How did Griselda get caught?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a lowly shoplifter or a notoriously violent drug lord who Netflix makes binge-worthy miniseries about, sooner or later, you’re going to get caught! But how did the long arm of the law finally reach out to put crime queen Griselda Blanco behind bars?

In 2023, if you asked the average man on the street who the hell Griselda was, chances are they’d have said some brand of granola, or perhaps a Walt Disney character. Fast forward to 2024, and thanks to on-tap streaming services and our obsession with true crime, the name Griselda is as familiar to our hive mind as Pablo Escobar. The Netflix show about the life and times of the “Cocaine Godmother” has topped the charts and reawakened our appetite for all things Colombian. Yet just like Pablo, Griselda’s life in the fast lane and moment in the sun could never last. The moral being, if you build a drug empire worth billions, don’t be surprised when the authorities come knocking. Boom! Boom! 

What did the “Cocaine Godmother” do that was so bad?

If you’re familiar with the Netflix show or perhaps just a fiercely keen student of Colombia’s troubled history, you’ll know Griselda Blanco came from humble beginnings, and ended up creating one of the most powerful drug cartels that the world has ever known. She was a key player in the Cocaine Cowboy Wars, and proved she had the salt to hold her own in an industry dominated by misogynistic psychopaths with dangerous drug habits. Yet as German existential philosopher Freidrich Nietzche pointed out before collapsing into a syphilis-induced insanity, “He who fights with monsters should be careful they do not become a monster.” Griselda may have been a penniless and uneducated young woman who left Colombia and managed to build an enterprise worth billions on a foreign shore, but she did it by being the biggest and baddest mother in Miami and leaving a legacy of carnage and cruelty in her wake. Nicknamed “The Black Widow,” Griselda was thought to have a hand in over 100 deaths. As the Netflix show tells viewers, even Pablo Escobar once said, “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” Sure, she made it on her own terms in a male-dominated environment, but the tactics she employed to that end were only ever going to lead to one place, and that’s the big house. 

How did the authorities take Griselda down?

When you’re living large, moving industrial-size quantities of drugs, and ordering hits left, right, and center, the authorities are going to take a special interest in your day-to-day activities — and so it was with the cocaine godmother. DEA agents had been on her trail for over a decade when they finally arrested her. The Netflix series shows Griselda calling the authorities to come over and arrest her because she could no longer with the weight of her crimes (or something like that). In reality, agent Robert Palombo arrested her at her home in Irvine, California on February 17, 1985, after tracking her down through intelligence provided by an extensive surveillance operation. The Radio Times reports that Griselda was on the bed reading a bible when he approached her and left her confused by giving her the “kiss of death” and saying, “Hola, Griselda. We finally meet.”  Palombo told CBS News, “I don’t wish death on anybody, but if anybody deserved the ultimate punishment…it was her. I made her stand up and at that point I just went over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She was bewildered. Had no idea why I did it.” Palombo said that in the wake of her arrest, the homicide rates in Miami “dropped dramatically.” Griselda, who had given the name “Betty” upon her arrest, was described as “pretty tough and standoffish” at first, but became “visibly shaken” the closer they got to the courthouse. Palombo told The Independent, “She was shaking and she grabbed my arm and she threw up on my shoulder. Not a lot, it was mostly just bile, but she knew the proverbial s*** had hit the fan. And it was time for her to meet her accusers.”  

Did Griselda die in prison?

In the dock and facing the full weight of the law for the manufacturing, importing, and distribution of cocaine, Griselda was given 15 years, a sentence that Palombo felt was criminally lenient. However, whilst serving her stretch, she pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder, and had a concurrent 20 years added to her term.

Yet the story doesn’t end there. A heart attack and other health scares behind bars entailed that she was eligible for an early release in 2004. She returned to Medellin, Colombia to reportedly live a quiet life far from the drug-running crowd, but karma has a nasty habit of catching up with you, particularly when you’ve got a lot of blood on your hands. On September 3, 2012, she was killed in a style that is often considered her signature technique: Two assassins on a motorcycle gunned her down in a busy marketplace. The cocaine godmother was 69, and had lived a lot longer than many of her victims.