Dan Snow's History Hit - The Hunt for Pablo Escobar

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

By the early 1990s, the Colombian city of Medellín was at the centre of the world's largest drug empire. The fearsome Medellín Cartel, led by the notorious drug lord and narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar, brought murder and mayhem to the city and the world for nearly two decades.In this episode, Dan is joined by the men portrayed in the critically acclaimed series Narcos, ex-DEA agents Javier Peña and Steve Murphy. They tell us the true story behind the rise and fall of the infamous Pablo Escobar.Produced by Freddy Chick and James Hickmann, and edited by Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I'm looking at a photograph now, taken on December 2nd, 1993. It's taken in the beautiful city of Medellín in Colombia. It's not a beautiful photo. It's a photo of men posing above the corpse of a man who's just been shot dead. Medellín was the murder capital of the world in the early 1990s. Hundreds of people could die in a weekend, and sadly it didn't even make the headlines anymore. And many of their deaths were the responsibility of the man whose corpse I'm looking at in this photograph. That's the body of Pablo Escobar, probably the wealthiest criminal who's ever lived. The man who turned his hometown into an endless, seething bloodbath of drug war.

He was thought to be responsible for thousands of deaths directly and, of course, countless others indirectly. One of the men crouching over Pablo Escobar's body is joining me on today's podcast. Steve Murphy was a DEA agent assigned to Bogota in the 1980s and 90s. He's joining him with his partner Javier Pena or JP. He was part of the operation to hunt down Pablo Escobar, but he flew out of the country the day before the final raid and flew back in that same night. These two men were key characters. They were heroes of the Netflix smash hit Narcos. So it's great that we're talking to the real thing. So here to talk me through the hunt for Pablo Escobar is Steve Murphy and Javier Pina. Enjoy. Escobar. It's Steve Murphy and Javier Pina. Enjoy. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. This is very exciting.

Who was Pablo Escobar when he was at the height of his powers? What was he doing and who was he? Pablo Escobar was probably the biggest, baddest trafficker in the world during the height of his Medellin cartel empire. I mean, Pablo was responsible for 80% of the cocaine that was going to the world, 80%. Plus, he is the first trafficker who employed terrorism. We never knew what terrorism was in the narco world, and Pablo Escobar introduced it, you know, used the car bombs to kill as many Colombians as he could. Downed a commercial airline, the Avianca airline, 1989, killed the next president of Colombia, Luis Carlos Galán.

So Pablo Escobar was the first trafficker to employ narco-terrorism to send his cocaine to the world. And how did he establish himself within Columbia? Just was he more brutal the next guy? Was he a better businessman than the next guy? Well, you know, we hate to give this guy credit for anything, to be quite honest, but he did have a charismatic personality. But I think his strongest trait was he had no remorse, no guilt feelings whatsoever. So he started out as a petty criminal, but then he got involved in a small drug deal. He realized

how much money was available there. And so he killed the drug dealer so he could take over his position. People like to say, well, he was such a successful businessman. If he'd gone into a legal business, he would have been extremely successful there as well. Well, his business plan is, I tell you to do something, Dan, and if you don't do it, I kill you. You know, that just doesn't work in the legal business world, right? And how are they getting their drugs through? Was the U.S. the biggest market? How are they getting them through to the U.S.? A lot of it was coming through Mexico, coming to the United States, the Caribbean countries. I mean, he employed methods via boats, via airplanes, human smugglers. I mean, you know, people ingesting, they would packet

inside fruits, inside oranges, inside fish. I mean, you know, the imagination was the limit, basically. Whatever it took, I remember the first load I saw when I arrived in Columbia. It was on an American airline coming to Miami. And I remember I went out to the airport, the cops had called me, and it was just boxes. It was 800 kilos of cocaine in the cargo area of the airplane, but it wasn't hidden. It was just as you'd open the box, it was just part of the cargo. I mean, as simple as that. So obviously, the corruption at the airport was there. People were paid off to look the other way. I think also, like I said, a lot of the airplane transportations, you know, the private airplanes. They'd buy the airplanes.

