Zero Hour (2004–…): Season 2, Episode 4 - The King of Cocaine - full transcript

NARRATOR: Bogota, Colombia.

Just before 3:00 p.m.

on the afternoon of December 2nd, 1993.

From a hotel room,

a 16-year-old is on
the phone to his father,

who is some 300 miles away in Medellin,

Cocaine City.

The son is Juan Pablo Escobar,

the father, Pablo Escobar.

The world's most wanted drug lord.

The phones they're using



and the words they
speak are betraying them.

On their trail is another
father and son team.

Leading an elite squad of Colombian police.

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

Pablo Escobar was the king of cocaine.

(MACHINE GUN FIRING)

For years, terrorized and
murdered thousands of people.

And made billions of dollars.

Now, the tables are about to be turned.

(SIRENS BLARING)

Based on the testimony
of those who survived

and the transcripts of Escobar's
own telephone conversations,

this is the second-by-second story

of Pablo Escobar's final hour.



(CLOCK TICKING)

Pablo Escobar's last hour

begins in a faceless house

in a modest suburb of Medellin, Colombia.

It's the final bolt hole,

with just one guard and
an aunt to care for him.

TRANSLATOR: His tastes in food was simple.

I have to admit, I wasn't a very good cook,

but he ate everything I made him.

NARRATOR: To this day, Escobar
inspires passionate and contrasting views.

To Aunt Luzmila, he's simply
the favorite and heroic nephew.

GAVIRIA THROUGH TRANSLATOR:
He was a very intelligent, beloved,

serious and sensitive person.

In short, a man of quality.

When he was alive, oh, Maria,

he could have been President.

I tell you, he could have been President.

NARRATOR: To his pursuers,

he's simply the greatest
criminal in history.

GUILLERMO AGUILAR THROUGH
TRANSLATOR: For me, he was a psychopath.

That was the description of Pablo Escobar.

He was a difficult man to understand

because he had some social awareness.

He liked to help the poor,

but he also killed poor people.

JOE TOFT: I probably hated him.

He was one of those individuals

that, you know, I despised.

TRANSLATOR: I wouldn't think
twice about eliminating him if I had to,

but I never thought about him with anger.

I didn't see him like that.

NARRATOR: Even though
cocaine made his fortune,

Escobar has always steered clear of it.

His favorite drug is cannabis.

In his final hour, Escobar
cuts a pathetic figure.

He was dirty, he had a beard, a huge beard.

Very changed physically.

Scruffy.

We could have passed
him in the street in Medellin

and said hello, not knowing it was Escobar.

NARRATOR: Escobar's last day
has begun with spaghetti for breakfast.

Prepared by his Aunt Luzmila.

And where he once had a staff of hundreds,

he's now reduced to just one bodyguard.

A man nicknamed "Limon."

Escobar wants to speak to
his wife and children in Bogota.

But calling them would be fatal.

Whoever he pretends to be.

But in 55 minutes,

these calls will lead to death.

The phone operator is working
for Colonel Hugo Martinez,

who is in control of the whole
operation to find Escobar.

Colonel Martinez's son, Hugo Jr.,

tracks Escobar's every word

from a mobile surveillance unit.

MARTINEZ THROUGH TRANSLATOR:
Hugo has some surveillance equipment

that scans the local area.

It signals the strength

and where the telephone
signal is coming from.

The nearer they get, the stronger it grows.

NARRATOR: The blue signal
follows the course of Hugo's van

as he electronically scans the area

searching for Escobar's phone signal.

The green signal behind Hugo's van,

is the Search Bloc assault team,

the foot soldiers of the operation.

They are led by Major Guillermo Aguilar.

During an extraordinary life

that has led to this final confrontation,

Pablo Escobar has been a man of many faces,

businessman, sportsman, politician,

victim and family man.

Local myth tells how by 16,
he was already dealing in death.

He'd steal gravestones, shave off the names

and resell them at bargain prices.

Born into a culture of
violence and rebellion

near the mountainous city of Medellin,

even Escobar's grandfather
was a famous rum-runner.

TRANSLATOR: My brother was a good student

and son.

He was a person who had a few friends.

But he was supremely faithful

to his friends, as a child.

NARRATOR: This is the family story.

In fact, he was just a small-time con man,

car thief and kidnapper,

until he discovered drugs.

He soon learned that
marijuana makes millions,

but cocaine is king.

He could make a million dollars, every day.

And, before long, he did.

