Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 52: Griselda Blanco: The Dark History of Cocaine's Queenpin

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

CW: Violence, Drug use, Kidnapping Before there was Pablo Escobar, there was Griselda Blanco, a woman who left the slums of Colombia to become a billionaire boss of the cocaine trade. If there's one thing Griselda knew, however, it's that the high couldn't last forever. Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. Hurry! We'll be archiving the $3 starting February 1st and adding a new after-show called "Footnotes" that you wont want to miss. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more. This episode is brought to you by Miracle Made. Go to TryMiracle.com/HSP  to try Miracle Made  thermo-regulating  sheets today and save over 40%. AND if you use our promo HSP at checkout you’ll get 3 FREE TOWELS and SAVE an extra 20%! This episode is also brought to you by Rocket Money. Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/hsp. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore

Monday, September 3rd, 2012. It's a beautiful day in Medellin, Colombia. 70 degrees, warm and sunny, a light breeze. The streets are busy, loud with the rumble of cars and motorbikes. We're in the city center, a nondescript neighborhood with a mix of residential and retail, with street vendors setting up on the sidewalks. At the corner is a butcher shop. a nondescript neighborhood with a mix of residential and retail, with street vendors setting up on the sidewalks. At the corner is a butcher shop.

And in that butcher shop is a woman. Short, heavy set, late 60s, she makes small talk with the butcher while he wraps her cuts. The usual order, the usual price. She pays and takes her purchases towards the door. Outside, her pregnant daughter-in-law waits for her in the car. They'll make the short drive back to El Poblado, also known as Las Manzanas de Oro, or the Golden Apples. A ritzy, enclaveed generation of wealthy Colombians have called home.

The old woman steps out into the sunshine. As she does, a man hops off a motorbike and walks calmly towards her. He has a message for her, but whether or not he says anything, we don't know. The message is what he's fiddling with in his right hand. He raises a pistol and fires two shots into the woman's head. She collapses into the street and he walks back to his bike

and disappears into traffic. The woman's daughter-in-law rushes to her side, but there's nothing to do. She was dead when she hit the pavement. The young woman reaches into the old woman's coat and pulls out a worn leather Bible. She lays it on her chest and folds her hands across it. She doesn't open it to Matthew 2652, but it would be appropriate if she did.

To the untrained eye, it looks like someone's grandmother just got murdered in broad daylight, but everyone around watching the scene knows better. They know who this woman is. A woman who was responsible for countless deaths in Colombia and America, who maybe had ordered the death of someone they knew. The woman is La Madrina, the cocaine godmother, the black widow. Griselda Blanco Restrepo. Listener discretion is advised. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore.

Today's episode fits into the horror category pretty perfectly. A real-life horror. I want to run you through the life of one of the most terrifying women I've ever read about. At times, you may feel sympathetic for her. You might even feel bad for her. I mean, after all, Jennifer Lopez has wanted to play her in a movie since forever. And Sofia Vergara is playing her in a show on Netflix that comes out tomorrow.

There's a reason two very beautiful powerful women want to play her. She's complicated. At times she sounds cool. Even, dare I say, girl boss. And this is in large part because Griselda was an anomaly. A woman in an overwhelmingly male dominated field, a boss of bosses. Cocaine trafficking was an industry

where women were either low level mules or decorations, but Griselda was respected, feared. Well, mostly feared. But I'm here to remind you today that she caused a lot of pain to a lot of people. And if you were a civilian in Columbia during her reign, she was definitely not cool. And today, if you're listening to the ad-supported version of the show, thank you so much. Our sponsors make the show possible. And if you're listening to the ad-supported version of the show, thank you so much. Our sponsors make the show possible, and if you're listening on Patreon, ad-free, you make it possible as well.

