Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

by Mark Bowden

  Killing Pablo was one very specific goal, by now only indirectly related to cocaine. Justice demanded it. He was "too big for his britches," in the words of one of those involved. He had to be stopped. If that could not be done within the strict language of a deployment order, then there were other ways. If it was handled discreetly, who would know except those who had much to lose by revealing the truth?

  When Los Pepes surfaced, there was no shortage of likely suspects. Pablo had been warring with other drug exporters and crooks all of his adult life. His years-long campaigns of intimidation and murder had left hundreds, if not thousands, of aggrieved family members, some of them from very wealthy and powerful families. And fratricidal violence was a way of life in Colombia. Homicide there enjoyed an overlapping abundance of motive; every corpse could claim a dozen authors. If a bomb went off or a beloved cousin was kidnapped or one of Pablo's key associates was found dead, the list of potential suspects was dizzying. Was it a family dispute, a random murder, or a hit from a rival cartel? Had it been ordered by Pablo himself, after falling out with the victim (as with the brothers Moncada and Galeano)? Was it some faction of the Medellín cartel trying to take advantage of Pablo's vulnerable state? Was it a rogue squad of army or police? Might it be a hit by one of the paramilitary squads who specialized in terror and murder? The DEA? The CIA? Delta Force? Perhaps a squad of guerrillas, the FARC or ELN, demanding a tax on illegal earnings or avenging some slight, or perhaps just seeing an advantage in contributing to the nation's ongoing instability?

  Given the timing and tactics, the most likely forces behind Los Pepes were the Moncada and Galeano families, against whom Pablo had declared open war, and the national police, which had lost hundreds of officers to Pablo's sicarios over the years. Pablo's executions of the Galeano and Moncada brothers had created civil war within the Medellín cartel. Having been in business with him for years, Dolly Moncada, Mireya Galeano, and Mireya's brother Raphael knew many of Pablo's secrets: where his money was invested, who his most trusted advisers were. They were certainly motivated. Within weeks after Pablo's escape, a DEA memo written by Murphy noted that the two families were trying to recruit sicarios "to battle Escobar," and were offering 20 million pesos ($29,000) to those willing to sign on. An October 16,1992, memo by Murphy noted that Marta Moncada, a sister of the slain men, was cooperating with the hunt for Pablo. Writing in The New Yorker in 1993, journalist Alma Guillermoprieto reported that among the leaders of Los Pepes was a sister of the slain Galeanos and that their "troops" were drawn from the Search Bloc itself. Both the Galeano and Moncada families were angry, rich, and powerful, but they were not strong enough to go up against Pablo's organization on their own. Why not ally themselves with the big boys?

  Daily DEA cable traffic from Bogotá to Washington, D.C., during the fall and winter of 1992–93 document how Los Pepes began coming together soon after Pablo's escape. In August, just two weeks later, the U.S. embassy flew an important new source to Washington; Dolly Moncada, the widow of William Moncada, the second of the two brothers Pablo had executed for allegedly withholding money from him. After William's disappearance, Pablo had sent word to Dolly demanding that she turn over to him all of her assets and threatening a war against her and her family.

  Dolly was a dangerous woman. When she vanished in mid-August, Pablo came looking for her. Her former residence in Medellín was ransacked, and the caretakers were taken hostage. The kidnappers painted the word Guerra (War) on the walls. On August 4, a bomb exploded at a Medellín shopping center owned by the Moncada and Galeano families. Three weeks later Dolly's dead husband's business associate Norman Gonzales was kidnapped, held captive, and tortured over thirteen days. His tormentors tried drugs and electric shock in an effort to learn from him Dolly's whereabouts. Gonzales didn't know. Pablo then offered a $3 million reward for whoever could help him find her.

  Instead of giving in to Pablo, an aggrieved and angry Dolly Moncada struck a deal with the Colombian government. In return for protection for herself and her family in the United States, Dolly handed over most of her family's assets and began cooperating in the pursuit. The Colombian government agreed to drop money-laundering charges against her sister.

