April 26, 2025 • 59 mins
Pablo Escobar was once the most wanted man in the world. As the cocaine king of Colombia, Escobar made billions through drug trafficking. He killed anyone who got in his way. Until American agent Steve Murphy helped bring him down.
This is the true story behind Netflix hit series, Narcos.
Listen to Steve Murphy's podcast, Game of Crimes, here.
Read Steve Murphy and Javier Peña's book, Manhunters: How we took down Pablo Escobar, here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life the average persons never exposed her.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The
(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. I
(00:46):
absolutely love hosting this podcast and speaking to some amazing guests.
And today I've got to speak to a former cop
who I've greatly admired ever since I heard about this
story on the hugely successful Netflix series Nakos. Steve Murphy
is my guest. Him and his dea partner Harvey Penna,
were part of a team who hunted down arguably the
(01:07):
world's most wanted criminal, Pablo Escobar. He was a murdering
drug lord who made billions of dollars out of the
cocaine trade. Today, Steve spoke about the investigation and the
impact it had on him, including living in the country
with a bounty on his head. This is a crime
story on steroids, and today we talk to the man
(01:27):
who was in the thick of it, the man who
brought down Pableau Escobar.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Have a listen. Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Thank you very much, Scary. I'm truly honored to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I've got to give a shout out to a common friend,
lou Velosi, who put me in contact with you.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And he's an interesting character, isn't he the undercover cop?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
You know you hit it now on the head. He
is a real character. I love that guy though. He's
one of my best best friends.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I enjoyed the chat I had with him, that's for sure. Hey,
I've been a big fan of your work, and you know,
from a law enforcement perspective, I've seen what you've done
and the sacrifices you made, especially on the investigation tracking
down Pablo Escobar. I know you'd probably like most cops
(02:17):
and saying well, hey, I'm just doing the job. But
my take on it and prepping for this and doing
some research, reading your book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and
also some of the interviews you've done that you weren't
just doing your job. You went above and beyond that.
You were really really got in there and had a game.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, thank you for saying that. It's you know, the
truth of it. It was exciting. We were younger, it
was exciting. It was the biggest thing, you know, the
DEA was doing at that time.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
And you know how it is.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Every other agent, a real police officer, would have gladly
taken your place immediately if they had the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
One percent.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I can sit here and say I'm a bit jealous
for a job like that. You start your career and
you're not going to think it's going to get to
what you were doing there, But we're gonna we're going
to talk about that in great detail. But I got
the sense it was it was personal. And yeah, I've
been a homicide cop for a long time and people
say you can't, can't let it get personal. I saw
(03:18):
of say bullshit on that. I make the job personal
because it drives me. I got the sense what you
and Harber were doing on that case. It did become
personal to you? Is that the right assessment?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
It is?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I don't know how you cannot make it personal, you
know that. I mean, you see the death and destruction
that one man is responsible for, and it's offer his
own power, his greed, his ego. You know, it just
it's unbelievable. And you go to some of these barming
sites where children, where babies have been killed just simply
because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
How can that not be personally?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, well, yeah, he's he's certainly looked at now, but
at the time it was starting to get a sense
of it. He was considered one of the world's mass
ruthless criminals.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
He was, he was, he was.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I don't know if you ever saw the show here
in the United States, America's Most Wanted yep, yep. So
they came, they flew down to Columbia and we took
a film crew to Mediine and they did one episode
only of the World's Most Wanted. That was Pablo Escobar. Yeah,
we're I mean, we're talking about the world's very first
Narco terrorist.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, described saying Naco terrorists Bright break that damn for us.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So, you know, and I used to have the same
question because I'd never heard that term. Uh, and we
kind of coined it, believe it or not, but it's
kind of caught on. So a narco terrorist is just
basically a narco narcotics trafficker who employs terroristic activities in
his daily routine. And so what we saw with Pablo
Escobar is when he didn't get his way, he declared
(04:54):
war on his own country. He was indiscriminately setting off
car bombs, not only against the government but also against
the Cali cartel. The murders were just completely out of control.
We used to say that Pablo, in our estimation, Pablo
was responsible for maybe ten, fifteen, twenty thousand murders. There
(05:15):
was a documentary a few years ago that we were
on that they also interviewed one of his remainings. Tocario's
a guy named went by the nickname of Popeye. His
real name is John Hiro of Alaskaz Vasquez. He was
he's dead now, he died of cancer, thank goodness. But
what sounded wrong, didn't it? But I mean that guy's evil.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
No, yeah, I understand where he's coming from there and He.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Says on that documentary that Pablo, he said the Green
Goes have it all wrong. Pablo is responsible for more
than fifty thousand murders. And then Popeye in that same documentary,
and you can see this, I think it's I think
it's on the Discovery Channel. He says that he orchestrated
as many as three thousand murders himself, and the Heat
(06:00):
committed over three hundred murders himself, and he's laughing about
his smiling about it. I mean, these guys are just
like demons walking. They're pure evil walking on the face
of our earth.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, the sense of I got, and I think I've
actually seen him interviewed, whether it's the documentary you're referring to,
but there just seems to be no remorse, and it's
just they get conditioned to it, and it's just their
way of life. To murder someone life meant nothing.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
That's exactly right. And in Pope's case, he even murdered
his girlfriend because Pablo told him to. Pabla was worried
that she was talking to people, and he went and
murdered his own girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I got the sense of that as well, that if
there was any risk. Well, we're not just going to
take a risk, would just get the person killed without
a second thought.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Without a second thought, that's exactly right. No conscience, no
guilt feelings, no remorse, nothing, just business.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Well, Steve, you didn't start off as a fresh blue eye,
so I'm ready to go take on the wheel the
as a law enforcement officer, thinking you're going to be
chasing the world's dangerous man. How did you find your
way into policing and law enforcement?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
You know, Gary, it's and this if you read the book,
you read this story. When I was about ten years old,
I had my first running with the police as a
kid in Tennessee, the state of Tennessee. And we're camping
out in the backyard and you know, some middle it's
probably one o'clock in the morning, and we're riding our
bicycles through the neighborhood and you know, our parents would
kill us if they knew what we were doing. There
were some snack machines at all night laundry mat but
(07:33):
none of us had any money. So we decided we'd
break in a house because you know, that just really
made sense.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It makes sense as a ten year old.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yep, So we go to this house and we're trying
to figure out how we're going to break in when
we're at this bedroom window and apparently we were making
a lot of noise because the cops showed up and
hit us with the spotlight. You know, we were like
a deer in the headlights, just frozen. I mean, we
were so scared. We didn't even run. And the two
police offs just came over and talked to us, and
(08:02):
you know, we told I mean, we were honest, We
told him what we were doing. They said, boys, you
got a decision to make. You either go to jail
with for you know, go with us and go to
prison for the rest of your life, or we take
you home to your parents. And we kind of looked
at each other, like take us to jail, because I
don't want to go home and face my dad. But
that event just stuck in my mind and it really
(08:23):
impressed me. And even at ten years old, you just
think it's cool, right, I mean, you're not really processing
in your mind as an adult, but it stuck with
me and I just I liked the uniforms, and you know,
back then, police officers had discretion to make decisions on
the street. Realizing you know, this is just a bunch
of kids about to get in trouble, and they could,
(08:44):
rather than putting us in jail and you know, send
us a juvenile hall, they could release us to our parents,
and the punishment I'm sure was.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
A lot worse.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
But as I got older, that's all I wanted to
do is be a cop. My dad was a retired
minister and when he retired him my uncle, my favorite uncle,
Uncle Joe. They started a flooring business, a carpet business,
and I was the only son of both families, so
it was always anticipated I would take over the business.
I started working in carpet at fourteen years old. I
(09:12):
hated it then, I hate it now, not what I
wanted to do. My dad sent me to college to
get a business degree, and my first semester I came
out on academic probation because I hated it. So he
maybe come home and I went to local college. They
had just started their criminal justice program, so I got
my four year degree there and became I took my
(09:35):
first police test. I was eighteen years old, and my
professor's the one that told me I should do it,
and I said, you know, they're not going to hire
me at eighteen. He's like, but you get experienced taking
the tests of them. When you're old enough, they will
hire you. You know, you'll know what to expect. Well, it
turns out I scored the high score on that test.
I mean the next closest guy behind me was ten
points down. And not that I'm an overly smart guy.
(09:58):
I was just you know, I was used to studying.
I could take a test, and it ended up at
the city that I went to work for in southern
West Virginia hired me one month after I turned eighteen
years old. I couldn't buy alcohol, I couldn't buy cigarettes,
I couldn't buy a gun. I couldn't break by bullets.
But I could carry a gun and I could use it.
If I determined that was trying to save a life.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
That very right, dirty is And I do recall in
your books saying that you still have a reaction if
you go past the flooring store or that from what
your life could have been. Not that there's anything wrong
with that life, but you discovered discovered policing and the
world that that had to offer your first in You've
(10:43):
been across to Australia a few times, and our set
up with law enforcement. We have federal police and then
we have state police. But with your first police force
or the section that you worked in, what was there
thirty cops or thirty right? Sorry, I thought it was small,
thirty five. That's a big beginning. Tell us about that.
(11:06):
And you even had to buy your own gun, because
it's hard for us to comprehend over here in Australia
that that's the way that law enforcement is done over
in the US.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, and I'm not sure sure that it is nowadays,
but this was back in nineteen seventy five. They provided
your uniform, and they would buy your shoes and things
like that, but you had to provide your own weapon,
and you're on your gun belt and your you know,
for your handcuffs and all that stuff. And so one
of the police officers that i'd befriended when I was
(11:37):
I'd actually done a college internship with the city police department,
so they all knew me already, and one of the officers,
I gave him the money. He bought me my first gun,
and my dad bought my bullets for me.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It's hard, it's just it's so funny. Now it's hard
to comprehend. Okay, well you got your gun, you got
your bullets. How did you find those is because you
moved around a bit. How long did you stay and
was it blue Bluefield?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Uh place in West Virginia?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
How long were you there for?
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yes, sir, six years.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Six years and working uniform, not making very much money.
I you know, worked as much overtime as I could.
I was working off duty jobs. The college I went to,
I actually had a little business and security business, and
so I got the sports contract for the college for
basketball games and baseball and football. I don't know if
(12:29):
you know what Amway is, but even sold Amway.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
To know what Amway. And I'm not buying off you. Yeah,
I don't care what you say, Steve. I respect you,
but no, we're not going down that path.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I've got.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
No sorry, I'm traumatized. I had a mate that said,
I want to catch up, Well what about And it
was doing an Amway pitch years ago, so yeah, I
do know about it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Oh yeah, And there was even a one of the
local firemen was an electrician when he was off duty,
so I worked for him as an electricians helper. So
I mean, you did just do with you had to
do to pay the bills.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
You know, now, I understand. Then you moved to another area.
What was that the north Transit transit policing all of
the railways.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well, there was not Transit police but Norfolk and West
Back then it was Northfolk and Western Railroad. It's now
the Norfolk Southern Railroad.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Became a detective with them, moved down to Norfolk, Virginia.
It was quite honestly, it was like a glorified security
guard the job they had me doing, and I hated it.
He was boring. I mean, it's just terrible. And transferred
back to West Virginia. After two years as a railroad cop.
(13:41):
Gotten involved in a couple of shootings there, mostly backing
up other law enforcement agencies. And the chief I had
at the time had never been a real cop. He'd
always been a railroad cop. And I'm not taking anything
away from railroad cops. I know some really fantastic investigators,
but he really got upset when I helped the city
where this is the city department I used to work for,
(14:03):
so I know all the cops there. A rookie You've
got in a shooting one night, so I went and
backed him up. And uh a man was laying shot
on the sidewalk and I had to go grab him
and drag him in a recessed doorway and we had,
you know, had a stand off there for a couple hours,
and the guy finally surrendered. The shooter did, but my
boss came in. I called my boss the next morning
and told him what happened, and uh so he came in,
(14:25):
and man, he was mad at me. He was He
said that had nothing to do with railroad business, you know,
And I mean he's chewing me out. So I told him,
I said, chief, I'm the only railroad cop on duty
for twenty six counties, which is an extremely large geographical area.
Where do you think I go when I need help?
So you know, when these guys need help, I'm going
(14:46):
to be there for him if I can get to him.
