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