February 18, 2025 • 52 mins
This is the story of Pablo Escobar's struggle against extradition to the United States and two of the many journalists he kidnapped to leverage the Colombian government, Maruja Pachón and Beatriz Villamizar.
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This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion audio. This episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care in listening. November seventh, nineteen ninety Bogota, Colombia, at
(00:34):
seven oh five pm, Maruja Pachon de Via Mizar and
Biatrice Via Misar de Guerrero slide into the backseat of
their Renault twenty one after work at Fox Scene, the
state run enterprise for the promotion of the film industry.
Maruja was an award winning journalist, and she attended to
(00:57):
all press matters. Since drug traffickers had started randomly kidnapping
journalists in August, she developed a habit of looking over
her shoulder wherever she went. As Moduha's sister in law
and personal assistant, Beatrice had even less reason to be
suspicious as their new chauffeur navigated through rush hour traffic
(01:20):
to bring them home for the day. But her intuition
was right. Eight men were following them. Twenty minutes later,
and less than two hundred meters from Maruja's family home,
a stolen yellow cab cut off Moduha's car and hemmed
it into the left hand curb. Their driver slammed the
(01:42):
brakes to avoid a wreck. At the same time, a
Mercedes pulled up behind the car, trapping them all. Three
armed men approached the car, then five more. Beatrice assumed
it was a hold up. She pulled two rings off
her right hand and threw them out the window, but
(02:04):
money was not what they were After two men opened
the back doors on each side, and the fifth shot
their driver in the head with an uzi through a silencer.
The men separated the women. Bea Trees went into a
third car, where they made her lie on the floor
with a filthy smelling jacket over her head. Maruha went
(02:29):
into the Mercedes in the middle of the back seat
with a man on either side. They forced her head
down against her knees so that it was hard to breathe.
We only want you to deliver a message. One of
them said, you'll be home in a couple of hours.
As the car wove through traffic, Maruha, the journalist asked,
(02:54):
who are you people? Welcome to the greatest true crime
(03:17):
stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. Today's episode, we're
calling Pablo Escobar's hostages not just bargaining chips. It's the
story of Pablo Escobar's eventual surrender, but not how you've
heard it before. To negotiate his terms, Escobar kidnapped and
(03:40):
held hostage ten journalists and their teams. In this episode,
we're following two women's stories, Marujampachon and Diana Torbai. Gabriel
(04:16):
Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite authors. If you
know his name, you probably know him from his magical
realist fiction titles like one Hundred Years of Solitude or
Love in the Time of Cholera, or my personal favorite
of Love and Other Demons. Until I got to visit
(04:36):
Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, I actually didn't know that
he was a journalist. First, Gabriel or Gabo is the
name most associated with magical realism, but at the same time,
starting around nineteen forty eight, when he left Bilgotav for
Cartagena because of political unrest, he cut his teeth on
(04:57):
journalism more importantly, or at least more relevantly. I had
never heard of his book News of a Kidnapping. This
is one of his significant works of creative nonfiction, and
it's the one from which this episode takes the bulk
of its research. I don't think news of a kidnapping
(05:18):
is super ubiquitous in English translation, at least I've never
seen it before, so it's unlikely that you'll happen upon
it on a shelf next to The General and his Labyrinth,
or The Autumn of the Patriarch, or even his posthumous
novel released just this year until August. But don't worry,
we will link to it in the show notes. And
(05:39):
if you're translator loyal like me, then you can rest
easy because this book is also translated by the inimitable
Edith Grossman. I also want to thank you in advance
for affording me grace when I'm pronouncing these names. I'm
doing my best and I have practiced, but I'm not
fluent in Spanish, so thank you for understanding. Frankly, it's
(06:06):
just like me to pick up a serious work of
true crime to read on vacation. Most people on a
rooftop slurping the monata concocos, chit chat with other expats,
or dance to the throbbing music that you'd have to
shout over regardless, but you know who you can find
in the far corner of the pool behind black sunglasses
and under a sun hat and a bikini too small
(06:27):
for this advanced stage of pregnancy me and probably since
you're listening to this, you let me start by saying,
Colombia in nineteen ninety one is very different politically from
(06:47):
Colombia in twenty twenty four. In nineteen ninety one, Well,
that's the stereotypical Colombia you think of when you free associate.
I'm going to give a very truncated, extra dreamely generalized
political landscape of nineteen ninety one. If you're listening and
you're super familiar with the details of this time and place,
(07:08):
please have mercy, and when you write in to correct me,
do be nice about it. So when Maruja asked her
kidnappers in that Mercedes, who are you people, they said,
we're from M nineteen, I didn't know what that was,
quick and dirty. M nineteen in nineteen ninety one was
(07:32):
the former Gorilla Group. In nineteen ninety one, they were legal,
they were campaigning for seats in the Constituent Assembly and
had been pardoned in the late nineteen eighties. Very very generally,
here's how I understand the trajectory of M nineteen. They
(07:52):
were a gorilla group who rebelled against dictatorship and fraudulent elections.
When they agreed to demobilize and instead affect changed through
legal politics, the remaining members were formally pardoned and they
created a legitimate political party. All that to say, when
(08:12):
these kidnappers told Maduha, a journalist that they were part
of M nineteen, she immediately knew they were bullshitting her
and Maruja again, a journalist, pressed for the truth. She said, seriously,
are your dealers or gorillas? They said they were gorillas.
They were lying dealers, coppos or captains. Pretty much everyone
(08:37):
really who worked for Pablo Escobar was at this time
part of a group called the extraditibles. So what is
an extraditible? Bottom line, At the time in nineteen ninety one,
(09:00):
not anymore. The government was still so full of corruption
that the drug dealers wanted to be tried in their
home country. What they didn't want was to be extradited,
specifically to the United States for crimes committed here, because
the US was having no mercy. In fact, sentences were
(09:22):
extraordinarily harsh. One Colombian drug dealer who was extradited in
nineteen eighty seven received life imprisonment plus one hundred and
thirty years. The so called extraditibles hid behind the peril
that their families would face once the actual criminals were
behind bars. Naturally, the Colombian government was reluctant to grant
(09:47):
the huge acquiescence of guaranteeing non extradition. They thought Pablo
Escobar essentially wanted to continue carrying out business as usual,
but this time with physical protection from the government. The
new nineteen ninety one Colombian government was knocked down with
being complicit in grand crimes against humanity, so Pablo started
(10:11):
taking hostages to get what he wanted. I should mention
here that extradition to the US was possible at all
because of a treaty signed under President Julio Cesar Torbai.
He was in office from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen
(10:33):
eighty two. Two subsequent presidents continued that treaty. The presidential
candidate of the New Liberalism Party had Torbain's full support,
Luis Carlos Galan was leading with sixty percent approval in
the polls, and then Pablo Escobar tried to take power
(10:53):
of the New Liberalism party, Galan denounced him in a
rally and declared a staunch position against drug cartels. The
cartels assassinated Galan before the end of the presidential race. Okay,
technically his murder is still unsolved, but I mean they
all but confessed to his killing. In nineteen eighty nine,
(11:18):
Goalan's campaign director, Seesar Gaviria came into office. Gavidia defended
extradition as quote an indispensable tool for strengthening the penal
system and announced an unprecedented strategy against the drug traffickers
who surrendered and confessed and they could obtain non extradition
(11:39):
in return. Sounds fair, right generous even to me. Yeah,
it wasn't good enough for the extraditibles. Gavidia is the
president during our story, but I thought it was relevant
to give you more background slash history on the presidential
office because when Pablo Escob didn't get his way with
(12:01):
the extradition clause, he started taking hostages. The first hostage
was seized on August thirtieth, nineteen ninety. Diana Torbai was
also an award winning journalist, director of the television news
program Krypton and of the Boco Ta magazine Oi Oi.
