Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talked to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: In the second part of my chat with former DA
Speaker 1: agent Steve Murphy, we talk about how Pablo Escobar was
Speaker 1: tracked down and killed in a violent shoetout. We talk
Speaker 1: about the impact the investigation had on Steve and his
Speaker 1: partner Javier, and the Columbian police who put their lives
Speaker 1: on the line to restore peace to their country. We
Speaker 1: also talk about his experience in the investigation being portrayed
Speaker 1: in the hugely popular TV series Narcos. It's a fascinating chat. Steve,
Speaker 1: welcome back to part two. If I catch killers. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Let's continue this wild story. And yeah, no wonder they
Speaker 1: made a TV series out of this investigation, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Narcos TV series and it's a
Speaker 1: great series, I've got to say on Netflix. But before
Speaker 1: we do, there's a bit of work to do before
Speaker 1: you start swamping round as the person that's portrayed on
Speaker 1: the TV series we've talked about Pablo Escobar, is there
Speaker 1: one thing that defines him, like how ruthless he was?
Speaker 1: You talk in part one that he didn't have a
Speaker 1: conscience and that he could just kill without a second thought.
Speaker 1: Is there one thing that demonstrates to the listeners what
Speaker 1: was the evilness or something that typified the evilness of
Speaker 1: the man.
Speaker 2: He was in his prison, this custom built prison, the cathedral,
Speaker 2: and they're actually he's on the phone with his wife
Speaker 2: talking and we're, you know, we're intercepting the phone calls,
Speaker 2: and he's talking about how much he loves her and
Speaker 2: how much he misses her and how are the kids
Speaker 2: and all that, and in the background you can hear
Speaker 2: a guy screaming he's being tortured, you know, and eventually
Speaker 2: his wife said, what is that noise? And he's like,
Speaker 2: hold on a minute. He covers up the you know,
Speaker 2: I assume he cover up the receiver, and you can
Speaker 2: hear him say cover his mouth, shut him up, and
Speaker 2: then he gets real quiet, so you know, they killed
Speaker 2: the guy. And then he's just right back on a yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll come and see you guys soon, and
Speaker 2: you know, you guys have to come to visit me,
Speaker 2: and just you know, like nothing happened.
Speaker 1: Just that set no conscience whatsoever.
Speaker 2: The indiscriminate car bombs that were just he set a
Speaker 2: car bomb off on fifteenth Street in Bogata one time,
Speaker 2: in the northern part of the city. And right where
Speaker 2: that bomb went off as a mall and it was
Speaker 2: the whole the size of a city block, and the
Speaker 2: whole front of the mall was glass. So when that
Speaker 2: bomb went off, you know what happened to the glass.
Speaker 2: It happened to be a time when moms were there
Speaker 2: with their school aged children getting school supplies. So Homy
Speaker 2: and I we were spawn down there. We get a
Speaker 2: phone call about it, We take off and go down there,
Speaker 2: you can't get very close. You can see the black
Speaker 2: smoke from where the bomb went off, but you can't
Speaker 2: get very close because traffic just bogs down. So we
Speaker 2: park and we get out, and we were walking in
Speaker 2: and as you get closer, you start hearing the sounds
Speaker 2: associated with tragedy, you know, the screams and the crying
Speaker 2: and the begging and all that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 2: then you get closer and you actually start seeing body
Speaker 2: parts laying around. And then you get up to the
Speaker 2: scene and you see the firemen and the police officers
Speaker 2: carrying the lifeless bodies of little children who just simply
Speaker 2: were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's
Speaker 2: probably the most horrific thing I saw while we were
Speaker 2: down there. Just it's there's there's no way you can
Speaker 2: justify something like that.
Speaker 1: That's the results of these actions. What were the circumstances
Speaker 1: with the luxury self designed prison that he was resulting in?
Speaker 1: What were the circumstances of him escaping from the How
Speaker 1: did that come about?
Speaker 2: We got this from an individual who eventually became an
Speaker 2: informative ours and eventually became of the biggest drug dealer
Speaker 2: in Columbia, And who is in prison here in the
Speaker 2: United States now. So he was the bodyguard for one
Speaker 2: of Pablo's childhood friends, a guy named Kiko Mankada. Qiko
Speaker 2: and Pablo grew up together. He was one of the
Speaker 2: primary lieutenants. And there was another guy named Fernando Galliano. Well,
Speaker 2: when Pablo went into prison, he imposed attacks or war
Speaker 2: tax on all the other drug draftickers, and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, look, I've fronted myself out for the good
Speaker 2: of all of you. I've embarrassed myself. I'm in prison now,
Speaker 2: you know, country club prison. He said, So what's going
Speaker 2: to happ happen is every load that you send up,
Speaker 2: I get half of it, or you pay me four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars cash. Okay. So then they were doing
Speaker 2: it well. After a while they got tired of doing it. Well.
Speaker 2: One day hits the carrios going out and they find
Speaker 2: a cave that there's this money US dollars that have
Speaker 2: been shrink wrapped and hidden in a cave, and the
Speaker 2: shrink wrap has come loose, and so air and moisture
Speaker 2: has been getting in there, and all this money is
Speaker 2: rotting away. And we've heard this anywhere from ten million
Speaker 2: to twenty three million dollars. So they bring it in.
Speaker 2: They show Pabula like, look, this is Kiko and Fernando's money,
Speaker 2: and they're holding out on you. You know, here you
Speaker 2: are fronting yourself out and you're not making all the
Speaker 2: billions that you were before because you've taken a stance
Speaker 2: against the government. You're trying to do good for everybody else.
Speaker 2: And they get him all fired up. So he has
Speaker 2: somebody make phone calls and they call the Galliano's and
Speaker 2: they call him Moncadas and said, hey, come on up
Speaker 2: to the prison. We're going to have a barbecue. No
Speaker 2: business discussed. We're just gonna have good time. Bring some
Speaker 2: hookers in and we'll have some mariachis. Come men or whatever.
Speaker 2: No need to bring security details. Everything's good. So they
Speaker 2: show up. Well Kiko, according to our source, Kiko comes
Speaker 2: walking in and he sees the money there on the floor,
Speaker 2: and he looks at Pablo and sees a look on
Speaker 2: his face and he starts saying, Pablo, that's not what
Speaker 2: you think it is. We're not holding out on you.
Speaker 2: That's money that's been buried for a long time. Quite honestly,
Speaker 2: we had forgotten about it. And if you think about it.
Speaker 2: For moisture and water to get in there, to start
Speaker 2: writing away paper. That doesn't happen in a few days,
Speaker 2: I mean that takes months and months and months of time.
Speaker 2: So the Cicarios are egging Pablo on he he cheated you, Pablo,
Speaker 2: kill him. You need to kill these two, and so
Speaker 2: eventually they go back and forth, and Pablo gets so
Speaker 2: incensed that he grabs a stick and he kills his
Speaker 2: childhood best friend, Kiko Moncada, beats him to death. Then
Speaker 2: the Ccarios they jump on Fernando Galliano. They do the
Speaker 2: same to him. Then they started cutting parts of their
Speaker 2: bodies off and sending them to their families and saying,
Speaker 2: you owe me this, You owe me that you know,
Speaker 2: and if you want, everyone want to see him again,
Speaker 2: and this is what you got to do. You know,
Speaker 2: the families didn't know they were already dead. Well, eventually
Speaker 2: word got out to us about it through this informant,
Speaker 2: and we went to our bosses and the ambassador, and
Speaker 2: eventually it went to the President of Columbia, and the
Speaker 2: message was do something about this. This is ridiculous. This
Speaker 2: is embarrassing to your country. It's embarrassing to your administration,
Speaker 2: you've got to do something. So they come up with
Speaker 2: an idea that they're going to tell Pablo, Okay, we're
Speaker 2: going to temporarily move you to a different prison so
Speaker 2: we can reinforce your prison to make it more secure
Speaker 2: for you. And it's all a ruse. Well, they send
Speaker 2: the deputy Justice minister up there. This kid, Mendoza is
Speaker 2: like twenty five years old. He goes up with a
Speaker 2: Columbian colonel, military colonel to take like twenty troops up there.