This is one of the last chances to sign up for Patreon at the reduced rate and lock in a $3 membership. We're raising the tier for new subscribers to $5 starting February 1st, but if you're in before then, you'll stay at $3. Also, we're adding another tier that's going to include a new after-show called Footnotes, where I talk with my producer about the episode. We share more research and interesting tidbits, sometimes we'll chat theories. He actually did most of the research for this episode because there is a lot that we're gonna cover today

And I'm really excited to talk to him more about her life Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back we're gonna dive into the life of Griselda Blanco Restrepo This episode is brought to you by Miracle Maid This episode is brought to you by Miracle Maid. So the other night I'm about to fall asleep and my husband is like, no, get up, we have to change the sheets. And I was like, are you kidding me? But no, he wanted to put our Miracle Maid sheets on. They were in the dryer, so he got out of bed and we ended up remaking the entire bed at

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Go to trimiracle.com slash hsp and use the code HSP to claim your free three-piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's trimiracle.com slash hsp to treat yourself. Thank you to MiracleM Made for sponsoring this episode. To understand who Griselda Blanco was requires two things. One is knowing the Columbia she grew up in, and the other is understanding the long-term effects

of smoking what's left over on the bottom of a cocaine barrel. But let's start with the first one. Griselda was born February 15th, 1943, in Santa Marta, Colombia, a small town on the country's Caribbean coast. Sometime in the first several years of her life, she and her mother moved to Medellin,

the second largest city, and one that would become famous for all the wrong reasons. This was an especially tumultuous time in Columbia's history, which is saying something considering they had eight civil wars in the 20th century alone. It was a period known as La Violencia, the violence. Oligarchs owned all the land and resources and the poor were left with nothing. I mean, nothing.

The oligarchs stayed in power through violence and public executions. At the same time, the poor communists were trying to start a violent revolution. There was a glimmer of hope in 1948 though. That was when Jorge Gallatin, a socialist communist candidate for president who was capable of uniting the working class

but wanted peace versus a violent uprising might some point be elected. Instead, he was murdered on the street by a lone gunman. La Violencia was a time where death squads from rival factions tortured and murdered their way through the cities and the countryside. It's estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed during these years.

200,000 in a country of under 12 million, that would be equivalent to 200,000 deaths in just the LA area today. And one of the most dangerous, desperate places during that time was the Medellin neighborhood where Griselda Blanco was raised. Griselda's mother was a sex worker and a severe alcoholic. From what we know, Griselda was routinely abused.

Her childhood memories must have been less than pleasant. The children of these slums would dig holes in the afternoon to bury the bodies that they would find the next day. For fun. There weren't like public parks to go play in and the violence was heavy and public. It was meant to strike fear into the hearts of opponents. It was the execution of an entire family in front of a father, children in front of parents, public beatings of women. The Colombian necktie came from this era, a form of execution

where the victim's tongue was pulled through a slit in their throat and left dangling. These are terrible things to even talk about, but they're important to understand if we're going to talk about a woman who was raised in this environment. At the age of 11, Griselda joined a gang of youths in this environment. At the age of 11, Griselda joined a gang of youths in her neighborhood.

She was a petty thief, a pickpocket. She was a master at deceiving you with her big eyes and sweet smile, only to take the cash right out of your pocket without you even noticing. It was an effective way to make some money, which she and her family needed. But this woke something up in her, an unquenchable thirst, and it wasn't long before Griselda

started escalating her schemes. One day, she and her friends came up with a plan, or maybe they just mimicked a plan of the adults around them. Early one evening, they left their neighborhood and headed into El Poblado, the rich area where Griselda would reside in her final years. Their target was the 10-year-old son of a wealthy family. They would kidnap and ransom him, get the family to pay them more than they would make in a year of picking pockets, rinse, wash, and repeat.

Getting the boy shouldn't be that hard considering they were kids themselves. And sure enough, they did. They lured him over and took him back to their side of the tracks where they notified his family he had been taken and the amount of the ransom. But for some reason, his family didn't pay. Did they know their son had been taken by kids

and so they didn't take it seriously? Did they think if they paid, their son would be killed? Anyways, we don't know, but the plan had failed. The gang could have released the boy and just gone back to picking pockets, but instead, someone handed 11-year-old Griselda a gun. She put the barrel to the young boy's head and she pulled the trigger.

At 11 years old, she took her first life on the streets of Medellin. 58 years later, she took her first life on the streets of Medellin. 58 years later, she would be shot dead on those same streets. She began and ended her criminal career in the span of a few blocks. But in the years in between, well, a lot happened. At 14, Griselda took up her mother's trade. She was, according to most reports,

both a criminal and a sex worker, though she denies the latter. Regardless, it was in a Medellin brothel at the age of 18 or 19 where she met her first husband, Carlos Trujillo. Carlos led a group of small-time criminals in Medellin, car thefts, robberies, kidnappings. Griselda became part of the crew

and got her first taste of organized crime. It was low-level, but it quenched a small piece of that insatiable thirst she had. Carlos was a businessman, and there was a system to his dealings. So long to pick pocketing and failed ransom jobs, Griselda now knew that she could make a life out of this. Over the next several years, their operation grew,

as did their family. They had three sons together, Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo. But this wasn't an entirely happy criminal family unit. By the end of the 1960s, their marriage had fallen apart and Carlos was dead. As with many things in Griselda's life, there's different stories around his death. He was sick and he didn't get better.