(12:23):
Diana was also the daughter of former president and leader
of the Liberal Party, Julio Cesar Torbai. They got Diana
on a bait and switch. Dianna was supposed to interview
(12:47):
the former Spanish priest and guerrilla fighter, Yes, priest turned
guerrilla fighter, Manuel Perez. Her team had their suspicions, but
nothing could have stopped Diana from trying to engage in
a dialogue about peace with the leader of the Colombian
National Liberation Army or the eal IN. He was the
(13:08):
leader of the second largest gorilla group at the time.
She and her team of five all drove from Bogota
to Onda. There, they got in two vehicles and rode
with the stated guerrillas overnight. Then they waited for a
landslide to be cleared. The next four hours, Diana and
(13:29):
the lone woman on the crew rode on horses while
the men walked through forests. People knew Diana's face even
in the coffee groves and peaceful valleys. They called out
to her as she passed. That evening, they dismounted near
a city that had to be Mediine. It was not
Yalen territory. The crew continued to Copacabana and entered a
(13:54):
little house. A masked man told her that the priest
was waiting, but the women to go first for safety.
Her cameraman was wary. This supposed guerrilla fighter was wearing
a rolex and these guys weapons were not gorilla weapons.
He warned Diana against it, and we all know the
(14:16):
first role of horror movies is you never split up
the group. But she couldn't prevent it. After a two
hour forced march during a storm, she Asusenna Leavanon, who
was editor in chief and director, and Tuan Vida, who
was an editor, arrived at the first house, where they
(14:38):
would be held hostage. By the end of nineteen ninety,
Escobar and the extra didivals had abducted ten people to
use his bargaining chips. What the hell was he thinking?
We'll get into that and much more when we come
back to recap. The three people were following most closely
(15:15):
have all been kidnapped. First Diana Torbai, the news show
and magazine reporter, also the daughter of the former president,
both a powerful woman in her own right and powerful
by proxy. Second Maruja, kidnapped three months later, journalist and
(15:36):
director of press. She was married to Alberto via Meissar,
campaigning for the Constituent Assembly and writing at the newspaper
El de'empo. Alberto was a famously tenacious, if not aggressive,
politician and diplomat. He was a chief ally to President
Luis Carlos Galan in seeking to limit the power of
(15:58):
Pablo Escobar. Maruha, too, was both powerful in her own
right and by proxy. Beatrice via Mussar was Maduha's assistant.
They'd actually kidnapped her on accident. At the same time,
Maduha assumed the kidnappers had already let her go because
she wasn't involved in any press, not really. But when
(16:19):
they reunited within hours of being abducted, they embraced like
they had not seen each other in years. They arrived
to a squalid room with one mattress on the floor
and two masked guards, and then the main guard, the
one who was in charge, said he was letting Beatrice go.
He said, we took you along by mistake. Beatrice said immediately, oh, no,
(16:45):
I'm staying with Maruha. The guards were genuinely impressed with
her loyalty. When she asked to use the bathroom, they
took her down a hallway with a torn nasty cloth
over her head. The lavatory was tiny and disgusting. When
she returned, her circumstances had changed. The guards had heard
(17:06):
on the radio that Beatrice was the sister of Maduha's husband,
Alberto via Missar, so she too had become a powerful
hostage to them. We know who you are now, the
guard said, and we can use you too. The radio
(17:37):
had also revealed that the police knew their escape route,
which made the current house dangerous for all of them.
The kidnappers relocated Maruha and Beatrice in the trunk of
a third car. They led the women into another small,
dimly lit room with a mattress on the floor, two guards,
(17:59):
and a bed in the corner. On the bed was
Marina Montoya. Maruja and Beatrice knew Marina, and they knew
she had been kidnapped three months earlier, just after Diana.
She was thought to be dead, since by all deduction,
her abduction was a form of vengeance. The unconfirmed story
(18:20):
was that Marina's brother, the Secretary General, had agreed to
negotiate terms that the government had not fulfilled. In other words,
Marina was not a bargaining chip. The common theory was
that she had been kidnapped only to execute. Marina was
(18:41):
in a bad condition. She was a skeleton and her
white hair hung limp where she lay on the bed.
She was alive, she did not move. Marina was sixty
four years old, and she was renowned for her beauty,
especially her beautifully groomed hands and fingernails. This person was
not how they remembered her. It didn't take long for
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Maruha and Beatrice to understand what sent Marina into decline.
The rules of the captivity were harsher than those of
a prison. They could only speak if urgent, and even
then only in a whisper. They could not get off
the mattress they had to share. The room was hardly
lit at all, and it had no ventilation, so it
(19:27):
was hard to breathe in the heat and stench. In
the night, the room turned freezing and the walls dripped water.
Their clothes were confiscated and replaced with two sweatsuits. They
had to ask permission from the two guards for everything
they needed, from sitting up to speaking to smoking. Maruha
(19:47):
even got death threats for snoring in her sleep. They
did however, have a television and it was always set
to one new station or another. Alberta Villa. Mussar was
on news shows eight times in the first two days,
hoping Maruha and Viatrice would hear him. Plus nearly all
of Maruja's six children worked in the media, and they
(20:10):
used their resources to communicate to her. It was unquestionably
awful for all the hostages, but I was surprised to
learn that after weeks of captivity, the hostages realized that
their guards were also kind of hostages. The guards were
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the worst part of the captivity. They were boys, young, uneducated, brutal,
and volatile. They worked in pairs for twelve hour shifts
with their submachine guns ready. Marquez says in News of
a kidnapping quote, the boy's common condition was absolute fatalism.
(20:55):
They knew they were going to die young. They accepted
and cared only about living for the moment. They made
excuses to themselves for their reprehensible work. It meant helping
the family, buying nice clothes, having motorcycles, and insuring the
happiness of their mothers, whom they adored above all else
(21:16):
in the world, and for whose sakes they were willing
to die, never mind that a mother would never ever
make that decision for her child. It didn't seem much
like any of them had choices, though the guards had
(21:36):
names that suited their personalities, Monk Spots or the scariest one,
the one who flirted with Marina and hated Maruja. Barabas
One was afraid the Extra Didivils would kill him when
they no longer needed him, just as a precaution in
case he wanted to tell some of their secrets. Between
(21:58):
late November and December seventeenth, the government worked hard and
in secret to revise the extradition treaty and get the
hostages freed. During that time, I think as a gesture
of good faith, the Extra Diitibles released four hostages. That
meant they still held six. Three were together, Maruja, Beatrice
(22:21):
and Marina. Maruja thought the Extra Diitibles were burning all
the low cards. Only the bargaining chips were still being
held and Marina, and then in a different location there
was Diana Torbai and Richard Basseera. The last detained alone
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was Paco Santos. Christmas came and went. Their spirits sank
when the captors of Maruja, Beatrice, and Marina, including the
family whose house they were held in, insisted on a
big New Year's Eve celebration. The hostages didn't really know
what to do with that. Then, sometime in January, one
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of the guards burst into Pacho Santo's room and said,
it's all fucked up. They're going to kill the hostages.
He explained that first they would kill Mariina Montoya every
three days, another in this order, Richard Bassea, Beatrice, Maruja,
and then Diana. The guard told Pacho he would be last.
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He said, but don't worry. This government can't stomach more
than two dead bodies. In reality, Pacho was the first
on the list for some reason, though his sentence was
not carried out. January twenty third, Madina's favorite guard, Monk,
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came into the room. We came to take Granny to
another house, said Maduha asked, outright, are you going to
kill her? Monk was so upset by the question that
he disconnected the TV and radio and confiscated them. Medina said,
who knows, maybe they're going to release me. Maduha and
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Beatrice decided the kindest thing to do was to agree
but they knew better. After they took Manina away, they
realized the TV and radio had been taken to keep
them from knowing how the night ended. This part of
the story is the saddest part of the story. Medina's
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body was found the next morning in an empty lot
north of Bokotah. The corpse wore a hood that obscured
her vision, and there were six entrance and exit wounds
in her skull, which she never saw coming. Because of
(25:10):
the crazy number of unidentified bodies in Bogota at the time,
the Jane Doe was dumped in a common grave after
the autopsy, but one of the pathologists who had performed
the autopsy believed quote the corpse of the lady with
the fine clothes and the impeccable nails was in fact
Marina Montoya. He was correct as soon as her identity
(25:34):
was established. However, someone claiming to be from the Justice
Ministry called the Institute of Forensic Medicine, urging them not
to reveal that the body was in a mass grave.
