Griselda Blanco

• 1. Introduction

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  Griselda Blanco Restrepo ran a distribution network, stretching across the United States and Colombia, that earned $80 million per month. She lived from 1943 to 2012, and her name is tied to the cocaine underworld of Miami from the 1970s through the early 2000s. Some people also claim she belonged to the Medellín Cartel. How did a girl from Colombia become a prominent figure in a violent drug war in Florida? What happened to the husbands and the courtroom battles around her? And why does her name keep surfacing in songs, novels and television series?

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• 2. Medellín Beginnings

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  Griselda Blanco was born in Cartagena, on Colombia's north coast, on the 14th of February 1943. When she was three, she and her mother, Ana Restrepo, moved south to Medellín. The city was enduring socioeconomic and political troubles of its own, and the move exposed her to a criminal lifestyle at an impressionable age. She had become a pickpocket before she reached her teens.

  Her former lover, Charles Cosby, later recounted a darker story. He said that at the age of 11 she allegedly kidnapped a child from an upscale neighborhood near her home, tried to ransom the child, and then shot the child.

  At 19, Blanco ran away from home to escape the sexual abuse of her mother's boyfriend. She stole in the city center until she was 20. It is speculated that she may have engaged in prostitution during that time to support herself. Her next move would carry her across a national border, and she would not make it under her own name.

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• 3. Crossing Into America

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  Blanco and her first husband, Carlos Trujillo, began with a marijuana-dealing enterprise inside Colombia. In 1964, after divorcing Trujillo, she entered the United States illegally, carrying fake documentation and an assumed name. She settled in Queens, New York, with her three children and her second husband, Alberto Bravo. Bravo was a cocaine smuggler for the Medellín Cartel, and together they built a thriving drug operation in New York City. In April 1975, authorities identified Blanco and indicted her on federal drug conspiracy charges, along with thirty of her subordinates. The family fled to Colombia rather than face conviction.

  Miami drew her back in the latter half of the 1970s. She returned to the United States to start a new drug operation there. Blanco is described as a key figure in establishing the cocaine trade between Colombia and big North American cities such as Miami and New York, as well as dealers in California.

  Her return coincided with the start of the Miami drug war. During the 1980s, hundreds of homicides per year plagued the Metro Miami area. Cocaine was extremely lucrative in those years, and it was trafficked more than cannabis. The struggle to stop the flow of cocaine into the city led to CENTAC 26, short for Central Tactical Unit. It was a joint operation between the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration, known as the DEA. Her time as a free woman in Miami would last until 1985.

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• 4. Courts and Prison

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  DEA agents arrested Blanco in her home on the 17th of February 1985. She was charged with conspiring to manufacture, import, and distribute cocaine. The case went to trial in federal court in New York City, where she was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

  While she was serving that sentence, the state of Florida charged her with three counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors made a deal with Jorge Ayala, one of her most trusted hitmen. Ayala agreed to testify that Blanco had ordered him to carry out the killings. The case collapsed over technicalities tied to a phone sex scandal. It involved Ayala and two secretaries employed at the state attorney's office.

  In 1998, Blanco pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, to run concurrently with her earlier term. She was released in 2004 after serving her full sentence in the United States. Deportation sent her back to Colombia, where she would spend the rest of her life.

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• 5. Husbands and Sons

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  Blanco met her first husband, Carlos Trujillo, when she was 13 years old. The couple had three sons in Medellín: Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo. All three were born by the time she was 26. After the marriage ended in divorce, the two stayed business partners. A business deal went wrong, an argument followed, and Blanco had Trujillo executed.

  Alberto Bravo, her second husband, met a similar end. After the family returned to Colombia, Blanco accused Bravo of stealing millions of dollars from the enterprise. Bravo countered that she had let her nickname, "Godmother," go to her head. Blanco shot Bravo in the head, killing him.