Speaker 2: Get to the gate outside. Now, remember who's paying the
Speaker 2: guards on inside the gate, So they're not.
Speaker 1: Loyal to the guts, they loyalty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the deputy Justice miner looks over the colonel says, colonel,
Speaker 2: go get him. Or el said, resident, tell me, he
Speaker 2: didn't tell me to go in there. He told you
Speaker 2: to go, and I'm not going in there. You go
Speaker 2: get him. So this young guy twenty five years old
Speaker 2: goes in there. Well, of course the Sagario is immediately
Speaker 2: taking hostage and they're slapping him around and they're trying
Speaker 2: to get Pablo Pablo kill him. This is the message
Speaker 2: from the president, they don't respect you and all that stuff. Well,
Speaker 2: Pablo tells the Justice minister, get the president on the phone. Well,
Speaker 2: he's calling. Before the president would take Pablo's calls, believe
Speaker 2: it or not, but this time nobody's answering the phone.
Speaker 2: So Pablo kind of sees the writing on the ball.
Speaker 2: They realize that they don't have enough troops up there
Speaker 2: to assault the prison, so now they send an elite
Speaker 2: group of military folks called the Copas, and they go
Speaker 2: in and they assault the prison, big firefight. Not a
Speaker 2: single good guy was wounded that day, believe it or not.
Speaker 2: And the deputy Justice Minister, they were able to get
Speaker 2: him out unscathed, which is just a miracle. Some of
Speaker 2: the guards were killed, Pablo's guards. A lot of cacarios
Speaker 2: were able to escape, not all of them. Some of
Speaker 2: them chose to stay in the prison. So recently, Jama
Speaker 2: had done some work for one of the Spanish speaking
Speaker 2: stations down to Columbia about the Escobar story, and in exchange,
Speaker 2: they had access to these photographs. So the press had
Speaker 2: shown up at the prison because you know, the words
Speaker 2: out that something's going on up there at the cathedral,
Speaker 2: and this one photographer he got up there, he saw everybody,
Speaker 2: you know, all the other presses there, worldwide press, and
Speaker 2: so he goes around and he somehow knows how to
Speaker 2: get around to the backside of the prison and he's
Speaker 2: walking in and here comes Pablo and some of his
Speaker 2: henchmen and the guy the story is the cameraman. He
Speaker 2: laid his cameras down and put his hands up. He says, Pablo, Pablo,
Speaker 2: please don't kill me. You know, I went to this
Speaker 2: front gate. My producers told me to go get pictures.
Speaker 2: It's crowded up there. I thought I'd just come around
Speaker 2: and see what's happening. Prob washed to get your camera,
Speaker 2: take your camera and take pictures of me. I'm a
Speaker 2: dead man walking, so that camera and held onto those pictures.
Speaker 2: He died recently and his family gave him to this.
Speaker 2: I think he was a Univision Univision and so because
Speaker 2: of the work Hobbier had done with them, they gave
Speaker 2: us license to use these pictures. So we now have
Speaker 2: three photographs that this camera took of Pablo, and I
Speaker 2: think it's four of his henchmen making their escape, and
Speaker 2: you can see some of them have guns, you know,
Speaker 2: pistols tucked in their waistband. It's not like they're running,
Speaker 2: you know, scared, they're just they're just getting away. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm always I've always wondered if you know
Speaker 2: there wasn't some green passed hands along the way, because
Speaker 2: how do you escape from the prison surrounded? How do
Speaker 2: you escape?
Speaker 1: And if you've got an elite team coming in and
Speaker 1: taking the Zakarias out, how they go to why? But well,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, if it didn't happen, you have to invent it.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. He he gets out that. So the tuns
Speaker 1: you your world upside down for the next eighteen months
Speaker 1: because you and Javier are asked to be stationed down
Speaker 1: in Medeleine, and you worked with a lot of different sections,
Speaker 1: and I know you pay a lot of tribute to
Speaker 1: the Colombian National Police absolutely, and the courage of those
Speaker 1: guys and the search block. This is a quote from
Speaker 1: your book when he was on the run, just to
Speaker 1: give you a sense of what happened after he escaped.
Speaker 1: Between the twenty second of July nineteen ninety two, when
Speaker 1: Escobar escaped and mid March nineteen ninety three, one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty six police officers had been killed in the
Speaker 1: line of duty by Escobar's hitmen. So that's one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty six police I'm talking about. The death tolls
Speaker 1: throughout the country had also increased. Columbia had seen it
Speaker 1: steadly this year, with nearly twenty nine thousand homicides reported
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, compared to twenty five thy one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten for the previous year. In Medelline and Bogata,
Speaker 1: one hundred and twelve Savilians had died from random car
Speaker 1: bomb attacks and four hundred twenty seven had been injured.
Speaker 1: It's just on the sky that's hired to comprehend, and
Speaker 1: that that's in that passage of time when he was
Speaker 1: on the run, when you guys were part of the team,
Speaker 1: uh tas we're tracking him down.
Speaker 2: It was it's it's I mean, I'm sure it's the
Speaker 2: same in Australia. If an Australian police officer is killed
Speaker 2: in the line of duty. Here in the United States,
Speaker 2: we stop everything. Everybody stops to contribute to the case
Speaker 2: to get that guy. When here you're talking about over
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty police officers and what about a
Speaker 2: six or seven month period were murdered. Pablo put a
Speaker 2: bounty on him of one hundred dollars each. I mean,
Speaker 2: that was a police officer's life was one hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And that was that was just anyone could collect that bounty.
Speaker 1: Just take take out a call there was.
Speaker 2: Javier was with We worked with a very elite unit
Speaker 2: of Plumbing National Police officers and they got to call
Speaker 2: one night that one of the sacarios was at this
Speaker 2: nightclub and they didn't have enough body. So Hovier went
Speaker 2: along with them and h this kid's fifteen years old.
Speaker 2: He's out on the dance floor with his girlfriend. They
Speaker 2: go out and grab He's got a gun in his waistband.
Speaker 2: They wrestle him, he fights, They get him down the floor,
Speaker 2: get him cuffed up, and take him out. Well, this
Speaker 2: kid talks, you know, he doesn't know he's not supposed
Speaker 2: to talk. He said, he had already killed I think
Speaker 2: it was something like ten police officers. And how you're asking,
Speaker 2: he said, how do you do this? He said, Well,
Speaker 2: you just you know, these uniform guys they're walking the
Speaker 2: streets and they stop and talk to each other or
Speaker 2: stop to talk to people in the street, and you
Speaker 2: just walk up behind him and shoot him in the
Speaker 2: back of the head. He said, the most I've killed
Speaker 2: him one day was three and then you go to
Speaker 2: an address and you tell him, and you know, they
Speaker 2: give you one hundred dollars for each cop that you've killed.
Speaker 2: And HWY said, what do you do with the money?
Speaker 2: He said, well, most of it I give to my
Speaker 2: mom because she had you know, she was one of
Speaker 2: those people living on the edge of a trash dump.