So he threatened to get me fired, and and uh,
you know, just motivated me to go find something else
to do, because that's I don't I'm not going to
work for somebody like that.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I think it's a pathway working.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And when I say working like genuine cops that they're
going to clash with bosses like that, that really you
wonder what they're in the job for when they don't
understand what the role of a copy is. So I
recall that in your book, and I thought, yeah, I
can just picture the type of ship you would have
got into and just shake your head, and yeah, it's
(15:23):
frustrating you this.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
I'll give you another example. This guy.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
We had somebody broke into one of the railroad buildings
at a remote site and they'd thrown a rock through
the window. So I went and investigated, and you know,
couldn't find my fingerprints and they didn't get very much.
And so I came back and told him what I
was preparing my reports. So where's the rock? So's it's
in parking lot over there. I threw it back on
you're going to in the draveway, Well, did your fingerprint it?
(15:49):
Say it's the rock. It's porous, it won't absorb the
oils on your fingers that you can fingerprint and lift
the That's how unexperienced.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I read, Steve.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
I always think there's a stream for them if they
want to go through in the management level. But I
always clashed with ones that yeah, it was obviously career
was management. I was an operational police officer. I respect
the work you do as a manager. Please respect the
work I do as an operational police officer. But it's worldwide,
isn't I can talk to a cop from anywhere and
(16:21):
everyone's got the same type of story that the same experience.
So okay, from absolutely from those experiences, you're thinking, DA,
you wanted to go to the DA. What's the process
to get into the DA?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well it Honestly, I had never heard of DEA. I
didn't know what it was. And one of my fellow
railroad police officers had been a Virginia State trooper that
worked with DEA on a task force, and so he
would tell me stories. And I was always interested in
archatic's cases as a uniform carp so I got to
looking at it. I had to finish up my college degree.
(16:56):
I still had a few classes to take, so I
did that apply in nineteen eighty five. Took two years
before I finally got hired. And you know, through the
background investigation and the interviews that you go through and
all the things that you have to go through. So
finally got hired and had just moved back to Norfolk, Virginia.
(17:17):
Was like my first week there was living in a
motel room because I didn't have an apartment yet. And
they called and they said they called me on a
like a Wednesday, and they said, hey, we've got an
opening a class starting Monday.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Can you be here?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
And I said absolutely, So I went from there, I
went to the main office. My boss there in Norfolk
was a guy that used to be a police officer
with me, so I know him very well. And they
all knew I was applying to DEA. So he, you know,
I said, listen, I've got two weeks leave coming. I'm
going to turn my notice in today. And he's like,
I understand completely, Murph, we hate to lose you, but
(17:51):
you know, do what you got to do. So that
night I packed up. The next day, Thursday, I drove home.
My wife was still living in West Virginia at the time.
You hadn't even moved down yet, and uh got everything ready,
and Sunday I drove to the da Academy in Quantica,
Virginia and started my adventure there.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Okay, how just to explain to people. I understand what
DEI is, but explain to people what the role of
the DEA is.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
What said, Chada, you know this is interesting if you know,
I'm not sure you probably know a lot about our
government here because it's crazy things going on.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Right, Yeah, a little bit in the news every recent times.
It's like watching reality TV. But anyway, oh my.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Gosh, this is going to be the strangest four years
I think any of us living. It's in de A
most law enforce or I'm sorry, in federal law enforcement
here in the United States. We have several different agencies
and the only single mission agencies are the Internal Revenue Service,
which are the tax collectors, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
(18:58):
Our single mission is to enforce the US Code Control
Substances Act, and how that also carries over into money laundering.
But you know, you've got to have an attorney to
prosecute those cases, and they kind of go hand in hand,
and you know, and you work in a task force environment,
so you sometimes you have an IRS agent working with you.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
But that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
We we we don't go after the users. We're not
after street level dealers. We're after the largest dealers in
the world that are having a negative impact on our country.
So if you look at DEA's footprint, we only have
if we have a full complement of agents. That's only
forty six hundred agents. I think right now DEA is
(19:40):
down about a thousand agents.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
But in the foreign.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Arena, the DEA has the largest footprint outside of the
United States of any federal law enforcement agency here in
the United States, including the FBI. I think there's it's
something like ninety one offices in seventy eight countries or
something like that. But what that does is, like, you know,
we've got right there in Australia, we now have an
office down in New Zealand. Of course, we had one
(20:03):
in Bogata and the baron Keia down you know when
I went down there back in the late eighties early nineties.
I'm sorry, but it's you know, we come to Australia,
we have no jurisdiction, so we it's it's an agreement
between countries to work together and we open up access
(20:24):
to information. We have working hand in hand with say
the Australian Federal Police or you know, whatever police agency
it is. I remember you used to have the Australian
Crime Commission, the acc over there. We had we'd partnered
with them for a while and you share intelligence and
then as the information say, information is coming out of
Australia that will pack impact other countries where we have
(20:46):
a presence, or more specifically the United States. Then we
send that intelligence to our investigators and what we're trying
to do is make prosecutable cases. And so if if
an Aussie is is a drug dealer sending cocaine, for example,
to the United States, well we want to we want
to build a case on him so we can get
extra dive to the United States and put his button jail.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
That's there. In a nutshell, that's what de EA is.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
How did you find the fund the training that I
would imagine giving the fact that you had a background
in law enforcement, it wasn't a complete shock. You weren't
coming in as a rural rookie.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Had it. How did you find the training.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
For the day it was I'm not going to say
it was easy. You know, the PT was every day
if and if if every day you're either on the
range on the firing range shooting or then on the
opposite day as you're you're doing two to three hours
of PT training and that that's you know, they're always
gonna throw at least a five mile run on you
(21:46):
just to screw with you. To be honest with you,
but it gets into shape and it was very regimented,
so very paramilitary. I'll give you an example. Before I
joined DA, especially with the Railroad, I shot competition, so
I was a pretty good shot with a pistol, and
I was a very good shot. I was on the
(22:07):
Railroad pistol team and we traveled all over the United
States and competition. So your first time on the range
with DEA, they treat everybody as if you've never seen
a gun. You know, they'll hold a gun up to
say the bullet comes out here, don't ever point that
at yourself. Yeah, I mean, just really basic, you know.
So we get on the five yard line with paper
targets in front of you, and they said, and we
had revolvers back then, not the semi automatics, and they said, okay,
(22:30):
fire six rounds, slow fire that no need to rush
and try to hit that piece of paper in front
of it five yards.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Pretty well, it's five yards I had.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Said that way.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
It was bigger than it was, bigger than a bullet hold.
But they're still they all touched. And so the instructor
comes over and he says, you see that right there,
And I said, yes, sir, and he said, if I
was scoring this year, get credit for one round. And
I started laughing. He said, what's funny? You got to
be kidnewed, you know, explained to him, I've been shooting competition,
you know, and he said, well, I'm telling you. You said,
(23:06):
if I can't count the hole, you don't get credit.
So as we progressed, then you know, they'd say, okay,
this time, we want you to fire six rounds, reload,
fire six more rounds. So I put a few rounds here,
a few rounds here, a few rounds here, a few
rounds here, and then some rounds right in the middle.
And then he comes back and he's like, oh, you're
real smart ass, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I'm just doing what you told me, come on see.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
And he didn't like that I was. He didn't like
it that I was challenging.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Dining upset the weapons instructor. You will probably have the
knock out push ups after that, for.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
You've been a smart eye.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Ye that yeah, but that that would have served you will. Okay,
you get pro, you get pro, you your training? Way
do you get posted?
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Well?
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The first post I went to was Miami in nineteen
eighty seven, So that still the wild West down there,
that would have been a quiet place.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Miami eighty seven.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Oh it was a blast, I'll tell you what it was.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
So when I joined EA, the most part of cocaine
I've ever seen it one time was two ounces.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Bagging about like this.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
The first case I got to go on undercover, we
went down to the Turks and Coco sailings on a
seized fifty three foot yacht. We picked up four hundred
kilos of cocaine. So I went from two ounces to
eight hundred and eighty pounds of cocaine. And you know what, Gary,
I was addicted to cocaine at that point, just in
a different way.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Just love seizing it, not using it. Well exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
I'm glad Miami Vice was a documentary then the TV
series was it. Now I'll put I'll put you on
the spot because even over here in Australia, I think
Miami Vice had any influence on the way certain people
were dressing cops and yeah, ah, this is going to
be the life Miami there. Did you go there thinking
(24:51):
it was going to be you know, you're going to
be that?
Speaker 4 (24:53):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Sunny Crockett?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Absolutely, I used to have hair.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I don't have a whole I left now, but I
have the hair down to, you know, past my shoulders.
I never could bring myself to get a pierced here,
so my wife got me these little magnetic ear rings.
You know, you could put an earring on meet and
try to pretend to be, you know, bad guy.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
I knew I looked like a cop when I was young,
and people would still deal with me, They would still
work with you in the cover.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, it's funny that because I know a lot of
undercover blokes and sometimes the fact that you it's all
like almost hiding in plain sight that Blake couldn't be
a copy. He looks like a cop. He's not going
to be working undercover if he looks like that. So
I can understand how that played out. But look, we're
making light of you speeding around in fleshy cars and speedboats.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
But that would have.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Been a pretty wild, dangerous place to be working in
the eighties in Miami.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
It absolutely was. It was.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
You'll understand when I say this, It was exciting. It
was nineteen eighty and aem we were doing a deal
for seventy kilos and a by bust operation. We had
an undercover and informant and they were going to be
the purchasers of the seventeen kilos. And we're in the
house and me, my partner, Kevin, and in the third agent.
(26:13):
We're the inside, arrest him and we've got backup teams
out dispersed throughout the neighborhood. And the two bad guys
show up and there's they're there to rip us off,
and so they you know, we hear the undercover agent
begging for his life out in the front room. We're
in the back bedroom. Long story short. I peecked down
the hallway, saw what was going on, stepped back in
(26:33):
the clause. They got the radio and told everybody you know,
get in here now, it's rip off. They've got Pete
on the floor. Pete was undercover agent. My partner Kevin
walked over to the door and as he's opening the
door to hear what's going on, the other bad guy
had his hand on the other side of that door.
So when they you know, they're the width of the
door apart. When they opened the door and Kevin Yille's
police and bad guys starts shooting, hits him twice, he
(26:54):
falls down if it comes back on me slams the
door shut, thank goodness, and bad guy came up shooting
through the door. And so then the third agent we
opened up on the door. Twenty three bullet holes in
that door on it was all over with. But as
they were making their escape, the informants stood up and
the second bad guy, as he was going out front door,
he turned around and fired three rounds back in the
(27:16):
in the house and hit the informant right in the
throat and he never made it to the hospital. So
it was you know, I know it sounds stupid to
say it like this, but it was just so exciting.
You know, it's scary but exciting.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, I understand that, Steve. You have like you you're
like a moth to the flame with the excitement when
you're when you're a cop, you're looking looking for the action.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah you're not.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You're not shoying away from it. And I understand the adrenaline.
It comes at a price, but you get conditioned to it.
But you're saying you would have seen a fair bit
in your time there. How did that affect you? Did
you change as a person like you you join as
you were going to be a carpets for the rest
of your life and you're yeah, you I'm tidying. Yeah,
(28:05):
call in Miami.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah. You know, going through high school and even college,
I was. I was not flamboyant. Uh, you know, probably
a little bit self conscious, not real shy, but a
little bit shy. You know, I'm not going to go
I'm not going to be the life of the party,
but I'll go have a good time at the party.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
And and when you're on.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
The street, especially in uniform, some of the situations you
go to, you know, people are looking for somebody to
take charge, and that's you. And you just when I
had a uniform on, I was, I was a different person.
I would I would control the situation. I tried to,
you know, it didn't always make the right decision, but
tried to and and uh followed orders. But people would
(28:48):
see you outside of uniform, and they would treat you
like if they recognized you. First of all, most time
they didn't recognize you if you were out of uniform.
These are people that you knew very well, and uh,
they would you know, whereas before I might tell them
this is what we're going to do now, I'd say, hey,
what do you guys want to do tonight? You know,
we're just trying to you know, trying to be the
(29:09):
same person. But I think it did change me. My
wife says that, you know, I should run from here
because I talk. I speak to everybody. I try to
speak to everybody. I try to say hello or kiss
my butt or whatever, you know, but I just try
to I try to be nice, to speak to everybody.
