Griselda Blanco dead in Colombia, reports say
Griselda Blanco is shown in this file photo posted to Facebook.
Griselda Blanco, known alternately around the world as the "Godmother of Cocaine" or the "Queen of Cocaine" for her notorious work in the drug trade, has reportedly been killed in Colombia.
The International Business Times reported that Blanco was shot dead in her home town of Medellin "by unidentified gunmen who came on a motorcycle as she was leaving the butcher's." Blanco was shot twice in the head, according to local news site El Colombiano.
Her killing comes as an unsurprising — some would say fitting — end for one of the cocaine trade's early pioneers and Pablo Escobar's mentor. As the IBT writes, Blanco is said to have popularized the use of motorcycle assassins, known in Spanish as "sicarios."
Blanco was featured in the 2006 film "Cocaine Cowboys," which documented the violent and lucrative drug trade between Colombia and Miami in the 1970s and 1980s. Fellow drug traders characterized Blanco in that film, and elsewhere, as intensely brutal. She is suspected to have ordered as many as 250 killings, Maxim wrote, and didn't hesitate to kill innocents along with her rivals.
Blanco, 69 at the time of her death, long celebrated her godmother status, even naming her youngest son after the famous film godfather Michael Corleone. Blanco was also said to have ordered the deaths of three husbands, earning another moniker, 'The Black Widow," the Miami New Times wrote.
Watch the trailer for "Cocaine Cowboys," which profiled Blanco's rise in Miami, below:
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