I Don't Know About That - Pablo Escobar with Steve Murphy and Javier Peña

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

In this episode, the team discusses notorious narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar with retired U.S. DEA special agents behind the dismantlement of the largest and most violent international drug trafficking organization of its time, Steve Murphy and Javier Peña. Go to DEAnarcos.com to purchase Steve and Javier's books and to learn more about their work! Make sure to check out their podcast "Game of Crimes" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to Podcasts. Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tampa, Orlando. Will Jim Jeffries be performing there this week? The podcast is coming out. Well, you might find out, and I don't know about that. With Jim Jeffries, Jack Huckett, and Kelly, and Forrest, and Louis. It's the week after. Is it? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you just found out. You just found out. That's true. That's true. February. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you just found out. You just found out. That's true. That's true. February 11th and 12th. February 11th and 12th, I'm going to be in Tampa and Orlando. I think it's Orlando first and Tampa second.

Am I correct? I think that sounds right. And, yeah, looking forward to those gigs, man. A lot of people ask me if I'm doing them with you because I'm from Florida, but nope. No? Who have I got? Oh, no. I'm not there.

I know that. Some of you know. We're going to be out there. We're going to be doing all this stuff. It'll be Justin and Whitehead. We'll be at Disneyland with ears on. Don't you worry about that. We'll be off having fun. Come and see us

out there. I think there's still tickets available for both. I'm looking forward to coming. We just did Kansas and Des Moines. Best shows I've ever had. They were fantastic. Yeah, I was there. Oh, the audiences were good. Yeah, remember I did the thing. Yeah, and so

a reminder again, we have the Patreon now that I believe, tell me if I'm right, you get episodes without ads. Yep. You get extra episodes. Yep. Yeah, so the tiers start as low as $2 a month.

At that tier, you can get all of these episodes without ads and you can still listen to them via Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever. You can just update your RSS feed. So we are going to be still doing free episodes here where you normally listen to podcasts and we're doing little promo clips and commercials for Patreon because we want you to know what you might be getting. We're doing extra episodes. Now look at that.

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yeah. Are we ready for our guests? Yeah. Let's meet our guests. Okay. Please welcome our guests today, Steve Murphy and Javier Pena. G'day, guys. Now it's time to play. Okay, that was a good one, Jack. We'll put that in post. Yeah, Jack has one bloody job. And the way that Jack pressed the button and then he and then he stepped away like

and here it goes now he's walking off his cowboy boots with his tongue in his lip like he's fucking dabbing tobacco get out of here all right well um thank you steve murphy and javier pena g'day guys thanks for being on the podcast first of all uh i i look I know what subject this is already. What? It's moustaches. That would be a good subject. Okay. I'll ask a quick question. I assume you two know each other. Are you guys, do you work in sports?

No. No. Okay. Do you work in science? No. I'll give you a hint. Law enforcement. Do you work in science? No. I'll give you a hand. Law enforcement. Do you work in law enforcement?

No. Not any longer. Not any longer. Okay. So these guys, this is the FBI. Maybe. Ask them. Why would you insult us like that?

All right. This is the motor highway patrol guys. All right. This is the motor highway patrol guys. They deal specifically in something that you used to really enjoy. Well, it's tangentially related to something that you used to really enjoy. Oh, you're the drug enforcement officers. They are. They used to work in the DEA.

But more specifically. So the subject we're talking about is something that they were involved with within that. Oh, smuggling drugs up your ass. How'd you know? It's a dirty job. They're here to teach you how to do it, James. We've already learned how to get a knife up your ass. Now we get drugs.

It's a specific person that they were involved in. Oh, Pablo Escobar. Yeah, I was going to say you may have seen a version of them on Netflix. Whenever I'm fat, people think I look like, which is now, people think I look like Pablo Escobar from the Netflix series. Oh, really? People send me pictures. He looks shockingly like a soccer dad.

And you find out how many people he killed. You're like, oh, okay. Let me introduce him. Well, Steve Murphy and Javier Pena both worked as special agents for the Drug Enforcement Administration, targeting the world's first narco-terrorist, Pablo Escobar, in his cartel, living and working alongside their Colombian National Police counterparts, as well as with the elite U.S. military units. Their efforts resulted in the dismantlement of the largest and most violent international drug trafficking organization of its time.

And this was the first in their field of international narcotics investigations. U.S. and international law enforcement agencies continue to utilize many of the strategies and innovative ideas that were created and implemented by Steve and Javier. They have a website, DEANarcos.com. Please go there, check that out. There are books available on that website, including Manhunters. How We Took Down Pablo Escobar is the only place to get an autographed copy of that book. If you live outside of the US, it can be ordered. Did Pablo autograph a lot of them? I think it's these two i think it's steve not sure um you know uh and if you live outside the u.s you can also order it on ebay but also go to that website there's tour information on there and they have a weekly true crime podcast

called game of crimes go to gameofcrimespodcast.com is there anything else i mean i didn't give your full bios there's two of you two i kind of combined it together but maybe if you want to say a few minutes without giving away any of the answers to jim about how like just just their background and yeah you did pretty good very well yeah i kind of plowed through it but i think we did all right well we'll talk to you more about so this this is what we're going to do i'm going to ask jim a series of questions there's a bunch of questions in here i'll ask him a lot of these we're going to see what his answers are we'll see if he gets things right or wrong and at the end of these asking his questions i'm going to get back to the two of you and you're going to grade him

zero through ten ten being the best on his knowledge of pablo escobar um all right now i think you assume that i'm going to do okay i'm not saying you're going to do okay in this one i don't know a lot i i enjoyed the drug of cocaine i i just don't know the farm to tableness you know what i mean like like i i um it's the same as like when i get meat i'm eating a hamburger i don't know where the cow was or what machine it's being put through or what farm it was on i don't know anything like that. Okay. And then, so after you're going to grade them zero through 10 on being harsh, 10 is the best, zero is the worst.

