Original subtitles

He built his cocaine empire

on a foundation riddled with violence, blood, and addiction.

His menacing brutality forever changed a country,

but his dangerous commodity destroyed families

and entire communities.

This is a story of Pablo Escobar, the king of cocaine.

For over a decade, the name Pablo Escobar was synonymous

with cocaine and violence.

He revolutionized the industry of drug trafficking

and became king of Colombian coke.

Escobar maintained control of his drug empire

through intimidation and fear.

At the same time, he fed the poor of his land

and built them homes, schools, and hospitals.

Colombian-born Pablo Escobar is credited

with exploiting America's insatiable love

and desire for cocaine.

Through his marketing strategy

of killing anyone who stood in his way,

Escobar transformed Columbia's mom-and-pop-style

cocaine industry into a multi-billion dollar conglomerate.

Along with his compadres of the Medellin cartel,

he developed a narcotics distribution network

that created a drug empire,

the likes of which the world had never seen.

He successfully shipped tens of thousands of tons

of the precious powder into the United States

and eventually Europe, donning him the godfather of cocaine.

Escobar was a very, a brilliant practitioner

with a strategy to protect his operations in Columbia

and to develop smuggling operations in the United States,

which allowed him to enter more cocaine here

than any other trafficker at the time.

William Gately spent 21 years

as a United States custom special agent.

During that time period,

he was responsible for numerous drug smuggling

and money laundering investigations, including two

that specifically affected Pablo Escobar's cocaine empire.

Pablo Escobar was a mafia boss.

He was a ruthless drug trafficker

who probably killed more people

than any individual drug trafficker

in the history of Columbia.

He was a ruthless killer.

This man aligned himself with narco terrorism.

He placed bombs on airplanes.

He murdered people.

Pablo Escobar was no folk hero.

He has blood on his hands in Columbia

that'll be in their history books for the next century.

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born

on December 1st, 1949, in the cattle farming district

southeast of Medellin during Columbia's era of violence.

He was a third child of farmer Abel de Jesus

and Hermilda, a primary school teacher.

Two years after his birth, a family moved to Medellin

before moving to a series of villages

where Hermilda taught school.

He was a Paisa by birth, that is an Antioquian,

and identified very closely with that region

as many of the people from that part of Columbia do.

It's got a very distinct subculture.

It's one of the reasons the Pablo Escobar never wanted

to leave Columbia to flee to other countries.

Escobar was raised

with strong traditional Catholic values.

After years of moving about Columbia,

a family eventually settled in Envigado outside of Medellin.

Bruce Bagley is a professor of international studies

at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

He has lived in Columbia off and on since 1968

and is an expert on Pablo Escobar and narco terrorism.

He built churches in Columbia

with some of the money that he had.

He donated right to the church in Medellin

and in the environments in Medellin.

At the same time, he saw no contradiction in killing people,

in acting as an extremely ruthless leader

of a criminal organization that grew exponentially

from the mid 1970s into the 1980s and beyond.

As a young boy,

Escobar developed a love for soccer,

which he maintained and supported throughout his life.

Pablo Escobar, who was also a sports fan,

decided to invest heavily in building up Colombian soccer,

and he invested the soccer teams, particularly in Medellin,

and he bought the very best talent

that he could find everywhere in Latin America.

And by the mid and late 1980s,

Pablo Escobar and the other members of the Medellin cartel

had built Colombian soccer into a world contender.

He became increasingly discontent

and impatient with school.

Escobar was very ambitious

and quickly learned that money was the ticket

to higher social circles in Columbia.

It was at this time

that he began his career as a petty thief,

stealing tombstones and sanding them down for resale.

He was a very bright child from the beginning.

Indeed, many of Columbia's major law enforcement officials

and ministers have noted

that in their conversations with him,

his intelligence was stellar.

Pablo Escobar never attended college in any serious way,

but he was a high school graduate,

at least he claimed to be, and he was a very good student.