The key to Escobar's success
was spectacularly simple.

Everyone who dealt with him, had a choice.

Plata o plomo.

Silver or lead.

(SIRENS BLARING)

When he was arrested in
1976 with 39 kilos of cocaine,

the judge received a death threat.

The two arresting officers were murdered.

The judge who signed his
arrest warrant was murdered.

The journalist who published an
account of the arrest was murdered.

The newspaper where the
journalist worked was bombed.

But now, from his safe house in Medellin,

Escobar is trying to use the press
to get public opinion behind him.

His 16-year-old son, Juan Pablo,

has set up an interview
with a local newspaper.

He relays the questions to his father.

According to Colombian intelligence,

Juan Pablo is already
well-steeped in the family's traditions.

TOFT: We heard a report
that when he was 16 years old,

he was involved in

the assassination of some policemen.

Allegedly, he was being groomed

by the father to basically
take over the business.

NARRATOR: The chances
of that are now remote.

Juan Pablo's role is now to be his
father's intermediary with the press.

Escobar's purpose in giving an interview

is to win public support for his campaign

to get his family out of Colombia.

In return, he's saying,
he will give himself up.

As Escobar receives the
questions from his son,

Colonel Martinez and Hugo listens intently,

hoping to get a fix on his position.

There's a strange
symmetry about this story.

Two families, two fathers and sons,

playing a deadly game of cat and mouse.

(DIAL TONE)

MARTINEZ THROUGH TRANSLATOR:
He knew we were recording him,

listening to him through
electronic surveillance.

He didn't allow himself any phone calls

longer than two or three minutes.

He would cut them off saying, "Stop there,

"don't speak anymore."

He was very careful
so we couldn't find him.

NARRATOR: A secret
US Army surveillance team,

code-named Centra Spike,

flying above Medellin,
is helping the search.

It pinpoints Escobar's phone transmissions

and relays them to
mobile units like Hugo's.

But the pinpoint is 600 meters wide.

It's up to Hugo to find the source
of the signal within that zone.

It's a delicate task,

made even harder by Escobar's short calls

and the usual habit of
speaking from mobile phones

on the move in taxis.

Well, there were numerous stories,

numerous reports about him being in a taxi.

There was one report I remember that

he was in a taxi, wearing a...

Dressed like a nun.

NARRATOR: The men of the Search Bloc

don't know if Escobar
is moving or still today.

But they do know what to
expect when they find him.

AGUILAR THROUGH TRANSLATOR:
Of course, we were very scared.

He had already killed thousands of people.

He killed 600 of our policemen

just in Antioquia.

Plus the ones he'd killed elsewhere.

So the moment he started killing,

and the moment we knew that he

was offering $1,000 per dead policeman,

we knew who we were facing.

NARRATOR: In this, his final hour,

Pablo Escobar may still be free,

but not as he was in his heyday.

In the early 1980s,

Escobar had his own private zoo.

He was moving hundreds of tons of cocaine

into the United States every year.

Forbes magazine reckoned
Escobar was worth over $7 billion.

That's more dollars than
there are people on Earth.

TOFT: Shipments of

multi-hundred kilos of
cocaine were quite common.

And, um,

it got to the point that

an airplane would come
to the United States,

loaded with cocaine,

make a drop, either offshore or

somewhere in a clandestine area,

and the airplane would go back

full of 20 dollar bills,

you know, to Colombia.

So, it got to a point where

money was not counted in
Colombia, it was weighed.

NARRATOR: Wealth and power
were never enough for Escobar.

He wanted to be respected,

admired, even loved.

And, as extraordinary as it may seem,

he really was loved.

TRANSLATOR: Precisely
where there was a lot of poverty,

he helped people.

He gave them housing.

He gave them money for things.

The poor appreciate that.

NARRATOR: He built and gave a
whole neighborhood for the homeless,

known as Barrio Pablo Escobar.

They admired him.

For them, he was a Robin Hood.

He robbed to help the poor.

Or so, he made it look.

NARRATOR: In return, the
poor were ferociously loyal.

They became his army
of spies on street corners,

in taxis, even inside the police itself.

Teenage murderers queued up
to gun down Escobar's enemies.

He was so popular,

that by 1982, he was voted
into the Colombian Congress.

But soon after being elected,

Escobar was publicly
denounced as a drug trafficker

and forced to resign his seat.

It all began to unravel.

(HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING)

On March 10th 1984,

the Colombian Minister
of Justice, Rodrigo Lara,

authorized the seizure of a
group of cocaine laboratories

hidden in the jungle of Caqueta province.

It turned out to be the biggest
cocaine seizure in history.

A billion dollars of Escobar's
cocaine was destroyed.

Furious,

he had Justice Minister
Lara gunned down in his car.

The Colombian government
hit back with a new tactic.

It introduced laws to
allow drug traffickers to be

extradited and tried in the United States.

For Escobar, this meant war.

No one crossed him and lived.

As one former business partner discovered.

Somehow or other this individual

did something that
Escobar did not approve of.

And he wanted to make an example of him,

in front of everybody else.

And allegedly, they hung him from the tree,

by the arms,

and poured gasoline on him

and burned him.

And, um,

the whole message was,
"This is what happens

"if you cross me."

TRANSLATOR: Another thing he used to say,

"When a cockroach is killed,

"I get the blame.

"If anyone is killed, I get the blame."

Everything was blamed on him.

NARRATOR: But Pablo's
sins have caught up with him.

He has 40 minutes to live.

The Escobars are back on the phone.

Hugo is honing in on
Pablo Escobar's signal.

Hugo keeps circling his target,

fed with information from his
assistant in the back of the van.

From the strength of the
signal he's now getting,

Hugo believes Escobar
is hiding very nearby.

His suspicions are zeroing in

on the Obelisco shopping mall.

Though Hugo is now convinced
Escobar is hiding in the shopping mall,

a strange ghosting effect
on the signal is puzzling him.

Even so, he thinks an
all-out attack is worth the risk.

After five years of searching for Escobar,

and several unsuccessful raids,

the pressure on Hugo
to be right is enormous.

His father, his colleagues,

in fact, the whole country,

await his next move.

Hugo now sees there is a problem.

If Escobar was somewhere
in the shopping mall,

he would be hearing and reacting
to the commotion around him.

But wherever Escobar is, all is quiet.

(CLOCK TICKING)

Evading his pursuers has
always been an Escobar specialty.

Eight years before,

he'd waged a populist campaign

against a potentially lethal threat
of extradition to the United States.

He used to say,

"I prefer a grave in Colombia,

"to jail in the United States."

NARRATOR: That said,

Escobar enjoyed thumbing
his nose at the Americans,

by slipping in undetected
for a little sightseeing,

as this photo outside
the White House shows.

(LOUD CRASH)

Then, on November 6th 1985,

Escobar violently raised the stakes

in his effort to thwart
the extradition laws.

The Marxist guerrilla group, M-19,

seized the Palace of
Justice in downtown Bogota.

Eleven of the country's 24 high
court judges were killed in the battle.

It looked like an
unrelated political disaster.

However, many believed
Escobar had paid M-19

a million dollars to attack the building,

and, while they were at it,

destroy all the records of
cases against the drug lords.

(GUNFIRE)

Charges against Escobar
literally went up in smoke.

TOFT: Colombian society was actually

caving in to the pressures

that Escobar was putting them under.

And they just wanted the bombing to stop,

they didn't care

what the government did,

as long as the bombing stopped.

(EXPLOSION)

NARRATOR: In August 1989,

Escobar ordered the assassination

of presidential candidate
Luis Carlos Galan.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(MAN ANNOUNCING IN SPANISH)

(GUNFIRE)

(SCREAMING)

(SHOUTING)

(TRUMPET BLOWING)

The country was crumbling in
the face of Escobar's onslaught.

The government turned
to the American President,

George Bush, for help.

Our most serious problem today is cocaine,

and in particular, crack.

Who's responsible?

Let me tell you straight out.

Everyone who uses drugs,

everyone who sells drugs

and everyone who looks the other way.

This, this is crack cocaine,

seized a few days ago by
drug enforcement agents

in a park just across the street

from the White House.

It's as innocent-looking as candy,

but it is turning our
cities into battle zones

and it's murdering our children.

Let there be no mistake,

this stuff is poison.

And our message to
the drug cartels is this.

The rules have changed.

We will help any government
that wants our help.

When requested, we will for the first time,

make available the appropriate resources

of America's armed forces.

We will intensify our efforts against

drug smugglers on the high seas,

in international air space

and at our borders.

And for the drug kingpins,

the death penalty.

NARRATOR: President
Bush sent in the experts.

TRANSLATOR: We received some important help

from the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

They trained us in special operations,

combat shooting and explosives.

