Nine
IHAVE OWNED HORSES FOR MANY YEARS. For a time the man who took care of my horses was called Doll. He was called that because he had a very attractive face and long hair. Doll was a very nice person, but like so many others he wanted to make more money, he wanted to be in our business. I told him, “Don’t get involved. You know what you’re doing with the horses. Do that.”
No, he insisted, I need to make more money. No. We had that discussion many times and he would get angry when I refused him. Finally one afternoon I had to go into the jungle with Pablo. But before I left I bought Doll a motorcycle.
After twenty days Doll showed up at the farm where we were hiding, riding his motorcycle. Once again he asked to make more money. He wanted to be my bodyguard and do everything for me. Finally I said okay. “If you want to stay, stay here.” The next day about five thousand soldiers surrounded our farm. Helicopters were flying overhead, it was chaos. We had to run to get away. We spent twelve days in the jungle sleeping on hammocks while every day the army flew by dropping bombs everywhere. When we were safe in the jungle I asked him again, “You still want to be in the business?”
“No,” he said.
Doll returned to the horses, and I took care of him like my own son. We had learned how hard it was to be on the run. It’s not life. Pablo knew that and wanted it to end; he wanted to negotiate a second surrender. The U.S. had offered several million dollars as a reward for the capture of Pablo and myself. As time passed he accepted that we could not return to the Cathedral and told the government he was prepared for “the most humble and modest jail” in Antioquia, as long as he was given firm guarantees he would not be extradited or moved again. He telephoned a reporter and told him he would even accept going to a military base, anywhere but a police station. This was a discussion he and I never had, but I think he knew it was his only chance to enjoy a real life with his family again. For us, the safest place was in jail. But Gavíria did not want Pablo in chains again.
This time the world was chasing us. Probably never had so many different organizations been trying to kill one criminal. Some people call it the biggest manhunt in history. And while they were after that one man, many others died. We found out later that Gavíria had told the U.S. government that there no longer were any restrictions; he invited them to be an army in Colombia. The U.S. Army sent people from the elite group Delta Force to work with our army and police, the American covert operations group Centra Spike and the Search Bloc, while agents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency inspected the Cathedral to find clues. On the other side of the law was Cali; some of the Galeano and Moncada people went to them to offer some help. They knew all the places that Pablo favored and all the people who worked with him. And they were pleased to give that information to Cali. Also there was a new group supported by Cali, the people that became our worst enemy, Los Pepes.
Los Pepes, meaning the people persecuted by Pablo Escobar, was headed by the Casta?o brothers, Carlos, Fidel, and Vicente, in addition to Diego Murillo Bejarano, known as Don Berna, a trafficker himself. Many of these people were former associates of Pablo’s, people that he had defended from extradition. What happened was that when their father got kidnapped by the guerrillas they got so tired of all the kidnappings for ransom that they formed an army to fight back, just as Pablo had done so many years earlier. They made their own force, five thousand people, ten thousand people, all over Colombia. Carlos Casta?o believed that Pablo had a plan to kill him because he thought this army was trying to take over the jungle laboratories. Carlos responded by joining the armies searching for Pablo.
Most of these organized groups started sharing their information. Also coming to Colombia to hunt Pablo were individual bounty hunters from all parts of the world, from the United States and Israel and England and supposedly Russia, hoping to become rich by collecting the reward money, which was many millions of dollars.
All of these people against Pablo, with all this technology and information, with all the money they could need—but they couldn’t catch him. Or me.
While they thought we went into the jungle, Pablo decided we should go to the place safest for us, the center of Medellín. Our city. I was staying in an apartment on the fourteenth floor I had bought quietly a few years before. The apartment was comfortable with a good location. With me was one bodyguard and living in the apartment was a woman and her five-year-old son. I traveled under the name Alberto Ramírez. After four days there I needed to go outside. I put on my disguise, a wig and beard and glasses, and dressed in a black suit, so mostly I looked like a rabbi. On my feet I had special shoes I had made, a black coating over sneakers, so they matched my suit but if I needed to run I could. My bodyguard was also in full disguise. I was with the woman of the apartment and her boy, who provided even more cover for us.
The elevator doors opened on the fourteenth floor and looking back at me was a man I had known well—he also was a person the government wanted badly. In my disguise he seemed not to know me. We greeted each other politely as strangers. I got off, he got on. The doors closed.
That afternoon I walked through the city feeling total joy. The people, the noise, the free life, it had been more than a year since I’d felt any of it. Even in disguise, even as a fugitive, for a time I could feel free. I knew that no one would suspect that one of the men most wanted in the world was walking easily through the city, eating an ice cream cone.
We couldn’t go back to the apartment. I was much more wanted than the fugitive I had seen. I was concerned that he had recognized me and would give me up to make a good deal with the government. We couldn’t go to any family homes because they would be watched. So instead the bodyguard and I went to a flophouse, an any name check-in hotel to hide with the woman and her son. This boy was really rambunctious and one day he was playing around and he hurt his head and his mother had to bring him to the hospital. In the next few days my friends bought and rented five apartments in different parts of the city so we might move easily if necessary. I found out later Pablo had done the same thing. He was always with Otto and Popeye.
My decision was to write an anonymous letter to this fugitive warning him that the police knew where he was living and were ready to pounce. I wanted to worry him into leaving right away. Then we went with the lady of the apartment and her son into the beautiful mountains and camped next to a stream. Unless you have lived in prison it’s not possible to know the feelings of those few days. There are few places lovelier than the mountains of Colombia. It was a place to rest.
