74. The Hunt for Pablo Escobar: Rise of a Drug Lord (Ep 1)

24:38Gordon Corera:The higher you go, the better the views, but the worse off you are socially. The wealthy city center is in the valley. That's where the elite live. You go higher and higher. The views get better, but you're poorer, right? Now, the locals in Medellin are known as paisas. It is very much the commercial capital of the country. It started as the mining center, and then it becomes the center for coffee. By the 20th century, it's the industrial center of the country. And those paisas are rich, they're industrious, but they're also the butt of jokes of this kind of oligarchy in Bogota. The Bogotans are more refined.

25:16Gordon Corera:It's where they have the political power. So there's a kind of regional resentment here. right? Which is going to play an important part of the story in how Pablo tries to set himself up kind of as the feudal lord of this city. And the region around it is quite wild, isn't it? And then that's where you've got smugglers, contraband, bandits. It's bandit country around the city. There's a long tradition of almost gentleman smugglers, I think you could say in Medellin, you have a class of people in Medellin who have created wealth and a perfectly, at least seen in the eyes of other places, as a perfectly respectable occupation, which is you might be smuggling gold and emeralds, it could be liquor, cigarettes, electronics.

26:04Gordon Corera:In Pablo's time, it's going to be cocaine. And this is like an accepted way to ascend in the sort of social classes of Medellin. And there's a great book about the Medellin cartel in Pablo's time called Kings of Cocaine by Guy Gugliata and Jeff Lean. And they make this wonderful comparison to say, if Bogota has the reputation as the Athens of South America, Medellin was at Sparta. It is rough and tumble, harder and more productive, right? And that's how the locals kind of see themselves. Now, I like the story that he got his start in crime by stealing headstones from the cemetery and then sandblasting the names on them so they could be resold for other people.

26:49But you're suggesting that's not true. That's a myth. But I love that story. It is a good story. It's a great way. Stealing from the cemetery is your first bit of crime. But maybe that's an exaggeration. But that's the kind of thing he's doing in his early days. As you said, he's a kind of con artist, petty crime, bit of a thug, element of violence.

27:05Gordon Corera:Yeah, that's right. And it does seem like the sort of the headstone business was legend that was appropriated as biography, but it's probably not true. It seems like it's too much actually of an honest business for Pablo Escobar. So to your point, Gordon, he moves through this world of kind of petty crime in Medellin and gets involved in the smuggling game by going to work as some of the muscle for one of these established smugglers who's running stereo equipment in and out of the Panama Canal Zone, right? He moves from that to actually running a very successful business stealing cars. So by the time he's 20 in the late 60s, he's running a kind of car pinching business.

27:48Gordon Corera:So they literally pull people out of the car in the middle of the day. And then Pablo and his gang break the car down for parts and then resell them. This seems to be pretty lucrative. He builds up some capital and then they start buying off municipal officials to issue new papers for the stolen cars so they don't have to break them down. The arrest records, this will be another great theme of this series. the arrest records from the time have largely vanished, Gordon. Pablo does spend a few months in jail before his 20th birthday. This stint in jail seems to have no impact on his desire to continue his criminal ways.

28:19I just think it's worth painting a picture of him as a character, isn't it? Because you get a sense of it from these days that he is someone who is comfortable in criminality to the point of actually enjoying it. He finds it fun, I think. He's clearly ruthless and willing to undertake violence. But one of the things other people seem to say about him is that he is calm, that he has a kind of calmness in dealing with sometimes the most chaotic, violent, extraordinary situations. And you can see those facets of his character will kind of see him well as he tries to rise up the ranks or as he does ride up the ranks.

28:55But the violence is going to be the key theme. I mean, it's a violent time, but he's going to show himself capable of violence.

29:01Gordon Corera:Very much so. And I think those two things, are going to be a feature of his character throughout this entire series, which is on the one hand, he's actually a very interpersonally polite, not a lot of profanity. He's not particularly intimidating when people meet him. And then you pair that with the extreme ruthlessness and the ability to be remarkably brutal. It's an unusual mix in some ways, isn't it? He doesn't have the kind of hot-headedness that you'd imagine with some people capable of extreme violence. It's a more calm, thoughtful, deliberate violence, rather than a wild, reckless violence, I guess.