Speaker 2: And he said, I keep enough money for myself. I
Speaker 2: don't have a nice pair of tennis shoes, nice pair
Speaker 2: of jeans, and I need beer money. But everything else,
Speaker 2: she gets everything else. And I thought, just no remorse whatsoever.
Speaker 2: But or a woman that's brave enough to put a
Speaker 2: uniform on and your life is worth one hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you guys had a lot of respect
Speaker 1: for the courage that they had. What about yourself and Javier,
Speaker 1: like I read somewhere or that you had a bounty
Speaker 1: on you for three hundred thousand with the greatest respect,
Speaker 1: you would sort of stand out in Columbia and people
Speaker 1: would know who you are. So how how did you
Speaker 1: feel with what was going on?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, we're cops. You don't show fear,
Speaker 2: but you know, when you first find out about it,
Speaker 2: it's like, that's all I'm worthing more than three hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. But the truth is, it's very disconcerting to
Speaker 2: start with. It's like, holy cow, this guy's got a
Speaker 2: bounty on me. And you're right. I mean, my family,
Speaker 2: my grandmother immigrated from England. My dad's family immigrated from Ireland.
Speaker 2: I'm about as white as you get. I don't blend
Speaker 2: into it Hispanic country. You know. I'm six to two,
Speaker 2: I have light colored eyes. I used to have brown
Speaker 2: colored hair. I just kind of stick out.
Speaker 1: But the gring Gay and that they would have known
Speaker 1: that you guys would like the intel and you couldn't
Speaker 1: trust everyone that was involved in the investigation, so they
Speaker 1: would have very much known who you guys were.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, we were going out on so back
Speaker 2: of a second, the embassy told us, the ambassadors, I
Speaker 2: don't want you guys going out in the field. You
Speaker 2: stay at the police base. Well that's we can't do
Speaker 2: our job if we do stay beneck in the back.
Speaker 2: And you know, we had we had the US Navy
Speaker 2: Seal Team six was there with us. We had the
Speaker 2: US Armies Delta FORCET. They were there with us. Of course,
Speaker 2: the CIA's in there. They're coming and going as they want.
Speaker 2: The military guys or under the same orders as us. Well,
Speaker 2: they're military, so they follow orders. We kind of looked
Speaker 2: at them as strong suggestions instead of orders. And so
Speaker 2: I mean, just just to match, You're still on the
Speaker 2: job there and in uh Australia, and I come to
Speaker 2: your country, and I tell you, Gary, I heard there's
Speaker 2: Pablo Escobars down there at the pub. Man, go see
Speaker 2: if he's down there. I'm gonna get a couple of
Speaker 2: coffee and come back and tell me what you find.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna tell me? I know what you're
Speaker 2: gonna tell me that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one, I understand, but I like the way it's
Speaker 1: just a suggestion that wasn't an order. But I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm misunderstood.
Speaker 2: But uh well, But but what that led to is
Speaker 2: we were going out on operations every day with with
Speaker 2: this unit that we worked with Dehean was the name
Speaker 2: of the unit. And we're going out on the Huey
Speaker 2: gunships doing raids on ranches, and we're going out and
Speaker 2: doing patrols in the mountains with the Columbia National Police
Speaker 2: and we're doing surveillance in the city, and we're paying
Speaker 2: informants and we're meeting snitches. We had a one eight
Speaker 2: hundred tip line set up offering a five million dollar
Speaker 2: reward for information on Pablo. It was it was exciting.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very exciting. There were times, especially if
Speaker 2: we were in the city, they would they had an
Speaker 2: armored personnel carrier, and so if we were doing stuff
Speaker 2: in the city, especially for going over into the barrios
Speaker 2: where Pablo's you know, he's the hero, they would put
Speaker 2: me inside the armored car just to protect me a
Speaker 2: little bit more. But you know, and you had a
Speaker 2: machine gunner on top. And but then when you know,
Speaker 2: when it's trying to clean up my language, when the
Speaker 2: ship hits the fan, you know, you don't run away.
Speaker 2: You got to stand there and fight.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a big difference from where you started your
Speaker 1: law enforcement a lot. There was a d A agent
Speaker 1: that was abducted by a cartel in Mexico, and you
Speaker 1: think that played a part that the consequences do you
Speaker 1: want to just explain to the listeners what the circumstances
Speaker 1: of that was. It was a horrific situation, but the
Speaker 1: response is probably, you know, protected people down the track.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain that those circumstances.
Speaker 2: Gladly Well, that was the case of Kiki or Enrique.
Speaker 2: Kiki came Marina was our agent's name. This is in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five. He had been stationed. Kiki was a
Speaker 2: former US marine. He'd been a cop in Glexico, California,
Speaker 2: before Dea joined EA, did time down on the border,
Speaker 2: got a volunteer to go to Guandalajara in Mexico. He
Speaker 2: was actually born in Mexico, so he spoke perfect Spanish.
Speaker 2: He's down there. He just kicking button, taking names. You know.
Speaker 2: The problem back then was was these massive marijuana grows,
Speaker 2: the ones up in the mountains. The quality wasn't as good,
Speaker 2: but the Mexican traffickers learned about sinsimilia, which is something
Speaker 2: that American marijuana growers just developed, and it basically they
Speaker 2: took the seeds out of the plants and it made
Speaker 2: it a much more potent strain of marijuana. So, through
Speaker 2: payoffs and so forth, they bought this desert land and
Speaker 2: they had to drill these massive wells to get water
Speaker 2: because marijuana grows require a lot of water. So Kiki
Speaker 2: gets information through an informant, and at one point the
Speaker 2: government of Mexico would let the United States do flyovers
Speaker 2: looking for marijuana fields or poppy fields because of Mexican heroin. Well,
Speaker 2: a new president comes in and he bans all that.
Speaker 2: So now Kiki's relying on informants, and apparently he had
Speaker 2: the knack for dealing with informants. He has one that's
Speaker 2: a pilot. He gets information where there's this massive marijuana grow.
Speaker 2: I think that one was two hundred acres. They do
Speaker 2: a couple of flyovers which were illegal, and confirmed it
Speaker 2: was there, got the Mexican police to go raid the place,
Speaker 2: and I forget how much it was capable of producing,
Speaker 2: but two hundred acres of marijuana plants just massive. Well,
Speaker 2: then as time goes on, he finds out about this
Speaker 2: other grow. This time it was twenty five hundred acres,
Speaker 2: two five hundred acres, just massive, and they rated that.
Speaker 2: I think they said that that field alone was capable
Speaker 2: of four billion dollars of weed per grow, and I
Speaker 2: think you could grow it at least twice a year
Speaker 2: down there. So that led to him, you know, he
Speaker 2: was ready to rotate out of Guadala horor back to
Speaker 2: the United States. But these three drug traffickers Raphael carl Countero,
Speaker 2: Miguel On Hell Felix Gayardo, and the third guy's name
Speaker 2: was Fan Saic I can't remember his full name. Those
Speaker 2: are the three guys that started the Guadara Guadalajara cartel
Speaker 2: in Mexico. So they orchestrated a kidnapp had Kiki came
Speaker 2: out of the consulate in Guadalajarra to go meet his
Speaker 2: wife for lunch. They surrounding kidnapp him, taking him to
Speaker 2: a house. He's torture for over thirty hours. He's actually
Speaker 2: killed three different times. They've got a doctor there that
Speaker 2: when the first two times when he died, they would
Speaker 2: inject adrenaline into his heart to restart his heart so
Speaker 2: they could kill him again. It's just horrific what they
Speaker 2: did to Kiki. And they also did the same thing
Speaker 2: to the pilot I think his name was Zavala. Then
Speaker 2: you know, of course Dea realizes that Keiki's missing because
Speaker 2: he didn't show up for wife, his lunch with his wife,
Speaker 2: and then he done show Homan that night, and so
Speaker 2: this massive man hunt is underway. The United States starts
Speaker 2: supplying pressure to the Mexican government. Finally they create they
Speaker 2: just designate somebody to be a scapegoat and they kill
Speaker 2: them and throw them out and said, okay, there's the
Speaker 2: guy killed Kiki and the pilot. Well, the United States
Speaker 2: knew that wasn't true. So our president back at the time,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure we have presidents that have these
Speaker 2: kind of honas now, but the president back then shut
Speaker 2: down the border between the United States and Mexico. It
Speaker 2: took less than one day for the Mexican government come
Speaker 2: back and say, okay, okay, we're back in. I think
Speaker 2: it took thirty days before they finally found Kiki's body.
