Queen of Cocaine (2023) Movie Script

[Tubi theme]
[Female narrator] They were some of the most terrifying
cartel leaders the world has ever known.
El Chapo.
[gunfire]
[Narrator] And Pablo Escobar.
Men with insatiable appetites for chaos and carnage.
But neither could match the talent nor the genius
of the visionary who came before them.
[Francisco] She reached the top of the mountain
in a world dominated by alpha males
in the 1980s.
At the height of her operations,
Griselda Blanco was moving tons of cocaine.
She was making 10 to 80 million dollars a month.
[Jameker] She didn't play.
When you in the drug game, the number one thing is
don't play with my money.
And he's like, you're the son of the Godmother of Cocaine.
You're the son of the lady who invented the cocaine game
as we know it.
[Narrator] But there's a bloody cost to her success.
[gunfire]
[Male reporter] The shootout occurred
at about 2:30 this afternoon,
when two or more Latin males entered the Crown Liquor Store
here on the west end of the Dadeland Mall.
She's responsible for approximately 200 murders--
more than Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy combined.
The coroner had to rent refrigerated trucks
just to store the bodies.
She made a lot of widows and orphans.
[Narrator] How did this Godmother
become one of the most dangerous women in history?
[Mandi] She was smart. She was persuasive.
She was a leader.
[Narrator] This is the true story
behind the rise, reign, and fall of Griselda Blanco--
the Queen of Cocaine.
[electronic music]
[Narrator] February 17, 1985.
DEA agents are on a secret mission--
take down Griselda Blanco,
one of the biggest and most elusive narcotraffickers
the world has ever known.
After doggedly hunting the queenpin for over a decade,
they finally tracked her down to this innocuous suburban hideout.
The agents know the deadly drug lordess
won't go down without a fight,
and enter ready for battle.
[Palombo] My partner and a couple of guys
went through the front door.
The rest of the surveillance guys
went through the back door.
We did a security sweep downstairs,
making sure that there was nobody in there.
And then my partner and I raced up the stairs
to a master bedroom.
[Narrator] But when the feds throw open the door,
they're met with a startling sight.
[Palombo] Griselda in bed, reading the Bible.
[Narrator] Agent Palombo is undeterred.
[Palombo] Showed her my credentials.
I said, hola, Griselda.
And she said, no, mi llamo Betty .
I said, ah, no, I don't think so.
[Narrator] It's a stunning fall
for a woman who rose from one of the poorest places on earth
to become one of the richest and most feared
cartel leaders ever known.
Born into a life of poverty,
Griselda Blanco lives her early years
in the slums of Medellin, Colombia.
[Michael] My mother lived in the Holy Trinity,
also known as El Barrio Antioquia.
It was basically like the den of thieves,
El Barrio Antioquia.
There was no more criminal neighborhoods in Medellin.
If you wanted to smoke reefer, get a prostitute,
play with numbers, alcohol bootlegging,
rooster fights,
you would go to this neighborhood.
[Chris] Medellin at the time is very much like a war-torn area.
There's violence everywhere. There's crime everywhere.
There's poverty everywhere.
[Michael] They were very poor.
My mother told me, one day, we were playing soccer,
and all the little girls made a circle
and they started laughing at me.
All the blood and the guts from the slaughterhouse and the rain,
it was, like, getting on her feet.
She looked horrible and felt so ridiculed.
My mother broke down crying, and she said that
right then and there is when she made the decision
that the day she had children,
they were gonna live in the lap of luxury.
And that's when she made up her mind
to do whatever she had to do in life.
So she started going around the city,
and she would pickpocket.
And she would run from bus to bus,
circle the city two or three times,
make it home with money.
She would always tell me, Michael,
I created everything with these two fingers.
[Narrator] Looking to make more money fast,
Griselda hatches an ambitious plan
when she's just 11 years old.
[Chris] She's out in the streets of Medellin,
running with a small gang of kids.
Kidnap a boy, hold him for ransom,
contact his family, let them know what's going on.
[Narrator] But when the family refuses to pay Griselda
her ransom demand,
she's determined to send a message.
She took a gun into the room and shot him.
Point blank.
It proves early on that she learned a very powerful lesson
about fear and violence.
[Narrator] Two years later,
while working her next hustle as a prostitute,
a 13-year-old Griselda
meets the man who will change her life.
Carlos Trujillo makes his living forging documents
to move people from Colombia
into the United States illegally.
She was very drawn to him, his criminal savvy.
And she fell for him.
[Narrator] Carlos is equally smitten,
and the couple become inseparable.
They marry when Griselda is still a teenager.
[Mandi] I would say a safe assumption
for Griselda at this time when she marries Carlos
is that it's pure survival mode.
Um, it's a bit of a step up from where she was.
Um, and at that point, she's looking for anything
to give her a bit of stability.
[Narrator] The couple literally forge a new life together.
Using Carlos's counterfeiting skills,
they create their own set of documents
to illegally enter the United States
and expand their criminal empire.
[Palombo] She makes her way up to New York,
and they set up shop pickpocketing
and forging documents.
[Narrator] It's not long before Griselda and Carlos's operation
welcomes new members-- their three sons,
Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo.
She seems to be, by all accounts,
a very loving mother.
She loves her children more than anything else.
[Narrator] But as successful as Griselda's business life is,
her personal life flounders,
and she and Carlos separate.
[Michael] I would ask her, so what did you do next?
And she told me, well, Michael, I looked around and I said,
what am I supposed to do?
Let these boys just be comfortable
with a mediocre life? She said, no.
I decided to use all the connections
that I met in New York, the Peruvians and the Bolivians.
[Narrator] Griselda continues clawing out a life
in the underworld
until she meets and marries a man with bigger ambitions
and deeper pockets--
fledgling drug dealer Alberto Bravo.
[Palombo] Alberto Bravo is an upper middle class Colombian.
He's a businessman.
It didn't take Alberto long to know
that Griselda was a very, very smart person
who was a ruthless criminal.
And she would make a perfect ally for him.
And they quickly got into the cocaine business
and moved to Queens, New York.
And that's when things really took off.
[Chris] America's appetite for drugs is starting to change.
And certainly by the early 1970s,
cocaine is starting to become more and more popular.
[Francisco] Cocaine was seen as a club drug.
It's the perfect drug for keeping the party going.
That's why cocaine became very popular in the 1970s.
It was just, like, insatiable.
[Narrator] The criminal couple see a tremendous opportunity
to up their fledgling coke operation.
[Dr. Sacks] Griselda and Alberto had connections
to very good product,
because Colombia's a great place to grow coco.
They're able to get it in mass quantities,
which gives them a serious advantage.
[Narrator] But they have a problem--
finding a way to smuggle the cocaine from Colombia
to New York.
[Palombo] Back then, US customs inspectors
are routinely trained what to look for,
the origin of the flight,
body language,
the nationality of the person.
Griselda's up at night trying to devise ways
to get the drugs in undetected.
[Narrator] But then, Griselda has an epiphany.
[Mandi] Security doesn't look at women as closely.
And then Griselda gets the idea,
okay, so maybe we should start
sewing pouches into undergarments.
They came up with the notion, all right, the airport's here.
We can make these fake visas for all these beautiful models.
We got the lingerie. Let's start stuffing it.
The basic procedure was that the young women
would either start down in Colombia
or fly down into Colombia, pick up the drugs,
have them sewn into various undergarments,
fly up to New York,
take the drugs to a certain place,
exchange the drugs for money,
put the money back into those same hidden pouches,
and transport the money back to Colombia.
So it was this back-and-forth flow of drugs
from Colombia to New York,
money from New York to Colombia.
She has them flirt with the agents
and, you know, make sure that they get through.
It was really brilliant.