Kelly's going to grade them on confidence, zero through 10, I'm going to grade them on et cetera. We'll combine all those scores together. And if you get zero through 10, which is not good, you'll be Pablo Esco Barbarian, 11 through 20, Pablo Sports Bar, 21 through 30, Pablo Lumbar Support. That's your best one. The Lumbar Support. That's your best grab. Alright, here's the first question. Who is Pablo Escobar and what was he known as? He was a cocaine dealer of

a big proportion. And he was from a town called, I believe, Medellin? Medellin? Medellin. Medellin. Medellin. And all the locals loved him. That's what I know.

They all thought, ah, he's all right. He puts a bit of money into the town, you know what I mean? But he was responsible for a huge percentage of the cocaine in America. Well, there's questions about that. Yeah. Okay. So where do you live? You said Medellin.

Okay. Yeah. What was the where do you live? You said Medellin. Okay. Yeah. What was the name of his cartel? Oh, God, I fucking know this. Okay. Let's ask you the next question. When was the Medellin cartel founded? There you go.

It was something that would have been, if movies, let me correct, early 80s. And, like, how did he get into this? Like, how did his criminal activity start? Like, what did he, how did he start? Like, he didn't just become the biggest. Well, the first thing he did was he, in a news agency, he stole a stick of gum, all right?

And then he thought, oh, he felt bad about it. But then he thought, oh, it wasn't that bad. And then he went and stole a Snickers and then it escalates and then he thought, oh, he felt bad about it. But then he thought, oh, it wasn't that bad. And then he went and stole his Snickers. And then it escalates. And then he's growing cocaine. I saw a movie with Tom Cruise. I'm sure these guys were involved with that one. American Made.

American Made. It was a great movie. And I think it got sort of buried because it was made by Harvey Weinstein right before Harvey Weinstein. Do you guys know that movie, American Made? Is that something you guys were involved movie, American Made? Yep. Is that something you guys were involved in too? No.

No. You weren't involved, but a great movie, huh? Yeah, it was a really good movie. It just got no airplay. But anyway, so that was set in the 80s. Okay, so Pablo Escobar wasn't originally the top bloke. He was one of the sort of, there was four blokes, but I think he was the most, he got shit done type of a guy.

Like if you want someone bumped off, he did it. When was Escobar first arrested and for what? Well, it depends what you, what for drugs? For the gun. Oh, yeah, he was arrested for speeding in 1976. Okay. No, he was, I don't know. I don't know.

He was first arrested, I would say, in the 90s, and it would have been for drug trafficking or tax evasion. Okay. At his peak, how much money did Escobar make weekly? Weekly? I'm going to say he made $15 million a week. $15 or $50? $50.

Okay. $50. You kind of talked about this. Why was Escobar seen as Robin Hood type. You mentioned he gives money. Yeah, people. We can talk about that. The locals adored him. Probably not all of them, but a vast majority of the locals liked him.

We can talk about it. What is La Catedral? It's a dish that you start with citrus, then you put shrimp in there and i call it a cocktail okay the next question kind of answers that so i'll ask it and we'll talk about it with the guys um when did escobar surrender to the government um well he had dinner with sean penn first that's what i remember you're not gonna know the answers to any of these here's a question that you were trying to answer Escobar supplied at least blank percentage of the world's cocaine market

sits up in the chair 38% 38% okay that's a lot um skip over some of these we'll get to all these how did the government and DEA agents track Escobar um find my phone with an iPhone really is we'll get to all these. How did the government and DEA agents track Escobar?

Find my phone. With an iPhone, really? Wow. They would have had spies in there. They would have had people on the inside that were, you know, Javier, people that would have joined in. Steve and Javier? Not Steve.

You can't fucking be in Pablo Escobar's group called Steve. Pablo would have gone, there we are. Luis, Steve. No, Javier got in there a bit. Okay. Okay. What is notable about Avianca Flight 203? That was a smuggling plane.

Okay. What is Plato or Plomo? Plato or Plomo? Or are you saying? The phrase Plato or Plomo. O means or. Just so you know. Plato or Plomo.

Death or life. Okay. I don't know. You're doing great. I don't speak Spanish. No, I know. But I thought you maybe watched Narcos. I never watched Narcos. Oh, I thought, but I thought you maybe watched Narcos. I never watched Narcos.

Oh, I thought you did. It's a great show. Great show. Yeah, I was watching the Toys That Made Us. We'll ask, I'll get to all these questions, but I'm going to ask two or three more, and then we'll start talking to our guests. How many deaths do they estimate Escobar is responsible for?

Oh, 2,000. Here's a question. I don't know this is is that counting drug overdoses or just ones that he had people pop up I think violent

violent 2000 like the cartel would have killed him I don't know do we know the answer to this how much did he spend on rubber bands a month

oh because you have to roll all the money up and also if I know anything about Pablo Escobar him and his friends do the... You haven't sold enough drugs.

You see one with a lot of welts in his forearm. Pablo is very angry at that guy. I want to say on rubber bands, he spent five grand a month on rubber bands. We did a question on cocaine. We did an episode on cocaine trafficking before, and this got brought up. Escobar had a zoo.

What is going on with that today? Okay, well, what happened with the zoo is, right? Because he, it's Columbia, right? Yes. So in Columbia, they never had hippos, right? But what happened was. You remembered something from the book. Yeah, what happened was, when they busted him in, ruined everything,

the animals just got let free, and the hippos- They ruined everything? Yeah. It was fucking crazy. They ruined it. They ruined it for him. The prices went up. I know when these guys were doing their job.

Anyway, so the hippos, they got released, and then they've been fucking, and now it's the biggest population of hippos outside of Africa. Okay. I know he knew that, but don't give him a lot of points for that. What? Because I knew something? Two more questions. You're not allowed to know anything on this.