29:39Gordon Corera:Yeah, exactly. And I think if you're picturing him as some like coked up Tony Montana, that's not it. He doesn't use cocaine. He is a lifelong user of marijuana. He does not use cocaine. He's capable of the violence himself, as we'll see. But I think he sees himself as a businessman running a particular kind of business, right? So that business turns into a protection racket because car theft is so widespread in Medellin because of his car thievery. So they expand into protection. They have debts to collect, right? So they'll occasionally have someone who doesn't pay. The gang will kidnap someone who owes them money and demand a ransom.

30:13Gordon Corera:If it's not paid, the person will be killed. Sometimes they're killed if the ransom was paid just to send a message. Again, getting back to that kind of violence is theater. And, you know, what's interesting is that that debt collection kidnapping soon transforms into a business where they're essentially kidnapping for ransom. And there's this very famous case, which is attributed to the young Pablo in 1971, when a Medellin industrialist named Diego Echeverria, who's a conservative factory owner in the kind of Medellin high society that I think Pablo resents, is kidnapped. And his body is found in a hole.

30:46Gordon Corera:He'd been beaten and strangled, even though the family had paid a$50 ,000 ransom. Some reports have that ransom higher at over$100 ,000. And it's kind of the beginning in some ways of Pablo's outlaw legend, because here we have this very profitable murder that Pablo can kind of spin and use his people to spin as being done for the cause of social justice. And there's no way to prove Pablo's involvement, but it's been so widely attributed to him that in the slums, Pablo becomes known with some admiration as Dr. Echeverria or simply El Doctor. And so you have this kind of Pablo gelling here by 1971.

31:28Gordon Corera:He's vicious, he's highly commercial, and he's totally tuned in to public sentiment around him as this kind of revolutionary outlaw. Sounds like the start of the legend of Pablo Escobar. At that point, let's take a break. As we come back, we'll see how he moves in and up the drug trade. See you after the break. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew, well, a community cycling group.

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32:52Hello, it's Gordon here, and I'm with Tabby from Goldhanger's new show, The Book Club. We're not here, are we, Tabby, to announce the new James Bond, but we are here to discuss a book that you've just covered. which may have inspired the character. That is correct, Gordon.

33:07Gordon Corera:So this week, Dominic Sandbrook and I have been discussing John Bucken's The 39 Steps. And now this is undoubtedly one of the greatest British spy thrillers of the 20th century. And it's a real trailblazer for that genre. So the birth of Bond. Absolutely. Secret squirrels will know that here on Classified, we're a big fan of historical intrigue. And in the 39 Steps, we meet the dashing Richard Hannay, based on David McCloskey, as he races to prove his innocence whilst inadvertently foiling a German plot to spark the First World War. Yeah, and it's a plot that bears an uncanny resemblance to the assassination of the figure that sparked the First World War in real life.

33:49So that's intriguing.

33:50Gordon Corera:And Hane's journey takes us from the hustle and bustle of London to the Scottish Highlands in this game of cat and mouse and espionage that starts to unfold around our main character. So to listen to the 39 Steps, search for The Book Club wherever you get your podcasts and follow along so you don't miss out on more of their upcoming thrillers. Yeah, including Goldfinger and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. So lots to look forward to. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for having me, Gordon. Goodbye. No problem, Tabby. Bye.

34:32Well, welcome back, everybody, into the story of Pablo Escobar. We've met the young Pablo. Clearly a sense of what he's capable of, and he's ambitious, isn't he? He wants to be somebody. He wants to be the big man. He doesn't just want to make money. It's more than that, isn't it?

34:50Gordon Corera:It is. It's much more than that, I think. And we talked before the break about this kind of outlaw culture in Colombia, and I think in Medellin in particular. And I think it's fair to say, though, that Pablo, as he's stealing cars and kidnapping wealthy industrialists for ransom, and conning people out of money and robbing banks, that it's very possible that he would have remained a notorious outlaw in Medellin, like Tarzan, or Spurs. Sparks or Black Blood or one of these other guys from La Violencia, that Pablo would have fallen into that category where he's essentially unknown, certainly outside of Colombia, if not unknown outside of Medellin.