[Francisco] That really cemented her role
as someone who could be reliable
to transport cocaine from Colombia
into the United States.
[Narrator] The scam's so successful,
Griselda starts a side hustle--
manufacturing the special line of lingerie.
[Laura] I hate to use the word "brilliant,"
but part of Griselda Blanco's brilliance
was that she really knew how to
kill two birds with one stone.
She would hide drugs within the pockets of a bra,
but she had actually produced and manufactured
an actual tangible product that could be sold
in the legitimate market.
[Vanessa] She created what I like to call Griselda Secret.
She was a very shrewd, very intelligent woman--
not book smart or, you know, college educated,
but she was street smart
and really took it to the next level.
Business was booming.
[Narrator] As demand for the drug grows,
Griselda devises additional innovative methods
to smuggle even more cocaine.
[Mandi] Anyone who doesn't look like a drug smuggler
becomes a drug smuggler for Griselda.
So we've got elderly people in wheelchairs
taking cocaine through security, and we've got children.
[Michael] The double-bottom suitcase.
The cocaine in the shoes.
My mother created that.
She was just savvy.
[Narrator] As Griselda and Alberto
successfully move more and more cocaine into the US,
user demand skyrockets,
and so does the couple's operation.
Soon they begin pulling in nearly $10 million every week.
[Laura] She was a natural innovator.
She was really like Wayne Gretzky,
skating to where she thinks the puck is going,
rather than where the puck is.
[Dr. Shlosberg] There was no stopping her.
She just wanted more and more, and that's what she did.
[Narrator] But soon, a threat from within her own ranks
will jeopardize the Queen of Cocaine's fledgling empire.
[Narrator] By the early 1970s,
Griselda Blanco and her husband, Alberto Bravo,
have established an extremely lucrative cocaine smuggling
and distribution operation in Queens.
[Chris] They're making money hand over fist.
They're quickly learning how successful
the cocaine business can be in America.
[Stephen] The wholesale price was probably
50, 60,000 dollars a kilo.
And, uh, they were probably bringing in
10, 12 kilos at a time.
It was, for today, extremely profitable.
[Michael] My mother made up her mind to do
whatever she had to do in life.
My mother was different.
She had a certain drive about her
that she never stopped.
You can see that ambition in my mother's eyes.
Survival skills are one of the most important business skills
that are required, but are also underestimated.
Sometimes the difference between a successful legitimate leader
and one that goes into more nefarious types of industries
is just one or two qualities that kind of shift you
in a different way.
People speak about do the means justify the ends.
And in her mind, the means completely justified the ends.
[Narrator] To combat the cocaine scourge,
state and federal law enforcement officials
team up to form Operation Banshee.
[Cunniff] Operation Banshee was created to focus on
the increasing levels of violence
and, uh, growing sophistication among drug traffickers
from Colombia at that time.
The Operation Banshee taskforce
included homicide detectives in NYPD,
as well as intelligence analysts from our agency.
[Palombo] We would spend days and days and days
sitting on certain targets, watching their movements.
[Narrator] Eventually, investigators learn
the names of three key suppliers.
[Palombo] Alberto Bravo, Pepe Cabrera,
and Griselda Blanco.
Griselda and Alberto were the highest level at that time.
They were moving cocaine from Colombia to New York City
through various means.
But the whereabouts of those targets were unknown,
because Griselda was-- she was an enigma.
She...was never seen by our law enforcement in the States.
Uh, never seen in New York.
[Michael] The people that were in charge of that case
had it out for my mother.
Enter Bob Palombo.
He was one of those agents that was in charge of
pursuing my mother.
And that's what he did.
[Narrator] Then, in 1973, the agents get a lucky break.
A woman named Maria Gutierrez reaches out to authorities
with firsthand information about Griselda Blanco.
Maria Gutierrez owned a travel agency in Medellin.
Griselda, who was outfitting mules,
female couriers, with drugs,
needed a travel agency.
And she had met Maria Gutierrez several years before
and became somewhat friendly.
[Narrator] Griselda asks Gutierrez
to book flights for her couriers to New York City
through her travel agency.
Maria Gutierrez wanted no part of drug trafficking.
So when Griselda approached her, she readily accepted,
and went to the DEA.
And we instructed her to gather
as much information as she could.
And that's what she did.
Every time Griselda came to
the travel agency to get tickets,
it was concluded that those tickets
were being used by her smugglers,
so that was valuable intelligence.
[Narrator] Intelligence the DEA uses
to begin seizing Griselda's smuggled cocaine shipments,
including a massive 150-kilo haul
worth an estimated wholesale value
of nearly $11 million.
To be able to find 150 kilos of cocaine in a single shipment
and be able to confiscate it was unprecedented.
This was unheard of at the time.
Through that interception,
the DEA can arrest a dozen or so foot soldiers from the group
and can start slowly working its way into the ranks
to Blanco and Bravo.
[Narrator] On April 30, 1975,
federal prosecutors indict Griselda, Alberto,
and 36 of their alleged associates,
charging them with conspiring to manufacture,
import into the United States,
and distribute cocaine.
But there's a catch.
[Chris] The federal government can't find Griselda Blanco.
She is a phantom at this point.
[Stephen] They sort of traveled surreptitiously back and forth.
When law enforcement got close, they would retreat to Colombia.
The trail would go cold.
[Palombo] There was no extradition treaty back then.
So she was basically thumbing her nose at the US.
At the time, we had no working relationship
with Colombian law enforcement.
The perpetrators really had a safe haven in Colombia,
and they could operate out of their home base.
[Narrator] For now, Griselda remains out of the feds' reach.
But she's facing a bigger threat--
her own conniving husband.
And she's not gonna take it lying down.
[Narrator] By 1975, the DEA's prized targets,
Griselda Blanco and her husband, Alberto Bravo,
have fled the US for their native Colombia.
[Male reporter] In Medellin, there was
a large cocaine organization headed by Griselda Blanco,
a flamboyant woman nicknamed by the Colombian newspapers
"La Madrina," or Godmother,
now is in hiding.
[Conniff] By the time this unfolded,
the teams assigned to
Alberto Bravo and Griselda Blanco
were unable to locate them because
they constantly moved between Colombia and New York.
[Dr. Sacks] There's no social media.
You're not gonna be caught on surveillance,
you know, a couple hundred times a day.
You're not leaving the same electronic footprint
that you would leave now.
So Griselda really had an easy time disappearing.
[Narrator] But the drug lordess knows
there are people who can identify her--or worse.
[Mandi] By this point, Griselda's starting to become
a little bit paranoid.
She knows someone's gonna flip at some point
to sell her out to save themselves.
But she also thinks maybe there was someone really close to her
that might have given the DEA a heads up
that made all this come down so quickly in the first place.
[Narrator] And no one makes Griselda more nervous
than the man closest to her.
[Dr. Sacks] Griselda became a little suspicious
of her husband,
because he had fled to Colombia before her.
And she thought maybe he was leaving her
to take the rap for what they had done.
[Narrator] Griselda knows to keep her friends close
and her potential enemies closer.
Using their private jets,
the couple secretly returned to New York
to keep tabs on their growing drug empire.
[Dr. Sacks] Griselda and Alberto returned to the United States.
They decided to divide and conquer.
Alberto was gonna stay in New York
and run the drug trade there,
but Griselda would move to Miami so they could expand.
And what happened was that they were living two different lives.
And...it definitely led to the deterioration of their marriage.
[Mandi] Things really start to fall apart
between Griselda and Alberto
when she recognizes that he's stealing from the company.
And this is a company that she's built.
Yes, he brought her into it,
but it's her innovations and it's her drug routes
that really took this over the top.
So now she's got a man taking advantage of her again,
and that doesn't sit well.