Yeah, that was learned things. Two more questions. I don't want to be like, well, you knew the hippos. You're going to hate. No. Okay. How did he die and when? How did he die? He got caught and arrested not that long ago uh i remember the footage of him going out of the bathtub

like where he's locked in prison and he lifted up the bath thing so i want to say he got he got killed by steve on uh six years ago. Six years ago? Steve was running around Columbia six years ago? I'm not saying you couldn't have, but... Brass knuckles. He never gives up on a case. You guys didn't hear about the 2017

killing of Pablo Escobar? Okay, last question. Trump took him down. I was in Trump. Last question. How many people attended his funeral? Okay, this is going to be a trick question because I'm going to go thousands because he was so beloved,

but then at the end, he was caught and killed and all that stuff. So I'm going to say, or maybe he was in prison. I'm going to say six people. Six people, okay. All right, Steve and Javier, how do you think jim did answering these

questions on pablo escobar zero through ten ten's the best well just so you know i retired nine years ago so him getting killed six years ago probably not it did pretty good uh some of them were a little way off but some were you were in the ballpark. You're very nice, Javier. Very nice. So where do you think? Like a six, seven, zero to ten? Where are you going to put them? Let's say let's give him a five.

Five would be nice. That's very nice as well. Very generous. We're nice people. These two, if they interrogated you, just go i'll be fine that's why it took so long to capture him these two kept on interrogating him like this guy come on pablo tell us where the drugs are be nice i was originally giving gonna give him a two on confidence but he was like an eight on the hippo thing so i'm gonna give him a two on confidence, but he was like an eight on the hippo thing.

So I'm going to give him a four on confidence. So 13, I'm going to give him a two. So you're a Pablo sports bar and we're back. All right. We're here with Steve Murphy and Javier Pena, and we are about to get to the questions here. So who is Pablo Escobar?

Jim said a cocaine dealer of big proportion from Medellin. The locals loved him. He put a bit of money in the town. And I also asked you, what was he known as? His nickname. I don't think you answered. Oh, his nickname was Shorty because he was medium height. Can you give us a better description, Javier and Steve,

of who Pablo Escobar was and who he was known as and so on his nicknames and yeah yeah go ahead jp yeah he was the number one uh trafficker in the world responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine that was reaching the world he was the first narco terrorism trafficker in the world because of all the violence that are used. But like I said, his empire, I mean, you know, 80% of the cocaine that was reaching the world, that was Pablo Escobar.

I thought 80% of the cocaine in the world was baby laxative. You've been snorting some bad stuff. Okay. And so, okay and so what was he I said what was he known as I know he had a couple names he said the shorty

is that I don't think that's right that's that'd be El Chapo with the Mexican cartels El Chapo is the one that bloody Sean Penn visited that went out of the boat that's why you said Sean Penn

I wonder why you said Sean Penn I've been messing up with El Chopo. He's coming for you. Is he dead? El Chopo. He's a person here in the US. You knew he was caught. Yeah, all right.

Okay. Yeah, so I think Pablo Escobar, El Patron, right? Or Don Pablo. Don Pablo. Don Pablo. I've got a lot of names. And what does Don Pablo mean? Luis? Just a term of respect. Like a Don, you? He had a lot of names. And what does Don Pablo mean? Luis?

Just a term of respect. Like a Don, you know, like even the mafia there. What does Pablo mean? Pablo Escobar. Oh. You're doing great at this, I guess. Oh, right. Is my nickname Don Jim?

Can we change our score now? Can we change our score? I have a feeling that's going to be a clip. The podcast isn't called I Know About That. I know. It's Pablo. That's where we're talking about. It's Pablo.

Where does it come from? Luis, he's going to tell me. I asked you where you lived. You said you tried to say Medellin. You were close. You got it. I think that's fine. And that was the name of his cartel the medellin cartel but what so when was the medellin cartel founded

and maybe some of the history of like how he got into that okay it was founded in the early 80s so you are correct on that one early 80s and you're right he was one of four other traffickers, but Pablo always was the CEO. But he had, like I said, three other traffickers working, but he was always the CEO. So that was correct when you said in the early, early 80s. But again, Pablo, make no mistake, was the boss of the other three. There's actually four other major traffickers. But, you know, Pablo was the CEO. Was Pablo born into a family of crime?

Or what did his parents do? Not at all. Not at all. His mom was a schoolteacher. Dad was a farmer. Grew up poor. Grew up poor. And you mentioned the first time he gets arrested you know what

he was stealing hubcaps uh stealing uh headstones from graves and then all of a sudden one kilo two kilos and like i said he was responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine breach in the world with the stand-up guy there's a very very iconic photo of Pablo Escobar with his, what do you call it, Steve, his number. Oh, yeah, his booking number. Yeah, his booking number. You'll see that photo all over the world. That was the first time he got arrested.

Oh. Okay, this is a little bit off topic, but how long did it take the human race to get rid of hubcaps and just go, we can screw the wheel on flush and it'll look a lot nicer. My first car had fucking hubcaps. Pain in the neck, those things. To replace them and find them, they'd fall off if you brake too hard. Stupid things.

We'll have to get Jay Leno back on to discuss that. Yeah, Jay Leno will have the answer for that. I don't know about that. There you go. So as criminal activity started. Yeah. Jim said gum, but it was hubcaps.

And so, so he was first arrested. What's that? And then, so you said it started with like a keel or two, but like, was there something that accelerated to him specifically? Or was it just,

did he start out as like just a short, like, like just dealing cocaine around nightclubs or something like that? How did he get into the cocaine business? No, he started out with coke. He helped another guy transport several kilos and he realized how much money he can make from it.

So he killed that guy. So his business plan became violence. Wow. He had no problem with that. Yeah, you learn that at business school. He did that by himself? Or did he have a gang of friends that were helping him do this? Because if he was just transporting coke, you kill a bloke,

then you've got to assume that there's people after you now. How did he reign this terror? How did he get a group together? Well, these were low-level guys. So they weren't like big gangs. They were moving, we'll say, 17 17 kilos of coke which down there is nothing it's like a it's like personal use almost you know jesus and so there wasn't any retaliation but the fact that he could perform that type of violence with no remorse and no guilt feelings and he wasn't afraid

to stand up to anybody that's what made him so powerful. People were afraid of him. Was he, before this, was he known as a tough guy around town or was it just a switch that went off? He was always known as a tough guy. And remember with Pablo, he had that charismatic factor about him where, you know, just like a natural type of a leader. And once everybody knew who Pablo was, everybody wanted to work for him.

So he was, like I said, he was known around town and he was known as, like you mentioned, right? As a kind, giving guy, but on the same breath, he'd kill you and your family in a heartbeat. And at his peak, how much money did Escobar make weekly? Jim said $50 million. You know, I don't know. Do you know if I'm here?