And, I mean, Steve saw them in the, what, Bahamas, Steve, right? Those downed airplanes where they would crash them. Yep. And they would just, they'd fly on hundreds of kilos of cocaine, and then they would just leave the aircraft in the water. And believe it or not, they're still there today. You guys were sent to Columbia working for the DEA. Was that volunteering, or did you guys just have to do what you were told?

Well, maybe we made our bosses mad and they sent us. I don't know. But no, it was strictly voluntary. But I think what's going to lead into here is, did we volunteer to go work against Pablo Escobar? You don't know what cases you're going to be assigned or what operations you're going to work on. So when I got there, Javier was already working with his other partner, Gary Sheridan. Then Gary got promoted and moved to Barranquilla. And that's how Javier and I became partners in 1991. And here we are in 2023, and we're still partners. Was it incredibly dangerous?

You know what? Colombia at that time, yes, it was very dangerous. And, you know, I mentioned those infamous car bombs. That to me was the most dangerous because you never knew where Pablo Escobar was going to place them. I mean, he was placing them at restaurants, shopping centers, bookstores. We saw one where kids and parents were buying their school supplies to go back to school. So if you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, you were going to be part of that car bomb. And it's an eerie feeling because, for example, if you go out to dinner with your family and you're sitting in a little cafe, then right next door, a car bomb, I mean, a bomb, and it could be a bomb that they placed at a restaurant.

I mean, if you talk to any Colombian that grew up during this era, they're going to remember someone, a friend, a relative, or someone who was killed in this car bombs. Why did you go, gents? Why not stay in a nice, cushy assignment in Orlando, Florida, where everyone else goes for a vacation? You can just sit there having a great time. You know, at that time, I was stationed in Miami

in the late 1980s, and it was very, very exciting. I have to say, it was very dangerous. I had my partner who was shot in 1989, and we got in a shootout in Hialeah, and our informant was killed. But my wife and I, and she's a registered nurse. She's retired now, but she loved the blood and guts associated with the medical field, the trauma centers, the ERs, the ICUs, and things like that. She came to me one day.

She said, this has been very exciting living and working in Miami. What's the next most exciting thing we can do? And I said, well, you know, I'm working a case with the DA office in Barranquilla. We could go to Columbia. She looked at me like I had three eyes, you know. And I know my wife, and if you tell her to do something, it's not going to happen. But I just let her think about it. And about three weeks later, she said, were you serious?

And I said, yeah, I'd love to go to Columbia. And she said, well, hey, if we're going to do it, let's do it while we're young. I joke around and say, you know, they didn't hire us because we were real smart. You know, we were willing to take risks like this. But it's the excitement and the adrenaline rush. It's the idea that I'd been a local cop for 12 years before I joined DEA. And you're arresting street dealers and people like that. But now you've got a new opportunity to go for the biggest people in the world. I mean, the people who are actually manufacturing the cocaine.

So not knowing that I was going to get to work on the Escobar case, just kind of hope you will. Honestly, it was for the excitement and the adrenaline rush that goes with it. For me, Dan, I was in Austin, Texas at the time. I was working lower class type traffickers, you know, the one pound, one kilo, couple of ounces, a lot of surveillances. And a lot of Mexican traffickers coming in with a heroin. And Austin was the capital for the methamphetamine boom, a lot of methamphetamine labs. But it was lower class type traffickers. Like Steve said, I wanted to see what the real, like, you know, I'm a baseball

fan, major league traffickers were all about, so I applied and like Steve said, I applied to go to Mexico and my boss comes in and says, Javier, did you apply for Columbia, Centosa, apply for Mexico? He says, well, you've been selected for Columbia. He says, Javier, did you apply for Colombia? I said, no, sir, I applied for Mexico.

