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Flip is where social and emotional learning happens! The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families.

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This video is an interview with the DEA agents that are credited with killing Escobar.

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Steve Murphy & Javier Pena -Interview with Wall Street Journal-

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"Steve & Javier are the retired DEA Agents responsible for apprehending the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. Their story has been featured in the television program Narcos." Have Steve and Javier speak at your next event. https://www.espeakers.com/marketplace/speaker/profile/27412

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This video shows Escobar's beloved son being interviewed.

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Interview with Sebastian Marroquin (the son of Pablo Escobar)

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This video shows clips from one of Escobar's few interviews.

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Steve Murphy & Javier Pena - Television Interview

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Pablo Escobar: Drug Money 'Permeated' Colombian State

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20 years after his death, a never before aired interview with Pablo Escobar reveals drug money had already penetrated the Colombian state, according to the drug capo.

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This article gives background information on Los Pepe's, a violent group that took violent measures to take down Escobar.

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Los Pepes, a name derived from the Spanish phrase " Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar" (" Persecuted by Pablo Escobar"), was a short-lived vigilante group composed of enemies of Pablo Escobar. They waged a small-scale war against the Medellín Cartel in the early 1990s, which ended in 1993 with Escobar's death.

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This article gives background information on how La Violencia, a time of extreme tragedy and violence in Colombia, started.

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La Violencia in Colombia

The transfer of power in 1946 ignited tensions between the Liberal and Conservative parties, resulting in violent political conflict, particularly in rural areas. The loss of peace foreboded the return to competitive and exclusionary politics, similar to the situation preceding the War of a Thousand Days. In the 1940s and 1950s, however, violence and exclusion more than threatened the political system; they ruptured it. A democratically elected administration became repressive and dictatorial, which led to its overthrow by the sole military coup in the twentieth century. Only by having the reins of power taken from both of their hands did the traditional elites recognize that the most effective way to avoid interparty civil wars and possible military dictatorships was to join forces and restrain their competitive tendencies.

In 1946 Conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez assumed office and was faced with the difficult task of ruling from a minority position, as Liberals had received the majority of all presidential votes and continued to control Congress. Ospina tried to confront this situation by incorporating Liberals into a coalition government. Meanwhile, the level of political rivalry intensified in the countryside, where Conservatives pursued a course of violence in an attempt to consolidate power after sixteen years out of office. Liberals retaliated and, under Jorge Eliecer Gaitán's leadership, became highly mobilized in their demands that the Ospina government confront the social needs of the modernizing and urbanizing nation.

Gaitanism, the populist social movement led by Gaitán as a faction of the Liberal Party, increased dramatically between 1946 and 1948. Gaitán supported the democratic rather than the revolutionary path to reforms. By advocating the passage of more socially liberal policies, he appealed to the masses and he united urban workers and campesinos. As the movement grew, observers believed that Gaitán would be elected president, which may have happened had he lived to see the next election.

Liberal victories in the 1947 congressional elections demonstrated the party's strength among the electorate. Ospina became increasingly concerned with retaining
Conservative control and provoked Liberals further by resorting frequently to police enforcement of Conservative privileges in the rural areas. The Liberal
appointees in his government resigned in protest in March 1948.

The following month, the inevitable explosion occurred in the form of the most violent and destructive riot in the country's long history of conflict. On April 9, Gaitán
was assassinated at midday in the heart of Bogotá. An angry mob immediately seized and killed the assassin. In the ensuing riot, some 2,000 people were killed, and
a large portion of downtown Bogotá was destroyed. The Bogotazo, as the episode came to be called, was an expression of mass social frustration and grief by a
people who had lost the man who represented their only potential link to the decision-making process.

Although order was restored in Bogotá and Ospina remained in control, the tempo of rural violence quickened to a state of undeclared civil war known as la
violencia. La violencia claimed over 200,000 lives during the next eighteen years, with the bloodiest period occurring between 1948 and 1958. La violencia
spread throughout the country, especially in the Andes and the llanos (plains), sparing only the southernmost portion of Nariño and parts of the Caribbean coastal
area. An extremely complex phenomenon, la violencia was characterized by both partisan political rivalry and sheer rural banditry. The basic cause of this
protracted period of internal disorder, however, was the refusal of successive governments to accede to the people's demands for socioeconomic change.

After the Bogotazo, the Ospina government became more repressive. Ospina banned public meetings in March 1949 and fired all Liberal governors in May. In
November of that year, Ospina ordered the army to forcibly close Congress. Rural police forces heightened the effort against belligerents and Liberals, and
eventually all Liberals, from the ministerial to the local level, resigned their posts in protest.

