Infamous America - MIAMI DRUG WARS Ep. 1 | “The Black Widow”

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Griselda Blanco grows up in painful and traumatic conditions on the streets of Medellin, Colombia. She becomes hardened and violent at a young age. Her second husband brings her into the cocaine business and they build a strong operation in New York City. But it’s dangerous to be the husband of Griselda Blanco. As she consolidates power, she sets her sights on a new city in which to build an empire: Miami. Thanks to our sponsor, Simplisafe. Get free security camera and a 60-day risk free trial at SimpliSafe.com/infamous Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials : blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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was back in her home country. She would soon be known as the godmother for her role in revolutionizing the cocaine trade in America and the extreme violence she used to do it. But right now, she was on the run. She'd fled New York before the DEA could find her. She'd grown paranoid that someone on the inside had ratted her out to American authorities, and she was convinced someone was stealing from her. She returned to Columbia to lay low for a while, but now it was time to get back to business. Alberto Bravo, Griselda's second husband, was expecting her.

The two of them had rarely lived as husband and wife for the last few years, but they were still business partners in the co-co-constraves. cane trade. Alberto lived on a lavish estate in Bogota, indulging in young women and spending money to excess. Griselda's car pulled into the parking lot of a nightclub near Alberto's property. Alberto emerged from the club, followed by his bodyguards. Griselda and her men stepped out of her car. She'd later say an argument broke out when she accused her husband of stealing money. Others suggest Griselda knew exactly what she was going to do before she arrived. Face to face with Alberto, Griselda pulled out a pistol and unloaded multiple shots into her husband.

Alberto dropped dead in the parking lot. Before his bodyguards could react, Griselda's men opened fire. Alberto's bodyguards returned the favor. At the end of the battle, Alberto's men lay dead on the ground, and Griselda was left clutching her stomach as blood poured. out. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling a six-part story about the Miami drug wars of the 1970s and 1980s. This is episode 1, The Black Widow. Griselda Blanco committed her first murder when she was only 11 years old. It was the mid-1950s, and she and her mother were living in poverty in Medellín, Colombia.

Griselda fell in with a gang of children who worked the streets as pickpockets and carried out petty crimes. It was a way to make some money during hard times. Even at that young age, Griselda found herself in a situation that would become common for most of her life. She was in a gang that didn't really accept women as leaders, but she was the one who clearly had the vision. Griselda saw room for expansion and other ways the gang could make money. Under her leadership, the kids moved from picking pockets of poor people on the streets to kidnapping, focusing on the children of wealthier residents in the area. The gang grabbed a boy off the streets, tied him up, and hid him away.

They contacted the boy's father and demanded a ransom. The police believed that if the man paid the ransom, the gang would just kidnap the boy again and do it all over. They said the gang was just a bunch of children who wouldn't do anything extreme. They clearly didn't know Griselda Blanco. When the ransom didn't come, she marched into the room where the boy was being held, drew a gun, and shot and killed him. Her use of deadly force supposedly stunned the other gang members. At 11 years old, Griselda saw the fear that violence struck in others,

and she never forgot it. She came to believe that the willingness to kill, regardless of the victim, was how you demonstrated power to both your friends and your enemies. While Griselda was carrying out violence on the streets, she was suffering abuse at home. Her mother was said to be physically abusive from the time Griselda was a small child. Things got worse when she turned 12. Men whom her mother brought home regularly assaulted Griselda. The abuse went on for an extended period of time, until eventually, when she was around 14,

Griselda couldn't take it anymore. She ran away from home and never went back. The streets of Medellín didn't offer much opportunity for a poor teenage girl. Griselda discovered quickly that surviving as a pickpocket and a petty thief was nearly impossible. She'd grown up watching women in the area resort to prostitution in an attempt to make enough money to survive. Before she turned 15, Griselda followed in their footsteps. Her childhood, her childhoods, was filled with poverty, abuse, and nearly every level of crime. But she still held out hope that she'd escape the streets of Medellín someday and lead a normal life. For a while, she thought Carlos Trujillo could offer her the escape, even though he was a criminal as well.

Carlos was handsome and kind. He made his living by forging immigration papers and helping people move illegally from Colombia to the United States. And while Carlos was involved in criminal activity, it was a for a force. far a cry from the violence and abuse Griselda had known growing up. Griselda and Carlos got married, settled down, and had three sons. Griselda was still a teenager, and it seemed for a time that she might get the chance to live a relatively calm life with her husband and her children. But Griselda's hopes of living happily with her husband and children didn't last long.