He says, well, you've been selected for Colombia. He says, you want to fight it? So I did. I said, nah, let me just go see the map where Colombia is. And I ended up in Colombia. That was all by mistake. And like Steve mentioned, I was assigned the case. I didn't go in there and say, I want to go after Pablo Escobar. I really did not know who Pablo Escobar. I really did not know

who Pablo Escobar was at this time. In 1991, Pablo Escobar cut a weird deal with the government, didn't he? He kind of handed himself in, built his own prison, which was actually like a five-star hotel. Tell me about that strange phase. We call it the deal of a lifetime. The Attorney General down there, Gustavo de Grief, created this program he called a self-surrender program, whereas criminals could come in, plead guilty to one felony of their choosing, and in exchange, they would be absolved of every other crime they committed in their entire lives, including multiple murders. So that's why we call it the deal of a lifetime. So Pablo goes in and pleads guilty to one unknowingly participating in the transportation

of a couple hundred kilos of cocaine. So he pleads guilty to that. But before he did, he told him, he said, you know, I've got some conditions that go along with the surrender. And so the attorney general said, okay, what is it? And he said, well, you know what? I'm going to build a special prison that I know is secure because I have a lot of enemies. The Cali cartel is trying to kill me, all this stuff. But you know what? I'm going to pay for it myself so the taxpayers of Columbia don't have to bear that financial burden. Attorney General said, okay. And he said, didn't probably say, well, listen, I'm going to hire my own protective force.

I will pay for the guards there because, again, I don't want the citizens of Columbia to have to bear that financial burden. Government said, okay. He said, well, now listen, my fellow inmates, I'm going to handpick them all because they got to be people that are loyal to me that I don't have to worry about killing me in my sleep. So there was only 14 prisoners in this prison, counting Pablo. And the government said, okay. He said, listen, by the way, those good guys, you know, the Colombian police, the military, and the gringos, they're not allowed to come within a couple miles of the perimeter of the prison because I don't want them trying to come in here and kidnap me or attack me or kill

me in my sleep and that type of thing. And the government said, okay. Then the sentence was five years. That's all he had to do, which he would have gotten out sooner than that. And you know what? All the assets, the estimated $30 billion that he was worth, he got to keep all his assets after the five years. It's just, it's not even a deal of a lifetime. It's the biggest joke in law enforcement history. So he's in his own prison. What was the nickname of the prison? La Catedral, the cathedral.

It had a football pitch, it had a jacuzzi. Did it have a giant doll's house? Yeah, he had a, for his kids that come in and visit him, yeah, it was, it had running water. I mean, it was just a joke. And you know what, when he escaped from the prison, because we were there

the next day, Steve and I, we found photos of the Columbia national team playing soccer with Pablo Escobar. They used to have tournaments. I mean, a lot of famous Colombian soccer players went and visited him at the prison. There was no cell. There was no bar. He had an apartment, living in an apartment with a refrigerator, freezers, the biggest TVs at that time, all the modern accommodations. He had paintings of famous artists.

It was a fancy penthouse, had all the modern accommodations. And then towards the back of the prison, and if I can explain, it's like a little hillside type. He called them chalets, basically apartments. So he had built apartments, chalets on the side of the prison, fancy ones. If he needed to go relax, go with someone, they'd have this chalets right outside the building. So it was not a prison.

It was all luxury type of living. So why the heck did he escape from that luxury? Why did he go on the run? Bogota because Governor Columbia found out that he had killed two of his best friends inside the prison, and he had ordered the massacre of other families in Medellin that he thought were cheating on him, taking money from him. So there was bloodbath in Medellin orchestrated by Pablo Escobar, and he had killed two of his traffickers. So that's what prompted the government of Colombia to move him. So he got tipped off, right? And he escaped and went on the run.

And then that's when you guys were called in. We were already, you know, living in Bogota, working with the Colombian National Police. I don't know that he got tipped off because what happened is they sent the deputy justice minister, a guy by the name of Mendoza, a young man, maybe 25 years old, up there with a Colombian military unit, ostensibly to tell Pablo, we're going to move you to another prison temporarily so that we can reinforce the security of your existing prison. You know, it was all a ruse to get him out of there and hopefully not suffer any bloodshed.

