Did you know that one of the most famous drug lords of all time upended an entire ecosystem with his love of exotic animals? From conspiracy theories to hidden millions, plenty of surprises have emerged after the deaths of these infamous criminals.
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00:00Did you know that one of the most famous drug lords of all time upended an entire ecosystem
00:04with his love of exotic animals? From conspiracy theories to hidden millions, plenty of surprises
00:09have emerged after the deaths of these infamous criminals.
00:13Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1977, Juan Pablo Escobar now goes by Sebastian MarroquÃn.
00:18That assumed name allowed him to escape the downfall of his father's criminal empire,
00:22which, believe it or not, was fairly normal outside of the occasional chucking of a board
00:27MarroquÃn has repeatedly renounced his father's illicit empire while also proclaiming his
00:31love for him. He's also made a fair amount of money from speaking tours and a book called
00:35Pablo Escobar, My Father. That book reveals slices of a seemingly normal upbringing with
00:40a few odd quirks. For example, Escobar was obsessed with his appearance and obsessed
00:44with winning, to the point that he even cheated at games like Monopoly. The drug lord also
00:49had his more tender moments.
00:51On December 1, 2023, MarroquÃn shared a letter his father had written to him while on the
00:55run that said,
00:56"...I want to tell you that, for you, I will fight and sacrifice whatever is necessary.
01:00And I also want to tell you that I love you very much, and that I miss your friendship
01:04and your company very much. Your father loves you."
01:07Is there a part of you that also hates him?
01:09No. There's no chance I could hate my father.
01:13You know that Pablo Escobar was a wealthy drug lord, but the full extent of his excesses
01:17is the stuff from movies. Only after he died in 1993 did the authorities publicize just
01:22how extravagant he lived, including the revelation that he owned and operated a private zoo.
01:27It held over 200 animals, all reportedly flown in on private planes.
01:32After Escobar's death, authorities began the long and difficult task of bringing these
01:35animals to public zoos all over the world. Eventually, they left behind four hippopotamuses.
01:40As they were simply too heavy to fly out, they were not all of the same sex. You can
01:45probably guess where this is going. Those four hippopotamuses lived in one of his estate's
01:49many lakes, and by 2006, their population had grown to 16.
01:54The local government considered exterminating the animals, while the citizens developed
01:57a love-hate relationship with them. A male hippo named Pepe posed enough of a threat
02:02that he was killed by authorities, which led to a public outcry and a law banning any more
02:06killing.
02:07By 2023, the number of hippos was estimated to be more than 100, and over the next decade,
02:12it's projected there will be more than 1,000. They are affectionately called the cocaine
02:16hippos, which isn't nearly as adorable as they intended it to be.
02:21Pablo Escobar's most notable home was the Hacienda Napoles, a massive ranch that has
02:25been converted into a zoo, theme park, and, unironically, an anti-drug museum.
02:30The drug lord also spent much of his time in the United States, specifically a notorious
02:34Miami mansion with an estate of over 30,000 square feet. In 2016, authorities hired a
02:40demolition team to smash it to rubble, while also making some notable discoveries in the
02:44process.
02:45Fast food mogul Cristian Dubuidóar purchased Escobar's lot after the manor was demolished.
02:50In the process of this acquisition, Dubuidóar found himself a proud owner of a large gray
02:54safe. As he revealed to the Tampa Bay Times,
02:56"...This is real. It's still locked. It's very, very heavy. We can't believe it. Now
03:01Pablito is my best friend."
03:03Dubuidóar also admitted that he hoped it was full of cash or diamonds. So what's in
03:07there? Who knows? It reportedly remains locked to this day.
03:11A lot of people have asked me, why don't you keep the house and make it into a museum and
03:14all this? I don't think we want to celebrate the criminals."
03:17The lives of a drug lord's relatives can be complicated, to put it mildly. Nevertheless,
03:22tender moments are still possible. Under the harsh leadership of Pablo Escobar, the MedellÃn
03:26cartel's rise and fall lasted about 20 years. For his family, that meant a life of luxury,
03:31followed by a tremendous decline.
03:33Escobar's wife, Victoria Ayuhenia Anao, discussed her tempestuous relationship with her husband
03:38in her book, Mrs. Escobar, My Life with Pablo. A surprisingly touching moment occurred when
03:43Escobar told his family that they would be entering government protection. Anao packed
03:47up the kids and cried late into the night as her husband said goodbye. As she recalled,
03:51"...He bid farewell to Juan Pablo with a heartfelt handshake and a kiss on the cheek.
03:55When he reached Manuela, he started crying. We'd never seen him weep before, and that made
04:00our goodbye even more heart-wrenching. That was the last time I saw him. He had 75 days left to live."
04:06Carlos Lehder was born in Colombia in 1949,
04:09and he was only 25 when he ended up in jail. That was where he met a man named George Young.
04:14Turns out Young had a decent business importing marijuana into the U.S.,
04:18but Lehder saw an opportunity to traffic cocaine instead, which led to a very lucrative
04:23business partnership. Lehder was an eccentric who was fascinated by the likes of Adolf Hitler
04:27and John Lennon. He also threw comically lavish parties that drew a lot of unwanted attention.
04:32In 1987, Colombian authorities raided his compound and sent him to the United States for trial.
04:37He spent decades in prison and later revealed a secret about a much more famous drug lord.
04:42In Lehder's 2024 memoir, Life and Death in the Medellin Cartel, he claimed that the U.S.
04:46Attorney General's Office sent him paperwork that revealed Pablo Escobar's connection to his arrest.