The fugitive had left the building fast when he got the letter, so it was safe to return. But truthfully, I felt more comfortable moving around every few days. We had good people living in all the apartments so they were always prepared for us to stay there. Eventually I met with Pablo. He had allowed his beard to grow, shaved off the mustache he’d had in prison, and wore glasses and a wig. Together all of us went to a private home where the owners were expecting us. While all around the country men waited for Pablo’s orders, only the five of us knew what was really going on. Our plan was to stay away until a new compromise could be found, and then surrender again.
Pablo gave us the rules we would live by. Each trip outside from the house had to have an exact time. If that person did not return in that time, in difficult situations we would wait an additional ten minutes, then we would leave. Pablo worried that one of us would be captured and tortured to give up our hideout. At the end of each trip it was necessary to circle the house three times before coming inside, while the people inside watched for the police.
Pablo knew that it was no longer safe to contact our families by phone. Instead he would write long letters to his family, demanding that they burn these letters after they had read them. He created a special system of delivery. He would hire three or four young boys on bicycles to make a chain, but insisting they always ride against traffic. That way no car could follow them. The letter would be delivered to his employee, either Alvaro or Limón. He also made many recordings for his children, giving them advice, telling stories, singing and reminding them of his deep love for them. One story I remember he told for Manuela was about a special horse he rode to escape from one of the farms.
It was dangerous for us to go outside, but sometimes it was too tempting to resist. One night as we walked by the governor’s office Pablo wanted to show us a demonstration. Borrowing a cigarette from Otto he approached the uniformed guard and requested a light. The guard politely lit the cigarette. Pablo thanked him and asked him for the time. Again the guard responded nicely as we walked on. “See what I’m telling you,” Pablo said to us. “They will only find us if we are betrayed or careless.” He told us stories of smart guys who had died only because someone had given them up. If we walk with confidence, he continued with confidence, no one will ever suspect our true identities. No one.
When we were outside we moved about the city in a fleet of taxis owned by Pablo. Each of these taxis was equipped with a big antenna that made it possible to make mobile phone calls. Most of the calls Pablo made were from these moving cars, which would make it impossible for anyone to find the place from where the call was made.
After spending three weeks together Pablo believed it had become too dangerous, so we went our separate ways. We would get together late at night about every three days, spending the time playing cards, talking, and barbecuing in the backyard. It was during this period that Pablo had the closest escape of his many close encounters. He told me that his bodyguard Godoy would take a plain car every few days to meet the boys carrying the mail. This meeting was always at seven o’clock when the streets were most crowded. That day Godoy returned to the house in the car as usual. When Pablo heard the horn signal he ran downstairs and swung open the twin doors of the garage. Godoy drove in quick—and two men on a motorcycle came racing in behind him before Pablo could close the doors. One of these young men—almost kids—pulled a gun and pointed it directly at Godoy’s head and screamed, “Get out of the car, motherf*cker.”
Pablo was frozen. He couldn’t know if these men recognized him or if this was just an ordinary Medellín crime. “Give them the car,” he told Godoy. “Don’t worry about the package. Just get out.”
The young man turned the gun on him. “Don’t move, motherf*cker,” he said. “I got a bullet for you too.” These two street robbers had done what the police and soldiers of Colombia and the United States could not do, what the Cali cartel and the paramilitaries and the bounty hunters and Los Pepes could not do—they had put a gun two feet away from Pablo Escobar.
But they didn’t know it.
They stole the car and the letters and drove away. Pablo left that house right away and never returned or paid attention to it. He went into the forest with his family for a few days of complete safety. He knew he could last forever in those woods, but for him that wasn’t living.
More dangerous than any of the enemies we had fought before was Los Pepes. Their members had been part of us, so they knew much more information than anyone else. It has never been proved, but it has been strongly suggested that Los Pepes was really working with the government. According to the Colombian Caracol News, published December 22, 2007, ex-paramilitary Salvatore Mancuso, before he was extradited to the U.S., had officially accused former Colombian president Cesár Gavíria of joining forces with them to assassinate Pablo Escobar, and kill all our organization’s members.
One reason to believe that is true is that the government never tried to stop anything they did. Even more, because the vigilante killers of Los Pepes moved in secret it is pretty much known that after the sun went down members of the other government organizations put on their masks and became part of Los Pepes. In fact, information between all the forces, the government as well as the death squads, flowed easily. When only the government knew the secret place where members of our family were staying, for example, that place was attacked by Los Pepes. A clear example was that only the former attorney general, Dr. Gustavo de Greiff, had known where Pablo’s wife and two children were secretly secluded, and protected. Nonetheless somehow the killers from Los Pepes found out that location and his family was attacked with a grenade launcher fired from the ground to the fourth floor. Fortunately nobody was injured. Pablo was devastated by that news, which ended any possibility that he might safely turn himself in.
Pablo fought back. The fear of the people had been realized. The violence that rocked the country had started again. And also the kidnappings of important people. It had all gotten completely out of control again. The country had become one battlefield. Colombia was under siege. People were afraid to go out of their homes even to the shops or the movies. All in search of one man. There was nothing that the government would do to stop it.