He was gunned down by a rival crew because he got too powerful. Or, as is sometimes claimed, his murder was ordered by his wife who wanted more power for herself. Regardless, he was out of the picture and Griselda and the boys were on their own. Up until this point, Griselda's criminal career

had been confined to Medellin, but her next husband would broaden her horizons. That next husband was Alberto Bravo. Bravo ran a more sophisticated criminal organization. And when Griselda met him, she had stars in her eyes. Carlos was small potatoes compared to Alberto, who was getting into a new burgeoning business.

This was the early 1970s, the beginning of the flood of cocaine into the United States from Columbia. This was before Pablo Escobar started his operation in 1976. It was before the U.S. had formed the Drug Enforcement Administration, and it was long before the war on drugs

and the crack epidemic. This was the era where the New York Times was referring to cocaine as the champagne of drugs, and it was an expensive party drug for the elite. Not considered especially dangerous to use it recreationally, and if the back-end profit from its sale hadn't financed governments that the U.S. considered hostile at the time, well, who knows? What's important for our story is that Alberto Bravo introduced Griselda Blanco to cocaine trafficking,

the most lucrative business she had ever partaken in. Pickpocketing was penny stocks. Cocaine was Apple. Cocaine was designer bags, a bigger house for her kids, the nicest car in her neighborhood. But just like everything Griselda ever touched, the business lost its excitement quickly. The generational wealth she was making wasn't enough.

She wanted more. Not satisfied by the profit potential as distributors in Columbia, she moved to New York and began personally smuggling cocaine into the city around 1972. So picture with me, an airport in the 1970s. I hardly remember the era, but my mother, who's worked at an airport for 40 years, has told me stories about pre-911 flying. There were no drug dogs, no scanners. People who didn't even have a flight could just walk right up to the gate.

It was a lawless place. Into Griselda, that meant if you can hide it, you can have it. And let's just say Griselda was an innovator at hiding. She'd clop, clop, clop through airports in her designer suits and custom-made heels. Before her flight, she had taken cocaine to a cobbler in Medellin and had him build the shoes around the product.

When she landed in New York, she'd go to her destination, kick off her heels, and smash them on the ground until they came apart. Not only was she making money like she had never seen before, it was easy. The cost to produce a kilo of cocaine in Columbia was somewhere between $500 and $1500. In the US, that same kilo could be worth $50,000.

So for the ticket price of a few hundred dollars and an initial investment of a few thousand dollars, you could make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few days. And that's not inflation adjusted, by the way. In today's money, multiply that by seven. After a few months of smuggling cocaine into New York, Alberto and Griselda were millionaires. But this still felt small time to Griselda, and she never thought small time. And given the profit potential, she didn't have to. She and Alberto were gaining market share

from Italian crime families who found it difficult to compete with the Colombians, who controlled 80% of the supply chain at the source. And she was going to need to expand operations to keep up with the demand. So, Griselda got to work. She set up garment shops to produce women's wear designs specifically for smuggling,

and this was beyond just sewing cocaine into the lining of jackets, which was popular at the time. She was taking advantage of being a woman, creating underwear where the cocaine could go into the seams. Knowing airport security would be hesitant at the time to go digging around in a woman's crevices. Griselda didn't know it,

but this is kind of a nostalgic golden era of cocaine trafficking. There was almost unlimited money with little violence, but the high can't last forever. And Griselda knew that. She had a sixth sense for violence, being raised in it her entire life. She knew it was coming, and she was going to be ready.

By this point, Griselda and Alberto were making millions every week from 1972 to 1975. It's estimated that their net worth was as high as $500 million, but more money, more problems. Alberto was spending most of his time in Colombia working with suppliers, and the couple was not getting along.