Carlos was having an affair, and he wanted a divorce. He also demanded full custody of her sons. At the time, Griselda thought it was the best chance for her boys, and she accepted the deal. Now she was back to having no money and no discernible future, and she wasn't even 20 years old. That all changed when she met Alberto Bravo. He worked in the cocaine business in Medellin, and he most certainly opened the door for her future. But the change didn't happen right away. When Griselda met Alberto, she saw little difference between her old life and her new life with her

second husband. She imagined she'd always be stuck on the streets, doing what she needed to do to scrape by. But Alberto had other plans. Medellin's history as a smuggler's cove dates back to the 1800s when people from rural areas traveled to Medellin to buy stolen items that were sold at lower cost than in other marketplaces. In the 1900s, Medellin became known as a center for smuggled cigarettes and liquor. By the 1950s, groups from Medellín were raiding duty-free ports in the Panama Canal Zone and smuggling stolen televisions and stereos into the U.S. where they could be sold on the black market. But all that was nothing compared to what came next. Medellin's smuggling history, coupled with its connection to the Colombian coffee industry, made it the perfect

spot for cocaine cultivation and distribution to take hold. The climate and the climate and infrastructure that allowed for coffee production also enabled cocaine to be produced on a large scale. And the decades spent discovering clandestine ways to smuggle products into the United States paid dividends when it came to exporting drugs. Alberto Bravo didn't hide his work in Medellín's growing cocaine smuggling trade from Griselda. They got married when Griselda was 20, and she quickly joined her husband in his business. It was clear that for the Colombian drug trade to grow, they'd have to really establish themselves in America. In the early 1970s, Grizzled and Alberto left Colombia in order to stake their claim in New York City.

Griselda and Alberto settled in Queens. They established a direct connection to Medellin and brought in limited amounts of cocaine to be sold in the city. Word spread quickly that the Colombian product was better than anything else on the market. Like she'd done with her first gang back in Medellín, Griseldo saw an opportunity to expand. Soon, the Colombians were sending multiple drug mules per day into New York. The mules were almost always young women, and that was one of Griselda's first big innovations in the drug trade.

She believed women made better mules than men because American police were less likely to suspect women of criminal activity. The mules would fly commercially, often smuggling cocaine in their bras and underwear. That was Griselda's second major innovation. She designed lingerie with extra padding in pockets specifically for the task. When a mule arrived,

she met with one of Griselda's people and made in exchange. Drugs came out of the underwear, money went in, and the mule headed back to Columbia while the cocaine hit the streets of New York. In this early phase, Griselda was helping lay the groundwork for what would one day become the Medellin cartel.

As more money came in, Alberto spent more on himself, but if tension was rising between the young married couple, Griselda kept it to herself. Instead, she directed her anger toward her first husband, the man who had taken her children and disappeared. Now she took her first step toward earning her nickname, the Black Widow. The story of how Griselda's first husband died

has been told different ways by different people, so it's difficult to discern the truth. One of the most romanticized versions had Griselda running into her ex-husband, Carlos Trujillo, on the streets of Queens, as if fate brought them back together. In that version, Griselda set up a meeting with Carlos at a hotel. Carlos stepped into the hotel room, maybe expecting his ex-wife to throw herself at him, but instead she put a bullet in his head and two in his chest. She then casually walked out of the hotel room, leaving her ex-husband's dead body on the floor. The more likely version of the story, at least according to several people who were directly involved in the cocaine trade, suggested that when Griselda made enough money, she simply paid someone to track down Carlos and kill him.

Still another rumor was that Carlos died from natural causes, and Griselda had nothing to do with it. But given her past and future conduct, if she wanted him dead, she certainly had the will and the resources to do it. Regardless of how it happened, Carlos Trujillo was dead, and most people believed Griselda Blanco orchestrated his demise. With her reputation for ruthlessness and violence growing, Griselda got another chance to expand the operation. By the mid-70s, America couldn't get enough Colombian cocaine. Griselda and Alberto's operation had grown too big for New York alone. They needed to take on another American city. Only one spot really made sense.