Los Pepes couldn’t catch Pablo, nor could they find me, so instead they began killing anyone who was part of our organization. They didn’t go just after the sicarios; instead they went after people working for Pablo who couldn’t defend themselves. They killed many of my accountants. Pablo’s main lawyer who was negotiating with the government, Guido Parra, who had also worked with the government, and his fifteen-year-old son were assassinated by Los Pepes and a note was left around their necks for Pablo: “What do you think of this exchange for your bombs now, Pablo?” Los Pepes killed lawyers who had worked for Pablo, preventing them from trying to work a compromise with the government. They killed the sicarios. They killed people who did business, people who had worked at Napoles, anyone who had an association with Pablo or with me. My closest friends were Guayabita, El Negro, Chocolo, my trainer from my bicycle life Ricardo, and my friend since I was fifteen years old, Halaix Buitrago. None of these had connections to the drug business. They were friends who would visit me at the Cathedral to play cards, kick a ball, and help me fill the days. Los Pepes kept track of them. After our escape Halaix went to live safely in Europe. This was not the same El Negro who worked for Pablo, and he and his wife, Marbel, moved to Argentina with members of their family and my own for safety. But Ricardo and Guayabita were kidnapped and tortured to try to get information about finding Pablo and their bodies were found dropped on the street next to the Medellín River. Chocolo was a psychologist and he was on vacation with his wife and six-year-old daughter in Cartagena; he stopped at a traffic light, and in the usual way two motorcycles came alongside and started shooting with machine guns. Chocolo died right there, but miraculously his family was saved.
Los Pepes would come out of the night, unexpected. Five sicarios very close to Otto were staying in a house, along with a sixth person who worked for them at his house. Supposedly nobody knew they were there. These were tough men who had been involved in a lot of violence. One night they were having a party with five lovely girls. The house man was upstairs, and he just happened to look out the window when as many as ten cars suddenly appeared. The doors flew open and maybe forty men, all of them carrying guns, all of them with their faces covered, came running out. The house man climbed out the window and went onto the roof to hide. There was a lot of shooting. Probably two of the sicarios were killed right there. The others were alive, maybe shot, and dragged into the cars. The house man lay still on the roof for at least five hours. When he came inside he found the women tied up.
No question the sicarios were tortured to provide information about where Pablo was. Their bodies were thrown into the street the next morning.
But this was just typical, almost every day about six bodies would be in the streets, usually with notes on them telling everyone that this was the work of Los Pepes and taunting Pablo. Los Pepes attacked everyone and everything touched by Pablo Escobar. Pablo would denounce these acts on repeated occasions without any response from the government.
This was a war, I understand that, but so much was not necessary. I owned a championship horse, Terremoto, meaning earthquake, that was the joy of Colombia. Our country takes pride in its beautiful horses and this was a pure Colombian horse. I was the only person who would ride Terremoto, and he was softer than a Rolls-Royce. He was easily worth $3 million, but his value as a horse to breed other Colombia champions was even greater. I knew the police were looking for this horse to take it like the rest of my property, so it was hidden on a farm in Manizales. One evening the trainer of the horse was at a restaurant when gunmen showed up. They took him outside and put a gun to his head. They demanded, “Where is the horse? Where is the horse?” He didn’t want to tell them, but they threatened to kill his whole family right there. So finally he told them where the horse was kept. Then they killed him.
They kidnapped the horse. A few days later the horse was returned, tied to a post on Las Vegas Street. But the horse had been castrated, its value to the nation as the father of champions destroyed. Its worth in dollars was gone. And then they had starved the horse so he was just bones.
They destroyed beauty without caring. Terremoto, fortunately, survived. But his promise to the Colombia horse business was never fulfilled.
But Los Pepes’ biggest target was our families. If they couldn’t catch Pablo, they would try to kill those people he loved the most. Two of the houses owned by our mother were bombed, our sister’s house was set on fire—so badly that a priceless Picasso was destroyed. The fear was so strong and our mother so scared she would sleep in the bathtub because it was the safest place in the house against bombs.
The most loyal of our sicarios fought back hard, but the circle of people around Pablo was getting smaller. It became safer for us to move around with very few people. Once I had thirty bodyguards, now I lived with only one. The main protection we had came from the people of Medellín, who believed in Pablo. At times we stayed with different people in the poorest sections of the city and these people shared with us whatever they had. The inner city was the safest place for us now. Once Pablo was staying in an apartment when there was a lot of noise outside. The soldiers had entered the area and were searching house by house. Pablo didn’t panic. Instead he sat with the resident of the apartment on the balcony, both of them leaning over a chessboard. The soldiers came closer and closer. Pablo was wearing a hat to keep the sun off him and had changed his appearance with his usual disguise of wig, beard, and glasses. Also, as I’ve mentioned, because he was not getting exercise he had gained a lot of weight eating fried rice and plantains and his whole body looked much heavier than in pictures. As a soldier passed directly below the balcony Pablo asked him, “What’s going on?”
The soldier responded, “Somebody called in that Pablo Escobar was staying around here.”
Pablo laughed at that. “Pablo Escobar! I hope we’re all safe from him.”
“Don’t worry,” the soldier told him. “If he’s here we’ll find him.”
We found out later that more than seven hundred men spent all their time searching for Pablo. They looked at thousands of houses and apartments. The Centra Spike, Search Bloc, and Delta Force listened to conversations all around the city, but particularly to our family, and still they couldn’t find Pablo. Meanwhile, the drug trafficking to the United States didn’t even slow down, the product was just coming from different people. Pablo Escobar had become a symbol of drugs to the United States, but stopping him was not a solution to the problem.
Was I afraid? For myself, no. I was resigned to the situation. I had lived under the possibility of immediate death for so many years now that it just didn’t make me worry. But for our family, yes I was afraid. Los Pepes was making targets of completely innocent people without any interference from the government. We took every possible step to protect them. In November of 1992 plans were made for the family to go to Bahía Solano on the Colombian Pacific Ocean, where they would be safe. Pablo made arrangements for a helicopter to take them there. When it arrived they loaded everything they needed and climbed on board. Finally they were going to be safe. When the helicopter took off I think they all breathed deeply.