During the mid 1960s,

Escobar's hometown of Envigado began to turn violent,

gangs emerged along with a thriving marijuana trade.

While still a teenager,

he began to associate with extortionists and car thieves

who gathered in Medellin City, Jesus Nazareno district.

By the end of the decade,

Escobar was an accomplished car thief,

an automobile smuggler with his own gang.

Everybody who knew him

during his youth commented on his quick intelligence

and his capacity to absorb information

and to put things together in ways

that many other people did not.

That's one of his greatest talents.

It made him an innovative entrepreneur

in the clandestine trade of drug trafficking.

Driven by his desire to become rich,

Escobar's criminal activities escalated to murder for hire.

Escobar's rise through Columbia's criminal ranks

was swift and violent.

He was young and ambitious, but moreover, he was smart.

He knew what he wanted

and would not allow anyone to stand in his way.

In less than a decade,

Escobar had evolved from a petty thief

to a cold-blooded contract killer.

He served a brief stint in jail

for presenting false documents.

It was his first opportunity to observe hardened prisoners

and the lawyers who defended them.

They would later become the core of his organization.

Fueled by his love of money and fast cars,

Escobar and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria

reportedly smuggled their first load of cocaine

in a car race.

They recognized when Pablo Escobar,

when his was in his early twenties,

that in comparison with stealing cars or bicycles

or windshield wipers or things like that,

that you could make a lot more money trafficking in drugs.

Escobar overcame humble beginnings

to become the world's wealthiest

and most notorious cocaine trafficker.

During the 1970s, coke became the drug of choice

for the sheik, the rich, and the famous.

It was also found to be highly addictive.

As its use exploded in the US,

Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel positioned themselves

to feed the insatiable demand.

The genesis of Pablo Escobar's rise

to international infamy began with an airplane flight

from Columbia to the United States.

In the mid 1970s,

the street value of a kilo of cocaine was $35,000,

and a small plane could carry millions of dollars worth.

The innovation was utilizing airplanes,

dropping off the loads, offloading them to cigarette boats,

and then bringing them into the United States

by boat into South Florida, particularly.

That transportation revolution was one

of the major innovations of the Medellin cartel.

After Escobar's first flight,

he decommissioned the small plane

and mounted it above the entry gate of his farm

so that everyone could see he was smuggling cocaine.

By the late 1970s with just a few flights under his belt,

Escobar had already become a millionaire.

In 1979, cocaine smuggling would enter

an extremely profitable and ultraviolet new era.

Pablo Escobar began a partnership with Carlos Lehder.

Lehder was allegedly the biggest of the drug kings.

A son of a German engineer, he grew up in Columbia.

It was Lehder who persuaded Escobar to begin

smuggling larger shipments of cocaine in larger planes.

The planes were now equipped with long range fuel tanks,

radar detectors, and communication scramblers.

To avoid American airspace,

Escobar, Lehder and others used The Bahamas as a stopover

for breaking down the cocaine shipments

before smuggling them into the US.

They pretty much brought cocaine into the country at will.

In South Florida, for example, private aircraft

and commercial aircraft were bringing tons of cocaine

into the peninsula on a daily basis.

In addition to that,

hideaways in the Bahama Islands were being used

by the Colombian, predominantly the Medellin cartel.

It was during one of their trips

to The Bahamas when they met Robert Vesco.

Vesco, who began his career as a machine tool manufacturer,

was one of the first international criminals to realize

that changes had to be made in the movement of money

and the shipping of cocaine.

The old practice of smuggling large quantities

one flight at a time is now considered to be too risky.

The big loads were coming

across the Atlantic from The Bahamas.

They were coming in the private aircraft,

and they were typically 500 to a thousand kilos at a time,

and this is an everyday event.

Entire islands were purchased by traffickers

and set up with air bases

where they transported cocaine

from the mainland of Columbia, went to the island.

Norman's Cay Island, located in The Bahamas,

was purchased by Escobar and Lehder

and was converted into a sinister military type base

equipped with sophisticated communications equipment

and navigational aids.