She thinks she gives me hard, she kiss me grounded,
you know.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah, well we're going to talk about talk about Connie because.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
She played, she shared, the shared.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
The adventures in the things, which is quite quite un well,
when I say unusual, it's not often recognized. The pressure
on the partners. Yeah, and the people waiting at home
and being worried about what's going on when you're out there.
But okay, so I get a sense. I'm getting a
sense of the type of person person.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
You are at this stage.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
You, yeah, fairly typical childhood, had a bit of a
devil in you. But yeah, we've pointed in the right
direction most times. You've decided this policing is all right,
and you get it's like I think you get addicted
to the adrenaline, the excitement, the pressure, the intensity. I
(30:20):
understand that that chaos is the thing that you're looking for.
You've done your time at Miami, You've been involved in
some major stuff there. What inspired you to apply to
a posting in Columbia.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well that's that's where Cannie comes out, because you know,
I can tell you she's a tough lady. We're coming
up on our forty first anniversary here in about a month.
She's given up her career over and over for me.
But we're down there in Miami. You know, she's excited
for me, for what we're doing. She's working in a hospital.
She's a registered nurse. She's working in a cardiac catheterization
(30:58):
unit where they you know, put those two up and
you're growing and it goes up into your heart. She
loves that kind of thing, the blood and guts, which
I think all has gross. But after we've been there
about three and a half years, she came to and
she said, you know, this has been a pretty exciting
life that. I mean. We're small town country people. We
end up in Fort We're living in Fort Lauderdale, working
in Miami and she said, what's the next most exciting
(31:20):
thing we can do. Well, I had already been working
some cases with our office in Baron Keya, Columbia, some
money cases, and I said, well, we could move to Colombia.
And you know, she kind of looked back at me
like I had three eyes, and.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
She's like, are you serious?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And I said, yeah, you know, I mean it's something
to think about. You got to understand if you tell
Connie what to do, it's not going to happen. I mean,
she's her own woman, you know, which is what I
love about her. But so she just kind of walked
away and thought about it for a couple of weeks,
and she came back. She said, are you really serious
about going to Columbia And I said sure. She said,
well we're going to do it, Let's do it while
(31:55):
we're young. So I applied. We got selected for Baron Keiya,
but I had to go to language school. So a
couple of weeks later they rescinded that transfer because they
needed a Spanish speaking agent immediately. So a guy in
headquarters later on he called me, I don't know that.
I don't even remember the guy's name, and I didn't
know him back then, but he said, you know, you
(32:16):
just got screwed, right, So yeah, I kind of figured
that out. He said, we're getting ready to post three
jobs in Bogotype.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Do you want one of those?
Speaker 3 (32:23):
And I said sure, And he said, okay, I'll do
everything I can to get you the job, and I
got it. So that's that's how it came about. I
want you to know right now, Gary that they never
hired me because I'm a real smart person.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I think let's not let's not tell people that too much, Steve,
because I think that's a secret of being a good cop.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
You don't have to be that smart.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
He's just well, we'll keep that one cat on the quiet.
I laughed the fact that, uh, and you know, putting
the book out there, and it's always confronting when you're
talking about your life. But I like the fact that
with Connie that hold that she owns a motor bike.
That's pretty cool. When you first got together and thought, okay,
(33:06):
she's a lady that likes adventure, and that certainly played
out so you read read read the script right.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Absolutely she was she wasn't a biker.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
She wasn't a biker check or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
She just she was at clarify that.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Okay, so you get to get to your posting in Columbia.
What what was that experience like when you come in too,
coming to a country like that, you.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Know, the only Columbias I've ever met were the ones
I'd put in jail, and you just, you know, it's
wrong to stereotype any people that I stereotypes that whole
country and thought everybody here is a drug traffer, but
found out, you know, I was completely off based on that.
But that first week I was in the embassy is
the week that Pablos surrendered, So you know, that's when
(33:52):
he surrendered to his customer built prison, and I was
just meeting people. When you first get to the embassy
like that, you've got to go through a lot of
security things and get your building pass, and I mean,
you're just trying to get your feet on the ground.
And it's a city of eight and a half million people,
and you know the town I went to high school
and had nine thousand, So it's you know, you're learning
your way around, and so they give you a couple
(34:12):
of weeks to kind of figure everything out. But I
was I was already had already met Javier and he
had a partner named Gary Sheeron at the time, and
Gary and I kind of hit it off right off
the bat. When Pablos surrender, We're all watching it on
TV and I'm thinking, this is fantastic, man. I mean,
the world's biggest cocaine manufacturing distributor just went to jail.
And I'm looking around and everybody's disappointed and they're pissed off,
(34:35):
and I'm like, what's wrong with you guys? And they said,
you know what you just got here. You don't even
know what you're talking about yet. You don't know what
we've been through here and what the Columbia National Police
have been through and what the Columbian citizens have been
through because of Pablo Escobar. You know, you need to
keep your mouth shut and learn and that you know
you do. They were exactly right. Yeah, So I ended
(34:55):
up partnering with Javier. Gary got promoted and transferred up
to baron Kia. So that's when Hobby and Are became
full time partners. And for that first year that's exactly
what I did. I went through case files, I went
with Hoabyard to meet the Columbia National Police. We were
supporting their wiretap rooms, all that kind of stuff, all
the investigative things that they were doing. But I learned,
and that was the best thing that could have happened,
(35:17):
because a year later we know what happened.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, when he got out of prison. Let's one that
back a bit talk about Escaba. What was his backstory
and how did he get to that point where he
gave himself up?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
You got it?
Speaker 3 (35:31):
So, Pablu his mom was a school Teacher's dad was
a dirt farmer. Basically, very poor household, not a lot
of income. As he grew up and as a teenager,
he started stealing hub caps off of cars and he
would go in and his buddy would go into the
graveyards and they'd steal headstones and send them down and
resell them. I mean, just you know, really upstanding kind
(35:53):
of guy.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It says something, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, And then he got involved with a guy named Ristreppo.
Strepper was a cocaine deli, a small time and he
needed I guess he needed some muscle or somebody to
participate in a deal. And Pablo agreed to do it
for money, and he saw how easy it was to
do it, so he went and killed Bristreppo and took
his place. So this is I'm going to guess that
(36:17):
Pablo was probably in his early twenties at this point.
And I really hate to give this guy credit for anything,
but he did have somewhat of a charismatic personality and
he could logically think things through on how to expand
his illegal activities, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
So and that's what he did.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
So they were, you know, they were smuggling marijuana in
and then he found out about this cocaine, this thing
called cocaine, and he liked it, not that he liked
to use it, but he liked the idea because it
was so much smaller than bought marijuana. So he got
involved in that and they bought some kilos. They got
(36:59):
they bought kilo has already done cocaine, had to chloride,
which is the finished product. Sold, it made some money,
and then he thought, well, you know what, why don't
we produce our own. So they went around and he
already had smuggling routes set up coming out of Bolivi
in Peru where they were bringing in just basically mainly
black market type items like televisions, electronics, just about anything
(37:20):
to get your hands on. So they learned how to
make cocaine, started setting up their own jungle labs, just
started making a buttload of money. And he realized that,
you know, people in Colombia, it's a third Wold country.
I mean, it's beautiful. I love Columbia. I hate the
same thing bad about it, but it's the truth, and
(37:41):
it's an extremely violent country. Their history shows that. But
he thought, I'm not going to sell this to Colombia's
I want to sell this to the Gringoes because they
you know, that's the rnchiest country in the world, and
you know they're idiots up there, and they'll spend money
on this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
And man, he was right.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
So his we did an analysis later on it roughly
it would cost him about one thousand dollars to produce
one kilo cocaine the finished product. Transportation fees are going
to cost you maybe three to four thousand dollars, so
roughly five thousand dollars per kilo to get it to
the United States. Well back in the eighties, those were
(38:18):
going for his high as sixty or eighty thousand dollars
for one kilo. Pig profits, so your returnal investment. Oh
my gosh, I mean, and you can see the and
now you see how the money just kind of took
over his mentality and it was all about him from
that point on.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Okay, and as he built the cartel, like in the
cacarios that he would have working for him there, but
my sense of it, people would grew up in poverty
and we're just He's beck and call to do any
of these, any of these killings, murders or whatever he
wanted to do. Is that how it operated? Was there
a structure to it? How did he rise to the
(38:56):
top he was.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
What brought him to the top is two things. One
his inability to have a conscience and not feel remorse.
You know that he was fine with murdering people. That's
what you had to do. The other was he brought
in his cousin, Gustavo Gaviria. Now Gustava, they're like their cousins,
but they're actually closer like brothers. They grew up together,
(39:18):
and Gustava was the brains behind the whole outfit. He
didn't have that mean streak that Pablo had, but he
also didn't shy away from it. So Pablo as people
would challenge him, he would kill him, and word got out.
You know, don't mess with Pablo, because they'll take you out.
He partnered up with Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Scotcha, who's known
(39:40):
as Elmeicano, the Mexican who was Gotcha was every bit
as evil as Pablo Escobarn and some people will say
even more violent. At the time he got involved with
the Emerald Minds, he would go kill the owners of
the mines and then take ownership.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
And you know, he had his.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Own thing going in court and to the cocaine production
and trafficking. And then Pablo realized that there's a lot
of different groups out there producing cocaine and it was competitive,
and he came up with this idea that hey, we're
all from Antiochia, which is the state where Medine is located,
and rather than you know, cutting each other's throats, why
(40:21):
don't we work together. We'll combine our loads. That way,
if we're sending five hundre kilos up, and let's say
Pablo's got a hundred, the Otrove brothers have one hundred,
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gotcha's got one hundred. A couple other people
have one hundred in there. If a load gets taken off,
we only lost one hundred kilos, you didn't lose five
hundred kilos. So you're kind of sharing. You're sharing the wealth,
(40:43):
but you're also sharing the pain. When the caizars do happen,
and everybody liked it. You know, Pablo was he knew
how to pay off government officials, whether they were police officers,
or they were senators or you know, did they pay
off the president. I don't know, but you know, certainly
was viable, the attorney general. There's a lot of suspect
(41:03):
things there. And eventually Pablo, in his own mind, became
so powerful that he thought everybody loved him. Well, the
only people loved him were the people that I mean, honestly,
it was the poor people.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
He grew up poor.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
He presented himself to be a man of the people
that he grew up like them, and he wanted to
help take care of them. He built clinics, he built
housing for people that lived on the edge of a
trash dump. He gave money away, he gave food away,
he built soccer fields and all those are good things.
But when he needed new sacarios because his old sagarios
are being killed. Where do you think he went to recruit?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
So that was because that was it was almost like
he's ego. He wanted to wanted to be the gangster
and the money, but he also wanted to be loved
by the people.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
He thought he was.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Representative of the people of Colombia, the pulled down, trodden
ones that are trying to make good.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
He wanted to be president of Columbia. There was going
to be a congressional election, and so the leading candidate
in meddiing Pablo had befriended, and I'm sure befriended him
with some American cash, and so Pablo ran as an
alternate under that congressman. Well, so the congressman got elected,
(42:21):
you know, Pablo's funding his campaign and everything. And the
day that he got elected, he resigned for health reasons,
which bumped Pablo up to his position. Now he's a
duly elected congressman. Convenient, and so when congress session is
in session, congressman in Columbia cannot be arrested. Well, he
goes to Congress. The story about him not wearing a tie.
(42:41):
I supposedly that's true. I don't know if it was
or not. But this is before my time. But the
man the was he the attorney general or the Justice minister,
Rodrigo Laura Buonia. Anyway, he knew who Pablo was. He
knew he was a drug trafficker. If you remember, the
(43:02):
Gorilla group M nineteen one time had attacked the Palace
of Justice in Bogata rated it.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
They were communists leaning yes.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, and so think when they killed a bunch of
the Columbia Supreme Court judges, there's some magistrates, there's people
that just disappeared, they were never found. But the evidence
room holding all the evidence against Pablo Escobar. Their goal
was to destroy that and they did pretty good job,
but not completely. So Rodrigo Lara Bania knew this. So
(43:34):
in open congress one day, he has that iconic photo
of Pablo as he's being arrested, holding his.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
ID number and smiling.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
So he has that blown up and he unveils that
in open congress and calls Pablo Escobar a drug trafficker,
which he's convicted criminal, which that nullifies him being a congressman.