It was bad. Pr officials had a hard time locating
the body when Mariina's son came to identify her. When
(25:55):
they did, she was difficult to recognize because the wounds
had so disfigured her face. Several days had passed between
Manina's death and the public awareness of her death. On
January twenty fifth, two days after Manina's death but before
(26:15):
its discovery, a guard burst into the house where Diana
Torbay and Richard Berrera were held hostage. He shouted the
law is all over us. Dianna and Richard started getting
ready to leave. The kidnappers gave them white hats so
that from the helicopters above they would look like innocent
(26:35):
composinos or local farmers. They further disguised the hostages by
throwing a black shawl over Dianna and putting Richard in
a leather jacket. Then the guards literally told them to
run for the hills. This is the shootout. Remember, current
(26:57):
President Gavida promised that no armed rescue mission would take place,
and definitely not without permission from the families. Dianna and
Richard tried to sprint up the hill, but after months
in captivity, they both gave out fast nearly as soon
as the helicopters were in sight. Richard threw himself to
(27:18):
the ground at the first sound of gunfire, and then
Dianna fell face down beside him. They killed me. She screamed,
I can't move my legs. She asked Richard to look
at her back because she had felt something like an
electric shock before she fell. He saw just above her
left hip bone a clean, tiny hole with no blood.
(28:02):
The Elite Corps was approaching, though they didn't know that
at the time. They were the front line troops in
the battle against drug trafficking two years earlier, two members
of the Elite Corps approached Richard and Diana lying on
the hillside. Guns raised. Where's Pablo, they asked. Richard explained
who they were, showed his id and with the help
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of some actual compass, he knows the local farmers who
had taken cover in the underbrush. They got Diana to
a helicopter. A military source called former President Torbai and
told him that Diana had been rescued in Mediyanne. He
was overjoyed, and he tried to contact Diana's mother, Nitia
to inform her as well. Nydia, by the way, was
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also a hot shot reporter with her own television show
who was also extremely connected. President Torbay dispatched his chief
bodyguard to drive to Nydia to tell her the good news,
but she was having none of it. The latest report
said that Diana was in intensive care, but she believed
(29:11):
her own instincts over the news, and she called the
President straightway. They killed Diana, she told him, and it's
your doing, it's your fault, and it's what comes of
having a soul of stone. He corrected her that Diana
was alive. She rejected his news. He asked, how do
(29:33):
you know that, She said, because I'm her mother and
my heart tells me so. An hour later, news arrived
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that Diana had bled to death despite hours of medical intervention.
It was a hopeless case. A high velocity, medium caliber
explosive bullet had shattered her spinal column at the waist.
As I mentioned before, her mother, Nydia, was also a
formidable woman. She went to see Diana at the hospital,
(30:19):
and even in her grief and despair, she held a
press conference right outside the operating room. She told the
press a detailed account of the appeals that she and
the Torbis had made to the President about not attempting
a rescue. When the criminals panicked from being under attack,
they might do anything, even on accident. Many of Escobar's
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recruits were kids, after all, and she blamed both the
stupidity and criminality of the extra diibles. She also said
that the government and the president were equally culpable for
ignoring their requests for the safety of the hostages. The
media quoted her a verbatim, public opinions solidified in her support,
(31:06):
and the public became indignant with the government. President Gavidia
wanted to issue a denial of Lydia's statement, but then
he thought better of it. You cannot argue with the
mother's grief. He said instead that they would go to
(31:29):
the funeral, the president and the entire government. They did,
and after the morning, Nydia went to his office and
got straight to the point. She said that she was
wrong for accusing him because now she knew he had
not been aware of it. In case you missed it,
(31:56):
this woman, this journalist grieving her murdered daughter. Her both
apologized to the president for accusing him of her daughter's death,
and then said she wasn't mad at him anymore because he,
the president, didn't know what his own military was doing.
Just incredible. Nydia had learned that the mission's purpose had
(32:21):
been to liberate the hostages, not to find Pablo Escobar,
which is what the president had been told. The military
had tortured a captive guard until he revealed the hostage's location.
Nydia told President Gavinia all of this, in addition to
the fact that the guard had been killed in the operation.
(32:43):
I'm not sure how she knew this honestly, but sometimes
journalists are able to procure a fuller picture of an
objective truth, at least more able than a powerful political figure,
if only for the reason that journalists can get straight
answers from more people without them fearing blowback. It's also
(33:08):
unsurprising that the official version of events was directly contradicted
by the extra didibles. Although Gavidia launched a full investigation
into the mission that ended in Diana Torbay's death, there
was no undoing it. The official statement given by police
almost immediately after, which seems to be consistent with Richard
(33:31):
Beretta's testimony, is that Diana was shot by one of
the kidnappers as they were fleeing. Escobar spun that story.
He actually agreed with the points that Nydia made to
the president. Escobar said that police had carried out the
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raid knowing that the hostages were there, and they knew
that because they had arrested and tortured two of his men,
one of whom had guided the officers to the location
from a helicopter. He said that Diana was killed when
she had already been released, and that she'd been shot
by police. He also said that three bystanding compasinos had
(34:16):
been killed, while police identified the dead as criminals. It
makes perfect sense that each side would pin the culpability
on the other, but there are a couple other things
to consider. Richard Bassetta was there for all of it.
(34:43):
His statement said that Diana's death was accidental, accidental, of course,
with the full full knowledge that a bunch of dudes
armed with submachine guns running up a hill had clear
intention of firing them at someone. What's not clear is
who shot Diana or whether they meant to shoot her.
At least there was no conclusive evidence to prove that
(35:06):
it was intentional. Most people supported this soul eyewitness testimony,
but listener, you and I know that he was also
under extreme stress at the time. I would never say
that he was outright lying, but is it possible that
(35:28):
he misremembered some details. Sure could he have been paying
more attention to his critically injured colleague than trying to
identify where the shots originated? I think so. He also
said that the members of the Elite Corps who came
upon him and Deanna asked him where's Pablo? They did
(35:48):
not ask, are you Richard Bessea? So the intent of
the mission that's unclear too. Not long after Marina Montoya's
(36:10):
body was identified, it surprised everyone. The public thought she
had been executed long ago. And not long after that,
on January twenty ninth, Decree three to three was issued.
It cleared all the obstacles that had interfered with the
drug traffickers surrender. Extradition was not granted for political crimes,
(36:37):
not for any native born Colombians. The government was never
able to shake the public belief that the issuance was
quote an active contrition of Dianna's death. I tend to agree,
since extradition was re established in a constitutional amendment in
nineteen ninety seven for the Torbai family, Dianna's parents, her siblings,
(37:10):
her husband, and her children, that decree was too little
and too late, but it made a huge difference for
their remaining hostages. The extraditibles immediately released a statement announcing
that they canceled the remaining executions. Maruja and Beatrice knew
(37:30):
nothing about any of those news breaks. They hadn't had
access to any form of news. They had no idea
that some hostages had been released, and they had no
idea that some of them, including their friend Marina, had
been killed. Once they even had an opportunity to escape,
one of the guards had a heart attack and dropped
(37:52):
his weapon. Both Maruja and Beatrice had military training. Beatrice
had even taken special Artillery Corps, but they had everything
to lose. On February second, the woman who kept the
house where they were captive told them that two hostages
would be released. Maruja and Beatrice were wary. They had
(38:15):
heard this before, but the woman was so sure she'd
already bought them new makeup and razors in preparation for
their release. It happened on February seventh, but only Beatrice
was released. The guards told Maruja she would have to
wait another week, and Maruja was pissed. Happy for her
(38:36):
sister in law, of course, but angry at her husband.