So when they got up there, the deputy justice minister goes in and of course they saw right through the charade. They held him captive. Eventually they sent in a special unit of Columbia police officers, the COPAS. They conducted the raid. Unbelievably, no good guys were killed. There were several guards killed during the raid. Unbelievably, Mendoza, they were able to get him out unharmed. It's just a miracle that he's still alive. So I don't think there was a tip-off to it.

But Pablo, I mean, he saw what was going to happen here. He wasn't going to give up his nice accommodations plus the security of his prison. Again, the deal of a lifetime. We're talking about Pablo Escobar and the war on drugs. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions.

And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. But on the run, his organisation falls apart. I mean, not only is there the violence, you guys experienced violence trying to catch him, but there's a wave of violence as his leadership of that organization starts to come apart and people start jockeying for position, right? It sounded like a very, very difficult time. Yeah, it was. And you know what? When he first escaped from the so-called

prison, it was in disarray. He was running, he was trying to get organized, and he was very vulnerable. And we were there, and you know what? I'll be honest, we should have had him at the very beginning, but we made some errors in our strategy. Later on, we corrected those errors, which is what helped us and brought him down towards the end. You know what, Danny, if I can also just credit one of the Colombians, Colonel Hugo Martinez. He was our boss in Medellin. He wasn't there when Pablo Escobar escaped. And he had been chasing Pablo for, I don't know, three, four years.

So anyway, long story short, when Pablo escaped, we don't have Martinez there, and we're not that good. We're not that organized. We had some problems in our hierarchy. So once we brought back Martinez, it all changed, and obviously it took us, what, 18 months, Steve, right? Right. And like I said, Steve was there towards the end.

I mean, I was there. We were there together. That's where the emergence of Los Pepes came into existence. And Los Pepes was that right-wing vigilante group in Medellin that was made up of traffickers that wanted to kill Pablo Escobar. Pablo killed their bosses. So, these guys wanted to kill anybody Escobar. Pablo killed their bosses. So, this guy's wanted to kill anybody associated with Pablo. They wanted to kill his mother, his wife, his two kids. They were able

to kill, we calculated, 30 of Pablo Escobar's friends, attorneys, teachers that were teaching these kids. I mean, it was a personal, it was a blood war. And they would torture those guys, they would tie their hands, torture them, kill them, and they put that plaque at Los Pepes, which was getting publicized. So Pablo knew it was them. So he was running from Los Pepes. He was running from us towards the end. You know, he was so afraid of Los Pepes that he tried to get his family members

out of the country, put them on an airplane, go to Miami, Florida. We stopped that. They had Florida. We stopped that. They had visas. We stopped that. Then he put him on a plane to go to Frankfurt, Germany. And we found out about that plot. Luckily, Germany did not allow the family to stay there. They sent him back to Bogota.

So actually, this period when he's on the run, he's in trouble. He's struggling to keep his enemies at bay. Pretty much. He's running through his resources. At one point, he had as many as 500 Sicario's protecting him. I mean, he had a small army there, right? The day that he was killed, he had one Sicario left. His nickname was Limon. He was killed also in that final shootout. He was losing his influence over people. He was losing his power base. The Cali cartel was funding Los Pepis, so they pretty much had unlimited funding. He was just running out of people who were willing to protect him. So tell me about that fateful day that you mentioned.

It's late 1993, December 1993. Was he difficult to find? Were you guys coming to the end of your tether or did you feel you were closing in on him? There was a time period a couple months before he was killed where Harvey and I were getting frustrated. We kind of ran into a dry period where we weren't getting a lot of leads, a lot of tips coming in and just frustrated. We've been living in Medellin all this time. My wife's back in Bogota by herself. She and I adopted our first daughter in October of 93. And I'm in Medellin and my family's back there.

And my two sons were still in the United States at the time. So, you know, you start feeling sorry for yourself, just to be quite honest. But then we would see one of our police friends would get killed in an operation. And that kind of brings your focus back to quit feeling sorry for yourself. You know, get back on mission, get back to the job, and let's get this thing done. So when early December comes around, we knew we were close. We knew we were really close. And Javier mentioned Colonel Hugo Martinez, superhero.