35:32Gordon Corera:But, Gordon, a particular drug is going to really come online in the 1970s. We would not be talking about him today, of course, if not for cocaine. Cocaine is going to be the business that makes Pablo Escobar. And I think, Gordon, it is worth a brief digression into cocaine. And I have to give a credit here to the journalist Toby Mews for his absolutely wonderful book, Kilo, which traces a kilo of cocaine from essentially the fields. He takes a farm-to-table approach to cocaine, Gordon, in that he tracks how a kilo moves from the fields into the United States. So kilo, the basic unit is a kilogram of cocaine.

36:17Gordon Corera:If you're using a kilo of cocaine in one sitting, you're probably dead. It is the wholesale unit that drives the business. Now, the coca bush, Gordon, we're going to start with the plant. Are we going to explain to people how to make cocaine? Is that what you're telling me? Is that the plan? Sort of. A bit like we've taught people how to make a nuclear bomb in other episodes. That's right. That's right. Is it your turn now to show us your technical expertise? This is less technically complex than creating a nuclear weapon. Okay. I'm not particularly alarmed by explaining how this works because, A, it's already out there in Toby Mews' book.

36:53Gordon Corera:And then B, you need a vast swath of land, smuggling routes and chemicals, and a large quantity of industrial chemicals to do this. So listeners won't just be able to pick it up, I don't think. You're prejudging our listeners that they're not the type to have those kind of resources or the ambition to do it. But anyway, let's put that to one side. Let's get back to what you need to do it. Okay, you need the coca bush. It is a plain looking bush, Gordon. Okay, it's about three feet high, but it has in its leaves a very precious alkaloid. Okay, so like caffeine, nicotine, codeine, morphine, heroin, cocaine is an alkaloid.

37:31Gordon Corera:It is a psychoactive compound that is produced by a plant. Now, the thing about coca in its kind of raw bush form is that it is cheaper to grow and to transport than other potential cash crops like coffee or citrus or cocoa. So there are real incentives for farmers to plant coca. That was true in Pablo's time and it's still true today. So the first stage of this process is picking. The pick is apparently a very quick movement. The leaves grow back and the process will be repeated in about two and a half months. So the cycle's pretty quick. The leaves get packed into sacks and then they're lugged on the picker's back.

38:09Gordon Corera:I think sometimes also taken by llama. They're lugged and taken a good ways to a lab. Now, lab is going to be a bit of a generous term here because it's essentially poles in the ground with sheets of black plastic for the roof. The lab workers are going to weigh the coca leaves and the job inside this lab, which again is also happening out relatively close to the fields and farms where the coca is being grown. The job of this lab is to turn coca into coca paste, which is a brick of dried powder that is not yet pure cocaine. The sacks get emptied, the coca leaves are passed through a wood chipper, all that mulch gets put on the floor, it's tossed with an ammoniac solution, it's then dusted with a mix of cement, lime powder, and ammonia, and then the lab workers wearing rubber boots will stomp all over the mulch to mix it all together.

39:02Like making wine. Right. Yeah. Just like that. Exactly.

39:06Gordon Corera:Now the mulch then gets shoveled into huge barrels. Gasoline is added. The gasoline is going to extract the coca base. So the barrels are drained after three days and that gasoline now holds the cocaine alkaloid in it. That final solution is poured into a barrel. It gets strained to ensure nothing solid makes it through. The solution over time then will dry and become coca paste. The coca paste, then goes back to the farmer who's going to bring that to market. So far, and this was true in Pablo's day and it's true now, the business up to this point in the value chain, Gordon, is rural, very low margin.

