He was once the world’s most feared assassin – a ruthless killing machine who massacred thousands of people for infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.
But while few Colombians will shed a tear for Jhon Jairo Velasquez, who died in custody last Thursday from cancer, ex-cop Carlos Palau can merely shake his head at the news.
‘My dream was to watch someone put a bullet in the back of his head,’ admits Palau, a former national police commander in Medellin, the violence-plagued city that Escobar and his vile sidekick turned into their lawless stronghold.
‘For a long time I wanted to do it myself to avenge my dead friends. But that’s not me: I was a cop, a family man, not a criminal like him.’
Referring to 57-year-old Velasquez as Popeye, his innocuous-sounding gangland nickname, Palau tells DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview: ‘Popeye was a human being, there’s no doubt he suffered a lot from the cancer.
‘I didn’t celebrate when I heard the news but I certainly didn’t feel any sympathy.
‘I felt nothing, only sadness for the victims. Because there are still a lot of questions about his crimes that will never be answered.’
Druglord Pablo Escobar’s hitman Jhon Jairo Velasquez, known as ‘Popeye’, died in custody Thursday of cancer
Carlos Palau, former national police commander in Medellin who worked for the bloque de Búsqueda (Search Bloc), tells DailyMail.com, ‘I didn’t celebrate when I heard the news but I certainly didn’t feel any sympathy’
Palau spent years hunting Velasquez in the 1990s (pictured) and witnessed dozens of his friends and colleagues get slaughtered by Velasquez’ orchestrated hits
As a former member of the elite police unit known as the bloque de Búsqueda (Search Bloc), Palau and his colleagues had the hellish task of bringing down the Medellin Cartel.
He lost countless friends at the hands of Escobar’s swaggering thugs, who murdered officers indiscriminately in the streets or kidnapped and tortured them in dingy basements before dissolving their corpses in acid.
The King of Cocaine’s reign ended in 1993 when he was cornered on a rooftop and gunned down by the Search Bloc.
But Velasquez admitted to DailyMail.com in a 2017 interview to personally killing 300 people and is accused of orchestrating 3,000 ‘hits’ during his time as Escobar’s chief sicario (assassin). He surrendered to authorities before Palau and his men could take him out.
To their disgust, Velasquez was offered an extraordinary plea deal in which he was charged with only one slaying, the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, in return for ratting on his cartel henchmen.
He was jailed for just seven years, although the sentence was ultimately increased to 23 years and three months when the government bowed to public outrage.
Released in 2014, Velasquez soon began to trade off his infamy, bragging about his cartel exploits, berating ‘corrupt’ politicians and writing a memoir which was later turned into a Netflix drama.
He amassed more than 1.2 million YouTube subscribers but was back behind bars by 2017 when he violated his parole by partying with a known drug trafficker.
A year later he was hit with an extortion charge. Velasquez was awaiting trial last December when he was transferred to a hospital to be treated for cancer of the esophagus.
‘Popeye’ Velasquez (right) killed more than 300 people and ordered the death of 3,000 to enforce Pablo Escobar’s (left) reign of terror
Of the 152 cops who graduated from his year in the National Colombian Police academy, Palau only knows of three who survived. Palau weeps as he recognizes names and photos of his fallen colleagues at a memorial museum at Escobar’s former Hacienda Napoles estate
Escobar and his vile sidekick Popeye turned Medellin, a violence-plagued city, into their lawless stronghold in the 80s and 90s
Notorious assassin for Pablo Escobar, Jhon ‘Popeye’ Velasquez, admits to slaying 300 in 2017 interview with DailyMail.com
Three years ago DailyMail.com interviewed notorious Medellin Cartel hitman Jhon Jairo Velasquez in Colombia. After the hitman’s death this week from cancer senior reporter Ben Ashford recalls the day he came face to face with Pablo Escobar’s deadliest assassin:
He bragged of killing 300 people and likely slaughtered thousands more as Escobar’s bombs and bullets shook the world and brought Colombia to its knees.
But in the teeming hillside slums of Medellin, crowds lined the streets to give Jhon Jairo Velasquez the sort of hero’s welcome normally reserved for a rock star or famous actor.
DailyMail.com accompanied the former hitman known largely by his innocuous sounding nickname, Popeye, as he returned to Escobar’s former stronghold of Comuna 13.
The rare public foray in 2017 was the first time Velasquez had set foot in the sprawling shanty town on the fringe of Colombia’s second city for 25 years.
But if the confessed mass-murderer was anxious about the reception he would receive, he need not have worried: Locals soon poured into the streets, taking photos and hailing his arrival with chants of ‘El Jefe’ (the boss).
‘This picture is the best,’ boasted Guillermo Lemus, 36, after waiting his turn for a selfie. ‘I’m going to put it on Facebook and Instagram. I bet I get loads of likes.’
Velasquez made a throat cutting gesture as he posed for another shot with Liliana Andrea Arguelles, 26, showing off a lurid gangland tattoo the length of his right forearm that read ‘El general de la mafia’.
‘I took a picture with Popeye to send to my dad. He’s really pissed. He doesn’t want me posing for a picture with a killer,’ said Arguelles, a Florida resident visiting family in Medellin.
Sympathy for Escobar and his supposed love for the poor lingers on in some of Medellin’s most deprived and crime riddled barrios (neighborhoods).