And that was when this helicopter tangled in the telephone wires, and everything suddenly went crazy and it started dropping fast. There was a lot of screaming. It hit the ground hard. Everybody was hurt; there was blood all over the place. When it hit the ground the helicopter burst into flames and the people on board were afraid the fuel was going to catch fire and explode. But they got out as fast as they could. Nobody knew why this helicopter had gone down and their fear was that the police or Los Pepes had shot at it and were waiting for them to come to the ground. A dump truck was coming down the road and my son Nico stopped it and pushed the family in the back, so if shooting started they would be protected by the truck’s metal sides. The driver was so frightened he peed in his pants. But he drove them away from the site and later Nico gave him $3,000. With that he was so happy he told Nico, “If you come around again and I can help you, please call me.”
Later I was able to send my wife and some of my family to Argentina, some others to Chile, and some of the others went to Germany. In those countries they were safe.
Pablo knew the situation had to be changed. The president had continued to say that if we surrendered and stopped all the violence he would guarantee our safety. Finally Pablo and I realized that the best thing would be for me to surrender again and in custody I could negotiate for him the terms by which he would give himself up. We were having discussions with high people in the government and they told me, “Fine, fine, Roberto, we will protect you. We’ll provide what you need and take it from there.” The only promise they gave me was that I would be treated with respect.
The plan was that I would surrender first and then two days later Pablo would follow me. The night before my surrender Pablo and I met with our mother and other family at a farm outside Medellín named La Pi?ata. They were brought there in a van disguised as a bakery truck. We wanted to tell them about this decision, rather than letting them hear it on the news. “This is the safest for all of us,” I explained. “And you can visit me without having to make all these secret arrangements.” When they had left, Pablo and I reviewed all of the houses and caletas I had in place so that he might use them if necessary.
We spent our last few hours together the next morning. I was to surrender with Otto. Pablo and I walked to the garage door. At that time we believed this was only a temporary parting; we would be together again soon in confinement. I gave Pablo two mobile phones that we would use. We hugged each other as brothers and I drove away at about 4 A.M. I left very sad, Pablo and I were inseparable. I did not want to leave him alone, just like he too had the same feelings, but that was the road that was inevitable. That was the last time I would see him.
It was always a possibility to me that the government would kill me rather than accept my surrender. In the arrangements I told them that Otto and I would surrender at a place more than a hundred kilometers outside the city, but that was never the plan. Instead the day before I had called a news reporter, Marcela Durán, and informed her that she should be waiting at a furniture store called Deco: “The people from the attorney general’s office will pick you up and bring you to where we are. We want you to be a witness.”
The government men went to the supposed meeting place way out of the city while we went to the furniture store. Marcela Durán was in shock when she saw us, and pleasantly complimented me, saying I looked snappy. I always have been a good dresser. I cared about my appearance and wore brand names, but nothing too fancy. Together on October 7, 1992, she went with us to the jail, which was only about one mile away, and watched as we surrendered safely.
I wanted to help make the arrangements for Pablo’s surrender, but no one would speak to me about that. Without a deal he would not come in, knowing what was waiting for him.
I was put into a small prison cell by myself for the first ten days. Most of the time I was treated like a dog. I slept on the floor, but at least the food was decent. The agreements we made were forgotten. If it would not have been for the mobile phone I had smuggled inside the jail in a radio I would not have been able to communicate with Pablo. I called him and told him how everything had gone out. The Colombian justice system did not allow me to have a lawyer, and I had to sue them to acquire one. It took the government a long time to determine what charges I should face, although everyone knew my real crime was being Pablo’s brother. I was never charged with any drug crimes or crimes of violence. Instead they claimed that I was involved in stealing a horse to use in terrorist actions, which did not make sense as I had more than a hundred horses, and carrying guns without legal permission. Also they had passed a law that made it necessary for the first time in our history to provide proof where your money had been earned and they charged me with that, and finally they charged me with escaping illegally from the Cathedral. They were making up all of these cases—except the escape, which I did, but only because we believed they were coming to kill us that day. The proof of that was that we immediately tried to make arrangements to surrender again. Originally they wanted me to be in prison for twenty-five years, and then they decided I should be in prison for forty years, and then it was fifty-eight years. So from the first day in prison I had to start fighting for my life.
After a month I was moved to a maximum security prison and my life changed forever. I was treated more like a normal prisoner. My attorney, Enrique Manceda, was allowed to bring a TV for me—although no one knew that inside that TV was a mobile phone. Unfortunately before my case could go forward Enrique was murdered. After having the mobile phone I spoke often with Pablo. I was one of the very few people he still could trust. Mostly he was traveling by himself, no driver, no security, and no friends. The people who got close to him now too often got killed. He moved around the city like a breath; he was never seen, but the government knew he was there. He had to stay away from all the places we knew because they were being watched; he had to stay away most of the time from all members of his family, as they were also being watched. They wrote letters to each other every day. Just getting his letters to them and from them required secret plans and secret codes. A good friend of Gustavo’s known as Carieton came to work for Pablo after Gustavo was killed, mostly just to carry this mail to Pablo. Carieton was the only one who knew where the family was hiding. When Carieton wanted to meet with the person who would get the mail for Pablo he would say to them, “All right, let’s meet at your mom’s house.” Since this person’s mother had died that meant they would meet at the cemetery. Another favored meeting place was the entrance to the biggest rum maker in Colombia. When they were to meet there Carieton would say, “Let’s have a shot of rum at three o’clock.” In this way Pablo was able to communicate with his family.
He was like a phantom; people would meet him and not know it it at all. One day he was wearing a costume and was going to a soccer game at the stadium. In the taxi he talked to the old driver. The driver told him he was struggling. “It’s tough. I’m worried because I’m behind on my payments and they’re trying to take away my taxi. It’s all I have and my family is huge.”