39:47Gordon Corera:In recent years, so these are not numbers from Pablo's time, but the dynamics are similar. That kilo of coca paste would be sold by the farmer for$400 to a militia, a narco militia in the Colombian countryside or to a trafficker. Now, once that is turned into a kilo of pure cocaine, those narco militias or traffickers can then sell it to a cartel for about$1 ,600 per kilo. So four times. Four times. So how do you turn the coca paste into pure coke? Now, here, it's going to get to another lab. That lab is going to be a bit bigger. There might be 20 people there. Here in this second lab, the paste is dissolved.

40:29Gordon Corera:It's brought to heat. It's mixed with acetone and hydrochloric acid to produce cocaine hydrochloride. The kilos are then weighed to the gram, wrapped as a brick, and a logo from the lab gets slapped on to kind of mark it as its own. The kilos are then going to be packed in trucks and sent to Medellin, where it's going to link up with networks that are specialized at getting it out of the country. And so here in Medellin, the narcos know the foreign buyers, how the product should move, who needs to be bribed, those roots, they have the roots out to market. And the roots, and this is, again, a critical facet of the cocaine trade to understand Pablo, is that the smuggling roots are the most valuable piece of this value chain.

41:19The chemistry is not the hard bit of the labs, The hard bit is moving the product out to people and knowing how to do that without getting caught.

41:26Gordon Corera:That's right. The profit pools in the smuggling are the most valuable in the whole business, right? And it's here at this nexus of the wholesale product coming in to Medellin and the narcos in Medellin who understand how to get it out to market, where the violence is most prevalent. and it's because the stakes are so high given the prices, right? But the business gets a lot more fragmented and complicated here because you've got this vast network of suppliers and customers. You have a back office infrastructure of security, those sicarios we mentioned, buyers, the real estate people. So sicarios, we should say, are basically the muscle.

42:07Gordon Corera:The muscle. Yeah, the assassins for the cartels. You've got all the people who do the transport. You've got the finance. You have the money laundering side of it. It's a cash business, especially in Pablo's day, and you have a massive cash management problem. The rumor in Pablo's time is that he'll actually basically write off like 10 % of the cash that he gets as it's going to be lost because rats are going to eat it. It'll get mildewed and ruined, right? You can't store all this cash. You've got tons of transactions, lots of opportunities for people to cheat you. This is an illegal market that is operating with a very high margin product that's got tremendous demand.

42:42Gordon Corera:And so there's a huge amount of violence that congregates around this last piece of it. But it is only from the 70s and the 80s that it really starts to emerge in Colombia, isn't it? As we were saying earlier, it was dope and marijuana through the 60s. So it's quite late that it actually takes over. I think before maybe 1973, you'd say that the cocaine business is kind of a cottage industry, right? It's actually originally based in Chile. It's controlled by a few refiners who bring that coca leaf in from Peru and Bolivia. The Chileans have the labs in that period. They then send it north to the US via Colombian smugglers.

43:24Gordon Corera:The US demand prior to that is actually pretty limited. But then in 73, the Pinochet government takes power in Chile and it cracks down on the coke business. And so the trade basically moves to Colombia starting in the early 70s. So Colombia had kind of been this weigh station for a small amount of cocaine prior to 73. I mean, that's the supply side, but it's the demand side which really drives this, isn't it? As you said, it's been a cottage industry. It's been relatively small, but suddenly cocaine takes off, doesn't it? Particularly in the US as the drug of choice in that period. And that is crucial because it is the demand side which is going to drive a lot of this story.

44:06Gordon Corera:Yeah, I think by the, maybe the mid to late 70s, I mean, cocaine is kind of a status symbol for a very small group of kind of largely elites in the US. There's a great memoir written by a guy named Robert Sabag called Snowblind, where he equates cocaine to a kind of fashion statement in those years. He says, it's like flying to Paris for breakfast, you know, It's this kind of cool jet-setting thing to do, right? Some people do that. Some people do that. You want to be with the people who are doing that, Gordon. You know, that's kind of the point. It's this kind of pixie dust for elite parties in Hollywood.

44:45And so it's going to flow down the social scale as a result.