So you know that that was extremely embarrassing for Pablo.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
And that ended these ambitions to be a politician. And
aspire to be the president.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
But the sad thing of that is about a week
or two later, Rodrigo Laura Bernia was assassinated.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Right, Okay, you don't have to guess where that order
came from. So he was in conflict with the government
at that point in time. You've got the sense that
I get is the government, the ones that weren't being
corrupted by him, were very much against him. And the
(44:36):
issue of extradition was that's played out in a lot
of well in the Nacos TV series and in some
of the books and documentaries. Was that very much the
issue that there was a lot of conflict about.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Absolutely. I mean, that's that's the leading issue right there.
He did not want Columbia nationals to be extradated to
the United States. And if you remember, he even created
a group called the Extra Datables, and they were to
create these flyers that they would drop out, you know,
they would fly over soccer games, have a plane fly
over and drop out these flyers and on these leaflets
(45:10):
that said the extraditibles, we prefer a tomb in Columbia
to a jail celle in the United States. So everybody
knew who it was that's Pablo. But when that happened
with Congress and they kicked him out, that's when he
really got violent. That's when he blew up the Avianca flight.
That's when he put a five hundred kilogram dynamite bomb
(45:32):
in front of the DOS headquarters, which was for us
would be like the combination of our intelligence agency and
the FBI blew them up, trying to kill the general
in charge to that. He killed the leading presidential candidate
at that time, a guy named Luis Carlos Kalan, who
had about a ninety percent approval rating. I mean, the
(45:53):
Columbians loved him and his platform is if elected, I'm
bringing back extradition. So Pablo had him assassinated. That's when
Oblo was so mad he declared war on his own country.
I mean openly declared war.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, it's the ruthlessness of it as well. Tell us
a little bit about the flight that was blown up,
because I got the sense that's when public opinions started
to sway against him, that you know, you've gone too far.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
He what was the backstory to that?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Well, there Oblo had information that Luis Carlos Golan, or
the guy who took his place after his murder, says Argaviria.
I think that's who it was, was going to be
on a flight from Bogata to Cali. And so what
Pablo did is he one of his favorite Sakarios is
a guy named Dan Denny Munos Mosquera. Everybody calls him Lakika,
(46:44):
that was the street name. Lakika is actually here in
the United States doing life in prison for this bombing.
Solakika goes out and recruits a new member of the
Cikarios who's he's really an unwitting He doesn't know what's
really going on, and so Lakey could tell him. He says, listen,
here's a briefcase Pabla's. We're getting you a first class
(47:04):
ticket on this plane up to Kylie. The guy that
you're going to be sitting next to is an enemy
of Pablo. And once you get in the air, Pablo
wants you to just engage him in conversation and just
you know, try to bait him a little bit and
see what his opinion is on different things. And he said,
but once you're up in the air, pull this little
pin out of the outside of the briefcase, little hidden pen,
(47:26):
and that will activate the recording device inside. Guy says okay,
So he goes and gets on the plane, sits down,
the plane gets the altitude, he pulls the pin out
to start the recording, and that detonated the bomb. So
one hundred and seven people died on that flight, plus
three people on the ground that were killed, So one
hundred and ten people died because Pablo wanted to kill
(47:47):
Sayes of Gaviria, the next presidential candidate that he thought
would win. And at the last minute something came up
and Gavia didn't even get on the flight. Now, there
were supposed to be two deea on that flight and
you know, whatever reason, and the embassy, the boss came
out says, nineted you guys or something else. We had
no information that there was going to be a bomb
(48:09):
on that flate. Just by the grace of guard, those
guys didn't get on the plane. But who was on
the plane was two American citizens. So that's what gave
me then States jurisdiction to go after Lakika and Pablo
for that.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Baring okay, and that's well, it's say when he crossed
the line, He's crossed the line a lot.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
But I think people.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Will look at that, how ruthless. It just says so
much about the person so on that there was this
very big effort to bring him to justice, but it
wasn't working. But they negotiated him. And what we started
talking about was when he gave up, gave himself up,
handing himself in.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Can you tell us.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
About that, because it's bizarre you look at it from
our situation in the United States or Australia. How did
this play out? Just explain it because I find it
fascin it is.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
It's the worst plead deal you will ever hear in
your life. I mean, it was embarrassing to the Columbian government.
But so the attorney general in Columbia, like here in
the United States, are presidents elected and then he appoints
the Attorney General to the United States. In Columbia, the
president's elected, but the Attorney general is elected separately, so
(49:21):
they're autonomous from each other. So the Attorney General at
that time was a guy named Gustavo de Grief, who
was a very very smart man educated in the United States,
I think at one of the Ivy League colleges. He
came up with this idea of what he called a
self surrender plan. And the way this worked is you
come in and you plead guilty to a felony that
(49:41):
you choose. You just pick whatever failing you want to
plead guilty to, and in exchange, will absolve you of
every other crime you've ever committed in your life. And
this was geared towards Pablo, so Pablo heard about it,
you know, and they got the word out, and so
he sent a couple of his guys, in lower ranking
guys and said, you know, go into pleak Gills. We'll
see what happens. And it worked, you know, the government
(50:03):
lived up to what they said. So finally Pablo said, well,
you know what, I can take advantage of this. So
he said, he calls up to the Attorney General, mister Grief,
and he says, uh, listen, I want to take advantage
of yourself surrender program. I want to come in and
plead guilty. And of course the Attorney General say, oh,
thank you, mister mescabor. I think this means so much
for our country. This is going to be a new
chapter in our history. And blah blah blah, and Papa says,
(50:26):
we wait a minute. I got some conditions that go
along with this. Oh what are they? Well, the first
one is, you know what, I'm going to build my
own prison because I needed to be a place that's secure,
that will protect me because I've got a lot of
enemies out there. And by the way, I'm going to
pay it for it, because I don't want the Columbian
citizens to have to bury that tax burd And Thettorney
General says, okay, to hell and he says, well, okay.
(50:47):
Next is the guards of the prison. I'm going to
pay their salaries, because again I don't want to tie
the citizens of Columbia to have to pay that bird
that that bill. Turn General says, okay, where do you
think they're is. Then he says, all right, my fellow prisoners,
there's only going to be fourteen of us, me and
thirteen others. And I'm gonna handpick my fellow prisoners because
(51:10):
I need them to be people who were loyal to me,
just in case somebody tries to come in and get me.
And the Attorney General said okay. He said, well I'm
not done yet. He said, uh, listen to all those
good guys, the Columbia Police, Columbia military, especially those gringoes.
None of those good guys can come within two miles
of the perimeter of my prison because I don't want
them sneaking any of you trying to kidnap me. And
(51:33):
the attorney general says okay, and he says, okay, listen,
I'm only gonna do five years. That's that's the max.
Attorney general said okay. And on top of that, there
were no stipulations to take any.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
Of his assets.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
This guy at that time was rated as the sixth
seventh richest person in the world. I think it was,
with an estimated wealth between eight and thirty billion dollars.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
Unbelievable, So oh he So Pablo goes anyway, they agreed everything.
So Pablo goes in and they said, well, what are
you gonna plead guilty too? And he says, well, you know,
there's this one time where some guys were moving a
load of cocaine. I didn't know about it, but apparently
it was in the car. So shame on me. I
was in the car. I'll plead guilty to that. And
they said, okay.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
That absolved him of every other crime he committed, including
murder mass murder. That's why we say it was the
worst plea bargain and in the history of the world.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Well you'll sign that it's unbelievable. Sign it was the
greatest deal. Yeah, but uh and oh yeah, and the
prison described the prison soccer field at luxury. It was.
Speaker 4 (52:44):
It was a joke.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
It was it was he he had plans this was
going to be a resort when he finished his time
in prison, because he thought, well, you know what, there's
idiots all around the world that will pay good money
to come and sleep into bed that Pablo Escobar slept in,
or a cabana or a chilet that I've build outside
the prison. So when when he escaped the next day,
(53:05):
Hobby and I flew to Mediina. For the next eighteen
months we lived in Mediene with Columbia National Police and
with the first place we went was the prison. You know,
we flew into the base and then they flew us
over to the prison. We went to Pablo's area of
the prison.
Speaker 4 (53:20):
He's got a two room suite.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
He's got everything is very nice. He's got a full
sized microwave oven, he's got a side by side refrigerator, freezer.
He's got custom built cabinets and a big banana bar
with marstools. He's got color coordinated upholstery and draperies. He's
got arn't work, legitimate, arn't work hanging on the wall.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
He had.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
There's a famous artist in Columbia just died here not
so long ago, Fernando Botero. He had a Botero original
that he reportedly paid one point five million dollars for.
He had a salad or Dolly original worth over three
million dollars hanging in his room. He had nice French
couches and love seats and individual chairs and coffee tables,
(54:04):
and then you go into the second room and that
was his bedroom and office area. His bed was larger
than any king sized bed. I mean it was massive.
It was massive bed. He had a fireplace in his office.
Some of the pictures that were hanging up in there
were not pictures of his family, but he had all
of his mug shots matted and framed, hanging on the wall.
(54:26):
He didn't have a picture of himself and his son
standing in front of our white house sixteen hundred Pennsylvania
Avenue in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
Really he had pictures. He had pictures of.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Himself and Gustavo dressed up like American style gangsters. He
had a picture of himself dressed up like manchu Villa,
the Mexican bandit. He had a wanted poster framed hanging
in his in his two rooms suite with his picture
at the top and all his criminal buddies decorated on
the picture.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
I said, you can't make this stuff up, but you
would just you sound like you're jealous of what he had.
It was in his in his prison.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
He had he had a zie tub in his bath
he had a private bathroom with a chub.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
You want to be comfortable. He's going to be spending
a lot of time there. I think you've been too
harsh on him. Look, we're making we're making light of
the situation, but you've got to you've got to see
the humor in the in the horror, because it was
horror that he was creating. And I think that it
was quite often people look at the two ex cops
(55:32):
talking and sort of laughing about that. But you've got
to take some of the lightness out of all all
the heavy things that were going on, because it was
quite horrendous what the people he was killing and the
damage he was doing. Before we finish Part Part one.
I just want to talk about your open here for
whatever you want to say about your partner, have you, Penna,
(55:57):
the good and the bad, Because I look back, I
look back at my career and investigations is defined by
who are you working with and different things tell us
about you two. It seems like a little bit like
the odd couple, but sometimes the odd couple work out.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
Well, we're actually opposites of each other. I'm I've been
married pretty much my whole life. He's he's married now,
but he certainly wasn't married back then. I'm very organized,
he's very unorganized. But the man has a brain like
an encyclopedia. I mean, it was just fascinating, you know,
when we're reporting our activities to Washington doing teletypes, cables
(56:33):
whatever you call them nowadays, I'm typing out the details
and they and of course Washing wants to know what
the relationship is amongst everybody and this and whatever event happened.
And I'd say, hab, okay, how's this person related to Pablo?
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (56:46):
Well, his wife is a cousin to Pablo's wife. And
he would just lay the whole thing out and Washington
loved it because we had all this detail in there.
Speaker 4 (56:56):
He we would have parties.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
And on weekends at you know, one of our apartments,
and they were really good parties. I'll tell you it
was a lot of them would go to daylight the
next day. Javier would show up with a girlfriend, a
different girlfriend at every party. He didn't stay very long
because he was going out on a date. But I
mean his like he dated miss the former Miss Columbia.
These were beautiful young ladies that he was dating. The
(57:22):
show shows that Pablo was or I mean the Havier
was dating hookers and informants and communists. He didn't date
anybody like that. But let me tell you, Garry, every
other woman in Columbia was fair game. So I lovingly
refer to Hvier as a man slut fair call.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
I think he's, uh, yeah, he's got to carry that,
carry that reputation. Sounds like you had a great relationship
and the fact that you were like different types. That's
sometimes the perfect jee, isn't it. That gets you through
those gets you through the precious situations. Really, when we
get back, we're going to talk about where it really
ramps up, when Pablo escapes and the hunt for him
(58:04):
that finally led to a shootout, and you were actually
all the photos that the people would see of when
Pablo did meet his end. You were the person that
took the photos at the location. And what a ride
you guys went on for It was it eighteen months
from the time he escaped from prison to the time
(58:25):
that he was finally caught.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
It was he escaped in June ninety two and he
was killed in December ninety three.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, Well, when we get back for part two, we're
going to talk about that, and that's I think some
of the most intense bit of policing I've heard about
the pressure you guys would have been under and everyone
else and the sacrifices people made. So it will take
a break and we'll be back back for part two shortly.