[Narrator] Even worse, Griselda believes
Alberto's having extramarital affairs.
[Mandi] The tipping point for Griselda
was when Alberto goes to Colombia with his girlfriend
and stays way too long.
[Dr. Shlosberg] Griselda probably felt
embarrassed by this.
And the fact that somebody would cheat on her
really pissed her off, frankly.
[Dr. Sacks] Griselda realized she didn't need him.
She didn't need him at all.
And I think she just didn't care
to have him as a partner anymore.
[Laura] Co-founder breakups are extremely frequent.
35 percent of startups actually fail
because of co-founder splits.
Sometimes it's trust issues.
Sometimes it's power and money and status issues.
Sometimes it's about skills.
[Narrator] She sees only one solution.
In her eyes, there was no other option.
If somebody crossed her, they needed to die.
[Narrator] In the winter of 1975,
Griselda flies back to Colombia
to very publicly set things right with her husband.
Alberto has been in the nightclub with his bodyguards.
He comes out of the nightclub and goes into the parking lot
to get into his car.
And Griselda and a couple of her guys pull up,
and both sides exchange gunfire.
[guns cocking]
[gunfire]
[Narrator] In the melee, Alberto shoots Griselda in the stomach.
But she returns fire,
shooting her philandering husband
right in the face.
[Chris] Alberto and his bodyguards are killed.
Griselda falls back into her car.
Her guys speed away,
and now she's bleeding in the back of the car.
[Narrator] Miraculously, Griselda survives
her life-threatening wounds.
And with Alberto now dead,
the crown is fully hers.
[Mandi] She's the boss. She's the queenpin of coke.
There's now a woman running
one of the most macho industries in the world.
But she needs to kind of reevaluate things.
And she's gotta heal from this gunshot wound to the stomach.
She really makes Colombia her home base for a while.
[Narrator] Down, but not out,
Griselda remains laser focused on business.
Griselda realizes that she's going to have to innovate
new ways to get cocaine over to the United States from Colombia.
So during the United States
bicentennial celebration in 1976,
there are ton of ships that are being charted
over to the United States for the celebration.
[Narrator] Griselda devises a plan
to put her largest shipment of coke ever,
1,000 kilos, onto one of the ships
sailing out of Colombia.
[Palombo] The Gloria , a triple-masted ship.
She must have thought that the ship would have
diplomatic immunity, able to get through pretty easily.
[Narrator] The queen enlists the aid of her travel agent,
Maria Gutierrez, not knowing her friend is a DEA informant.
[Palombo] As Maria relates,
they loaded the ship with the 1,000 kilos of cocaine.
We immediately channel the information
to the State Department.
The State Department says, unless you have more concrete--
rather than just information from one cooperating individual,
we're not gonna cause an international incident.
So, uh, thanks, but no thanks.
[Narrator] But when the ship docks in Miami,
the DEA is waiting and seizes 13 pounds of cocaine.
[Narrator] Despite the small seizure,
the operation's overall success emboldens Griselda.
She continues innovating her smuggling operation,
looking for new ways to move even larger amounts of coke.
[Chris] Griselda wanted to make Miami a hub for drug smuggling.
And she begins to use the same tactics
that other gangs use to bring marijuana into south Florida.
Mostly speedboats, but then evolving into small planes.
[Male reporter] Major Nick Navarro
of the Broward County Sheriff's Organized Crime Department
explains why south Florida is an ideal gateway.
[Francisco] At one point, there was an airfield
out by the Everglades
as a drop-off point for cocaine shipments.
[Chris] You could view South Florida
as a bit of the Wild West,
where there was very little security around the border.
Certainly there were not the technologies that we have today
to stop smuggling of any kind.
But radar, sonar, satellites,
none of that stuff really existed in the 1970s.
So the drugs can get from Miami to Los Angeles
and New York and Chicago and Houston
and any other city you can name
in rapid-fire succession.
[Michael] They didn't really understand
how to create routes or use transportation
or use these means of transportation.
My mama said, Michael, there was nothing.
I invented this.
My mother was the first entity
of drug trafficking as we know it.
[Laura] What she did that really made it unique
was being able to manage
the supply and the demand seamlessly,
and how they needed to get the inventory to her.
She was very savvy in that sense.
[Narrator] With her empire expanding,
Griselda takes a protge under her wing,
only to watch him become her biggest rival.
[Vanessa] The machismo was big in Pablo.
He wanted to rule.
[Male announcer] Miami Beach!
All-year sun and fun capital to all the world.
Queen of South Florida's golden Sunrise Coast,
where the blue Atlantic Gulf Stream
kisses the white sands of a tropical playground.
[Chris] Miami started out in the '50s and '60s
as a fairly sleepy city of about 250,000 people.
Tourism mostly came from people
who were fleeing the north during the winter months
and coming down to get away from the cold.
[Francisco] Miami Beach was known as God's Waiting Room
because it was a place where retired snowbirds
could come down to live out their,
you know, their golden years.
It was pretty much all senior citizens,
and they're all living in these art deco buildings.
[Narrator] The city remains relatively quiet and peaceful
until the late 1970s,
when rising drug lordess Griselda Blanco
makes it her new base of operations.
[Francisco] When Griselda Blanco moves down to Miami,
she basically, like, just blows up.
She is the queenpin of the cocaine era.
She was responsible for the transportation of
tons of cocaine from Miami to California and New York.
She became the Godmother, La Madrina.
[Narrator] But Griselda's operation
faces one major challenge.
Existing competition.
In South Florida, mostly the Cuban gangs ran everything.
They ran the drug smuggling
from places like Cuba and Jamaica.
And then eventually the cocaine industry
takes over South Florida,
and the Cubans start to find their power reduced.
Although there were still many Cuban cocaine distributors,
the Colombians took a bigger place.
The Colombians were taking over.
[Narrator] The Cubans don't take kindly
to the new Colombian competition.
And so it becomes a turf war.
She's ordering assassinations, ordering her rivals killed.
[gun cocks]
[gunfire]
She went out there to terrorize her competitors.
She thought that the more violent she became,
the stronger her position became.
She had dozens of hitmen who were ready to go
and perform killings whenever she made the order.
[gunfire]
[Michael] My mother told me once--
she said, Michael, you know what's an easy way
to deal with competition?
Erase your competition, and then you have no competition.
That was a pretty deep thing to say.
[Chris] She knows that as a woman,
she has to prove a point,
and she's willing to prove that point
and go further than all the men.
I think that was probably the distinguishing feature
of Griselda Blanco throughout her entire career--
her willingness to go to violence so quickly.
And I think that definitely helped them
corner the market on cocaine.
[Narrator] Griselda, always the innovator,
even invents a new type of execution--
the motorcycle hit.
[Stephen] Two men, one on the back of the motorcycle
with some kind of high-powered gun,
uh, drive up fairly close, fairly innocuously
to the victim,
helmeted, unidentifiable.
The passenger was free to just shoot ablaze
wherever, you know, they wanted to.
[gunfire]
[Stephen] And then speed away before
anyone really knows what happens.
A whole new, exciting, terrible way of killing.
[Narrator] And a method Griselda generously employs.
By 1976, Griselda has eliminated most of her competition
and is supplying much of South Florida with cocaine.
She is importing an incredible amount of cocaine.
She has more money, more resources.
[Narrator] And the more people use Griselda's product,
the more they want it.
[Laura] Griselda very intuitively understood
the core product that she was selling
was not necessarily cocaine,
but it was the addiction,
it was the servicing of the addiction.
The more demand there was for her drugs,
the more that she would have to supply it,
and the more profits and the more revenue she would reap.
Miami had, like, the best-quality cocaine.
You had lawyers, accountants, cops--
everybody was on to cocaine.
