By Elliott West
“To the cowards whoever killed my son, the ground will shake beneath your feet. This deed will not go unpunished”.
Griselda Blanco
Introduction
This is a story about crime and narcotics involving a Columbian woman who made Ronnie Kray look like a saint in comparison. Known as La Madrina,” “the Black Widow,” and “la Dama de la Mafia”, Griselda Blanco Restrepo was a woman who chose to tread the illicit path of crime that in turn made her a Cocaine Godmother. A life of ultimate luxury, death and destruction that rocked the history books, a story that had it not been documented would be something reminiscent of a supervillain straight out of a comic book.
Blanco was definitely a bad person but she was very good at it. A woman who gained legendary status for the wrong reasons. A woman whose name has been kept alive in television programmes and numerous rap songs. A tale of avarice that can only have one ending and does not bode well for the instigator. A terrifying figure who had numerous freedoms that few enjoyed in her era which led her to becoming a drug addict herself, using vast amounts of unrefined cocaine called “basuco”.
A Life of Crime
Born on February 14, 1943, in Cartegena, Columbia, Blanco’s story was far from innocent from the start. When she was three, her parents Ana Lucia Restrepo and Fernando Blanco moved with her to Medellin and it was here that Griselda started committing crime a few years later. At eleven years old, she kidnapped a child from a wealthy neighbourhood and held the child to ransom. A crime that ended with her shooting the child. By the age of thirteen, she was an established pickpocket and ran away from home at the age of sixteen. An escape that was fuelled by the sexual assaults from her mother’s boyfriend. Living on the streets, Blanco survived for the next four years by committing burglaries.
The Thin White Line
It wasn’t long before Griselda moved into the world of drugs, setting up her own business and rapidly moving to the top of the tree. A dark world that was helped come to fruition by her marriages to Carlos Trujillo and Alberto Bravo. Allegedly she had Carlos killed after he was deported from the USA. By the mid-1970s, their drug cartel was booming and Bravo and Blanco had moved to Queens, New York using counterfeit passports. In 1975, Blanco and 30 of her underlings were indicted on Federal drug conspiracy charges and she and Bravo fled back to Columbia.
Missing Funds
When they returned to their homeland, Griselda realised that there were millions of dollars missing from their business. She confronted Bravo about the anomaly, brandishing a handgun at him. Bravo’s response was to produce an Uzi and a gun battle ensued. Blanco killed Bravo and six of his bodyguards and only sustained a superficial wound to her abdomen. The result was that she had complete control of the company. She decided to move the cartel back to the USA, settling in Miami.
Life in the Sun
At this time Miami entered a period of extremely violent crime waves. A wave that Black was a contributing factor to. So vicious was this crime wave that it was dubbed the “Cocaine Cowboy Wars” or the “Miami Drug Wars”. Griselda was scary and viscous, forcing people to have sex in front of her at gunpoint. She sunk to ultimate lows, murdering her husbands, business partners, business rivals and even innocent bystanders including a child who was only four years old. A woman who was openly bisexual and often organised orgies. A godmother who had a gold and emerald MAC-10 machine pistol, a pearl necklace that belonged to Eva Perón and a tea set that once belonged to the Queen of England.
Under Suspicion
In the end, Blanco would cause her own downfall. By the mid-1980s, her violent cartel had come to the attention of the US government. Her third marriage to Darío Sepúlveda was on the rocks and in 1983 he left her, kidnapped their child, Michael Corleone Blanco and fled back to Columbia. This was a fatal mistake because Blanco then sent an assassin to Columbia to kill her husband and bring her son home to Miami. It was then that she realised that she needed to stop the regular attempts on her life and in 1984 she fled Miami for California.
On the Run
On February 17, 1985, DEA agents finally caught up with Griselda and arrested her in her California home. She was held and denied bail. Thanks to one of her cartel giving evidence against Blanco, which paved the way for her to be charged with three murders. However, the case fell apart when a phone sex scandal emerged involving the star witness and secretaries in the DA’s office. As a result, Griselda continued her business from prison with despite being given a twenty-year prison sentence. Whilst in prison, Blanco had a heart attack in 2002 and then became a born-again Christian. She was released from prison in 2004 and deported back to Columbia. She kept a low profile for several years and then after being seen at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, disappeared into thin air. She wasn’t seen again until 5 September 2012. On that day Griselda was seen buying $150 of meat from a butcher’s shop in Medellín, Colombia. As she went to leave, two men pulled up on a motorcycles outside, walked in and produced their guns, shooting her twice, once in the head. He then got back on her bike and drove away. Bianco died at the scene. She was 69 years old.
