Griselda Blanco Dies: Miami’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ Assassinated in Colombia

The Miami Times is reporting that Griselda Blanco, a former Colombian drug trafficker nicknamed the “Godmother of Cocaine,” was gunned down Monday in her hometown of Medellin, Colombia. Blanco was 69.

According to the newspaper El Colombiano, two assassins on motorcycles unleashed a hail of gunfire as Blanco walked out of a butcher shop. Two of the bullets hit Blanco in the head and killed her immediately.

“It’s surprising to all of us that she had not been killed sooner because she made a lot of enemies,” former Miami homicide detective Nelson Andreu, who investigated her, said late Monday.

“When you kill so many and hurt so many people like she did, it’s only a matter of time before they find you and try to even the score.”

Blanco, one of the first to engage in large-scale smuggling of cocaine into the United States from Colombia, spent nearly two decades behind bars in the United States for drug trafficking and three murders including the fatal shooting of a two-year-old boy in Miami in 1982. She is also credited with originating motorcycle assassinations.

In 2004, she was deported to her native country and maintained a low profile in her hometown of Medellin.

NBC notes that upon her return to Colombia, Griselda was said to have cut her ties to organized crime. She subsequently became a hip-hop culture icon thanks to the documentary Cocaine Cowboys and its sequel Hustlin With the Godmother.

“This is classic live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword,” said Miami filmmaker Billy Corben, whose Cocaine Cowboys documentaries chronicled Blanco’s notoriety.

“Or in this case, live-by-the-motorcycle-assassin, die-by-the-motorcycle assassin.”

The Miami Times reports that Griselda Blanco is survived by one son, Michael, a 34-year-old Colombian American who is under house arrest in Miami while waiting for his trial on a cocaine trafficking charge from last year.