Disputes over spending, disputes over how to run the business. Alberto was the one who introduced his wife to the business, but her appetite and ambition was becoming too much for him. He saw it start to turn her into something else. She had recently seen The Godfather, you know, the American movie about the Corleone family. Well, she really saw something of herself

reflected back in Marlon Brando's portrayal of a mafia boss, intimidating, powerful, self-made from tragedy. She decided to rename herself the godmother as an homage to the film. But her reign as the godmother in New York wouldn't be for long. In April of 1975, a long-running US federal investigation entitled Operation Banshee filed indictments against the cocaine ring, including Griselda and Alberto, who were both named in the suit.

And it's during this time that Alberto stops returning Griselda's calls. Griselda is not happy. So she flies down to Medellin with her entourage to confront her husband. As the story goes, it's late at night when Griselda and company arrive outside the club where Alberto and his crew have been enjoying the evening.

He comes outside to meet his wife, but the meeting is not amicable. The two immediately get into a shouting match in the parking lot with their posse standing by. They move closer and as they do, Griselda draws a concealed pistol. Alberto reaches for his own gun, but it's too late. He fires, but Griselda has already shot him in the face.

By the time he hits the pavement, he's dead. Griselda is hit in the stomach. Her men drag her into a car and get her to a hospital. She has to go under, but she survives. And now the power couple is just her. It could have been there in that parking lot, holding her guts in with her own hands, knowing she could never return to New York

because of the indictments that she could have just called it quits. She could have retired with hundreds of millions of dollars to go have a quiet life with her children. But no, Griselda had Vito Corleone's blood and premium product flowing through her veins. And the previous highs were not gonna cut it now. She wanted more and she was going to get it.

This time on a different coastline. The cocaine godmother was heading to Miami. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Question, did you know that I was paying for a monthly audiobook subscription service for like three years? Well, if you did, I really wish you would have told me because I had no idea.

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slash hsp. That's rocketmoney.com slash hsp. One more time, rocketmoney.com slash hsp. The Florida coastline is long. And going back through its history as a smuggling route for pirates, it was mostly unguarded. In the 1970s, it was essentially a 1,350-mile dock for drugs. The city of Miami before then wasn't the city we think of today. It didn't have the skyline, it didn't have the glitz and the glamour,

it didn't have the models and the champagne. It got those after it got cocaine. Right around the time that Griselda got there. This was the place Griselda chose to make her home when she returned to the United States, still a wanted woman from her New York indictment. In her palatial home, visitors would rub the bronze bust she had made of herself for luck and as a sign of respect. You could call this time the end of the golden era of drug trafficking. You know, the nostalgic part I described earlier? And that is, in no small part, because of Griselda Blanco. because of Griselda Blanco. Remember, I said there was a second thing to know about Griselda,

the long-term effects of smoking the bottom of a cocaine barrel. That wasn't a joke. When cocaine is processed, a layer of scum is left on the bottom of the barrels. It's also known as basucco, which basically means trash Coke. It's a paste.

It's highly toxic, but it also gives a certain kind of high, different and more intense than cocaine. It's rolled and smoked, or more often, it's smoked from a PVC pipe in case you feel the need for more harmful chemicals. And it's this type of cocaine that Griselda was addicted to. Side effects include anxiety and extreme paranoia. She was becoming something that less resembled the Godfather

and more resembled Scarface. At this time, it was generally agreed that it was good business to keep body counts down and only use violence when absolutely necessary. But the drug trade was changing. Billions of dollars were at stake now, which attracted more and more competition from gangs and criminal organizations and more and more attention from the public and law enforcement. A small and formal network of often-backwards and homegrown operations was becoming a multinational industry. And it's this growth that makes Griselda the first female drug billionaire, with a B.

female drug billionaire with a B. But along with copious amounts of trash cocaine, also makes her a paranoid, volatile loose cannon who decides that the best solution to most of her problems is murder. And not a quiet sleep with the fishes kind of murder. A loud motorbike with an oozy and broad daylight kind of murder. According to authorities at the time, quote, if you took drugs from Griselda Blanco

and didn't pay, she would have you killed. If she took drugs from you and didn't want to pay, she would have you killed. It was this attitude that ushered in the next era of the business. It's July 11th, 1979, just before 2.30pm. This is the moment that many people point to as the beginning of the cocaine cowboy era. The wild, violent, lawless period that took over the front pages of papers across