  The man who helped arrange Dolly's surrender and trip to the United States was Rodolpho Ospina, the grandson and great-great-grandson of Colombian presidents, who had himself gotten involved in drug trafficking back in the mid-1970s, and had quickly run afoul of Pablo. Ospina had survived two assassination attempts by the drug boss. Within days after Pablo's escape, Ospina was helping the authorities investigate the deaths of the Moncada and Galeano brothers. When word got out in Medellín that Ospina was cooperating, which it did quickly, he, too, was flown to the United States. Pablo put a $3 million price on his head.

  Ospina was given the code name Juan Diego and the number SZE-92–0053. He proved to be a valuable ally. He explained how and why Gerardo Moncada and Fernando Galeano were killed. The drug boss's minions had discovered a secret cache where the Moncada and Galeano families had stashed $20 million in cash. The money had been sitting for so long it had grown moldy. Pablo had invited them to the prison for a meeting and then turned on them angrily. A DEA cable reported Ospina's account of what happened:

  Escobar argued that while he and his close associates were in jail and needed money for their expensive war with the Cali cartel, Galeano and Moncada preferred to store money until it became moldy rather than use it to help their friends…. Escobar convinced cartel members who genuinely liked Moncada and Galeano that if the two men were not killed, the Medellín cartel would be in a war with itself, and they would all perish…. Moncada and Galeano were killed by being hung upside down and burned. The informant says this is Escobar's favorite way of killing people. Their bodies were buried either in or just outside the prison. Afterwards, Escobar invited William Moncada along with Galeano's brother. Escobar invited them to the prison and then killed them.

  Ospina's close relationship with the Moncadas and Galeanos made him a source of very current and useful information. He had plenty of reasons to cooperate. Apart from the price Pablo had placed on his head, his brother was about to be deported back to Colombia. Ospina's cooperation won his brother a year's stay on the deportation order. In late October Attorney General de Greiff called the U.S. embassy and asked authorities there to set up a meeting for him with their prize informant. De Greiff was flown to Washington, where Ospina's testimony helped build these four new murder charges against the drug boss.

  Pablo hit back. On December 16, Lisandro Ospina, another of the informant's brothers, was kidnapped. Lisandro was a twenty-three-year-old student at MIT with no connection to his older brother's criminal activities. He had just finished a semester in Boston and was home for a holiday break. Thirty heavily armed men surrounded him as he shopped for clothes in Bogotá and took him away. He was later killed by his captors.

  Ospina told agents in Washington that he wanted to return to Colombia and retaliate against Pablo personally. He was talked out of that, but he channeled his anger in another way.

  For months now, in a series of debriefings with DEA agents, he had been outlining a broader campaign against Pablo. Impatient with what he saw as the polite legal tactics employed by official pursuers, he felt that the manhunt needed to go outside the law. He laid out an illegal vendetta that could have been a blueprint for the creation of Los Pepes, right down to the need to publicize their actions.

  SZE-92–0053 states that Pablo Escobar's apprehension should be planned by accomplishing five goals. First…key Escobar organization members…should be arrested or killed, if there are no charges pending against them in Colombia. [Second], SZE then named attorneys who handle Escobar's criminal problems and whose deaths would create havoc for Escobar. Third, the informant named properties and important assets belonging to Escobar which should be destroyed.

  Ospina went on to list the key members of Pablo's current inner circle "essential to his survival" and five at
torneys who, he said, "handle Escobar's criminal and financial problems and are worse than Escobar. These attorneys negotiate with the Colombian government on [his] behalf and are fully aware of the scope of [his] activities since [he] consults them before he carries out any action." These men should be killed, he said. Step four, according to Ospina, involved destroying Pablo's possessions. He enumerated Pablo's most prized properties and assets, his antique cars, his country homes, his apartment houses, his aircraft and airports:

  SZE claimed that in order to bring Escobar out of hiding, he needs to be provoked, or angered and made desperate so that he wants to strike back. The informant claimed that Escobar may then make mistakes. [He]recommended seizure and confiscation of Escobar's assets, or their literal destruction, as a means of angering Escobar.