In the 1949 presidential election, the Liberals refused to present a candidate; as a result, Laureano Gómez, the only Conservative candidate, took office in 1950. Gómez, who had opposed the Ospina administration for its initial complicity with the Liberals, was firmly in control of the party. As leader of the reactionary faction, he preferred authority, hierarchy, and order and was contemptuous of universal suffrage and majority rule. Gómez offered a program that combined traditional Conservative republicanism with the European corporatism of the time. A neofascist constitution drafted under his guidance in 1953 would have enhanced the autonomy of the presidency, expanded the powers of departmental governors, and strengthened the official role of the church in the political system.

Gómez acquired broad powers and curtailed civil liberties in an attempt to confront the mounting violence and the possibility that the Liberals might regain power.
Pro-labor laws passed in the 1930s were canceled by executive decree, independent labor unions were struck down, congressional elections were held without
opposition, the press was censored, courts were controlled by the executive, and freedom of worship was challenged as mobs attacked Protestant chapels. Gómez
directed his repression in particular against the Liberal opposition, which he branded as communist. At the height of the violence, the number of deaths reportedly
reached 1,000 per month.

Despite the relative prosperity of the economy--owing largely to expansion of the country's export markets and increased levels of foreign investment--Gómez lost
support because of protracted violence and his attacks on moderate Conservatives and on the military establishment. Because of illness, in November 1951 Gómez
allowed his first presidential designate, Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, to become acting president until Gómez could reassume the presidency. Although Urdaneta
followed Gómez's policies, he refused to dismiss General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, whom Gómez suspected of conspiring against the government. When Gómez tried
to return to office in June 1953, a coalition consisting of moderate Conservatives who supported Ospina, the PL, and the armed forces deposed him and installed a
military government. They viewed such action as the only way to end the violence. Rojas Pinilla, who had led the coup d'état, assumed the presidency.

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The transfer of power in 1946 ignited tensions between the Liberal and
Conservative parties, resulting in violent political conflict, particularly
in rural areas. The loss of peace foreboded the return to competitive and
exclusionary politics, similar to the situation preceding the War of a
Thousand Days. In the 1940s and 1950s, however, violence and exclusion
more than threatened the political system; they ruptured it. A democratically
elected administration became repressive and dictatorial, which led to
its overthrow by the sole military coup in the twentieth century. Only
by having the reins of power taken from both of their hands did the traditional
elites recognize that the most effective way to avoid interparty civil
wars and possible military dictatorships was to join forces and restrain
their competitive tendencies.

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This is an article that gives a synopsis of the events in Colombia during the time period that Escobar was at large.

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AFP

On December 2, 1993, Pablo Escobar, the wealthiest drug kingpin the world has ever seen, attempted to flee from a hideout in his home base of Medellín, Colombia, by scrambling across a neighboring rooftop.

Instead, he was cut down by gunfire, and the resulting image has been seared into the public memory - the bloody corpse of the world's most powerful drug lord splayed across a tile roof in the city that was once his safest redoubt.

US Government Photo

The other men in that image, a group of Colombian troops, have long been regarded as the ones responsible for delivering to Escobar the justice he had so long avoided.

But accounts from rival traffickers and gang members, intelligence documents, and Escobar's own family indicate that those troops, soldiers backed by the legitimacy of the state, may not have been responsible for the demise of El Patron.

Bloque de Búsqueda

In late 1989, after a series of bloody humiliations dealt by Escobar to the forces and officials of the Colombian government, then-President Virgilio Barco created a special police unit to deal with the kingpin and his cartel.

While its initial encounters with the Medellín network left the Bloque de Búsqueda, or Search Bloc, dazed and weakened, it eventually became a hardened task force that hunted down Escobar and his associates.

Assisted by US special forces, US Army intelligence, and members of the CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration, the Search Bloc pursued Escobar throughout 1992 and 1993. According to official accounts, it was the Search Bloc that ultimately killed Escobar.

Sins of my Father

On December 2, 1993, one day after Escobar's birthday - according to Mark Bowden's book " Killing Pablo," he celebrated with marijuana, a birthday cake, and wine - the Search Bloc tracked the drug baron to Los Olivos neighborhood in Medellín.

The Search Bloc was able to converge on the house where Escobar was speaking on the phone with his son.

In Bowden's account, despite all of the group's gadgets, a positive ID was made only when a member spotted Escobar through a second-story window.

Members of the Search Bloc surrounded the home while others stormed through the door. Alerted, Escobar and a bodyguard stumbled out a back window onto an orange-tiled roof. They were met with a hail of gunfire, and both fell from shots to their heads - Escobar with one that entered his right ear and killed him instantly.

Once the gun blasts had subsided, Col. Hugo Martinez, the Search Bloc leader who had pursued Escobar for three bloody years but was not on the scene, heard one of his men shouting into the radio. "Viva Colombia!" the soldier said. "We have just killed Pablo Escobar!"

Reports emerged afterward that Escobar had gone down firing his own weapon, and the confusion of the encounter has left the question of who fired the fatal shot open to speculation.