By the early '80s, Pablo Escobar was to cocaine trafficking

what Bill Gates would soon be to the computer industry.

He was making over half a million dollars a day,

but he had serious competition from the Ochoa brothers

and the virulent Mafioso gangster, Jose Rodriguez Gacha.

Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha was a genius

in discovering roots for smuggling into the United States.

The Ochoas were very good at laundering money.

Pablo Escobar ran the organization, if you like,

and he concentrated in his hands the roots

that were developed to bring cocaine

through airplane traffic into the United States,

at first, across the Caribbean and into South Florida.

And they innovated in a variety of different ways

in that route.

It was together that Escobar, Lehder

and the Ochoa Brothers and Gacha would spread the wealth

and share the risk in the lucrative cocaine industry.

What made him different

than any other group was this is the first time

they were really organized in the cartel-type fashion.

Special agent Ramiro Escudero spent 12 years

investigating drug trafficking and money laundering

for the FBI's Los Angeles field division.

We consumed the largest number

of drugs anywhere in the world.

Pablo Escobar was able to take advantage of that

and exploit that market.

I think before the Medellin cartel,

we had a lot of what we call smaller groups.

Pablo Escobar, along with the other members

of the Medellin cartel,

were able to mass market the cocaine.

They controlled everything from production

to transportation and distribution.

He became the king of cocaine,

even though in his own country he had a boss,

a fellow named Jose Rodriguez Gacha.

But like all bosses,

if you've got a captain of your industry

that produces more wealth for you than anyone else,

then he's your man.

A second major innovation of the Medellin cartel was

what I call their Lloyd's of London approach

to diversifying the risk.

If we assume that there were five major participants

in the Medellin cartel in the late '70s and the early '80s,

what they did was, rather than send a single shipment

in their own name into the United States

running the risk of having it confiscated,

each of the five major capos would share

one fifth of that load, so over five loads,

they would get their entire shipments in.

But if any one of those loads was captured,

each of them only lost a fifth.

The Medellin cartel was growing stronger

and more powerful with every successful shipment

into South Florida.

By the beginning of the 1980s,

Miami was engulfed in a full scale drug war

between the newly formed cartel and the Cuban mafia

who had controlled Miami's cocaine trade since the 1950s.

In 1979 and 1980, the so-called Cocaine Wars

that took place here in South Florida

that ended up with shootouts on various freeways,

some 115 people killed.

Even with all the indicators

that cocaine was becoming a boom business

in the United States,

the government in a law enforcement capacity didn't react

to it until South Florida became a Wild West show.

Won't you join Nancy, Vice President Bush and me

in urging all America's young people to just say no.

President Ronald Reagan responded

by appointing Vice President George Bush

to head a special anti-drug task force in South Florida.

Within a few months, a 500 member task force was in place

and functioning in South Florida.

I was transferred there in early '82

as a supervisor in that task force,

and in that capacity got to know the cocaine business

intimately within a few weeks of my transfer.

With South Florida's drug trade

under the control of the Medellin cartel,

Pablo Escobar was now ready to parlay his wealth

and power into a position in Colombian politics.

His perception, at least early on

by the average Colombian, was interesting enough,

a very positive one.

James Finkenauer was a professor

of criminal justice at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

He was sort of like a Robinhood character

in that what he would do is he would use some

of his enormous wealth to build housing for the poor

and provide other kinds of services for the poor.

Well, Pablo Escobar sought to curry support

with the poor segments of Medellin.

He recruited many of them, gave them jobs,

some as [speaking in non-English] or gunman,

others as employees in various aspects of his business.

He also sought to curry the loyalty of members

of his own organization

and those people who worked for him on the various

farms that he bought in the

Pablo Escobar had the wealth

and power to buy anything he wanted,

and what he wanted now was a political career.

By the early 1980s,

Escobar had developed political ambitions,

and as he became wealthier,

he began to see a political future for himself.