Why had he not negotiated for her release too. She
knew he would have to be a part of the
hostage negotiation, not only because of his professional position as
political diplomat with the Mediine cartel even before they were kidnapped,
but also because he was very closely related to both
(38:57):
of them. They discussed the story via Trice would need
to tell Alberto, specifically how to navigate the details around
Alberto's impulsive nature so that they protected everyone's safety. The
(39:24):
bosses gave Beatrice ten minutes to get ready. Maduha helped her.
It had been three months since either of them had
seen their own reflections, and they were appalled they were ashen, underweight,
with limp untinded hair. Beatrice tried to make herself up,
and Maruja stopped her, saying, as pale as you are,
(39:47):
you'll look awful if you put that on. That is
a real friend notifying you about a wardrobe malfunction. Before
you get out of the house. The bosses blindfolded Beatrice
and had her life down on the floor of a jeep.
They dropped her off in Normandya with a bill in
her hand. For the first cab she saw. If you
(40:08):
tell the press. You are with Donia Marina Montoya. We'll
kill Maruja, they said. A cab pulled up immediately, and
she realized later that this driver was also a plant.
He asked where she was going, and she had to
repeat her address for him three times. That's when she
realized she was whispering. It would be a symptom of
(40:32):
her captivity that took her a long time to shake.
When they arrived at her house, Beatrice had to go
inside to get change for the cabby. The old porter
shouted when he recognized her, gave her a big hug
and took her up to the flat. After reuniting with
her husband and children, she called her brother Alberto. He
(40:54):
was at her house in ten minutes. Meanwhile, Maduha became
convinced that they had murdered Beatrice, despite the repeated refrain
a dead hostage has no value. They finally allowed her
to watch the midday news on TV, where Beatrice was
(41:15):
surrounded by her family, and that's when Madoha discovered that
her husband had redecorated their apartment. He had done it
to keep her spirits up. He'd tried to follow the
design plan she'd mentioned to him before her kidnapping, but
the colors were wrong and her favorite antique was improperly curated.
(41:35):
Maduha was irate. She yelled at the TV. It's just
the opposite of what I said. I loved this moment
of reading their story, just like I loved the moment
of Beatrice making up her face. I guess because it
feels so human, It feels so much like what I
would do. I mean, how relieving for just a moment
(41:56):
to concentrate on how that orange toned lipstick makes my
teeth look, or how they put the library in the
wrong room of my apartment, rather than whether or not
I will be executed by submachine gun that afternoon. But
it wasn't long before Maruja grew depressed. The bosses had
(42:20):
a changing of the guard. These new guards were nicer,
more educated, talked to her like a person, and her
spirits lifted a bit. And then the old guard came back,
and so did her depression. One of the bosses called
the newly freed Miatrice more than once, screaming medicine because
he couldn't remember the heart medication Maduha required. In the end,
(42:44):
Francisco Santo's the other journalist held in a different house
near Bogota, and Maruja Pachon were not released until Monday,
May twentieth. That's almost seven months of living as a hostage.
(43:20):
In line with Pablo Escobar's need for publicity, Maduha would
be released in time for the seven o'clock news, and
Francisco would be released in time for the news at
nine point thirty. The woman who kept the house offered
to buy Maduha anything she needed. Maduha just asked for
the essentials mascara, lipstick and eyebrow pencil, and, because this
(43:45):
was nineteen ninety one, a pair of stockings to replace
the ones that kidnappers tore during her abduction. She also
asked them to return the emerald ring they had taken
at her initial abduction, but they couldn't find it. Her
drive to freedom was fast and uneventful. They put a
hood over her head and had her lie on the
(44:06):
floor of the car, just as Beatrice had, and after
forty or so minutes, they pushed her out of the car.
She did as they had instructed both women take the
first cab. The first driver she saw recognized her immediately.
He took her to the nearest house to call her
family using their phone, and everyone there recognized her and
(44:29):
embraced her as well. Alberto and their son were in
their cars on the way to her as soon as
they could take down the address. The reporters were waiting
outside her home. She knew them. She said, take it easy, guys,
it'll be easier to talk in the apartment. I don't
(45:05):
want to detract from our focus here. Telling the story
of the journalists who were held hostage is the point
of this episode. Pablo saw them as bargaining chips. That's
how he used people in this instance, as bargaining chips.
But the psychopathy runs so deep that nowadays it's pretty
clear that he saw most people as expendable. It's important
(45:28):
to this show that we illustrate they were not expendable.
Pablo's hostages were people, mothers of journalists, wives to ambassadors,
sisters to politicians, daughters of presidents. Yes, they were powerful people,
both by their associations to decision makers who could be
(45:49):
manipulated to a criminal's needs. But they were also powerful
in themselves. They were journalists and television news crews, survivors,
women who talked back to their child guards, and demanded
basic accommodations, even at gunpoint, who traveled for days and
hours at the promise of talking peace with a violent radical.
(46:12):
But they were people first, people who had very distinct
visions of how their living room should be decorated. People
who ran the neighborhood cafe, the ones who might remember
your order and your name as soon as you walked
in the door. But I don't want to leave you
hanging either. Because they were abducted for essentially one reason,
(46:33):
Pablo Escobar didn't want to be tried for his crimes
in the United States, their time spent as hostages was
not in vain. Within a week, President Gavidia had negotiated
surrender terms with Escobar. They actually negotiated through a televangelist priest,
Father Garcia Edreros, which is just wild to me. The
(46:56):
actual surrender was done via helicopter in the pucker field
on the estate of Pablo's mansion, surrounded by beautiful tropical
flowers and heavily armed guards. Pablo hugged each one of
them and then climbed into the helicopter, which took them
from Pablo's soccer field to the soccer field at the
local prison. In the helicopter, Alberto Villa, Mussar, Maruja's husband
(47:22):
and Beatrice's brother asked Pablo why he had abducted them.
Pablo's response is going to repulse you. It sounds like
something a spoiled child would say. He said, I was
kidnapping people to get something, and I didn't get it.
Nobody was talking to me, nobody was paying attention. So
(47:45):
I went after Donia Maruja to see if that would work.
(48:16):
I didn't know anything of Pablo's ultimate fate. I probably
should have, But in case you're like me, here's the real,
quick and dirty end of Pablo Escobar. So remember how
the government thought he'd basically use them as a shield
and continue running his drug cartel from prison. Well, they
weren't far off. He bribed the guards and he smuggled
(48:40):
in enough shit to make his personal private prison a
high end acienda. The government realized what he was doing
and they planned to move him to another prison without warning.
When Pablo got wind of the change through his numerous bribes,
as paranoid people tend to do, he broke out. This
(49:01):
was two hundred and ninety nine days, so less than
a year after his initial surrender, he bounced from safe
house to safe house, leaving a huge body count of
bodyguard's innocence and his own thugs in his wake. Eighteen
months later, Plain closed, police barricaded his hideout, and Pablo
was killed during the gunfire. Soon after her release, Maduha's
(49:38):
emerald ring was returned to her in a package tied
with a ribbon. There was a diamond chip missing, but
it was her ring, and she was regaining her health
so fast that it almost fit. It definitely fit again
by the time two years later when she was elected
Columbia's Minister of Education. Join me next week on the
(50:19):
greatest true crime Stories ever told for our episode on
Linda Taylor, or at least we think that was her name.
We're talking about the first ever welfare queen and the
ultimate scam artist. Maybe I'd like to shout out a
few key sources that made it possible for me to
(50:39):
tell this week's story, especially Gabriel Garcia Marquez's nonfiction work
entitled News of a Kidnapping. We will link to it
in our show notes. For more information about this case
and others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com.
One more thing before I go. If you haven't already,
(51:02):
I'll love you forever. If you pre order my forthcoming
true crime book, Madam Queen, The Life and Crimes of
Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair, there's a link to do
it at your favorite retailer. In our show's notes, The
Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of
Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer, and I hosted this episode.
(51:25):
I also wrote this episode, and if you like my writing,
you should check out my book, America's First Female serial Killer,
Jane Toppin and the Making of a Monster. Our show
was edited by Antonio Enriquez. Theme music by Tyler Cash,
produced by Emma Demuth. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.
