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