The body of the taxi driver was found about a mile away, with a sign that accused him of working for the Medellin cartel. Any public dismay over the killings was far outweighed by anger over Escobar's deadly car bomb in Bogota.
In a statement issued by Los Pepes to the press, the vigilantes referred to Escobar's "demented attitude" and concluded, "We challenge Pablo Escobar and all his people to fight a frontal war which only affects the parties involved and doesn't incur the vile assassination of Colombians, under the false pretense that with these actions he will convince the last hopefuls of the power of his extinct organization; otherwise we will be forced to fight a frontal war against him and his close ones."
Los Pepes saw themselves as a military organization. They called for the war to be fought without involving "civilians," but evidently Escobar's "close ones" and innocents such as the son of Guido Parra did not qualify. Los Pepes also spread the word that the drug boss had been condemned to death, whether or not he surrendered.
The killings of Escobar's lawyers prompted three of the drug lord's best-known attorneys, Santiago Uribe, Jose Lozano and Reynaldo Suarez, to publicly resign from his service. In June, Lozano, who continued to represent Escobar despite his public resignation, was shot 25 times in downtown Medellin as he walked with his brother, who was badly injured. In July, seven other lawyers who had worked for Escobar or his cartel resigned (Uribe for the second time) after Los Pepes publicly threatened "potential harm or murder."
As this lawlessness accelerated through the spring, no one from Washington questioned it or noted America's possible links to it. No one from Colombia was complaining, or explaining.
The only voice of complaint came from Pablo Escobar. On April 29, he wrote a letter to Colombia's chief prosecutor, Gustavo de Greiff, who had recently indicted him for murder and other crimes. Escobar named Fidel Castano, a paramilitary leader who had secretly been providing information to the Americans, as the head of Los Pepes:
"Los Pepes have their headquarters and their torture chambers in Fidel Castano's house, located . . . scarcely 40 yards from an incinerated house which belonged to a relative of mine. There they torture trade unionists and lawyers. No one has searched the house or confiscated their assets."
Escobar went on to complain that the murders and kidnappings he attributed to Los Pepes were not investigated by the government. The government, he said, offered rewards for information on the leaders of his cartel and leftist guerrilla commanders, but nothing for Los Pepes members.
The letter ended with yet another indication that the killings of his associates, the attacks on the homes of his loved ones, the relentless pursuit by the Search Bloc - all of it - were starting to wear on Escobar. He was ready to surrender.
"I remain disposed to turn myself in . . ." he wrote. And as always, he listed his conditions: ". . . if given written and public guarantees."
In the fifth-floor vault at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Centra Spike analysts were not missing the distinct pattern in the Los Pepes hits. The death squad was killing off the white-collar infrastructure of Escobar's organization, targeting his money-laundering experts, bankers, lawyers and extended family - names listed on the very charts that Centra Spike's surveillance experts and the CIA had painstakingly assembled over the previous six months.
Often the hits corresponded with intelligence Centra Spike was turning over to CIA Station Chief Bill Wagner, who was passing it along to Colombian police commanders in charge of the Search Bloc. More and more of the people identified by Centra Spike's Beechcraft spy planes were turning up dead.
Despite this, Centra Spike's operators felt they were well within the legal boundaries of their mission. They gave their information to Wagner, and what happened to it after that was, as far as he was concerned, none of their business. If Col. Hugo Martinez and his men were attempting to enforce Colombia's laws and arrest criminals, whatever they did on their own could hardly be the responsibility of the embassy.
If Los Pepes were working with the Search Bloc, that would explain their apparent access to fresh U.S. intelligence. After the vigilante group's murders and bombings on April 15, a Drug Enforcement Administration memo to Washington summed up the official attitude at the embassy:
While not completely unexpected, the attacks by Los Pepes further demonstrates their resolve to violently retaliate against Escobar each and every time Escobar commits a terrorist attack against the GOC and/or the innocent citizens of Colombia. Although the actions are not condoned nor approved by the CNP nor the BCO, they may persuade Escobar to curb such behavior for fear of losing members of his own family. Too, these types of attacks will seriously cut into those assets owned by Escobar and his associates.
As long as any American linkage with Los Pepes remained circumstantial, the embassy had little to fear.
And as long as the Colombian government did not object, and the new U.S. administration and Congress did not notice, the pursuit of Escobar could proceed as a war. The phrase dirty war was redundant. Innocent people would always get killed in the cross fire, but at least Los Pepes was choosing targets with a great deal more precision than Escobar was.
After Los Pepes killed one of Escobar's top lawyers, Guido Parra, and Parra's teenage son, the public outcry prompted President Cesar Gaviria to make another public statement denouncing the group. This time he offered a $1.4 million reward for information leading to the arrest of members of the vigilante squad. Los Pepes promptly issued a communique announcing that it was disbanding, having "made a contribution" to the effort against Escobar.
Several months earlier, the secret informant Dolly Moncada had given the Americans the names of six key members of Escobar's organization who she thought should be taken out, one way or another. By summer, three had surrendered and were in prison and one was dead. Of the lawyers she had named, all were either dead or had publicly resigned.
Despite Los Pepes' public pledge, the killings continued. The death toll now included Escobar's brother-in-law, Carlos Henao, and his cousin, Gonzalo Marin. Another nephew was kidnapped.
Fear of Los Pepes had taken root in Escobar's family. By the end of June 1993, many members of the extended family had fled the country, or had tried. The United States was using its influence to deny them safe havens. When Nicholas Escobar, a nephew of Escobar's, and his family were traced to Chile, the embassy prevailed on the government there to evict them. The family appealed through Chile's courts, which bought them a few weeks before the appeal was denied and they fled to Germany.
In early July, the president of neighboring Peru announced that his country would not allow Escobar's relatives to enter even as tourists. Meanwhile, Escobar's brother Argemiro, nephew, sister Luz Maria and her husband and three children were discovered in Costa Rica, where they were deported and flown back to Medellin.
Back in Colombia in mid-July, Escobar's wife filed a legal petition demanding that the Colombian government allow her children to leave the country. It was denied.
Escobar made another offer to surrender in March, just before the Search Bloc killed one of his most notorious assassins, a man known as "El Chopo." The offer was delivered by an Escobar lawyer to a Roman Catholic bishop.
By now the fugitive drug boss, his ranks riddled by deaths and surrenders and increasingly isolated and vulnerable, had dropped many of his former demands for surrender. He no longer insisted in living in his own prison, surrounded by his own men and guards. Now he asked that his family be given government protection - earlier he had demanded U.S. government protection - that he be given a private cell with his own kitchen (to prepare his own food to prevent poisoning), and permission to phone his family three times a week.