44:48Gordon Corera:Exactly. It is going to move down into kind of the middle class, the club scene. And, you know, in small doses, cocaine makes you euphoric. It ignites these feelings of power and control. In larger doses, of course, it makes you exceptionally paranoid. It's highly addictive. There's not a lot known at the time, of course, about any of the kind of addictive qualities of it or any of the kind of health downsides, right? But by the late 80s, just to show you how quickly it expands, there's maybe 6 million Americans who are using cocaine regularly, not just dabbling, but regularly. Which is like if you filled up a school classroom, 30 kids, I mean, at least one in there is probably a regular cocaine user.

45:27Gordon Corera:And so demand is skyrocketing. Production is having a hard time keeping up because at this point, which we'll see, the cocaine business is not a centralized. We don't have cartels, right? We've got like entrepreneurial traffickers trying to, you know, make a buck. The prices rise insanely in the 1970s. So in Miami, which in those years is kind of the port of entry for a lot of cocaine entering the US, the prices rise from about$34 ,000 per kilo to$51 ,000 per kilo. So there's this massive spike in demand for cocaine. And Miami is a crucial part of the story. Because, of course, you haven't commented on my slightly pink pastel shirt today.

46:15But this is me. This is the closest I could get to Miami Vice. This is your Miami Vice look, Gordon. Oh my gosh. Are you too young for Miami Vice, Crockett and Tubbs? I am too young for it. So I've got a pastel shirt. I was going to have one of those jackets with my sleeves rolled up. I'd go out on a jet boat. And this is the closest I get in South London to Miami Vice. But anyway, this is it.

46:35Gordon Corera:But are you trying to look like one of the DEA agents? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah, yeah, one of the good guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my attempt anyway. Gordon, I don't think if you were trying to convey 1970s Miami to me, I feel like you missed a little bit. Well, it was either that or trying to grow a Pablo Escobar mustache. And I decided I didn't have time to do that. You didn't have the time or the inclination. Yeah. But the point is Miami Vice grows out of something real, which is Miami becomes the hub, doesn't it? The import hub, because of its location on the Caribbean or even the Caribbean, if you want to be American about it.

47:10Do you say Caribbean? Like you'd say pirates of the Caribbean? Yeah, that is exactly how you say it. Okay. Agree to disagree. And that's fine. Let's leave it tomato, tomato. But that becomes the hub, doesn't it? The shipment route into America for all of this cocaine, which is coming in. And so, of course, the advantage is it's got the coastline, hasn't it? So it can come in by boat. It can come up by air on small airplanes. And Colombia is going to become the place where it's coming from.

47:38Gordon Corera:Yeah, that's right. And I think if you look at a map that has the North Pole at its center, and then the geography spreads out from there, it gives you another interesting picture. and like, if you have this sort of Arctic lake, who actually borders it? If you do the same thing with the Caribbean, Gordon, you see that basically, Florida sits at its north and Columbia sits at the south, right? So they're on a shared body of water. And you kind of I think sometimes on the normal maps that we view of the world, you have this tendency to see or think of Columbia as being this very distant place. The reality is, is that Miami is closer to Barranquilla than Miami is to Chicago, right?

48:14Gordon Corera:So this is a system. And it is the Colombians that become the kings of the business because the production has shifted from Chile, demand is skyrocketing, and the Colombians are sitting on those exceptionally valuable trade routes into the US. And it's going to start as a trickle, mostly small shipments moving by drug mules in many cases. By the 1980s, those routes are going to be worth billions of dollars. And that is going to change Colombia, turn it into basically the biggest industry and change Medellin, isn't it? The city and therefore Pablo's fortunes. Yeah, and Pablo, you said earlier, Gordon, he wants to be kind of a big man.

48:57Gordon Corera:He's got ambitions that go beyond certainly being a small time kind of gangster or outlaw, right? I think in the Coke business starts to see that there's a path to not just power, right, but respectability as one of these kind of gentleman smugglers and almost feudal lords in Medellin, right? It is a way, and I think Becky, one of our producers had the great comment that he's kind of wants to be Vito Corleone, you know, he wants to be this mobster who is socially respectable and accepted, right? And And in the same way, you know, Vito thinks that, hey, Michael could become a senator. Yeah, the big man.