  Darío Sepúlveda was her third husband, and together they had her youngest son. The boy was named Michael Corleone Blanco, after the character Michael Corleone in The Godfather film series. Sepúlveda left her in 1983 and returned to Colombia. When he and Blanco disagreed over custody, he kidnapped Michael. Blanco paid to have Sepúlveda assassinated in Colombia, and her son returned to her in the United States.

  The Miami New Times summed up the boy's childhood this way: "Michael's father and older siblings were all killed before he reached adulthood. His mother was in prison for most of his childhood and teenage years, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and legal guardians." In 2012, Michael was put under house arrest after a sentencing on two felony counts of cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine. His probation ended in 2018. That year he appeared on an episode of the Investigation Discovery documentary series Evil Lives Here to recount his lonely childhood. In 2019, he was featured on Cartel Crew, a VH1 docuseries that follows the descendants of drug lords. He also runs a clothing brand, Pure Blanco.

  According to Michael, his mother became a born-again Christian in her later years. Whatever that change meant, it came before a September afternoon in Medellín in 2012.

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• 6. The Butcher Shop

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  On the 3rd of September 2012, Blanco and her pregnant daughter-in-law went to the Cardiso butcher shop. It stood on the corner of 29th Street in Medellín. As Blanco came out, an assassin on a motorcycle shot her twice in the head, killing her. She was 69. The killing mimicked the assassination style that she herself had practiced during the Miami drug war. Her name would soon travel far beyond Medellín, into music, film and television.

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• 7. Screen and Page

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  Cocaine Cowboys, released in 2006, gave Blanco a prominent place in documentary film. Its sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2, followed in 2008 and is also written as Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' With the Godmother.

  In 2012, the television series Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord featured a character based on her. Colombian actress Luces Velásquez played the role under the name Graciela Rojas.

  La viuda negra, or The Black Widow, was a 2014 Spanish-language telenovela produced by RTI Producciones and Televisa. It aired on Univisión in the United States and on Caracol Televisión in Colombia. The series adapted the book La patrona de Pablo Escobar by José Guarnizo, based on Blanco's story, and Ana Serradilla portrayed her. Also in 2014, a character named Griselda Blanco appeared in Marlon James' Booker Prize-winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings.

  Catherine Zeta-Jones played Blanco in the 2018 Lifetime television film Cocaine Godmother. Sofía Vergara took the part in Griselda, a six-part Netflix miniseries released in 2024. Rappers had been naming her in songs since 2010, years before either production arrived.

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• 8. Hip-Hop Echoes

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  In 2010, Florida rapper Jacki-O released a mixtape titled La Madrina - Griselda Blanco. A year later, Lil Kim referenced Blanco in her "Warning Freestyle." In 2016, she did so again in the song "Diego," on the record Lil Kim Season.

  Westside Gunn, an American rapper, formed a record label in 2012 called Griselda Records, named directly after her. That same year, in the Meek Mill song "Believe It," Rick Ross says, "Rest in peace, Griselda Blanco."

  Pusha T mentioned Blanco in 2013 in the song "Pain," from his studio album My Name Is My Name. In 2016, Young Thug mentioned her in an early leaked version of Kanye West's "Famous." Nicki Minaj closed her verse on Fetty Wap's 2016 single "Like a Star" with a reference to Blanco. Quavo referenced her in the 2017 Drake song "Portland," and YoungBoy Never Broke Again did so repeatedly in the chorus of his 2018 song "Slime Belief." Minaj returned to the subject in 2019, opening her unofficial remix of DaBaby's "Suge" with a mention of Blanco. Later that year, on Chance the Rapper's "Slide Around," she referenced both Blanco and Pablo Escobar.

  Paul Blanco, a Korean-Canadian rapper, took his stage name from her, following the habit of Chicago drill rappers of choosing drug lord names. "Griselda Blanco," a song by Toronto drill rappers Pengz and Two Two, was certified Platinum in Canada. In 2018, French rappers Booba and Maes composed a song called "Madrina," referring to her. The Spanish word madrina, meaning godmother, links a 2010 mixtape to a 2018 French song.

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