The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see aside of life the average persons never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. I absolutely love hosting this podcast and speaking to some amazing guests. And today I've got to speak to a former cop who I've greatly admired ever since I heard about this story on the hugely successful Netflix series Nakos. Steve Murphy
is my guest. Him and his dea partner Harvey Penna, were part of a team who hunted down arguably the world's most wanted criminal, Pablo Escobar. He was a murdering drug lord who made billions of dollars out of the cocaine trade. Today, Steve spoke about the investigation and the impact it had on him, including living in the country with a bounty on his head. This is a crime story on steroids, and today we talk to the man who was in the thick of it, the man who brought down Pableau Escobar.
Have a listen. Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Thank you very much, Scary. I'm truly honored to be here.
I've got to give a shout out to a common friend, lou Velosi, who put me in contact with you.
And he's an interesting character, isn't he the undercover cop?
You know you hit it now on the head. He is a real character. I love that guy though. He's one of my best best friends.
Yeah, yeah, no.
I enjoyed the chat I had with him, that's for sure. Hey, I've been a big fan of your work, and you know, from a law enforcement perspective, I've seen what you've done and the sacrifices you made, especially on the investigation tracking down Pablo Escobar. I know you'd probably like most cops
and saying well, hey, I'm just doing the job. But my take on it and prepping for this and doing some research, reading your book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and also some of the interviews you've done that you weren't just doing your job. You went above and beyond that. You were really really got in there and had a game.
Well, thank you for saying that. It's you know, the truth of it. It was exciting. We were younger, it was exciting. It was the biggest thing, you know, the DEA was doing at that time.
And you know how it is.
Every other agent, a real police officer, would have gladly taken your place immediately if they had the opportunity.
One percent.
I can sit here and say I'm a bit jealous for a job like that. You start your career and you're not going to think it's going to get to what you were doing there, But we're gonna we're going to talk about that in great detail. But I got the sense it was it was personal. And yeah, I've been a homicide cop for a long time and people say you can't, can't let it get personal. I saw of say bullshit on that. I make the job personal because it drives me. I got the sense what you
and Harber were doing on that case. It did become personal to you? Is that the right assessment?
It is?
I don't know how you cannot make it personal, you know that. I mean, you see the death and destruction that one man is responsible for, and it's offer his own power, his greed, his ego. You know, it just it's unbelievable. And you go to some of these barming sites where children, where babies have been killed just simply because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
How can that not be personally?
Yeah, well, yeah, he's he's certainly looked at now, but at the time it was starting to get a sense of it. He was considered one of the world's mass ruthless criminals.
He was, he was, he was.
I don't know if you ever saw the show here in the United States, America's Most Wanted yep, yep. So they came, they flew down to Columbia and we took a film crew to Mediine and they did one episode only of the World's Most Wanted. That was Pablo Escobar. Yeah, we're I mean, we're talking about the world's very first Narco terrorist.
Yeah, described saying Naco terrorists Bright break that damn for us.
So, you know, and I used to have the same question because I'd never heard that term. Uh, and we kind of coined it, believe it or not, but it's kind of caught on. So a narco terrorist is just basically a narco narcotics trafficker who employs terroristic activities in his daily routine. And so what we saw with Pablo Escobar is when he didn't get his way, he declared war on his own country. He was indiscriminately setting off car bombs, not only against the government but also against
the Cali cartel. The murders were just completely out of control. We used to say that Pablo, in our estimation, Pablo was responsible for maybe ten, fifteen, twenty thousand murders. There was a documentary a few years ago that we were on that they also interviewed one of his remainings. Tocario's a guy named went by the nickname of Popeye. His real name is John Hiro of Alaskaz Vasquez. He was he's dead now, he died of cancer, thank goodness. But
what sounded wrong, didn't it? But I mean that guy's evil.
No, yeah, I understand where he's coming from there and He.
Says on that documentary that Pablo, he said the Green Goes have it all wrong. Pablo is responsible for more than fifty thousand murders. And then Popeye in that same documentary, and you can see this, I think it's I think it's on the Discovery Channel. He says that he orchestrated as many as three thousand murders himself, and the Heat committed over three hundred murders himself, and he's laughing about his smiling about it. I mean, these guys are just
like demons walking. They're pure evil walking on the face of our earth.
Yeah, the sense of I got, and I think I've actually seen him interviewed, whether it's the documentary you're referring to, but there just seems to be no remorse, and it's just they get conditioned to it, and it's just their way of life. To murder someone life meant nothing.
That's exactly right. And in Pope's case, he even murdered his girlfriend because Pablo told him to. Pabla was worried that she was talking to people, and he went and murdered his own girlfriend.
Yeah.
I got the sense of that as well, that if there was any risk. Well, we're not just going to take a risk, would just get the person killed without a second thought.
Without a second thought, that's exactly right. No conscience, no guilt feelings, no remorse, nothing, just business.
Well, Steve, you didn't start off as a fresh blue eye, so I'm ready to go take on the wheel the as a law enforcement officer, thinking you're going to be chasing the world's dangerous man. How did you find your way into policing and law enforcement?
You know, Gary, it's and this if you read the book, you read this story. When I was about ten years old, I had my first running with the police as a kid in Tennessee, the state of Tennessee. And we're camping out in the backyard and you know, some middle it's probably one o'clock in the morning, and we're riding our bicycles through the neighborhood and you know, our parents would kill us if they knew what we were doing. There were some snack machines at all night laundry mat but
none of us had any money. So we decided we'd break in a house because you know, that just really made sense.
It makes sense as a ten year old.
Yep, So we go to this house and we're trying to figure out how we're going to break in when we're at this bedroom window and apparently we were making a lot of noise because the cops showed up and hit us with the spotlight. You know, we were like a deer in the headlights, just frozen. I mean, we were so scared. We didn't even run. And the two police offs just came over and talked to us, and you know, we told I mean, we were honest, We told him what we were doing. They said, boys, you
got a decision to make. You either go to jail with for you know, go with us and go to prison for the rest of your life, or we take you home to your parents. And we kind of looked at each other, like take us to jail, because I don't want to go home and face my dad. But that event just stuck in my mind and it really
impressed me. And even at ten years old, you just think it's cool, right, I mean, you're not really processing in your mind as an adult, but it stuck with me and I just I liked the uniforms, and you know, back then, police officers had discretion to make decisions on
the street. Realizing you know, this is just a bunch of kids about to get in trouble, and they could, rather than putting us in jail and you know, send us a juvenile hall, they could release us to our parents, and the punishment I'm sure was.
A lot worse.
But as I got older, that's all I wanted to do is be a cop. My dad was a retired minister and when he retired him my uncle, my favorite uncle, Uncle Joe. They started a flooring business, a carpet business, and I was the only son of both families, so it was always anticipated I would take over the business. I started working in carpet at fourteen years old. I hated it then, I hate it now, not what I wanted to do. My dad sent me to college to get a business degree, and my first semester I came
out on academic probation because I hated it. So he maybe come home and I went to local college. They had just started their criminal justice program, so I got my four year degree there and became I took my first police test. I was eighteen years old, and my professor's the one that told me I should do it, and I said, you know, they're not going to hire me at eighteen. He's like, but you get experienced taking the tests of them. When you're old enough, they will
hire you. You know, you'll know what to expect. Well, it turns out I scored the high score on that test. I mean the next closest guy behind me was ten points down. And not that I'm an overly smart guy. I was just you know, I was used to studying. I could take a test, and it ended up at the city that I went to work for in southern West Virginia hired me one month after I turned eighteen years old. I couldn't buy alcohol, I couldn't buy cigarettes,
I couldn't buy a gun. I couldn't break by bullets. But I could carry a gun and I could use it. If I determined that was trying to save a life.
That very right, dirty is And I do recall in your books saying that you still have a reaction if you go past the flooring store or that from what your life could have been. Not that there's anything wrong with that life, but you discovered discovered policing and the world that that had to offer your first in You've been across to Australia a few times, and our set up with law enforcement. We have federal police and then
we have state police. But with your first police force or the section that you worked in, what was there thirty cops or thirty right? Sorry, I thought it was small, thirty five. That's a big beginning. Tell us about that. And you even had to buy your own gun, because it's hard for us to comprehend over here in Australia that that's the way that law enforcement is done over in the US.
Yeah, and I'm not sure sure that it is nowadays, but this was back in nineteen seventy five. They provided your uniform, and they would buy your shoes and things like that, but you had to provide your own weapon, and you're on your gun belt and your you know, for your handcuffs and all that stuff. And so one of the police officers that i'd befriended when I was I'd actually done a college internship with the city police department, so they all knew me already, and one of the officers,
I gave him the money. He bought me my first gun, and my dad bought my bullets for me.
It's hard, it's just it's so funny. Now it's hard to comprehend. Okay, well you got your gun, you got your bullets. How did you find those is because you moved around a bit. How long did you stay and was it blue Bluefield?
Uh place in West Virginia?
How long were you there for?
Yes, sir, six years.
Six years and working uniform, not making very much money. I you know, worked as much overtime as I could. I was working off duty jobs. The college I went to, I actually had a little business and security business, and so I got the sports contract for the college for basketball games and baseball and football. I don't know if you know what Amway is, but even sold Amway.
To know what Amway. And I'm not buying off you. Yeah, I don't care what you say, Steve. I respect you, but no, we're not going down that path.
I've got.
No sorry, I'm traumatized. I had a mate that said, I want to catch up, Well what about And it was doing an Amway pitch years ago, so yeah, I do know about it.
Oh yeah, And there was even a one of the local firemen was an electrician when he was off duty, so I worked for him as an electricians helper. So I mean, you did just do with you had to do to pay the bills.
You know, now, I understand. Then you moved to another area. What was that the north Transit transit policing all of the railways.
Well, there was not Transit police but Norfolk and West Back then it was Northfolk and Western Railroad. It's now the Norfolk Southern Railroad.
Yeah.
Became a detective with them, moved down to Norfolk, Virginia. It was quite honestly, it was like a glorified security guard the job they had me doing, and I hated it. He was boring. I mean, it's just terrible. And transferred back to West Virginia. After two years as a railroad cop. Gotten involved in a couple of shootings there, mostly backing up other law enforcement agencies. And the chief I had at the time had never been a real cop. He'd
always been a railroad cop. And I'm not taking anything away from railroad cops. I know some really fantastic investigators, but he really got upset when I helped the city where this is the city department I used to work for, so I know all the cops there. A rookie You've got in a shooting one night, so I went and backed him up. And uh a man was laying shot on the sidewalk and I had to go grab him and drag him in a recessed doorway and we had, you know, had a stand off there for a couple hours,
and the guy finally surrendered. The shooter did, but my boss came in. I called my boss the next morning and told him what happened, and uh so he came in, and man, he was mad at me. He was He said that had nothing to do with railroad business, you know, And I mean he's chewing me out. So I told him, I said, chief, I'm the only railroad cop on duty for twenty six counties, which is an extremely large geographical area. Where do you think I go when I need help?
So you know, when these guys need help, I'm going to be there for him if I can get to him. So he threatened to get me fired, and and uh, you know, just motivated me to go find something else to do, because that's I don't I'm not going to work for somebody like that.
Yeah, I think it's a pathway working.
And when I say working like genuine cops that they're going to clash with bosses like that, that really you wonder what they're in the job for when they don't understand what the role of a copy is. So I recall that in your book, and I thought, yeah, I can just picture the type of ship you would have got into and just shake your head, and yeah, it's frustrating you this.
I'll give you another example. This guy.
We had somebody broke into one of the railroad buildings at a remote site and they'd thrown a rock through the window. So I went and investigated, and you know, couldn't find my fingerprints and they didn't get very much. And so I came back and told him what I was preparing my reports. So where's the rock? So's it's in parking lot over there. I threw it back on you're going to in the draveway, Well, did your fingerprint it?
Say it's the rock. It's porous, it won't absorb the oils on your fingers that you can fingerprint and lift the That's how unexperienced.
I read, Steve.
I always think there's a stream for them if they want to go through in the management level. But I always clashed with ones that yeah, it was obviously career was management. I was an operational police officer. I respect the work you do as a manager. Please respect the work I do as an operational police officer. But it's worldwide, isn't I can talk to a cop from anywhere and everyone's got the same type of story that the same experience.
So okay, from absolutely from those experiences, you're thinking, DA, you wanted to go to the DA. What's the process to get into the DA?
Well it Honestly, I had never heard of DEA. I didn't know what it was. And one of my fellow railroad police officers had been a Virginia State trooper that worked with DEA on a task force, and so he would tell me stories. And I was always interested in archatic's cases as a uniform carp so I got to looking at it. I had to finish up my college degree. I still had a few classes to take, so I did that apply in nineteen eighty five. Took two years
before I finally got hired. And you know, through the background investigation and the interviews that you go through and all the things that you have to go through. So finally got hired and had just moved back to Norfolk, Virginia. Was like my first week there was living in a motel room because I didn't have an apartment yet. And they called and they said they called me on a like a Wednesday, and they said, hey, we've got an opening a class starting Monday.
Can you be here?
And I said absolutely, So I went from there, I went to the main office. My boss there in Norfolk was a guy that used to be a police officer with me, so I know him very well. And they all knew I was applying to DEA. So he, you know, I said, listen, I've got two weeks leave coming. I'm going to turn my notice in today. And he's like, I understand completely, Murph, we hate to lose you, but you know, do what you got to do. So that night I packed up. The next day, Thursday, I drove home.
My wife was still living in West Virginia at the time. You hadn't even moved down yet, and uh got everything ready, and Sunday I drove to the da Academy in Quantica, Virginia and started my adventure there.
Okay, how just to explain to people. I understand what DEI is, but explain to people what the role of the DEA is.
What said, Chada, you know this is interesting if you know, I'm not sure you probably know a lot about our government here because it's crazy things going on.
Right, Yeah, a little bit in the news every recent times. It's like watching reality TV. But anyway, oh my.
Gosh, this is going to be the strangest four years I think any of us living. It's in de A most law enforce or I'm sorry, in federal law enforcement here in the United States. We have several different agencies and the only single mission agencies are the Internal Revenue Service, which are the tax collectors, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Our single mission is to enforce the US Code Control Substances Act, and how that also carries over into money laundering.
But you know, you've got to have an attorney to prosecute those cases, and they kind of go hand in hand, and you know, and you work in a task force environment, so you sometimes you have an IRS agent working with you.
But that's what we do.
We we we don't go after the users. We're not after street level dealers. We're after the largest dealers in the world that are having a negative impact on our country. So if you look at DEA's footprint, we only have if we have a full complement of agents. That's only forty six hundred agents. I think right now DEA is down about a thousand agents.
But in the foreign.
Arena, the DEA has the largest footprint outside of the United States of any federal law enforcement agency here in the United States, including the FBI. I think there's it's something like ninety one offices in seventy eight countries or something like that. But what that does is, like, you know, we've got right there in Australia, we now have an
office down in New Zealand. Of course, we had one in Bogata and the baron Keia down you know when I went down there back in the late eighties early nineties. I'm sorry, but it's you know, we come to Australia, we have no jurisdiction, so we it's it's an agreement between countries to work together and we open up access to information. We have working hand in hand with say the Australian Federal Police or you know, whatever police agency it is. I remember you used to have the Australian
Crime Commission, the acc over there. We had we'd partnered with them for a while and you share intelligence and then as the information say, information is coming out of Australia that will pack impact other countries where we have a presence, or more specifically the United States. Then we send that intelligence to our investigators and what we're trying
to do is make prosecutable cases. And so if if an Aussie is is a drug dealer sending cocaine, for example, to the United States, well we want to we want to build a case on him so we can get extra dive to the United States and put his button jail.
That's there. In a nutshell, that's what de EA is.
How did you find the fund the training that I would imagine giving the fact that you had a background in law enforcement, it wasn't a complete shock. You weren't coming in as a rural rookie.
Had it. How did you find the training.
For the day it was I'm not going to say it was easy. You know, the PT was every day if and if if every day you're either on the range on the firing range shooting or then on the opposite day as you're you're doing two to three hours of PT training and that that's you know, they're always gonna throw at least a five mile run on you just to screw with you. To be honest with you, but it gets into shape and it was very regimented,
so very paramilitary. I'll give you an example. Before I joined DA, especially with the Railroad, I shot competition, so I was a pretty good shot with a pistol, and I was a very good shot. I was on the Railroad pistol team and we traveled all over the United States and competition. So your first time on the range with DEA, they treat everybody as if you've never seen a gun. You know, they'll hold a gun up to say the bullet comes out here, don't ever point that
at yourself. Yeah, I mean, just really basic, you know. So we get on the five yard line with paper targets in front of you, and they said, and we had revolvers back then, not the semi automatics, and they said, okay, fire six rounds, slow fire that no need to rush and try to hit that piece of paper in front of it five yards.
Pretty well, it's five yards I had.
Said that way.
It was bigger than it was, bigger than a bullet hold. But they're still they all touched. And so the instructor comes over and he says, you see that right there, And I said, yes, sir, and he said, if I was scoring this year, get credit for one round. And I started laughing. He said, what's funny? You got to be kidnewed, you know, explained to him, I've been shooting competition, you know, and he said, well, I'm telling you. You said, if I can't count the hole, you don't get credit.
So as we progressed, then you know, they'd say, okay, this time, we want you to fire six rounds, reload, fire six more rounds. So I put a few rounds here, a few rounds here, a few rounds here, a few rounds here, and then some rounds right in the middle. And then he comes back and he's like, oh, you're real smart ass, aren't you.
I'm just doing what you told me, come on see.
And he didn't like that I was. He didn't like it that I was challenging.
Dining upset the weapons instructor. You will probably have the knock out push ups after that, for.
You've been a smart eye.
Ye that yeah, but that that would have served you will. Okay, you get pro, you get pro, you your training? Way do you get posted?
Well?
The first post I went to was Miami in nineteen eighty seven, So that still the wild West down there, that would have been a quiet place.
Miami eighty seven.
Oh it was a blast, I'll tell you what it was.
So when I joined EA, the most part of cocaine I've ever seen it one time was two ounces.
Bagging about like this.
The first case I got to go on undercover, we went down to the Turks and Coco sailings on a seized fifty three foot yacht. We picked up four hundred kilos of cocaine. So I went from two ounces to eight hundred and eighty pounds of cocaine. And you know what, Gary, I was addicted to cocaine at that point, just in a different way.
Just love seizing it, not using it. Well exactly.
I'm glad Miami Vice was a documentary then the TV series was it. Now I'll put I'll put you on the spot because even over here in Australia, I think Miami Vice had any influence on the way certain people were dressing cops and yeah, ah, this is going to be the life Miami there. Did you go there thinking it was going to be you know, you're going to be that?
What was it?
Sunny Crockett?
Absolutely, I used to have hair.
I don't have a whole I left now, but I have the hair down to, you know, past my shoulders. I never could bring myself to get a pierced here, so my wife got me these little magnetic ear rings. You know, you could put an earring on meet and try to pretend to be, you know, bad guy.
But you know what I mean.
I knew I looked like a cop when I was young, and people would still deal with me, They would still work with you in the cover.
Yeah, it's funny that because I know a lot of undercover blokes and sometimes the fact that you it's all like almost hiding in plain sight that Blake couldn't be a copy. He looks like a cop. He's not going to be working undercover if he looks like that. So I can understand how that played out. But look, we're making light of you speeding around in fleshy cars and speedboats.
But that would have.
Been a pretty wild, dangerous place to be working in the eighties in Miami.
It absolutely was. It was.
You'll understand when I say this, It was exciting. It was nineteen eighty and aem we were doing a deal for seventy kilos and a by bust operation. We had an undercover and informant and they were going to be the purchasers of the seventeen kilos. And we're in the house and me, my partner, Kevin, and in the third agent. We're the inside, arrest him and we've got backup teams
out dispersed throughout the neighborhood. And the two bad guys show up and there's they're there to rip us off, and so they you know, we hear the undercover agent begging for his life out in the front room. We're in the back bedroom. Long story short. I peecked down the hallway, saw what was going on, stepped back in the clause. They got the radio and told everybody you know, get in here now, it's rip off. They've got Pete
on the floor. Pete was undercover agent. My partner Kevin walked over to the door and as he's opening the door to hear what's going on, the other bad guy had his hand on the other side of that door. So when they you know, they're the width of the door apart. When they opened the door and Kevin Yille's police and bad guys starts shooting, hits him twice, he falls down if it comes back on me slams the door shut, thank goodness, and bad guy came up shooting
through the door. And so then the third agent we opened up on the door. Twenty three bullet holes in that door on it was all over with. But as they were making their escape, the informants stood up and the second bad guy, as he was going out front door, he turned around and fired three rounds back in the in the house and hit the informant right in the throat and he never made it to the hospital. So it was you know, I know it sounds stupid to say it like this, but it was just so exciting.
You know, it's scary but exciting.
Yeah, I understand that, Steve. You have like you you're like a moth to the flame with the excitement when you're when you're a cop, you're looking looking for the action.
Yeah you're not.
You're not shoying away from it. And I understand the adrenaline. It comes at a price, but you get conditioned to it. But you're saying you would have seen a fair bit in your time there. How did that affect you? Did you change as a person like you you join as you were going to be a carpets for the rest of your life and you're yeah, you I'm tidying. Yeah, call in Miami.
Yeah. You know, going through high school and even college, I was. I was not flamboyant. Uh, you know, probably a little bit self conscious, not real shy, but a little bit shy. You know, I'm not going to go I'm not going to be the life of the party, but I'll go have a good time at the party.
You know what I mean.
Yeah.
And and when you're on.
The street, especially in uniform, some of the situations you go to, you know, people are looking for somebody to take charge, and that's you. And you just when I had a uniform on, I was, I was a different person. I would I would control the situation. I tried to, you know, it didn't always make the right decision, but tried to and and uh followed orders. But people would see you outside of uniform, and they would treat you
like if they recognized you. First of all, most time they didn't recognize you if you were out of uniform. These are people that you knew very well, and uh, they would you know, whereas before I might tell them this is what we're going to do now, I'd say, hey, what do you guys want to do tonight? You know, we're just trying to you know, trying to be the same person. But I think it did change me. My wife says that, you know, I should run from here because I talk. I speak to everybody. I try to
speak to everybody. I try to say hello or kiss my butt or whatever, you know, but I just try to I try to be nice, to speak to everybody. She thinks she gives me hard, she kiss me grounded, you know.
Yeah, well we're going to talk about talk about Connie because.
She played, she shared, the shared.
The adventures in the things, which is quite quite un well, when I say unusual, it's not often recognized. The pressure on the partners. Yeah, and the people waiting at home and being worried about what's going on when you're out there. But okay, so I get a sense. I'm getting a sense of the type of person person.
You are at this stage.
You, yeah, fairly typical childhood, had a bit of a devil in you. But yeah, we've pointed in the right direction most times. You've decided this policing is all right, and you get it's like I think you get addicted to the adrenaline, the excitement, the pressure, the intensity. I understand that that chaos is the thing that you're looking for. You've done your time at Miami, You've been involved in some major stuff there. What inspired you to apply to a posting in Columbia.
Well that's that's where Cannie comes out, because you know, I can tell you she's a tough lady. We're coming up on our forty first anniversary here in about a month. She's given up her career over and over for me. But we're down there in Miami. You know, she's excited for me, for what we're doing. She's working in a hospital. She's a registered nurse. She's working in a cardiac catheterization unit where they you know, put those two up and
you're growing and it goes up into your heart. She loves that kind of thing, the blood and guts, which I think all has gross. But after we've been there about three and a half years, she came to and she said, you know, this has been a pretty exciting life that. I mean. We're small town country people. We end up in Fort We're living in Fort Lauderdale, working in Miami and she said, what's the next most exciting
thing we can do. Well, I had already been working some cases with our office in Baron Keya, Columbia, some money cases, and I said, well, we could move to Colombia. And you know, she kind of looked back at me like I had three eyes, and.
She's like, are you serious?
And I said, yeah, you know, I mean it's something to think about. You got to understand if you tell Connie what to do, it's not going to happen. I mean, she's her own woman, you know, which is what I love about her. But so she just kind of walked away and thought about it for a couple of weeks, and she came back. She said, are you really serious about going to Columbia And I said sure. She said, well we're going to do it, Let's do it while
we're young. So I applied. We got selected for Baron Keiya, but I had to go to language school. So a couple of weeks later they rescinded that transfer because they needed a Spanish speaking agent immediately. So a guy in headquarters later on he called me, I don't know that. I don't even remember the guy's name, and I didn't know him back then, but he said, you know, you just got screwed, right, So yeah, I kind of figured that out. He said, we're getting ready to post three jobs in Bogotype.
Do you want one of those?
And I said sure, And he said, okay, I'll do everything I can to get you the job, and I got it. So that's that's how it came about. I want you to know right now, Gary that they never hired me because I'm a real smart person.
I think let's not let's not tell people that too much, Steve, because I think that's a secret of being a good cop.
You don't have to be that smart.
He's just well, we'll keep that one cat on the quiet. I laughed the fact that, uh, and you know, putting the book out there, and it's always confronting when you're talking about your life. But I like the fact that with Connie that hold that she owns a motor bike. That's pretty cool. When you first got together and thought, okay, she's a lady that likes adventure, and that certainly played out so you read read read the script right.
Absolutely she was she wasn't a biker.
She wasn't a biker check or anything like that.
She just she was at clarify that.
Okay, so you get to get to your posting in Columbia. What what was that experience like when you come in too, coming to a country like that, you.
Know, the only Columbias I've ever met were the ones I'd put in jail, and you just, you know, it's wrong to stereotype any people that I stereotypes that whole country and thought everybody here is a drug traffer, but found out, you know, I was completely off based on that. But that first week I was in the embassy is the week that Pablos surrendered, So you know, that's when he surrendered to his customer built prison, and I was
just meeting people. When you first get to the embassy like that, you've got to go through a lot of security things and get your building pass, and I mean, you're just trying to get your feet on the ground. And it's a city of eight and a half million people, and you know the town I went to high school and had nine thousand, So it's you know, you're learning your way around, and so they give you a couple
of weeks to kind of figure everything out. But I was I was already had already met Javier and he had a partner named Gary Sheeron at the time, and Gary and I kind of hit it off right off the bat. When Pablos surrender, We're all watching it on TV and I'm thinking, this is fantastic, man. I mean, the world's biggest cocaine manufacturing distributor just went to jail. And I'm looking around and everybody's disappointed and they're pissed off,
and I'm like, what's wrong with you guys? And they said, you know what you just got here. You don't even know what you're talking about yet. You don't know what we've been through here and what the Columbia National Police have been through and what the Columbian citizens have been through because of Pablo Escobar. You know, you need to keep your mouth shut and learn and that you know you do. They were exactly right. Yeah, So I ended
up partnering with Javier. Gary got promoted and transferred up to baron Kia. So that's when Hobby and Are became full time partners. And for that first year that's exactly what I did. I went through case files, I went with Hoabyard to meet the Columbia National Police. We were supporting their wiretap rooms, all that kind of stuff, all the investigative things that they were doing. But I learned, and that was the best thing that could have happened, because a year later we know what happened.
Yeah, when he got out of prison. Let's one that back a bit talk about Escaba. What was his backstory and how did he get to that point where he gave himself up?
You got it?
So, Pablu his mom was a school Teacher's dad was a dirt farmer. Basically, very poor household, not a lot of income. As he grew up and as a teenager, he started stealing hub caps off of cars and he would go in and his buddy would go into the graveyards and they'd steal headstones and send them down and resell them. I mean, just you know, really upstanding kind of guy.
Right.
It says something, doesn't it.
Yeah, And then he got involved with a guy named Ristreppo. Strepper was a cocaine deli, a small time and he needed I guess he needed some muscle or somebody to participate in a deal. And Pablo agreed to do it for money, and he saw how easy it was to do it, so he went and killed Bristreppo and took his place. So this is I'm going to guess that Pablo was probably in his early twenties at this point.
And I really hate to give this guy credit for anything, but he did have somewhat of a charismatic personality and he could logically think things through on how to expand his illegal activities, if that makes sense.
So and that's what he did.
So they were, you know, they were smuggling marijuana in and then he found out about this cocaine, this thing called cocaine, and he liked it, not that he liked to use it, but he liked the idea because it was so much smaller than bought marijuana. So he got involved in that and they bought some kilos. They got they bought kilo has already done cocaine, had to chloride, which is the finished product. Sold, it made some money, and then he thought, well, you know what, why don't
we produce our own. So they went around and he already had smuggling routes set up coming out of Bolivi in Peru where they were bringing in just basically mainly black market type items like televisions, electronics, just about anything to get your hands on. So they learned how to make cocaine, started setting up their own jungle labs, just started making a buttload of money. And he realized that, you know, people in Colombia, it's a third Wold country.
I mean, it's beautiful. I love Columbia. I hate the same thing bad about it, but it's the truth, and it's an extremely violent country. Their history shows that. But he thought, I'm not going to sell this to Colombia's I want to sell this to the Gringoes because they you know, that's the rnchiest country in the world, and you know they're idiots up there, and they'll spend money on this kind of stuff.
And man, he was right.
So his we did an analysis later on it roughly it would cost him about one thousand dollars to produce one kilo cocaine the finished product. Transportation fees are going to cost you maybe three to four thousand dollars, so roughly five thousand dollars per kilo to get it to the United States. Well back in the eighties, those were going for his high as sixty or eighty thousand dollars
for one kilo. Pig profits, so your returnal investment. Oh my gosh, I mean, and you can see the and now you see how the money just kind of took over his mentality and it was all about him from that point on.
Okay, and as he built the cartel, like in the cacarios that he would have working for him there, but my sense of it, people would grew up in poverty and we're just He's beck and call to do any of these, any of these killings, murders or whatever he wanted to do. Is that how it operated? Was there a structure to it? How did he rise to the top he was.
What brought him to the top is two things. One his inability to have a conscience and not feel remorse. You know that he was fine with murdering people. That's what you had to do. The other was he brought in his cousin, Gustavo Gaviria. Now Gustava, they're like their cousins, but they're actually closer like brothers. They grew up together, and Gustava was the brains behind the whole outfit. He didn't have that mean streak that Pablo had, but he
also didn't shy away from it. So Pablo as people would challenge him, he would kill him, and word got out. You know, don't mess with Pablo, because they'll take you out. He partnered up with Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Scotcha, who's known as Elmeicano, the Mexican who was Gotcha was every bit as evil as Pablo Escobarn and some people will say even more violent. At the time he got involved with the Emerald Minds, he would go kill the owners of the mines and then take ownership.
And you know, he had his.
Own thing going in court and to the cocaine production and trafficking. And then Pablo realized that there's a lot of different groups out there producing cocaine and it was competitive, and he came up with this idea that hey, we're all from Antiochia, which is the state where Medine is located, and rather than you know, cutting each other's throats, why
don't we work together. We'll combine our loads. That way, if we're sending five hundre kilos up, and let's say Pablo's got a hundred, the Otrove brothers have one hundred, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gotcha's got one hundred. A couple other people have one hundred in there. If a load gets taken off, we only lost one hundred kilos, you didn't lose five hundred kilos. So you're kind of sharing. You're sharing the wealth, but you're also sharing the pain. When the caizars do happen,
and everybody liked it. You know, Pablo was he knew how to pay off government officials, whether they were police officers, or they were senators or you know, did they pay off the president. I don't know, but you know, certainly was viable, the attorney general. There's a lot of suspect things there. And eventually Pablo, in his own mind, became so powerful that he thought everybody loved him. Well, the only people loved him were the people that I mean, honestly, it was the poor people.
He grew up poor.
He presented himself to be a man of the people that he grew up like them, and he wanted to help take care of them. He built clinics, he built housing for people that lived on the edge of a trash dump. He gave money away, he gave food away, he built soccer fields and all those are good things. But when he needed new sacarios because his old sagarios are being killed. Where do you think he went to recruit?
So that was because that was it was almost like he's ego. He wanted to wanted to be the gangster and the money, but he also wanted to be loved by the people.
He thought he was.
Representative of the people of Colombia, the pulled down, trodden ones that are trying to make good.
He wanted to be president of Columbia. There was going to be a congressional election, and so the leading candidate in meddiing Pablo had befriended, and I'm sure befriended him with some American cash, and so Pablo ran as an alternate under that congressman. Well, so the congressman got elected, you know, Pablo's funding his campaign and everything. And the day that he got elected, he resigned for health reasons, which bumped Pablo up to his position. Now he's a
duly elected congressman. Convenient, and so when congress session is in session, congressman in Columbia cannot be arrested. Well, he goes to Congress. The story about him not wearing a tie. I supposedly that's true. I don't know if it was or not. But this is before my time. But the man the was he the attorney general or the Justice minister, Rodrigo Laura Buonia. Anyway, he knew who Pablo was. He
knew he was a drug trafficker. If you remember, the Gorilla group M nineteen one time had attacked the Palace of Justice in Bogata rated it.
They were communists leaning yes.
Yeah, and so think when they killed a bunch of the Columbia Supreme Court judges, there's some magistrates, there's people that just disappeared, they were never found. But the evidence room holding all the evidence against Pablo Escobar. Their goal was to destroy that and they did pretty good job, but not completely. So Rodrigo Lara Bania knew this. So in open congress one day, he has that iconic photo of Pablo as he's being arrested, holding his.
ID number and smiling.
Yeah.
So he has that blown up and he unveils that in open congress and calls Pablo Escobar a drug trafficker, which he's convicted criminal, which that nullifies him being a congressman. So you know that that was extremely embarrassing for Pablo.
And that ended these ambitions to be a politician. And aspire to be the president.
But the sad thing of that is about a week or two later, Rodrigo Laura Bernia was assassinated.
Right, Okay, you don't have to guess where that order came from. So he was in conflict with the government at that point in time. You've got the sense that I get is the government, the ones that weren't being corrupted by him, were very much against him. And the issue of extradition was that's played out in a lot of well in the Nacos TV series and in some of the books and documentaries. Was that very much the issue that there was a lot of conflict about.
Absolutely. I mean, that's that's the leading issue right there. He did not want Columbia nationals to be extradated to the United States. And if you remember, he even created a group called the Extra Datables, and they were to create these flyers that they would drop out, you know, they would fly over soccer games, have a plane fly over and drop out these flyers and on these leaflets that said the extraditibles, we prefer a tomb in Columbia to a jail celle in the United States. So everybody
knew who it was that's Pablo. But when that happened with Congress and they kicked him out, that's when he really got violent. That's when he blew up the Avianca flight. That's when he put a five hundred kilogram dynamite bomb in front of the DOS headquarters, which was for us would be like the combination of our intelligence agency and the FBI blew them up, trying to kill the general in charge to that. He killed the leading presidential candidate at that time, a guy named Luis Carlos Kalan, who
had about a ninety percent approval rating. I mean, the Columbians loved him and his platform is if elected, I'm bringing back extradition. So Pablo had him assassinated. That's when Oblo was so mad he declared war on his own country. I mean openly declared war.
Yeah, it's the ruthlessness of it as well. Tell us a little bit about the flight that was blown up, because I got the sense that's when public opinions started to sway against him, that you know, you've gone too far.
He what was the backstory to that?
Well, there Oblo had information that Luis Carlos Golan, or the guy who took his place after his murder, says Argaviria. I think that's who it was, was going to be on a flight from Bogata to Cali. And so what Pablo did is he one of his favorite Sakarios is a guy named Dan Denny Munos Mosquera. Everybody calls him Lakika, that was the street name. Lakika is actually here in the United States doing life in prison for this bombing.
Solakika goes out and recruits a new member of the Cikarios who's he's really an unwitting He doesn't know what's really going on, and so Lakey could tell him. He says, listen, here's a briefcase Pabla's. We're getting you a first class ticket on this plane up to Kylie. The guy that you're going to be sitting next to is an enemy of Pablo. And once you get in the air, Pablo wants you to just engage him in conversation and just you know, try to bait him a little bit and
see what his opinion is on different things. And he said, but once you're up in the air, pull this little pin out of the outside of the briefcase, little hidden pen, and that will activate the recording device inside. Guy says okay, So he goes and gets on the plane, sits down, the plane gets the altitude, he pulls the pin out
to start the recording, and that detonated the bomb. So one hundred and seven people died on that flight, plus three people on the ground that were killed, So one hundred and ten people died because Pablo wanted to kill Sayes of Gaviria, the next presidential candidate that he thought would win. And at the last minute something came up and Gavia didn't even get on the flight. Now, there were supposed to be two deea on that flight and you know, whatever reason, and the embassy, the boss came
out says, nineted you guys or something else. We had no information that there was going to be a bomb on that flate. Just by the grace of guard, those guys didn't get on the plane. But who was on the plane was two American citizens. So that's what gave me then States jurisdiction to go after Lakika and Pablo for that.
Baring okay, and that's well, it's say when he crossed the line, He's crossed the line a lot.
But I think people.
Will look at that, how ruthless. It just says so much about the person so on that there was this very big effort to bring him to justice, but it wasn't working. But they negotiated him. And what we started talking about was when he gave up, gave himself up, handing himself in.
Can you tell us.
About that, because it's bizarre you look at it from our situation in the United States or Australia. How did this play out? Just explain it because I find it fascin it is.
It's the worst plead deal you will ever hear in your life. I mean, it was embarrassing to the Columbian government. But so the attorney general in Columbia, like here in the United States, are presidents elected and then he appoints the Attorney General to the United States. In Columbia, the president's elected, but the Attorney general is elected separately, so
they're autonomous from each other. So the Attorney General at that time was a guy named Gustavo de Grief, who was a very very smart man educated in the United States, I think at one of the Ivy League colleges. He came up with this idea of what he called a self surrender plan. And the way this worked is you come in and you plead guilty to a felony that you choose. You just pick whatever failing you want to plead guilty to, and in exchange, will absolve you of
every other crime you've ever committed in your life. And this was geared towards Pablo, so Pablo heard about it, you know, and they got the word out, and so he sent a couple of his guys, in lower ranking guys and said, you know, go into pleak Gills. We'll see what happens. And it worked, you know, the government lived up to what they said. So finally Pablo said, well,
you know what, I can take advantage of this. So he said, he calls up to the Attorney General, mister Grief, and he says, uh, listen, I want to take advantage of yourself surrender program. I want to come in and plead guilty. And of course the Attorney General say, oh, thank you, mister mescabor. I think this means so much for our country. This is going to be a new chapter in our history. And blah blah blah, and Papa says, we wait a minute. I got some conditions that go
along with this. Oh what are they? Well, the first one is, you know what, I'm going to build my own prison because I needed to be a place that's secure, that will protect me because I've got a lot of enemies out there. And by the way, I'm going to pay it for it, because I don't want the Columbian citizens to have to bury that tax burd And Thettorney General says, okay, to hell and he says, well, okay.
Next is the guards of the prison. I'm going to pay their salaries, because again I don't want to tie the citizens of Columbia to have to pay that bird that that bill. Turn General says, okay, where do you think they're is. Then he says, all right, my fellow prisoners, there's only going to be fourteen of us, me and thirteen others. And I'm gonna handpick my fellow prisoners because I need them to be people who were loyal to me, just in case somebody tries to come in and get me.
And the Attorney General said okay. He said, well I'm not done yet. He said, uh, listen to all those good guys, the Columbia Police, Columbia military, especially those gringoes. None of those good guys can come within two miles of the perimeter of my prison because I don't want them sneaking any of you trying to kidnap me. And the attorney general says okay, and he says, okay, listen, I'm only gonna do five years. That's that's the max.
Attorney general said okay. And on top of that, there were no stipulations to take any.
Of his assets.
This guy at that time was rated as the sixth seventh richest person in the world. I think it was, with an estimated wealth between eight and thirty billion dollars.
Unbelievable, So oh he So Pablo goes anyway, they agreed everything. So Pablo goes in and they said, well, what are you gonna plead guilty too? And he says, well, you know, there's this one time where some guys were moving a load of cocaine. I didn't know about it, but apparently it was in the car. So shame on me. I was in the car. I'll plead guilty to that. And they said, okay.
That absolved him of every other crime he committed, including murder mass murder. That's why we say it was the worst plea bargain and in the history of the world.
Well you'll sign that it's unbelievable. Sign it was the greatest deal. Yeah, but uh and oh yeah, and the prison described the prison soccer field at luxury. It was.
It was a joke.
It was it was he he had plans this was going to be a resort when he finished his time in prison, because he thought, well, you know what, there's idiots all around the world that will pay good money to come and sleep into bed that Pablo Escobar slept in, or a cabana or a chilet that I've build outside the prison. So when when he escaped the next day, Hobby and I flew to Mediina. For the next eighteen months we lived in Mediene with Columbia National Police and
with the first place we went was the prison. You know, we flew into the base and then they flew us over to the prison. We went to Pablo's area of the prison.
He's got a two room suite.
He's got everything is very nice. He's got a full sized microwave oven, he's got a side by side refrigerator, freezer. He's got custom built cabinets and a big banana bar with marstools. He's got color coordinated upholstery and draperies. He's got arn't work, legitimate, arn't work hanging on the wall.
He had.
There's a famous artist in Columbia just died here not so long ago, Fernando Botero. He had a Botero original that he reportedly paid one point five million dollars for. He had a salad or Dolly original worth over three million dollars hanging in his room. He had nice French couches and love seats and individual chairs and coffee tables, and then you go into the second room and that was his bedroom and office area. His bed was larger than any king sized bed. I mean it was massive.
It was massive bed. He had a fireplace in his office. Some of the pictures that were hanging up in there were not pictures of his family, but he had all of his mug shots matted and framed, hanging on the wall. He didn't have a picture of himself and his son standing in front of our white house sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, d C.
Really he had pictures. He had pictures of.
Himself and Gustavo dressed up like American style gangsters. He had a picture of himself dressed up like manchu Villa, the Mexican bandit. He had a wanted poster framed hanging in his in his two rooms suite with his picture at the top and all his criminal buddies decorated on the picture.
I said, you can't make this stuff up, but you would just you sound like you're jealous of what he had. It was in his in his prison.
He had he had a zie tub in his bath he had a private bathroom with a chub.
You want to be comfortable. He's going to be spending a lot of time there. I think you've been too harsh on him. Look, we're making we're making light of the situation, but you've got to you've got to see the humor in the in the horror, because it was horror that he was creating. And I think that it was quite often people look at the two ex cops
talking and sort of laughing about that. But you've got to take some of the lightness out of all all the heavy things that were going on, because it was quite horrendous what the people he was killing and the damage he was doing. Before we finish Part Part one.
I just want to talk about your open here for whatever you want to say about your partner, have you, Penna, the good and the bad, Because I look back, I look back at my career and investigations is defined by who are you working with and different things tell us about you two. It seems like a little bit like the odd couple, but sometimes the odd couple work out.
Well, we're actually opposites of each other. I'm I've been married pretty much my whole life. He's he's married now, but he certainly wasn't married back then. I'm very organized, he's very unorganized. But the man has a brain like
an encyclopedia. I mean, it was just fascinating, you know, when we're reporting our activities to Washington doing teletypes, cables whatever you call them nowadays, I'm typing out the details and they and of course Washing wants to know what the relationship is amongst everybody and this and whatever event happened. And I'd say, hab, okay, how's this person related to Pablo?
Oh?
Well, his wife is a cousin to Pablo's wife. And he would just lay the whole thing out and Washington loved it because we had all this detail in there.
He we would have parties.
And on weekends at you know, one of our apartments, and they were really good parties. I'll tell you it was a lot of them would go to daylight the next day. Javier would show up with a girlfriend, a different girlfriend at every party. He didn't stay very long because he was going out on a date. But I mean his like he dated miss the former Miss Columbia. These were beautiful young ladies that he was dating. The show shows that Pablo was or I mean the Havier
was dating hookers and informants and communists. He didn't date anybody like that. But let me tell you, Garry, every other woman in Columbia was fair game. So I lovingly refer to Hvier as a man slut fair call.
I think he's, uh, yeah, he's got to carry that, carry that reputation. Sounds like you had a great relationship and the fact that you were like different types. That's sometimes the perfect jee, isn't it. That gets you through those gets you through the precious situations. Really, when we get back, we're going to talk about where it really ramps up, when Pablo escapes and the hunt for him that finally led to a shootout, and you were actually all the photos that the people would see of when
Pablo did meet his end. You were the person that took the photos at the location. And what a ride you guys went on for It was it eighteen months from the time he escaped from prison to the time that he was finally caught.
It was he escaped in June ninety two and he was killed in December ninety three.
Yeah, Well, when we get back for part two, we're going to talk about that, and that's I think some of the most intense bit of policing I've heard about the pressure you guys would have been under and everyone else and the sacrifices people made. So it will take a break and we'll be back back for part two shortly.
Amazing, amazing story.