Pablo told him, “If you don’t mind, give me your phone number and address. Don’t be scared but I know somebody who might be able to help you.” The next day he sent some money for his debts to this old man’s home.
From the days of beautiful living at Napoles and taking helicopter rides with Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas, Pablo was now staying secretly with regular people in their homes, and never for more than one or two days. For example, Pablo told an assistant whose name I would not use in order to respect him and the good deeds he did, “Don’t be scared if I show up at your house one night because I’m staying in different places in the city.”
“That’s not a problem,” this man said. Then he informed his wife that Pablo Escobar might stay over for one night only and she shouldn’t be scared. Perhaps a week later he came home to find Pablo sitting in his living room watching the television alongside the man’s seven-year-old daughter. Later they were having dinner with the TV still on when a public announcement showed a picture of Pablo and offered a $5 million reward to anyone “If you tell us where Pablo Escobar is.”
The seven-year-old child looked at Pablo and laughed. “Oh, sir, you look just like him.”
They all laughed. The man explained to his daughter that Pablo was his uncle who had come to visit him. But she shouldn’t tell anybody.
There were some very close escapes. One time Pablo was staying outside Medellín and the American planes intercepted a phone conversation and sent men to the house to grab him. Pablo and a bodyguard escaped into the forest and hid. While they watched from above the house as the soldiers searched for them, Pablo listened on a small transistor radio to the big game between Medellín and Nacional. Suddenly he whispered urgently to the bodyguard, “Listen, listen.” The bodyguard got very nervous. Then Pablo explained, “Medellín just scored!”
In another situation Pablo was staying for a few days at a farm outside the city. I had warned him many times to never spend more than a few minutes on the mobile phone, but sometimes he couldn’t stop himself. He spoke with his son, Juan Pablo, or myself, almost every day trying to find terms of surrender that would be acceptable. But he had learned not to make calls from the exact place he was staying. This time he had walked up into the woods to make his call and could watch from there as the army raided the main house. As always he was listening to a soccer game between Medellín and Nacional on his small transistor radio. Just as his bodyguard approached Pablo and whispered that the police were close and they had to go, Medellín was awarded a penalty kick. Pablo said, “Let’s just wait for the penalty kick.” When Medellín scored Pablo looked up and said calmly, “Now where did you say the police were?”
Several times Pablo had to run away from his life of only a few minutes earlier, leaving everything he possessed behind him. The newspapers would run stories about how close the Search Bloc had been to catching him, finding hot food or making him leave without shoes. That’s what they claimed, but they couldn’t catch him. More than a year went by since my surrender and still the world was looking for Pablo Escobar.
In prison there was little I could do to help him. I know I was watched carefully, hoping that something I did or said would give away his hiding places. But I had my own difficulties. I was trying to fight my legal case while also caring for the safety of my family.
The hardest part of it all was the feeling that in jail I could have no control over my own life. In the Cathedral we had to stay in that one place, but within the fence we could do what we wanted. In this prison my life was controlled completely.
Those feelings I had about not being able to help Pablo were magnified many times when my son, my beautiful son Nicholas, was kidnapped. Nico was never involved in the business, until later when he risked his life to make peace with Cali and Los Pepes. But on this day in May 1993, he was driving with his wife and son, as well as an employee and a bodyguard, from his farm to Medellín. They stopped at a restaurant on the road called Kachotis. Almost instantly after they sat down police cars surrounded the place, and the police yelled for everybody to get down on the floor. Then they came in with guns and took Nico out. Nobody else. So it was clear this was their plan from the beginning.
While this was happening I knew nothing about it. There was little I could have done anyway, and it made me crazy when I found out.
These police put Nico in the back of a car and drove away. As Nico remembers; “Within a few minutes we reached a police checkpoint. They were stopping cars asking drivers for ID. When our car stopped I started screaming, ‘I’m kidnapped! I’m being kidnapped!’ Nobody paid any attention to me, so obviously they were part of the corrupt police group.
“We kept driving. I didn’t think about what was going to happen to me. They drove me to a farm in Caldas, a town near Medellín, and there they tortured me trying to get information to find out where my uncle Pablo was. They tied me to a chair and started kicking me. That was the beginning. I didn’t have a clue where he was so I couldn’t tell them anything. Honestly I was never afraid. Maybe that’s part of my blood, but I was not afraid of death. They returned me to the same neighborhood where they had caught me. I don’t know why they didn’t kill me. But soon after I got back Pablo called me. He had me picked up and we spent two hours together as he asked me questions.”
Pablo was getting desperate to save the family. This was when we made arrangements for my family to leave the country. Nicholas went with his pregnant wife and children, his mother and his seventy-eight-year-old aunt, all huddled together. They went to Chile, where, as Nicholas remembers, “It was tough because when the police found out who we were from the Colombian government informants there, they didn’t want to let us into the country. Finally I had to pay some money to the police in Santiago to allow us to go through the gate. When we left the airport three cars were following us. I started driving all over the city and they followed me. I went faster they went faster. Just like in the movies. We were scared. We didn’t know if they were going to take us and hand us back to Colombia or kill us. It didn’t matter that we were innocent, that we had nothing to do with the wars between Pablo and the cartels and the government. They wanted to use us to catch Pablo. I turned into a huge parking lot and shut the car and we all hid below the windows. We waited, the cars drove around looking for us for hours and hours. Finally they went away.
“I waited some more, then started the car. Two blocks later they were waiting for us. I raced. On the road I saw a police station and I stopped. It was better to be taken out of the country than killed.”
