Pablo Escobar

On December 2, 1993, after a fifteen month manhunt by ‘Search Bloc’, the Colombian and the U.S. intelligence agencies and the ‘Los Pepes’, he was found from his hiding and shot by the ‘Colombian National Police’. It still remains a mystery as to who shot him in his head as the relatives of Escobar believe that he shot himself to death.

Around 25,000 people attended his burial including most of the Medellin’s poor who were extensively aided by him. His grave rests at Itagui’s ‘Cemetario Jardins Montesacro’.

Pablo Escobar was born in on December 1, 1949, Rionegro, Colombia, to Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar and Hermilda Gaviria as their third child among seven. His father was a farmer and his mother was an elementary school teacher.

His criminal activities began on the streets of Medellin in his teens when he used to steal gravestones and sell them to smugglers after sanding them. Reberto Escobar, his brother on the contrary claimed that the stones were from owners of those cemeteries where the clients failed to pay for site care and that one of Escobar’s relatives were in the monument business.

He studied in the ‘University Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín’ for a short period.

Since childhood he had a strong desire to become a millionaire by the age of 22. His criminal activities along with Oscar Bernal Aguirre included selling fake lottery tickets, stealing cars, selling contraband cigarettes and operating petty street scams.

He became a bodyguard and a thief in early 1970s and kidnapped a Medellin executive to earn a quick $100,000. His next step up in the criminal world was to work with Alvaro Prieto, a contraband smuggler.

In ‘The Accountant's Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel’ Roberto Escobar discussed how an obscure and simple middleclass Pablo Escobar rose to become one of the richest men under the Sun.

Roberto Escobar used to keep track of all the money earned by Pablo Escobar as his accountant. At its peak when ‘Medellin Cartel’ smuggled 15 tons of cocaine daily to the U.S. worth over half a billion dollars, Pablo and his brother purchased rubber bands worth $1000 per week to wrap the cash bundles. About 10% of the money stored in their warehouses was lost every year due to spoilage by rats.

Pablo entered the drug trade in the 1970s and developed his cocaine operation in 1975. He himself used to fly a plane between Colombia and Panama for smuggling the drug to the U.S.

In 1975, after he returned to Medellin from Ecuador with a heavy load, he was arrested along with his men. Thirty-nine pounds of white paste was found in their possession. He failed in an attempt to bribe the judges of his case and later killed the two arresting officers resulting in dropping of his case. Soon he started applying his tactics of either bribing or killing to deal with the authorities.

Earlier, he used to smuggle cocaine in old tyres of planes and a pilot would receive $500,000 per flight. Later when its demand in the U.S. escalated, he arranged for additional shipments and alternative routes and networks including California and South Florida.

During 1990s, the government expropriated his luxurious estate ‘Hacienda Napoles’, the unfinished Greek-style citadel and the zoo under the law ‘extinción de dominio’ and handed them over to the low-income families. The property was reformed to a theme park encompassed by four luxury hotels alongside the zoo and a tropical park.

Escobar has remained a subject of several books, films, television shows, documentaries, music and even games.