Case File: Griselda Blanco

During the heady days of the 1970s disco era, cocaine rapidly became the drug of choice among hedonists in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and other large cities. To keep the party going, cocaine was smuggled into the United States from South America in ever-growing quantities.

Smugglers used an array of clever ruses to bring their coke to U.S. dealers: airplane drops, drug mules, underground tunnels, drugs hidden inside toys or candy, “narco submarines” and countless other methods limited only by the human imagination.

Most of those involved in the South American drug trade were men, but Griselda Blanco rose through the ranks of a deadly, male-dominated business. Born in 1943 in Colombia, Blanco grew up on the streets of Medellin, where she was exposed to crime on an almost daily basis.

An accomplished thief and pickpocket in childhood, Blanco allegedly notched her first kill at age 11, after she joined other youths to kidnap a 10-year-old boy from an affluent neighborhood. When his family was slow to pay the ransom, Blanco reportedly fatally shot him.  

Within a few years, Blanco added counterfeiting and prostitution to her resumé. By age 13, she had taken up with Carlos Trujillo, a street hustler, small-time marijuana dealer and “coyote” who smuggled immigrants into the United States. The pair married, had three sons together and expanded their drug-dealing business even after they split up.

But their amicable divorce soon turned into a nasty dispute over a failed business transaction in the early 1970s. Shortly thereafter, Trujillo was found dead, possibly from cirrhosis, but many blamed Blanco for his untimely death.

Never one to grieve over a loss, Blanco quickly moved on to her next husband, Alberto Bravo. By the time she married Bravo, he was making a name for himself in the lucrative cocaine trafficking business. Far more profitable than marijuana—and much less bulky, making it easier to hide—cocaine was rapidly becoming the drug of choice in the 1970s, and New York City was the drug’s biggest and richest market.

After joining Bravo’s business, Blanco devised some unique ways to move the drug into New York: She employed women as mules, since they were less likely than men to arouse suspicion from drug agents. Blanco also outfitted her mules with her own line of custom-made lingerie featuring bras and girdles with compartments for hiding packages of “white gold.”

And it worked. By the mid-1970s, business was booming, and Blanco and Bravo profited millions of dollars every month from their headquarters in Queens, N.Y., in collaboration with the notorious Medellin drug cartel. Their client roster reportedly included movie stars, Wall Street tycoons and famous pro athletes.

But even as the business grew, the marriage between Blanco and Bravo was on the rocks. Tensions exploded in 1975, when Blanco accused her high-flying husband of skimming millions of dollars from their enterprise.

In Colombia, Blanco and Bravo met in the parking lot of a Bogota nightclub. Each was accompanied by gun-toting bodyguards, and it wasn’t long before shots rang out: Blanco was hit in the stomach and six bodyguards were slaughtered, as was Bravo.

Blanco survived her gunshot and assumed ultimate control over her late husband’s share of the cocaine market. Bravo’s murder at the hands of his wife earned her the “Black Widow” moniker, a nickname that would prove chillingly prophetic.

As Blanco’s notoriety grew, so did her business. At its peak in the 1980s, her enterprise was pulling in up to $80 million a month, and her outfit expanded into Los Angeles, Miami, Toronto and other major cities.

Fueled by massive amounts of tax-free cash, Blanco lived a life of wild extravagance: The cocaine-infused parties at her lavish home were legendary, allegedly involving strippers, sex acts and other depravations. By this time, Blanco herself was consuming a substantial amount of cocaine and other drugs, which may explain some of her more outrageous crimes.

In 1979, for example, a truck labeled “Happy Time Complete Party Supply” pulled into the Dadeland Mall parking lot. Two of Blanco’s assassins walked from the truck into Crown Liquors and opened fire on a rival coke dealer and his bodyguard until “they looked like Swiss cheese,” according to a medical examiner. When police later found the white truck, it looked like a “war wagon” with thick steel walls and dozens of high-powered firearms inside.

In another infamous episode, Blanco ordered a hit on Jesus Castro, a cartel member who allegedly kicked one of Blanco’s adult sons. The 1982 drive-by killing went horribly wrong when Castro’s 2-year-old son was accidentally killed instead. Blanco, however, had no regrets about the boy’s death, declaring that now she and Castro were “even.”

The orgy of violence during the Miami drug wars, and Blanco’s participation in it, outraged the citizens of South Florida and caught the attention of federal law enforcement.

In 1975, Blanco was indicted along with 37 of her associates on charges of conspiring to manufacture, import and distribute cocaine. She was, however, able to evade capture by fleeing to Colombia, which at the time had no extradition agreement with the United States. This allowed her to continue running her criminal organization from Colombia, while making occasional trips into the United States using a false name and passport. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Schlessinger later declared, "She was a complete sociopath. She murdered people at the drop of a hat. She would kill anybody who displeased her, because of a debt, because they screwed up on a shipment, or she didn’t like the way they looked at her.”

By 1983, Blanco was known as “La Madrina,” or the Godmother, a clear reference to her mob-boss behavior. She even named her fourth son Michael Corleone Blanco after the Godfather character. Michael's father and Blanco’s third husband, Dario Sepulveda, was less beloved, however, and Blanco had him murdered in 1983—right in front of Michael—because he took their son back to Colombia without Blanco’s permission.

After years of evading capture, Blanco’s luck ran out, and she was arrested in 1985 in Irvine, Calif., on drug charges. Her case went to trial in New York City, where she was sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiring to manufacture, import and distribute cocaine.

While imprisoned, she was sentenced to another three concurrent 20-year sentences after pleading guilty to three counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of two rival drug dealers and Castro’s 2-year-old boy.

Released in 2004 due to failing health, La Madrina was deported to Colombia. Having squirreled away millions of dollars in real estate and other tax shelters, Blanco lived a very comfortable, quiet life until September 3, 2012. While leaving a Medellín butcher shop, she was shot dead on the sidewalk by a gunman on a motorcycle—a classic Blanco-style assassination.

Her three older sons faced an end similar to their mother’s: All of them joined the family drug business, and all three were killed under suspicious circumstances while Blanco was still alive. Michael Corleone survived his half-brothers’ fate, however, and has reportedly turned his back on the drug trafficking business.

Blanco’s dominion over the cutthroat cocaine industry has inspired numerous books, rap lyrics and media portrayals, including Cocaine Godmother, a 2017 Lifetime movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the 2014 miniseries Griselda with Sofía Vergara.