Eventually from Chile my family went to Brazil. They were not permitted to land in Brazil; instead they were sent to Spain. Again, they were not permitted to leave the plane, because the Colombian government had warned all these different countries and the persecution against my family continued. So from Madrid they went to Frankfurt, Germany. There, Nicholas remembers, “I spoke to an immigration agent since I had studied there and knew German and he told us it was true that everybody in Europe had information from the Colombian government that the Escobar family was trying to hide in Europe so don’t let them in. ‘The president of Colombia gave the order to my superiors,’ he told me.
“Finally we pleaded, ‘Please let us get in, they are going to kill us, we are innocent. It would be better for everybody. We’re not going to do anything bad. Please call your superiors.’ It took some time, but he got permission for us to be there. That agent was so human he saved us.”
Pablo was not so fortunate. María Victoria, Juan Pablo, and Manuela were not permitted to leave the country. There is a story I have heard that Manuela would walk the halls of the security hotel the government had put them in singing little songs that Los Pepes were going to come and kill her.
Through the months I would speak to Pablo almost every day on the mobile phone. He always spoke from a moving taxi. But he was very much alone and lonely. Much of his money was beyond his reach, too many people of the organization were dead or had surrendered, and it was dangerous for him to be in contact with his family. A contact inside the Search Bloc would tell us that their new listening tools allowed them to track every phone call of interest. The government would not negotiate. In the city he only went out in complete disguise and now he stayed away from the most popular areas, instead going outside the city. When possible he liked small places where he could sit and drink black coffee with pastry. For Pablo it seemed that the safest answer was to go into the jungle and work with his new movement that he was forming called Antioquia Rebelde. So in November of 1993 that is what he began planning to do.
He had just moved into an apartment in Medellín in an area near the soccer stadium Atanasio Giradot. With him was our cousin Luzmila, who prepared his meals and did the errands for him, and one of my best men, Limón. Nobody in the family knew Pablo was staying there. Luzmila told her sons that she had a job taking care of an older man and she was going to earn good money. But with the torturers waiting, it was important that nobody knew where Pablo was staying. I personally had sent Limón to work for Pablo and before he went to meet him I had him pick up a different mobile phone. That phone was a terrible danger. On Sunday November 29, a woman who was working for me had smuggled in some secret letters hidden in the soles of her shoes, shoes that had been made for that purpose. One of those letters came from a source who warned that if Pablo continued talking on those phones he would be caught. I wrote immediately to Pablo this letter: “Brother, lovely greetings. I hope that when you get this note you are all right. Next Thursday you will be one year older, and that is a gift of God He can give us. Brother, I’m really worried; I just received some information, which tells me your mobile is being intercepted, they are triangulating the signal, you could get caught if you keep it up. DO NOT SPEAK OVER THE PHONE . . . DO NOT SPEAK OVER THE PHONE . . . DO NOT SPEAK OVER THE PHONE.”
When my mother arrived for her visit I gave this letter to her and gave her instructions where to take it. I told her it must be done very quickly. She knew it was for Pablo, and so she was worried. I did not lie to her, but I did not tell her the complete truth. “Mother,” I said, “they have Pablo’s phone intercepted, and it’s not convenient for them to know who Pablo is talking to, because we are negotiating again with Gavíria’s government.”
His big worry always was his family. Pablo was trying hard to get them out of the country, away from Los Pepes. In April he had tried to send them to the United States but the American DEA stopped them from leaving in Bogotá, keeping them under the death sentence from Los Pepes. In November Pablo called my son Nico, who was living in Spain with his family, and requested that he go to Frankfurt to meet María Victoria, Juan Pablo, and the rest of his family. “Uncle,” Nico told him, “I don’t know if this is safe. We had so much trouble getting into Europe.”
Pablo replied, “I have no other choice right now. I want my family to be away and I want you to please help me out and take care of my family while I fix this situation here in Colombia.”
Of course Nico would do that. He returned to Germany, to the same airport he had arrived at months earlier. María Victoria, sixteen-year old Juan Pablo, and five-year-old Manuela flew to Germany, but they were not permitted to get off the plane. There was no legal reason for this, not one person on the plane had done anything illegal. None of them had sold or transported drugs. As I have said, their crime was their Escobar blood. So they were told they had to return to Colombia. They were told that being allowed into any country in Europe was only possible “upon the immediate surrender” of Pablo.
For Pablo surrender was sure death. According to his sources he was going to be murdered once in custody.
When Pablo’s family was deported from Germany the government ordered that they be put into a famous hotel in Bogotá owned by the national police. This was incredible; the government was holding the entire family hostage. The government of El Salvador had offered to protect them, but the Colombian government wouldn’t talk to them. Worse, they were being protected by the police, which was known to be working with Los Pepes. Then the government threatened that it was going to take away the protection from the family.
Pablo made phone calls telling people what would happen if his family was harmed, but besides that there wasn’t much he could do. He would still go out of the apartment; in the last days of November he took the risk of attending a soccer game. But now the Search Bloc, Centra Spike, Delta Force, the police, Los Pepes, and Cali were getting closer to him. They had set up the family and they knew that Pablo would do anything, even give his own life, for them. So the planes continued to fly overhead listening for his conversations, the experts with phone-tapping equipment drove through the city, soldiers roamed through the streets, all of them searching day and night for Pablo.
Limón, the person staying with Pablo, was superstitious. He believed in witches and fairies, the luck of the four-leaf clover, even the power of spells. Pablo didn’t take any of it seriously, but he enjoyed Limón’s predictions. On the last day of November he was reading the newspaper when a big, ugly fly started bothering him. He rolled up the paper and tried to kill it, but failed. When he sat down again to read the fly landed on his right ear. Limón said nervously, “Patrón, this is not good. This means bad luck. Something is going to happen.” Pablo tried to kill it again, but again the fly escaped.