  Lastly, Ospina felt the pursuit needed to court the Colombian media. He noted that Pablo had bought tremendous influence during his campaign against extradition. "He controls the media through fear and payments, and has confused the Colombian public by having himself portrayed as a wronged Colombian citizen, not really as dangerous as he appears to be in the foreign press."

  Ospina also suggested that the manhunt seek help from jailed Colombian drug traffickers who might be willing to trade useful information. Such an incentive was offered to Carlos Lehder, the former Medellín cartel leader who believed Pablo had turned him over to the authorities for extradition. The jailed cocaine boss described Pablo's methods of evading capture, how he moved from safe house to safe house and would never leave the immediate Medellín area. He gave the agents explicit insights into Pablo's habits and preferences:

  Escobar is strictly a ghetto person, not a farm or jungle person. He fears more the communist and nationalist guerrillas than the army, so he remains in the Magdalena Medio Valley, a non guerrilla region. Since the guerrillas remain in the high mountains one could disregard the mountains as Escobar's hiding place…. Escobar always tries to keep within distance range for his cellular phone to reach Medellín's phone base. That's approximately 100 miles, so he can call any time.

  Generally, P.Escobar occupies the main house with some of his hitmen, radio operator (Big High Frequency radio receiver), cooks, whores and messengers. For transportation they have jeeps, motorcycles and sometimes a boat. I have never seen him riding a horse. Escobar gets up at 1 or 2 P.M. and goes to sleep at 1 or 2 A.M.

  Fugitive Escobar uses from 15 to 30 security guards, with arms and WT (walkie-talkies). Two shifts of 12 hours each. Two at the main road entrance, some along the road, the rest around the perimeter of the main house (one mile) and one at his door…. The main house always has two or three gateway paths which run to the forest and thus toward a second hideout or near a river where a boat is located, or a tent with supplies and radios. Escobar is an obese man, certainly not a muscle man or athlete. He could not run 15 minutes without respiratory trouble. Unfortunately, the military-police has never used hunting dogs against him.

  Anytime the lookouts on the far perimeter saw a vehicle approaching or a low-flying airplane or helicopter, they would "scream through those walkie-talkies," Lehder said, and Pablo would immediately flee. Until the Search Bloc got a lot smaller and a lot stealthier, Pablo would always know they were coming.

  Lehder responded with his own suggestions for closing in on his former ally:

  The only realistic de facto solution, as I analyzed it, is a new military government or, at the very minimum, a freedom fighters brigade, controlled by the DEA, and independent of the Colombian politicians, police or army…. There is a great number of Colombian peoples from all walks of life that are genuinely willing to assist, support, finance and even participate in the effective forming of a civilian militia…. The rich, the poor, the peasant, the political left, center and right are willing to cooperate. Every day Escobar remains at large he becomes more powerful and dangerous.

  When Lehder suggested a "civilian militia," it didn't require a stretch of the imagination. He was speaking a language well understood by the U.S. Special Operations Command. Organizing indigenous forces to combat insurgency was one of the founding doctrines of special warfare, exactly what President John F. Kennedy had had in mind when he'd created the Green Berets. In the ensuing thirty years, the John F.Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, had compiled long experience in such work, from Vietnam to El Salvador. It was one of Garrison's specialties.

  And if the Americans were looking for a "civilian militia" equipped to challenge Pablo Escobar on his own level, they did not have to look far. Colombia had a long history of death squads. One of the most notorious of its paramilitary leaders was Fidel Castaño, nicknamed "Rambo," a charismatic assassin and sometime drug exporter and diamond smuggler who had been close to the Moncada and Galeano families. Castaño was notorious for his brutality. He was rumored to have been responsible for the massacre of forty-five peasants in the Gulf of Urabá in 1988. After Pablo became a fugitive, Castaño contacted the Search Bloc to offer his help. In a cable to DEA headquarters written by Peña on February 22, 1993, the agent identified Castaño as "a cooperating individual":

  As a result of a disagreement with Escobar, Castaño contacted the CNP/Medellín task force [the Search Bloc] and offered his help in attempting to locate Escobar. Castaño advised the CNP that his disagreement with Escobar stemmed from his (Castaño) telling Escobar that he (Castaño) was not in agreement with his (Escobar) terrorist campaign, i.e., bombs, police killings. Castaño was also concerned that Escobar could have him (Castaño) killed at any time as had been the case with the Galeano/Moncada brothers.