Los Pepes

In January 1993, according to Bowden, a new group had joined the hunt for Escobar. "Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar," or People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar - known as Los Pepes - was made up of rival drug traffickers, paramilitaries, and others scorned by the Medellín cartel boss.

Screen grab

Earlier, in mid-1992, Pablo's execution of two lieutenants had broken his cartel into warring factions.

And according to journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, who spoke with a former Los Pepes member, the group was most likely led by former members of the Medellín cartel who, seeking vengeance, had offered money to members of Escobar's crew, members of the Search Bloc, or anyone else who was willing to take on the kingpin.

Los Pepes were, in Bowden's words, "some extralegal muscle ... who didn't mind crossing the lines of legality and morality that Pablo so blithely ignored." Many in the Colombian government were said to be open to their participation in the hunt.

According DEA documents cited by Bowden, the group probably received funding from the rival Cali cartel and likely got information from the Colombian National Police and, allegedly, American intelligence agents operating in the country.

A 2015 court ruling ordered the CIA to release more documents that could shed light on the suspected cooperation between the American government, Colombian security forces, and Los Pepes.

Wikimedia Commons

Los Pepes quickly mounted a campaign that rivaled that of Escobar's in sheer violence. In early 1993, there were up to six killings a day. Low-level cartel managers, former state officials linked to the cartel, Escobar's attorneys - anyone was fair game.

Escobar retaliated with more bombings in urban areas, and Los Pepes responded in kind, destroying numerous properties belonging to Escobar and his associates.

An account from Diego Fernando Murillo, aka Don Berna - a central figure in Los Pepes, according to Insight Crime - also indicates that members of Los Pepes accompanied the Search Bloc on its raid of Escobar's hideout in Medellín.

In Don Berna's telling, it was his brother, Rodolfo, who delivered the coup de grace, shooting Escobar in the head with an M-16.

Tom Griggs

Despite evidence that the Search Bloc was working with Los Pepes - and evidence, cited by Bowden, that Don Berna worked with both the Search Bloc and the DEA - the accuracy of Don Berna's account hasn't been confirmed.

A 2003 confession by a former paramilitary member seemed to corroborate Don Berna's claim that it was a joint operation.

"It was an agreement that they had because Escobar was a common enemy," said the former fighter.

Colombian Government Photo

However, paramilitary leader Fidel Castaño, a cofounder of Los Pepes, had previously denied such involvement, saying in a 1994 interview that it "never performed any operation with the Search Bloc."

"The operation during which Escobar was killed was realized exclusively by the police, as is public knowledge," he said.

Here, too, Bowden's account contradicts Castaño's, describing missions on which the paramilitary leader accompanied the Search Bloc, as well as a DEA cable that referred to Castaño as "a cooperating individual."

Pablo himself

A third actor to whom Escobar's death has been attributed is Escobar himself.

His son, Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, who has changed his name to Sebastián Marroquín, has insisted that his father took his own life on that Medellín rooftop.

"I have no doubt" that Pablo Escobar planned his own death, Marroquín said in a 2014 interview.

In his book, " Pablo Escobar: My Father" released that year, Marroquín detailed the basis for his claim. Escobar told his son numerous times that he would shoot himself in the right ear to avoid being captured alive, he said.

Moreover, images of the drug lord on the rooftop show his Sig Sauer pistol, which Marroquín says his father would've used to shoot himself, lying next to his body.

Other members of the Escobar family have posed this theory. After an exhumation of the drug baron's body led by his mother and widow in 2006, the family said a hole in his head confirmed the theory that the fatal wound had been self-inflicted.

But according to Martinez, a gunshot from within 3 feet would've left gunpowder marks on Escobar's skin - marks that are not visible in autopsy photos, according to Bowden.

Reuters

The question of who killed Pablo Escobar is likely to go unresolved, probably by design.

His death, like his life, left a dark stain on Colombia, and the commitment to forgetting how he died seems to be one shared by Colombians and Americans alike.

"Nobody is ever going to tell you" whether Los Pepes killed Escobar or if it was someone else, an American soldier involved in the hunt told Bowden. "You have to surmise."

SEE ALSO: Pablo Escobar may be long gone, but his hippos are still causing problems for Colombia

NOW READ: Meet the cocaine-addled, Hitler-obsessed drug smuggler who tried to take down Pablo Escobar

NOW WATCH: Inside the dangerous life of Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo'

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23 years ago Pablo Escobar was gunned down in his hometown, but his killing remains shrouded in mystery

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On December 2, 1993, Pablo Escobar, the wealthiest drug kingpin the world has ever seen, attempted to flee from a hideout in his home base of Medellín, Colombia, by scrambling across a neighboring rooftop.

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This article shows the perspective of the DEA Agents credited with killing Escobar, more specifically about their portrayal in the show Narcos.

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Steve Murphy and Javier Pena (who are portrayed by Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal, respectively, on the Netflix series) take THR inside some of the drug cartel saga's biggest plot points.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from the second season of Narcos.]
For anyone wondering what the real DEA agents behind Narcos think about their portrayal on the Netflix series, Steve Murphy sums it up.

