the priest had visited me before and what had happened. Pablo believed me. I asked him, “Is it true that they are going to come for us?” I know he went to his informants in the government and army and they told him that indeed it was true. Someone at a very high level of the army told him he needed to move. Others told him that there was an order from the U.S. that either the Colombian government had to bring him to America or they would come to our country.
The next few days there was a lot of preparation in case we had to leave quickly. There was a lot of nervousness those days, as if we were waiting for a tornado.
It came as a breeze. We had set up a communication system that made it possible to find Pablo or myself wherever we were; we even had speakers above our beds. One morning at 10:15 we received a warning that four truckloads of military were coming up. Soon after we were officially informed that representatives of the government were coming to speak with us.
Pablo and I started to get ready to leave in case we had to go. We knew it would be difficult in the daylight but there was nothing else we could do. One thing for sure, Pablo was not going to let them take him anywhere without a fight. At noon the assistant minister of justice, Eduardo Mendoza, and the director of prisons, Colonel Hernando Navas, got to the gate and explained that President Gavíria had ordered the army to search our bedrooms.
Pablo remained polite, inviting these two men to come inside to discuss this situation. “I’m sorry,” he said to them. “But I have made a deal with the government of Gavíria. The police and the army are not permitted inside this prison. If you want, you can bring the regular prison officials to do this search, but I will not allow the army and even less the police. Please remember, gentlemen, I fought a war with the police and this policy is the result.”
The assistant minister looked very upset. To make the situation more comfortable, Pablo offered to allow soldiers inside, but only without weapons. The two officials accepted this, but when contacted, the president refused. Breaking his pact with Pablo, he insisted the army enter with their weapons, that there could be no compromise. I think he was concerned he would look weak if he accepted Pablo’s offer.
But Pablo was just as strong. “They can’t come inside with weapons,” he insisted. “No one’s coming in here armed to kill us.” The government men tried to calm the situation, but Pablo insisted: “We don’t know what their intentions are. I do not trust my life with them.” There was no solution to this standoff and we all waited to see what would happen. What happened was that the government sent many more soldiers, as well as helicopters and airplanes. We learned from sources that two loaded Hercules airplanes had left from Bogotá to Medellín, and already truckloads of soldiers from Bogotá were coming up the mountain to replace the troops from Medellín that were patrolling the prison’s perimeter.
After dark the government officials decided to leave. “Let’s go to sleep tonight,” Mendoza said. “We’ll come back tomorrow to figure out how to solve this.” But just at that moment Pablo got a phone call from an army general we trusted. He informed Pablo that the government planned to capture or kill him, or even extradite him. Pablo took me aside and explained the situation knowing that we were the only two who knew what was going on. Our options were narrow. The first thing he decided was to keep the government officials as hostages. He explained to them: “I’m sorry, but you can’t leave here right now. We need you to ensure our own security while we figure out what to do.”
The situation could be solved only by the president, but Gavíria refused to get on the telephone. Pablo’s lawyers tried many times to contact the president, but it was clear that the president had his own plan. Pablo did not want to leave the Cathedral, but he had no choice. We all believed the army wanted to come in and kill us. It was time to leave. All of us except me got armed with the weapons that had been hidden a long time, including a machine gun and rifles. Pablo had an Uzi on his right shoulder and his Sig Sauer stuck in his waistband. Without saying anything I left the prison building and slipped into the cool night. I was going to prepare our escape route. The fog was drifting in, which gave me some cover. Pablo and I had walked the perimeter of the prison many times, searching for the ideal place to get through the wire fence. We were convinced this was the only place in the entire perimeter we could leave unseen. Months earlier I had buried wire cutters near the place we had selected. The nearest soldiers were about eighty meters away. Pablo and I had carefully selected this place to go through the fence because it led directly to a gulley, a trench cut in the ground by a stream that served as a natural tunnel. The wire fence was thicker than I thought it would be, and much more difficult to cut. I had to be very quiet because sounds flow easily in the night. One of the most difficult challenges we faced was getting through the high-voltage fence. Everybody was worried they would be electrocuted, and truthfully they would have preferred to be shot dead instead of fried. My engineering knowledge allowed me to bypass this system. Eventually I cut a hole just barely large enough for our men to slip through one by one, and then I went back to the prison building.
