THE FINAL SECRET A DRUG LORD SPILLED ABOUT PABLO ESCOBAR

BY S. FLANNAGAN/JULY 12, 2024 11:00 AM EST

True crime fans may be justified in thinking there is little left to learn about Pablo Escobar, whose jaw-dropping story has been told countless times in best-selling true crime books, documentaries, and dramas, most notably the hit show "Narcos." The Colombian drug kingpin was the driving force in South American drug trafficking from the mid-1970s to the 1990s and was ultimately responsible for flooding the world with cocaine. Escobar amassed and managed to hide an immense personal wealth said to be in the region of $25 billion, as well as a legendary status in the world of organized crime, before his dramatic death during a Colombian government raid on his Medellín hideout in 1993, the day after his 44th birthday. 

As the head of the Medellín cartel, Escobar oversaw the rise of a drug empire that came to be characterized by brutal violence, and the gangster's willingness to torture and kill opponents when bribery and intimidation didn't get the results he wanted. Like the mafia in the United States, the Colombian drug cartels operated with a code of secrecy, which saw them both corrupting police and officials and coming down hard on those in their ranks they discovered to be police or government informers.

But recent revelations have cast a new light on informant-punishing Escobar, raising the possibility that the kingpin was himself a snitch, who was directly responsible for the capture and imprisonment of one of his fellow Medellín cartel leaders, Carlos Lehder. The tidbit comes from Lehder himself, whose memoir of his career in the drug trade was published in 2024. Here is the story.

WHO IS CARLOS LEHDER?

The drug trafficking career of Carlos Lehder is almost as remarkable as that of Pablo Escobar himself. A founder of the Medellín cartel alongside Escobar, Lehder established himself as a canny and intelligent operator who was capable of thinking outside the box to get things done, i.e. to smuggle drugs to wherever they might be profitable. He was a skilled pilot, which therefore made him a powerful smuggler, and set up bases for drug trafficking in the Bahamas, in one case utilizing a private island. He also proved his worth early on by retaliating against those who kidnapped family members of an ally, per PBS's Frontline. With his combination of cunning and ruthlessness, Lehder helped establish the Medellín cartel as one of the most dangerous in the world. As his aspirations in terms of control over Columbia grew, Lehder created his own anti-communist political party, which was also intended to overturn the extradition treaty between Columbia and the U.S. and block cartel members from facing justice.

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