Killing Escobar: The Hunt for The World's Greatest Outlaw

I’ll only give you a very brief review of this 2001 nonfiction work. The book followed Pablo Escobar’s rise from a street thug in Medellin, Columbia to becoming one of the richest men in the world as head of the Medellin drug cartel. The book also reviewed some history of Columbia. Known as El Doctor, Escobar was born on 12/1/49 and killed on 12/2/93. Essentially, the book chronicled the life of a psychopath. He simply muscled his way into the drug trade and then intimidated and killed anyone who got in his way. Although he was devoted to his wife and their children, the youngest daughter having been named after Manuel Noriega, he was certainly not faithful. El Doctor frequently exercised his lust for young teenage girls. Given his financial support of the citizenry of Medellin, his bribery of officials throughout the country, and the fear he induced in everyone, until near the end of his life, Escobar moved freely, especially in Medellin, although he was one of the most wanted men in the world. Even when he was in prison, he lived in relatively luxurious circumstances, and he left the prison whenever he wanted to attend a soccer match. His brutality to anyone who betrayed him or stole from him was legendary. After the death of Len Bias in 1986 and the gradual understanding of the evils of cocaine by the young professionals in the U.S. who had been his users, the cocaine trade began to suffer. Eventually, the Columbian forces, backed by lots of U.S. money, were able to locate and kill Escobar. He considered fleeing to Panama, but he eventually decided to stay and fight from his home turf. In the last year of his life, a vigilante group murdered nearly everyone in his organizational structure, leaving him progressively more alone. He was shot while trying to flee from a house that had been surrounded by government troops. It was interesting, but I found it to be a challenge to keep track of everyone that Escobar murdered along the way – this was reality, not the fantasy that MRB usually indulges in.