I mean, he's the head of the search block there, and he's our boss in Medellin. True hero. His son, Lieutenant Hugo Martinez, had trained himself on how to use radio directional finding equipment. And the telephone systems back then, especially systems that Pablo were using, were just basically radio telephones. So it operates off a radio frequency. If Pablo wanted to thwart our efforts to listen to his calls, he knew we were intercepting him. If he wanted to make it so we couldn't listen, all he had to do was change the dial to a different frequency. But it's not quite that simple because he's got to get that new frequency to the people he wants to talk to. That makes sense. So it's a little bit challenging for him as well. Well, we can talk about this now.

The CIA had an operation there called Center Spike. And basically, Center Spike was a twin engine airplane that flew over the city of Medellin with radio intercept equipment. And they were the ones monitoring the frequencies to try to identify the new frequency. Well, Javier had an informant who was able to come up with that new frequency, called him, gave it to him. We passed it to CA. They gave it to CentraSpike, and we got confirmation that that was this new frequency. So, on December 2nd, 1993, that that was in its new frequency. So on December 2nd, 1993, now the day before,

and this is my biggest regret with the whole operation, the ambassador made Javier go to Miami to talk to an informant, a guy named Naviganti who's portrayed in the Narcos series. He's a real person. So Javier was forced to go to Miami because the ambassador,

he's the president's representative. And if you don't do what he tells you, he can kick you out of country. But back at the base, Lieutenant Martinez was able, using his equipment, he was able to pinpoint the location. And as he's driving down the street, he says he looked up and he saw Pablo looking at him on the phone. And these guys are in plain clothes, but the equipment that he was using required him to hold a handheld antenna out the window of his car and drive down the street holding that up in the air. And that's, you know, very unusual.

But we've gone back and listened to the tapes where Pablo was actually talking to his son, Juan Pablo. And there's no indication that he realized what he was seeing. And you know how it is, like we're all talking now and we're seeing each other, but we're kind of reliving these events in your mind. And you're really not realizing what you're seeing at that very moment. And that's the only explanation we've ever come up with as to why Pablo didn't, listen, I got to go, you know, and then try to escape. So the Deheen unit, this is a specialized group of Colombian national police officers that Javier and I worked with, we lived with, we ate with.

These are the guys that protected us while we were there. They were out there with the lieutenant. They surrounded the place. Now, in the narco series, it shows that I was on the roof when Pablo was killed. That's not true. I was back at the base. Things were happening in the base. I went over to Colonel Martinez's office, and the operation was underway. Colonel Martinez is telling the major in charge of Duhin, listen, we'll mount the troops up, surround him, but don't let him get away. Do what you have to do. Well, they go ahead and launch an operation. And that was about 10, 12 guys.

So they launch an operation on this three-story row house. As we now know, he only had one Sicario left, Limon. As the police enter the row house and start making their way up the steps, the Pablo's start shooting at them. They shoot back. Police enter the row house and start making their way up the steps. Pablo starts shooting at them. They shoot back. Limon jumps out the window of the third floor of this row house onto the roof of a two-story row house behind him.

So he's making his way over to the edge. The police on that side order him to surrender. He starts shooting at them, and they shoot him, and he falls off the roof dead. Pablo makes his way up to the third floor. He realizes now there's cops outside, and there's cops coming up the steps. So he's in a really, really precarious situation here. He goes out and jumps onto the roof of the two-story behind him. As he's trying to make his way across, he starts shooting at the police again. They catch him in a crossfire and he was killed that day. This was December 2nd, 1993. So my biggest regret, Javier was there twice as long as I was in Columbia.

