Christopher Madrid | Contributing Writer
Retired DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña once helped bring down Pablo Escobar. Now, they’re speaking across the country about their experiences in battling the cartels. Alongside Colombian police, they were instrumental in bringing down Pablo Escobar’s criminal empire, with their story later being adapted into the hit TV show Narcos.
“There is nothing good about the person we’re about to talk about tonight,” said Murphy.
Steve Murphy started as a law enforcement officer in West Virginia and began serving with the DEA in 1987. Javier Peña grew up in Texas, earned a degree in sociology from A&M University, and served as deputy sheriff until 1984, when he decided to join the DEA.
At one point, Escobar put a 300k dollar bounty on each of their heads.
“Pablo would like the world to remember him as a robin-hood. He did nice things – he built clinics, he built housing, he gave away money, he gave away food – but when he needed new sicarios because all his sicarios had been killed, where do you think he went to recruit? Right back in the barrio” said Murphy.
Peña, “Master of Informants” on the Medellin Cartel investigation, detailed La Quica’s manipulation of a poor man the cartel recruited off the streets. Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera also known as La Quica, was a known sicario tied to 220 murders by US Authorities.
“He put a bomb on a commercial airline. Avianca Airlines, 1989, it was going from Bogota to Cali”, said Peña. La Quica told a cartel member to take a recording device disguised as a briefcase onto a plane, and flick the switch on the side of it to start recording one of the other passengers. Once the plane was in the air, the bomb in the briefcase went off, killing all 107 innocents.
“They were trying to kill the president Cesar Gaviria, who was not on board.”
Peña had five of his informants murdered during the investigation, and the duo spoke on the controversy of working with Diego Murillo Bejarano, better known as Don Berna.
“Los Pepes is nothing more than a murderous group of vigilantes. Every bit as evil as Pablo Escobar,” says Steve Murphy. Los Pepes was a paramilitary organization run by Don Berna who had personal vendettas against the Medellin Cartel. “But the truth is, gentlemen, they had a lot to do with taking down Pablo Escobar.”
One student asked if they believed Pablo Escobar committed suicide.
“When you fire a gun there are little bits of gunpowder that fly with the bullet… if you commit suicide it’s gonna leave those burning pieces of gunpowder on your skin… see if you see any powder burns by his ear… there are no powder burns because I took those pictures. If Pablo was my dad I might wanna change the legacy too, because I wouldn’t be proud to call him my dad” said Murphy.
“After years of being immersed in violence and high-stressed operations, how was the recovery process for each of you?” asked one student. “I was waking up at night choking,” said Peña. “I never lost a minute of sleep,” said Murphy.
Escobar was in Medellin when the DEA and Colombian Special Forces tracked down his phone calls. “No one would take Pablo’s calls anymore. Not congress, not the president, he started calling his son, Juan Escobar” said Peña. They had several vans with radio detecting equipment tracking Escobar’s phone signal. “But the margin of error back then was huge,” said Murphy. They put officers with handheld radio trackers and they drove around Medellin looking for Escobar’s phone. In theory, once they obtained a strong reading on the handheld devices, the vans would double-check the frequency. In practice, one of the officers found Escobar’s signal, and was looking directly at his face.
Murphy rushed to the scene while Colombian officers pursued Escobar through his apartment and the roofs of Medellín. Peña was sent away before the incident on DEA-related business and wasn’t present.
“What kept us going was Pablo would kill our friends,” said Javier Pena. “When that happens you stay in the fight and do it all over again.”
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