Everyone.
[Narrator] Griselda Blanco is quickly amassing
a breathtaking fortune.
[Dr. Sacks] There are estimates anywhere
that she was making 10 to 80 million dollars a month.
This was a massive organization.
[Mandi] Her innovations were working.
Her routes were running like clockwork.
She's worth $500 million at this point.
[Narrator] And Griselda's not afraid to flaunt it.
She buys a mansion in Miami
and a penthouse overlooking Central Park in Manhattan.
And she's constantly jetsetting between the two.
[Michael] My mother was always at Studio 54.
She would have parties in her penthouse.
[Chris] This is where the legend of Griselda Blanco
really starts to grow.
She's known for lavish parties and wild spending
and a huge nightlife.
She begins using cocaine herself.
At least all kinds of nefarious and sinister party antics.
Anything from potentially executing strippers
who were on hand as entertainment to wild orgies.
It was a time and a place where if you could imagine it,
it either did happen at these parties,
or it certainly was in the realm of possibility.
[Narrator] As Griselda's reputation grows,
so does her associates' desire to be near her.
Including an ambitious young criminal
whom she takes under her wing--
Pablo Escobar.
Pablo Escobar also began from a humble background.
Again, a child of poverty and violence
looking to escape.
[Michael] Pablo was still coming up.
He was still a car thief and a grave robber.
Pablo meets my mother,
and she said, when you got a couple dollars saved up,
you come talk to me.
The future's cocaine.
You couldn't just get into the drug game.
You had to ask Griselda to get into the drug game.
[Chris] She becomes his mentor.
He becomes her protge.
She brings him into the cocaine business.
And he starts to learn everything,
and it quickly becomes apparent
that he's a natural with the business.
So basically, my mother made him his first millions.
[Narrator] Griselda has no idea
her student will soon become her biggest rival.
[Vanessa] The machismo was big in Pablo.
He wanted to rule.
He decided that he didn't wanna be under this woman.
He didn't wanna work for her.
He wanted everyone to work for him.
[Michael] Pablo came from the second guard.
He grew up around my mother and these people.
Pero la vieja guardia was my mother's guard, the old guard.
[Narrator] In 1976, Escobar teams up
with several other drug traffickers
to create one of the most powerful drug organizations
in history--
The Medellin Cartel.
But for the moment,
Griselda has more pressing concerns.
Within a few years of killing her second husband,
Alberto Bravo,
Griselda takes a new lover,
another drug dealer named Dario Sepulveda.
The relationship between Dario and Griselda
was very different than the one she previously had with Alberto.
Griselda had all the power, and Dario knew that going in.
So he was not going to be the boss in this relationship.
Griselda was, and that's just the way Griselda wanted it.
[Narrator] Griselda soon becomes pregnant
and gives birth to her fourth son on August 5, 1978.
She's obsessed with the Godfather movies,
and so she names her fourth son
after one of the sons in the movies, Michael Corleone.
[Michael] My mom had me at the clinic,
and then rented the top floor at the most popular hotel
for, like, a month.
So they said I was born in a golden crib,
una cuna de oro,
and I literally was.
The maids would bathe me with milk.
And I was like, wow, she must've really loved me.
It's a lot of milk.
[Narrator] It's not until Michael is six years old
that a cousin explains the significance of his name.
[Michael] He's like, it's a mafia family,
like the Italians are the movie The Godfather.
Why do you think your name is Corleone?
You're the son of the Godmother of Cocaine.
You're the son of the lady who invented
the cocaine game as we know it.
[Narrator] While Griselda bonds with her new son,
a new threat emerges.
The Medellin Cartel, led by Escobar,
is quickly growing in size and strength,
thanks in part to payoffs to Colombian government officials.
[Chris] Pablo's star has seriously risen,
and now he and Griselda are not only rivals,
but some people would say that Pablo had eclipsed Griselda.
She realizes that she's lost a little bit of ground,
that everybody's saying Pablo Escobar,
Pablo, Pablo, Pablo.
And all of a sudden, she realizes
she's gonna have to step it up to regain her turf.
My mother said, I would never bow down to anybody,
'cause I invented this.
[Chris] By 1979, the violent crime rate
has really been going up in Miami.
And in July, it hits a true turning point.
[Male reporter] The shootout occurred
at about 2:30 this afternoon,
when two or more Latin males entered the Crown Liquor Store
here on the west end of the Dadeland Mall.
They were followed by two or three other Latin males,
and then the shooting began.
Right now, two people are dead, and there are others injured.
[Narrator] Police suspect the carnage
is the result of Griselda's henchmen
settling a debt with a rival.
[Mandi] They calmly walk in.
[gun cocks]
[Mandi] They shoot them numerous times in the back.
[gunfire]
[Mandi] And they calmly walk out
until they decide that they want to make
a little bit more of a point,
and they unload 86 more bullets,
and it's just a warzone.
[gunfire]
[Male reporter] The assailants sprayed gunfire
all around the parking lot.
Shell fragments were found some 40 yards from the store.
The suspects were apparently still at large.
[Diaz] It was incredible.
We knew we had a serious problem on our hands.
[Palombo] The turning point was the Dadeland Massacre in 1979.
Before that, you had a certain amount of violence
perpetrated by Colombians, perpetrated by Cubans.
But when Dadeland took place, that changed the whole dynamic.
Griselda didn't care where you were.
If she felt that somebody was going to do her in,
she'd have them whacked.
[Dr. Sacks] The fallout from the Dadeland shooting
is the actual war that begins
and that marks Miami for several years after that.
The culture of violence has just, um, exploded on the scene,
and it would stay that way for a very long time.
[Narrator] Griselda goes after
anyone she feels has wronged her.
Griselda's henchmen were ruthless.
They would decapitate people.
They would cut people up into little pieces.
They would leave people in cardboard boxes
on the side of the road.
Violence is what she wanted, and violence is what she got.
[Laura] There's an expectation that women
will not be as successful in more male-dominated industries.
What she really did was she took the bull by the horns
and really embraced it.
She knew that she could operate in a male-dominated world.
And she saw it almost as a personal vendetta
to not only exceed them,
but also be able to enact her own level of justice
within this macho industry.
She was brilliant when it came to bringing the drugs
into the United States,
devising the methodology,
but she was horrible at dealing with customers
and paying suppliers.
And this is when she began to employ the violence
that she was known for.
[Diaz] The crime became more sensational.
The violence they brought,
the gunpower, the firepower that they brought,
it was something we had not seen before.
[Francisco] When I was growing up in Miami in the 1980s,
I mean, it was pretty fierce.
Miami was basically like the capital of cocaine.
All the cocaine from Colombia and South America
was coming through Miami.
[Chris] The violent crime rate has gone through the roof.
It's now one of the most violent cities
in not just the country, but in the world.
[Diaz] These guys did not respect anyone.
They didn't respect bystanders.
They didn't respect family.
They didn't respect kids.
They didn't respect anyone.
I had a one-year-old and a two-year-old daughter
at the time this was going on.
So my concern was for the safety of my family.
I was worried.
There were so many drug-related murders in Miami
that the coroner had to rent refrigerated trucks
just to store bodies.
[Michael] My mother made the statement
to the other cartels,
and she said, gentlemen, in Miami,
I do not bow down.
I make the rules here--
meaning that no drug trafficking of heavy weight
could be done without my permission in this city.
And she became the Queen of Miami.
[Narrator] The queen's chaos and carnage
leads Time Magazine to publish this cover story in 1981.
It was becoming a disaster because
it was really negatively impacting the tourist trade.
People didn't wanna go down there.
When that came out, politicians freaked out.
And they called for something had to be done.