He should have been there rather than me. That's the only regret I have about this whole operation. I'll just say, hey, you know what? I'm glad it happened. I'm glad Steve was there. And Steve, you had the only camera, right? That's what- Yeah, I had the only camera that worked. But you know what? It was the end of, like I said, a very violent era in Colombia that was carried out by Pablo Escobar. So I'm glad it happened. It needed to happen. I mean, if you look at all the people that Pablo Escobar killed, Steve and I put the figure at 10,000 to 15,000 people, and we were way off. One of Pablo Escobar's main sicarios, a guy by the name of

Popeye, who was with Pablo during all this time, he puts the figure at 50,000 people that Pablo Escobar killed. When he died, when he was killed, you were optimistic about the future. Did things improve afterwards? Yeah, yeah, it improved for about, what, a couple of weeks, about a month. Everything stopped. And then the Cali cartel took it over. Cali cartel was a vicious enemy of Pablo Escobar. They helped finance those papers. The Cali cartel took over the business.

So it was drug trafficking again. However, the car bombs stopped, the assassinations, the kidnappings. Cali Cartel was more businesslike where Pablo was wild, wild west. Then what happened? We take down the Cali Cartel, what happens? Another cartel, the North Valley cartel takes over. So you take down the cartel, there's people ready to take over the drug business. So when you look back at those experiences, did you sacrifice it? Did the dangers that you guys run, were they worth it? Absolutely. Absolutely. People say, let's legalize it. You can't just stand back. And there's more to it than just legalizing because

of the deaths that are involved with this, whether it's an accidental overdose or whether it's a vicious criminal like Pablo Escobar or the Rodriguez or Whaler brothers or whoever the drug traffickers are. There are innocent people being killed. You can't turn a blind eye to this. Do you guys look back with pride on that? Yes, we helped. We were part of history. And you know what? This thing really happened. We witnessed it. We saw the heroes. We saw the innocent people that got killed. We saw friends of ours, police officers that got killed. I hope I never go through that again. I mean, we went to a funeral where we had eight coffins, eight coffins in the church.

All of them had been our friends killed by Pablo Escobar. We saw a lot. We experienced a lot. And it's a point in history where someone is just killing, no disregard, of course, for human life. I mean, and if you look at even the Avianca Airline, the Avianca Airline was a commercial airline that was going from Bogota to Cali. Pablo Escobar put a bomb on that airplane. One hundred and seven innocent people were killed.

Pablo Escobar was there, put a bomb to kill one person who was not on board that plane. I mean, look at all the victims that they killed. And if you just don't do anything about it, well, what's going to happen? And this is why, you know what, in all our presentations, we always say the real heroes were the Colombian National Police, Colonel Lolo Martinez, General Octavio Vargas Silva. This guy, the general was the one who organized the search and public war and never gave up. So they're the heroes and all the victims out there.

So you have to do something. Like Steve said, when we see our friends get killed, yeah, we wanted to give up. We wanted to let him surrender and just all go home. But you just cannot do that. You got to stay with that fight until the end, you know? You guys have seen people do the worst things that any human has done living, you know, today. Do you feel positive about human beings, about the world?

Are you optimists? Of course. You know what? And I tell people the majority of us are all good people. The majority. You know what? It's a small little percent that is not. But the majority of the people are great people.

They're good people. And, of course, it was worth it being out there. We saw our friends get killed. But the majority of law enforcement is good. They're trying to do the right thing. It's that few rotten apples. And we've had them in DEA. We had them in Columbia

and we've seen the media out there of bad people, wrong people, but the majority are still good. You got to have hope. That's not being naive. The golden rule is do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Treat your fellow man with respect. Not to sound naive or stupid, but I mean, there's no rule that says we can't all get along. That was the premise of my leadership as we got promoted up through the ranks. There was no rule that said we couldn't have fun at work. You don't have to come in and be miserable every day.

So if you want to be miserable, life's as good or as bad as you make it individually. Well, thank you very much, Stephen Javier. It's been inspiring talking to you. Thank you very much indeed. Well, Dan, thank you for much, Steve and Javier. It's been inspiring talking to you. Thank you very much indeed. Well, Dan, thank you for having us on the show. If your listeners would like to find out more about us, if you could check out www.deanarcos.com, that's our website. We're still in our world speaking tour. We've done two UK tours.

We love coming to England and Ireland and Scotland. I mean, three of the most beautiful places in the world. Just check us out on the website and you'll see how great we think we are. For sure. Come on another tour soon, guys. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. you