Who Was Griselda Blanco? Inside the True Crime of the Cartel Leader Pt. 2

During this incident, two of Griselda's hired killers took the lives of German Jimenez Panesso and his bodyguard, Juan Carlos Hernandez, while also causing injuries to several others. It was reported that Panesso had connections to the Colombian drug trafficking industry.

What crimes did Griselda Blanco commit?

Griselda, who had been evading capture for ten years, was apprehended in Irvine, California, in February 1985. As stated by the United Nations on Drugs and Crime website, she provided false identification and documents when she was stopped by officials from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Eventually, a jury sentenced her to 15 years in prison and imposed a $25,000 fine.

During her time serving her federal sentence in New York, Griselda faced three counts of first-degree murder charges from the state of Florida. However, the case was dismissed due to the inappropriate behavior of the prosecution's key witness, Jorge Ayala, who engaged in explicit conversations with the secretaries of the Miami-Dade County prosecutor, as reported by The Tampa Bay Times.

In 1999, special prosecutors in Orlando took over the case, and Griselda pleaded guilty to two murders, according to The New York Post. She received a concurrent sentence of 20 years in prison, in addition to her existing federal sentence of 15 years, as reported by Vice.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Schlessinger, who handled Griselda's prosecution, strongly believes that she was responsible for numerous other murders beyond the three charges she faced.

"It would certainly be dozens. We have no idea here how many murders she authorized in Colombia," Schlessinger told The Miami Herald. "She was a complete sociopath. She murdered people at the drop of a hat. She would kill anybody who displeased her, because of a debt, because they screwed up on a shipment, or she didn't like the way they looked at her."
Griselda was released from prison in 2004 and deported to Colombia, where she lived for the rest of her life.