How Pablo Escobar died

Pablo Escobar Gaviria was the founder and leader of the Cartel de Medellín, a criminal organization that in its heyday managed to control more than 80% of the world production of cocaine, establishing it as one of the 100 richest men in the world according to Forbes magazine of 1987, since he held until 1993.

During the years of his mandate, which was one of the most important posters in Colombia and the world, Escobar murdered more than 4, 000 people including politicians, judges, civilians and even members of his own cartel. He is responsible for such atrocious acts as the attack on a plane of the Avianca line in which 110 people died, the kidnapping of various journalists and various bombings perpetrated in different parts of Colombia. But how did Pablo Escobar die and what are the hypotheses surrounding his death? In this article we explain it to you.

The many criminal activities of Escobar

Pablo Escobar Gaviria began his criminal career in the world of contraband, later he would become involved in the business of car theft in the city of Medellín and then in marijuana trafficking to the United States. However, in the 1970s, its drug trafficking activities increased to a higher level when it went from being an intermediary in the purchase of cocaine paste to reselling it to traffickers in the United States to becoming the head of the processing, trafficking and distribution of cocaine. cocaine for the United States and the rest of the world.

Along with other important drug lords such as the Ochoa brothers, Carlos Lehder and Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, he founded in 1981 one of the most feared criminal organizations in Colombia: the Medellin Cartel . This time marked his beginnings like one of the most dangerous criminals of all the times, recavando a fortune of at least 7, 000 million dollars only between 1981 and 1987.

In charge of the Medellín Cartel he managed to make drug trafficking a big problem for the Colombian authorities, this added to his long list of murders turned him into public enemy number one. Escobar killed both civilians in their various attacks, criminals of other cartels and their own organization, as well as well-known public figures, including Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, murdered on April 30, 1984 for openly fighting against the drug trafficking, or the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, murdered on August 18, 1989.

The situation of violence became uncontrollable, so the government of President Belisario Betancur decided to fight the drug traffickers with a feared and powerful weapon: the extradition of criminals to the United States due to his involvement in the drug trade to that country.

Escobar's response was blunt: "I prefer a grave in Colombia than a cell in the United States." This sparked an all-out war between the Medellin Cartel and the government. Members of the media, police, former government ministers, many names were on the list of murders of Escobar and his henchmen in order to put pressure on the Colombian government to stop the persecution against him and eliminate the possibility of extradition.

Finally, in 1991 the new Colombian constitution prohibited extradition to the United States and, in exchange, Escobar surrendered on June 20 of that same year to the authorities to be imprisoned. But he would not do it in any prison but in the Cathedral, an enclosure that he himself had sent to build in some land of his property.

Prison and escape time

Your stay at The Cathedral was as comfortable as a spa vacation. Outside the "prison" was the Colombian army, which, however, could not access the place. Among the conditions of El Capo, no one could fly over The Cathedral and its custodians were no more than members of their own band in military uniforms.

Inside the prison, he went from being the Patron of the drug to becoming someone who lived off his partners, charging huge amounts of money to other drug traffickers for using the networks and the system he had created and for having their protection. In the Cathedral abounded alcohol, drugs, women and parties, but the situation was out of control when it was leaked to the media that Escobar had murdered two of his associates inside the prison itself, their bodies disappearing in these areas.

The government of Carlos Gaviria ordered his transfer to a new prison, for which they made a surprise shot of the Cathedral on July 21, 1992 in which the Capo ordered to kidnap the deputy justice minister Eduardo Mendoza inside the jail, while he and his henchmen escape quietly on foot through the mountains in which the Cathedral is located.

This is the beginning of his time as a fugitive from justice, an action with which he unknowingly signed his death sentence.

The death of Pablo Escobar

For 1 year and a little over 4 months, Escobar remained a fugitive from the authorities, during which time a real war broke out in Colombia to apprehend several members of the Calí Cartel as well as other criminal associations in the country. The emergence of the paramilitary group Los Pepes, an acronym for persecuted by Pablo Escobar, a group founded by former members of the Capo in order to take revenge on him, further increased the violence in the streets of cities such as Medellín and Bogotá, unleashing a tense climax of violence that plunged Colombia into a major crisis.

The Search Block, composed of special members of the Colombian National Police who had been trained by members of the Armed Forces of the United States and who worked with the collaboration of the DEA, was in charge of searching and capturing Escobar. During all that time the drug trafficker was tremendously elusive, constantly misleading the authorities with satellite phones that he installed in different houses and points of the city, where he was hiding so as not to be discovered.

During his time as a fugitive his greatest concern was the safety of his wife and two children, to whom he was very attached. He tried to process the departure of his family from the country, negotiate with the government and protect them at all costs from the Pepes, which is why he believes he neglected his own security. After months of intelligence work with the highest technology for the moment, on December 1, 1993, the day on which Escobar turned 44, the Search Block managed to locate it in a neighborhood of Medellín thanks to the tracking of 6 calls. that the Capo made his son.

The next day, on December 2, 1993, the Colombian armed forces cornered Escobar in his hiding place in a house in the Center of Medellin. When being caught, it tried to escape by the roof of the house, nevertheless during the flight a bullet hit him in the heart killing it of instantaneous way. The image of his lifeless body on the roof of this house went around the world, concluding the mandate of one of the most obscure and controversial characters in Colombian history.

Other hypotheses of his death

Although the ballistics analysis confirms the fact that Escobar was killed by a shot in the heart perpetrated by one of the members of the Search Block, many theories about his death have emerged since his murder, some of them are: