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Most people picture gangsters as powerful men in sharp suits, surrounded by cigar smoke, luxury, and violence. But one of the most feared crime bosses in history was a woman… and she was so ruthless that even Pablo Escobar was afraid of her.
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When you think of gangsters, you probably think of opulent parties, obscured by a haze of cigar smoke
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And who's smoking those cigars? Chances are, you're imagining powerful men in smart suits and brimmed hats
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But in reality, one of the most notorious gangsters in the game was a woman
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one so ruthless that Pablo Escobar himself admitted he was afraid of her
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Which is why, today, we'll be chronicling the scandalous life of the woman who terrified Pablo Escobar
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Before she ever came to be one of history's most vicious criminal queenpins
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Griselda Blanco Restrepo had already lived a life of ill repute. Accounts differ on exactly where she was born
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but it was either in Santa Marta or Cartagena, Colombia, on February 15, 1943
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Three years later, her mother, Ana Restrepo, brought her young daughter to the city of Medellin
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which is where the trouble truly began. Medellin wasn't exactly a thriving city known for its family-friendly atmosphere
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Its fledgling industrial efforts were on shaky ground thanks to political upheaval
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Living there meant constant hardship, and it was a hotbed for criminal activity
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It was a city in turmoil, vulnerable to any and all who were willing to take advantage of it
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not unlike Blanco herself. She was introduced to the seediest parts of Medellin at an early age
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thanks to her mother's involvement in sex work. These unfortunate formative experiences hardened
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Blanco against the world, and it wasn't long until she was searching for ways to take her fate
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into her own hands. According to a story told by one of her later lovers, Charles Cosby
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Blanco committed her first major crime at just 11 years old. She and a gang of poverty-stricken
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children made the dangerous trek across Medellin to kidnap a wealthy boy from a more upscale
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neighborhood in the city. Their plan was to extort the boy's parents for ransom money
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but when things went awry, Blanco got more than she bargained for. With encouragement from the
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other children, Blanco ultimately ended up shooting the boy, and if the story is to be believed
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then this was the first life Blanco took, but it would be far from the last. By the time she
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reached adolescence, Blanco had become a seasoned pickpocket and started working as a prostitute
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under her handler, a man named Carlos Trujillo. Trujillo was a petty criminal in his own right
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known mostly for forging fake documents for Colombians looking to flee to America
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and he would later become Blanco's first husband after she ran away from home to escape the abuse
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of her mother's then-boyfriend. Together, Blanco and Trujillo expanded their enterprise to include
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the illegal growing and distributing of marijuana throughout Medellin and the neighboring towns
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While continuing their crime streak, they had three sons, all before Blanco turned 22
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But by the mid-1960s, Blanco divorced Trujillo. Shortly afterwards, she met and married Alberto
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Bravo, a smuggler for Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel. And in 1964, Bravo had saved up enough
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money to fly himself, Blanco, and her three sons to America, where Blanco would continue to work
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with Trujillo while helping to build up her new husband's extra-legal ventures. Unfortunately for
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Trujillo, his business partnership with Blanco wouldn't last much longer than their marriage
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and neither would his life. Just a few years later, around 1970, she put out a hit on her
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handler Apparently the pair had some sort of business dispute and Blanco decided the easiest way to settle it was to snuff him out This one merciless act would lay the foundation for the rest of Blanco life She was no longer a child
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being goaded into action. She was a woman in control, and she would do everything in her power
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to stay that way. While living in Queens, New York, with Bravo and her children, Blanco wasted
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no time getting a foothold in her new stomping ground. She and her second husband established a
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successful cocaine smuggling operation in the city, and to cover their tracks, they started a
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clothing import company that would explain away their impressive income. In addition to that
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clothing import company, Blanco had the deviously brilliant idea to open a factory in Colombia
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which manufactured lingerie with hidden pockets made especially so women could traffic drugs out
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of the country and into the United States. Though her and her husband's shared enterprise
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became known as the Alberto Bravo Organization, Blanco was acquiring a reputation of her own
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Her business acumen and cutthroat attitude made her infamous within New York's criminal underbelly
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They were raking in millions monthly and bringing countless pounds of illicit substances
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across the border. They were practically legends, but as their notoriety grew underground
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it was only a matter of time before things bubbled to the surface and they garnered mainstream attention
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In April of 1975, the NYPD and DEA went in search of evidence of Blanco's involvement
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in illegal drug trafficking, and they found it. The investigation, which was dubbed Operation Banshee
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resulted in over 150 arrests, with Blanco among them. It was the largest case ever uncovered at the time
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She and 30 of her underlings were brought under federal drug conspiracy charges
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and released with an impending indictment. But by the time a judge approved the indictment
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Blanco had done what any sensible criminal mastermind would do. She made a break for it
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She, Bravo, and her three sons returned to Colombia before the police ever had the chance to knock on her door
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But while she escaped the feds, she did not escape notice. Blanco became known in the press as the godmother
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and the queen of cocaine, which she welcomed with open arms. The general public's fixation with gangsters
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had hit its peak just a few years earlier with the release of The Godfather in 1972
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and apparently Blanco was fully embracing the comparisons. She and Bravo continued their operations from Colombia as best they could
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but after a few months, tensions began running high. The pair got into an argument over their business
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Blanco accused her husband of embezzling millions of dollars from their business
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and he accused her of taking this whole godmother thing too seriously and going mad with power
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Biting words turned to biting bullets as the two got into a gunfight
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Blanco suffered a stomach wound and survived, but Bravo wasn't as lucky
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A lethal headshot administered by Blanco ended his life in an instant
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and she took six of his bodyguards down with him. She'd come a long way since that childhood kidnapping
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With Bravo out of the picture, the godmother had become the sole owner of a massive illicit empire
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and she'd earned herself a new nickname, one she would not embrace so eagerly, the Black Widow
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In 1978, Blanco married her third and final husband, a man named Dario Sepulveda she met
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while running her business in Colombia. There's very little information about who Sepulveda was
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prior to his involvement with Blanco but what is known is that the two of them had a son Blanco named her fourth and youngest son Michael Corleone Blanco after the iconic fictional gangster portrayed by Al Pacino
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in The Godfather. So, maybe Bravo was right, and Blanco's godmother nickname really had gone to
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her head. She, Sepulveda, and their son secretly found their way back to America, but New York
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was still too hot. The moment she stepped foot there, the feds would be all over her
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She had to settle somewhere else, somewhere rich with opportunity, somewhere like Miami
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Miami, Florida already had a well-established cocaine pipeline thanks to the ever-increasing
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activity of Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel. But Blanco wasn't afraid of a little
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competition. After all, she had a sizable operation of her own and a propensity for cruelty that had
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already become common knowledge among Escobar and his crew. That propensity would end up coming in
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handy as Miami devolved into an all-out drug war, with violence between rival cartels flowing as
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freely as the substances they trafficked. Actually, Blanco may have even been the reason the war
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started in the first place. In 1979, a Colombian drug trafficker named Germán Jiménez Panezo
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and his bodyguard, Juan Carlos Hernandez, perished in an infamous shootout at the Daedlin Mall in
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Miami. Several others were injured, and it was allegedly two hitmen under Blanco's employ who
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instigated the skirmish. That incident led to a dramatic increase in clashes among rival cartels
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in the area, and the pressure built until Miami became known as the drug capital of the world
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So many people lost their lives in the struggle over turf and reputation that by 1981
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the city morgue literally ran out of space and had to rent a refrigerated truck to store lost souls
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And Blanco was right there ordering hits, bloodying her hands, and ensuring that the truck had to keep running cold
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She especially favored a technique where her hired hands would mount motorcycles
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take out their targets, and tear away with a speed and maneuverability
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not easily accomplished by a more traditional drive-by in a car. It was through techniques like this, and her liberal use of them, that the other cartels
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began to truly fear Blanco. Pablo Escobar himself even reportedly said, The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco
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By 1983, Blanco's lust for power, control, and carnage would once again reach a boiling point
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After she found Sepulveda to be cheating on her, the two separated and a custody battle
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ensued over their son. Sepúlveda wanted to put their son through school, but Blanco wanted him
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within arm's reach. Rather than resolving things amicably, Sepúlveda saw the writing on the wall
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He was never going to get his way, so he absconded with their then five-year-old son back to Colombia
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where he presumably thought they'd both be safe. But nowhere in the world was safe from the
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godmother. Not long after their escape, while driving down a road somewhere in Colombia
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Sepulveda was pulled over with his son in the car. Two men, claiming to be police officers, ordered Sepulveda to step out of his vehicle
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and then they executed him on the spot in front of his son. They were not police officers, but rather hitmen
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and it strongly suspected that Blanco was the one who gave them their target
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Her son was returned to her in Miami, and the pair lived there together for another two years
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until Blanco's fast life of crime finally caught up to her. Blanco home was raided by the DEA She was arrested and subsequently charged with conspiring to manufacture smuggle and distribute
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cocaine in the U.S. and brought before a judge in New York City, where she was convicted and
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sentenced to 15 years in a federal prison. While under lock and key in 1994, she was also charged
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with three counts of first-degree murder by the state of Florida, including that of the two-year-old son of a rival cartel member
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But those were the only crimes they thought they could prove in court. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Schlesinger, who prosecuted Blanco
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estimated that she had actually ended dozens of lives over her tenured criminal career
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According to him, she was a complete sociopath. She murdered people at the drop of a hat
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She would kill anybody who displeased her because of a debt, because they screwed up on a shipment
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or she didn't like the way they looked at her. The prosecution's star witness was Blanco's own hitman
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Jorge Ayala, who agreed to testify against his former boss in exchange for leniency in his own trial
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But his credibility was irrevocably damaged after he was found to have engaged in phone sex
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with the Miami-Dade County prosecutor's secretaries. The scandal rocked the case and ultimately worked in Blanco's favor
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She pled guilty to three second-degree murder charges in 1998, and six years later, in 2004
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she was released from prison and immediately deported back to Colombia, where she would live the rest of her life
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What she didn't know, however, was that the rest of her life would be brief
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On September 3rd, 2012, Blanco and her pregnant daughter-in-law were out grocery shopping in Medellin, Colombia
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The two of them went to a butcher shop, and as they left, an assailant on a motorcycle fired two shots in their direction and sped off
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The shots hit their intended target. Blanco suffered two direct head wounds and perished instantly
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At just 69 years old, the godmother was dead, and to add insult to mortal injury
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the Florida police told the Miami Herald that they thought she'd been dead for years
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meaning that not only had Blanco fallen, but so had her empire
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She and her enterprise, the thing she'd fought so hard to build, was no longer even a blip on their radar
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The same year his mother died, Blanco's son Michael was put under house arrest in 2012
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and charged with two felony accounts of cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. His probation ended in 2018, and since then, he's spoken publicly about his mother on several occasions
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Since she'd been in prison for most of his life, Michael barely knew her. He was raised by his paternal grandmother and other legal guardians throughout his childhood
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But according to Michael, his mother found religion later in life. She became a born-again Christian and did her best to live quietly
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until the opportunity to do so was taken from her in the exact same manner as she'd ordered so many others to their deaths
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There's something tragically poetic about that end. And perhaps that's why her life has been since immortalized in documentaries
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rap songs, novels, and a Netflix miniseries starring Sofia Vergara. Griselda Blanco started life as a frightened, abused child with nothing to her name
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and it's hard not to have sympathy for the child she used to be in her final moments
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At the same time, she was almost cartoonishly villainous. She reveled in some of the worst, most heinous crimes a person can commit
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She clung to her infamous godmother nickname like a badge of honor
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and did everything she could to maintain it. No wonder she was the woman who terrified Pablo Escobar