Sorry if you don't know. I read something about it that said it was $420 million a week. In today's money? In today's money? I don't know if it's today's money. They said that he died with a net worth of like $30 billion, which would be about $64 billion today.

Yeah. Yeah. $30 billion. We did the math. He was doing about 2,500 kilos a day, sending it to the Amazon. He must have been wiped out. Yep.

And the kilo at that time, you know, and everybody's seen the movie Scarface, right? Blow. You know, that kilo was going for about $80,000 to $100,000 in Miami during the 80s. So if you're doing 2,500 on a daily basis, that's a lot of money. Did it always ship in through Miami? Because Miami feels like in the movies and stuff where it happened. Or did he have several planes and several runners doing it all over the country? Or did it just come into one point in America and then spread out?

Well, initially, it was South Florida. He went in and took control of South Florida, and that was using the Caribbean Corridor to bring it up through that way, through ships, through boats, through go-fasts, through eventually airplanes that would go to other parts of the southeast. And then as his kingdom began to grow here in the United States, he branched out from there. But South Florida was always kind of Pablo's entry into the U.S. And was he hands-on with how it was going to ship across,

or did he just give an order like, I want this cocaine into America tomorrow and the other people had to figure out the way to get it in and if they didn't get it in, they were in trouble or did he actually sit down and go, I'm putting it in tic-tac packets? You'd have to have a lot of tic-tac packets. They had different people that were responsible for certain things so you had a group that was in charge of air transportation a group in charge of boat transportation a group that was responsible for coming up with new techniques to to hide cocaine i mean eventually if and you said you didn't watch the narco show so i'm not sure why we're on here but maybe no no no i never know the guests when they come on i did did. We were big fans of it.

You should watch it, Jim. The first two seasons, there's many seasons now, but the first two seasons deal specifically with Steve and Javier and Pablo, obviously. Is there a lot of reading involved? I was just going to say, Jim's not a big reader. I'm still wiped out from Squid Game.

They showed it to us in film school. They showed you Narcos? We watched the first two episodes in the movie theater. It was really cool. Just as a side note, did you guys enjoy watching it? Did you feel like they represented you too well? Yeah, they got good actors.

We were consultants on the first two seasons, and Javier was on the third season as well. Were you happy with who played you? yeah they picked a redneck from eastern Kentucky I grew up in Tennessee and West Virginia so I'm like a cross between

a redneck and a hillbilly and Boyd Holbrook is from eastern Kentucky so that worked good and Javier you know they picked Pedro Pascal to play him

and he's a heartthrob and Javier's a man slut. So it worked out really good. I think I'm more handsome than Pedro Pascal, right? You are. Absolutely. Thank you, guys.

I was going to say, I mean, Pedro Pascal, yeah, is a very good looking guy. Boyd Holbrook, not ugly, Steve. But I mean. Nice. Yeah. We stay in touch with him. And the actress that played my wife, Connie, Joanna Christie, she's British.

And so she, she was able to hide her British accent and do a really good job. Yeah. Yeah. Great show. Anybody who hasn't seen it, you should check it out for sure. The guy that plays Pablo,

I forget his name. Oh, Wagner Mora. Yeah. Yeah. That is great. That was going to be one of my questions to y'all who played Pablo Escobar. And the fun fact

about Wagner Mora, he did not know Spanish. Wow. He learned it upon arrival in Medellín, Colombia. Oh, I thought he was just saying gibberish and I wrote it down the bottom. Yeah, but he does look a lot like him. Yeah, he really does.

I guess. He did a great job. Did he have to gain weight or anything? Yeah. He did. He gained 40 pounds, and then I think he wore a fat man suit there in the Poiseuille. That's Jim's dream job, falling to gain weight on purpose.

Fuck, I want one of those movies where I have to get really fat. Why was Escobar seen as a Robin Hood type? Jim mentioned that he did put money back into the community. Is that true? Well, you know what? We do shows all over the world. He was seen as a Robin Hood.

We do not agree with that term. Pablo Escobar was no Robin Hood. And I tell people, you know, did Robin Hood kill the next president of Colombia? Did Robin Hood put a bomb on a commercial airline? Of course not.

I haven't seen that movie either. He did build schools, homes, but he always wanted something in return. That's why the sicarios, the assassins, were always, like I said, he helped them out and gave them money, gave them houses. But in the end, he would tell, hey, go wipe out three families over there. The sicarios were the first ones to do it.

Wow. Did he have any, how is he with the women? I got to imagine that Pablo did well with the women. He married his wife when she was 15. Hell yeah. He got her pregnant when she was 12. Even worse. I'm backing away.

He's very good with the women. Girls. Well, you mentioned the flight anyway, so we can say that. What is notable about Avianca Flight 203 Jim said it was a smuggling Plane that's not correct right There was one that he hijacked and he blew up

Well why don't you let them answer That wasn't a smuggling plane It was a commercial airline going from Bogota To Cali Pablo thought the guy who was running For press and a guy named Garverio Was going to be on that flight He was not on that flight.

They put a bomb because he wanted to kill this guy who was running for president. He was not on it. And 107 innocent people were killed on the orders of Pablo Escobar. He's the one, I mean, he had other people place the bomb, but like I said,

there was no hijacking. It was just to clear out, you know, terrorism. How do you get a job with Pablo if, like, if you're just a, like, okay, when you watch the gangs here in LA and all that sort of stuff, they start with the little kids running the drugs and stuff like that because I've watched a few documentaries on this because those kids are underage and they can't get arrested and then they have the teenagers and the other thing.

Was it like that or was it just like you were just a bloke in a bar who you know knew a bloke who knew a bloke like how did you get involved with Pablo Escobar did he seek you out or did you seek him out well when what what Javier was just telling you there when he needed Sicario's he'd go back into those barrios where he had built the houses and the clinics and the sports fields and all that and you know he said hey I need 40 people to come and work for Pablo who are willing to kill willing to die for me and you know the sad thing is he might have two or three hundred kids teenagers step up and want to work for Pablo so that's how they would start I think Popeye who was one of his famous Sicario's who died of cancer here just a couple of years ago, said that he approached Pablo and wanted to work for him.