"We don't binge-watch TV, but we binge-watched season two," Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter about blowing through the second season of the cartel drama with his wife in two days. "That's how much we enjoyed it."

Pena adds to THR, "The intrigue, the suspense - it's really well done. There's stuff in there that's never been told."

Murphy (played by Boyd Holbrook) and Pena (played by Pedro Pascal) are the two agents responsible for taking down Pablo Escobar. Their hunt for the notorious Medellin Cartel leader was told on the first two seasons of Narcos, where both agents serve as series consultants. The finale of the second season re-created the kingpin's final moments during a rooftop shootout in Medellin, Colombia. (Netflix confirmed the return of Pascal as Pena, while Holbrook's Murphy remains up in the air.)

After Escobar's death on Dec. 2, 1993, Murphy and Pena were approached to bring their story to Hollywood. "We tried to do something with a couple of people and they would come up with these wacko ideas about what they wanted to do," Murphy recalls. "We kept on getting disappointed and it wasn't worth the grief."

So the pair blew off forthcoming offers, until they met with those who would become the creators of Narcos. "The only stipulation Javier and I have is: Whoever we do this with cannot in any way glorify Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel," Murphy recalls telling showrunner Eric Newman during a dinner in Washington, D.C. "We just hit it off. Eric has lived up to his word 100 percent."

Though Narcos is a dramatization, Newman told THR the series is 50-50 when it comes to fiction and nonfiction, and that they stick to the true chronology of events. "We told them how it actually happened," says Pena. "There's some artistic licenses, but the timeline is accurate."

Here, Murphy and Pena take THR behind some of the biggest moments of the second season and delve further into a story that, despite its infamy, still had details that were only now brought to light.

"Let me break it down for you: 4,000 soldiers, a 250-man team of Colombia's elite forces, tens of thousands of rounds fired, seven dogs and four f-ing helicopters. Pablo Escobar was surrounded in the middle of f-in' nowhere. There was no way he was getting out of this one, right?"

The second season opens with the above words from narrator Steve Murphy as played by Holbrook. Pablo Escobar is then shown in the wilderness, where a group of Colombian police who are frozen with fear simply let him pass. Thus, the 18-month manhunt for Escobar ensues.

"That's pretty accurate," Pena says of the blunder. "When Escobar surrendered, many of the original Search Bloc guys got foreign assignments, which is what everybody aspires to, as a reward. So after Escobar escapes, those guys weren't there."

In the beginning of season two, Connie Murphy (played by Joanna Christie) left Steve Murphy behind in Colombia. Fed up with the danger, she took the pair's adopted daughter and abruptly flew back to the United States.

"When Connie read that her character was going back to Miami, she got upset," Murphy recalls. "She actually talked to Eric [Newman] about it and said: 'I've just got one bone to pick with you, I would have never left my husband there!' Eric took it in good stride. [ Laughs.]"

Connie, whom Steve calls "one of the bravest women I've ever met," actually stayed at their home in Bogota while the agent spent most of the 18 months covered on season two hunting Escobar from Medellin. (The pair also have not one but two adopted daughters from Colombia.)

Connie's departure, however, worked well for the drama. Steve subsequently fell into a downward spiral when abandoned by his family, overcome with emotion from a simultaneous realization that he might be the only "good guy" left. "The violence that's depicted is all true: Pablo and his people are some of the most violent people to ever walk this earth," he said about experiencing similar feelings. "So you learn who you trust."

As the season progresses, more than one of the "good guys" reveal themselves to be in cahoots with Los Pepes, the death squad led by right-wing vigilantes the Castano brothers. Trujillo (Jorge Monterrosa), it is discovered, has been feeding Los Pepes information to aid in the hunting of Escobar and his men.

"There was a lot of corruption," says Murphy. "The corruption was even worse in the military. We worked primarily with the police, and they were the guys that we trusted with our lives. They kept us alive when we were out doing operations."

He continues, "One of the majors that we worked with, who we literally put our lives in his hands for an extended period of time, we later found out that he was collaborating with Los Pepes. I think he retired from the Colombian National Police and did some work with the Cali Cartel until they were taken down, and I think he eventually went to prison. To find out that he could have taken us out at any time he wanted to, we kind of attribute it to the grace of God. That's the only thing that kept us alive."

Trujillo, who is based on a person whose name has been changed, is also the Colombian cop who ends up pulling the final trigger on Escobar in the season finale.

The first season spanned more than a decade as it detailed the rise of Escobar, but the second focused on the 18 months between his escape from La Catedral prison and his eventual death. By shortening the timeline, Newman was able to focus more on the characters, including his villain. "It's very dangerous to draw a picture of someone as inhuman," he has said. "If you do that, you deny the human side of these guys, which is what allows them to happen."

