Ms. Blanco used a special hit man for many of her killings, he wrote a book which I read. He may have bargained with the authorities leading to her capture and conviction. I forget. But all these years later she gets a little of her own medicine.
The woman who turned Miami into a murder capital during the 80s died in much the same way she is said to have killed others.
The woman who turned Miami into a murder capital during the 80s died in much the same way she is said to have killed others.
Florida Department of Corrections
Griselda Blanco before being released from prison in 2004.
Foto de Griselda Blanco en 1984. En E.U era conocida como la “Viuda Negra” FOTO tomada de internet
Griselda Blanco was known variously as the “Queen of Cocaine”, the “The Black Widow” or simply La Madrina—”The Godmother.” And she died in a hail of bullets Sunday in Colombia, dispatched in the same way she had allegedly ordered dozens of others killed during her rise to power as one of the biggest drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere.
Blanco, 69, was killed by motorcycle-riding assassins as she walked out of a butcher shop in Medellin, according to a report in the Spanish-language newspaper El Colombiano. She had kept a low profile since being deported from the U.S. in 2004, where she’d allegedly ruled a drug empire that first opened trafficking routes between Miami and Colombia, and which shipped as much as a ton and a half of cocaine per month into the United States.
Before the famous Central American cartels took over the illicit drug trade during the 1980s and 90s, Blanco was a pioneer in the game during the 70s and 80s. The drug pipelines she created became the basis for the modern illicit drug industry, while her ruthless war against rival traffickers laid the template for much of the drug violence that followed.
Although she was never tried for all of the killings tied to her, authorities suspected Blanco of being behind 40 murders. Police believed that she was responsible for an infamous 1979 shooting spree at suburban Miami’s Dadeland mall, in which two Colombian drug-traffickers were slain in broad daylight by thugs with submachine guns. Three of her husbands were also killed in drug-related violence, one of them reportedly by her hand.
“It’s surprising to all of us that she had not been killed sooner because she made a lot of enemies,” ex-Miami homicide detective Nelson Andreu, who had been an investigator into Blanco’s case, told the Miami Herald. “When you kill so many and hurt so many people like she did, it’s only a matter of time before they find you and try to even the score.”
Born in 1943 in the slums near Cartagena, Blanco began her life of crime by kidnapping and murdering the son of a wealthy Medellin family at age 11, according to one biography. From there she went on to pickpocketing and prostitution to survive the violent environment she lived in. She graduated from petty crime to major hustling with the help of illegal immigrant smuggler Carlos Trujillo, whom she eventually married and had three children with, but divorced and allegedly later had murdered over a drug dispute.
Her second husband, Alberto Bravo, introduced Blanco to cocaine dealing; in the early 1970s the couple moved to Queens, N.Y. just in time for the drug to explode in New York City. Prior to the couple’s arrival, the mafia largely controlled drug distribution; but Bravo and Blanco, with their direct connection to Colombia, soon captured a large share of the market and before long were allegedly making millions. However, their operation soon attracted the attention of law enforcement, who busted them in 1975 in a sting called “Operation Banshee,” the largest of that time.
But by the time a grand jury was ready to hand down charges, Blanco had escaped back to Colombia. It was during this temporary exile that she is said to have killed Bravo in a shootout over disputed drug money. Taking full control over the drug empire in the wake of her husband’s death, she made her way back to the states, this time to Miami to solidify her reign as Queen of Cocaine.
Griselda Blanco, ‘Godmother’ of Cocaine, Gunned Down in Colombia | NewsFeed | TIME.com
Link: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/04/griselda-blanco-godmother-of-cocaine-gunned-down-in-colombia/?iid=nf-article-mostpop1