Inside the prison our hostages were terrified. They had been captured by Pablo Escobar so probably they abandoned hope. They were scared quiet and lost all skin color. Colonel Navas took a glass of whiskey and said, “This could be the last whiskey I will drink in my life.” Then he went to a Bible and read Psalm 91. Finally he asked for a telephone and called his family to tell them goodbye. He told us he didn’t even know what his mission was when he was ordered to fly to Medellín.
Later in the night Pablo ordered the prisoners taken to his bedroom. He had tried many times to contact the president, even through Father García, but Gavíria would not accept the phone calls. There was no longer a question of leaving for us. Pablo said clearly, “Either we flee or we all die.” Pablo and I went to the hidden room and packed ourselves with cash. We heard airplanes circling above and I flipped a switch that operated the lighting system I had installed, and the Cathedral went into darkness. The dark prison was lost in the fog. But inside the lights going off scared everyone, especially the hostages. It was explained to them this was necessary for security but I don’t know how much they accepted that.
Outside it was very quiet. We could hear the birds and insects and occasionally a soldier yelling. Inside radio stations were broadcasting the story. They all got it wrong: One said the army had taken control of the Cathedral and there had been casualties. Another said Pablo had been captured and was already on an airplane to Florida. But all of them spoke of this military assault. They gave us some good information. Pablo used the mobile phone to speak with his family. The reports terrified them. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “Don’t listen to the news. The situation is being resolved directly with the president.” I called my children to tell them the same thing. And then Pablo and I both called our mother.
We had thought about this night many times. Pablo always walked around with the laces of his sneakers open and we all used to say, the day Pablo ties his sneakers is the day we’re in real difficulty. There were already as many as two thousand soldiers surrounding the Cathedral. An air controller we paid informed us helicopters from Bogotá had landed in Medellín. Things were now happening fast. Pablo gathered all of us and told us who would be leaving and who would be staying. He picked the most fit knowing we would have to move fast. Then he bent over and tied the laces of his sneakers.
He said to me, “Roberto, let’s put our radios on the same frequency.” We visited the hostages, told them to remain calm, that this situation would be solved without bloodshed. Then he told them he was going to sleep for a while and would see them again in the morning. There have been stories written that the guards were bribed and we just walked out the door, that Pablo and others were dressed as women, that we paid more than $1 million to leave. With all the soldiers around, many of them from Bogotá, bribing all of them would have been impossible. Instead, Pablo decided we would slip out of the prison one by one at five-minute intervals. It had started raining, so the dark of night, the thick fog, and the rain gave us good cover. Pablo went first and took a good position to see everything that was going on around him. I waited with the hostages a few minutes and told them that I was going to lie down. Then I went back to my room to make my final preparations.
I put on boots, put new batteries in the radiophone, and took my transistor radio so I could hear the news. I finally put on my raincoat and my old bicycling hat with the message Bicicletas El Ositto, Bear Bicycles. It was time to leave. There were only a few things we left behind that mattered, for Pablo it was his collection of records by Elvis and Sinatra. I left the bicycles I loved and my mini-lab for cancer and AIDS research. I walked slowly through the dark, empty building. It was a strange feeling. I looked for the lights of the city below the mountain, but Medellín was hidden in the fog.
I walked toward the fence where I thought Pablo and the others were waiting, but something happened. In the dark I got confused, I got lost. And for the first time that night, I felt panic. I felt completely alone. There wasn’t much I could do, I couldn’t make a sound because the soldiers were too close. Like in a race, I took deep breaths to find a place of calm inside me. I knew Pablo would never leave without me. He had often told me that he would not leave. I walked slowly—and finally saw movement. It was one of our people.