For Murphy, he says it's important to draw a strong line between the humanization of the character on the series and any takeaways that the real Escobar had good intentions.

"We tend to say he was a Robin Hood guy because he took some of his ill-gotten gain and helped the poor, but that's all fantasy," he says. "Pablo really was a manipulator. Now those people all of a sudden became 100 percent loyal to Pablo, willing to give their lives to protect him and work for him."

He also downright rejects the notion that Escobar was truly devoted to his family: " Fortune says he's worth as much as 30 billion dollars. Even if he's only worth 5 billion dollars, those numbers are astronomical. This guy got the deal of a lifetime from the government of Colombia. He was allowed to plead guilty to one crime and be absolved of every other crime he committed. He was sentenced to five years in his custom-built prison, which was a resort. There were no stipulations that he had to turn over any of his assets: He could have walked away a free man and never have had to work again. He could have watched his children grow up. But we all know, that's not what he chose to do. He chose the drug business, he chose his greed and his ego over his family. That's not a dedicated family man."

The real leader of the Search Bloc, Hugo Martinez, is still alive today. "Colonels Carrillo and Pinzon are both based on Colonel Hugo Martinez," Newman has explained. "In reality, Martinez and his son catch Escobar, but we liked the idea of killing Carrillo [Maurice Compte]. Carrillo's death, in episode four, is my favorite, I hope it really surprised people."

The narrative decision did surprise Murphy, who said the writers did a "wonderful job."

"We went from Pinzon, who was basically an obstacle for us, to Martinez. When he got there it was like, 'Wow, He's here to take care of business.' Just his appearance and demeanor commands respect. For us that was great because here's a can-do guy and our ambassador at the U.S. embassy was a can-do guy, so all of the pieces just fell into place for us to move forward. I hated to see Maurice's character get killed, but it was very exciting. The writers just really astound me. They're well-versed, it was pretty neat working with them."

Judy Moncada (Cristina Umana) was a major player in the alliance of enemies who formed to take down Escobar, until her own partners took her out. Betrayed by Don Berna (Mauricio Cujar), the narco is shipped off to the United States and Pena's plan to bring her on as an informant is foiled in the season finale.

Pena tells THR the real Moncada was a "major force behind Los Pepes" and that they were told Don Berna was an informant working with the Search Bloc, authorized by the then-Attorney General.

"We never signed him up as a DEA informant, but he was at the base and I could always tell there was something weird," he says, adding that after Escobar's death, Don Berna went on to become a trafficker and is now in prison in the United States. "After Escobar is killed, maybe two or three years later, we find out the real truth that one of our officers at the Search Bloc was hand-in-hand with Los Pepes."

As for the Narcos storyline that shows Pena having a relationship with Don Berna, the agent says he was fine with the drama: "We never crossed that line, but that's what makes the show exciting and interesting."

The penultimate episode sees Escobar retreating to his father's farm. With the walls closing in and only his driver, Limon (Leynar Gomez), left alive, he knocks on the elder Escobar's door and enjoys an extended stay with his estranged parent.

Newman has said the storyline was fictionalized (though Escobar did predecease his father, who was a farmer and estranged from the family) and Murphy says they weren't sure of his whereabouts at that point in the timeline.

"Javier and I were manning the 1-800 number but people would call in with all kinds of tips because there was a $500 reward on the table," he says. "But we felt that he was still in Medellin or in the immediate area. That was home, where he felt comfortable and knew people. Everybody was willing to hide him. That's where his stronghold was and given his situation, I can't imagine he would leave that area."

Pena adds of Escobar's final days: "He was running out of money and he was running out of time. We put a lot of pressure on and it was that relentless pressure that we later learned is what really got him killed."

Newman also said little was known about Victoria "Tata" Escobar (Paulina Gaitan) at the time. Murphy says they didn't focus on her, but that her portrayal on the show was aligned with what they could piece together.

"She was benefiting from all the illegal things her husband was doing," he says about Tata, who was 15 when she married 24-year-old Pablo. "She knew, just like his mother, what he was doing. But they had gotten comfortable in that lifestyle. They basically had anything that you could ever dream of. She took full advantage of her husband's business, his station in life and certainly all the assets and benefits that having that much money brings. They had hundreds of people working at Hacienda Napoles. She lived like a queen."

The finale shows Tata Escobar swallowing her pride and attempting to appeal to Gilberto (Damian Alcazar) for compassion when she asks her husband's enemy for help getting her family out of Colombia. On the series, Gilberto agrees, as long as she hands over all of her assets.

Escobar's son, Juan Pablo, details the days after his father's death in his book, Pablo Escobar: My Father. Though Murphy says he has no respect for Juan Pablo ("He's trying to save face for his family and create a better legacy than his father left behind"), he admits that his side of what the family had faced after Pablo's death was interesting.