Speaker 2: Him and the pilot were wrapped up in plastic. Seeing
Speaker 2: that what the response of the United States was, and
Speaker 2: it might be the same now because we have a
Speaker 2: new president. But past administrations would certainly not have gone
Speaker 2: to those links because the d agent was killed. So
Speaker 2: if you think about it, the drug traffickers are in
Speaker 2: business to make money. If you shut down the border,
Speaker 2: they can't get the product into the United States, where
Speaker 2: you know, we're the leading consumer country of ill legal
Speaker 2: narcotics in the world. That's a reputation we truly enjoy having.
Speaker 2: It's outrageous. But they knew that if I mean we
Speaker 2: had wire taps, one wire tap, we're Pablo's talking makes
Speaker 2: reference to the two gringos, and then a short time
Speaker 2: later he actually mentions the name's Penyon Murphy. That was
Speaker 2: worse than finding out there's a three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: bounds in just guys knew your name.
Speaker 1: But then it becomes personal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, so if I think Pablo knew
Speaker 2: that if he really took us out, they could have
Speaker 2: killed us numerous times. I mean that we're out on operations,
Speaker 2: anything could happen. But then you know they're not going
Speaker 2: to make the money that that's what they're in business for.
Speaker 2: So that's why we say Kiki's legacy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's passed on them. I suppose it gives
Speaker 1: a sense that there's going to be a reaction that
Speaker 1: people don't want to coming if something happens to people
Speaker 1: like yourself. I'm glad that so the response was done
Speaker 1: because that's the topic response it's needed, right, So what
Speaker 1: were the strategies got him out of prison? He's creating
Speaker 1: chios and chaos is a nice way of putting the
Speaker 1: horrific situation with people being killed, left, frought and center.
Speaker 1: What were the strategies to bring him down? And the
Speaker 1: people that you're working with to to yeah, find you.
Speaker 2: Well with the IRO ambassador brought in the Seal Team
Speaker 2: Sex and the Delta Force guys, the operators, these the
Speaker 2: Delton Seals guys. They brought in assets that we didn't
Speaker 2: have access to, so they were able to glean intelligence
Speaker 2: that we were getting real time intelligence that hey, Pablo's here,
Speaker 2: Pablo's there. And this is in the first few weeks.
Speaker 2: I remember we went to a huge church and just
Speaker 2: searched that in the middle of the night when we
Speaker 2: finally we were able to get out, get some troops
Speaker 2: to go and and just you know, we searched for
Speaker 2: a couple of hours, couldn't find a thing. And you know,
Speaker 2: the the lower ranking Columbian officers or they're getting tired
Speaker 2: and they were just want to go back to the
Speaker 2: barracks and sleep and and I'm not wanting to leave.
Speaker 2: And Taivea is the same way. We got to keep going,
Speaker 2: got to keep going, got to keep going, and eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, the commander of the unit comes over and
Speaker 2: he's like, look, but we're going, we're going. We can't
Speaker 2: find it. He's not here, and it's it just over
Speaker 2: and over. There was times when we hit one cabin
Speaker 2: and the coffee was still warm in the mug, there
Speaker 2: was a cigarette and the ashtray still burning, you know.
Speaker 2: And Pop Poplo was known he liked. He had it
Speaker 2: this fetish for fancy bathrooms, you know, gold plated fixtures
Speaker 2: and things like that, you go in these little shannies
Speaker 2: and and but it had a really nice bathroom. You
Speaker 2: knew that was Poblo's, you know, one of his places, okay,
Speaker 2: And he'd always have he'd have a lady in there cooking,
Speaker 2: and they'd have a young girl in there as the
Speaker 2: cleaning lady. But more like you know, his personal enjoyment
Speaker 2: type things.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what was the what was the thing that fondly,
Speaker 1: uh like kated him?
Speaker 2: It was, Well, so Colonel Ugo Martinez is our boss.
Speaker 2: He's the guy in charge of the blokie de busca
Speaker 2: the search box what it translates to. And his son
Speaker 2: is a lieutenant, Lieutenant Ugo Martinez. Well, the lieutenant taught
Speaker 2: himself how to use radio directional finding equipment. The government
Speaker 2: of France donated a bunch of vans that had radio
Speaker 2: directional finding equipment mounted in them, and the algorithm that
Speaker 2: they used back then was triangulation, which is pretty simple
Speaker 2: to figure out. You know, Medine's built in a bowl.
Speaker 2: So you put three vans up on high spots. They
Speaker 2: shoot the signal out where the three signals intersect. That's
Speaker 2: where Pablo's phone is coming from. Because it wasn't three G,
Speaker 2: four G, five G phones like we enjoy today. They
Speaker 2: were basically radio telephones. If he wanted to he knew
Speaker 2: we were listening. If he wanted to thwart our efforts
Speaker 2: to listen to him, all he had to do is
Speaker 2: change frequency. But the challenge to him was he had
Speaker 2: to get the new frequency to the people he wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to. So it wasn't quite as easy to
Speaker 2: spend that dial. So they get they get the triangulation.
Speaker 2: They triangulate on the signal. The margin of error back
Speaker 2: that time could be two three city blocks large. So
Speaker 2: to refine that, to refine that area down, you send
Speaker 2: somebody in with holding an antenna out the car window,
Speaker 2: driving down the street. And that was Lieutenant Martinez. He's
Speaker 2: he's got a meter in one hand, he's got driver
Speaker 2: driving him and he's driving down the street. He gets us.
Speaker 2: He thinks he's found this warehouse, and so they bring
Speaker 2: the Deheen guys in, they launch an operation. It's an
Speaker 2: empty warehouse. So, I mean, you know the grief he
Speaker 2: caught from all the other cops because like, oh, you idiot,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, you know how we are.
Speaker 1: You make a mistake, you pay for it, and you ridicule.
Speaker 2: Yes do So he what he did is he found
Speaker 2: there was a body of water next to the this warehouse,
Speaker 2: and water will affect the way that radio waves passed
Speaker 2: through the air. So he recalibrated his equipment to uh
Speaker 2: include that water area, and he gets another hit. So
Speaker 2: he's driving down the street holding this antenta out the window.
Speaker 2: He says, we've got a reenactment video where he's actually interviewed,
Speaker 2: and he looks up and he says he sees Pablo
Speaker 2: Escobar on the phone talking looking at him. Well, we're
Speaker 2: listening to the phone call on the wire tap. There's
Speaker 2: never any we listened to this a lot of times.
