Catching Escobar

Oct. 28—In the early 1990s, narcoterroist Pablo Escobar had placed $300,000 bounties on the heads of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña.

"When you first hear that, it's a little bit disconcerting, because this is a mass murderer," Murphy said. "But honestly, you just get used to it. You stay hyper-vigilant. You're always aware of your surroundings, but you can't dwell on it because it will prevent you from thinking clearly and you won't get your job done. That'll just block everything you're trying to do. I know it sounds silly, but you just kind of forget about it. It's part of the job."

Despite the danger to their lives, Murphy and Peña were involved in the investigation into Escobar and the Medellín Cartel up until his death in 1993.

The men came to Lebanon's Cumberland University Wednesday to share their story with students and community members. While sitting in Cumberland University's Alumni Hall, Peña recalled a particularly close call while in Colombia.

"They were coming after me in my apartment in Bogotá," Peña said. "Intelligence found out, so I was ordered to move. I'll always remember that phone call ... 'Are you in your apartment?' ... 'Yes sir' ... 'Get your gun. Don't do anything else. Get out of there as soon as you can. Drive to the embassy.' I said, 'What?' They said, 'We'll tell you here, but they're coming right for you.' The threats were always there on a daily basis."

Peña said that the biggest threat was being at the wrong place at the wrong time because of the car bombs that Escobar used.

"He was putting them anywhere he could," Peña said. "He was putting them outside our base when people were leaving. A lot of police officers lost their lives. He put bounties on police officers. (It was) $100 a head for a human life. Thousands of police officers lost their lives. This was a personal war (between) the Colombian National Police to Pablo Escobar."

Peña arrived in Colombia in 1988. There, he was assigned to the Escobar case.

"We never realized how big he was," Peña said. "We just thought he was (drug) a trafficker, but then, when he started using the terrorism is when it got out of control. Pablo Escobar had more than 500 sicarios (hired gunmen) working for him."

Murphy arrived in Colombia the same week that Escobar surrendered in 1991. The following year, Escobar escaped from prison.

"These guys were ecstatic because they got another chance to go after him," Murphy said.

The day after Escobar escaped, Peña and Murphy were flown to Medellín to collaborate with the Colombian National Police, where they would stay for 18 months.

"It got to the point where one of us had to be in Medellín, and one of us had to be in Bogotá at all times," Murphy said. "They wouldn't let us take vacation at the same time. One of us always had to be in country. Whoever was in Medellín was going out on operations and collecting intelligence."

The pair were sharing the information they gathered with DEA agents around the world.

"Then, the United States came up with a bounty on Pablo Escobar," Peña said. "It got to be $5 million. A lot of great intelligence came from from that hotline, and guess who answered the hotline. It was Steve and I. We were the hotline, so we got a lot of good intelligence from there."

All the while, the pair worked alongside the Colombian National Police.

"There was times we wanted to give up," Peña said. "It was (said) just let's let him surrender and have his own way again, but when you see your police officers and civilians getting killed, the search for Pablo Escobar was based on killing or capturing Pablo Escobar (with) whatever methods we had to take."

The moment where the tide turned, Peña said, came two months before Escobar's capture.

"We got a hold of his frequency (for) radio communication," Peña said. "So, the search is hot now. It's hot in that we heard him talking. That reinverated the whole search block."

On Dec. 2, 1993, Escobar was found in a house in Medellín. Police breached a three-story row house, where Escobar and a hired gunman ran up the steps to the top floor. The gunman left through the window, dropping on to the roof of a two-story house before shooting at police and was killed.

According to Murphy, Escobar could hear the gunshots beyond the window as police were making their way upstairs.

"He's got no alternative," Murphy said. "He jumps out that window. He's trying to hug the wall so the guys on the ground can't see him, but he knows that there's going to be cops in that window here in just a minute."

When the police reach the window, Escobar is ordered to stop.

"He starts shooting at them and makes a dash across the roof," Murphy said. "They shoot him. He's hit three times and ultimately killed."

While neither Murphy nor Peña were on scene when Escobar was killed, both of them remember how they felt when they heard the news.

"It was something that needed to happen," Peña said. "I think a lot of innocent people were saved because Pablo was killed."

This is the eighth year that Peña and Murphy have been traveling the world telling their story.

"We want the world to know the truth," Murphy said. "Pablo Escobar was not a Robin Hood. He was not a dedicated family man. There's nothing magnanimous about this guy whatsoever. He's nothing more than a mass murderer responsible — according to his own people — for as many as 50,000 murders. He was responsible for 80% of the world's cocaine at one point. He was just one of the most violent people."