"We had always heard that Tata sent Juan Pablo to Cali to talk to the Rodriguez brothers and say, 'Hey, it's over, we're sorry, can we live here without fear?'" he says. "The Colombian national police told us that Cali told Juan Pablo: 'You guys got 24 hours and then you're a target. You have 24 hours to leave Colombia.'"

He continues, "In his book, he says they were trying to negotiate with the Rodriguez brothers, who were very upset by the war, and what they wanted was his assets. He talks about how Tata had to personally go negotiate these different surrendering of assets to all the Cali Cartel traffickers. He says they had to give up everything. I don't believe what he says, so I don't know if it's true or not. But that was probably the most interesting thing of that book."

The family did ultimately leave Colombia for Argentina. They changed their names but shortly after, their identities were discovered and Tata was arrested on suspicion of money laundering. "Juan Pablo writes that they were trumped-up charges and says they were dismissed." (The 1999 charges were dismissed, according to a BBC News report, and not much is known about her life beyond that point.)

Pablo Escobar died in a rooftop shootout in Medellin on Dec. 2, 1993. He was shot three times: in the leg, torso and fatally in his ear. Since that day, theories have proliferated as to who fired the fatal shot; Newman has shot down every single one, including Juan Pablo's claim that his father turned his gun on himself.

Pena was called away for a daylong assignment, but Murphy was on the scene the day they caught Escobar. Though he wasn't on the rooftop until after Escobar was gunned down (a photo of Murphy posing with Escobar's corpse is easily searchable), he was the only one with a camera before the media arrived.

Of Juan Pablo's theory that the shot was self-inflicted with Escobar's semiautomatic pistol, which was found next to his body, Murphy explains: "I saw Pablo up close and I have photographs of him. When a gun is held close to any part of your body and a bullet is fired, little pieces of gun powder come out. They only travel a short distance, a few feet, but it strikes the body and leaves what's called powder burns. I saw the bullet hole in the side of Pablo's head, I saw no signs whatsoever of the powder burns on his face. So that's how I know he didn't commit suicide."

Murphy arrived on the scene with Colonel Hugo Martinez, head of the Search Bloc, and says the Colombian national police are the true heroes: "They were the guys that we worked with who would keep us alive and they're the ones who told us what happened. We have no reason to disbelieve them."

As for the photographs in which he and other members of the Colombian police are smiling while posing with Escobar's dead body, Murphy says, "The reason I was smiling is because we knew, effective that moment, every citizen in Colombia was safer simply because one man died."

Pena calls it ironic that he wasn't in Medellin the day they caught Escobar, but says it doesn't matter because justice was served. "What matters is that he was killed," he says. "It was revenge for a person that killed thousands and thousands of innocent civilians and police officers, including a couple of my good friends."

After news of Narcos' two-season renewal, Newman said the third season will focus on Escobar's successor, the Cali Cartel. On Oct. 12, with filming of the third season underway in Colombia, Netflix confirmed Pascal's return with a season-three photo. "The blow must go on. Pablo might be dead but the war is not over," the series tweeted from its official account. The streamer has yet to comment on the status of Holbrook's Murphy, however, and both Murphy and Pena couldn't comment on their future involvement with the series when speaking to THR.

They did, however, confirm when they left Colombia: After vacationing with his wife, the Murphys moved back to the United States in June 1994. They adopted their second daughter in May before they returned. Pena left in October 1994.

The season two finale set up a return for Pena, even though both of the real agents indicated they weren't involved in the real hunt for Cali. "The Medellin Cartel was the Wild Wild West and Cali was businesslike," explains Pena. "They were accountants, professional money-launderers. They were more sophisticated and very different cartels. Cali moved a lot of dope and sent more to the U.S."

It remains to be seen whether Newman will take liberty with both agents' timelines to also keep Holbrook onboard, but Murphy did have this to tease on a final note: "The agent who was there when the Cali Cartel was taken down, I think you'll see him in season three."

THR confirmed that two new DEA agents have been added as series regulars for season three: Michael Stahl-David ( Show Me a Hero) as Chris Feistl and New Zealand actor Matt Whelan as his partner, Daniel Van Ness. Feistl is described as being the more serious of the two and a young agent who sought out assignment to Colombia as the drug trade shifts to Cali.

What's Hot on The Hollywood Reporter

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The Real DEA Agents of 'Narcos' Break Down What Season 2 Got Right

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Warning: This story contains spoilers from the second season of Narcos .] For anyone wondering what the real DEA agents behind Narcos think about their portrayal on the Netflix series, Steve Murphy sums it up. "We don't binge-watch TV, but we binge-watched season two," Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter about blowing through the second season of the cartel drama with his wife in two days.

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This website described similarities between various drug lords, including Escobar.

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Billionaire Mexican drug cartel king Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera's time as a free man appears to be short-lived: Mexican police acknowledged Sunday that they nearly caught him in February.