They gave us electronic surveillance

and scanning technology
to do triangulation.

And to listen to all the movements

of Pablo Escobar's organization.

NARRATOR: And so began the Search Bloc,

the elite squad under the
command of Colonel Martinez

which, for five years, has hunted Escobar.

By now it's clear that the search in
the shopping mall has gone badly wrong.

There's a further problem.

Amidst all the confusion,

the Search Bloc miss Hugo's call

that Escobar isn't in the shopping center.

Hugo heads off alone to find Escobar.

Pablo Escobar has terrorized and outwitted

the Colombian authorities for years.

Though he's seemed to have escaped again,

it's just 30 minutes

till the dragnet closes in.

(LAUGHING)

(CLOCK TICKING)

While the Search Bloc
look for Escobar in Medellin's

huge Obelisco shopping mall,

Hugo tries frantically to work
out why the raid has gone wrong.

It turns out Hugo is right about
the signal being reflected off water.

Unbeknownst to him, there is a storm drain

running between the shopping center

and where Escobar is really hiding.

That is what caused the ghosting effect

and led him astray.

Now alone,

Hugo has to trust more than his equipment.

He has to trust himself.

He follows his instinct,

the signal and the water
that keeps crossing his path.

This time he's right.

He's heading towards the red
signal coming from Escobar's hideout.

Meanwhile, the Search Bloc
are still at the shopping center.

(PANTING)

(SINGING)

Where once he would have
been constantly on the move,

lately, Escobar has become more sedentary.

Maybe it's the cannabis,

maybe it's just middle age.

Only the night before, he
celebrated his 44th birthday.

(TALKING IN SPANISH)

TRANSLATOR: That day
something very strange happened

that had an effect on me.

As I was about to serve
the birthday champagne

to Pablo and Limon,

the glass fell on the floor.

It didn't break.

(GLASS CLINKING)

Look at what happened the next day.

That's when I realized his premonition

was true.

(BUZZING)

And there was another thing.

That day there had been a fly

buzzing around Pablo's face,

like this, zzzzz, like this, like this.

It was one of those that feed on corpses.

That was the day

before the death.

NARRATOR: Escobar is now
on phone call number three,

in the final hour, continuing the campaign

to win safe refuge for
his wife, son and daughter.

NARRATOR: Escobar's
anger could be explosive.

When he went after one man,

presidential candidate,
Cesar Gaviria in 1989,

he blew up the whole airliner.

Gaviria wasn't on the plane,

but 107 innocent passengers were.

He even began killing and
torturing those around him,

worried about informants.

Escobar was a man rarely beaten.

By June 1991, he'd bombed
Colombia to a standstill.

The government threw in the towel

and finally canceled the extradition law.

In exchange, Escobar handed himself in,

knowing he'd won again.

He was sent to prison,

but very much on his own terms.

TOFT: La Catedral, the prison where Escobar

spent some time after he turned himself in,

was really nothing
more than a country club.

He was calling the shots on operations,

he was receiving a percentage
of anything that took place,

you know, throughout the Medellin cartel.

He built a discotheque in the prison.

He built a soccer field with lights.

The prison cells were

better than most hotels

in Colombia.

It was an incredible facility. Incredible.

ROBERTO ESCOBAR THROUGH
TRANSLATOR: We lived well.

We had our families, we were protected.

We had comforts.

But the government

was aware of what we had there

and what the rules were.

TRANSLATOR: It was both
his fortress and Aladdin's cave.

NARRATOR: Escobar used his
mountain-top fortress overlooking Medellin

to rebuild his empire

and settle old scores.

He ended up suspecting
even his inner circle.

He was already a bit paranoid.

NARRATOR: In July 1992, he
called a meeting of senior traffickers.

Suspecting his business partners,
the Moncada and Galeano brothers,

of creaming off profits,

he hung them upside down
and tortured them to death.

Torture turned into actually

cutting off fingers, hands.

And in essence, ripping the body apart

in an effort to

make sure that they would never be found.

(HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING)

NARRATOR: President Gaviria
tried to move Escobar to a real prison.

But Escobar was having none of it.

He simply walked past the
army battalion sent to get him

and escaped.

They were too intimidated to stop him.

TRANSLATOR: It was just like, "I'm going."

And he went.

He fooled everyone.

Including the authorities.

By the time the sun came up,

he'd been gone two or three hours.