Pablo told Limón to kill it, which he tried to do, but again it landed on Pablo’s leg, and Limón just let it out the window. I’m sure Pablo laughed.
At night Pablo sent our cousin Luzmila to the store to buy a present for me, a copy of the new Guinness Book of Sports Records. Pablo was an expert on our sports, particularly soccer; he knew the details of every World Cup final ever played and would always quiz me to make sure my knowledge kept even with him—and I would not lose any sports bet. When Luzmila returned he wrote a note to me in this book and asked our cousin to send it to me in prison.
The next day, December 1, was his forty-fourth birthday. Writing this, it is difficult not to think of the great celebrations we had enjoyed in years earlier, from when he was a boy to the parties at Napoles with hundreds of people. Now he was almost alone. Luzmila made his favorite breakfast and he read the notes that had arrived the night before from his family. Manuela had written, perhaps with some collaboration with María Victoria, “Even though you are not here, we have you hidden in a corner of our heart. Happy Birthday, I love you Dad.”
María signed her letter of good wishes and long life with the mark of her lips.
My card to him expressed my love for him and my hopes for his long life. After reading them all he put them in a paper bag and for security asked Luzmila to burn them. She does not remember if she burned them or not.
For dinner that evening the three of them enjoyed seafood from one of the best sea food restaurants in Medellín, Frutos del Mar, with a bottle of Viuda de Clicoff champagne. Limón failed to open the champagne so Pablo tapped it gently against the wall. The cork shot out, hitting Limón on the chest. They laughed and Limón said, “Thank God it wasn’t a bullet, patrón.”
The three people raised their glasses in a toast, but Pablo insisted a fourth glass be present, “Which symbolizes the presence of my family that cannot be with me today.” His toast was, “For my family, for the good health of all.”
“God bless you forever,” toasted Luzmila.
Limón offered thanks to God for the chance to work with Pablo, saying, “God crossed our paths.”
They raised the glasses to toast once again, but as Luzmila remembered later the glass slipped from Limón’s hand and fell to the ground—and landed standing up without breaking. To Limón everything that happened in life was a sign from the other life. This one, he said, was “a sign of bad luck. Something bad is going to happen.”
I know that Pablo respected the fears of Limón, but never took superstitions very seriously. He probably wanted to comfort him when he said softly, “You don’t die the night before.” After dark he put on his disguise and went outside. Early in the morning he managed to get inside to see our mother. She was still living in the secure apartment he had established for her. Getting there was difficult and dangerous, but this time Pablo risked it because he needed to tell her goodbye.
Pablo had finally accepted that the government would not make an arrangement with him for his surrender. There was nothing he could do in Medellín for his family. He needed to get back his power if he was going to make them release María Victoria and his children. So he was going to leave the city and go into the jungle to form up with his new group. “This is the last time we’re going to be seeing each other in Medellín,” he explained to our mother. He was going into his new life to set up Antioquia Rebelde, he said, which will fight for freedom. “We will establish an independent country called Antioquia Federal. I’ll be the new president.” And as president he would be free from the legal system of Colombia.
Our mother did not cry. Instead she told her son that she loved him and walked him to the door. He slipped out into the early morning.
My mother was a very strong woman with good feelings; she was a beautiful woman with blue eyes. She was a devoted Catholic with a charitable heart for Medellín’s needy. During her youth she was a teacher with perfect penmanship, which I dearly remember. After ending her teaching career my mother had created a group for retired teachers for which she would provide the money needed to enjoy different sorts of activities like arts and crafts, music, singing, and anything fun.
Pablo knew he had to limit his time to under two or three minutes, but he was getting too careless. On his birthday he had called the radio station to inform the Colombian people that their government was holding his family hostage, and he had called his son. With their sophisticated equipment the Americans had located the general area where he was staying, but not the precise spot. They were getting too close.
That night in my dreams the priest came to visit once again. But this time it was a happy dream. I don’t remember the details, but when I woke on December 2, I felt excited, like everything was going to be fine. For no reason I was filled with joy. I was feeling love for my family, I was feeling happy to be alive.
Pablo got up about noon that day, the usual Pablo, and organized his day. The day was gray, with hints of rain in the air. The early news was sad; the son of Gustavo, Gustavito, had been killed in a raid by the national police. Pablo asked Luzmila to go to the store and buy some things he would need in the jungle, like pens, notepads for writing letters, toothpaste because he used so much of it, some shaving supplies, and medicine. He warned her to return back to the apartment by three o’clock. If she had not returned by 3:30 he reminded her, he would be forced to leave for safety.
It was just another day for her. After she was gone Pablo got into the taxi with Limón and drove around the city while making his telephone calls. The Search Bloc was listening to him, armed and prepared to attack wherever he was staying, but he was moving and they couldn’t track him. He called María Victoria and spoke with her briefly, then spoke with Juan Pablo. A German magazine had requested to do an interview and given his son a list of forty questions. I suspect Pablo thought that maybe he could appeal through this magazine to the German people to accept his family, and inform them of the inhumane treatment that they received from the Colombian government. As they drove, Limón helped him write down the questions. Questions like, Why did they depart Colombia for Germany? Why did they pick Germany? What happened when the family landed there? Why were they refused entry?
I guess Pablo must have felt secure because he went back to Luzmila’s apartment and continued speaking on the telephone from there. He was never this careless. But this time the Search Bloc was able to find the right street. They went to the wrong place first, but Pablo knew nothing about it. Then they found the right place. Only the people who were there on December 2, 1993, know what happened. I know the official story they told. I also know what I believe.
