That was just seconds before the call from Murphy. Toft stepped out into the hallway and shouted: "Escobar is dead!"
Then he ran upstairs to tell Ambassador Morris Busby, the man who had directed the American effort in this 15-month manhunt.
Busby was ecstatic. He grabbed a phone and called Washington. He asked to speak with Richard Canas, the National Security Council's drug enforcement chief at the Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House.
Canas took the call and heard Busby say: "We got Escobar."
"Are you sure?" Canas asked.
"Ninety-nine percent," Busby said.
"Not good enough. Have one of our people seen it?"
"Give me a few minutes," Busby said.
It did not take long for Busby to get absolute confirmation: Steve Murphy had turned over Escobar's body and had looked into the lifeless face of the man who had been the most powerful criminal in the world.
Busby called Canas back.
"Got him," he said. "Dead. Got him. Gone forever."
At the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, a party erupted. Champagne bottles popped. Banners were draped that read "P.E.G. DEAD." Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was finally gone.
Ambassador Busby felt a deep sense of satisfaction. After nearly 20 years of counterterrorism work, he felt this was the most impressive feat he had ever been involved with. They had stuck with the chase for 15 hard, frustrating, bloody months. The effort had involved U.S. military, diplomatic and law enforcement agencies spanning two administrations and two continents.
It had been ugly. Since Escobar's escape from prison in July 1992, 209 people associated with Escobar or the Medellin cartel had been killed. Fifty-two of Escobar's associates had been captured, and another 29 had turned themselves in under a generous government surrender offer.
Busby visited the Presidential Palace that afternoon to personally congratulate President Cesar Gaviria. Extra editions of the Bogota newspapers were already on the street. El Espectador ran an enormous page one headline that read "FINALEMENTE SI CAHO" (FINALLY, HE'S DOWN). Gaviria signed a copy for the ambassador.
The death of Pablo Escobar may have been cause for celebration in official circles in Washington and Bogota, but for many Colombians, especially in Medellin, it was an occasion for grief. Thousands attended Escobar's funeral, following his casket through the streets. They swarmed to get closer, and some mourners opened the casket lid to stroke the dead man's face.
There were chants of "We love you, Pablo!" and "Long Live Pablo Escobar!" There were shouts of anger toward the government, and threats of revenge.
Escobar was their martyr, slain by a government they believed had persecuted him. Even today, it is not unusual to find Escobar's framed photograph in Colombian homes.
Escobar's grave is still carefully tended. It is framed by flowering bushes, and ornate iron bars support three flowering pots. On the simple gravestone there is a photograph of a mustachioed Pablo in a business suit.
On the day Escobar was killed, Col. Hugo Martinez ran into the hideout and found the drug boss' portable phone. That was his trophy. He used it to phone his superior, Maj. Luis Estupinan, to congratulate him on the kill.
That evening, the men of the Search Bloc in Medellin partied late. Col. Martinez and his son Hugo did not join them. Such overt displays were not the colonel's style. When the men began firing their weapons into the air, the colonel put an end to the party.
The next morning, the colonel, Hugo and some of the other top men in the Search Bloc were honored in Bogota. That evening, back at their home, the colonel's youngest son, Gustavo, age 10, was looking through a sack of Escobar's personal items that the colonel had collected. In the bag was a small loaded handgun. As Gustavo examined it, the gun went off.
The bullet scratched the skin of his belly, but the boy wasn't seriously hurt. The colonel gathered up the items and delivered them that night to police headquarters, as though they were a curse.
Martinez says he still feels haunted by the dead drug boss. He says he derived personal satisfaction from Escobar's death, and he finally got his promotion to general, but he paid a heavy price.
"When I think about Pablo Escobar, I think of him as an episode in my life that completely altered the way I was living," Martinez said in an interview last summer in his home village of Mosquera. "I don't blame him as a person or anything like that. However, being involved in those operations, I abandoned my family and my sons who needed me in what was a crucial time in their lives."
Martinez was accused of accepting money from the Cali cartel and of being involved with the illegal activities of Los Pepes - accusations he denies. He said the allegations were first made by Escobar himself, and spread by the Colombian press.
Martinez was never charged with any crime. For a while, for safety reasons, he considered moving with his wife and family to Argentina. But just as he began to inquire about emigrating there, he read news reports that Pablo Escobar's wife and son had been arrested there. Martinez said he felt sympathy for Escobar's family.
"Just as I was trying to go someplace else for security, so were they," he said. "I hurt to see they are still suffering for something that happened so long ago. They are also trying to escape from all that."
Escobar's wife and children are believed to still own a substantial part of his illicit fortune. They live under assumed names in Buenos Aires, where Maria Victoria and Juan Pablo were charged in 1999 with attempting to illegally launder money. A family lawyer says Juan Pablo works for a computer graphics company, and Manuela, who is still a teenager, is a student.
Not long after Escobar's death, Juan Pablo paid an unexpected visit to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. He asked to see Busby, who called downstairs to Toft.
"Hey, Joe, Pablo Escobar's son is downstairs. I'm not going to see him, OK?"
Toft agreed to meet with Juan Pablo. He stepped into the room to encounter a soft-looking young man. Toft was impressed with the boy's poise under the circumstances.
"He told me that he and his family were in great danger, and they were appealing for visas to save their lives," Toft remembers.
"What will it take for me to get a visa?" Juan Pablo asked.
"All of the cocaine and cocaine money in the world would not get you a visa," Toft told him.
Juan Pablo did not appear surprised by the answer.
"Are you sure we can do nothing?" he asked again. "Is there anything, anything we could do to earn a visa?"
"Even if you helped put the whole Cali cartel in jail we would not give you a visa," Toft told him.
And Juan Pablo left.
During the celebration at the embassy after Escobar was killed, Toft felt a knot in his stomach. He felt it all the while he was smiling, embracing colleagues, talking to the Colombian press. Toft was troubled by a feeling that somehow, they had sold their souls to the devil.
Even so, he framed a certificate presented by DEA Special Agent Kenny Magee to those directly involved in manhunt. It read, in part: "Because of your selfless dedication and willing sacrifices, the world's most sought after criminal was located and killed. . . ." At the bottom were the signature and thumbprint of Pablo Escobar.
In his briefings in Washington over the previous year, Toft had soft-pedaled evidence of links between his own agency and the vigilantes of Los Pepes. He knew his agents had seen self-confessed Los Pepes leaders at the headquarters of the Search Bloc, the police team funded and guided by the United States.
He knew that certain murders of Escobar associates by Los Pepes came after the victims had been located by U.S. intelligence, and the information had been passed to the Search Bloc. On the one hand, Los Pepes were dismantling Escobar's Medellin cartel and stripping away the layers of protection around him. On the other hand, their brutal methods troubled Toft's conscience.