NARRATOR: But by
leaving his luxury fortress,

Escobar had made the
biggest mistake of his life.

The government's answer was
to throw money at the problem

and offer a large reward for his capture.

(ANNOUNCEMENT IN SPANISH)

Escobar's former business associates

had their own solution.

They started to throw bombs... At him.

Enraged by the murder of the
Moncada and Galeano brothers,

and worried they would be next,

Escobar's old trafficking pals revolted.

A vigilante group appeared,

known as Los Pepes,

"People persecuted by Pablo Escobar."

They wreaked a terrible and sudden revenge.

TOFT: In essence, they used
the same tactics that Pablo utilized

to control the country.

And they didn't stop at anything.

They burned homes, they burned buildings,

they assassinated

followers of Pablo
that were still with him.

They left signs on the bodies saying that

they were killed by the Los Pepes

because they were
collaborators of Pablo Escobar.

Los Pepes, systematically

destroyed Pablo's organization.

They killed his attorneys,
they killed his bodyguards.

NARRATOR: Without warning,
Escobar had gone from hunter,

to hunted.

TRANSLATOR: They
also killed my sister, Lucy.

They killed her husband,
they killed the cleaner.

She was pregnant.

That day they killed four people.

NARRATOR: It's now less than
15 minutes to the final shoot-out.

(CLOCK TICKING)

Absorbed in his telephone interview,

Escobar has no idea

that Hugo is now only yards away.

It's an extraordinary moment,
as after five long years,

the hunter and the hunted have locked eyes.

With Escobar now finally within reach,

Colonel Martinez is faced with
the hardest decision of his career,

to do his duty

or to protect his son's life.

Then I answered, "You must face him

"if the assault team
doesn't get there in time."

TRANSLATOR: I was so
overwhelmed that we'd found him.

We had waited for so long.

I was sure we would catch him now.

NARRATOR: With the Search
Bloc still some distance away,

Hugo and his driver prepare

to tackle the world's most feared criminal.

On their own.

TOFT: Here he is with one driver,

Pablo in this house,

with no idea with how
many people in that house.

I can't imagine what, uh,

what Hugo Martinez thought at that moment.

I mean, here is the situation where

there have been so many false alarms,

there have been so many close calls,

and finally, finally

feeling that he had Pablo in his sight.

(CLOCK TICKING)

By April 1993, with his empire in ruins,

Escobar was frantic to save
the only thing he had left,

his family.

He tried to send them to Miami,

but their visas were revoked

by DEA agents at the airport.

TRANSLATOR: Why did they want to go?

Because of what the Pepes were doing.

Their enemies were
their own drug traffickers,

their own ex-colleagues.

They were bombing his
family and his properties.

Threatening his family.

NARRATOR: In response,

Escobar bombed Bogota, in a fit of rage,

killing innocent civilians.

Faced with Escobar's relentless carnage,

some feel Los Pepes were a necessary evil.

There are places in this world

where traditional methods,

democratic methods, do not work.

Maybe the only way

that you can strive for solutions

is through unorthodox methods such as

using violence.

Fighting violence with violence.

That's the sad story, it's a sad truth.

And that's reality.

NARRATOR: Just four days from the end,

Escobar made a final
bid to save his family.

This time he sent Juan Pablo,
his mother, and sister to Germany.

But they were refused entry

and forced to return in
humiliation to Bogota.

The Colombian authorities
offered them protection

at the Hotel Tequendama.

But in Escobar's eyes,

his family were now being held

by the very people who wanted them dead.

The inability even to protect his family

showed just how far Escobar had now fallen.

TRANSLATOR: They were in the hotel,

reading the newspapers, watching the news.

They led a life of incarceration.

He saw that they were pursuing them,

that they were using his family as bait

in order to locate him.

Anyone could come
anytime to assassinate them,

a lady with two children.

Escobar basically lost it, and he, um,

he entered a state in which he stopped

taking care of the little
things that kept him alive.

He stopped, uh,

moving around when he spoke on the phone.

He started making calls to the newspapers,

to Senators, to everybody he could

in a desperate, frantic effort to try and

get them to do something
to help his family.

And that was his downfall,

that's how he was tracked down.

(HUMMING)

NARRATOR: Reports filtered out

that while Pablo was being
tracked through his son on the phone,

his daughter, Manuela, was
wandering the halls of the empty hotel

singing a Christmas carol to herself,

only she'd changed the words

to "Los Pepes are going to kill my father,

"my mother and me."