And they had to test him out. He had to know where he came from and that kind of thing. But those were the that's like the murdering group, the smugglers themselves. They would start their own organizations and then, you know, it'd be like the godfather problem make them an offer they couldn't refuse and they'd come in under the medellin cartel umbrella oh right right right see you start up a restaurant then mcdonald's buys you out it's kind of like an mlm you you start you can be your own boss you just get three people underneath you and they each get three people underneath them then you get rich no no this is something i don't understand so so obviously he was wanted by the colombian government or he probably paid off a lot of people or whatever

how did he stay so protected i assume he had big houses it wasn't like a summer bin laden where we didn't know where he was or did we not know where he was you know what that's a great question at at the beginning obviously because paulo was part of Congress, Colombian congressman. He wanted to be president, but there was another congressman who found out Pablo was a drug trafficker. So they kicked him out. And really, the search for Pablo starts in about, I would say, right around 85, 86. in about, I would say, right around 85, 86, and going after him, after the Avianca bombing, and then he did kill a guy who was running for president who was going to be the president of Colombia.

Once he killed that person, then the all-out war started on Pablo Escobar. And at the beginning, it was hard. People were protecting him. They were hiding him. We had information. We were really never able to locate him. So he was in hiding, but he had a lot of help from government officials.

There was some corruption. But, you know, the main thing were people wanting to hide Escobar for money. If he's being hid for money and he's worth $30 billion, money doesn't buy you happiness, especially if you're fucking hiding all the time. You know what I mean? Like, what's the point of all this? I don't understand why someone doesn't just stop at a billion and go,

I did all right. I'll just give it a rest right now. I guess it was at all power for him or did he want to pass something onto his children or what, what was, what was his motivation? His, his ego had gone out of control.

You know, he, he not only wanted to be a member of Congress, he wanted to be the president of Columbia. He offered to pay off their national debt to the tune of about $211 billion two different times if they would leave him alone. It was the power and the ego thing just got to him, the greed factor. He wanted everybody to bow down to the great Pablo. His biggest thing was he didn't want to be extradited to the United States.

He was like, I'll stay here and hide out in these houses, but I don't want to go to United States, right? Like he was like, I'll stay here and, you know, hide out in these houses, but I don't want to go to United States jail. But he was going to pay off their national debt. Like I'm not condoning what he did. He's murdered all these people, Jim. I know, but if he offered to fix the potholes in my street, I would listen to him. You know what I mean?

Like national debt in a poor country, you know, I don't know. But then the threat's always looming. Well, he'll just murder whoever, you know, like what if in the present United States. If that's what you do, you go, all right, you're a poet of national debt. Bring us the bag of money. Then you kill him and you take the bag of money.

Wow. It was a setup. And you hit it right on the head with the extradition. A lot of people don't realize that was his beef with the United States. He did not want to get extradited. His war, his terrorism war, was because of extradition. So I'm glad you brought that up. A lot of people think it was money, dope.

No, the war started because they were trying to extradite him to the United States, and that's what, you know, the terrorism was all about. What was his food of choice? I always wonder this with billionaires because Bill Gates' favorite meal is a cheeseburger. And he's got all the money in the world. Bandeja paisa. It's very famous.

I love it, but it's real filling. It's white rice, a plantain, it's a pork, like a rib with a lot of fat on it. It's great. A piece of meat, they put an egg over it, and you eat that once, and your cholesterol

is going to go away. Like a bing-bang-bop. Luis is drooling right now. What is it called? Bandeja paisa. Very famous. It's a great dish, but it's just real. There's a lot of good stuff in it

that's bad for you. It's supposed to represent everything you can get on the farm. Everything you get on the farm. So we'll jump across to this question too. How did the government and the DEA agents, you guys, track Escobar? Jim said, find my phone and spy on the inside.

He said, Javier, you were on the inside. You were on the inside, Javier. Yeah, that's what he said. Were you on the inside? I'm on the inside? Nah. Nah, we weren't on the inside. And it was the radio intercepts, basically.

We had a lot of informants who were telling us where he was. But basically, towards the end, we're monitoring his telephone. And it wasn't the regular telephone like we use now. Steve says it better. It's a radio telephone. We had the frequency. And it's a great story because at the end, Juan Pablo, who is Pablo's son, is talking to dad, Pablo Escobar, right? He's giving him direct, I mean, instructions on what to do. And the other team that's intercepting him is our boss in Medellin, Colonel Martinez.

And the person who is intercepting him is his son, Lieutenant Hugo Martinez. I mean, that's, you can't get better for a movie than that. Father, son, Colonel Martinez, his son, Lieutenant, who's DFing, triangulating, and it's Pablo talking to his son, Juan Pablo. Wow. You're clearly very brave men to go up against the guy who killed.

Were you ever in fear of your lives? Did you feel protected? Do you feel in fear of your lives now? Well, I don't think, we don't think we're very brave. We were just doing a job down there. We were in fear for our lives every day that after Pablo escaped, that very next day, Javier and I lived in Medellin for the next 18 months with the Colombian National Police and going out on operations every day and talking to informants and just doing the things that you do. We did feel protected. A couple of things.

I'm a Christian, I believe, and a good man upstairs took care of us. man upstairs taking care of us. We worked with a very elite group of Columbia police officers that when the shit hit the fan, they wouldn't run off and leave you. But because of the mutual respect, they knew we wouldn't run away either. And we were a hell of a lot younger back then. But when you say you lived in Medellin for 18 months, you know, so After he escaped from jail, they're saying, yeah. I know it's an all-encompassing job and you don't work nine to five and all that type of stuff, but you must have had some downtime every now and again.

Did you guys ever just go out in the town and get yourself some pork with an egg with a plantain, or were you always just like, I'll save the safe house? Of course we did. We had to. Come on, man. We had a little bar called Candile. In all the neighborhood, people knew us.

It was just right outside the base. We'd be there. Of course, who would buy all the cocktails and burgers? We did. So that's why we were pretty well known. But yeah, we had to go out, man. This is a really weird question. I don't know if you've probably been asked this one before,

but how much cocaine have you held in your hands at one time? I've just got the record, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think we did 10 tons of cocaine. What the fuck? How big is that? And you know what?