49:38Gordon Corera:You know, the family can sort of become socially respectable. And he can do that by himself sort of building this business and becoming big. There's a path here, right? You get rich, you buy one of these villas or mansions out of the city. You buy yourself a finca, which is a cattle ranch for taking vacations. You can kind of go from a hoodlum to a respected Catholic businessman overnight, right? And cocaine is his sort of pathway there. Now, Medellin is having some problems as the cocaine business starts to take over in the 1970s. There are working class suburbs and slums on its north end that are becoming, in many ways, the cradle of that kind of smuggling end of the cocaine business.

50:25Gordon Corera:They're becoming very dangerous. Medellin in the 1980s has a murder rate that is 5x, five times worse than the worst U.S. cities in the 1980s. 1980s is not a great decade for crime in the States either. But it's also a boomtown, Gordon. There's tons of money coming in, financing construction, business startups. The employment rate is higher. There's so much money that comes into this business. that, and this is a bit of a fast forward, but just to give a sense of kind of where this is going. By the mid 1980s, Pablo will own 19 residences in Medellin alone, fleets of helicopters, planes, boats.

51:05Gordon Corera:Their estimates of what he's making in his heyday are, of course, all over the place. But the organization itself might be pulling in$70 million a day in the 1980s. And Pablo personally might be pulling in like 10 million per day. So Medellin earns the nickname, it's the Wall Street of cocaine. So you can see, rewind a bit, 1970s, how would Pablo not get involved in this business? But let's explore a little bit. It's worth exploring how he moves into it and moves up because it's a violent trade and it's not easy, I guess, for a young man to suddenly assert himself and become the big figure. You got to be pretty smart to be able to do that.

51:50Gordon Corera:You do have to be smart. You have to be ruthless. The Coke business then, as it is now, is not a particularly easy business to be in, despite the seeming material benefits. And we should say that in the mid 70s, as Pablo is really dipping into it, there aren't cartels like there will be in the story and like we think of them today. the coke business in Colombia in that period is newish. There are dozens of entrepreneurs and kind of smugglers that are doing this. There's those old gentleman smugglers. They have a portfolio of products they smuggle. Cocaine might be one of them. One of these entrepreneurs is a guy named Fabio Restrepo, who is kind of newish in the business, kind of entrepreneurial, almost playboy guy.

52:37Gordon Corera:He hires pilots to bring the product north into Miami. Pablo contacts him about moving some product. And it's small. It's like 14 kilos. When Restrepo goes to see it, it's in Pablo's dresser drawer. And this is very common in the business then of like, somebody would have a small shipment, and they would go to somebody who has a route, and say basically in exchange for some fee, can I move my stuff on your route, right? And this is what Pablo is doing. So they buy it from Pablo, they move on, they don't think anything of it. Two months later, Fabio Restrepo is murdered. No proof. It's widely believed to be Pablo's doing.

53:15Gordon Corera:And this is going to be a pattern for Pablo's construction of his cocaine empire, which becomes known on the streets as Los Pablos. How do you consolidate disparate businesses in a fragmented market, right? In normal markets, if you're acquiring small veterinary practices in the United States, you go and you buy a whole bunch of them and you roll them up. And then you sort of create the proper economics for that deal by unifying all the pricing and the back office stuff. And it's all done legally. But with Pablo in the Coke business, you've got to do these roll-ups with violence, intimidation, and fear.

53:53In business school speak, he's doing vertical integration and horizontal integration, isn't he? Because he's both wiping out competitors, but also moving up the chain to take over all the aspects of it.

54:06Gordon Corera:That's right. And I think the most violent piece of this, and frankly, what Pablo is most focused on, to use our business school language in this period, is the horizontal integration. It is the elimination of rivals in Medellin who control lucrative smuggling routes into the United States to market. Now, Gordon, in a bit of a, I would say wonderful coincidence, but it's not that. And this is another nod to our Osama Bin Laden series, is that in 1976, Gordon, Pablo gets married. And he marries, of course, a 15-year-old named Maria Victoria Enao Vallejo. And Maria Victoria will play an exceptionally important role in this story because this is the start of a family in 1976 that is going to be absolutely critical not only to just understanding Pablo but to the hunt for Pablo that is to come so in 76 though and by the way I don't think that it was legal to marry a 15 year old in Colombia at that point in time but he gets a dispensation from a bishop for a fee to make this marriage legal She is 15, he's 26, and the Escobars are setting off into the world.