And in 1982, he ran for the Colombian Congress,

and he was elected as an alternate deputy

to the Colombian lower house.

Rensellear Lee is one

of the nation's former scholars

on international drug trafficking.

He is the author of several books,

including "The Andean Cocaine Industry,"

which paints a comprehensive picture

of the multi-billion dollar

South American narcotics business.

He was embarked on a political career,

which seemed to be very promising.

The trouble was that the money that he got

to finance his political career came largely

from his activities in the cocaine business.

But people in Columbia at that time didn't know.

They thought he was a local entrepreneur.

Escobar's time

in the political spotlight would be brief.

Political enemies in the media sought

to reveal the source of his fortune.

He did, I think, genuinely care about those people

who were outside the mainstream of Colombian society.

And I think he was, he would've been able,

I think, to parlay this support among the Colombian poor

into a very substantial political career.

The only trouble was that he was kind of an interloper

in the political scene and his political enemies

within the liberal party and in the media and elsewhere,

they began to check up on this guy.

Who is Pablo Escobar?

Where does he come from?

And above all, where where does he get his money?

And gradually they began to go through the legal records.

They found that he had been arrested for cocaine trafficking

back in 19, I think, 1976.

The details regarding his arrest were missing

from the court's files.

The two policemen responsible

for the original arrest had been mysteriously murdered,

and the judge who had tried the case could not be found.

It was clear then that Pablo Escobar had made his fortune

through illegitimate means.

According to people who did know him,

and one individual who knew him well,

he was a demanding and ruthless character.

The Robinhood image only extended to the PR

that he wanted known to the rest of the world.

In 1983, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla was appointed

as Attorney General and launched a campaign

to crack down on Columbia's drug trade.

The following year, the police raided Tranquilandia,

the largest cocaine laboratory ever built.

As the efforts

by the [speaking in non-English] administration be

towards extradition became more intense,

as the Attorney General of the country at that time,

Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, began to bust the operations

in the Medellin cartel, most importantly, Tranquilandia,

the biggest refining complex ever constructed in Columbia,

capable of producing some thousand kilos

of cocaine per month,

that bust set the Medellin cartel back in 1984,

produced a great deal of ire in Pablo Escobar.

And the Attorney General was targeted for assassination.

Escobar ordered the assassination of Bonilla

in retaliation for his crackdown

against the Medellin cartel.

The list of people murdered at the command

of Pablo Escobar was becoming long and vast.

He would not tolerate anyone standing in his way,

including law enforcement officials

or the Colombian government itself.

By the mid '80s, Pablo Escobar and the drug lords

of Medellin had amassed fortunes

rivaling those of big time legitimate businessmen.

With his worth estimated at between $2 and $4 billion,

Escobar was written up in Forbes Magazine

as one of the world's richest men.

He was able to be an enormously successful businessman.

And I mean, let's face it,

the cocaine industry drives a lot of employment

and provides a lot of opportunities for people in Columbia

who wouldn't otherwise have opportunities.

And he was a big guy at doing this.

He was the prince of the capos,

but they were all in the same ballpark.

Each of the Medellin cartel,

emerged as a billionaire

or a multi-billionaire over the latter part of the 1980s.

This is a very, very sophisticated business,

the product of which just happened to be cocaine

as opposed to TV cameras or VCRs or something.

But the business itself structured

very much in the same way.

And Escobar was the head of one of these two businesses.

You're like the chief executive officer

for international business.

Like so many mafia members,

Escobar possessed a certain duality.

He was a ruthless murdering drug Lord wanted

by the Colombian and United States governments.

But at the same time, he was a husband,

loving father and philanthropist who provided jobs,

build homes, hospitals, schools, and recreational facilities

for the people of his region.

Family for many of the members of the Medellin

and other cartels in Columbia was very important.

On the other hand, he also led a rather licentious life.

When he was not with his wife or with his family,

they had riotous parties at his farms and in other places

where his wife was not there.