It was hidden inside a hole, just buried inside a hole. And then once we found that, we found like, I think it was three or four more holes. We had like 40 tons of cocaine. What does that look like in size at 40? It's about if you and they were they were packaged in bales with burlap sacks. Each sack had about, I don't know, 40, 50 kilos. So it was about, I don't know, 50 yards in length, about two, three feet high.

50 yards in length, two, three feet high. The moral of the story in this is, you know, was, you know, we'd seize a hundred keys in Miami. Steve was in Miami. We'd be celebrating all night. Hey, look at this. You think Pablo Escobar cared? He's got 40, 50 tons.

That's crazy. Did you guys ever crack into a package and try out the product? I wanted to ask that, but I've got more decorum. We assume they did. Yeah, you've got to celebrate somehow. If it's 50 feet, two,. Yeah, you've got to celebrate. If it's 50 feet, two, three

high, you've got to take one sack over you. No, we did not. But here's the thing. It must have been weird going back to your wife to say this sentence. Oh, God, me back hurts. I've been lifting cocaine all day.

Yeah, we had other guys that would been lifting cocaine all day. Yeah. We had other guys that would do that. Thank goodness. Yeah, the interns. That's what they're for, right? I'm a coke lifter for the DEA. I get coffees and lift coke. So we kind of skipped ahead. I asked Jim, what is Catedro?

And then Catedro. I'm fucking mispronouncing um and then uh maybe we can talk about when he surrendered to the government like just about that kind of time because you said he when he got out of jail when he escaped jail let's talk about that a little i guess what that was yeah okay let me la catedral was his so-called prison which was not it was a it was fancy looked like a prison from the outside, but inside it was just luxurious apartments. He even built, he was building chalets, they call them on the side of the mountain where he was at, entertaining.

The so-called prison had a bar, a drinking bar. Women would come in, you know, left and right. So it was no, no prison. It was no prison. They called it La Catedral. It was a country club setting. Everything, luxurias, the big TVs, everything was just a luxury setting for him.

And this was after he surrendered, right? He surrendered to the government? Is that right? Right. He surrendered. And part of the condition was nobody from the government could go visit him so there was no chance so he hired his own prison guards he uh hired his own prison guards and his sentence was about what five years steve right five years five years and uh nobody can come and visit him at the so-called prison he brought in his own sicarios about seven guys

they could protect him and so you know he had it made but like we talked about that greed and that's what he led to the escape was agreed he thought a couple of his guys were stealing money from him and he had him killed and that's where we basically came in were the other prisoners in this prison was was he the only prisoner? It was Pablo and 13 others that he handpicked. So, you know, he paid for this prison. So, you know, it was nice. He had a two-room suite.

He had a fireplace. He had a jacuzzi tub in his private bathroom. I mean, all the other prisons we've seen around the world, they have what they call group showers. And is this prison now, is it a hotel or is it a theme park? No, you know what? We went back, well, during the filming of Narcos. So I took the guys for the prison.

They converted it into a monastery. I wish they would have kept it museum type just so that people could see, but they converted it into a monastery. With the TV show and with all the interest in different movies and all that type of stuff, is there Escobar tourism now in Colombia where people go and they see what happened and all that type of stuff? Oh, yeah. They've got the Narco tours down there.

So they'll give you a tour up to the prison. They'll give you a tour out to this famous ranch, Hacienda Napoles, where the hippos and all the other animals lived. The Colombian government actually blew up the Monaco building, which was an eight-story condo building in the Poblado section of Medellin, which is a rich section, to try to get rid of some of that tourist, narco-tourism dollars. They're not proud of it. Medellin is one of the most beautiful places you'll ever go. It's just a beautiful city. The people there are really nice. Is it safe to travel down there now on holiday? And do they have an 800-seat theater that would do comedy? Yeah, I'm sure they do. It is safe. Believe it or not, my oldest son and his wife,

they vacation once a year with friends. And I sent them to Cartagena here a couple years ago, and they fell in love with the place. Harvey and I have been back to Medellin to film one show down there several years ago. We didn't stay very long, but it was just so much nicer than what we remembered when we were there. And how did they clean the place up?

Is it just law enforcement's better there now or is it the drugs are gone? Yeah. The city itself, the mayor of Air Progressives, they cleaned it up. They had a metro system, which wasn't there when we were there. It's a very cosmopolitan, modern city, and we encourage people to go visit. It's the flower capital of the world. The biggest, like I said, they're known for producing flowers,

and they have once a year a big party. You know, the food is great. They got those narco tours. You know what? The only caveat we tell people and we do it in our shows is, you know, visit, enjoy. It's a beautiful city, but do not bat mouth Pablo S bar in the city of Medellin.

Yeah. People that think he's at Robin hood. So I just tell them, just don't say nothing. Don't bat mouth him. But because there's still a lot of people that love him. All right. So what?

All right. Plato or Palomo? I asked Jim what that was. And he, I don't even remember what the answer was. Death or life. Death or life. What was that about

with Pablo Escobar? That was pretty close. It's Spanish for silver or lead. Silver in the form of money or lead in the form of a bullet. Oh, wow. You were close. Actually, it was close.

I didn't think about that. Yeah, you were, yeah. But what did that mean? That was something he had said or he was... What? You want to tell the story, Dave? Yeah, he came up with that phrase and believe me, it caught on real fast.

I was in Medellin when that phrase came on. And the story is a couple of sicarios, assassins, going to this judge's office, say, judge, we have a briefcase here. We're being sent by Mr. Pablo Escobar. Sir, we have one hundred thousand dollars in this briefcase. All you have to do to accept, you know, and accept it is drop the charges against Mr. Escobar. This money is yours. The judge kicked him out of the office. The next morning, they killed the judge, his wife, and his two kids. From there on, it was known as, you want plata or plomo? You want a bullet or you want some money from then on people

started accepting briefcases that were sent by Pablo Escobar if not they kill them and their family well that's it's not a hard choice is it you know what I mean it's like he could go death or nothing at least he's giving you a cash option yeah death or money that's what I was wondering were you guys ever worried that any of your informants or the police that were protecting you might get paid off by him and turn on you? Or did you guys feel pretty secure in your security there? Did anyone ever try to bribe you? No. We did feel pretty secure working with the police.