Speaker 2: There's never any indication that Pablo saw Lieutenant Martinez or
Speaker 2: this man driving down the street holding an antenna out
Speaker 2: the window, which was, you know, something you don't see
Speaker 2: every day. And the only explanation we've ever come up
Speaker 2: with is like when you ask me a question, I'm
Speaker 2: reliving a lot of things in my mind, and I'm
Speaker 2: seeing you on the screen, but I'm more in my
Speaker 2: mind reliving things I don't I mean, you could pick
Speaker 2: your nose, I probably wouldn't even pick up.
Speaker 1: On it because I didn't by that allegation stuff I
Speaker 1: was not and I didn't see it.
Speaker 2: I didn't see it. So and that's the only thing
Speaker 2: we can every only explanation we ever came up with. Well,
Speaker 2: now you've got one hundred percent confirmation there's Pablo in
Speaker 2: this row house. So I'm back at the base and
Speaker 2: I'm actually in the room with all the gringoes talking
Speaker 2: because you know, it's just kind of nice to talk
Speaker 2: to your countryman every once in a while and just
Speaker 2: you're talking sports or whatever, girlfriends or whatever. And I
Speaker 2: see it. We're in this quad area, and I see
Speaker 2: the executive staff for the colonel as majors and his
Speaker 2: lieutenant colonel's running across the squad and that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's clue something's going on. So I told the gringoes.
Speaker 2: I said, hey, man, something's happening. I'll be right back.
Speaker 2: And so I go to the Colonel Martinez's office. And
Speaker 2: we had in a good enough relationship, a mutual respect
Speaker 2: that he sees me at the door and he said,
Speaker 2: come on. He come on in, and he's on the
Speaker 2: phone with the lieutenant and he's giving him instructure. He's like, okay,
Speaker 2: he says, we've got Pablo located without you know, with
Speaker 2: one hundred percent margin of air or no margin of
Speaker 2: air whatsoever. Colonel saying, okay, we're loading up the troops. Well,
Speaker 2: loading up six hundred people takes a while. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't knock it out in five or ten minutes,
Speaker 2: he said. But whatever you do, don't let him get away.
Speaker 2: Surround it and keep him there. Don't let him get away. Well,
Speaker 2: these the heen guys, they interpreted to that to meus
Speaker 2: go get him. The American operators had taught them how
Speaker 2: to use debt cord to blow doors open. So they
Speaker 2: this is a three story rowhouse. They line the front door,
Speaker 2: blow the door off, the engines, they go in. The
Speaker 2: first floor is a combination garage, kitchen, laundry room or
Speaker 2: cleaning room. Maybe made's quarters back there. Then you go
Speaker 2: to the second floor and there's a living room, there's
Speaker 2: a couple bedrooms, and the third floors all bedrooms and bathrooms.
Speaker 2: So as they get up to the second floor, they
Speaker 2: clear the first floor. They go to the second floor,
Speaker 2: there's Pablo running up to the third floor. They exchange
Speaker 2: shots with each other. One police officer actually tripped on
Speaker 2: the steps, which saved his life because Pablo shot at
Speaker 2: him right at that time and it went right over
Speaker 2: top of his head. Poblo at one time had as
Speaker 2: many as five hundred cicario as protecting him. On December second,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, he was down to one guy. His
Speaker 2: nickname was lemon On I can't remember his real name.
Speaker 2: Lemon gets to the third floor window. The rowhouse behind
Speaker 2: him was a two story, so he could jump out
Speaker 2: that window onto the roof of this two story and
Speaker 2: then they were going to make their escape out the
Speaker 2: back way well. The cops had sent a couple guys
Speaker 2: around the back. They ordered Lemona to drop his we
Speaker 2: weapons and surrender. He starts shooting at him from the
Speaker 2: roof and they tune him up and he falls off
Speaker 2: dead onto the ground. Now Pablo gets up to that
Speaker 2: third window, or that third floor, and that window he
Speaker 2: knows good guys are coming up steps. Now he's heard
Speaker 2: this shooting outside, so he knows there's good guys out there,
Speaker 2: and he knows he's in a crossfire. He goes in
Speaker 2: and jumps out the roof. The building next to this
Speaker 2: two story was another three stories, so there's a wall
Speaker 2: here and Pablo is trying to inch along that wall
Speaker 2: to see where the guys are on the ground. These
Speaker 2: guys are coming up to the front window. He's like,
Speaker 2: screw it. He takes off a run across the roof,
Speaker 2: shooting at them, shooting at them. They catch him in
Speaker 2: a crossfire. He's hit three times, once in the back
Speaker 2: of the leg, once in the butt cheek, which both
Speaker 2: of those are knocked down shots, but neither one was
Speaker 2: a kill shot. And then the kill shot was a
Speaker 2: two twenty three round through the ear. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of speculation about that round through the ear. His son,
Speaker 2: Wan Pablo, would have you believe that his dad committed suicide.
Speaker 2: I've took the pictures. We don't post those on the
Speaker 2: meat on the internet. But you can see them all
Speaker 2: on the internet because people take pricktures during our presentations
Speaker 2: and they post them. When I was a city cop,
Speaker 2: I've worked murders and I've worked suicides. I'm also a
Speaker 2: former fire arms instructor for DEEA. You know that when
Speaker 2: you shoot a bullet and it comes out the end
Speaker 2: of the barrel, there's little bits of gunpowder that follow
Speaker 2: the bullet out and they'll travel a certain distance before
Speaker 2: they lose their velocity and follow the ground. Even if
Speaker 2: you could hold a gun at arm's length. And remember
Speaker 2: it's the two twenty three, So now he's going to
Speaker 2: have to turn a rifle around and shoot himself into ear.
Speaker 2: There would be powder burns all over the side of
Speaker 2: his head. You can go online and look those pictures.
Speaker 2: I promise you there's not a single powder burn on there.
Speaker 2: So he was killed by the Columbia National Police. It's
Speaker 2: not suicide, you know, the kid. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe if my if Pablo Escobar had been
Speaker 2: my dad, I think I'd like to change the legacy
Speaker 2: of his memory too. But that's not true. It's it's
Speaker 2: a lie.
Speaker 1: If you'll you have sayen that in a gunshop residue
Speaker 1: there when it happened. You've you've come out shortly after,
Speaker 1: and some of some of the five days that you
Speaker 1: talk about, the five days that have been at in
Speaker 1: the public, they were five days that you actually talk.
Speaker 2: Right, you know. You see on a Narco series it
Speaker 2: shows that I was on the roof when Pablo was killed.
Speaker 2: That's not true. I wrote out after the fact with
Speaker 2: Colonel Martinez and his jeep.
Speaker 1: And when when you got there, you had to go there,
Speaker 1: I identify him and just corroborate the fact that it
Speaker 1: is him. How did you feel.
Speaker 2: When one of the majors on the de Henion after
Speaker 2: they killed Pablo, he comes back in radio's back Viva Columbia.
Speaker 2: Pablo is dead. I took off running over to the
Speaker 2: wire room to call the embassy to you know, because
Speaker 2: you've got to let your bosses know what happened. And
Speaker 2: so I couldn't get through to the d A office
Speaker 2: to the front office. So I ended up calling our
Speaker 2: admin office. When the secretary's answered and she's like, oh, hey, Steve,
Speaker 2: how you doing. I'm like, go get mister Taff was
Speaker 2: our boss. I said, go get mister Toff. Oh okay, is
Speaker 2: everything okay? I'm like, go get mister Toff now, quit
Speaker 2: wasting time, you know. And so it took two three
Speaker 2: minutes before he came on the phone, which just seemed
Speaker 2: like an eternity because I know that they're mounting up
Speaker 2: the troops and getting ready to go out there. When
Speaker 2: mister Toff comes on the phone, the first thing he
Speaker 2: says is they just kill Pablo. I'm like, well, no shit,
Speaker 2: that's why I'm calling you. And so I told him
Speaker 2: what had happened, and he said, listen, get out there,
Speaker 2: confirm this is Pablo. You know, we've been down this
Speaker 2: road before where we get our hopes up. Go make
Speaker 2: sure this is Pablo. So I run back to the
Speaker 2: barracks to get my gear, you know, a gun and everything,
Speaker 2: and come running back out and everybody is gone. The
Speaker 2: only people there are the guards on the gates. I
Speaker 2: don't have a car, I don't know where they are.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm old, dressed up, and no way they
Speaker 1: got exactly right.