America well into the 1980s. It's a Wednesday. Summer. School is out. Families are out. The parking lot of the Daedaland Mall in South Miami is full. Two men walk into the Crown Liquor's shop, just outside the mall. Shortly after they enter, two other men exit a van outside of the store and make their way

to the door. Once inside, they open fire. Wildly, gunning down the two men who had entered before them and wounding two of the store's employees. Then, they walk out, hop in the van, and leave. And critically, abandon the van at the edge of the parking lot. The two men inside the store, Hermann Jimenez-Ponesso and his bodyguard, Juan Carlos Hernandez,

were involved in the drug trade and it's believed Griselda ordered their assassination. These weren't the first bullet-riddled bodies that had been found that year. In fact, it was already the bloodiest start to a year in South Florida history, but it was the first shootout in public and it was what the police found in the van

that worried them the most. This was a sign of what was to come for the next decade. The van had, quote, happy time complete party supply printed on the side. But police described it as a war wagon. The panels were thick metal, bulletproof. There were gun ports on the side that could be opened

for drive by fire, and inside was an enormous weapons cache, including semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. This was at a time when police on the street were still carrying six shooter revolvers like they were ready for a showdown at the OK Corral. They were just not prepared for this level of violence. It was a wake-up call, but it wouldn't really matter. Over the next several years, the body count would only grow in Miami and in Medellin. Miami hit a high of 621 murders in a single year. In 1981, it was the most dangerous city in America

by a mile with a murder rate, something like 40% higher than Chicago today. 25% of the bodies in the morgue were riddled with bullet holes from automatic weapons. And there were long stretches of time where the bodies wouldn't even fit in the morgue. They had to rent refrigerated trucks from a fast food franchise.

During this time, it's thought Griselda was responsible directly or indirectly for the murder of 250 or more people in Miami. Some quick math says that that's around 40% of all murders in the area. And the only thing that grew faster than the body count was Griselda's wealth. At her peak, she employed more than 1500 people

and brought in tens of millions of dollars a week. But all the money and power turned her into sort of a parody of a drug kingpin. Like I said, she was Scarface before Scarface, and she wanted to be that. According to those closest to her, by which, I mean her hitmen since those were the only people around her that survived her reign of terror, she liked the violence. She liked being at war. It was the devil she knew. She remarried after murdering her second husband

and had a fourth son. And what do you think she named him? Just take a guess. Well, she named her son Michael Corleone after the youngest son in her favorite movie. I told you, she loved the Godfather. And she was really losing it at this point. She had a German shepherd that she named Hitler.

She ordered a hit on a man arriving at the Miami airport, but insisted it be carried out with a bayonet inside the terminal. She once ordered the murder of eight strippers because she thought her latest husband had slept with them. And what did happen to that husband? Well, the relationship got rocky and they had a custody dispute over Michael Corleone.

Her husband thought his son would be better off away from his cocaine-paste smoking mother, so he kidnapped him back to Columbia. Griselda hired hitmen to find them, and they did. And one afternoon, they went up beside the car and gunned the father down with Michael right there. They took the child and left the father to bleed out in the street.

Of course, the Colombian higher ups weren't thrilled with Griselda's tactics, at least not on the US side. It was unwanted, chaotic. She would order the execution of whole families, women, children, no survivors, tactics of la violencia, the era she was born into. She would kill for business, for pleasure, for a perceived slight. One of the most infamous was when she ordered the assassination of one of her former enforcers, because he treated Michael Corleone badly.

The man left his home one day in a van and unbeknownst to the Hitman, his two-year-old son was in the passenger seat. The Hitman pulled up beside him on the street and sprayed the vehicle. They got in a high-speed chase, but the man managed to outmaneuver them and get to the highway. Only when he did, he realized his boy had been struck and killed. He realized his boy had been struck and killed. He took the body of the child home and put it in an ice bath, and he and his wife sat there all night. When Griselda heard what had happened, she laughed. She said it was perfect.