Diversion audio. This episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care in listening. November seventh, nineteen ninety Bogota, Colombia, at
(00:34):
seven oh five pm, Maruja Pachon de Via Mizar and
Biatrice Via Misar de Guerrero slide into the backseat of
their Renault twenty one after work at Fox Scene, the
state run enterprise for the promotion of the film industry.
Maruja was an award winning journalist, and she attended to
(00:57):
all press matters. Since drug traffickers had started randomly kidnapping
journalists in August, she developed a habit of looking over
her shoulder wherever she went. As Moduha's sister in law
and personal assistant, Beatrice had even less reason to be
suspicious as their new chauffeur navigated through rush hour traffic
(01:20):
to bring them home for the day. But her intuition
was right. Eight men were following them. Twenty minutes later,
and less than two hundred meters from Maruja's family home,
a stolen yellow cab cut off Moduha's car and hemmed
it into the left hand curb. Their driver slammed the
(01:42):
brakes to avoid a wreck. At the same time, a
Mercedes pulled up behind the car, trapping them all. Three
armed men approached the car, then five more. Beatrice assumed
it was a hold up. She pulled two rings off
her right hand and threw them out the window, but
(02:04):
money was not what they were After two men opened
the back doors on each side, and the fifth shot
their driver in the head with an uzi through a silencer.
The men separated the women. Bea Trees went into a
third car, where they made her lie on the floor
with a filthy smelling jacket over her head. Maruha went
(02:29):
into the Mercedes in the middle of the back seat
with a man on either side. They forced her head
down against her knees so that it was hard to breathe.
We only want you to deliver a message. One of
them said, you'll be home in a couple of hours.
As the car wove through traffic, Maruha, the journalist asked,
(02:54):
who are you people? Welcome to the greatest true crime
(03:17):
stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. Today's episode, we're
calling Pablo Escobar's hostages not just bargaining chips. It's the
story of Pablo Escobar's eventual surrender, but not how you've
heard it before. To negotiate his terms, Escobar kidnapped and
(03:40):
held hostage ten journalists and their teams. In this episode,
we're following two women's stories, Marujampachon and Diana Torbai. Gabriel
(04:16):
Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite authors. If you
know his name, you probably know him from his magical
realist fiction titles like one Hundred Years of Solitude or
Love in the Time of Cholera, or my personal favorite
of Love and Other Demons. Until I got to visit
(04:36):
Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, I actually didn't know that
he was a journalist. First, Gabriel or Gabo is the
name most associated with magical realism, but at the same time,
starting around nineteen forty eight, when he left Bilgotav for
Cartagena because of political unrest, he cut his teeth on
(04:57):
journalism more importantly, or at least more relevantly. I had
never heard of his book News of a Kidnapping. This
is one of his significant works of creative nonfiction, and
it's the one from which this episode takes the bulk
of its research. I don't think news of a kidnapping
(05:18):
is super ubiquitous in English translation, at least I've never
seen it before, so it's unlikely that you'll happen upon
it on a shelf next to The General and his Labyrinth,
or The Autumn of the Patriarch, or even his posthumous
novel released just this year until August. But don't worry,
we will link to it in the show notes. And
(05:39):
if you're translator loyal like me, then you can rest
easy because this book is also translated by the inimitable
Edith Grossman. I also want to thank you in advance
for affording me grace when I'm pronouncing these names. I'm
doing my best and I have practiced, but I'm not
fluent in Spanish, so thank you for understanding. Frankly, it's
(06:06):
just like me to pick up a serious work of
true crime to read on vacation. Most people on a
rooftop slurping the monata concocos, chit chat with other expats,
or dance to the throbbing music that you'd have to
shout over regardless, but you know who you can find
in the far corner of the pool behind black sunglasses
and under a sun hat and a bikini too small
(06:27):
for this advanced stage of pregnancy me and probably since
you're listening to this, you let me start by saying,
Colombia in nineteen ninety one is very different politically from
(06:47):
Colombia in twenty twenty four. In nineteen ninety one, Well,
that's the stereotypical Colombia you think of when you free associate.
I'm going to give a very truncated, extra dreamely generalized
political landscape of nineteen ninety one. If you're listening and
you're super familiar with the details of this time and place,
(07:08):
please have mercy, and when you write in to correct me,
do be nice about it. So when Maruja asked her
kidnappers in that Mercedes, who are you people, they said,
we're from M nineteen, I didn't know what that was,
quick and dirty. M nineteen in nineteen ninety one was
(07:32):
the former Gorilla Group. In nineteen ninety one, they were legal,
they were campaigning for seats in the Constituent Assembly and
had been pardoned in the late nineteen eighties. Very very generally,
here's how I understand the trajectory of M nineteen. They
(07:52):
were a gorilla group who rebelled against dictatorship and fraudulent elections.
When they agreed to demobilize and instead affect changed through
legal politics, the remaining members were formally pardoned and they
created a legitimate political party. All that to say, when
(08:12):
these kidnappers told Maduha, a journalist that they were part
of M nineteen, she immediately knew they were bullshitting her
and Maruja again, a journalist, pressed for the truth. She said, seriously,
are your dealers or gorillas? They said they were gorillas.
They were lying dealers, coppos or captains. Pretty much everyone
(08:37):
really who worked for Pablo Escobar was at this time
part of a group called the extraditibles. So what is
an extraditible? Bottom line, At the time in nineteen ninety one,
(09:00):
not anymore. The government was still so full of corruption
that the drug dealers wanted to be tried in their
home country. What they didn't want was to be extradited,
specifically to the United States for crimes committed here, because
the US was having no mercy. In fact, sentences were
(09:22):
extraordinarily harsh. One Colombian drug dealer who was extradited in
nineteen eighty seven received life imprisonment plus one hundred and
thirty years. The so called extraditibles hid behind the peril
that their families would face once the actual criminals were
behind bars. Naturally, the Colombian government was reluctant to grant
(09:47):
the huge acquiescence of guaranteeing non extradition. They thought Pablo
Escobar essentially wanted to continue carrying out business as usual,
but this time with physical protection from the government. The
new nineteen ninety one Colombian government was knocked down with
being complicit in grand crimes against humanity, so Pablo started
(10:11):
taking hostages to get what he wanted. I should mention
here that extradition to the US was possible at all
because of a treaty signed under President Julio Cesar Torbai.
He was in office from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen
(10:33):
eighty two. Two subsequent presidents continued that treaty. The presidential
candidate of the New Liberalism Party had Torbain's full support,
Luis Carlos Galan was leading with sixty percent approval in
the polls, and then Pablo Escobar tried to take power
(10:53):
of the New Liberalism party, Galan denounced him in a
rally and declared a staunch position against drug cartels. The
cartels assassinated Galan before the end of the presidential race. Okay,
technically his murder is still unsolved, but I mean they
all but confessed to his killing. In nineteen eighty nine,
(11:18):
Goalan's campaign director, Seesar Gaviria came into office. Gavidia defended
extradition as quote an indispensable tool for strengthening the penal
system and announced an unprecedented strategy against the drug traffickers
who surrendered and confessed and they could obtain non extradition
(11:39):
in return. Sounds fair, right generous even to me. Yeah,
it wasn't good enough for the extraditibles. Gavidia is the
president during our story, but I thought it was relevant
to give you more background slash history on the presidential
office because when Pablo Escob didn't get his way with
(12:01):
the extradition clause, he started taking hostages. The first hostage
was seized on August thirtieth, nineteen ninety. Diana Torbai was
also an award winning journalist, director of the television news
program Krypton and of the Boco Ta magazine Oi Oi.
(12:23):
Diana was also the daughter of former president and leader
of the Liberal Party, Julio Cesar Torbai. They got Diana
on a bait and switch. Dianna was supposed to interview
(12:47):
the former Spanish priest and guerrilla fighter, Yes, priest turned
guerrilla fighter, Manuel Perez. Her team had their suspicions, but
nothing could have stopped Diana from trying to engage in
a dialogue about peace with the leader of the Colombian
National Liberation Army or the eal IN. He was the
(13:08):
leader of the second largest gorilla group at the time.