[Narrator] Law enforcement creates a taskforce
compromised of Miami-Dade homicide detectives,
the DEA, and other agencies.
It's called the Central Tactical Program,
or CENTAC-26.
[Diaz] I had recommended that
whoever was placed in charge of the unit
would have to be Latin,
would have to have experience in narcotics,
in counterterrorism, and homicide.
The only one in the department was me.
So I got the assignment.
[shouting]
[Narrator] Lieutenant Diaz quickly recognizes
the police are not only outmanned,
they're also outgunned.
I can't tell...
[Diaz] There were a lot of paramilitary people in Colombia
involved in the drug trafficking,
and those people had AK-47's, M-16's, AR-15's.
They had everything, okay?
At that time, Miami-Dade police homicide detectives
were only allowed to carry six-shot .38
or .357 revolvers.
So the fight was in their favor.
[Narrator] Diaz makes a request for better weaponry
to the top brass.
[Diaz] Major, we're gonna need for you to approve our guys
to carry semiautomatics.
He was a former Marine.
And he raised his hand, he slapped it on the table.
And he said, horseshit!
We're gonna go for fully automatic!
And so we got machine guns.
[Narrator] Just when it seems the cops can't beat back
the cocaine scourge plaguing their city,
they get a major tip.
Griselda Blanco, the Colombian queenpin,
has returned to US soil to lead her operations.
But unless they can find her,
they have no way to stop her.
[Narrator] In 1982, cocaine usage in the United States
reaches its pinnacle,
with 10.4 million users.
But hand in hand with the euphoria
comes the chaos.
[Male reporter] Beleaguered South Florida law enforcers
say the Colombian assassins don't seem to care
if there are innocent victims
as they bring to Miami a type of violence
it has never seen before.
I mean, we're just flat out losing.
They're getting better at it.
Dade County's losing and Miami's losing.
[Narrator] But there is one silver lining--
the city's economy is booming.
[Francisco] In the 1980s,
Miami was flush with cocaine money.
At the height of her operations,
Griselda Blanco was moving tons of cocaine,
so she was very, very, very, very wealthy.
[Vanessa] I hate to say this,
but I feel like this is where trickle-down economics
actually worked,
because there was so much--
an influx of so much money.
People are partying. People are spending like crazy.
[Diaz] Money was growing.
There were high-end clubs that were packed every night.
They ran out of Rolexes in Miami
during a recession in the rest of the country.
It was wild, crazy, and violent days.
The most frightening part of
the cocaine, um, dilemma that we have
as it's coming through the South
to me is the amount of that illegal money,
those billions of dollars in profits,
that are being channeled into legitimate businesses.
One key complicating factor that Griselda Blanco had to--
to grapple with was her profits.
She had to actually find a way to wash the money
through things like casinos, real estate, actual products.
Her exotic lingerie business was an example.
[Francisco] You had all these bankers and real estate people
more than willing to help them.
[Diaz] Clubs were being opened.
Money was being spent like crazy.
Money was rolling on the street.
If you went to buy a car,
you were lucky if you got a big-ol'
manufacturer's suggested retail price,
because these dope dealers would go in there
with a bag full of cash.
There was no money laundering statue then.
They would go in with a bag full of cash
and buy it at whatever price.
[Narrator] Over 2700 miles to the west,
California's in the midst of its own cocaine boom.
Only it's not powder.
It's crack. And it's taking over LA.
[Dr. Sacks] When cocaine hit the scene in the '80s,
it can be used in two distinct forms.
As an accessory for upper classes.
But on the flip side, the street-level drug was crack.
And crack could be used very cheaply.
It could be bought for as cheap as $5.
And so you have an entire different class of people
who were buying crack. And so it's highly desirable.
[Narrator] And an industrious dealer
is cashing in the crack craze.
[Jemeker] When I was in high school,
I met a young man named Daff.
Daff was selling marijuana.
And then I would take dimebags and 20 bags to school
and sell to my friends at school.
I was excited about making the money.
And then once I graduated, the demand for cocaine
in the Black community took off.
It's a big difference selling a pound of marijuana
to a pound of cocaine.
It's like you caught triple your money.
That's when we went to selling crack cocaine.
And I was one of the very few women that were selling this
in the early '80s in the Los Angeles area.
[Vanessa] Jameker really was a badass businesswoman.
She very quickly rose through the ranks
and became the Queen of Crack.
She not only dominated in California,
but she also spread through the States.
She was able to really distribute on a large scale
and get that power.
[Narrator] At the height of her reign,
Jameker is making millions,
and far outperforming her male competitors.
It was just like a high that I got.
The more money I made, the more I wanted to make.
The hustling drive came because I wanted more.
I wanted a better life.
It just seemed like it was never enough.
I was a woman Scarface and a woman Godfather.
I never thought of myself as being a drug dealer.
I thought of myself as being a businesswoman.
I don't feel that being a woman in a world of men selling drugs,
that the men treated me differently.
Actually, they treated me as one of them,
because they had a lot of respect for me,
because I was selling drugs on the level
that they were selling drugs, and they knew it.
[Narrator] While the Queen of Crack rules LA,
back in Miami, the Queen of Cocaine's business
also continues its dizzying ascent.
But her personal life is crashing.
The relationship between Griselda
and her third husband, Dario Sepulveda, falls apart
when she learns that Dario's been cheating on her
and sleeping with a topless dancer.
[Michael] At the time, my father still lived with my mother
and had a girlfriend here--
a beautiful blonde woman, blue eyes, beautiful.
She looked like an actress.
And I remember it was weird 'cause my mother and my father
started to fight.
[Mandi] She's furious.
Disloyalty is not something that will stand with her.
So divorce is inevitable.
[Chris] She wants custody of her son, Michael, of course.
But Dario also wants custody.
Dario believes that Michael should stay in school.
Griselda wants Michael to stay with her,
and that accelerates the fallout between them.
[Narrator] Then, in 1983, the couple's fight
over the five-year-old son reaches a breaking point.
[Michael] I'm living with my mother.
And my father one day, he comes to pick me up.
And I guess he told my mother,
yeah, I'm gonna take him shopping,
bring him back tomorrow morning.
But he picked me up, went to his house.
He grabbed his suitcase, jumped on a plane
to Bogota, Colombia.
Basically kidnapped me.
Took me from my mother without her parental consent.
My father, uh, loved me so much.
I was like, you know, his little prince.
You know, he loved me.
[Narrator] Dario's counting on
his network of friends in Colombia
to protect him from his audacious move.
You know, he should obviously know his wife well enough
at this point that that's not how this story is going to end.
[Narrator] When Griselda learns what Dario's done,
she is furious.
She sends her henchmen to Colombia
to find her thieving husband.
After scouring the city, they locate the pair.
Griselda's goons, posing as policemen,
pull over Dario's car.
They're not here to negotiate.
[Michael] I look to my right,
and I see the bodyguard,
and then my father telling me,
[speaking Spanish]
And then I just heard that fucking storm.
Uzis.
[gunfire]
.38's.
I look at my dad, and my papi...
had just holes with blood oozing out of them.
His nice suit, the back of it was just riddled.
He got hit 27 times.
In my mind, they're gonna kill me too.
I mean, that's-- that's the law in Colombia.
You kill a Godfather, you kill his son.
[Narrator] But as Michael prepares for the end,
a divine intervention.
Nuns and schoolchildren from a nearby Catholic school
race over to protect the five-year-old boy.
I just remembered the schoolgirls jumping on me
and the nuns,
and they told the killers, no!
No! He is a baby!
And they--they all made, like, a human chain.
No, you will not take him!
And they ran away, and the cops came.
The real cops.
[Narrator] Michael is flown back to the United States
and reunited with his mother.