They were all outside. I slipped through the fence and joined them. It was almost 2 A.M. As we left I heard some panicky shouts and thought it was the priest warning me that we had to get moving. Slowly, but gradually, we went down the mountain, careful to keep our footing on the wet ground. One slip could mean death.
It was a difficult descent. There was a large straight rock face we had to climb down. The biggest and strongest went first, and allowed other men to stand on their shoulders to make a human ladder. That part completed, we found a steep slope covered with thick, thorny brush. We pushed on as silently as possible through the bushes, holding hands to make a chain. We kept moving forward toward the morning, not knowing where we were going. Finally, after more than two hours we came into a clearing near a stable. The fog had thinned. We paused and looked around, and were stunned and dismayed to discover that we were only a few hundred meters from the prison. We had almost been going around in a circle. If anyone had been looking in this direction from the prison they easily could have seen us. If they were shooting, we were an easy target.
The one advantage we had was that seven of us were wearing army camouflage uniforms and if people in the distance saw them they probably would have mistaken them for the army. Pablo figured we had less than two hours to find safe cover, so we began moving faster. Looking back over our shoulders, the Cathedral looked so big, so strong, like from some movie. We managed to snake down the hill into the neighborhood of El Salado by daylight. The city was coming alive, people were leaving their homes to go to work, and children were on their way to school. For them it was a normal day, for us it was the end of our old lives as we walked into the unknown. Once again we were fugitives of justice.
We were filthy, covered with mud and sweating, our clothes torn. The people who saw us thought we were ordinary street people. No photographs of Pablo had been seen by the public in more than a year and he had gotten heavier, so no one recognized him. The rest of us were not known. Pablo decided to go to the farm of Memo Pérez, an old friend who had worked for him in many different important positions.
Memo’s groundskeeper answered the door. After a second of shock he recognized us and quickly had us come in. It was the first time we could relax since the government came to the Cathedral. We were wet and exhausted. But within the hour there was a heavy banging on the door. We grabbed our weapons and got ready for the fight as the butler, Raúl, opened the door. It was some neighbors who had seen us move in, coming with hot food for our breakfast. It was an amazing gesture. Several of these people formed a neighborhood watch for us, standing on the nearby streets to warn us if the army arrived. Someone else took our filthy clothes and washed them as we cleaned ourselves and shaved. By the time we put on our fresh clothes we felt refreshed and ready for whatever happened next.
We learned from the radio what had happened on the top of the mountain. At about 7 A.M. Gavíria had ordered General Gustavo Pardo Ariza, commander of the Fourth Brigade, to attack. The radio said that as they burst through the main door they screamed that everyone should get on the ground, but when the commander of the prison guards tried to fight back he was shot and killed. Months later we would learn the truth that he had turned to open the door and was shot. The army then stormed through the prison, shooting and setting off explosives looking for us. They discovered the hostages safe in Pablo’s bedroom, but still they continued shooting and tearing up the place. They captured the five of us who had stayed behind, and arrested twenty-seven guards on suspicion of cooperating with us. The radio reported that the purpose of the raid was to move Pablo out of the Cathedral to a more secure prison.
While this was going on we were enjoying fresh coffee. We could hear the helicopters circling above the city. We knew we couldn’t move again until dark. We felt no joy or excitement about our escape. We believed we were forced to flee, that the government had broken its agreement and there was no way of knowing what would be done to us. There was nothing else we could do if we wanted to live.
I called my son Nicholas from the radiophone. I gave him number hints so he would know which frequency to switch to so we could talk safely. When we had contact I told him to call the national network Radio Caracol and tell them Pablo and I were hiding in a secret tunnel beneath the prison and that we were well armed and had enough food to hold out for a month. Nicholas also told the reporter Dario Arizmendi that Pablo was willing to surrender if we were guaranteed that we would be returned safely to the Cathedral and the original terms of surrender respected.
Inside the prison the government forces heard this interview and began searching for this secret tunnel. They started digging with heavy construction equipment and using explosives in the fields to find it. Pablo stood at windows of the farm looking at the mountain. “The only thing they’re going to find is the money in the barrels,” he said, meaning the $10 million we’d buried. Pablo wasn’t concerned about that, his thoughts were about what our next steps should be. He wanted to surrender again, but only with the same guarantees as before.