Speaker 2 (58:49):
Amazing, amazing story.
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life the average persons never exposed her.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The
(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. I
(00:46):
absolutely love hosting this podcast and speaking to some amazing guests.
And today I've got to speak to a former cop
who I've greatly admired ever since I heard about this
story on the hugely successful Netflix series Nakos. Steve Murphy
is my guest. Him and his dea partner Harvey Penna,
were part of a team who hunted down arguably the
(01:07):
world's most wanted criminal, Pablo Escobar. He was a murdering
drug lord who made billions of dollars out of the
cocaine trade. Today, Steve spoke about the investigation and the
impact it had on him, including living in the country
with a bounty on his head. This is a crime
story on steroids, and today we talk to the man
(01:27):
who was in the thick of it, the man who
brought down Pableau Escobar.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Have a listen. Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Thank you very much, Scary. I'm truly honored to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I've got to give a shout out to a common friend,
lou Velosi, who put me in contact with you.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And he's an interesting character, isn't he the undercover cop?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
You know you hit it now on the head. He
is a real character. I love that guy though. He's
one of my best best friends.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I enjoyed the chat I had with him, that's for sure. Hey,
I've been a big fan of your work, and you know,
from a law enforcement perspective, I've seen what you've done
and the sacrifices you made, especially on the investigation tracking
down Pablo Escobar. I know you'd probably like most cops
(02:17):
and saying well, hey, I'm just doing the job. But
my take on it and prepping for this and doing
some research, reading your book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and
also some of the interviews you've done that you weren't
just doing your job. You went above and beyond that.
You were really really got in there and had a game.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, thank you for saying that. It's you know, the
truth of it. It was exciting. We were younger, it
was exciting. It was the biggest thing, you know, the
DEA was doing at that time.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
And you know how it is.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Every other agent, a real police officer, would have gladly
taken your place immediately if they had the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
One percent.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I can sit here and say I'm a bit jealous
for a job like that. You start your career and
you're not going to think it's going to get to
what you were doing there, But we're gonna we're going
to talk about that in great detail. But I got
the sense it was it was personal. And yeah, I've
been a homicide cop for a long time and people
say you can't, can't let it get personal. I saw
(03:18):
of say bullshit on that. I make the job personal
because it drives me. I got the sense what you
and Harber were doing on that case. It did become
personal to you? Is that the right assessment?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
It is?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I don't know how you cannot make it personal, you
know that. I mean, you see the death and destruction
that one man is responsible for, and it's offer his
own power, his greed, his ego. You know, it just
it's unbelievable. And you go to some of these barming
sites where children, where babies have been killed just simply
because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
How can that not be personally?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, well, yeah, he's he's certainly looked at now, but
at the time it was starting to get a sense
of it. He was considered one of the world's mass
ruthless criminals.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
He was, he was, he was.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I don't know if you ever saw the show here
in the United States, America's Most Wanted yep, yep. So
they came, they flew down to Columbia and we took
a film crew to Mediine and they did one episode
only of the World's Most Wanted. That was Pablo Escobar. Yeah,
we're I mean, we're talking about the world's very first
Narco terrorist.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, described saying Naco terrorists Bright break that damn for us.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So, you know, and I used to have the same
question because I'd never heard that term. Uh, and we
kind of coined it, believe it or not, but it's
kind of caught on. So a narco terrorist is just
basically a narco narcotics trafficker who employs terroristic activities in
his daily routine. And so what we saw with Pablo
Escobar is when he didn't get his way, he declared
(04:54):
war on his own country. He was indiscriminately setting off
car bombs, not only against the government but also against
the Cali cartel. The murders were just completely out of control.
We used to say that Pablo, in our estimation, Pablo
was responsible for maybe ten, fifteen, twenty thousand murders. There
(05:15):
was a documentary a few years ago that we were
on that they also interviewed one of his remainings. Tocario's
a guy named went by the nickname of Popeye. His
real name is John Hiro of Alaskaz Vasquez. He was
he's dead now, he died of cancer, thank goodness. But
what sounded wrong, didn't it? But I mean that guy's evil.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
No, yeah, I understand where he's coming from there and He.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Says on that documentary that Pablo, he said the Green
Goes have it all wrong. Pablo is responsible for more
than fifty thousand murders. And then Popeye in that same documentary,
and you can see this, I think it's I think
it's on the Discovery Channel. He says that he orchestrated
as many as three thousand murders himself, and the Heat
(06:00):
committed over three hundred murders himself, and he's laughing about
his smiling about it. I mean, these guys are just
like demons walking. They're pure evil walking on the face
of our earth.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, the sense of I got, and I think I've
actually seen him interviewed, whether it's the documentary you're referring to,
but there just seems to be no remorse, and it's
just they get conditioned to it, and it's just their
way of life. To murder someone life meant nothing.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
That's exactly right. And in Pope's case, he even murdered
his girlfriend because Pablo told him to. Pabla was worried
that she was talking to people, and he went and
murdered his own girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I got the sense of that as well, that if
there was any risk. Well, we're not just going to
take a risk, would just get the person killed without
a second thought.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Without a second thought, that's exactly right. No conscience, no
guilt feelings, no remorse, nothing, just business.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Well, Steve, you didn't start off as a fresh blue eye,
so I'm ready to go take on the wheel the
as a law enforcement officer, thinking you're going to be
chasing the world's dangerous man. How did you find your
way into policing and law enforcement?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
You know, Gary, it's and this if you read the book,
you read this story. When I was about ten years old,
I had my first running with the police as a
kid in Tennessee, the state of Tennessee. And we're camping
out in the backyard and you know, some middle it's
probably one o'clock in the morning, and we're riding our
bicycles through the neighborhood and you know, our parents would
kill us if they knew what we were doing. There
were some snack machines at all night laundry mat but
(07:33):
none of us had any money. So we decided we'd
break in a house because you know, that just really
made sense.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It makes sense as a ten year old.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yep, So we go to this house and we're trying
to figure out how we're going to break in when
we're at this bedroom window and apparently we were making
a lot of noise because the cops showed up and
hit us with the spotlight. You know, we were like
a deer in the headlights, just frozen. I mean, we
were so scared. We didn't even run. And the two
police offs just came over and talked to us, and
(08:02):
you know, we told I mean, we were honest, We
told him what we were doing. They said, boys, you
got a decision to make. You either go to jail
with for you know, go with us and go to
prison for the rest of your life, or we take
you home to your parents. And we kind of looked
at each other, like take us to jail, because I
don't want to go home and face my dad. But
that event just stuck in my mind and it really
(08:23):
impressed me. And even at ten years old, you just
think it's cool, right, I mean, you're not really processing
in your mind as an adult, but it stuck with
me and I just I liked the uniforms, and you know,
back then, police officers had discretion to make decisions on
the street. Realizing you know, this is just a bunch
of kids about to get in trouble, and they could,
(08:44):
rather than putting us in jail and you know, send
us a juvenile hall, they could release us to our parents,
and the punishment I'm sure was.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
A lot worse.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
But as I got older, that's all I wanted to
do is be a cop. My dad was a retired
minister and when he retired him my uncle, my favorite uncle,
Uncle Joe. They started a flooring business, a carpet business,
and I was the only son of both families, so
it was always anticipated I would take over the business.
I started working in carpet at fourteen years old. I
(09:12):
hated it then, I hate it now, not what I
wanted to do. My dad sent me to college to
get a business degree, and my first semester I came
out on academic probation because I hated it. So he
maybe come home and I went to local college. They
had just started their criminal justice program, so I got
my four year degree there and became I took my
(09:35):
first police test. I was eighteen years old, and my
professor's the one that told me I should do it,
and I said, you know, they're not going to hire
me at eighteen. He's like, but you get experienced taking
the tests of them. When you're old enough, they will
hire you. You know, you'll know what to expect. Well, it
turns out I scored the high score on that test.
I mean the next closest guy behind me was ten
points down. And not that I'm an overly smart guy.
(09:58):
I was just you know, I was used to studying.
I could take a test, and it ended up at
the city that I went to work for in southern
West Virginia hired me one month after I turned eighteen
years old. I couldn't buy alcohol, I couldn't buy cigarettes,
I couldn't buy a gun. I couldn't break by bullets.
But I could carry a gun and I could use it.
If I determined that was trying to save a life.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
That very right, dirty is And I do recall in
your books saying that you still have a reaction if
you go past the flooring store or that from what
your life could have been. Not that there's anything wrong
with that life, but you discovered discovered policing and the
world that that had to offer your first in You've
(10:43):
been across to Australia a few times, and our set
up with law enforcement. We have federal police and then
we have state police. But with your first police force
or the section that you worked in, what was there
thirty cops or thirty right? Sorry, I thought it was small,
thirty five. That's a big beginning. Tell us about that.
(11:06):
And you even had to buy your own gun, because
it's hard for us to comprehend over here in Australia
that that's the way that law enforcement is done over
in the US.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, and I'm not sure sure that it is nowadays,
but this was back in nineteen seventy five. They provided
your uniform, and they would buy your shoes and things
like that, but you had to provide your own weapon,
and you're on your gun belt and your you know,
for your handcuffs and all that stuff. And so one
of the police officers that i'd befriended when I was
(11:37):
I'd actually done a college internship with the city police department,
so they all knew me already, and one of the officers,
I gave him the money. He bought me my first gun,
and my dad bought my bullets for me.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It's hard, it's just it's so funny. Now it's hard
to comprehend. Okay, well you got your gun, you got
your bullets. How did you find those is because you
moved around a bit. How long did you stay and
was it blue Bluefield?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Uh place in West Virginia?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
How long were you there for?
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yes, sir, six years.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Six years and working uniform, not making very much money.
I you know, worked as much overtime as I could.
I was working off duty jobs. The college I went to,
I actually had a little business and security business, and
so I got the sports contract for the college for
basketball games and baseball and football. I don't know if
(12:29):
you know what Amway is, but even sold Amway.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
To know what Amway. And I'm not buying off you. Yeah,
I don't care what you say, Steve. I respect you,
but no, we're not going down that path.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I've got.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
No sorry, I'm traumatized. I had a mate that said,
I want to catch up, Well what about And it
was doing an Amway pitch years ago, so yeah, I
do know about it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Oh yeah, And there was even a one of the
local firemen was an electrician when he was off duty,
so I worked for him as an electricians helper. So
I mean, you did just do with you had to
do to pay the bills.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
You know, now, I understand. Then you moved to another area.
What was that the north Transit transit policing all of
the railways.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well, there was not Transit police but Norfolk and West
Back then it was Northfolk and Western Railroad. It's now
the Norfolk Southern Railroad.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Became a detective with them, moved down to Norfolk, Virginia.
It was quite honestly, it was like a glorified security
guard the job they had me doing, and I hated it.
He was boring. I mean, it's just terrible. And transferred
back to West Virginia. After two years as a railroad cop.
(13:41):
Gotten involved in a couple of shootings there, mostly backing
up other law enforcement agencies. And the chief I had
at the time had never been a real cop. He'd
always been a railroad cop. And I'm not taking anything
away from railroad cops. I know some really fantastic investigators,
but he really got upset when I helped the city
where this is the city department I used to work for,
(14:03):
so I know all the cops there. A rookie You've
got in a shooting one night, so I went and
backed him up. And uh a man was laying shot
on the sidewalk and I had to go grab him
and drag him in a recessed doorway and we had,
you know, had a stand off there for a couple hours,
and the guy finally surrendered. The shooter did, but my
boss came in. I called my boss the next morning
and told him what happened, and uh so he came in,
(14:25):
and man, he was mad at me. He was He
said that had nothing to do with railroad business, you know,
And I mean he's chewing me out. So I told him,
I said, chief, I'm the only railroad cop on duty
for twenty six counties, which is an extremely large geographical area.
Where do you think I go when I need help?
So you know, when these guys need help, I'm going
(14:46):
to be there for him if I can get to him.
