Leftist guerrillas had even less reason to go after Escobar. His dramatic ongoing flight was distracting the United States and tying up Colombia's elite military units.
The protracted effort to track Escobar was given such high priority by both the Colombian government and the U.S. Embassy that it began to deeply trouble Joe Toft, the American country chief for the DEA.
Toft never lost sight of the fact that Escobar was part of a much larger problem. As the hunt stretched into 1993, Toft could see that the Cali cartel, the main rival to Escobar's Medellin cartel, was growing richer and stronger. Its cocaine shipments to the U.S. actually had grown while Escobar was on the run. The longer the hunt went on, the better it was for its business.
Given the timing and tactics, the most likely forces behind Los Pepes were the Moncada and Galeano families, against whom Escobar had declared open war, and the National Police, which had lost hundreds of officers to Escobar's sicarios. Both were receiving American support.
The execution of the Galeano and Moncada brothers, ordered by Escobar, had fractured the Medellin cartel. Having been in business with Escobar for years, the widow Dolly Moncada, along with Mireya Galeano and her brother Raphael, knew many of his secrets. The murder of their loved ones was sufficient motivation to seek Escobar's own death.
Within weeks of Escobar's escape, a DEA memo written by agent Steve Murphy noted that the two families were trying to recruit sicarios 'to battle Escobar,' offering 20 million pesos ($29,000). Another Murphy memo written on Oct. 16, 1992, noted that Marta Moncada, a sister of the slain men, was cooperating with the hunt for Escobar.
A former drug trafficker and pilot who went by the name 'Rubin' said he worked in Medellin with a group headed by a man known as Don Berna, who had been the chief hit man for the Galeano family. Rubin said Don Berna and the others in the group, which would eventually call themselves Los Pepes, worked closely with the Search Bloc, and with the DEA.
'At first, Los Pepes would just kill people,' said Rubin, who asked that his real name not be used. 'Then the philosophy changed at one point. . . . Those in charge said: 'Let's not kill them all.' '
Both the Galeano and Moncada families were angry, rich and powerful, but they were not strong enough to go up against Escobar's organization on their own. They needed a strong push, some organization, some inside intelligence, and cash. Suspicion has traditionally fallen on the rival Cali cartel, but an equally likely suspect would be the Americans.
At least one person in Colombia felt there was no mystery at all about the vigilante group that called itself Los Pepes. The day after several of Pablo Escobar's properties were bombed in January 1993, the fugitive drug boss sent a note to Col. Hugo Martinez, who headed the police Search Bloc.
The message flatly accused Martinez of ordering the 'terrorist actions' against the homes of his relatives. Escobar did not mention Los Pepes. Instead, he wrote: 'Personnel under your supervision set car bombs at buildings in El Poblado, where some of my relatives live.'
Pointedly, Escobar also mentioned the supposedly secret headquarters of the Search Bloc at the Holguin Academy in Medellin - what he called Martinez's 'headquarters of torture.' Those headquarters, Escobar wrote, had directed 'criminal actions undertaken by men who cover their faces with ski masks.'
Escobar concluded the note with his customary coda, a thumbprint and a death threat:
'Knowing that you are part of the government I wish to warn you that if another incident of this nature occurs, I will retaliate against relatives of government officials who tolerate and do not punish your crimes. Don't forget that you, too, have a family.'
The colonel hardly needed to be reminded. His family had been living with Escobar's threats for years. Martinez had moved his wife, a dentist, and his two younger children with him to the Holguin base (his eldest son, Hugo, had recently graduated from the National Police academy in Bogota). Just four months earlier, three police officers assigned to protect his family had been gunned down in Medellin. The hit was a very personal message from Escobar. The officers had been on their way to pick up Martinez's youngest son for school.
Escobar had been aware for years of Martinez's pivotal role in the government's campaign against him. He had suspected, correctly, that the Americans were helping to guide and finance the Search Bloc. And now he had concluded that the newly emergent vigilante group, Los Pepes, was directly linked to the Search Bloc.
But Escobar didn't know, six months into his second sojourn as a fugitive, how deeply the Americans were penetrating his organization.
In August 1992, just two weeks after Escobar's escape from prison, the U.S. Embassy in Bogota secretly flew a young woman to Washington, D.C. Her name was Dolly Moncada, and she knew every detail of the inner workings of Escobar's Medellin drug cartel.
She had been part of the cartel while her husband, William Moncada, was serving as one of Escobar's top associates. Now Dolly was a widow, and a vindictive one. Escobar, suspicious that William Moncada was withholding money from him, had ordered him tortured and murdered. Then he sent word to Dolly, demanding that she turn over to him all of her assets and threatening a war against her and her family.
Dolly was a dangerous woman. Instead of giving in to Escobar, she vanished in mid-August. Escobar searched desperately for her. He ordered her former residence in Medellin ransacked and her caretakers taken hostage. The kidnappers painted the word guerra (war) on the walls.
Three days later her dead husband's business associate, Norman Gonzales, was kidnapped, held captive and tortured over 13 days. His captors tried drugs and electric shock in an effort to learn Dolly's whereabouts. Gonzales didn't know. Escobar then offered a $3 million reward for whoever could help him find her.
By now, Dolly was in the hands of the U.S. government. Desperate and angry, she had struck a deal with the administration of President Cesar Gaviria. She handed over most of her family's assets, and won American protection. She was quickly flown to Washington, where she became Confidential Informant SZE-92-053.
Dolly had been talking to DEA agents in the United States when, in December, her 23-year-old brother, Lisandro Ospina, was kidnapped. He was a student with no involvement in the drug cartels and had been visiting Bogota after finishing his first semester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Up to this point, Dolly had seemed intent on merely crippling Escobar's empire. Now she wanted to harm Escobar himself.
Dolly 'was extremely upset by this occurrence,' a DEA memo said, 'and wants to take some type of retaliatory action against Escobar personally.'