  Castaño led the Search Bloc on an ill-fated raid in December, when a boat carrying three of Martinez's top officers capsized. Two of the officers were drowned as the raiding parties crossed the Cauca River. Castaño had reportedly made heroic efforts himself to rescue the men, and had pulled one of them from the water. In such ways he'd earned the trust and respect of the Search Bloc. The charismatic paramilitary leader brought dash and daring along with his valuable connections to the Colombian drug underworld. Few of Pablo's other former allies were evidently willing to take sides against him.

  Peña wrote:

  Fidel Castaño had made telephonic contact with the incarcerated Ochoa clan (Jorge, Fabio and Juan David). Castaño asked the Ochoas to leave Escobar and join sides with him. Castaño explained that Escobar would have them killed just like the Moncadas and Galeanos. The Ochoas stated that they had recently given Escobar $500,000, however, they were thinking of abandoning him…. Castaño told the CNP/Medellín [the Search Bloc] that the Ochoas would never abandon Escobar for reasons of fear and that they "always lied in order to stay in neutral with everybody."

  In Castaño, Lehder, Ospina, and the Moncada and Galleano families, the hunt for Pablo Escobar had gained allies who were eager to play by the bloody rules of Medellín criminal wars. Others were enticed to join the effort by a judicial decree sought by Attorney General de Greiff that granted amnesty to drug traffickers and other criminals who assisted the police in the manhunt.

  One of those who took advantage of the decree was the pilot who called himself Rubin, who had fallen into cocaine smuggling through his friendship with the Ochoa brothers sixteen years earlier. Rubin's first impression of Pablo had never changed. He still saw him as a Medellín street thug, low class, who had bullied his way into the cocaine business. In the years that he and his friends the Ochoa brothers had worked for Pablo, he would occasionally remind his partners that "Pablo is nobody's friend." Indeed, when a close friend, married to one of the Ochoas' sisters, was kidnapped in 1985, Rubin immediately suspected Pablo. His partners refused to believe him, so Rubin began snooping on his own. When he'd collected evidence linking the kidnapping to Pablo, Rubin got a phone call from the drug boss, who asked, "How are you doing with your investigation?"

  "We are very close," said Rubin.

  "I want you to stop," said Pablo. "That guy is in the hands of very dangerous peop
le, and you might find yourself in trouble."

  Rubin understood perfectly. He stopped looking. He took the warning so seriously that he left Medellín and took his family with him. For months they moved from place to place and avoided telephones. Pablo tracked him down more than a year later—his kidnapped friend had been killed—and asked him for $1 million.

  "I won't give you a dime," Rubin said.

  "Do you know what you are doing?" Pablo asked.

  "Yes. I know I'll have to hide for the rest of my life."

  Not long after the escape, Rubin was approached by DEA agent Peña, who asked if he would be willing to help enlarge the search effort's pool of informants in Medellín. Rubin agreed. He joined the effort against Pablo, and his criminal past in Colombia was wiped clean.

  By the end of that year, a notorious cast of characters had assembled to assist in the manhunt, some of them in the United States, most of them in the war zone of Medellín. In the States there were Ospina, Dolly Moncada, Lehder, and others. Among those in Medellín were Castaño and his brother Carlos, Marta Moncada, sister to the slain Moncada brothers, Mireya and her brother Raphael Galeano, the traffickers Eugenio García, Luis Angel, Oscar Alzate, Gustavo Tapias, Enrique Ramirez, and an assortment of others. Among the group was Leonidas Vargas, a drug dealer who was on the DEA's "kingpin" list, and a notorious former Galeano family sicario, Diego Murillo, an obese man with buck teeth and a face disfigured with scars who walked with a limp. He was known as Don Bernardo, or just Don Berna.