So he threatened to get me fired, and and uh,
you know, just motivated me to go find something else
to do, because that's I don't I'm not going to
work for somebody like that.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I think it's a pathway working.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And when I say working like genuine cops that they're
going to clash with bosses like that, that really you
wonder what they're in the job for when they don't
understand what the role of a copy is. So I
recall that in your book, and I thought, yeah, I
can just picture the type of ship you would have
got into and just shake your head, and yeah, it's
(15:23):
frustrating you this.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
I'll give you another example. This guy.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
We had somebody broke into one of the railroad buildings
at a remote site and they'd thrown a rock through
the window. So I went and investigated, and you know,
couldn't find my fingerprints and they didn't get very much.
And so I came back and told him what I
was preparing my reports. So where's the rock? So's it's
in parking lot over there. I threw it back on
you're going to in the draveway, Well, did your fingerprint it?
(15:49):
Say it's the rock. It's porous, it won't absorb the
oils on your fingers that you can fingerprint and lift
the That's how unexperienced.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I read, Steve.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
I always think there's a stream for them if they
want to go through in the management level. But I
always clashed with ones that yeah, it was obviously career
was management. I was an operational police officer. I respect
the work you do as a manager. Please respect the
work I do as an operational police officer. But it's worldwide,
isn't I can talk to a cop from anywhere and
(16:21):
everyone's got the same type of story that the same experience.
So okay, from absolutely from those experiences, you're thinking, DA,
you wanted to go to the DA. What's the process
to get into the DA?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well it Honestly, I had never heard of DEA. I
didn't know what it was. And one of my fellow
railroad police officers had been a Virginia State trooper that
worked with DEA on a task force, and so he
would tell me stories. And I was always interested in
archatic's cases as a uniform carp so I got to
looking at it. I had to finish up my college degree.
(16:56):
I still had a few classes to take, so I
did that apply in nineteen eighty five. Took two years
before I finally got hired. And you know, through the
background investigation and the interviews that you go through and
all the things that you have to go through. So
finally got hired and had just moved back to Norfolk, Virginia.
(17:17):
Was like my first week there was living in a
motel room because I didn't have an apartment yet. And
they called and they said they called me on a
like a Wednesday, and they said, hey, we've got an
opening a class starting Monday.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Can you be here?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
And I said absolutely, So I went from there, I
went to the main office. My boss there in Norfolk
was a guy that used to be a police officer
with me, so I know him very well. And they
all knew I was applying to DEA. So he, you know,
I said, listen, I've got two weeks leave coming. I'm
going to turn my notice in today. And he's like,
I understand completely, Murph, we hate to lose you, but
(17:51):
you know, do what you got to do. So that
night I packed up. The next day, Thursday, I drove home.
My wife was still living in West Virginia at the time.
You hadn't even moved down yet, and uh got everything ready,
and Sunday I drove to the da Academy in Quantica,
Virginia and started my adventure there.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Okay, how just to explain to people. I understand what
DEI is, but explain to people what the role of
the DEA is.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
What said, Chada, you know this is interesting if you know,
I'm not sure you probably know a lot about our
government here because it's crazy things going on.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Right, Yeah, a little bit in the news every recent times.
It's like watching reality TV. But anyway, oh my.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Gosh, this is going to be the strangest four years
I think any of us living. It's in de A
most law enforce or I'm sorry, in federal law enforcement
here in the United States. We have several different agencies
and the only single mission agencies are the Internal Revenue Service,
which are the tax collectors, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
(18:58):
Our single mission is to enforce the US Code Control
Substances Act, and how that also carries over into money laundering.
But you know, you've got to have an attorney to
prosecute those cases, and they kind of go hand in hand,
and you know, and you work in a task force environment,
so you sometimes you have an IRS agent working with you.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
But that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
We we we don't go after the users. We're not
after street level dealers. We're after the largest dealers in
the world that are having a negative impact on our country.
So if you look at DEA's footprint, we only have
if we have a full complement of agents. That's only
forty six hundred agents. I think right now DEA is
(19:40):
down about a thousand agents.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
But in the foreign.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Arena, the DEA has the largest footprint outside of the
United States of any federal law enforcement agency here in
the United States, including the FBI. I think there's it's
something like ninety one offices in seventy eight countries or
something like that. But what that does is, like, you know,
we've got right there in Australia, we now have an
office down in New Zealand. Of course, we had one
(20:03):
in Bogata and the baron Keia down you know when
I went down there back in the late eighties early nineties.
I'm sorry, but it's you know, we come to Australia,
we have no jurisdiction, so we it's it's an agreement
between countries to work together and we open up access
(20:24):
to information. We have working hand in hand with say
the Australian Federal Police or you know, whatever police agency
it is. I remember you used to have the Australian
Crime Commission, the acc over there. We had we'd partnered
with them for a while and you share intelligence and
then as the information say, information is coming out of
Australia that will pack impact other countries where we have
(20:46):
a presence, or more specifically the United States. Then we
send that intelligence to our investigators and what we're trying
to do is make prosecutable cases. And so if if
an Aussie is is a drug dealer sending cocaine, for example,
to the United States, well we want to we want
to build a case on him so we can get
extra dive to the United States and put his button jail.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
That's there. In a nutshell, that's what de EA is.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
How did you find the fund the training that I
would imagine giving the fact that you had a background
in law enforcement, it wasn't a complete shock. You weren't
coming in as a rural rookie.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Had it. How did you find the training.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
For the day it was I'm not going to say
it was easy. You know, the PT was every day
if and if if every day you're either on the
range on the firing range shooting or then on the
opposite day as you're you're doing two to three hours
of PT training and that that's you know, they're always
gonna throw at least a five mile run on you
(21:46):
just to screw with you. To be honest with you,
but it gets into shape and it was very regimented,
so very paramilitary. I'll give you an example. Before I
joined DA, especially with the Railroad, I shot competition, so
I was a pretty good shot with a pistol, and
I was a very good shot. I was on the
(22:07):
Railroad pistol team and we traveled all over the United
States and competition. So your first time on the range
with DEA, they treat everybody as if you've never seen
a gun. You know, they'll hold a gun up to
say the bullet comes out here, don't ever point that
at yourself. Yeah, I mean, just really basic, you know.
So we get on the five yard line with paper
targets in front of you, and they said, and we
had revolvers back then, not the semi automatics, and they said, okay,
(22:30):
fire six rounds, slow fire that no need to rush
and try to hit that piece of paper in front
of it five yards.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Pretty well, it's five yards I had.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Said that way.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
It was bigger than it was, bigger than a bullet hold.
But they're still they all touched. And so the instructor
comes over and he says, you see that right there,
And I said, yes, sir, and he said, if I
was scoring this year, get credit for one round. And
I started laughing. He said, what's funny? You got to
be kidnewed, you know, explained to him, I've been shooting competition,
you know, and he said, well, I'm telling you. You said,
(23:06):
if I can't count the hole, you don't get credit.
So as we progressed, then you know, they'd say, okay,
this time, we want you to fire six rounds, reload,
fire six more rounds. So I put a few rounds here,
a few rounds here, a few rounds here, a few
rounds here, and then some rounds right in the middle.
And then he comes back and he's like, oh, you're
real smart ass, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I'm just doing what you told me, come on see.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
And he didn't like that I was. He didn't like
it that I was challenging.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Dining upset the weapons instructor. You will probably have the
knock out push ups after that, for.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
You've been a smart eye.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Ye that yeah, but that that would have served you will. Okay,
you get pro, you get pro, you your training? Way
do you get posted?
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Well?
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The first post I went to was Miami in nineteen
eighty seven, So that still the wild West down there,
that would have been a quiet place.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Miami eighty seven.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Oh it was a blast, I'll tell you what it was.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
So when I joined EA, the most part of cocaine
I've ever seen it one time was two ounces.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Bagging about like this.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
The first case I got to go on undercover, we
went down to the Turks and Coco sailings on a
seized fifty three foot yacht. We picked up four hundred
kilos of cocaine. So I went from two ounces to
eight hundred and eighty pounds of cocaine. And you know what, Gary,
I was addicted to cocaine at that point, just in
a different way.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Just love seizing it, not using it. Well exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
I'm glad Miami Vice was a documentary then the TV
series was it. Now I'll put I'll put you on
the spot because even over here in Australia, I think
Miami Vice had any influence on the way certain people
were dressing cops and yeah, ah, this is going to
be the life Miami there. Did you go there thinking
(24:51):
it was going to be you know, you're going to
be that?
Speaker 4 (24:53):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Sunny Crockett?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Absolutely, I used to have hair.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I don't have a whole I left now, but I
have the hair down to, you know, past my shoulders.
I never could bring myself to get a pierced here,
so my wife got me these little magnetic ear rings.
You know, you could put an earring on meet and
try to pretend to be, you know, bad guy.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
I knew I looked like a cop when I was young,
and people would still deal with me, They would still
work with you in the cover.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, it's funny that because I know a lot of
undercover blokes and sometimes the fact that you it's all
like almost hiding in plain sight that Blake couldn't be
a copy. He looks like a cop. He's not going
to be working undercover if he looks like that. So
I can understand how that played out. But look, we're
making light of you speeding around in fleshy cars and speedboats.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
But that would have.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Been a pretty wild, dangerous place to be working in
the eighties in Miami.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
It absolutely was. It was.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
You'll understand when I say this, It was exciting. It
was nineteen eighty and aem we were doing a deal
for seventy kilos and a by bust operation. We had
an undercover and informant and they were going to be
the purchasers of the seventeen kilos. And we're in the
house and me, my partner, Kevin, and in the third agent.
(26:13):
We're the inside, arrest him and we've got backup teams
out dispersed throughout the neighborhood. And the two bad guys
show up and there's they're there to rip us off,
and so they you know, we hear the undercover agent
begging for his life out in the front room. We're
in the back bedroom. Long story short. I peecked down
the hallway, saw what was going on, stepped back in
(26:33):
the clause. They got the radio and told everybody you know,
get in here now, it's rip off. They've got Pete
on the floor. Pete was undercover agent. My partner Kevin
walked over to the door and as he's opening the
door to hear what's going on, the other bad guy
had his hand on the other side of that door.
So when they you know, they're the width of the
door apart. When they opened the door and Kevin Yille's
police and bad guys starts shooting, hits him twice, he
(26:54):
falls down if it comes back on me slams the
door shut, thank goodness, and bad guy came up shooting
through the door. And so then the third agent we
opened up on the door. Twenty three bullet holes in
that door on it was all over with. But as
they were making their escape, the informants stood up and
the second bad guy, as he was going out front door,
he turned around and fired three rounds back in the
(27:16):
in the house and hit the informant right in the
throat and he never made it to the hospital. So
it was you know, I know it sounds stupid to
say it like this, but it was just so exciting.
You know, it's scary but exciting.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, I understand that, Steve. You have like you you're
like a moth to the flame with the excitement when
you're when you're a cop, you're looking looking for the action.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah you're not.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You're not shoying away from it. And I understand the adrenaline.
It comes at a price, but you get conditioned to it.
But you're saying you would have seen a fair bit
in your time there. How did that affect you? Did
you change as a person like you you join as
you were going to be a carpets for the rest
of your life and you're yeah, you I'm tidying. Yeah,
(28:05):
call in Miami.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah. You know, going through high school and even college,
I was. I was not flamboyant. Uh, you know, probably
a little bit self conscious, not real shy, but a
little bit shy. You know, I'm not going to go
I'm not going to be the life of the party,
but I'll go have a good time at the party.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
And and when you're on.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
The street, especially in uniform, some of the situations you
go to, you know, people are looking for somebody to
take charge, and that's you. And you just when I
had a uniform on, I was, I was a different person.
I would I would control the situation. I tried to,
you know, it didn't always make the right decision, but
tried to and and uh followed orders. But people would
(28:48):
see you outside of uniform, and they would treat you
like if they recognized you. First of all, most time
they didn't recognize you if you were out of uniform.
These are people that you knew very well, and uh,
they would you know, whereas before I might tell them
this is what we're going to do now, I'd say, hey,
what do you guys want to do tonight? You know,
we're just trying to you know, trying to be the
(29:09):
same person. But I think it did change me. My
wife says that, you know, I should run from here
because I talk. I speak to everybody. I try to
speak to everybody. I try to say hello or kiss
my butt or whatever, you know, but I just try
to I try to be nice, to speak to everybody.
She thinks she gives me hard, she kiss me grounded,
you know.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah, well we're going to talk about talk about Connie because.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
She played, she shared, the shared.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
The adventures in the things, which is quite quite un well,
when I say unusual, it's not often recognized. The pressure
on the partners. Yeah, and the people waiting at home
and being worried about what's going on when you're out there.