Informants, you can never trust them. If they're snitching on somebody, they'll snitch on you the first opportunity. They'll set you up. They'll do anything for money. We did feel safe there working, but we worked with a very elite group of Colombian national police officers. I mean, these are guys we would fly out on the gunships. We'd do surveillance with them. We'd eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same barracks.

We were with these guys all the time and those were the guys that actually took down Pablo when he was finally killed Pablo put a bounty out on us, $300,000 each that's a little bit disconcerting to start with you kind of get used to it

I'm glad it was the same price for both of you. It wasn't a two for one. It wasn't a two for one. There would have been a bit of tension if one was worth a million and then a hundred thousand bucks. Funny story. When I first get there in 88, you know,

I get a call from my boss over here. Are you at the apartment? I say, yeah, get out of there. You know, just, you know, holler a call from my boss over here. Are you at the apartment? I say, yeah, get out of there. You know, just, you know, holler ass back to the embassy. There's a car just coming to get you. You know, they find out where I live. So, I mean, I took off, went back to the embassy.

But all the other government did was they changed. They got me another apartment, so I was safe. Doesn't sound stressful at all. Not at all. Hey all we used to have hair where did Pablo keep his money because it feels like a lot of money in bags

and you're saying 30 billion dollars what banks were working with him or was it Swiss bank accounts or where did he keep his money that's a great question there's been several documentaries that have have kept it in holes in the ground, caletas, basically. At the beginning, he didn't believe in the banking system. Towards the end, they started doing a couple of the banks.

But at the beginning, they used to hide it. I mean, hide it in plain, just they dig a hole. They call them caletas. The problem was that Pablo would have the guy who hit the money, they would have him killed. So only Pablo knew where the money was. Now that Pablo's dead, there is still a lot of money buried in Colombia. Oh, wow. Wow. There have been a lot of expeditions trying to get that money. I don't think they're going to discover it. It's, you know, some of it has been weathered away. You know, the weather has washed it away. There was one incident.

An old man who was milking cows right by the river started seeing bags. So he started grabbing some bags. So we interviewed him. I think he got like, I don't know, four or five hundred thousand. We let him keep the money, but he said there was a lot more bags coming by. We asked him, why did you get them? He said, had to go back to milk, finish

milking the cows. Priorities. Isn't it amazing that Paolo Escobar only dealt in cash? Like, you know, you have all the fucking money in the world, but you can't buy something on Amazon. It says here, according to his brother, about 10% or

2.1 billion was written off annually because it was eaten by rats or destroyed by the elements. 2.1 billion dollars. That came from his brother, Roberto? Yeah, it's probably a lie. No, he's

an idiot. He's a freaking idiot. No, he's an idiot. He's a freaking idiot. How do you really feel, Steve? And is he still alive? What are Pablo's kids doing now? Well, his son is on the speaking circuit like we are, traveling all around the world. He's got a bigger following than we do.

The daughter, we don't know much about her, and we never have really spent much time with her. She was very, very young, you know, in the Los Pepes, and they blew up the Monaco building trying to kill the family, and she lost hearing in one ear. Just, you know, it's a horrible story for a little kid to go through. But the brother, somebody sent him a letter bomb when he was in prison, so he's uh blind and partially

deaf but he sits at the front i understand he sits at the front gate of hacienda napoles for the narco tours uh and if you want you know if you're willing to give him you know 15 20 bucks he'll take a picture with you that kind of crap all right but in his his book he takes a lot of credit for stuff he didn't do wow so the son not the accountant. He wrote a bullshit book. A buddy of mine went to the NACU tour not too long ago in Medellin and I didn't know that. He said, hey Javier, here's Roberto's

book. Anyway, I forgot about it. I had it in my desk. It fell the other day and I didn't know that but Roberto wrote a note to me. Basically, Javier Peña, hey bygones bygones but let the truth and justice Roberto wrote a note to me. Basically, Javier Pena, hey, bygones, bygones,

but let the truth and justice come forward. I forgive you, basically. Totally. Bullshit. Steve's upset. It's bullshit? Steve fired up over there. Yeah. I wanted to ask real quick. His son,

because he's speaking towards Pablo Esc escobar does he kind of romanticize his father or does he think that yeah he was that depends where he's talking to i'm sure speaks about the violence of this or you know do you know or well i don't know what he talks about i know he did start the uh the false rumor that his father committed suicide rather than being killed by the columbian national police and. And he tries to justify it's all, it's bullshit. We did have, we were doing a Northern European tour several years ago and our agent calls

this, Hey, you know, Juan Pablo's in Sweden or Finland, wherever he was. And you guys are going there. Would you go on stage with him? It's like,

uh, not no, but hell no. Yeah. I read, with him it's like uh not no but hell no yeah i read i read somewhere that he had like initially considered like continuing on with the family business and then kind of had a change of heart and became this like guy who goes on speaking tours so it's he probably just wasn't as good as his dad i guess callie would have killed him if he tried to carry on the business, the Cali cartel. Okay. So there are still cartels in,

like, so my question, what, what happened to all the farms? Like, okay. First of all, when you go,

oh, we found these drugs under the ground. Isn't it easier to find a farm that is growing the cocaine plant or like, we did an episode on this. Remember? I know, but I can't remember. So what happened to all

the land where all the cocaine was made what happened there well the the the cocaine basically you know the plant came from bolivia peru you know the you know the indians use it for their you know mate for tea medicinal purposes however once you bring the raw material back to Colombia, they would process it into the powder form. And this is where we used to see the humongous cocaine lab. This lab for producing 1,000 kilos of cocaine on a daily basis. So there is still coca plants in Colombia. They're trying to eradicate them. I mean, everybody's still growing them. It's still, you know, there's a lot of religious medicinal purposes. But going back to the farms that Pablo Escobar had, pretty much after he was killed, all the other traffickers stole them.

