![]() I remember one going off at a restaurant, and I was 6-7 blocks away. That to me was always my biggest fear: the car bombs, being at the wrong time at the wrong place. Every day was something new, and I started to get so tired. You don’t know who your friends are and who your enemies are.ĭid you ever have a moment where the pressure felt like too much? When you wanted to give up, go back to the United States, and work a job with a little less danger and intensity? You don’t want to be rude to people, but at the same token, you can’t tell people what you’re really doing down there. But if they liked the police being there, you’d be viewed favorably.īack in Bogota, nobody knew who we were… my neighbors, they knew I worked for the embassy because they’d see the diplomatic tags on my personal car… there’d be small talk, they’d ask me “What is it you do there?” And I told them I was in charge of janitorial services, and they never bothered me again. So if the attitude was animosity towards the police, people looked at you like they could kill you. When we went to a barrio or a community, you were treated the same as the Colombian National Police were treated. But we were always with the police, and those guys really went out of their way to protect us. I’m very white, and I don’t blend in very well, so I pretty much stuck out like a sore thumb. Steve Murphy: I come from an English-Irish background. What kind of reception did you get from Colombian civilians, doing the work you were doing? In Colombia, Pablo Escobar had fans as well as detractors. But on the DEA side, I never came across anybody… I heard a lot of rumors of those guys being corrupt back in the States. We’re all professional-I never had any worry about it. Were you worried that some of your fellow agents at the DEA might be compromised? There was a lot of bribery going on at the time, and a lot of cops on the take. Watch: In Part One of two videos, Alison Becker talks about Pablo Escobar’s early life and rise to power. Who killed pablo escobar full#He would see my desk at the end of a day, and it’d be just full of papers. He’s very organized, meticulous-and I’m not. And we’re very different, so we complimented each other. But my first impression was that he’s a worker. When you first meet someone it’s a little weird-we don’t know each other, and basically the way it started really was-boom!- in Medellin. Javier Peña: When Steve arrived I was already in Medellin. Given those different backgrounds, what was the first impression you had of each other, as colleagues in Colombia? Javier, you’re of Mexican descent and were doing undercover work at brothels and drug dens throughout Texas. Steve, before you went to Colombia you were stationed in Miami, where you would get annoyed when menus would only appear in Spanish. One of the things that jumps out at me about this book is how different your backgrounds are. In their new book Manhunters: How We Took Down Pablo Escobar, special agents Javier Peña and Steve Murphy detail the rise of their careers and their eventual partnership with agents in Colombia, where they helped bring down Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel.Ī&E True Crime caught up with the co-authors about the work they did on the front lines of America’s war on drugs. The lead investigators trying to take him down? A former railroad cop from Virginian Appalachia, and a watermelon farmer from Texas who’d joined the DEA after leaving his bride at the altar an hour before their wedding. He was the most powerful criminal in modern history-a Forbes’ list billionaire drug dealer who ordered the assassinations of frontrunner presidential candidates and Supreme Court judges. Meet the DEA Special Agents Who Helped Bring Down Pablo Escobar Article Details: Meet the DEA Special Agents Who Helped Bring Down Pablo Escobar ![]()
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