55:21Now, soon thereafter, he is arrested after a tip-off to agents of the DAS,

55:28Gordon Corera:the Departamento Administrevo de Securidad, which is basically Colombia's FBI. And along with his cousin, who's one of Pablo's business partners and a few other men, they're doing a drug run to Ecuador, and they're arrested by the DAS. The DAS finds 39 kilos of cocaine in the spare tire of the truck they're driving in. This is a massive problem for Pablo Escobar. It is way beyond sort of the severity of his other more youthful arrests. And so there is, of course, going to be potentially a trial. Pablo tries to bribe the judge, which doesn't work. So he and his organization research the judge. They find out that the judge has a brother who's a lawyer and the two don't get along.

56:11Gordon Corera:So Pablo hires the judge's brother as his lawyer, and the judge has to recuse himself. I mean, it's clever, isn't it? It is. It's a great strategy. It goes back to that point, which he is both incredibly violent, but also smart. So now he's got a better judge appointed who he can bribe, basically. Yes, exactly. Because a lot of judges in this period were open to bribes. So Pablo bribes the judge. He and his cousin Gustavo are freed. There's an appellate judge later who reinstates the indictments. But there's a bunch of appeals that tie up the case. And the following year, those two DAS agents who are responsible for the arrest are killed.

56:48Gordon Corera:We should say a word on Pablo's violence. There is a very long tradition in Colombia of what are called autodefensas, which are basically private security and military companies, in many cases that are hired to protect very wealthy families. And I think Pablo, even though I find the comparison somewhat demented, he views his organization, I think, similarly. He's an outlaw. I think he believes the state is not going to enforce justice, right? He thinks that the wealthy in Colombia have sort of always done whatever they wanted, enforced their own brand of justice. And he kind of thinks, well, this is the way things are done, right?

57:29Gordon Corera:How is my violence any different? And I think one way it is a little bit different is that Pablo sometimes, particularly in these early years, will do it himself, right? There is a case where a worker was discovered stealing something from one of his properties. And Pablo apparently had the man bound hand and foot and in front of guests, kick the guy into his swimming pool and then watched him drown, right? So you have a kind of, I think, willingness to step in and actually use the violence himself, which maybe bleeds away over time. He becomes more distant from it, as we'll see. But I think in his early years, you definitely have the sense that he's this kind of rising entrepreneurial violent drug lord that is kind of riding the cocaine wave to notoriety.

58:14Gordon Corera:And his justice is going to soon be labeled with this wonderful phrase that becomes his trademark. it's a plateau plomo and that it means either silver or lead so you either accept his silver accept the bribe and you're fine or you get the lead you get shot you get killed your family gets killed you get tortured so it's really the underpinnings of his business model and the cartel that that form in these years so there david i think with the offer of silver and lead to Pablo's enemies. Let's stop. And next time we'll come back and we'll see his rise really to become this mythical figure almost, this drug kingpin who rules over Colombia, who even tries to get in politics and takes on the states and comes into the sights of Washington.

59:06Gordon Corera:Well, that's right. And of course, Gordon, we have to say, if listeners don't want to wait for that can't wait and why wait, you can get access to the entire Hunt for Pablo Escobar series right now by going to the restisclassified.com and signing up to join the Declassified Club, where in addition to early access to series, you're going to get a bunch of wonderful bonus content and a whole lot more. So we do hope you sign up. We'll see you next time. See you next time.

59:42I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award-winning storytelling podcast from KQED. Every week, Snap deals a new card, like the girl whose sister was a monkey, or the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or even the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate. Pick a card, any card. Tap to listen now to Snap Judgment from KQED on Spotify.