family's properties. The vigilante group seemed to be toying with the Escobars, picking off cousins, in-laws and friends, including some who had been living in the neighborhood where Escobar's immediate family was staying.
In early November, a rocket-propelled grenade had been fired at the Escobar building and another grenade had exploded outside the front doors. These were mere warning shots, but to the family it seemed that the threat was closing in.
The fiscal general, Gustavo de Greiff, was holding Escobar's family in place, officially protecting them from vigilantes but also positioning them like bait in a trap. The pressure increased when, in late October, de Greiff threatened to withdraw his protection.
Increasingly at odds with the administration of President Cesar Gaviria, de Greiff was still trying to engineer Escobar's surrender before he could be found by Col. Hugo Martinez's Search Bloc. The Americans, along with Gaviria and the Search Bloc commanders, feared that a surrender would enable Escobar to once again run his drug cartel with impunity from a comfortable 'prison.'
De Greiff was not above playing hardball with Escobar, who had just engineered the kidnapping of two teenage boys from wealthy families in Medellin and extorted $5 million in ransom.
De Greiff informed Juan Pablo that unless his father turned himself in by Nov. 26, the large detail of bodyguards that had been protecting the family would be withdrawn. Escobar's wife Maria Victoria, and his son and daughter, would 'only be entitled to the same security as any other Colombian citizen,' de Greiff informed the family.
Maria Victoria was terrified. In a letter to de Greiff, she asked him to visit her, and pleaded with him to give her husband more time to surrender so that he could consult with his attorneys. She wrote that the family was 'anguished.' She argued that they were not responsible for her husband's refusal to surrender, and should not be punished for it. She reminded de Greiff that she and her children were not criminals, and that they too were trying to persuade Escobar to surrender.
The same day, de Greiff received a note from Juan Pablo, which began, 'Worry, desperation, anguish and anger are what we feel in these confusing moments.' The young man urged de Greiff to investigate the kidnappings and killings of several close family associates, whom he said were victims of the Search Bloc and Los Pepes.
He wrote that on Nov. 5, his longtime childhood friend, Juan Carlos Herrera-Puerta, who was living with the Escobars, was kidnapped. On Nov. 8, the administrator of their apartment building, Alicia Vasquez, a close friend, was kidnapped and killed. On the same date, the family's maid, Nubia Jimenez, was kidnapped and killed.
On Nov. 10, Juan Pablo wrote, masked men kidnapped Alba Lia Londono, the children's personal tutor. On Nov. 15, according to Juan Pablo, the police attempted to kidnap a family chauffeur, Jorge Ivan Otalvaro-Marin. Ten armed men jumped him, but Otalvaro exchanged fire with them and escaped. Juan Pablo said de Greiff should prosecute these crimes as vigorously as the state was pursuing his father.
Juan Pablo defended his father's honor vigorously, negotiating with government representatives as though Escobar were a head of state. By early November, the son (speaking several times a day with his father) was hammering out a secret deal with de Greiff's office for the long-awaited surrender. De Greiff did not share the plan with President Gaviria or the U.S. Embassy.
De Greiff agreed to several of Escobar's demands: To transfer Escobar's brother Roberto from isolation to a part of Itagui Prison where other Medellin cartel members were housed. And to place Escobar in the same section upon his surrender, and to allow him 21 family visits each year.
The deal was contingent on getting Escobar's family out of Colombia. The fugitive was insisting that he would not turn himself in until Maria Victoria and the children were flown to a safe haven. De Greiff promised to help the family flee, but only after Escobar's surrender.
In early November, Juan Pablo assured de Greiff that his father would surrender on or before the Nov. 26 deadline, either at the fiscal general's office in Medellin or the family's apartment building, and that he would likely demand that representatives of the National Police and the Colombian army be present. De Greiff eventually acquiesced, and began laying plans to get Escobar's family out of the country.
Word of these surrender negotiations leaked in early November, alarming the U.S. Embassy. In a Nov. 7 cable, DEA agent Steve Murphy wrote:
'Obviously, if the above is true, and the BCO has no doubts about its accuracy, then the GOC and particularly the Fiscal's office has not been straightforward with the BCO or other American embassy personnel. Should Escobar agree to the one remaining condition regarding his family's departure from Colombia, his immediate surrender may be imminent.'
Surrender, of course, was what the Americans, the National Police and Escobar's other enemies hoped to prevent. Mindful of the extent to which Escobar had corrupted and intimidated the Colombian judiciary, agents had warned in an earlier cable that if he managed to surrender before he was found by the Search Bloc, it would begin 'a new farce.'
American officials at the embassy believed the Search Bloc was closing in. With Escobar's wife and children baiting the trap, and Los Pepes continuing to kill off his associates, he was isolated and desperate. If he managed to get the family to safety, there was no telling what would happen. He might surrender - or launch a new campaign of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.
Everyone involved in the manhunt knew that the best leverage for catching Escobar was his concern for his family. It wasn't an impeccably ethical strategy, but it was working. Ever since Los Pepes had begun killing those close to Escobar in retaliation for his assassins' attacks, Escobar's bombings had dropped off almost to nothing.
When Ambassador Morris Busby learned of the family's pending flight, he went to work. He was assured by Colombia's defense minister that the government was opposed to letting the Escobars go, but there was no legal reason to prevent them from leaving Colombia.
So the government concentrated on slamming doors of entry to all the family's known destinations. Maria Victoria had purchased tickets to London and Frankfurt. Because the London flight stopped over in Madrid, the defense minister contacted the Spanish, British and German ambassadors there, formally asking that they refuse entry and return the family directly to Colombia if possible.
So long as his wife and children were in Colombia, Escobar would keep worrying about them, and keep calling them. With the Search Bloc's improving targeting methods, every time Escobar made contact with his son or wife it gave Col. Martinez and his men another chance at him.