This became widespread knowledge in Columbia,

and many people who sought to partake of the huge profits

of the drug trade and the immense wealth of Pablo Escobar

and others went to these parties.

Obviously he bought ranches and farms.

He had, you know, lots of accoutrements.

He had women, he had horses.

He had beautiful fixtures in his homes.

He had an antique car collection.

He had all the rest of it.

He had a zoo, for example.

You could go in there, you wouldn't have to pay admission,

just go in there and see the animals.

This was another one of these free services

that he was giving to the public to enhance his image

as being a socially responsible person

and somebody who cared about the Colombian people.

In reality, he was a savage entrepreneur,

a cold-blooded killer

who earned his fortune in the gainful world of narcotics.

His drug trafficking empire became so large

and so famous that he was a household word.

By the time '80, '82 came around,

everyone knew who Pablo Escobar was.

It was like who's Joe Gambino or Paul Castellano.

They knew who Pablo Escobar was.

His menacing product had destroyed

the lives of millions.

At the pinnacle of his power,

the Medellin cartel was making

between $6 and $8 billion a year.

As a result of their efforts to bring more

and more cocaine into the United States,

they made up in volume, but they lost in per unit price.

Americans were consuming more cocaine than ever,

and Escobar was wanted by both the Colombian

and the United States government.

Pablo Esquire did fear extradition

as all the Medellin capos did.

They knew full well that extradition

to the United States meant a lifelong sentence in the jail.

Carlos Lehder was extradited.

He was given life plus 135 years in Marion, Illinois.

Pablo Escobar was intelligent enough to know

that if he was ever judged in the United States,

that the sentence he would get

would be two lifetime sentences plus 135 years.

They formed a group called ,

the Extraditables, and those extra Extraditables launched,

if you like, a terrorist campaign

against the Colombian government

to prevent them from extraditing,

the major figures of the Medellin cartel.

The narco terrorism conducted

by the Medellin cartel

bloody South America's fourth largest country

for the next seven years.

The cartel targeted anyone

who supported extradition to the US.

It led to the assassination

of a variety of major Columbia officials,

judges, police officers, notables in Colombian society.

Guillermo Cano, the director

of El Espectador newspaper, was assassinated.

El Espectador headquarters were bombed during this campaign,

and the violence became increasingly indiscriminate.

He used the revolutionary forces of his fighting

against the government of his country

to protect his operations,

providing them with arms and money,

housing for their families and education for their children,

churches for them to worship in.

It was open season on government officials,

and one of Escobar's methods of persuading judges,

politicians, and journalists, was through intimidation.

It was common practice for Escobar to send a message

through one of his many attorneys.

He would offer the targeted official a choice

between plomo o plata, led or silver.

The messenger would also arrive with a photo album filled

with pictures of the victim's home, family, and friends.

In return for his life and cooperation,

Escobar would pay the official a large sum of money.

Again, because of his power and because of his,

I would say, just brute force,

he was able to influence a lot of people.

The people heard, especially judges and prosecutors

in Columbia would hear the name Pablo Escobar,

they would feel like there was a death threat,

and they would not get in his way.

In 1985, Columbia's murder rate

mirrored that of a country at war.

The city of Medellin alone reported nearly 1,700 homicides,

the highest per capita in the country.

No man, woman, or child was spared

in Escobar's campaign of violence

against anyone who dared to oppose him.

One year later, the killings in Medellin more than double

to 3,500, nearly 10 murders a day.

So Pablo Escobar became increasingly filled

with his own power, his own fire power,

his own political power, and his own economic power.

And he used his billions to, if you like,

break down the doors of the Colombian government

and to prevent it from functioning

as a law enforcement entity against the Medellin cartel.

They developed ties with Nicaragua,

with a number of the Caribbean islands,

with Panama, of course, with General Noriega in Panama,

with some upper level functionaries

in the Castro government in Cuba.

And they were very active in many parts of the hemisphere.

His cocaine empire was steadily growing,

and his product was being pushed throughout the world.