04:51As he recalled,
04:52"...even though several lines of the text were crossed out with black marker in the document,
04:56it was possible to see that Pablo Escobar was the person who had handed
04:59Carlos Lehder over to the Medellin police."
05:02Griselda Blanco operated an empire during the turbulent cocaine-cowboy wars of the late 1970s.
05:07She was one of the most innovative leaders of the era, revolutionizing the drug trade with
05:11a brazen creativity. Blanco was also known by the nickname the Godmother, which was appropriate,
05:16considering her love of the classic 1972 film The Godfather. She leaned into that obsession
05:21when she named her fourth son Michael Corleone Blanco. Just ignore the fact that she mispronounced
05:26Corleone. At least he lived up to his fictional namesake when he became the first member of his
05:30family to go straight. His parents both sincerely hoped that he would drag the entire bloodline
05:35toward legitimacy. Michael discussed his family's wishes for him during a 2024 interview with
05:39Business Insider. He mentioned how he considers his connection to his mother's actions a generational
05:44curse. But he also noted,
05:45"...I'm the first Blanco to bring legit money home, and I'm so happy and proud of that."
05:49Michael also revealed that his late mother and brothers frequently told him,
05:53"...you have to show the face for the family. You have to make this s---- legit."
05:56And indeed, Michael has now accomplished that goal.
05:58"...I miss you so much, go to beef."
06:05Amado Carrillo Fuentes was notoriously reclusive during his rise to power. Almost all of his
06:09criminal empire was kept under wraps until his passing, and his death raised plenty of new
06:14mysteries. Carrillo was known as Lord of the Skies for his obsession with private planes and a
06:19fondness for using them to move millions of dollars' worth of cocaine. His heyday was in
06:23the mid-1990s, and many consider him the smartest operator in his illegal industry.
06:27This contributed to plenty of controversial beliefs about his otherwise mundane passing.
06:32In July 1997, Carrillo died while undergoing plastic surgery, reportedly to increase his
06:37anonymity. Countless journalists took photos of his dead body during his wake. Because he died
06:41while trying to change his face, many people came to believe that he actually faked his own death
06:46and escaped with a new look. In 2015, his cousin Sergio Carrillo told the Latin American news
06:51network TELSOR,
06:52"...Amado is fine. He's alive. He had surgery and also had surgery practiced on some poor,
06:57unfortunate person to make everybody believe it was him."
07:00"...Why change your face at all, bro?"
07:02These theories remain commonplace, even though there's no concrete evidence to support them.
07:08So, about that whole surgery thing. He underwent more than eight hours of facial
07:12reconstruction surgery and liposuction to drastically alter his appearance,
07:16but less than 12 hours later, doctors found him dead in his bed.
07:19Professionals later determined that the cause of death was a heart attack while under anesthesia.
07:24While nobody seemed to suspect foul play on the part of the doctors,
07:27the police immediately claimed that the physicians went into hiding.
07:30Just a few months after the surgery, two of those doctors were found dead.
07:33The scene certainly looked suspicious, as their bodies were bound,
07:37gagged, and stuffed into barrels with signs of torture. These bizarre circumstances led
07:41many to believe that Carrillo faked his own death and killed his doctors to keep his secret.
07:46So, for review, the biggest coke dealer of the 90s not only faked his death,
07:50but caused a death by a heart attack and then killed off the doctors. If that's true, yikes.
07:57José Gonzalo RodrÃguez Gacha grew up extremely poor in Colombia. He did all
08:01he could to escape poverty, ending up in the shady emerald business before his 30th birthday.
08:06That made him fairly wealthy, and then when he joined forces with Pablo Escobar,
08:09he became one of the richest men of his era. He eventually became an icon in the small village
08:13where he was born by waving around stacks of cash, and he ultimately accrued so much money
08:18that most of it outlived him.
08:19In the aftermath of a big earthquake,
08:21hundreds of homeless peasants stood in line to receive handouts of cash.
08:25After Gacha's death, the military seized his massive farm property known as Cuernavaca.
08:30They discovered several huacas, which are traditional Colombian buried tombs full of
08:34valuables. One of them contained more than $10 million, while another held more than $8 million.
08:39Gacha was also fascinated with precious metals, as he hid silver and gold all over his properties.
08:43It's been said that he dug tunnels to move safely between several homes,
08:47leading many civilians to raid Cuernavaca after his passing in desperate hope of finding even
08:51more of his cash. It's also entirely possible that the largest huaca is still hidden beneath
08:56a massive lake behind the house.
08:58Leroy Nicholas Barnes, better known as Nicky, was born in New York City in 1933.
09:03He got into the drug trade at an early age, as he ran heroin across the city and developed an
09:07addiction of his own. Along the way, he ended up spending a significant amount of his life behind
09:11bars. He eventually became a co-founder of a group of heroin dealers known as The Council.
09:16If he were just for inflation, Barnes would have been a multimillionaire today.
09:19That wealth led to an inflated sense of immortality that offended American President
09:23Jimmy Carter, who ordered the Justice Department to increase their efforts to prosecute him.
09:27Barnes was ultimately sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in January 1978.
09:32In 2012, he died of cancer, but nobody outside of his family learned of his fate until seven
09:37years later. As one of his daughters wrote in an email,
09:40"[My sister and I have kept his passing private and have not released it publicly.
09:44It still remains a sensitive topic, given all that occurred. Our dad was very private,
09:48and we wanted to respect that."
09:49She also hinted at the possibility that her sister might write a memoir about her life
09:53growing up as the daughter of a criminal. Both daughters have been given new identities
09:57as part of the Witness Protection Program.