Guzman, the Sinaloa drug cartel leader who controls an estimated 25% of the illegal drug trade from Mexico to the U.S., has reportedly been hiding out in a seaside mansion in Los Cabos. Mexican police barely missed capturing him three weeks ago, Mexico's assistant attorney general in charge of organized crime investigations, Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas, told the Associated Press on Sunday.

Sources say that the net appears to be closing in on the world's most powerful drug dealer. Guzman is spending more money to defend the cartel than in previous years, and he's expanded his activities outside his native country to avoid the heat from Mexican authorities. An additional indication that the footsteps are closing in: last year, Guzman reportedly sent his 22-year-old wife to Los Angeles County to give birth to the couple's twin daughters.

Despite Guzman's defensive spending, the Mexican government recently struck two significant blows against the Sinaloa empire: December 2011 brought the arrest of a top Sinaloa lieutenant, quickly followed in February by the capture of the leader of the cartel's armed wing.

Guzman appears on Forbes 2012 World's Billionaires List for the fourth year running. His admission to this elite set has always been controversial--last year the son of a famed Colombian drug dealer accused Forbes of "lying"--but Guzman is certainly not the first drug lord to make our list of the world's wealthiest. In 1987, we included Colombian cocaine tycoons Pablo Escobar Gaviria and the Ochoa brothers--Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez and his brothers Fabio and Juan David--on our first World's Billionaires List.

The reason for including these notorious names has always been, and continues to be, quite simple: they meet the financial qualifications. And they run successful private businesses--though their products are quite illegitimate.

Escobar's biography from the 1987 inaugural Forbes Billionaires issue reads like a how-to guide for ambitious, P.R.-savvy entrepreneurs: from a lowly position as smuggler, enforcer and bodyguard, Escobar worked his way to the top, first by saving enough money to invest in his own cocaine business. By 1978, Escobar was moving about 35 kilos of coke a month out of Medellin. He took over a Medellin newspaper, became influential in politics, and successfully ran for public office. He built houses for the poor, soccer fields, and a zoo for the public. Eventually, he was indicted on charges of cocaine marketing, money laundering, and contract killing. In 1987, Escobar controlled an estimated 40% of the Medellin drug cartel's business, and had accumulated at least $3 billion over the years, Forbes reported. Escobar remained on the Forbes Billionaires List for seven years, appearing for the final time in the July 1993 Billionaires issue. Five months later he was killed.

The Ochoa brothers followed a similar business plan, building their wealth by expanding their influence in the cocaine trade. Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez took over a cocaine exporting business in 1977 by having his boss executed, DEA sources told Forbes. Jorge was a founding member of the Medellin cartel; a meeting he convened in 1981 led to the development of the powerful network. He also developed a distribution network into the U.S. Fabio, on the other hand, was in charge of business development outside Colombia: he moved to Florida and was believed to have personally run thousands of pounds of cocaine out of a house in Coral Gables. By 1983, the family had acquired a fleet of 55 aircraft, including helicopters. Together, brothers Fabio, Juan David and Jorge eventually controlled 30% of the Medellin cartel's cocaine trade. Jorge was indicted by the U.S. government in 1984. Forbes said in 1987 that the brothers shared more than $2 billion. In January 1991, Jorge turned himself in to Colombian authorities; his brother Fabio followed, and Juan David became the final brother to surrender that February. The Ochoa brothers remained on the Forbes Billionaires List for six years, last appearing in the rankings in 1992. All three brothers are still living, Fabio in a U.S. prison.

In 1988, Forbes added Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha to our second World's Billionaires List. Rodriguez operated out of Bogota but had ties to the Medellin cartel; U.S. authorities said he was in charge of all cocaine distribution on the West Coast of the United States. Rodriguez rose to power as Escobar's lackey: he was alleged to have killed a left-wing Colombian political leader whose guerrilla activists were interfering with coca farmers, and he set up Yari laboratories, one of the world's largest cocaine production centers. Rodriguez helped expand the trade in Nicaragua with his ties to the Sandinistas; he also was said to have disguised his product as it was shipped into the U.S., tricking airport sniff dogs by embedding the cocaine with flower shipments. Forbes estimated Rodriguez's worth at $1.3 billion in 1988. The drug lord appeared on the Forbes Billionaires List only two years, with his second and final appearance in July 1989. Five months later, he was killed in a shootout with Colombian police.

As I mentioned before,S ebastian Marroquin, son of notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, said last year that we weren't right about Guzman--he accused Forbes of lying.

Forbes wasn't lying, of course. As we've written before, we value Guzman's fortune in the same way that we value the fortunes of all business people running private enterprises: by interviewing experts, government officials and academics who understand El Chapo's business. The first year that Forbes put Guzman on the billionaires list, we explained in the magazine how we calculated his net worth. You can read that story here.

Look, we don't like the fact that drug dealers make billions by ruining lives and shedding blood--but it's a cold, hard reality of the global economy. That's why we continue to cover people like Guzman.