Meanwhile, the casualties of the drug war

in Columbia continue to rise.

Escobar and his Medellin cartel were responsible

for countless assassinations,

including the attorney general, a justice minister,

dozens of journalists, more than 200 judges,

and over a thousand police officers.

And the drug war escalated with the assassination

of liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan

in August, 1989.

The terrorist activity sponsored by the Medellin cartel

and particularly Pablo Escobar,

eliminated three of the six presidential candidates

running in the 1990 elections.

Three were assassinated out of the six.

President Gaviria, Cesar Gaviria was elected

because the man who had been picked by the liberal party

to be their candidate, Luis Carlos Galan, was assassinated

at Pablo Escobar's orders in August of 1989.

Pablo Escobar's relationship with the Columbia government

changed the face of Colombian politics.

It changed who was president of Columbia.

After the execution of Galan,

the Colombian government intensified its campaign

of bringing down the Medellin cartel.

Hundreds of airplanes and vehicles were impounded,

thousands of weapons and 25,000 rounds

of ammunition received, personal property

and commercial real estate was confiscated.

The cartel responded by burning or bombing the homes

of numerous politicians.

But the ultimate example of Escobar's diabolical disregard

for life was demonstrated in November of that same year.

Over 100 passengers prepared to board the Avianca 727 jet

from Bogota to Cali.

They had no idea that five of their co passengers

were informants against the Medellin cartel.

Reportedly, they were responsible

for the raid of Escobar's jungle hideaway,

resulting in the kingpin's narrow escape

through a cornfield.

The six crew members prepared for takeoff,

while the unsuspecting passengers settled in for the flight.

The plane ascended into the air.

But on route to Cali,

the plane exploded in midair killing everyone aboard.

Pablo Escobar had struck again.

The charred remains of the avian campaign were broadcast

throughout the world.

There seemed to be no escaping the menacing terror inflicted

by the powerful cartel.

The public's cry to reach a compromise

between the government

and the drug lords was louder than ever.

The continuing war between the Colombian government

and the Medellin cartel was beginning

to take his toll on the cocaine empire.

For over a decade, Pablo Escobar had exerted his might

in Columbia through bribery and murder.

During the beginning of the 1990s,

Escobar found himself enthralled

in an intensifying campaign conducted by Columbia

and the United States to bring him down.

Ultimately, Escobar became enemy number one.

The Medellin cartel became a target.

Columbia began to believe

that their national security depended on the destruction

of the Medellin cartel,

and they went about doing this

with a certain amount of help from the United States.

So we were, as a government aware of his power,

and we were trying to assist Columbia

in either apprehending him

or extraditing him to the United States.

He saw an opportunity to strike a bargain

with the Colombian government to, in effect,

enter into a plea bargaining situation,

which would reduce his sins,

eliminate the possibilities of his extradition,

and give him a few years in jail.

And he would emerge with his money more or less intact,

his billions intact.

With a guarantee

that he would not be extradited to the United States,

Escobar turned himself in

under the terms he had dictated to the Colombian government.

He financed, design and built his own jail

named La Catedral outside of Medellin.

It's very hard for the head of a criminal organization

to continue to influence that organization

in the same manner when they're in prison.

You can do it for a little while,

but the troops begin to get restless,

and you're not there anymore to enforce these rulings.

And I think that happened with Escobar.

He felt that he could have the best

of all possible worlds.

He had many people at that time who were after him,

not just the Colombian government.

He had his enemies in the Cali cartel.

He had a falling out

with some people within the Medellin Coalition,

and I think he wanted to,

he wanted to come into some secure facility

where he could rest and relax, and, at the same time,

continue to run his cocaine empire.

He had his own cooks.

He had visitors come in.

The fence around and kept the military out

and kept his rivals out.

It didn't necessarily keep him in.

The prison facility

that he built was to his specifications.

From there, he was able to manage his cocaine empire.

He had computers, he had fax machines, he had telephones.