She and her team of five all drove from Bogota
to Onda. There, they got in two vehicles and rode
with the stated guerrillas overnight. Then they waited for a
landslide to be cleared. The next four hours, Diana and
(13:29):
the lone woman on the crew rode on horses while
the men walked through forests. People knew Diana's face even
in the coffee groves and peaceful valleys. They called out
to her as she passed. That evening, they dismounted near
a city that had to be Mediine. It was not
Yalen territory. The crew continued to Copacabana and entered a
(13:54):
little house. A masked man told her that the priest
was waiting, but the women to go first for safety.
Her cameraman was wary. This supposed guerrilla fighter was wearing
a rolex and these guys weapons were not gorilla weapons.
He warned Diana against it, and we all know the
(14:16):
first role of horror movies is you never split up
the group. But she couldn't prevent it. After a two
hour forced march during a storm, she Asusenna Leavanon, who
was editor in chief and director, and Tuan Vida, who
was an editor, arrived at the first house, where they
(14:38):
would be held hostage. By the end of nineteen ninety,
Escobar and the extra didivals had abducted ten people to
use his bargaining chips. What the hell was he thinking?
We'll get into that and much more when we come
back to recap. The three people were following most closely
(15:15):
have all been kidnapped. First Diana Torbai, the news show
and magazine reporter, also the daughter of the former president,
both a powerful woman in her own right and powerful
by proxy. Second Maruja, kidnapped three months later, journalist and
(15:36):
director of press. She was married to Alberto via Meissar,
campaigning for the Constituent Assembly and writing at the newspaper
El de'empo. Alberto was a famously tenacious, if not aggressive,
politician and diplomat. He was a chief ally to President
Luis Carlos Galan in seeking to limit the power of
(15:58):
Pablo Escobar. Maruha, too, was both powerful in her own
right and by proxy. Beatrice via Mussar was Maduha's assistant.
They'd actually kidnapped her on accident. At the same time,
Maduha assumed the kidnappers had already let her go because
she wasn't involved in any press, not really. But when
(16:19):
they reunited within hours of being abducted, they embraced like
they had not seen each other in years. They arrived
to a squalid room with one mattress on the floor
and two masked guards, and then the main guard, the
one who was in charge, said he was letting Beatrice go.
He said, we took you along by mistake. Beatrice said immediately, oh, no,
(16:45):
I'm staying with Maruha. The guards were genuinely impressed with
her loyalty. When she asked to use the bathroom, they
took her down a hallway with a torn nasty cloth
over her head. The lavatory was tiny and disgusting. When
she returned, her circumstances had changed. The guards had heard
(17:06):
on the radio that Beatrice was the sister of Maduha's husband,
Alberto via Missar, so she too had become a powerful
hostage to them. We know who you are now, the
guard said, and we can use you too. The radio
(17:37):
had also revealed that the police knew their escape route,
which made the current house dangerous for all of them.
The kidnappers relocated Maruha and Beatrice in the trunk of
a third car. They led the women into another small,
dimly lit room with a mattress on the floor, two guards,
(17:59):
and a bed in the corner. On the bed was
Marina Montoya. Maruja and Beatrice knew Marina, and they knew
she had been kidnapped three months earlier, just after Diana.
She was thought to be dead, since by all deduction,
her abduction was a form of vengeance. The unconfirmed story
(18:20):
was that Marina's brother, the Secretary General, had agreed to
negotiate terms that the government had not fulfilled. In other words,
Marina was not a bargaining chip. The common theory was
that she had been kidnapped only to execute. Marina was
(18:41):
in a bad condition. She was a skeleton and her
white hair hung limp where she lay on the bed.
She was alive, she did not move. Marina was sixty
four years old, and she was renowned for her beauty,
especially her beautifully groomed hands and fingernails. This person was
not how they remembered her. It didn't take long for
(19:05):
Maruha and Beatrice to understand what sent Marina into decline.
The rules of the captivity were harsher than those of
a prison. They could only speak if urgent, and even
then only in a whisper. They could not get off
the mattress they had to share. The room was hardly
lit at all, and it had no ventilation, so it
(19:27):
was hard to breathe in the heat and stench. In
the night, the room turned freezing and the walls dripped water.
Their clothes were confiscated and replaced with two sweatsuits. They
had to ask permission from the two guards for everything
they needed, from sitting up to speaking to smoking. Maruha
(19:47):
even got death threats for snoring in her sleep. They
did however, have a television and it was always set
to one new station or another. Alberta Villa. Mussar was
on news shows eight times in the first two days,
hoping Maruha and Viatrice would hear him. Plus nearly all
of Maruja's six children worked in the media, and they
(20:10):
used their resources to communicate to her. It was unquestionably
awful for all the hostages, but I was surprised to
learn that after weeks of captivity, the hostages realized that
their guards were also kind of hostages. The guards were
(20:34):
the worst part of the captivity. They were boys, young, uneducated, brutal,
and volatile. They worked in pairs for twelve hour shifts
with their submachine guns ready. Marquez says in News of
a kidnapping quote, the boy's common condition was absolute fatalism.
(20:55):
They knew they were going to die young. They accepted
and cared only about living for the moment. They made
excuses to themselves for their reprehensible work. It meant helping
the family, buying nice clothes, having motorcycles, and insuring the
happiness of their mothers, whom they adored above all else
(21:16):
in the world, and for whose sakes they were willing
to die, never mind that a mother would never ever
make that decision for her child. It didn't seem much
like any of them had choices, though the guards had
(21:36):
names that suited their personalities, Monk Spots or the scariest one,
the one who flirted with Marina and hated Maruja. Barabas
One was afraid the Extra Didivils would kill him when
they no longer needed him, just as a precaution in
case he wanted to tell some of their secrets. Between
(21:58):
late November and December seventeenth, the government worked hard and
in secret to revise the extradition treaty and get the
hostages freed. During that time, I think as a gesture
of good faith, the Extra Diitibles released four hostages. That
meant they still held six. Three were together, Maruja, Beatrice
(22:21):
and Marina. Maruja thought the Extra Diitibles were burning all
the low cards. Only the bargaining chips were still being
held and Marina, and then in a different location there
was Diana Torbai and Richard Basseera. The last detained alone
(22:41):
was Paco Santos. Christmas came and went. Their spirits sank
when the captors of Maruja, Beatrice, and Marina, including the
family whose house they were held in, insisted on a
big New Year's Eve celebration. The hostages didn't really know
what to do with that. Then, sometime in January, one
(23:02):
of the guards burst into Pacho Santo's room and said,
it's all fucked up. They're going to kill the hostages.
He explained that first they would kill Mariina Montoya every
three days, another in this order, Richard Bassea, Beatrice, Maruja,
and then Diana. The guard told Pacho he would be last.
(23:25):
He said, but don't worry. This government can't stomach more
than two dead bodies. In reality, Pacho was the first
on the list for some reason, though his sentence was
not carried out. January twenty third, Madina's favorite guard, Monk,
(23:56):
came into the room. We came to take Granny to
another house, said Maduha asked, outright, are you going to
kill her? Monk was so upset by the question that
he disconnected the TV and radio and confiscated them. Medina said,
who knows, maybe they're going to release me. Maduha and
(24:18):
Beatrice decided the kindest thing to do was to agree
but they knew better. After they took Manina away, they
realized the TV and radio had been taken to keep
them from knowing how the night ended. This part of
the story is the saddest part of the story. Medina's
(24:40):
body was found the next morning in an empty lot
north of Bokotah. The corpse wore a hood that obscured
her vision, and there were six entrance and exit wounds
in her skull, which she never saw coming. Because of
(25:10):
the crazy number of unidentified bodies in Bogota at the time,
the Jane Doe was dumped in a common grave after
the autopsy, but one of the pathologists who had performed
the autopsy believed quote the corpse of the lady with
the fine clothes and the impeccable nails was in fact
Marina Montoya. He was correct as soon as her identity
(25:34):
was established. However, someone claiming to be from the Justice
Ministry called the Institute of Forensic Medicine, urging them not
to reveal that the body was in a mass grave.
