Inside evil life of ‘cocaine Godmother’ cartel queenpin who ‘loved killing’
Griselda Blanco dubbed the cocaine Godmother, was the queenpin among kingpins in the Colombian Medellin drug cartel of the 70s and 80s.
The woman may have had a cute dimple in her chin and once bore a passing resemblance to Betty Boop – but that did not hide her monstrous tendencies.
Heading a near-unrivalled campaign of violence, she was a trailblazer for women entrepreneurs the world over – for all the worst reasons, the Mirror reports.
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A forerunner and rival to Pablo Escobar, the three-times married mother-of-four boasted a Malibu mansion, a bronze sculpture of herself, a tea-set once owned by the Queen and a gold-plated sub-machine gun embedded with emeralds.
She had killer style and is said to have raked in £60million a month at her peak – landing her a £1.5billion fortune, surely making her the first female billionaire drug boss.
A lust for murder, the bloodier the better, was key to her success.
Some say she had 200 deaths to her name. Others estimate up to 2,000.
Indeed all three of her husbands met brutal ends, too – with none other than Griselda under suspicion, earning her the name… the black widow.
Full of such horror and drama, it’s no surprise Griselda’s story is coming to our screens in more than one version.
Cocaine Godmother, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, began streaming on Paramount+ last week.
Sofia Vergara is shooting a Netflix series, Griselda, and Jennifer Lopez’s long-touted version, The Godmother, is in development.
Former Miami homicide detective Nelson Abreu said Griselda was worse than any of the men involved in the drug trade.
He added: “People were so afraid of her that her reputation preceded her wherever she went.”
Another drugs expert cut to the heart of her cold-bloodedness when he remarked: “Other criminals killed with intent.
“They would check before they killed. Blanco would kill first and then say ‘Well, he was innocent. That’s too bad but he’s dead now’.”
In 1971, before Escobar came along, she and her husband became the first cartel to import from Colombia into the United States.
Before long she was flooding Miami and California with cocaine as well as New York.
Business boomed and Griselda made her name through violence and utter fear. As rivals increased and feuds gathered pace, bodies racked up.
She was at the centre of the “Cocaine Cowboys” in Miami where she kept a luxury penthouse.
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The lawlessness included a particularly bloody mall shoot-out in 1979.
A refrigerated truck had to be rented from Burger King to cope with all the bodies. But it was her attitude to the killings which elavated her from even her most monstrous peers.
A Drugs Enforcement Agency officer said: “Griselda loved killings. Bodies lined the streets of Miami as a result of her feuds. She gathered around her a group of henchmen known as the Pistoleros.
“Initiation into the group was earned by killing someone and cutting off a body part as proof of the deed.”
And the killings were personal, too.
“She not only killed rivals and wayward lovers but also used murder as a means of cancelling debts she didn’t want to pay.”
Finally she was tracked down in California and arrested in 1985.
Griselda was sentenced to 13 years, initially for drugs offences.
In 1994 she was finally convicted for three first-degree murders, including that of the two-year-old son of a rival shot in the head travelling in his dad’s car.
But the case, which depended on the evidence of one of her former hitmen, collapsed and she ultimately pleaded guilty and received just 20 years.
In June 2004, having dodged the electric chair, she was freed and returned home.
In 2012, aged 69, she was shot dead in a motorcycle drive-by killing of the kind she had once eagerly engineered.
Cocaine Godmother is currently streaming on Paramount+.
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