Griselda Blanco

Griselda Blanco Restrepo was born on February 14, 1943, in Cartagena, Colombia. When she was three, she and her mother, Ana Restrepo, moved to Medellín, where the city’s social and political troubles exposed her to crime early. By age 11, according to a former lover named Charles Cosby, she allegedly kidnapped a child from a wealthy neighborhood, tried to ransom him, and then shot him. Before her teens, she worked as a pickpocket. At 19, she ran away from home to escape sexual abuse by her mother’s boyfriend, and spent the next year stealing in the city center; some speculate she turned to prostitution for extra money.

Blanco helped establish the cocaine trade between Colombia and major U.S. cities like Miami, New York, and California. Her distribution network stretched across both countries and brought in $80 million each month. With her first husband, Carlos Trujillo, she started by dealing marijuana in Colombia. After divorcing him in 1964, she entered the United States illegally using fake documents and a false name, settling in Queens, New York, with her three children and second husband, Alberto Bravo, a cocaine smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. They built a thriving drug operation in New York City. In April 1975, authorities indicted her and thirty of her subordinates on federal drug conspiracy charges, and the family fled to Colombia. She returned to the U.S. in the late 1970s to start a new operation in Miami.

Her return coincided with the Miami drug war of the 1980s, a period of violent public conflicts that caused hundreds of homicides per year in the Metro Miami area. Cocaine had become extremely profitable and was trafficked more than cannabis. Law enforcement struggled to stop the influx, leading to the creation of CENTAC 26, a joint operation between the Miami-Dade Police Department and the DEA.

On February 17, 1985, DEA agents arrested Blanco at her home, charging her with conspiring to manufacture, import, and distribute cocaine. She was tried in federal court in New York City, found guilty, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. While serving that sentence, Florida charged her with three counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution struck a deal with one of her trusted hitmen, Jorge Ayala, who agreed to testify that she ordered the killings. The case collapsed due to a phone sex scandal between Ayala and two secretaries at the state attorney’s office. In 1998, Blanco pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and received a 20-year sentence, to run at the same time as her previous one. She was released from U.S. prison in 2004 after serving her full sentence and was deported back to Colombia.

Blanco had three husbands and four children. She met Carlos Trujillo when she was 13, and they had three sons—Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo—all born by the time she was 26. They divorced but stayed business partners; after a dispute over a failed deal, she had Trujillo killed. She then married Alberto Bravo. After returning to Colombia, she accused him of stealing millions from the business, and he claimed her “Godmother” nickname had gone to her head. She shot him in the head. Her youngest son, Michael Corleone Blanco (named after the character from *The Godfather*), was born with her third husband, Darío Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda left her in 1983, returned to Colombia, and kidnapped Michael during a custody disagreement. Blanco paid to have Sepúlveda assassinated, and Michael was returned to her in the U.S. According to the *Miami New Times*, Michael’s father and older siblings were all killed before he grew up, and his mother was in prison for most of his childhood. He was raised by his paternal grandmother and legal guardians. In 2012, Michael was placed under house arrest after being convicted of two felony counts of cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. His probation ended in 2018. He appeared on the 2018 Investigation Discovery series *Evil Lives Here* and the 2019 VH1 docuseries *Cartel Crew*, and he runs a clothing brand called Pure Blanco. Michael has said his mother became a born-again Christian in her later years.

On September 3, 2012, Blanco and her pregnant daughter-in-law went to a butcher shop called Cardiso on the corner of 29th Street in Medellín. As she left, an assassin on a motorcycle shot her twice in the head, killing her. The method mirrored the assassination style she had used during the Miami drug war. She was 69.