The man had mistreated her son, so his son died. I told you, you're gonna remember to not be sympathetic towards her. It's a little surprising to me that someone didn't try to have her taken out. This level of violence was not working for anyone, not even her own business. It seems like someone maybe did try

to take her out a few times, but perhaps it was the combination of things that kept her alive so long. Her effectiveness, she was, after all, moving a lot of product. Her paranoia that made her a difficult target. Her employment of some of the best assassins. And the fact that the man in charge of US operations

for the Colombians in Florida, a man named Rafa was one of her childhood best friends. She thought she was unstoppable, but eventually she did go too far. Heart Starts Pounding Community, I have another podcast I want to tell you about. National Park After Dark brings together macabre stories and a love of the outdoors. People from all over the world are visiting national parks in record numbers. And for good reason, these places are brimming with beauty

and inspire reconnection with our wild world. But with more and more people entering our parks, more and more of them never leave. Join hosts Cassie and Danielle every Monday as they enter a new park to explore its beauty and its darkness. Our national parks holds tales of murder, animal attacks, fatal accidents,

miraculous survival, and so much more. If you loved my National Park Horror episode or my Lake Bottom mystery, this podcast might be right up your alley. Check out National Park After Dark, created for morbid outdoor enthusiasts wherever you listen to podcasts. And remember, enjoy the view, but watch your back. you, but watch your back. Marta Ochoa was a niece of the Ochoa family, heads of the Medellin cartel. Griselda owed her something like $1.8 million for a shipment of coke. But she decided, well, if I kill Marta, I can just say that I paid her the money and

that I don't know what she did with it. So she did. She had Marta picked up, murdered, and then thrown out of a car on the side of the road. That brazen act, along with increased heat from federal authorities after escalating public violence, finally drove Griselda from Miami by the end of 1984. Remember, she had been a wanted woman for a decade

and the government had been trying to build a case against her for most of that time. So did she try to flee the country, buy the biggest house in El Poblato and retire at the age of 42? No, she attempted to set up shop in California. Within a year, she was arrested and sentenced to more than 15 years on drug trafficking charges.

But the feds never stopped trying to get her for murder. Finally, they got their chance. In 1994, she was extradited to Miami after one of her closest hitmen turned against her. She was awaiting trial for 25 or so murder charges that would have put her away for life and then some. But it turns out that same hitman had had an illicit affair with the lead government prosecutor's secretary.

And since he was the state's key witness, the only one with direct testimony of Griselda ordering all of the murders, the case began to fall apart. Griselda pleaded guilty to three murders in exchange for a 10-year sentence. And that sentence ended in 2004, after which she was shipped back to Columbia and never heard from again until her death in Medellin in 2012.

On the day that Griselda was shot point blank, I said that it would have been appropriate to open the Bible up to Matthew 2652. That passage says, for all of them that take the sword, shall perish with the sword. Griselda ultimately was killed, not very far from where she was raised, slain by the same violence

that she had become desensitized to. She died how she lived. And to her, it was all the same. There was no difference between pickpocketing and screwing someone out of a million dollars. No difference between kidnapping a neighborhood kid and a billionaire's son. If she could get what she wanted,

the ends were worth the means. And my last little story about her, I think proves that. It's 1995, Tribeca, New York, a trendy neighborhood for trendy people with plenty of money. A handsome man in his mid-30s who fits the trendy description, leaves his loft to take his dog for a walk.

As they head down the sidewalk, a group of men approach, casually. They slowly spread out around him, as one of them comes up to give the dog a pat on the head. As they close in, a police car pulls down the street, and the men dissolve away. The man and his dog continue on, unscathed. The man is a 35-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr.

The four men are Colombians who had been paid by Griselda to kidnap him, there to take him out of the country, at which point they'll make contact with the Kennedy family and demand Griselda's release from prison in exchange for his life. The plan never came to fruition. Soon after the failed attempt, Griselda was transferred to Miami

in a more secure facility to face the murder charges that were mostly dodged. Her first criminal scheme was also her last. Kidnapping JFK Jr. was to her, no different than kidnapping any rich kid. Griselda may have left Medellin, but she never left La Violencia. This has been Heart Starts Pounding.

This episode was written and produced by Kailin Moore and Matt Brown. Sound Design by Pete's Tree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlop, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Want to sign up for our monthly newsletter? You can do so on our website, heartstartspounding.com. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? You can submit those on our website, heartstartspounding.com. Have a heart pounding story or a case request?

You can submit those on the website as well. Patrons will be thanked by name in the monthly newsletter, also on our website. And I'm not kidding guys, now is seriously the best time to join before the prices go up. So come on over, we have so much fun in there. All right, until next time, stay curious.