Speaker 2: So I'm just standing there just trying to go through
Speaker 2: my mind. Right, how am I going to do this?
Speaker 2: Maybe I could call a taxi or you know, And
Speaker 2: finally here comes Colonel Martinez with his protection detail, driving
Speaker 2: back in and he sees me standing out in the
Speaker 2: middle of quality. He say, Steve, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: They actually called me Steak Stick cause they couldn't They
Speaker 2: couldn't say Steve, so it came out of Stick. It
Speaker 2: was my nickname. He says, Stick, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: And I said, I need a ride. Colonel He's like,
Speaker 2: get the jeep, you know. So I ride out with him.
Speaker 2: We get out there, We go in the door that
Speaker 2: the Deheen guys had made entry. We searched the first floor,
Speaker 2: take pictures, go to the second floor, take pictures. Get
Speaker 2: to the third floor and that's the window. So I
Speaker 2: get to that wind and I look out and there's
Speaker 2: all our Deheen buddies out there over the body. And
Speaker 2: I yelled to them and they're all yelling back, holding
Speaker 2: their rifles up. You know, we got him. We got him.
Speaker 2: It's Bablo. He's dead. Well now thousands of people are
Speaker 2: starting to come out because they just heard this big,
Speaker 2: massive gun battle. We've got our six hundred people out there.
Speaker 2: Then the Columbian military shows up with a couple hundreds.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's great security, but Eventually I
Speaker 2: got around back with the colonel and we climbed up
Speaker 2: on the roof and that's when I took the pictures
Speaker 2: of Pablo, and the whole purpose of that was for
Speaker 2: identification purposes. When that was over, we're standing on the
Speaker 2: roof and this group of people show up and they're
Speaker 2: making a commotion and I looked at one of the
Speaker 2: lieutenant Colonels was up there. Colonel Colias was with me
Speaker 2: and I said, Colonel, who's that down there? And he said, well,
Speaker 2: that's Pablo's mom and that's Pablo's sister. Like oh really,
Speaker 2: so let's just watch them for a minute. So we
Speaker 2: watch them and they're arguing with the police and the military,
Speaker 2: and finally his sister she's really loud and obnoxious. She's like,
Speaker 2: I want to see you say that's Pablo on the ground.
Speaker 2: I want to see him. I want to see that
Speaker 2: that's my brother. So she goes over to where Limonum,
Speaker 2: the bodyguard, is laying and she just goes off on
Speaker 2: the police. She's like, oh, you idiots, that's not Pablo.
Speaker 2: Whiskey bar, you killed the wrong person. You don't even
Speaker 2: know what you're doing. And she just lets them have it.
Speaker 2: Finally she calms down and one of the cops looks
Speaker 2: at her and look on the roof. Bitch, that's what
Speaker 2: Pablo was, was up on the roof. So I stick
Speaker 2: around watched them. Once the mother and the sister saw
Speaker 2: Pablo's body brought off the roof, and I saw their reaction,
Speaker 2: there was no question in my mind whatsoever that was
Speaker 2: Pablo Escobar. Now the police were worried about my safety
Speaker 2: because you know, we weren't allowed to wear anything that
Speaker 2: looked like police and military, so we typically wore, you know,
Speaker 2: polo shirts and jeans, tennis shoes, whatever reason. That day
Speaker 2: I had a red polo shirt on, which really I
Speaker 2: don't stick out enough, so I wrote, wore a red shirt,
Speaker 2: you know, go figure.
Speaker 1: Good choice.
Speaker 2: So now the press is starting to show up, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to be on camera because we don't
Speaker 2: want this to look like it was orchestrated by the
Speaker 2: United States. We want the Columbia National Police to have
Speaker 2: the credit for everything, and rightfully so. So the colonels,
Speaker 2: like Lieutenant Colonel, he said, okay, Steve, we're going to
Speaker 2: get you back, and so he gave me a protection
Speaker 2: detail and they escort me back to the base that night.
Speaker 2: I mean we went into total lockdown. You were you know,
Speaker 2: I know you see this on TV, but you literally
Speaker 2: have your gun under your pillow because you're expecting this
Speaker 2: retaliatory tax, you know, retaliation from the narcos. Quiet at night,
Speaker 2: I ever spent money.
Speaker 1: And this was that night.
Speaker 2: Next day they made Hoavier go to Miami to talk
Speaker 2: to an informant, which is a bogus trip. We knew
Speaker 2: the informant didn't have the information, but the ambassador order
Speaker 2: how to go. So he flew back into that pub
Speaker 2: was killed on a Thursday. He flew back to Bogaton
Speaker 2: on Thursday night. Friday, he flew up to Median sent
Speaker 2: a gunship out to bring him into the base. You know,
Speaker 2: high five, congratulations and all that. We were there for
Speaker 2: a couple hours, and he and I Friday night flew
Speaker 2: back to Bogota and we weren't supposed to ride taxis
Speaker 2: down there because of the danger factor. Well, the embassy
Speaker 2: didn't send anybody out to pick us up, so we
Speaker 2: jumped to the taxi went back to the embassy. My
Speaker 2: wife was working in the see at that time, and
Speaker 2: it's probably six thirty seven o'clock at night, and you know,
Speaker 2: she had lots of pizzas and lots of cases of beer,
Speaker 2: and we celebrated that night. We got home Saturday morning,
Speaker 2: probably about ten thirty eleven o'clock. It was an all nighter.
Speaker 2: It was one hell of a party. Well it was,
Speaker 2: and that was a long story of your short question.
Speaker 2: It felt like the weight of the world had been
Speaker 2: lifted off our shoulders. I mean, it's my wife and
Speaker 2: I had adopted our first daughter down there in October
Speaker 2: before Pablo was killed, and then I had to go
Speaker 2: back to Media Inc. And Monica at that time, she
Speaker 2: was at eight months old and we got her and
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm not even getting to spend any
Speaker 2: time with my new daughter. So it was it was
Speaker 2: it's hard to describe. It's just, you know, Wow, he's
Speaker 2: finally dead. He's really finally dead.
Speaker 1: And do what was the ongoing reaction from that? Did
Speaker 1: it make a difference.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, and a lot of people ask
Speaker 2: us that, especially when we go to the UK. Here's
Speaker 2: what we did. We and you you already mentioned the statistics.
Speaker 2: In ninety two and ninety three, medi in Columbia was
Speaker 2: the murder capital of the entire world, one of the
Speaker 2: most dangerous cities in the world. So we looked at
Speaker 2: the murder rate in Meding prior to Pablo's death, and
Speaker 2: then we waited a couple of months and checked the
Speaker 2: murder rate, and you can go. I challenge every audience
Speaker 2: to go check it and see if I'm telling the truth,
Speaker 2: because what I found and what you'll find, is that
Speaker 2: the murder rate in Median, Columbia had dropped by almost
Speaker 2: eighty percent simply because Pablo Escobar was dead. Now did
Speaker 2: we do we make a difference on cocaine trafficking? We did,
Speaker 2: probably lasted maybe two weeks at most. The sad thing
Speaker 2: is here in the United States right now you can
Speaker 2: go on almost any street corner by cocaine, certain areas
Speaker 2: of town you go to. So people say, well, the
Speaker 2: war on drugs is lost, that it has just been
Speaker 2: away at coloss a waste of time and human life. Well,
Speaker 2: what would it be like if law enforced wasn't out
Speaker 2: there fighting the scourge? You know, would you be safe
Speaker 2: to do anything? Because there's going to be drug addicts everywhere.