[Michael] I later on was told by many of people
that, you know, that it could've been my mother
who ordered the hit on my father for kidnapping me.
And I asked her, did you do it?
And if you did, I'll still forgive you.
I just wanted to know.
She told me, nah, I didn't kill your father.
I loved your father.
[Narrator] Regardless, Dario's murder
earns the Coke Queen a new nickname.
[Mandi] She's now known as the Black Widow.
But she doesn't really think this one through,
because Dario's brother is one of Griselda's hitmen.
So naturally, he's been trained to kill,
he's gonna come after her.
[Chris] In addition to Dario's brother,
there are lots of other people in the operation
who are loyal to Dario.
And so now there's even more internal strife in the group.
[Narrator] Many members of Griselda's once loyal crew
begin to defect.
They realize that no one who works for the queenpin
is safe from her wrath.
[Chris] She becomes more paranoid and more erratic,
and the body count is rising in Miami.
She's running out of friends.
She's running out of loyalists.
So she decides to take her operation out west,
try to set up a whole new shop in California,
specifically in Los Angeles.
Hopefully the goal is to dominate the entire West Coast.
Pivoting is critical in business,
because the only certainty is that things are going to change.
And the best leaders recognize that,
and they make sure that that's part of their thinking,
they make sure that that's part of their cognition all the time.
[Narrator] It's a bold move.
Griselda knows she now needs new lieutenants
to help run her West Coast operation.
So she appoints the only people she can trust,
her three oldest sons--
Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo.
[Palombo] By that time, her three sons,
they're in their early 20's.
They were Americanized.
So they spoke English.
They had American friends.
And they were able to develop their own customer base.
[Michael] My mother was like, all right, come here, guys.
Takes them under her wing.
I guess that's why they call my mother
the Ma Baker of the drug cartel.
Just like Ma Baker, you know, she was close to her boys.
That's what my brothers were trained to do
since they were children.
They were trained to be fucking capos.
You know?
Drug lords.
And that's what they did, and they did it well.
[Dr. Sacks] They each took different roles.
What they did was kind of divide and conquer.
So they worked different regions.
[Chris] Dixon runs San Francisco.
Uber has taken over operations in Los Angeles.
And Osvaldo has taken over operations in Miami.
So they're really like
the three-headed monster in this thing.
[Michael] My mother starts handing the business over
to the three brothers.
Them boys were monsters, you know?
Them boys went from selling 10, 20 kilos
to 200 or 300 a week.
[Palombo] She didn't deal with customers.
Her sons dealt with the customers,
and she trusted her sons.
So as far as her distribution was concerned,
they were the go-to people.
[Narrator] The move west enables Griselda
to flood an entirely new market with her product.
There's only one problem-- getting enough of it.
She needs a new supply chain.
[Mandi] But most of her suppliers,
trusted suppliers in Miami,
won't ship all the way to California.
So she's gotta find a new supplier.
[Narrator] So Griselda makes a deal with the devil.
She gets Marta Ochoa Saldarriaga,
a relative of the co-founders of the Medellin Cartel
with Pablo Escobar,
to sell her $1.8 million worth of coke.
But then Griselda gets greedy.
[Chris] Marta delivers on her end of the deal,
delivers the drugs.
But instead of Griselda paying her,
she orders Marta killed.
If Marta's dead, Marta can't say anything
about the deal gone wrong,
and Griselda doesn't have to pay the money,
and she gets the drugs.
[Narrator] She puts her best hitman on the case.
[Dr. Sacks] Griselda failed to recognize
that this person should have been off limits.
That there was gonna be consequences for this.
But that was Griselda's way.
And this would definitely be one of those mistakes
that she would live to regret.
[Narrator] The fallout is swift.
[Chris] When the rest of the Medellin Cartel find out
that Griselda ordered the murder of Marta Ochoa,
they put a $4 million bounty on Griselda's head.
So now she's on the run from the DEA
and the Medellin Cartel.
[Narrator] In 1984 alone,
Griselda survives six assassination attempts.
She must now sleep with one eye open.
[Chris] She's hiding from the DEA.
She's hiding from the Medellin Cartel.
She moves around from safe house to safe house
to try to maintain this phantom-like status.
[Dr. Sacks] She doesn't want to be alone.
And so she was actually paying people
to sleep in her bed with her night,
because she was so afraid that
something bad was going to happen to her.
[Mandi] It's very ironic, because
she's a very brilliant business mind.
But in the case of killing her husband
and now Marta Ochoa,
she doesn't predict the blowback of these murders.
She knows what the Medellin Cartel is capable of.
It's almost like she just thinks she's invincible.
[Narrator] But it's not just Griselda's enemies
who are closing in.
The DEA's also tightening the noose.
An individual walks into our office
and says he wants to cooperate.
[Narrator] By 1984, Griselda Blanco
has moved her cocaine operation and her family
from Miami west to the Golden State.
She scurried to California to, uh,
avoid being killed herself by
other people involved in the business.
[Narrator] But even on a new coast,
she still remains a ghost.
[Michael] My mother was still a fugitive.
When we moved to California,
we had a house in Anaheim,
a house in Orange County,
my brothers' houses in Beverly Hills,
the ranch in Calabasas,
and the houses in the Bay Area.
So I spent my time up and down the state of California.
At that age, I was very, uh, angry with the fact
that I didn't go to school like normal kids,
couldn't ride my bike around the neighborhood.
And if my friends wanted to play with me,
they'd have to come to my toy room at the house, you know?
I couldn't go to nobody's house.
I was kidnappable. You get it?
If you let me out of your eyesight,
yeah, I was a million dollars walking.
[Narrator] The DEA knows if they can't find Griselda,
they'll never end her reign of terror.
[Cunniff] The focus on Griselda Blanco in California
illustrates the significant challenges
to investigating a person who operates like Blanco did.
She was relying upon her sons
to conduct a lot of her business,
and did not communicate with anyone else.
[Narrator] Just when it seems as if all is lost,
the feds shift their attention from the mother to her sons,
launching a new operation codenamed Los Nios.
Operation Los Nios is designed
to infiltrate Griselda's organization
through her three sons-- Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo.
[Narrator] To do so, they'll need a mole,
someone who can get close to Griselda's boys.
Then, out of the blue, in 1984, they get a break.
[Palombo] An individual walks into our office
and says he wants to cooperate,
that he knows he's got good information.
He identifies himself as Geraldo Gomez.
Very articulate Americanized Colombian.
[Narrator] Gomez informs the feds
he knows Griselda Blanco from his days
running an automotive garage in Medellin.
Hm.
What else can you tell us?
He said, my cousin is going out with one of her sons
in, uh, San Jose, California.
[Narrator] Agents can't believe their good luck.
They convince Gomez to fly to San Jose
and meet with his cousin and her boyfriend,
Dixon Blanco Trujillo, Griselda's eldest son.
[Palombo] He meets with her and Dixon Trujillo
at the Holiday Inn in San Jose.
And Dixon lays it all out. Lays out the organization.
He's doing hundreds of kilos in San Francisco.
Uber is doing hundreds of kilos in Los Angeles.
And Osvaldo is still handling the Miami customer base.
[Narrator] Gomez offers to help the family
where they need it most--
laundering the drug proceeds.
[Chris] His come-on was, you know, I'm a businessman.
I have a business in Colombia.
I can launder your drug profits through my various businesses.
It seems to have made sense to the sons,
and they bought into it.
[Palombo] They take the bait. They give him some money.
He flies back to Miami, picks up some money
from another individual there,
and he facilitates the transfer of the money
to the bank in Panama.
[Narrator] Impressed with the trial laundering run,
the queenpin's sons convince her to meet with Gomez
at the Newport Beach Marriot.