At the moment this was taking place I was in my cell opening up the gift-wrapped book that my brother had sent to me. With it came a short note that read: “My dear brother, my soul brother, my best friend. This is so you learn a little more of the sport, and perhaps someday you could beat me in sports trivia . . . I send you a hug.” He signed it with two letters, “V.P.,” and to this day I have never understood this signature. Pablo always singed his letters to me “Dr. Echaverria,” and the most secret letters were signed “Teresita.” But “V.P.”—I didn’t know what it meant. I can only think about two assumptions: “Victoria Pablo,” and the other would be “Viaje Profundo,” which means “profound trip.” I have asked many people, including my English teacher Jay Arango, what he thought the initials could mean. There has been no satisfactory answer. But while I sat there in my cell, wondering for the first time, the events that would become history were taking place.
In the official reports the government said that probably Pablo and Limón heard a noise downstairs when the police came inside. The reports all claim that the government shot only after Pablo and Limón began firing at them. That I do not believe. There is no way they wanted to capture Pablo and risk that one day he would be free. He was going to die there.
These reports say that Limón was shot first on the roof and fell to the ground. Then Pablo tried to run across the roof to the back of the house, carrying two guns with him, but he was shot there and collapsed. Limón had been shot many times. Pablo had been shot three times, in his back, in his leg, and just above his right ear. There have been many stories about the source of the third bullet. The claims are that it was the Search Bloc shooting. Some people claim Pablo was killed by an American sniper from another roof. But after he was shot and fell on the roof, the Delta Force Americans posed for pictures with him like at an animal hunt.
That’s the story, but this is what I believe happened: The police barged in through the doors and Pablo told Limón to see what that noise downstairs was. When Limón went to see he was shot numerous times, and died right there near the entrance. While Limón was heading to the door Pablo decided he would escape to the roof. There on the roof Pablo looked around and saw he was surrounded. He would never allow himself to be captured or killed by the government. Pablo had always said that he would never be caught and taken to America. In my mind there can be no doubt about what happened. Pablo understood that there was no escape, and did not want to be a trophy for those who were out to kill him. He did as he always had said he would: He put his own gun to his head and deprived the government of their greatest victory. Truly, he preferred a grave in Colombia over a jail cell in the United States. At the end, in his last hour, he stood fighting like a warrior. And when there was no hope, he committed suicide on that roof.
In front of the building the police fired their weapons into the air and started screaming, “We won. We won!”
Luzmila had been late returning to the building. As always, she took a cab to a point a few blocks away from the building and walked the rest of the way. But this time people were running to the block. She stopped a young policeman who was carrying his gun and asked what had happened. “It’s Pablo Escobar,” he said to her. “We just caught him! We just shot him.” Luzmila dropped the packages she was carrying for him. She sat down on the curb and cried.
Soon our mother and sister Gloria approached the building. The police let them through. A friendly cop helped them. The body they saw on the ground was Limón, not Pablo, and for a few seconds they could believe that the wrong man had been identified, that Pablo lived. Then one of the police told them, “His body is up there on the shingles.” They led her up the steps to see the body of her son.
I was in my cell and I heard the news on the radio. Pablo Escobar was killed by the DEA and the Colombian police. Of course I couldn’t believe it. It did not seem possible. The TV was turned on and it was on all the channels. Pablo Escobar is dead. It didn’t seem possible to me. He had survived so much. We are all mortal, certainly, but the death of a few of us strikes harder than so many others. It was not that I ever believed Pablo could cheat death, but I thought it would come at a time much later. It was hard for me to accept. Finally I too began crying for my brother, for everything that had happened
Pablo had been prepared for his death. He had left a tape for Manuela. On this tape he is telling her that God wants him to live. So he was going to go to heaven and he decided to leave this tape for her. Be a good girl, he says. Be a good daughter to your mom, he says. Don’t worry about death, you are going to live on earth for one thousand years—and I will be protecting you from heaven.
That night a radio station spoke with Juan Pablo, who was still terribly upset at the death of his father. Juan Pablo struck out with anger. His language was harsh to the police. He threatened revenge. I contacted Juan Pablo and told him of the problems this could create for himself and his family. I asked him to call back with an apology. He did this, explaining he had spoken too quickly because he was upset and wanted to apologize for his actions.
We have always to remain calm, I told Juan Pablo. I reminded him that even at the most dangerous moments his father would never show distress, never show anger or fear. Calm, I advised him.
Pablo’s body needed to be identified in his coffin. Pelolindo, the girl with the pretty hair, went to the funeral home the next day. She would know him by his hand. In the times she had manicured him she had noticed that his index finger, his pointing finger, was short and square. If I see his hand, she had steeled herself, I will know it’s him. At the funeral home the coffin was opened. Our family had not been allowed to change his clothes, so he was bloody in that coffin. When she approached the coffin she took his hand and held it. It was the hand of Pablo Escobar.
There were many thousands of people at the funeral. It is tradition in Colombia that at the funeral six songs are sung for the body. Pablo had told the girl with the pretty hair, “If they kill me I want you to sing for me. I don’t want anybody else to sing to me at that place, I want you to sing.”
It was his wish. She was in shock, but it was a promise she had vowed to fulfill. “You are the brother of my heart,” the song begins. It continues, “Every journey of my life and every day you are there for me.” Which of course is how I will feel forever.
While the funeral began as a solemn affair, soon the people of Pablo’s city came inside to the funeral home and took the coffin outside on their shoulders. Approximately ten thousand people joined the procession carrying Pablo on his final journey through the streets of Medellín.
On December 3 the New York Times announced the death of Pablo Escobar on the front page. “Pablo Escobar, who rose from the slums of Colombia to become one of the world’s most murderous and successful cocaine traffickers, was killed in a hail of gunfire. . . .
“The death is not expected to seriously affect cocaine traffic.”