It was bad. Pr officials had a hard time locating
the body when Mariina's son came to identify her. When
(25:55):
they did, she was difficult to recognize because the wounds
had so disfigured her face. Several days had passed between
Manina's death and the public awareness of her death. On
January twenty fifth, two days after Manina's death but before
(26:15):
its discovery, a guard burst into the house where Diana
Torbay and Richard Berrera were held hostage. He shouted the
law is all over us. Dianna and Richard started getting
ready to leave. The kidnappers gave them white hats so
that from the helicopters above they would look like innocent
(26:35):
composinos or local farmers. They further disguised the hostages by
throwing a black shawl over Dianna and putting Richard in
a leather jacket. Then the guards literally told them to
run for the hills. This is the shootout. Remember, current
(26:57):
President Gavida promised that no armed rescue mission would take place,
and definitely not without permission from the families. Dianna and
Richard tried to sprint up the hill, but after months
in captivity, they both gave out fast nearly as soon
as the helicopters were in sight. Richard threw himself to
(27:18):
the ground at the first sound of gunfire, and then
Dianna fell face down beside him. They killed me. She screamed,
I can't move my legs. She asked Richard to look
at her back because she had felt something like an
electric shock before she fell. He saw just above her
left hip bone a clean, tiny hole with no blood.
(28:02):
The Elite Corps was approaching, though they didn't know that
at the time. They were the front line troops in
the battle against drug trafficking two years earlier, two members
of the Elite Corps approached Richard and Diana lying on
the hillside. Guns raised. Where's Pablo, they asked. Richard explained
who they were, showed his id and with the help
(28:25):
of some actual compass, he knows the local farmers who
had taken cover in the underbrush. They got Diana to
a helicopter. A military source called former President Torbai and
told him that Diana had been rescued in Mediyanne. He
was overjoyed, and he tried to contact Diana's mother, Nitia
to inform her as well. Nydia, by the way, was
(28:50):
also a hot shot reporter with her own television show
who was also extremely connected. President Torbay dispatched his chief
bodyguard to drive to Nydia to tell her the good news,
but she was having none of it. The latest report
said that Diana was in intensive care, but she believed
(29:11):
her own instincts over the news, and she called the
President straightway. They killed Diana, she told him, and it's
your doing, it's your fault, and it's what comes of
having a soul of stone. He corrected her that Diana
was alive. She rejected his news. He asked, how do
(29:33):
you know that, She said, because I'm her mother and
my heart tells me so. An hour later, news arrived
(29:55):
that Diana had bled to death despite hours of medical intervention.
It was a hopeless case. A high velocity, medium caliber
explosive bullet had shattered her spinal column at the waist.
As I mentioned before, her mother, Nydia, was also a
formidable woman. She went to see Diana at the hospital,
(30:19):
and even in her grief and despair, she held a
press conference right outside the operating room. She told the
press a detailed account of the appeals that she and
the Torbis had made to the President about not attempting
a rescue. When the criminals panicked from being under attack,
they might do anything, even on accident. Many of Escobar's
(30:44):
recruits were kids, after all, and she blamed both the
stupidity and criminality of the extra diibles. She also said
that the government and the president were equally culpable for
ignoring their requests for the safety of the hostages. The
media quoted her a verbatim, public opinions solidified in her support,
(31:06):
and the public became indignant with the government. President Gavidia
wanted to issue a denial of Lydia's statement, but then
he thought better of it. You cannot argue with the
mother's grief. He said instead that they would go to
(31:29):
the funeral, the president and the entire government. They did,
and after the morning, Nydia went to his office and
got straight to the point. She said that she was
wrong for accusing him because now she knew he had
not been aware of it. In case you missed it,
(31:56):
this woman, this journalist grieving her murdered daughter. Her both
apologized to the president for accusing him of her daughter's death,
and then said she wasn't mad at him anymore because he,
the president, didn't know what his own military was doing.
Just incredible. Nydia had learned that the mission's purpose had
(32:21):
been to liberate the hostages, not to find Pablo Escobar,
which is what the president had been told. The military
had tortured a captive guard until he revealed the hostage's location.
Nydia told President Gavinia all of this, in addition to
the fact that the guard had been killed in the operation.
(32:43):
I'm not sure how she knew this honestly, but sometimes
journalists are able to procure a fuller picture of an
objective truth, at least more able than a powerful political figure,
if only for the reason that journalists can get straight
answers from more people without them fearing blowback. It's also
(33:08):
unsurprising that the official version of events was directly contradicted
by the extra didibles. Although Gavidia launched a full investigation
into the mission that ended in Diana Torbay's death, there
was no undoing it. The official statement given by police
almost immediately after, which seems to be consistent with Richard
(33:31):
Beretta's testimony, is that Diana was shot by one of
the kidnappers as they were fleeing. Escobar spun that story.
He actually agreed with the points that Nydia made to
the president. Escobar said that police had carried out the
(33:52):
raid knowing that the hostages were there, and they knew
that because they had arrested and tortured two of his men,
one of whom had guided the officers to the location
from a helicopter. He said that Diana was killed when
she had already been released, and that she'd been shot
by police. He also said that three bystanding compasinos had
(34:16):
been killed, while police identified the dead as criminals. It
makes perfect sense that each side would pin the culpability
on the other, but there are a couple other things
to consider. Richard Bassetta was there for all of it.
(34:43):
His statement said that Diana's death was accidental, accidental, of course,
with the full full knowledge that a bunch of dudes
armed with submachine guns running up a hill had clear
intention of firing them at someone. What's not clear is
who shot Diana or whether they meant to shoot her.
At least there was no conclusive evidence to prove that
(35:06):
it was intentional. Most people supported this soul eyewitness testimony,
but listener, you and I know that he was also
under extreme stress at the time. I would never say
that he was outright lying, but is it possible that
(35:28):
he misremembered some details. Sure could he have been paying
more attention to his critically injured colleague than trying to
identify where the shots originated? I think so. He also
said that the members of the Elite Corps who came
upon him and Deanna asked him where's Pablo? They did
(35:48):
not ask, are you Richard Bessea? So the intent of
the mission that's unclear too. Not long after Marina Montoya's
(36:10):
body was identified, it surprised everyone. The public thought she
had been executed long ago. And not long after that,
on January twenty ninth, Decree three to three was issued.
It cleared all the obstacles that had interfered with the
drug traffickers surrender. Extradition was not granted for political crimes,
(36:37):
not for any native born Colombians. The government was never
able to shake the public belief that the issuance was
quote an active contrition of Dianna's death. I tend to agree,
since extradition was re established in a constitutional amendment in
nineteen ninety seven for the Torbai family, Dianna's parents, her siblings,
(37:10):
her husband, and her children, that decree was too little
and too late, but it made a huge difference for
their remaining hostages. The extraditibles immediately released a statement announcing
that they canceled the remaining executions. Maruja and Beatrice knew
(37:30):
nothing about any of those news breaks. They hadn't had
access to any form of news. They had no idea
that some hostages had been released, and they had no
idea that some of them, including their friend Marina, had
been killed. Once they even had an opportunity to escape,
one of the guards had a heart attack and dropped
(37:52):
his weapon. Both Maruja and Beatrice had military training. Beatrice
had even taken special Artillery Corps, but they had everything
to lose. On February second, the woman who kept the
house where they were captive told them that two hostages
would be released. Maruja and Beatrice were wary. They had
(38:15):
heard this before, but the woman was so sure she'd
already bought them new makeup and razors in preparation for
their release. It happened on February seventh, but only Beatrice
was released. The guards told Maruja she would have to
wait another week, and Maruja was pissed. Happy for her
(38:36):
sister in law, of course, but angry at her husband.
