Crime isn’t always about the blokes!
Sometimes it’s about fearless, kick-arse, Colombian-born murderesses.
Griselda Blanco was a force to be reckoned with. It’s estimated that she is responsible for approximately 200 murders whilst trafficking drugs from Colombia to Miami, New York and California.
Ms. Blanco was known as The Black Widow and The Cocaine Godmother. She instilled fear in major male crime figures via ruthless violence. And she’s said to have inspired Al Pacino’s characterisation of ‘Tony Montana’ in Scarface.
The Black Widow, (also known as La Madrina) started her gig in crime aged 11, it’s believed she kidnapped and shot another child in a nearby neighborhood.
At 14, Blanco ran away from home to escape the sexual advances and abuse from her mother’s boyfriends. Was the sexual abuse she endured the catalyst for turning her into one of the world’s most unforgettable criminals?
Possibly but we will never truly know.
IN THE BEGINNING
Griselda Blanco was one of the major players in transporting drugs from Colombia to the United States in the late sixties.
By the seventies, Blanco and her second hubby, cocaine trafficker -- Alberto Bravo, moved to New York and created a cocaine business. In 1975 she was indicted for drug conspiracy charges but returned to Colombia before she could be arrested.
On her return to Miami in the late seventies Blanco’s drug-trade-violence was known as the ‘Miami Drug Wars’ and The Black Widow and her minions were coined The Cocaine Cowboys.
THE BLACK WIDOW AND SEX
Blanco was notorious for her love of violent sex. She would force both males and females to perform sexual acts on her at gunpoint. No doubt that would add some excitement to cunnilingus! Court documents also reveal Blanco was a huge fan of bisexual orgies -- once again, nothing wrong with that!
THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT!
It seems that The Cocaine Godmother was as ruthless in love as she was in crime. She had three husbands and murdered them all.
The first was Carlos Trujillo, who gave her three sons. She had him murdered when he returned to Colombia after finishing a prison sentence in America.
Her second husband and business partner, Alberto Bravo was killed by Blanco along with his six bodyguards in a parking lot after an altercation over millions of dollars worth of profit.
And her third husband, Darío Sepúlveda (who fathered her youngest son) was assassinated by Blanco after a custody battle over their child.
It’s also rumoured that she had a passionate affair with Pablo Escobar, the founder and head of the Medellín Cartel, which she wrote about in her discovered diaries.
WHEN FEAR IS A WOMAN
Blanco was arrested without bail in her home in 1985, she was found reading the bible in her bedroom. After the trial, she was sentenced to 17 years imprisonment.
But you can’t keep a good crim down. Blanco continued successfully to run her cocaine empire from prison and in 2004 was released back into the community and deported back to Medellin, Colombia.
For the 200 lives she apparently took, she came through those perils relatively unscathed.
THE COCAINE GODMOTHER DIES
Griselda Blanco was considered ‘the inventor’ of the ‘motorcycle assassin’ where gunmen on motorbikes would speed past their intended victims, spraying them with bullets.
Ironically on September 3, 2012, Blanco was walking out of a butcher’s shop in Colombia with a $150 worth of meat. She was murdered by two men on motorbikes who repeatedly shot her in the face.
She leaves behind a legacy in crime like no other. Because fear is often a woman.
Vanessa de Largie is an actress, author, journalist and sex-columnist, soon to be based in London.