She has no idea she's walking right into a trap,
and that the launderer she's meeting
is actually a federal informant.
[Palombo] He basically put his life in our hands.
If Griselda was to ever find out
that Gerry was working with the government,
she'd pick up the phone
and call one of her trusted shooters.
It was a huge risk because she was a sociopath.
[Narrator] Griselda also has no idea
DEA agent Bob Palombo is there watching her every move.
[Palombo] She comes in with a bodyguard.
My partner and I are sitting in the lobby.
She walks right by us.
We don't recognize her at all at first.
She looked like an American, with a blonde wig.
And then she walked by again,
and I kind of looked over.
She had two unusual characteristics--
a cleft and dimples on her cheeks.
[Narrator] The telltale traits are a dead giveaway.
The agents have their gal.
[Palombo] My partner and I looked at each other.
We had to restrain ourselves from, like, high fiving.
[Narrator] Now they just need the drug lordess
to take the bait.
[Palombo] Griselda goes up to our informant's room
with this other individual
who's carrying a big leather satchel, heavy.
[Narrator] Behind closed doors,
Gomez convinces Griselda to let him launder
a half million dollars as a test run.
She agrees and leaves the cash behind.
[Palombo] You had informant testimony,
tapes to corroborate the testimony,
physical evidence in the form of money.
You couldn't ask for anything more
except for dope on the table.
[Narrator] While the feds want to arrest Griselda on the spot,
they hold back, knowing it will blow their informant
Gerry's cover before he can fully integrate himself
in her operation.
So they let the drug lordess walk.
It's a decision they'll come to regret
when Griselda once again disappears.
[Stephen] Griselda for 10 years was a fugitive.
Her whereabouts were unknown.
I mean, even after we had made contact with her
through Gerry the informant,
her whereabouts were still difficult to determine.
We know that she was in Newport Beach
to meet us at the hotel.
But we didn't know where she lived.
[Narrator] But the agents refuse to give up.
Believing the Queen of Cocaine still in California,
they spend the next year hunting her.
Just when the feds fear the drug lordess
has once again slipped their net,
they get another break.
[Palombo] We had a couple of leads.
One of the informant that came in and told our agent
about Uber going out with her daughter.
So that was tremendous intelligence for our case.
[Narrator] The feds use that intel
to ultimately track down Griselda
living in this townhouse in Irvine, California.
[Palombo] It was a Sunday morning.
And on February the 17th, 1985,
we were stationed across the street.
A little boy emerges, Michael, the youngest son.
A moment later, the housemaid takes the child
and goes down to a local park.
Went to the park to play toy guns.
[Narrator] It's the break the agents need.
[Palombo] My partner and a couple of guys
went through the front door.
The rest of the surveillance guys
went through the back door.
We did a security sweep downstairs,
making sure that there was nobody in there.
And then my partner and I raced up the stairs
to a master bedroom.
[Narrator] They throw open the door
and are met with a shock.
[Palombo] Griselda in bed, reading the Bible.
Showed her my credentials.
I said, hola, Griselda.
And she said, no, mi llamo Betty.
I said, ah, no, I don't think so.
[Narrator] Agent Palombo then approaches
the Godmother of Coke,
the Black Widow,
the woman he has chased for a decade
from one end of the country to the other...
and makes a bold move.
He leans over and kisses her gently on both cheeks.
[Palombo] She was causing such frustration
to myself and the guys in the group.
So one day I just blurted out--
I said, if I ever put the cuffs on her,
she's getting the kiss of death.
The old Italian kiss of death.
It was kind of fitting at the time,
so I decided, what the heck.
I'll take a shot.
[Narrator] All the commotion
catches young Michael's attention
down at the park.
I look, I see a helicopter hovering above my neighborhood.
[Narrator] The six-year-old races home,
only to discover a chaotic scene.
I see the circus of agents and regular police,
and they're just everywhere.
You know, walking in through the house,
them destroying the walls, pouring out all the food
and the cereal, hitting the fucking kitchen.
And I can't pour a bowl of cereal
without remembering the day my mother was arrested.
Made my way up the stairs
to my mother's main room.
Bob Palombo and all the agents are there.
I remember my mother telling me,
Michito, Michito, come here, to hug me.
And she's like, I don't know what these gentlemen are saying.
They're saying I'm some lady, but I don't know who that is.
And then my mother told me, Michito,
go with them.
And I'm like, I'm not going nowhere
'till we leave together. Come on.
She's like, no, I'll see you later, baby.
Boom, they, uh, ushered me off to an orphanage,
LA County Orphanage,
and they took my mother to federal detention.
[Narrator] After 10 long years of hunting their prey,
the feds finally have Griselda Blanco in custody.
But will prosecutors have enough evidence
to keep her behind bars?
[Narrator] After arresting Griselda Blanco in California,
the DEA sends the Queen of Cocaine to New York
to face trial for the original Operation Banshee indictment
issued 10 years earlier.
[Canniff] Operation Banshee was created
to focus on the increasing levels of violence
and growing sophistication among drug traffickers
from Colombia at that time.
We were concerned about not only Griselda Blanco's
drug trafficking activities,
but about the violence that she had perpetrated
in New York City, in Florida, and elsewhere.
[Narrator] The feds also issue a second indictment
against Griselda and her three top lieutenants--
her older sons Uber, Dixon, and Osvaldo.
But her youngest boy, Michael, remains out of the legal fray.
[Michael] I went to visit my mother
in the federal correctional building
in New York City while she was awaiting trial.
And I'm like, Ma, how long you think you're gonna be here?
She's like, I don't know, Mike. It's not gonna be too long.
Don't worry. We got this covered.
That day I understood that my mother was Griselda Blanco,
the Godmother of the Medellin and Miami--
the first godmother of the cartel.
[Narrator] On June 25, 1985,
Griselda goes on trial in the Southern US District Court
in New York City.
She's charged with multiple counts
for her involvement in
the original drug trafficking operation
she ran with her second husband, Alberto Bravo.
[Mandi] The defense's strategy for this trial
is to bring Griselda in and have her look like a timid housewife.
She's got her rosary.
She's got her Bible.
But the prosecution has an eyewitness
that was a former drug smuggler of Griselda's
named Carmen Caban.
[Canniff] Carmen Caban was a key witness.
She was the paramour of the right-hand man for Griselda.
And he was responsible for the cocaine trafficking
that Alberto Bravo and Griselda Blanco
were conducting in the city.
[Narrator] On July 9, 1985,
the jury finds Griselda Blanco guilty.
But they only sentence the international narcotrafficker
to 15 years in federal prison.
It was heart-wrenching.
Here we are in the final inning,
three strikes--
two strikes, you know?
Three balls.
Boom.
Popped out.
[Narrator] And the feds aren't finished dismantling
Griselda's operation.
They soon round up and arrest Griselda's top lieutenants,
her oldest sons Uber, Dixon, and Osvaldo.
So we had the whole organization, basically,
all in cuffs and ready to stand trial.
[Narrator] The boys plead guilty
to conspiracy to distribute cocaine,
and each receive 12 years in prison.
On top of the 15 years from her New York trial,
Griselda gets another 10 years for her Florida crimes.
But in an unexpected ruling,
the queenpin is allowed to serve her terms concurrently.
[Michael] 1985, my mother gets incarcerated.
My brothers get incarcerated right before 1986.
The Colombian family becomes my legal guardians.
Whether I liked it or not,
I had to grab my balls and grow up.
And I did.
[Narrator] But Michael's isn't the only life
that changes dramatically.
His mother must face her own new reality
inside the federal women's prison outside San Francisco.
It's behind these walls the drug lordess
meets another queenpin to help show her the way--
Jameker Thompson, the former Queen of Crack.