Why had he not negotiated for her release too. She
knew he would have to be a part of the
hostage negotiation, not only because of his professional position as
political diplomat with the Mediine cartel even before they were kidnapped,
but also because he was very closely related to both
(38:57):
of them. They discussed the story via Trice would need
to tell Alberto, specifically how to navigate the details around
Alberto's impulsive nature so that they protected everyone's safety. The
(39:24):
bosses gave Beatrice ten minutes to get ready. Maduha helped her.
It had been three months since either of them had
seen their own reflections, and they were appalled they were ashen, underweight,
with limp untinded hair. Beatrice tried to make herself up,
and Maruja stopped her, saying, as pale as you are,
(39:47):
you'll look awful if you put that on. That is
a real friend notifying you about a wardrobe malfunction. Before
you get out of the house. The bosses blindfolded Beatrice
and had her life down on the floor of a jeep.
They dropped her off in Normandya with a bill in
her hand. For the first cab she saw. If you
(40:08):
tell the press. You are with Donia Marina Montoya. We'll
kill Maruja, they said. A cab pulled up immediately, and
she realized later that this driver was also a plant.
He asked where she was going, and she had to
repeat her address for him three times. That's when she
realized she was whispering. It would be a symptom of
(40:32):
her captivity that took her a long time to shake.
When they arrived at her house, Beatrice had to go
inside to get change for the cabby. The old porter
shouted when he recognized her, gave her a big hug
and took her up to the flat. After reuniting with
her husband and children, she called her brother Alberto. He
(40:54):
was at her house in ten minutes. Meanwhile, Maduha became
convinced that they had murdered Beatrice, despite the repeated refrain
a dead hostage has no value. They finally allowed her
to watch the midday news on TV, where Beatrice was
(41:15):
surrounded by her family, and that's when Madoha discovered that
her husband had redecorated their apartment. He had done it
to keep her spirits up. He'd tried to follow the
design plan she'd mentioned to him before her kidnapping, but
the colors were wrong and her favorite antique was improperly curated.
(41:35):
Maduha was irate. She yelled at the TV. It's just
the opposite of what I said. I loved this moment
of reading their story, just like I loved the moment
of Beatrice making up her face. I guess because it
feels so human, It feels so much like what I
would do. I mean, how relieving for just a moment
(41:56):
to concentrate on how that orange toned lipstick makes my
teeth look, or how they put the library in the
wrong room of my apartment, rather than whether or not
I will be executed by submachine gun that afternoon. But
it wasn't long before Maruja grew depressed. The bosses had
(42:20):
a changing of the guard. These new guards were nicer,
more educated, talked to her like a person, and her
spirits lifted a bit. And then the old guard came back,
and so did her depression. One of the bosses called
the newly freed Miatrice more than once, screaming medicine because
he couldn't remember the heart medication Maduha required. In the end,
(42:44):
Francisco Santo's the other journalist held in a different house
near Bogota, and Maruja Pachon were not released until Monday,
May twentieth. That's almost seven months of living as a hostage.
(43:20):
In line with Pablo Escobar's need for publicity, Maduha would
be released in time for the seven o'clock news, and
Francisco would be released in time for the news at
nine point thirty. The woman who kept the house offered
to buy Maduha anything she needed. Maduha just asked for
the essentials mascara, lipstick and eyebrow pencil, and, because this
(43:45):
was nineteen ninety one, a pair of stockings to replace
the ones that kidnappers tore during her abduction. She also
asked them to return the emerald ring they had taken
at her initial abduction, but they couldn't find it. Her
drive to freedom was fast and uneventful. They put a
hood over her head and had her lie on the
(44:06):
floor of the car, just as Beatrice had, and after
forty or so minutes, they pushed her out of the car.
She did as they had instructed both women take the
first cab. The first driver she saw recognized her immediately.
He took her to the nearest house to call her
family using their phone, and everyone there recognized her and
(44:29):
embraced her as well. Alberto and their son were in
their cars on the way to her as soon as
they could take down the address. The reporters were waiting
outside her home. She knew them. She said, take it easy, guys,
it'll be easier to talk in the apartment. I don't
(45:05):
want to detract from our focus here. Telling the story
of the journalists who were held hostage is the point
of this episode. Pablo saw them as bargaining chips. That's
how he used people in this instance, as bargaining chips.
But the psychopathy runs so deep that nowadays it's pretty
clear that he saw most people as expendable. It's important
(45:28):
to this show that we illustrate they were not expendable.
Pablo's hostages were people, mothers of journalists, wives to ambassadors,
sisters to politicians, daughters of presidents. Yes, they were powerful people,
both by their associations to decision makers who could be
(45:49):
manipulated to a criminal's needs. But they were also powerful
in themselves. They were journalists and television news crews, survivors,
women who talked back to their child guards, and demanded
basic accommodations, even at gunpoint, who traveled for days and
hours at the promise of talking peace with a violent radical.
(46:12):
But they were people first, people who had very distinct
visions of how their living room should be decorated. People
who ran the neighborhood cafe, the ones who might remember
your order and your name as soon as you walked
in the door. But I don't want to leave you
hanging either. Because they were abducted for essentially one reason,
(46:33):
Pablo Escobar didn't want to be tried for his crimes
in the United States, their time spent as hostages was
not in vain. Within a week, President Gavidia had negotiated
surrender terms with Escobar. They actually negotiated through a televangelist priest,
Father Garcia Edreros, which is just wild to me. The
(46:56):
actual surrender was done via helicopter in the pucker field
on the estate of Pablo's mansion, surrounded by beautiful tropical
flowers and heavily armed guards. Pablo hugged each one of
them and then climbed into the helicopter, which took them
from Pablo's soccer field to the soccer field at the
local prison. In the helicopter, Alberto Villa, Mussar, Maruja's husband
(47:22):
and Beatrice's brother asked Pablo why he had abducted them.
Pablo's response is going to repulse you. It sounds like
something a spoiled child would say. He said, I was
kidnapping people to get something, and I didn't get it.
Nobody was talking to me, nobody was paying attention. So
(47:45):
I went after Donia Maruja to see if that would work.
(48:16):
I didn't know anything of Pablo's ultimate fate. I probably
should have, But in case you're like me, here's the real,
quick and dirty end of Pablo Escobar. So remember how
the government thought he'd basically use them as a shield
and continue running his drug cartel from prison. Well, they
weren't far off. He bribed the guards and he smuggled
(48:40):
in enough shit to make his personal private prison a
high end acienda. The government realized what he was doing
and they planned to move him to another prison without warning.
When Pablo got wind of the change through his numerous bribes,
as paranoid people tend to do, he broke out. This
(49:01):
was two hundred and ninety nine days, so less than
a year after his initial surrender, he bounced from safe
house to safe house, leaving a huge body count of
bodyguard's innocence and his own thugs in his wake. Eighteen
months later, Plain closed, police barricaded his hideout, and Pablo
was killed during the gunfire. Soon after her release, Maduha's
(49:38):
emerald ring was returned to her in a package tied
with a ribbon. There was a diamond chip missing, but
it was her ring, and she was regaining her health
so fast that it almost fit. It definitely fit again
by the time two years later when she was elected
Columbia's Minister of Education. Join me next week on the
(50:19):
greatest true crime Stories ever told for our episode on
Linda Taylor, or at least we think that was her name.
We're talking about the first ever welfare queen and the
ultimate scam artist. Maybe I'd like to shout out a
few key sources that made it possible for me to
(50:39):
tell this week's story, especially Gabriel Garcia Marquez's nonfiction work
entitled News of a Kidnapping. We will link to it
in our show notes. For more information about this case
and others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com.
One more thing before I go. If you haven't already,
(51:02):
I'll love you forever. If you pre order my forthcoming
true crime book, Madam Queen, The Life and Crimes of
Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair, there's a link to do
it at your favorite retailer. In our show's notes, The
Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of
Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer, and I hosted this episode.
(51:25):
I also wrote this episode, and if you like my writing,
you should check out my book, America's First Female serial Killer,
Jane Toppin and the Making of a Monster. Our show
was edited by Antonio Enriquez. Theme music by Tyler Cash,
produced by Emma Demuth. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.
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