But okay, so I get a sense. I'm getting a
sense of the type of person person.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
You are at this stage.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
You, yeah, fairly typical childhood, had a bit of a
devil in you. But yeah, we've pointed in the right
direction most times. You've decided this policing is all right,
and you get it's like I think you get addicted
to the adrenaline, the excitement, the pressure, the intensity. I
(30:20):
understand that that chaos is the thing that you're looking for.
You've done your time at Miami, You've been involved in
some major stuff there. What inspired you to apply to
a posting in Columbia.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well that's that's where Cannie comes out, because you know,
I can tell you she's a tough lady. We're coming
up on our forty first anniversary here in about a month.
She's given up her career over and over for me.
But we're down there in Miami. You know, she's excited
for me, for what we're doing. She's working in a hospital.
She's a registered nurse. She's working in a cardiac catheterization
(30:58):
unit where they you know, put those two up and
you're growing and it goes up into your heart. She
loves that kind of thing, the blood and guts, which
I think all has gross. But after we've been there
about three and a half years, she came to and
she said, you know, this has been a pretty exciting
life that. I mean. We're small town country people. We
end up in Fort We're living in Fort Lauderdale, working
in Miami and she said, what's the next most exciting
(31:20):
thing we can do. Well, I had already been working
some cases with our office in Baron Keya, Columbia, some
money cases, and I said, well, we could move to Colombia.
And you know, she kind of looked back at me
like I had three eyes, and.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
She's like, are you serious?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And I said, yeah, you know, I mean it's something
to think about. You got to understand if you tell
Connie what to do, it's not going to happen. I mean,
she's her own woman, you know, which is what I
love about her. But so she just kind of walked
away and thought about it for a couple of weeks,
and she came back. She said, are you really serious
about going to Columbia And I said sure. She said,
well we're going to do it, Let's do it while
(31:55):
we're young. So I applied. We got selected for Baron Keiya,
but I had to go to language school. So a
couple of weeks later they rescinded that transfer because they
needed a Spanish speaking agent immediately. So a guy in
headquarters later on he called me, I don't know that.
I don't even remember the guy's name, and I didn't
know him back then, but he said, you know, you
(32:16):
just got screwed, right, So yeah, I kind of figured
that out. He said, we're getting ready to post three
jobs in Bogotype.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Do you want one of those?
Speaker 3 (32:23):
And I said sure, And he said, okay, I'll do
everything I can to get you the job, and I
got it. So that's that's how it came about. I
want you to know right now, Gary that they never
hired me because I'm a real smart person.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I think let's not let's not tell people that too much, Steve,
because I think that's a secret of being a good cop.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
You don't have to be that smart.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
He's just well, we'll keep that one cat on the quiet.
I laughed the fact that, uh, and you know, putting
the book out there, and it's always confronting when you're
talking about your life. But I like the fact that
with Connie that hold that she owns a motor bike.
That's pretty cool. When you first got together and thought, okay,
(33:06):
she's a lady that likes adventure, and that certainly played
out so you read read read the script right.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Absolutely she was she wasn't a biker.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
She wasn't a biker check or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
She just she was at clarify that.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Okay, so you get to get to your posting in Columbia.
What what was that experience like when you come in too,
coming to a country like that, you.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Know, the only Columbias I've ever met were the ones
I'd put in jail, and you just, you know, it's
wrong to stereotype any people that I stereotypes that whole
country and thought everybody here is a drug traffer, but
found out, you know, I was completely off based on that.
But that first week I was in the embassy is
the week that Pablos surrendered, So you know, that's when
(33:52):
he surrendered to his customer built prison, and I was
just meeting people. When you first get to the embassy
like that, you've got to go through a lot of
security things and get your building pass, and I mean,
you're just trying to get your feet on the ground.
And it's a city of eight and a half million people,
and you know the town I went to high school
and had nine thousand, So it's you know, you're learning
your way around, and so they give you a couple
(34:12):
of weeks to kind of figure everything out. But I
was I was already had already met Javier and he
had a partner named Gary Sheeron at the time, and
Gary and I kind of hit it off right off
the bat. When Pablos surrender, We're all watching it on
TV and I'm thinking, this is fantastic, man. I mean,
the world's biggest cocaine manufacturing distributor just went to jail.
And I'm looking around and everybody's disappointed and they're pissed off,
(34:35):
and I'm like, what's wrong with you guys? And they said,
you know what you just got here. You don't even
know what you're talking about yet. You don't know what
we've been through here and what the Columbia National Police
have been through and what the Columbian citizens have been
through because of Pablo Escobar. You know, you need to
keep your mouth shut and learn and that you know
you do. They were exactly right. Yeah, So I ended
(34:55):
up partnering with Javier. Gary got promoted and transferred up
to baron Kia. So that's when Hobby and Are became
full time partners. And for that first year that's exactly
what I did. I went through case files, I went
with Hoabyard to meet the Columbia National Police. We were
supporting their wiretap rooms, all that kind of stuff, all
the investigative things that they were doing. But I learned,
and that was the best thing that could have happened,
(35:17):
because a year later we know what happened.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, when he got out of prison. Let's one that
back a bit talk about Escaba. What was his backstory
and how did he get to that point where he
gave himself up?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
You got it?
Speaker 3 (35:31):
So, Pablu his mom was a school Teacher's dad was
a dirt farmer. Basically, very poor household, not a lot
of income. As he grew up and as a teenager,
he started stealing hub caps off of cars and he
would go in and his buddy would go into the
graveyards and they'd steal headstones and send them down and
resell them. I mean, just you know, really upstanding kind
(35:53):
of guy.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It says something, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, And then he got involved with a guy named Ristreppo.
Strepper was a cocaine deli, a small time and he
needed I guess he needed some muscle or somebody to
participate in a deal. And Pablo agreed to do it
for money, and he saw how easy it was to
do it, so he went and killed Bristreppo and took
his place. So this is I'm going to guess that
(36:17):
Pablo was probably in his early twenties at this point.
And I really hate to give this guy credit for anything,
but he did have somewhat of a charismatic personality and
he could logically think things through on how to expand
his illegal activities, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
So and that's what he did.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
So they were, you know, they were smuggling marijuana in
and then he found out about this cocaine, this thing
called cocaine, and he liked it, not that he liked
to use it, but he liked the idea because it
was so much smaller than bought marijuana. So he got
involved in that and they bought some kilos. They got
(36:59):
they bought kilo has already done cocaine, had to chloride,
which is the finished product. Sold, it made some money,
and then he thought, well, you know what, why don't
we produce our own. So they went around and he
already had smuggling routes set up coming out of Bolivi
in Peru where they were bringing in just basically mainly
black market type items like televisions, electronics, just about anything
(37:20):
to get your hands on. So they learned how to
make cocaine, started setting up their own jungle labs, just
started making a buttload of money. And he realized that,
you know, people in Colombia, it's a third Wold country.
I mean, it's beautiful. I love Columbia. I hate the
same thing bad about it, but it's the truth, and
(37:41):
it's an extremely violent country. Their history shows that. But
he thought, I'm not going to sell this to Colombia's
I want to sell this to the Gringoes because they
you know, that's the rnchiest country in the world, and
you know they're idiots up there, and they'll spend money
on this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
And man, he was right.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
So his we did an analysis later on it roughly
it would cost him about one thousand dollars to produce
one kilo cocaine the finished product. Transportation fees are going
to cost you maybe three to four thousand dollars, so
roughly five thousand dollars per kilo to get it to
the United States. Well back in the eighties, those were
(38:18):
going for his high as sixty or eighty thousand dollars
for one kilo. Pig profits, so your returnal investment. Oh
my gosh, I mean, and you can see the and
now you see how the money just kind of took
over his mentality and it was all about him from
that point on.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Okay, and as he built the cartel, like in the
cacarios that he would have working for him there, but
my sense of it, people would grew up in poverty
and we're just He's beck and call to do any
of these, any of these killings, murders or whatever he
wanted to do. Is that how it operated? Was there
a structure to it? How did he rise to the
(38:56):
top he was.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
What brought him to the top is two things. One
his inability to have a conscience and not feel remorse.
You know that he was fine with murdering people. That's
what you had to do. The other was he brought
in his cousin, Gustavo Gaviria. Now Gustava, they're like their cousins,
but they're actually closer like brothers. They grew up together,
(39:18):
and Gustava was the brains behind the whole outfit. He
didn't have that mean streak that Pablo had, but he
also didn't shy away from it. So Pablo as people
would challenge him, he would kill him, and word got out.
You know, don't mess with Pablo, because they'll take you out.
He partnered up with Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Scotcha, who's known
(39:40):
as Elmeicano, the Mexican who was Gotcha was every bit
as evil as Pablo Escobarn and some people will say
even more violent. At the time he got involved with
the Emerald Minds, he would go kill the owners of
the mines and then take ownership.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
And you know, he had his.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Own thing going in court and to the cocaine production
and trafficking. And then Pablo realized that there's a lot
of different groups out there producing cocaine and it was competitive,
and he came up with this idea that hey, we're
all from Antiochia, which is the state where Medine is located,
and rather than you know, cutting each other's throats, why
(40:21):
don't we work together. We'll combine our loads. That way,
if we're sending five hundre kilos up, and let's say
Pablo's got a hundred, the Otrove brothers have one hundred,
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gotcha's got one hundred. A couple other people
have one hundred in there. If a load gets taken off,
we only lost one hundred kilos, you didn't lose five
hundred kilos. So you're kind of sharing. You're sharing the wealth,
(40:43):
but you're also sharing the pain. When the caizars do happen,
and everybody liked it. You know, Pablo was he knew
how to pay off government officials, whether they were police officers,
or they were senators or you know, did they pay
off the president. I don't know, but you know, certainly
was viable, the attorney general. There's a lot of suspect
(41:03):
things there. And eventually Pablo, in his own mind, became
so powerful that he thought everybody loved him. Well, the
only people loved him were the people that I mean, honestly,
it was the poor people.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
He grew up poor.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
He presented himself to be a man of the people
that he grew up like them, and he wanted to
help take care of them. He built clinics, he built
housing for people that lived on the edge of a
trash dump. He gave money away, he gave food away,
he built soccer fields and all those are good things.
But when he needed new sacarios because his old sagarios
are being killed. Where do you think he went to recruit?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
So that was because that was it was almost like
he's ego. He wanted to wanted to be the gangster
and the money, but he also wanted to be loved
by the people.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
He thought he was.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Representative of the people of Colombia, the pulled down, trodden
ones that are trying to make good.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
He wanted to be president of Columbia. There was going
to be a congressional election, and so the leading candidate
in meddiing Pablo had befriended, and I'm sure befriended him
with some American cash, and so Pablo ran as an
alternate under that congressman. Well, so the congressman got elected,
(42:21):
you know, Pablo's funding his campaign and everything. And the
day that he got elected, he resigned for health reasons,
which bumped Pablo up to his position. Now he's a
duly elected congressman. Convenient, and so when congress session is
in session, congressman in Columbia cannot be arrested. Well, he
goes to Congress. The story about him not wearing a tie.
(42:41):
I supposedly that's true. I don't know if it was
or not. But this is before my time. But the
man the was he the attorney general or the Justice minister,
Rodrigo Laura Buonia. Anyway, he knew who Pablo was. He
knew he was a drug trafficker. If you remember, the
(43:02):
Gorilla group M nineteen one time had attacked the Palace
of Justice in Bogata rated it.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
They were communists leaning yes.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, and so think when they killed a bunch of
the Columbia Supreme Court judges, there's some magistrates, there's people
that just disappeared, they were never found. But the evidence
room holding all the evidence against Pablo Escobar. Their goal
was to destroy that and they did pretty good job,
but not completely. So Rodrigo Lara Bania knew this. So
(43:34):
in open congress one day, he has that iconic photo
of Pablo as he's being arrested, holding his.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
ID number and smiling.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
So he has that blown up and he unveils that
in open congress and calls Pablo Escobar a drug trafficker,
which he's convicted criminal, which that nullifies him being a congressman.