[Jameker] The funny thing about Griselda and myself,
we never would talk about our life outside of prison.
I really liked Griselda.
We had a great friendship.
And Griselda wasn't friends with everybody in prison.
But for some reason, we had that connection.
But I think because we lived a certain lifestyle on the street,
our friendship connected without even knowing.
She was a lot like me.
She was a boss in her own right.
And I was a boss in mine.
She was well respected.
She had a hustle.
And she had a drive.
And she was gonna get it one way or another.
[Narrator] The Griselda Blanco that Jameker comes to know
is far different than the murderess coke queen
that terrorized Miami.
She went to church every Sunday.
She went to the chapel just about every day.
That was her life.
Me and her would sit out on the bench
and we would talk about just life and God.
So that's the side of Griselda that I know.
She was very humble, very loving, very caring.
[Narrator] But life behind bars for the Godmother of Coke,
someone who has amassed a fortune
estimated at over a billion dollars,
is...different.
[Jameker] She ahd the favor of all the guards.
So she had contraband coming in from left to right.
She still lived like a queen in prison.
She had someone to do her facial,
iron her clothes, clean her room,
fix her food, and she was very respectful and loving.
And she took care of those people
that took care of her in prison.
[Michael] My mother ate gourmet food.
My mother had a kitchen in her cell.
Or the kitchen would cook for my mother.
That lady dressed in Louis Vuitton and Gucci
while she was in the feds.
She had a fucking 2-pointer on her finger.
She had her 18-karat and 22-karat gold chains,
her high heels.
Dublin Correctional Facility, my mother was the warden!
[Narrator] Despite obtaining convictions against Griselda
for drug trafficking,
prosecutors remain committed to bringing her to justice
for her reign of terror in Miami.
Griselda was responsible for approximately 200 murders,
and that's more than Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy combined.
[Narrator] Then, in 1993,
the feds get a huge break in their case,
when Griselda's trusted hitman,
Jorge "Rivi" Ayala,
pleads guilty to murder.
That's a serious blow to Griselda Blanco.
This guy knows literally where all the bodies are buried.
He buried lots of them.
[Narrator] They charge Rivi with three hits.
[gunfire]
[Narrator] Staring down a death sentence,
the assassin cuts a deal.
Our people from CENTAC went to talk to him, and he flipped.
It was like the first hitman that had truly flipped on her.
Rivi, her trusted hitman, he has all the secrets.
[Narrator] On July 28, 1994,
state prosecutors in Miami lower the boom on Griselda,
charging her with three counts of murder.
Griselda knows this is the nail in the coffin.
She's never going to see the outside world
if Rivi tells all.
[Narrator] Desperate to avoid a murder conviction,
Griselda hatches an audacious plan--
kidnap the Prince of Camelot.
[Narrator] Facing the death penalty
for three counts of murder,
Griselda Blanco, the Queen of Cocaine,
is desperate to find a way out of prison.
Her elaborate, arguably insane plan
to try to keep herself out of another prison sentence
is to kidnap John F. Kennedy, Jr,
the son of former president John F. Kennedy.
She wants to send a crew to JFK Jr's New York apartment
and kidnap him and hold him for ransom,
and basically trade his freedom for her freedom.
[Narrator] But there's a snag.
[Dr. Sacks] The people closest to her,
who she ordered to kidnap JFK, to be part of this plot,
they backed off.
They realized that this was way too risky.
And so the plan was never carried out.
[Narrator] Griselda knows she's at the end of her rope.
If convicted, she'll face the electric chair.
But in February 1998, as her case approaches trial,
it's rocked by a bombshell revelation.
The prosecution's star witness,
Jorge "Rivi" Ayala,
has been engaging in phone sex with secretaries
from the prosecutor's office.
This creates a big problem for the state's attorney's office,
because now they've got a credibility issue.
It essentially obliterated their case.
[Narrator] The feds must change tact.
The prosecution decides that they're going to offer Griselda
a plea, because they want to salvage the case.
They don't wanna lose it completely.
And they want to see her punished.
And Griselda agrees to a plea.
[Mandi] Griselda pleads to second-degree murder.
So with that charge, she gets three concurrent
20-year sentences.
[Narrator] But Griselda's actual sentence is revised
to reflect the guidelines that were in effect in the 1980s,
when she committed her crimes.
[gunfire]
[Narrator] So for ordering three cold-blooded murders,
Griselda will serve just seven years in prison.
I mean, it was essentially a slap on the wrist
for these horrific crimes.
Because of this hole in the case, this sex scandal,
she essentially was saved of the death penalty.
[Palombo] What she got for what she did
is really a cakewalk, in my view,
especially since most of the time she spent in jail
wasn't really super hard time.
[Narrator] In June 2004,
after serving 20 years behind bars,
the now 61-year-old Blanco is released from prison
and immediately deported to her native Colombia--
just like her three oldest sons and co-conspirators,
Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo,
when they were released and deported six years earlier.
[Mandi] When Griselda arrives back in Colombia,
she's really nobody at this point.
She's not running a drug empire.
She arrives in Colombia and...
we just start selling off properties
in order for her to have her money
to be able to live the life she was accustomed to.
Griselda really kept a low profile.
Probably scared for her life, I would imagine,
'cause a lot of people wanted her dead.
[Narrator] After nearly 40 years of ruling the cocaine world
with an iron fist,
the queen has outlived most of her competitors,
enemies, and lovers.
But no one can rule forever.
While shopping in Medellin on September 3, 2012,
karma finally catches up to the Queen of Coke.
She went to the butcher.
She did this every month.
[Francisco] Two guys on a motorcycle stopped,
and the guy that was riding on the back got off,
walked up to her, and shot her twice
at close range in the head.
[two gunshots]
And then the guy got back on the motorcycle and they sped off.
[Dr. Sacks] The irony there, of course,
is this is the very practice that she perfected,
and that was her ultimate demise.
[Michael] Yeah, they killed my mama.
You know, I fell to the ground, like, from the pain.
There's a certain ironic justice to it.
I mean, she went the way that she devised.
Maybe you could say she went the way she would've liked to.
[Jemeker] I think running a drug empire,
you always gonna look over your shoulder,
because it's so many people that's so jealous of you,
of what you have. They wanna be you.
She did what she had to do to survive for those four boys.
It's a price you pay, and she paid the price.
In prison and death, she paid the price.
[Dr. Sacks] We don't know who killed Griselda.
She had enemies.
We don't know who, but we sure do probably know why.
She made a lot of widows and orphans.
That always catches up to you.
Always. Especially the orphans.
[Michael] I told everybody what was done is done.
It's nothing gonna bring my mother back or my brothers back.
So I'm gonna honor her wishes to be a changed man, and that's it.
[Narrator] Ten years after the coke queen's death,
the story of her meteoric rise and fall
still captures the imagination.
I think people are fascinated with Griselda Blanco's story
because it's a very twisted take on the American Dream.
Here's a woman who reached the top of the mountain
in a world dominated by alpha males.
[Chris] She was a one-woman force of nature.
From the very beginning, she didn't take shit from anyone.
She did whatever she needed to do
to keep moving up in life.
[Michael] If my mother wouldn't have been
the first female drug baron of our time,
she probably would have been CEO at a Forbes company.
She did something that was never done before.
My mother's legacy?
Yes, it's a legacy of violence.
But she was a woman that had to become savage
in a world that wasn't made for her.
The drug cartel world at the very beginning
was only made for men.
[Narrator] But not everyone sees Griselda and her legacy
in the same light.
We have this bitch from hell
who decides she wants to be meaner and more powerful
than anybody else,
and she went out there to terrorize her--
her competitors.
Violence.
Arrogance.
Greed.
That is her legacy.
[unsettling electronic music]
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
[ding, ding]