You know, I think we mentioned Los Pampas, which, you know, that was a very deadly group. They stole a lot. The Cali cartel hated Pablo. So basically, other traffickers stole all of their properties. Yeah, that's season three. How many deaths do they estimate Escobar is responsible for?

Jim said 2,000. Well, we say 10 to 15, but 10 to 15,000. But, we say 10 to 15, but 10 to 15,000. But that guy we talked about earlier, Popeye the Sicario, and Popeye was in prison with Pablo, so this is a guy that would know. He was on a documentary that we were on,

and he said, he laughed at our number. He said the number is more like 50,000 people that Pablo Escobar was responsible for killing. But that means that he was killing a few people a day. Like every day, he's like, kill that guy. They blew up a plane, you know? Yeah, no, that was a big, that was a, that was a big day.

Right. If you look at the terrorists, you know, the airplane, there was buildings he was blowing up. There were hundreds of people inside. Then the car bombs, car bombs were being placed about 10 to 15 on a daily basis. And that's where a lot of innocent people were getting killed. Women, children just going to the mall. He placed them at the mall. He put one at a bookstore where parents were going to buy their books.. It was his deal was try to kill as many people as possible.

That way the government would negotiate with him. So he must've had like a bomb making place as well. Like just like that would have been next to these cocaine. How big were the cocaine manufacturing warehouses? How big were they? Like, you know, like square feet or whatever, football field or whatever? The laboratories, yeah. The cocaine laboratories were humongous.

If you could picture, I mean, we have pictures, but they're in the jungle. It'd be a platform, I don't know, 500 feet by 500 feet. They had roofs. They had sleeping quarters. There'd be proud 100 people working they had dormitories they had work schedules it was like a little little town and you know uh it'd be they even had a recycling plan for the chemicals you know to make cocaine you need all sorts of nasty chemicals so he was was recycling them at this time.

So put, I mean, we would count the people and give about 100 people per lab. And the guy had about 10 labs. That's why all the cocaine was being manufactured there. Okay. So whenever I take meetings at Netflix, they have like a little, they have free food there for the staff and everything like that. They have an ice cream room where you go in. And I always get myself, whenever I go to Netflix,

I go, I've got to get me ice cream. So I go to the room and there's every ice cream you can imagine. The staff look at me like, you can't do that every day, man. Anyway, what I'm saying is with all the staff working there, were they told not to take cocaine or there was so much of it that it was like, have at it, boys. We need staff that are going to work quick and fast. You know what? I'm going to go against that one.

Every cocaine lab there was a sign. It said, if I catch you using the product, I will kill you, signed Pablo Escobar. So he didn't want his guys to be using it. Oh, really? I would have a sign that said, you sniff it, you bought it. So how did he die? And when Jim thought that Steve killed him six years ago?

I don't think that's correct. No, I got mixed up. Steve killed someone else six years ago. It was those boys coming around trying to date my daughter. Oh, I don't know. No, on December 2nd, 1993, is when Lieutenant Martinez was able to triangulate and find where Pablo's phone was. And as he's driving down the street, he sees Pablo looking out the window.

So this elite group of Colombian police officers that we worked with, they were in the area. They went over and launched an operation. They got in a gun battle. Pablo tried to jump out the third floor window of a rowhouse onto the roof of a two-story behind him. And the cops were down there and he's shooting out and they catch him in a crossfire. So he was killed by the Columbia National Police. And one thing I'd like to point

out is if you watch the Narcos series, it shows that I was on the roof when Pablo was killed. That's not true. I was back at the base. So this was a straight out. There were no American operators, no American military there, no DEA agents american military there no dea agents this was the colombian national police taking their country back did you guys ever talk to pablo did you ever get on the phone with him and have a chat like we know where you are dickhead

you ever do anything we listen to him a lot of times i i know and i met his family yes i mean uh i i you know we knew the family in fact, I took him out of an airplane. They were coming to Miami. How they got you as visas, we'll never know. But not personally. We never talked to him, no. And then how many people attended his funeral? Do we know this?

Jim said six. He went for the low number. Yeah, it might have been 6,000. Right, right, right. If 1,000 showed up, 1,000. Thank you, because you mentioned earlier, I think, J 6,000. Right, right, right. It was thousands showed up. Thousands. Thank you, because you mentioned earlier, I think, Javier, you mentioned earlier. Hell of a party afterwards. Going to one of these holes.

Two days afterwards, the whole town was sad. Okay, guys. So this is a part of the show where we ask our guests to provide us with a dinner party fact, something our listeners and viewers can use to impress people about this subject if they're at a dinner party or a bar or something. So what do you got for us? Okay.

Who was Pablo Escobar's right-hand man that never got the credit? Oh, I'm going to say Dean Martin. Sammy Davis Jr. It was

his first cousin, Gustavo Gaviria, and he appears on the Netflix show. He was the guy that had the brains of the cartel because he had the routes, the cocaine routes to Mexico, to Miami, dealt with General Moriega. This guy was actually the guy who was planning the loads.

Is Gaviria like a super popular name in Colombia? Because that was the guy who was supposed to be president, right? And who was president, Cesar Gaviria. But they weren't related. Yeah, Gustavo Gaviria. He was killed by the police. He didn't want to surrender. Comes out with a machine gun.

How much cocaine did Sofia Vergara get into America? What do you know? What do you know there, Jim? I don't know. Bring him in the implants. He's making a movie, I understand, portraying Griselda Blanco. Yeah, that's the modern family cartel.

All right, Steve. Yeah, just thank you for being here, Stephen and Javier. I just wanted to reiterate one more time. DEANarcos.com is the website. Go ahead and buy the book there, Manhunters, How We Took Down Pablo Escobar. You can get an autographed copy on the website there. and listen to the podcast game of crimes podcast at game of crimes podcast.com guys thanks for being on the podcast this was uh fast i'm gonna watch narcos now so

i'll be ready for the next time i have to do a podcast on it that's that's the best news we've heard all night thank you guys for having us on here thank you so much we also had fun ladies and gentlemen if you've ever had a party and you say Pablo Escobar he was a Robin Hood type character go I don't know about that and then run away goodnight Australia