(HUMMING CONTINUES)

With four minutes to zero hour,

Hugo is still alone.

(CLOCK TICKING)

At last, at three minutes to 3:00,

the Search Bloc arrives.

Quickly and quietly,

the men surround the house

and marksmen position
themselves in the street behind.

As Escobar continues his conversation,

the trap snaps shut around him.

(LOUD BANG)

(ESCOBAR SHOUTING)

Limon flees, leaving
Escobar to fight alone.

(ESCOBAR SHOUTING)

(GUNS COCKING)

(CLOCK TICKING)

(TICKING CONTINUES)

The death of Pablo Escobar

is surrounded by as
much legend as his life.

First, the official version.

(SHOUTING)

Ahhh!

(SHOUTING IN SPANISH)

TRANSLATOR: We took cover
when the shooting started outside.

There were at least 300 shots.

(SHOUTING IN SPANISH)

(CHEERING)

AGUILAR THROUGH TRANSLATOR:
We all heard, "Long live Colombia!"

And understood Pablo Escobar had fallen.

NARRATOR: There are, however,

other versions.

One is that Pablo Escobar
was felled by a killing shot

straight through the ears.

Some American researchers
claim this amazing feat

could only have been done by a US sniper

from the ultra-secret Delta Force.

(GUNSHOTS)

TRANSLATOR: That's absolutely false.

I am confident

that the Delta Force had
nothing to do with this.

NARRATOR: Escobar's
family has another theory.

(GUNSHOTS)

(MOANS)

TRANSLATOR: He committed suicide.

He did not get killed.

During all the years they went after him,

he would say to me every day

if he was really cornered,

without a way out,

he would shoot himself through the ears.

And he shot himself through the ears.

TRANSLATOR: I don't
believe they killed him.

He killed himself.

Because he used to say,
"I'd prefer a grave in Colombia,

"to jail in the United States."

(GUNSHOT)

NARRATOR: There's one
final, and less romantic theory.

(GUNS COCKING)

(GUNSHOTS)

(SHOUTING)

(WHEEZING)

(GUNSHOT)

Whatever happened on the roof that day,

Pablo Escobar passed into legend.

Grief exploded amongst his
thousands of bereaved supporters.

Yet, some believe his death
was just Escobar's last trick.

TRANSLATOR: I think he's still alive.

It's not possible to get a
man with so much money,

who always stayed ahead of the law,

who just walked out of jail so many times.

I think he gave a load of cash

to some guy who was tired of life.

The family will be rich

and he would die instead of Pablo.

(PEOPLE CHANTING "PABLO")

MARTINEZ THROUGH
TRANSLATOR: They admired him

like he was Robin Hood.

He did spectacular things.

He helped the poor, so,

people don't want his name to die.

But he was only a man.

He's buried. In Medellin.

(SINGING IN SPANISH)

NARRATOR: Escobar's death casts a shadow,

that stretches to this very day.

Limon is buried right beside his boss.

His life, like his death,

is tied to Escobar's forever.

Juan Pablo, his mother and sister Manuela,

fled to Argentina and changed their names,

but are still being chased as the Escobars.

Roberto Escobar
survived Los Pepes and jail,

until one day, he opened
a parcel in the post.

His sight and hearing have
been permanently damaged.

Guillermo Aguilar was hailed
for his part in Pablo's death.

He is now the Governor of
Colombia's Santander province.

Hugo's assistant and
driver were not so fortunate.

Like many others in the Search Bloc,

they were to die of un-natural causes

in what became known as "Escobar's Curse."

Hugo Martinez Jr. was so overwhelmed

by the discovery of Escobar,

that he was unable to even fire his
gun when the final moment arrived.

After surviving years of danger,

Hugo died in a traffic accident in 1999.

Colonel Martinez was promoted to general,

but retired in 2003.

He now lives a quiet life,

without his son, painting.

Luzmila Gaviria was lucky.

She went shopping that
afternoon and survived.

But believes Escobar
still takes care of her.

TRANSLATOR: Four days later,

I dreamed I was cooking fried fish for him.

And he was hugging me, happy.

I'm sure he was thanking me,

like he was saying goodbye.

Sometimes I ask, Pablito, help me.

And he does.

NARRATOR: Did the death of
Pablo Escobar make any difference

to the blizzard of cocaine
that blows across America?

Despite all the killing,

cocaine only got cheaper
and more plentiful,

than even Escobar could ever have dreamed.