 | Colombia's most feared drug lord, Pablo Escobar died 28 years ago at age 44. Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord and Medellín cartel leader. One of the wealthiest men in the world at the height of his power, the Medellín cartel was smuggling 15 tons of cocaine a day, worth more than half a billion dollars, into America. |
 | In the early 1970s Escobar was a thief and bodyguard. He made $100,000 from the kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before entering the drug trade with Alvaro Prieto. In 1975, Escobar started his own cocaine operation. He even flew a plane himself, mainly between Colombia and Panama, to smuggle loads into the United States. When he later bought 15 new and bigger airplanes (including a Learjet) and 6 helicopters, he decommissioned the plane and hung it above the gate to his ranch. |  |
 |  Pablo Escobar's palace off the coast of Cartagena on La Isla |  Vacation house in Guatape |
 Colombia quickly became the world’s murder capital. | Corruption and intimidation characterized Escobar's operations. His policy in dealing with cops and the government was referred to as "plata o plomo," (literally silver or lead, colloquially [accept] money or [face] bullets). Escobar was responsible for the deaths of about 4,000 people, including three Colombian presidential candidates, an attorney general, an estimated 200 judges and 1,000 police. In 1989, he bombed a Colombian plane and Bogota's DAS building, killing 159 and injuring 1,000 others. |  |
  | In 1989, Forbes estimated Escobar to be the seventh-richest man in the world with a personal wealth of US$25 billion while his Medellín cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. In 1992 US Delta Force, Navy SEALs and Centra Spike joined an all-out manhunt for Escobar. They trained and advised a special Colombian police task force, known as the Search Bloc. The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993. Using radio triangulation technology provided by the US, a Colombian electronic surveillance team found him hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín. A firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed. |   |
 | Pablo Escobar’s once-opulent Colombian vacation home was demolished. The 20-room mansion, complete with a private runway for Escobar’s planes, was one of the main tourist draws at a theme park that now covers much of the drug dealer’s former estate of Hacienda Napoles. Theme park managers demolished the semi-ruined mansion before it collapsed. |  |
 | A growing herd of some 60 hippos, the offspring of four animals bought in the 1980s for Escobar’s personal zoo, still roam the area. There’s also a former bullring. |  |