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Billionaire Druglords: El Chapo Guzman, Pablo Escobar, The Ochoa Brothers

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Billionaire Mexican drug cartel king Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera's time as a free man appears to be short-lived: Mexican police acknowledged Sunday that they nearly caught him in February. Guzman, the Sinaloa drug cartel leader who controls an estimated 25% of the illegal drug trade from Mexico to the U.S., has reportedly been hiding out in a seaside mansion in Los Cabos.

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Escobar was a very interesting man with lots of quirks. This website tells stories about Escobar that display his quirkiness.

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At his extravagant estate in Puerto Triunfo, Escobar also built a private zoo filled with hippos, giraffes, elephants, and other animals. Hippos still roam the grounds today.

Escobar was responsible for killing about 4,000 people, including an estimated 200 judges and 1,000 police, journalists, and government officials.

In the 1980s, Escobar's Medellin cartel was responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine that was sent to the United States.

Before getting into the drug trade, Escobar sold stolen tombstones to smugglers and was also into the business of stealing cars.

Pablo Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia in 1949. His father was a farmer, and his mother was a schoolteacher.

In 1976, a 27-year-old Pablo Escobar married Maria Victoria Henao Vellejo, who was then just 15.

While the Escobar family was in hiding, Pablo's daughter, Manuela, got sick. To keep her warm, Escobar burned about two million dolllars.

Pablo Escobar bought a Learjet specifically for flying his cash.

Escobar is said to have smuggled cocaine into plane tires. Depending on how much product pilots flew, they could earn as much $500,000 per day.

In an attempt to change the laws of extradition, Escobar offered to pay Colombia's debt--an estimated 10 billion dollars.

Escobar spent around $2,500 a month on rubber bands used to hold his money.

Escobar's earnings peaked at an estimated 30 billion dollars.

Escobar made the Forbes' billionaires list of the world's richest people seven years in a row beginning in 1987 and peaked at number seven in 1989.

In the late 1980s, Colombian authorities seized some of Escobar's enormous fleet, including 142 planes, 20 helicopters, 32 yachts, and 141 homes and offices.

Escobar's business was so big and so scrutinized that in addition to planes, helicopters, cars, trucks, and boats, he even bought two submarines for transporting his cocaine into the United States.

At the height of the drug trade, Escobar smuggled up to 15 tons of cocaine each day.

Pablo Escobar's support of the poor earned him the nickname "Robin Hood."

Other popular nicknames for Escobar were "Don Pablo" and "El Patron."

Among the possessions that authorities found in Escobar's home was a Spanish translation of the self-help classic, The Power Of Positive Thinking.

About ten percent of Escobar's earnings were lost to spoilage. Rats likely consumed a bulk of those bills.

Escobar's luxury prison was referred to as "La Caterdal" (aka the Cathedral).

La Catedral housed a casino, a nightclub, and even a spa.

Following his death, Escobar's lavish Colombian estate was transformed into a theme park featuring animals, life-sized dinosaur models, Escobar's collection of classic cars, and more.

Pablo Escobar's greatest fear was extradition. No matter what happened, he didn't want to spend his final years in an American jail cell.

Despite his horrific business dealings, Escobar did fund a number of programs to help Colombia's poor residents. He gave money to churches and hospitals, established food programs, built parks and football stadiums, and created a barrio.

Escobar used his extraordinary wealth and popularity to get himself elected to Colombia's Congress.

The biggest single cocaine shipment Escobar ever made to the United States weighed a whopping 51,000 pounds.

Pablo Escobar was gunned down at the age of 44. Some people speculate that the wound was self-inflicted.

About 25,000 people -- including many of the poor Colombians to whom Escobar had personally distributed money -- attended his burial in Medellin.

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29 Absolutely Ridiculous Facts About Pablo Escobar

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29 Absolutely Ridiculous Facts About Pablo Escobar

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At his extravagant estate in Puerto Triunfo, Escobar also built a private zoo filled with hippos, giraffes, elephants, and other animals. Hippos still roam the grounds today. Escobar was responsible for killing about 4,000 people, including an estimated 200 judges and 1,000 police, journalists, and government officials.

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Escobar grew up in Medellin, Colombia. He was later the head of the Medellin Cartel.

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Medellin, Colombia is a wonderful city. One very cool thing about Medelln is the Metro Cable, a cable car that transports people up and down the hills. This is a shot from the Metro Cable, through the thick windows. Looks pretty and it is safe from the Metrocable, but it is a poor, not-so-safe neighborhood.

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Escobar made his fortune off cocaine.

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Escobar loved and valued nothing more than his family. Family was very important to Escobar from a very young age.

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Killing Escobar was highly sought after and after it was achieved, celebration ensued. Cops posed for a photo with Escobar.

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Escobar's infamous mugshot is found here. This was before his rise to prominence in May of 1976.

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This website explains the magnitude of Escobar's wealth and explains how he acquires it.