Speaker 2: They're going to be robbing here, They're going to be
Speaker 2: still and you're going to kill, you gonna be jacking
Speaker 2: your car. It made a difference. It's just it didn't
Speaker 2: end the war on drugs. That's not going to happen
Speaker 2: until the demand goes away.
Speaker 1: How do you approach it? That's a subject for another
Speaker 1: another time. I think highlighting what you were doing. Your
Speaker 1: job was to locate and capture Pablo Escobar, and by
Speaker 1: doing so you made a difference and a job of
Speaker 1: that magnitude. That's like an investigation on steroids. Were you
Speaker 1: on a low after it? Like did you you feel
Speaker 1: like you lack purpose? Or did you use it to
Speaker 1: just go Okay, I've done the hard yards. Now I
Speaker 1: can have a bit of a bit of a rest
Speaker 1: or take some time to find myself again.
Speaker 2: Well, I was there until June. So he was killed
Speaker 2: Decemberary three and asked for back to the United States.
Speaker 2: Since in June of ninety four and Javier came out.
Speaker 2: I think in September. I ended up in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Never seen praight cocaine in my life. I've spent four
Speaker 2: years in Miami, three years in Bogata, and I ended
Speaker 2: up Greensboro. And right, cocaine is the that's the drug
Speaker 2: evil drug of that area at the time, so you
Speaker 2: addressed whatever the drug problem is in the area that
Speaker 2: you're assigned. But when I got to Greensboro and I
Speaker 2: didn't even know where it was, I had to look
Speaker 2: it up on the map. When I got to Greensboro,
Speaker 2: I felt like that's when the job got to be
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. That there had I had no
Speaker 2: pressure whatsoever to prove myself to anybody. I felt like
Speaker 2: I survived Miami in the nineteen eighties, I survived the
Speaker 2: Pablo Escobar man hunt. That's when a job got to
Speaker 2: be fun. I mean, we had five agents trying to
Speaker 2: cover twenty plus counties, so we always worked at our
Speaker 2: state and local park nurse, which quite honestly, I prefer
Speaker 2: working with anyway, because they're a lot more fun to
Speaker 2: hang out with, and you know, they don't complain when
Speaker 2: it's quitting time. And I mean they're dedicated, and most
Speaker 2: most d agents are, but not all. So I guess
Speaker 2: that was the thing for me. It was it was
Speaker 2: I had come I had become a workaholic, I think.
Speaker 2: I mean we were Gosh, if you were in the embassy,
Speaker 2: we lived off off the coffee and doughnuts, every day.
Speaker 2: It was that sugar and caffeine kept you going. I'd
Speaker 2: stop by the nurses station and get my blood pressure
Speaker 2: checked and it was never high. You know, I say
Speaker 2: it was I felt like, you know, the good man
Speaker 2: upstairs was taking care of me healthwise. The Columbia National Police,
Speaker 2: especially the dehing guys. When the bullets started flying, we
Speaker 2: knew they wouldn't run off and leave us. I mean
Speaker 2: they'd stand there and fight to protect us. But they
Speaker 2: knew we wouldn't run off and leave them either. So
Speaker 2: it was just it was one of the I would
Speaker 2: I never want to do any of that again, especially
Speaker 2: at this old man age, but I wouldn't trade it
Speaker 2: for the world. It's what we're doing in retirement is
Speaker 2: I never dreamt we'd be doing anything like this. It's
Speaker 2: I mean, being on a podcast with you and you're
Speaker 2: in Australia. I mean I get to travel the world
Speaker 2: just our Kenthon. You're traveling around the world telling the
Speaker 2: true story about bablu Escobar. We talk about leadership, decision making, teamwork.
Speaker 2: It's I'm having a blast in retirement. I have to see.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, like full credit to you, but I think
Speaker 1: it starts and you didn't start off that investigation thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in twenty years thirty years time, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be doing a tour around the world. I'm going to
Speaker 1: speak on someone's podcast overseas. And that's I can see
Speaker 1: and I know, yeah, you're a cop, you know other cops.
Speaker 1: I can see the joy that you took from the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing. It has the highs, it has
Speaker 1: the horror, but there's also something that, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the right fit for you, obviously doing policing your life
Speaker 1: after policing, hope, noting a round the world, and yeah,
Speaker 1: your Netflix series Knockofs tell us how it came about.
Speaker 2: You know, a friend of mine had introduced me to
Speaker 2: Hollywood producers and Hobby and are stilling the job, and
Speaker 2: I would call him. He was in Texas, I was
Speaker 2: in Virginia, and you kind of get your hopes up that, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe somebody is interested in this story because it was
Speaker 2: so long ago, and both of those producers wanted to
Speaker 2: take our story and make political statements out of it.
Speaker 2: I say, I'm about as a political as you're going
Speaker 2: to get. So you get your hopes up, but then
Speaker 2: nothing happens and you get disappointed. So when I got
Speaker 2: the call about this guy named Eric Newman and Hollywood
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to us, I refused to call him
Speaker 2: to start with. And the guy that called me was
Speaker 2: an old Breen buddy, and I told him, I said, okay,
Speaker 2: he cussed me out to what he did, and I's like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll call him. I'll call him. So I called Eric
Speaker 2: and he kind of gave me his little spill on
Speaker 2: the phone and I said, you know, thank you, but
Speaker 2: I think we'll pass. And he got real quiet on
Speaker 2: the phone. I said to Eric, are you still there?
Speaker 2: And he's like, I can't believe you just said no.
Speaker 2: And we've since learned that people will pretty much sell
Speaker 2: their soul to be on TV in Hollywood. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's some strange people out there. And so he said, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm coming to Washington next month. Would you can I
Speaker 2: take you to dinner. I have a couple of writers.
Speaker 2: Let's just talk about this and see if we can
Speaker 2: change your mind. And againy, you will understand this. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking that's going to be a free dinner and a
Speaker 2: really nice restaurant. Yes, I will meet you. That it
Speaker 2: was as a French restaurant, so we you know, after
Speaker 2: we talked to them, I just kind of developed a
Speaker 2: connection with them. They were very open and honest and
Speaker 2: transparent about everything. And so we're getting ready to leave
Speaker 2: the restaurant. He says, so what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, let me talk to Hoare and
Speaker 2: let's maybe we'll pursue this and see where it goes.
Speaker 2: So my initial conversation with Eric was in February of thirteen.
Speaker 2: In March is when we had dinner. In May, we
Speaker 2: signed contracts with Netflix, and at the end of June,
Speaker 2: I retired from DEEA. I retired from law enforcement after
Speaker 2: thirty eight years. And in July we were sitting in
Speaker 2: Hollywood starting to write the first season of Narco's with
Speaker 2: all the writers. So it went just like that.
Speaker 1: Perfect, perfect Tommy for you. The obvious question you want
Speaker 1: to ask is who's going to play you? At what
Speaker 1: point in time did you ask who's going to play It?