We waited throughout the day, listening as the reports on the radio became more frantic. Someone told the radio station that Pablo had ordered the killing of the attorney general, defense minister, and other officials if the government continued to pursue us. Other people phoned in bomb threats supposedly from us. It was ridiculous. In the afternoon I called the station and told them that Pablo had made no threats to anyone, that all we wanted was to return to the former situation—with protection. It didn’t matter; the whole city was in a panic. Schools in Bogotá held bomb evacuation drills, people went to the stores to buy groceries afraid that stores would be forced to close. At night the president went on TV and told people to be calm, promising if we surrendered he would protect our lives and defending his policy of giving leniency to drug traffickers who gave up. But he did not promise to restore the situation.
In the United States newspapers wrote that we had shot our way out of prison and that we had escaped in a rain of gunfire. Some senators threatened to send troops to Colombia to kidnap Pablo and bring him to the United States for trial.
During the day we made plans to move again. I called an employee we trusted and told him in coded language to find the friend I would jog with before our surrender and tell him to get three cars and at midnight meet us at the iron door at the entrance to the farm. He knew the place, the gate of a farm where my friend and I would end our daily runs. After dark we left and walked through the woods, staying off the roads. We stopped briefly at another farm owned by one of our friends, and from there called our families to confirm that the cars were going to meet us, and then told them not to worry and not to believe the radio reports. After eating, we kept going. As we walked we could hear the explosives going off at the Cathedral as the search for the tunnels continued. Each step had danger.
When we passed one farm five German shepherds came bursting out after us. El Mugre was bitten on the leg and started bleeding. We fought them off but we couldn’t shoot at them because the noise would bring attention. Fortunately Pablo had candy in his pocket and tossed it to the dogs, who went for it and calmed down. Pablo stayed with the dogs until the rest of us had moved away, and then joined us. We got to the meeting point about 1:30 and the cars were waiting for us.
At 3:30 in the morning we arrived at a farm owned by a friend. First thing, Pablo cut the phone lines. Instead we used a clean cell phone to call our families—although now we didn’t call our mother because clearly the government would be listening for that. Instead Pablo and I agreed that I should go see her.
My face was still not easily recognized by the government. One of our drivers took me there before dawn. “It’s me, Mom,” I said to her. “I came to tell you that we are all right.” She came out of her room and we embraced. I held her tightly and for that one moment I could almost forget our situation. The important thing was to tell her that the tunnel story was not true, that we had just made it up to occupy the army while we escaped. I could only stay a short time. She insisted that I wait while she prepared food for us, just like the way she would make lunch for her boys Roberto and Pablo when we rode our bicycles to school. It was my mother, I had to wait. I kept nervously watching through the window, afraid the police would show up at any second. In the life of the city another day was starting. She packed a meal of chicken and rice in pots and gave them to me. She also gave me a note for Pablo and urged me to continue praying. Then she kissed me twice, “One for you and one for Pablo.”
By the time I got back to the farm some of the others had left us. Pablo had decided we should move separately to be harder to find. We rested there a few days, believing we were safe. We kept track of the TV and radio coverage and listened to the many untrue rumors. Supposedly we were being seen everywhere. After a few days Pablo made a tape for the radio, again offering to surrender if our safety was guaranteed and we were allowed to return to the Cathedral, giving his word he would not start a new campaign of violence. Then he closed with: “From the jungles of Colombia.” Of course we were not there, but the government believed that and sent troops and helicopters.
The search for us was intense. The army rushed troops into the region. The president was on the TV almost every day trying to explain what had happened. Everyone seemed afraid that the violent days were going to start again. But while all this was happening we were watching it on TV. Mostly those first few days we stayed quiet, just waiting for the situation to calm down so we could move again. Our lawyers continued to try to make a new arrangement. But this time the government did not want Pablo to be in prison. This time government officials wanted to kill him.