So you know that that was extremely embarrassing for Pablo.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
And that ended these ambitions to be a politician. And
aspire to be the president.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
But the sad thing of that is about a week
or two later, Rodrigo Laura Bernia was assassinated.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Right, Okay, you don't have to guess where that order
came from. So he was in conflict with the government
at that point in time. You've got the sense that
I get is the government, the ones that weren't being
corrupted by him, were very much against him. And the
(44:36):
issue of extradition was that's played out in a lot
of well in the Nacos TV series and in some
of the books and documentaries. Was that very much the
issue that there was a lot of conflict about.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Absolutely. I mean, that's that's the leading issue right there.
He did not want Columbia nationals to be extradated to
the United States. And if you remember, he even created
a group called the Extra Datables, and they were to
create these flyers that they would drop out, you know,
they would fly over soccer games, have a plane fly
over and drop out these flyers and on these leaflets
(45:10):
that said the extraditibles, we prefer a tomb in Columbia
to a jail celle in the United States. So everybody
knew who it was that's Pablo. But when that happened
with Congress and they kicked him out, that's when he
really got violent. That's when he blew up the Avianca flight.
That's when he put a five hundred kilogram dynamite bomb
(45:32):
in front of the DOS headquarters, which was for us
would be like the combination of our intelligence agency and
the FBI blew them up, trying to kill the general
in charge to that. He killed the leading presidential candidate
at that time, a guy named Luis Carlos Kalan, who
had about a ninety percent approval rating. I mean, the
(45:53):
Columbians loved him and his platform is if elected, I'm
bringing back extradition. So Pablo had him assassinated. That's when
Oblo was so mad he declared war on his own country.
I mean openly declared war.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, it's the ruthlessness of it as well. Tell us
a little bit about the flight that was blown up,
because I got the sense that's when public opinions started
to sway against him, that you know, you've gone too far.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
He what was the backstory to that?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Well, there Oblo had information that Luis Carlos Golan, or
the guy who took his place after his murder, says Argaviria.
I think that's who it was, was going to be
on a flight from Bogata to Cali. And so what
Pablo did is he one of his favorite Sakarios is
a guy named Dan Denny Munos Mosquera. Everybody calls him Lakika,
(46:44):
that was the street name. Lakika is actually here in
the United States doing life in prison for this bombing.
Solakika goes out and recruits a new member of the
Cikarios who's he's really an unwitting He doesn't know what's
really going on, and so Lakey could tell him. He says, listen,
here's a briefcase Pabla's. We're getting you a first class
(47:04):
ticket on this plane up to Kylie. The guy that
you're going to be sitting next to is an enemy
of Pablo. And once you get in the air, Pablo
wants you to just engage him in conversation and just
you know, try to bait him a little bit and
see what his opinion is on different things. And he said,
but once you're up in the air, pull this little
pin out of the outside of the briefcase, little hidden pen,
(47:26):
and that will activate the recording device inside. Guy says okay,
So he goes and gets on the plane, sits down,
the plane gets the altitude, he pulls the pin out
to start the recording, and that detonated the bomb. So
one hundred and seven people died on that flight, plus
three people on the ground that were killed, So one
hundred and ten people died because Pablo wanted to kill
(47:47):
Sayes of Gaviria, the next presidential candidate that he thought
would win. And at the last minute something came up
and Gavia didn't even get on the flight. Now, there
were supposed to be two deea on that flight and
you know, whatever reason, and the embassy, the boss came
out says, nineted you guys or something else. We had
no information that there was going to be a bomb
(48:09):
on that flate. Just by the grace of guard, those
guys didn't get on the plane. But who was on
the plane was two American citizens. So that's what gave
me then States jurisdiction to go after Lakika and Pablo
for that.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Baring okay, and that's well, it's say when he crossed
the line, He's crossed the line a lot.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
But I think people.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Will look at that, how ruthless. It just says so
much about the person so on that there was this
very big effort to bring him to justice, but it
wasn't working. But they negotiated him. And what we started
talking about was when he gave up, gave himself up,
handing himself in.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Can you tell us.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
About that, because it's bizarre you look at it from
our situation in the United States or Australia. How did
this play out? Just explain it because I find it
fascin it is.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
It's the worst plead deal you will ever hear in
your life. I mean, it was embarrassing to the Columbian government.
But so the attorney general in Columbia, like here in
the United States, are presidents elected and then he appoints
the Attorney General to the United States. In Columbia, the
president's elected, but the Attorney general is elected separately, so
(49:21):
they're autonomous from each other. So the Attorney General at
that time was a guy named Gustavo de Grief, who
was a very very smart man educated in the United States,
I think at one of the Ivy League colleges. He
came up with this idea of what he called a
self surrender plan. And the way this worked is you
come in and you plead guilty to a felony that
(49:41):
you choose. You just pick whatever failing you want to
plead guilty to, and in exchange, will absolve you of
every other crime you've ever committed in your life. And
this was geared towards Pablo, so Pablo heard about it,
you know, and they got the word out, and so
he sent a couple of his guys, in lower ranking
guys and said, you know, go into pleak Gills. We'll
see what happens. And it worked, you know, the government
(50:03):
lived up to what they said. So finally Pablo said, well,
you know what, I can take advantage of this. So
he said, he calls up to the Attorney General, mister Grief,
and he says, uh, listen, I want to take advantage
of yourself surrender program. I want to come in and
plead guilty. And of course the Attorney General say, oh,
thank you, mister mescabor. I think this means so much
for our country. This is going to be a new
chapter in our history. And blah blah blah, and Papa says,
(50:26):
we wait a minute. I got some conditions that go
along with this. Oh what are they? Well, the first
one is, you know what, I'm going to build my
own prison because I needed to be a place that's secure,
that will protect me because I've got a lot of
enemies out there. And by the way, I'm going to
pay it for it, because I don't want the Columbian
citizens to have to bury that tax burd And Thettorney
General says, okay, to hell and he says, well, okay.
(50:47):
Next is the guards of the prison. I'm going to
pay their salaries, because again I don't want to tie
the citizens of Columbia to have to pay that bird
that that bill. Turn General says, okay, where do you
think they're is. Then he says, all right, my fellow prisoners,
there's only going to be fourteen of us, me and
thirteen others. And I'm gonna handpick my fellow prisoners because
(51:10):
I need them to be people who were loyal to me,
just in case somebody tries to come in and get me.
And the Attorney General said okay. He said, well I'm
not done yet. He said, uh, listen to all those
good guys, the Columbia Police, Columbia military, especially those gringoes.
None of those good guys can come within two miles
of the perimeter of my prison because I don't want
them sneaking any of you trying to kidnap me. And
(51:33):
the attorney general says okay, and he says, okay, listen,
I'm only gonna do five years. That's that's the max.
Attorney general said okay. And on top of that, there
were no stipulations to take any.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
Of his assets.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
This guy at that time was rated as the sixth
seventh richest person in the world. I think it was,
with an estimated wealth between eight and thirty billion dollars.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
Unbelievable, So oh he So Pablo goes anyway, they agreed everything.
So Pablo goes in and they said, well, what are
you gonna plead guilty too? And he says, well, you know,
there's this one time where some guys were moving a
load of cocaine. I didn't know about it, but apparently
it was in the car. So shame on me. I
was in the car. I'll plead guilty to that. And
they said, okay.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
That absolved him of every other crime he committed, including
murder mass murder. That's why we say it was the
worst plea bargain and in the history of the world.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Well you'll sign that it's unbelievable. Sign it was the
greatest deal. Yeah, but uh and oh yeah, and the
prison described the prison soccer field at luxury. It was.
Speaker 4 (52:44):
It was a joke.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
It was it was he he had plans this was
going to be a resort when he finished his time
in prison, because he thought, well, you know what, there's
idiots all around the world that will pay good money
to come and sleep into bed that Pablo Escobar slept in,
or a cabana or a chilet that I've build outside
the prison. So when when he escaped the next day,
(53:05):
Hobby and I flew to Mediina. For the next eighteen
months we lived in Mediene with Columbia National Police and
with the first place we went was the prison. You know,
we flew into the base and then they flew us
over to the prison. We went to Pablo's area of
the prison.
Speaker 4 (53:20):
He's got a two room suite.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
He's got everything is very nice. He's got a full
sized microwave oven, he's got a side by side refrigerator, freezer.
He's got custom built cabinets and a big banana bar
with marstools. He's got color coordinated upholstery and draperies. He's
got arn't work, legitimate, arn't work hanging on the wall.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
He had.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
There's a famous artist in Columbia just died here not
so long ago, Fernando Botero. He had a Botero original
that he reportedly paid one point five million dollars for.
He had a salad or Dolly original worth over three
million dollars hanging in his room. He had nice French
couches and love seats and individual chairs and coffee tables,
(54:04):
and then you go into the second room and that
was his bedroom and office area. His bed was larger
than any king sized bed. I mean it was massive.
It was massive bed. He had a fireplace in his office.
Some of the pictures that were hanging up in there
were not pictures of his family, but he had all
of his mug shots matted and framed, hanging on the wall.
(54:26):
He didn't have a picture of himself and his son
standing in front of our white house sixteen hundred Pennsylvania
Avenue in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
Really he had pictures. He had pictures of.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Himself and Gustavo dressed up like American style gangsters. He
had a picture of himself dressed up like manchu Villa,
the Mexican bandit. He had a wanted poster framed hanging
in his in his two rooms suite with his picture
at the top and all his criminal buddies decorated on
the picture.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
I said, you can't make this stuff up, but you
would just you sound like you're jealous of what he had.
It was in his in his prison.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
He had he had a zie tub in his bath
he had a private bathroom with a chub.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
You want to be comfortable. He's going to be spending
a lot of time there. I think you've been too
harsh on him. Look, we're making we're making light of
the situation, but you've got to you've got to see
the humor in the in the horror, because it was
horror that he was creating. And I think that it
was quite often people look at the two ex cops
(55:32):
talking and sort of laughing about that. But you've got
to take some of the lightness out of all all
the heavy things that were going on, because it was
quite horrendous what the people he was killing and the
damage he was doing. Before we finish Part Part one.
I just want to talk about your open here for
whatever you want to say about your partner, have you, Penna,
(55:57):
the good and the bad, Because I look back, I
look back at my career and investigations is defined by
who are you working with and different things tell us
about you two. It seems like a little bit like
the odd couple, but sometimes the odd couple work out.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
Well, we're actually opposites of each other. I'm I've been
married pretty much my whole life. He's he's married now,
but he certainly wasn't married back then. I'm very organized,
he's very unorganized. But the man has a brain like
an encyclopedia. I mean, it was just fascinating, you know,
when we're reporting our activities to Washington doing teletypes, cables
(56:33):
whatever you call them nowadays, I'm typing out the details
and they and of course Washing wants to know what
the relationship is amongst everybody and this and whatever event happened.
And I'd say, hab, okay, how's this person related to Pablo?
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (56:46):
Well, his wife is a cousin to Pablo's wife. And
he would just lay the whole thing out and Washington
loved it because we had all this detail in there.
Speaker 4 (56:56):
He we would have parties.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
And on weekends at you know, one of our apartments,
and they were really good parties. I'll tell you it
was a lot of them would go to daylight the
next day. Javier would show up with a girlfriend, a
different girlfriend at every party. He didn't stay very long
because he was going out on a date. But I
mean his like he dated miss the former Miss Columbia.
These were beautiful young ladies that he was dating. The
(57:22):
show shows that Pablo was or I mean the Havier
was dating hookers and informants and communists. He didn't date
anybody like that. But let me tell you, Garry, every
other woman in Columbia was fair game. So I lovingly
refer to Hvier as a man slut fair call.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
I think he's, uh, yeah, he's got to carry that,
carry that reputation. Sounds like you had a great relationship
and the fact that you were like different types. That's
sometimes the perfect jee, isn't it. That gets you through
those gets you through the precious situations. Really, when we
get back, we're going to talk about where it really
ramps up, when Pablo escapes and the hunt for him
(58:04):
that finally led to a shootout, and you were actually
all the photos that the people would see of when
Pablo did meet his end. You were the person that
took the photos at the location. And what a ride
you guys went on for It was it eighteen months
from the time he escaped from prison to the time
(58:25):
that he was finally caught.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
It was he escaped in June ninety two and he
was killed in December ninety three.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, Well, when we get back for part two, we're
going to talk about that, and that's I think some
of the most intense bit of policing I've heard about
the pressure you guys would have been under and everyone
else and the sacrifices people made. So it will take
a break and we'll be back back for part two shortly.
Speaker 2 (58:49):
Amazing, amazing story.
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