Its geography, demographics, and relatively untapped market made Miami, Florida the perfect place to jumpstart a major drug trafficking operation. In the 1950s, America was in a state of post-war transition. were enjoying the economic boom that followed World War II, while in the West, the farm labor movement was ramping up, and in the south, the civil rights movement was beginning to take shape. On the southern tip of Florida, the city of Miami was on the precipice of a transition that would be historic, and not always for the best reasons. Miami was a city of a little less than 250,000 people when the 1950s began. It attracted a small group of vacationers each winter who wanted to

escape the cold weather up north. But city leaders knew tourism could expand. They just had to let the rest of the country see Miami's beautiful beaches. Initially, Miami Beach tried to attract high-end tourists by offering glitz and glamour on the water. As the 50s progressed and the American middle class continued to grow, hotels sprang up along the beach offering lower rates so more people could enjoy all that Miami had to offer. In those days, the biggest concern was unseasonably cold weather that would keep tourists away. Miami experienced the ups and downs that were common to vacation destinations, but it continued to market itself as a safe, fun city that could be enjoyed by people from all over the country. As the 1960s began, larger hotels went up along Miami Beach,

and those hotels soon attracted A-list entertainers. Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack performed in Miami. Dean Martin opened a restaurant called Dinos. At one point, the king himself, Elvis Presley, played at the Fontainebleau Hotel and famously took the stage with Sinatra. By the mid-60s, Miami Beach was one of of the top tourist destinations in America. But the city beyond the beach remained relatively quiet. Miami had crime like any city of its size, but nothing to make national news. And of course, that was about to change.

Griselda and Alberto had set up a wildly successful operation in New York, and they were now personally pulling in huge amounts of money. Griselda was feared and respected. She was said to be enthralling, alluring, and incredibly intimidating, even though she was barely over five feet tall. She reacted quickly to the constant changes in the market without ever losing sight of the big picture. Despite all that, Griselda knew she could never own New York. Too many groups, including the mafia, had deep roots in the criminal activity of the city

and connections at the highest levels. She needed a place that was more open, and she focused on Miami. The mafia was there in real estate and hotels, but it didn't have a stranglehold on the town like it did with New York. With Griselda's connections in Medellin, she believed she could take over Miami. But her rise to power would have to wait. As the 1960s progressed into the 1970s, she and Alberto made inroads in Miami, but total control would take time. New York was still the center of their operation, and Griselda was the one who had to manage the business locally.

Alberto was now doing most of his work from Columbia. He was supposedly sleeping with the young women who worked as smugglers and spending money extravagantly. But his habits didn't seem to hurt the business, and Griselda seemed willing to let him do as he pleased in his personal life, so they still functioned as a team. But in 1975, business took a major hit, and Griselda went on the run from the DEA. A government sting, known as Operation Bansheet, led to a major drug bust and exposed Griselda's enterprise.

Griselda and over 30 of her subordinates now faced indictment in New York. But by the time the indictment was filed in April of 1975 and the warrant for Griselda's arrest was issued in May, she had already fled back to Columbia. And it was around that time Griselda decided she could no longer tolerate Alberto's existence. By 1975, Griselda and Alberto were married in name only. Business kept them separated, and it was rumored that even when they were both in Colombia, Griselda stayed in Medellin while Alberto preferred Bogota. It wasn't clear if Griselda blamed Alberto for her troubles with the DEA,

or if missing drug money was the issue, as she'd later claim. What did seem clear was that Griselda wanted to be in charge of the operation. In a nightclub parking lot in Bogota, she abruptly ended her partnership with, and marriage to, Alberto Bravo. Griselda and her men engaged in a gun battle with Alberto and his bodyguards. Alberto had been expecting her at the club, so the attack came as a surprise, and the surprise worked. Within seconds, Alberto and his bodyguards were dead on the pavement. Griselda and her men leapt back into their car and sped away. Griselda was bleeding from a bullet wound to the stomach, but it proved to be relatively minor.

News of Alberto's murder spread quickly, and with two dead husbands, Brzelda's reputation as the Black Widow was truly born. The next year, in 1976, the Medellin cartel officially came into existence. With the cartel's blessing, Griselda took complete control of the operation that used to belong to her and her husband. She was ready to go back to America. She knew she couldn't return to New York, and that wasn't her intention anyway. She wanted Miami. Vreselda was already known for her brutality and efficiency in New York, but she knew that

to gain power in Miami, she'd have to go even further. With the drug trade expanding, she built a small army around her, and soon her crew was seen as the epicenter of the city's cocaine trade. Along with the Black Widow, people now called her La Madrina, or the godmother. In the late 1970s, with the help of Griselda, the Medellin cartel's power grew in Miami and across the United States. But the cartel's competitors certainly weren't going to sit back and let Griselda dominate the business. Rivals emerged, other Colombian families, Cuban gangs, and Jamaicans who'd controlled large portions of the marijuana, a trade. In some criminal circles, it was believed that different groups should work together. In