Speaker 2: Wasn't too far into it. There was between Eric and
Speaker 2: one of his other producers is a guy named Chris Francato,
Speaker 2: who this and I have stayed friends and I've worked
Speaker 2: on a couple of other projects with him. And I
Speaker 2: think what they would do is they would there are
Speaker 2: organizations in Hollywood that, you know, their talent Agency, so
Speaker 2: they represent certain actors and actresses, and so they would
Speaker 2: bring us these booklets and said here's somebody you know
Speaker 2: the book that might be this thick and they'd say,
Speaker 2: here's some of the people were thinking about playing your part.
Speaker 2: And he started going through. Then you see John Travolta,
Speaker 2: and you see Armie Hammer, and you see Jake Jillen Hall,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, holy cow, I'm not a big TV watcher,
Speaker 2: but even I knew who these people were. And I
Speaker 2: think it was just to playcad us, to keep us
Speaker 2: from asking questions, because that's not who they hired at all.
Speaker 1: Right, just keep these idiots happy.
Speaker 2: Exactly, That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's an experience and that it's been. I believe it's
Speaker 1: one of the top Netflix series that they put out,
Speaker 1: the original series. And the question that often gets us too,
Speaker 1: when your life or the investigations played out in the
Speaker 1: TV world, was it true and in terms of things
Speaker 1: that happened, what's your take on Knickos.
Speaker 2: The timeline, the chronological timeline is pretty accurate, but we
Speaker 2: did it only in our own analysis of the first
Speaker 2: two seasons, because that's the twenty episodes about Pablo Escobar,
Speaker 2: and we figured that about a third of what you
Speaker 2: see in there is true. The second third, well, those
Speaker 2: events happened, but they haven't been portrayed correctly. They've been
Speaker 2: dramatized greatly, or they've taken other incidents and combined them
Speaker 2: and things like that. But then that last there is
Speaker 2: just straight out and make believe Hollywood. You know, I
Speaker 2: was never kidnapped. We weren't pushing people out of helicopter
Speaker 2: doors at three thousand feet. Javier wasn't passing class find
Speaker 2: information to lost peppies. But like I take you know
Speaker 2: one on stage, what I joke around about it. What
Speaker 2: is true is that Javier really is a man slut.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because when his wife's when his wife's
Speaker 2: in the audience, I always go before the show and say, Beverly,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm going to say, Are you okay
Speaker 2: with us? It's like, yeah, go ahead, don't know what
Speaker 2: you're doing.
Speaker 1: Well that that's good, but that's certainly the way he
Speaker 1: was portrayed, but he seems to enjoy it. It must
Speaker 1: be great. You two still been in contact. When you've
Speaker 1: been through an experience like you went through. I take
Speaker 1: it you've remained lifelong friends. And you must be having
Speaker 1: a ball doing what you're doing because you do some
Speaker 1: live shows as well. You've been able to overdo Australia
Speaker 1: and UK and across America. You enjoying yourself?
Speaker 2: Yeah, brother, I'm having a blast. It's we've been on
Speaker 2: every content that except Africa and Antarctica, and I'm not
Speaker 2: going to Antarctica. But we were supposed to go to
Speaker 2: Africa the first year of COVID, and of course that
Speaker 2: killed that. That our four years before COVID, we averaged
Speaker 2: seventy five shows a year. So I saw hobbyer born
Speaker 2: and I saw my wife, but my marriage was stronger
Speaker 2: than ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I wasn't on You've got to get a
Speaker 1: wife from him. You probably probably probably seek of him.
Speaker 1: And what's the you're also doing the podcast Game of Crimes.
Speaker 1: What's what's the backstory to that?
Speaker 2: It's very similar to what you're doing. It's I started
Speaker 2: out with a friend of mine. We came up to
Speaker 2: this idea. He was used to be a Kansas State
Speaker 2: trooper and a detective out there and during COVID, we
Speaker 2: got bored and decided we start a podcast. And I
Speaker 2: don't even know what a podcast was, but he did,
Speaker 2: so we're He had to leave the show last April
Speaker 2: because he still had a day job and they increased
Speaker 2: his responsibilities, but they also doubled his paycheck and that
Speaker 2: pays a whole lot more than a podcast. Okay, but
Speaker 2: coming up on the end of the fourth year here
Speaker 2: in June, going to start the fifth year. Every show
Speaker 2: has a guest. It's mostly current or law enforcement. Occasionally
Speaker 2: a first responder or military. I bring in the military veterans,
Speaker 2: and even every once in a while I'll bring in
Speaker 2: a former bad guy and then let the listeners get
Speaker 2: the perspective from his viewpoint. And most of them, they
Speaker 2: they have to have a tone for for their crimes.
Speaker 2: You know, most of them have done their time in
Speaker 2: prison and they've changed their lives. And I have one
Speaker 2: guy that was the just a couple of months ago,
Speaker 2: that was the president of the Hell's Angels in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles for thirty five years, and he really wouldn't come
Speaker 2: off of it. He did his prison time. But you know,
Speaker 2: I asked him, I said, anything you'd changed in your life,
Speaker 2: and he's like, Nope, not a thing. So you know,
Speaker 2: he's the only one that really hasn't come across the
Speaker 2: you know, to be a good guy.
Speaker 1: Now, it's interesting, interesting, Steve, you're touring, touring the world.
Speaker 1: You've got the TV series pubcast, Wilse. I write a book,
Speaker 1: Man Hunters and the Bringing Them Pablo Escoba, which I
Speaker 1: read cover the cover, and it's a great read and
Speaker 1: gives a really good insight into what you've what you've done.
Speaker 2: Just to give you a little inside secret, we had
Speaker 2: a go straighter. No no, well, I tried to and
Speaker 2: it looked like a third reader had written.
Speaker 1: Well when I left the Cops and trying to like
Speaker 1: I was doing journalism and writing articles and the book
Speaker 1: it looked like a fact sheet until someone pulled me
Speaker 1: aside and slapped me and said, it looks stupid. Had
Speaker 1: a bit of color to this. We just don't want
Speaker 1: a fact shet. Okay, all right, I had a bit
Speaker 1: if I went back to the cops. Now, I'd love
Speaker 1: to write a fact sheet because would be very creative.
Speaker 1: It it'd be a cold, dark night when I came
Speaker 1: across the seas. Oh yeah, yeah, anyway, look, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for your time, and we literally have just
Speaker 1: scratch scratched the surface of your stories. But from a
Speaker 1: law enforcement officers point of view, I think what you did,
Speaker 1: I can see the sacrifices you made, and we haven't
Speaker 1: really delved into all the sacrifices you made in your
Speaker 1: personal sacrifices hunting down the world's most wanted man and
Speaker 1: all the other things that you've done in your career.
Speaker 1: But also someone like you, I think inspires law enforcement officers,
Speaker 1: Like you're this dumb, dumb kid from the country that
Speaker 1: ended up living the life that you live because of
Speaker 1: the job that you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been blessed in my life. I've been blessed
Speaker 2: in my career. You know, you mentioned the families of
Speaker 2: our families that sacrifice so much. I refer to them
Speaker 2: as the unsung heroes, so I always give them a
Speaker 2: shout out, and just to finish up about the esc
Speaker 2: of our story, the real heroes. It's not half of
Speaker 2: your opinion, Steve Murphy. It's not the United States. It's
Speaker 2: Columbia National Police because they took their country back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it always comes across when I hear you
Speaker 1: talk about giving the tribute to to the sacrifices they
Speaker 1: made as well. But look it's been an honor and
Speaker 1: the privilege and I've really enjoyed, enjoyed the chaps.
Speaker 2: Take care of again.
Speaker 1: You look like you're enjoying life.
Speaker 2: Life is good. I'm sitting at the beach right now,
Speaker 2: so there you got good stuff. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Thank you.