He had everything that he needed

to communicate with the outside world.

And also he used the prison,

not just to to manage his cocaine trafficking operations,

but also to conduct trials,

summary judgments against his enemies

within the Medellin cartel.

Some people who went there to see him,

talk to him, were never seen alive again.

So all kinds of things went on in that prison.

Escobar was also able to leave the prison at will.

He would leave, for example,

on a Saturday night to go down to Envigado

and go to a local bar and have drinks with his friends,

have a good time.

He was seen at soccer matches, football matches.

He really had quite a good life there,

until finally it became so obvious what he was doing,

that the government decided

they were gonna move him to a military prison,

which would've been considerably less comfortable.

Rather than serve out his time

in a military prison, Escobar fled La Catedral

and lived out the remainder of his life

as a fugitive on the run from his numerous enemies.

Escobar had built for himself a protection network.

I mean, not just his support structure in Medellin

among the poor, he also paid officials, paid policemen,

paid army officers, paid other people in authority,

to tell him, you know, when a police raid

or dragnet was going to take place,

and so he could get out of the way.

Escobar made many miraculous escapes,

but his reign as a king of cocaine had come to an end.

The Rodriguez Orejuela brothers of Cali had gained ground

in the drug trafficking industry.

They were now in position to become the dominant figures

in the lucrative yet dangerous cocaine business.

The Rodriguez Orejuela emerged

as the principle figures in Cali,

rapidly surfaced over the latter part of the 1980s

and the early part of the 1990s,

as the principle traffickers in Columbia

supplanting Medellin and Pablo Escobar,

precisely because Pablo Escobar got increasingly caught up

in his own survival and in his terrorist war

against the Columbian government.

Escobar was on the run,

and his Medellin drug cartel was a mere shell

of his former narco glory days.

The ravishing effects of the cocaine war had taken his toll

on two continents and expose Escobar

as a diabolical ruthless killer

who would do anything to push his lethal product.

Escobar's escape from his luxurious prison

was the ultimate slap in the face

to the political establishment.

With the backing of the American president,

a special Colombian task force was created

for the sole purpose of apprehending Escobar.

We intend to see them dismantled and destroyed.

Pablo Escobar had escape routes that allowed him

to survive in clandestine for a lengthy period of time,

for a couple of years actually.

But this was a kind of desperate existence.

The reality was that he had created an organization

with loyal followers, both in the Magdalena media

where he had a number of farms, and throughout Medellin,

where he had a number of different residences.

First of all, he has a lot of friends in Medellin.

Other words, he has this huge political backing

from a lot of the poor people in that city.

And so there's a certain loyalty,

and he can depend on this loyalty

to provide a certain amount of cover or protection.

So in other words,

there are people who would not turn him in

because, you know,

they think he's almost like a deity of some sort.

But his enemies were closing in.

In 1992 and 1993,

the Columbian authorities were making a tremendous effort

just to demolish that organization.

I mean, they arrested people.

They killed something like 200 top ranking

and middle ranking leaders.

They offered surrender opportunities,

plea bargain chances for people to come in.

Basically, they put the Medellin cartel out of business.

It became more costly.

People simply didn't stay bought.

And the Colombian government,

with the backing of the United States,

created new units within both the police and the military

in order to pursue him.

The was a new unit created

within the Columbia military

precisely to go after Pablo Esquire.

Hence, they were not able to get this group.

They also rotated many of the people

that he had previously bought out of Medellin

and brought new ones in.

So we'd either have to bribe them

or kill them in order to gain their loyalty.

Colombian President Gaviria

intensified the manhunt

with additional command coordination,

electronic bugging interdiction, and 24 hour surveillance.

United States assistance was essential,

but the Gaviria government was committed

to getting Pablo Esquire too,

after he escaped from La Catedral.

That was a black eye against the Columbia government

and a violation of the agreement that they had reached.

When Pablo Escobar did that and then went out

and killed a bunch of members of his own organization,

really, the death bell was ringing already.