New York, mafia families seemed to live by a code that, more often than not, kept them from waging war on each other. Griselda saw things differently. She wanted to make it clear that no one should get in her way. She had no problem attacking others in the trade, and would often instruct her people not just to kill an enemy, but to take a body part from them as well. She wanted to instill fear. An assistant U.S. attorney said about Griselda, she would kill anybody who displeased her, because of a debt, because they screwed up on a shipment, or she just didn't like the way they looked at her. Griselda also had no problem killing civilians in order to carry out a successful hit on an enemy. Her willingness to murder and use violence whenever she saw fit

propelled her to leadership in her first childhood gang back in Medellin. It helped her rise to power in New York, and it enabled her to gain control of her own operation. She saw no reason to change her tactics now. But violence wasn't Griselda's only talent. She was smart and innovative. She was the one who initiated all the facets of the smuggling operation that used young women to move product and money between New York and Columbia. Now, with a new city at her feet, she was ready to innovate again. Griselda is credited with either inventing or at least perfecting, the two-man motorcycle hit. While one person drove, the other sprayed bullets from the back of the bike. Hitting enemies from motorcycles instead of cars allowed her band of assassins,

known as Los Pistalleros, to make a kill and quickly get away. They could hit fast and they could hit anywhere. In just a couple short years, Griselda secured her position of power in Miami. It was rumored that she was now personally bringing in tens of millions of dollars per month. The poor girl who grew up on the streets of Medellin now sat at the top of her own criminal empire, and she had no problem flaunting it. In Miami, Griselda embraced her reputation as the godmother of the cocaine trade. Much like Alberto had done in Colombia, she started buying property, luxury cars, and jets. She dressed more extravagantly, often appearing in high-priced gowns and turbans.

She loved jewelry, and she liked to tell people that one of her favorite diamonds had once belonged to the former First Lady of Argentina, Eva Peron. But as her power grew, so did her paranoia. She didn't like to sleep alone, and told those around her that she felt safer if someone else shared her bed. To that end, in 1978, Griselda married for a third. time. Dario Sepulveda was known as a low-level bandit and killer. Unlike her previous marriage, there was no question who was in charge in this relationship. Griselda and Dario had a son together. She named the boy Michael Corleone Blanco, after Al Pacino's character in the Godfather films. Griselda had already attracted the attention of the federal government when she'd been indicted

in New York and tracked by the DEA. That made her one of the focal points. That made her one of the focal points. of ongoing government investigations. In addition, her lavish lifestyle and seemingly made-for-Hollywood story turned Griselda into the face of the cocaine trade in Miami. What the DEA failed to see, and maybe Griselda failed to see it too, was that in the grand scheme of things, she wasn't the one running the show. The power behind Griselda and all those working in the states was in Medellin, Columbia. The Medellin cartel's operation was growing exponentially.

In time, the group would seem to have more money, more influence, and more firepower than the Colombian government itself. As the cocaine trade continued to flourish, the generation of leaders who'd founded the cartel thirsted for more power. They saw Miami as theirs, and they viewed Griselda Blanco as a subordinate. it. One of those power-hungry leaders was a young man named Pablo Escobar. He helped found the Medellin cartel with notorious drug traffickers, the Ochoa brothers. In 1978, Pablo was only 29 years old. He was smart, ruthless, and charismatic, and like Griselda, he always kept the big picture in mind. Griselda might not have seen Pablo or the Ochoas as a threat at that time, but he was a lot of she did know the landscape in Miami was changing. Not only were there more gangs pouring into the

city, but Pablo and the Ochoa brothers were reaching out to others like Griselda in the area in order to smuggle and distribute as much cocaine as they possibly could. The godmother might have sat at the top of the food chain in Miami, but people were going to start gunning for her. At the end of 1978, Miami was on the edge of what would become the most violent period in its history. The city that had once welcomed small groups of northerners who were trying to escape the cold and had then transformed into a tourist destination and entertainment center would soon be viewed nationally as a battlefield. Grisel de Blanco would be a major force behind the growing violence in Miami

as she fought to keep her position, and she helped ignite the Miami drug wars. Next time on Infamous America, the cocaine trade in Miami needs more than just crime bosses like Griselda Blanco to make it work. John Roberts is born into the mob in New York and has a knack for smuggling and a love of drugs and the finer things in life. When he flees to Miami, he becomes one of the top cocaine smugglers

and one of the original cocaine cowboys. That's next week on Infamous America. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive early access and the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com.

Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This season was co-executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with ritual productions. Research and writing by Michael Federico. Original music by Rob Valier. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. find us at our website blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Beryl Media on Twitter.

And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcasts. Thanks for listening.