TL;DR: We continue our women’s history lesson with Griselda Blanco, aka the Cocaine Godmother, a notorious drug “queenpin” who hung out with the likes of Pablo Escobar and ordered hits on hundreds of rivals.
By now, you know it’s Women’s History Month. You also know we’re learning about some really messed-up women who made their own mark on society through their heinous crimes.
In case you’ve missed parts one through three, here’s a recap:
- Jane Toppan: America’s first female serial killer
- Martha Place: First Woman Executed in the Electric Chair
- Blanche Taylor Moore: Oldest Woman on Death Row
Today, we meet the Cocaine Godmother, whose brutality is thought to have caused more deaths than the Titanic.
Griselda Blanco: First Billionaire Female Criminal
Known as the Queen of Cocaine and the Godmother, Griselda Blanco was one of the most powerful drug kingpins in the world, with an estimated body count of up to 2,000 people.
Her Backstory
Raised by an abusive mother in Colombia in the 1940s and ’50s, Blanco’s criminal empire was established at a young age: In her adolescence, she was said to have been a pickpocket and even kidnapped a child and killed him when his parents wouldn’t pay ransom. She eventually ran away from home to escape her mother and her sexually abusive boyfriend and made her living through looting and prostitution.
In the mid ’70s, Blanco and her second husband emigrated to the U.S. using fake passports, and set up shop trafficking cocaine in Queens, N.Y. She later moved back to Colombia to escape prosecution, then back to the U.S., where she reestablished herself in Miami. There, she pulled in $80 million a month through her nationwide drug distribution network and helped make Miami the murder capital of the world. She moved around over the years to avoid the long arm of the law—and the many assassination attempts—but ultimately wasn’t able to escape.
Her Weapon of Choice: Firearms
Blanco’s method was to kill first and ask questions later. According to her favorite hitman, when she ordered a hit, that meant everyone in the vicinity of the target should be killed, too: Friends, family, innocent bystanders (including children).
No one was safe from her cold brutality: She executed rivals, lovers, even her own husbands. (Yes, plural.) She is rumored to have forced both men and women to have sex with her at gunpoint, sometimes executing them afterward. Blanco was also known for drive-by shootings by motorcycle, an M.O. she is credited with inventing.
“She did horrible stuff: decapitations, cutting people into pieces, throwing them on the side of the road. (Even) drug kingpins and their associates were afraid of her.”
—Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky
Professor, Oakland Univ.
How Karma Got Her
In 1985, Blanco was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for narcotics trafficking. Behind bars, she continued to run her drug empire while prosecutors sought evidence to bring capital charges against her.
In 1994, her murder trial featured a star witness: Her favorite hit man, who knew enough about her to send her to death row many times over. She and her minions concocted a plan to kidnap JFK Jr. and use him to ransom her way out of prison. Luckily for her, her favorite hit man became embroiled in a sex scandal that eventually discredited him as a witness.
In 2004, Blanco was released from prison after serving only 15 years of her sentence. She went home to Colombia, and in 2012 fell victim to a brutal poetic justice: She was assassinated in a drive-by motorcycle shooting outside her local butcher shop. Interestingly, although she and Pablo Escobar were bitter enemies in real life, their graves are only a few hundred feet apart.
Sources: Meet Griselda Blanco, The ‘Queen Of Cocaine’ Who Ruled Her Drug Empire With An Iron Fist (ATI); Griselda Blanco (Wikipedia); Griselda Blanco: A Blood-Thirsty Queen Among the Cocaine Cowboys (A&E)
Next up: Our #5 female criminal is perhaps the worst of them all. Stay tuned!
Photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya from Pexels