Escobar had been on the run for over a year,

but his luck was about to run out.

He had taken refuge in an apartment located in Medellin.

While talking to his son on his cellular telephone,

the special police were able to identify his location.

They were able to triangulate these communications

and focus in on him, and, you know, found the block

and finally found the apartment complex

and the specific place where he was.

Escobar attempted to escape

by running across the rooftop of the apartment

in which he sought shelter.

A barrage of gunfire was exchanged

between Escobar and the police.

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was gunned down

by the special police force on December 2nd, 1993,

one day after his 44th birthday.

In the end, Escobar laid dead in a pool of his own blood

without any shoes on his feet.

The police celebrated in the streets

while his family openly mourned his murder.

He died a bloody death, 'cause at that point,

this support structure, if you wanna call it that,

you know, the protection from above

among officials, police and military,

and among, you know, his local coteries

of supporters in Medellin, that had begun to unravel.

And when somebody becomes a public enemy like he was,

all of this is going to begin to disintegrate.

And it was that, I think that created the conditions

that allowed the police,

or the so-called

the search block to kill him.

Like his life,

Escobar's funeral was a combination of joy

from those who had personally suffered from his terror

and sorrow by those who had benefited

from his narco wealth and kindness.

The Medellin cartel had been systematically dismembered.

Carlos Lehder was in jail.

Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha was gunned down

in the sugar cane fields along the Colombian coast.

And the Ochoa brothers all cop plea bargains

and were sent to prison.

The underbosses of that organization did not disappear.

Some of them were thrown in jail as well,

but many of them continue to operate on their own.

And so we have remnants of the Medellin cartel.

Years after the death of Pablo Escobar

and the demise of his Medellin cartel,

the Colombian narcotics trade is stronger than ever.

The large cartel structure is given away to smaller,

more efficient organizations that not only traffic cocaine,

but heroin as well.

So the figurehead has changed.

Pablo Escobar's gone, but we still have a drug problem.

What has changed for the most part is the will in Columbia

to do something to salvage their country

from a gorilla force, which has aligned itself so well

with the drug traffickers.

They are not a cartel.

They do not traffic outside of Columbia.

They're only partially involved in refining,

but nonetheless, they provide protection for landing strips,

protection for laboratories.

They collect taxes from the peasant growers

of both coca leaf and opium poppy.

United States citizens use more illicit drugs

than any other country in the world.

Escobar recognized this and capitalized

upon the American consumers craving for cocaine.

We don't seem to understand that this is a huge industry.

This is an industry that makes a tremendous amount

of difference in the economies

and the lives of people in South America.

We can't just eradicate this industry overnight.

And every time we take steps against it,

we find that something else crops up in its place.

There are more people leaving Columbia today

than any time in the history of the country,

because they no longer believe that they can win the war.

The legacy of Pablo Escobar will be felt

for generations to come.

Until the demand for illegal drugs is neutralized,

there will always be a person

or an entity willing to satisfy that desire.

I think most of all,

what I would remember Pablo Escobar for

is for being the major architect of this cocaine industry,

one of the most important, most painful,

but also most important industries

that has developed in Latin America and really the world.

Regardless of what he did that was good

and perceived to be good, he did it for the proliferation

of a criminal organization to bring billions in drug profits

back to him personally so he could send more poison out.

I don't believe that a country outside of Columbia

knows the devastation of drug trafficking like they do.

He was born as Pablo Escobar.

He died the godfather of cocaine.

Years after Pablo Escobar's death,

people in Medellin still bring flowers to his grave site.

If asked, they might tell you

about the home he built for them

or the food he distributed within their impoverished village

or the hospital he constructed for the sick.

But for the relatives of the Colombian police officer,

journalists and government officials he assassinated,

the reply will be different.

They will tell you that Pablo Escobar,

who was a ruthless, cold-blooded killer

who seemed to have it all, but in the end, died alone.

I'm Robert Stack. Thanks for joining us.