"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."
Dolly knew exactly how to hurt Escobar. In a series of debriefings conducted in Washington and recorded by the DEA, she outlined in detail Escobar's entire criminal organization. She was impatient with what she considered the gentle tactics employed by the Search Bloc, which was authorized to go after only those suspected of criminal activity. Dolly wanted to go after everyone associated with Escobar, his family members, his lawyers, anyone. She wanted people killed.
She gave the names of the key members of Escobar's inner circle. If they had been indicted, she said, they should be arrested. If not, she suggested, they should be killed.
Dolly listed five lawyers who, she said, "handle Escobar's criminal and financial problems and are worse than Escobar. These attorneys negotiate with the Colombian government on his behalf and are fully aware of the scope of activities since he consults them before he carries out any action."
She provided a list of Escobar's most prized properties and assets, his antique cars, country homes, apartments, aircraft and airports.
Dolly also offered what she considered helpful advice on how to bring Escobar out into the open, where he could be trapped and killed: "He needs to be provoked, or angered and made desperate so that he wants to strike back. . . . Escobar may then make mistakes," a DEA memo said, quoting Dolly. She recommended confiscating his assets - or destroying them.
The memo said Dolly also advised, wrongly as it turned out, that Escobar would attribute any deaths of his associates not to the authorities, but to the rival Cali cartel. "As a result," Dolly predicted, according to the DEA memo, "the Escobar organization would turn on itself and begin killing itself again."
There was one other piece of advice proffered by Dolly Moncada: Perhaps the U.S. should take another look at some Colombian drug traffickers held in American prisons. Although these narcos had been talking to U.S. authorities in hopes of earning reduced sentences, Dolly said, they knew a lot more than they were telling about Pablo Escobar.
After her husband was murdered by his former boss Pablo Escobar, Dolly Moncada began providing valuable information to the Americans who were helping direct and finance the hunt for the fugitive drug lord. Among her suggestions was that the authorities talk to Colombian drug traffickers held in American jails.
Soon after Dolly was debriefed by the DEA in Washington, D.C., in late 1992, an incentive was offered to jailed Colombian drug dealer Carlos Lehder, a former associate of Escobar's. Lehder, seeking a reduced sentence, responded with his own suggestions for closing in on his former ally.
In a letter to the DEA from federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., where he had been given a new identity under the federal witness protection program, Lehder recommended that the Americans create a Colombian "freedom fighters brigade, controlled by the DEA, and independent of the Colombian politicians, police or army." Lehder wrote that "the rich, the poor, the peasant, the political left, center and right are willing to cooperate" in the effort to bring Escobar down.