It perhaps came as no surprise then that one of the last remaining members of the slain cocaine king’s inner circle was feted like a living legend.
‘I no longer carry a gun. If you offered me $10million to kill someone I would refuse,’ he assured DailyMail.com afterwards in an exclusive face to face interview to coincide with a new Netflix drama about his life. ‘Now I’m 100 percent a celebrity. The people here love me, not because I’m a hitman but because I have changed my life. They want to take pictures and shake my hand.
‘Women want to sleep with me because I’m Popeye. One girl told me it was her fantasy to have sex on Pablo Escobar’s grave – but I refused out of respect for El Patron.’
Deeper into the slum, the city’s true feelings toward Velasquez – a self-proclaimed ‘man of peace’ despite spending two decades in prison for murder – became apparent.
Two young men, reeking of liquor, started jeering from afar then came within a few feet of the silver-haired former assassin, one pointing furiously in his face. ‘You killed our fathers, you murderer. We will put many bullets in you,’ they yelled, as bystanders tried anxiously to pull them away. It is the sort of disrespect that would have earned them two tickets to the morgue back in the days when Escobar’s Medellin Cartel stalked these narrow, claustrophobic streets.
‘There was a time when I would have killed them both – a bullet each to the head,’ he told us afterwards, making the shape of a gun with his fingers. ‘But now I let it go. Those guys are junkies or drunks. They are not a threat to me.’
His words were a chilling reminder that the softly spoken Velasquez was said to have personally murdered 300 people and orchestrated 3,000 deaths.
‘It was 257 to be precise,’ he told us, as if querying his check in a restaurant. ‘The people in the cartel killed 3,000, yes.
‘It was my job. I’m a professional assassin. Only a psycho feels pride or pleasure. I only killed when people paid me or to protect my life. ‘I killed women, I killed children in car bombs. They were collateral damage. This was a war and innocent people die in wars.’
Prison authorities confirmed Thursday the ailing mobster – who has never disputed his involvement in hundreds of murders – had died at the National Cancer Institute in Bogota.
The popularity of Netflix’s Narcos show has lead to a booming industry in Pablo Escobar tourism in Medellin, Colombia. Pictured are flowers laid by Escobar’s grave
It was a bittersweet moment for Palau, who was a rookie cop in the Colombian capital back in November 1990 when a remote controlled car bomb ripped through a passing police bus.
‘I was one of the first officers on the scene because I wanted to find my friends. I entered the bus and saw the first body hanging out of a window,’ Palau, 48, recalled.
‘In the smoke and chaos I thought this man could still be alive so I picked him up. When I got him out of the bus I could see his head was blown completely off.
‘Six more of my friends died that day. I wanted revenge. I asked for a transfer to Medellin and five days later I was there.’
Back then between five and ten officers were being slaughtered each day by Escobar’s car bombs and hitmen, all coordinated by Velasquez who regarded police as enemy combatants in a war.
Of the 152 cops who graduated from his year in the National Colombian Police academy, Palau only knows of three who survived.
‘Some people say Escobar was a good guy, a Robin Hood who gave to the people, but he was a psycho, a terrorist,’ he tells DailyMail.com.
‘I couldn’t have a girlfriend, I had to cut off my family. Life was not something we could ever take for granted.
‘When I said goodbye to my comrades each night we would say ”I hope to see you again”. It was more in hope than expectation.’
Palau, now a married father-of-two, spent nine years living in Rhode Island after the U.S. granted him political asylum in 2000.
Velasquez’s most lucrative assignment was the murder of Carlos Mauro Hoyos (legt), the Colombian Attorney General, for which he was paid $1million. He also had one of Escobar’s former girlfriend’s Wendy Chavarriaga (right) killed after Velasquez began dating her and learned she was leaking information to the DEA
After his release, Valasquez started a touring company, becoming rivals with Palau’s touring company. The pair came face to face in 2017 and took this photo together for DailyMail.com. Palau said: ‘For me personally it wasn’t a bad thing as I had a chance to look him in the eye. I even shook his hand
After beign siezed by the government, Escobar’s estate has been turned into a safari theme park. Pictured are what remains of Pablo Escobar’s car collection at Hacienda Napoles after they were bombed by the Cali cartel
After the cartel violence subsided he returned to Colombia and founded a tour company, Medellin Paradise Travel, whisking tourists around Escobar’s former turf and telling them about the sacrifices of his comrades.
In an astonishing twist, he soon found himself facing competition from a rival tour operator run by a familiar face.
‘Popeye was a crazy guy. He started doing his own tours,’ Palau recalls.
For those willing to take their life in their hands, Velasquez was charging $350 per day to tour the haunts where he butchered Escobar’s enemies, with a free t-shirt thrown in.
Bookings rocketed when Netflix aired a TV version of his 2015 memoir, Surviving Escobar – Alias JJ.
‘The guy had so many enemies, there was no way it was safe for tourists to walk around Medellin beside him,’ adds Palau.
‘Honestly, I blame the government here. They should have placed conditions on him not to talk and do these crazy things when they let him out of jail.
‘For me personally it wasn’t a bad thing as I had a chance to look him in the eye. I even shook his hand.
‘This was a man I wanted to kill for so long but that was like a form a therapy for me, it allowed me to move on and leave the anger behind.
‘He thanked me and said, thanks for forgiving and forgetting. But I will never forget, no way.’
For those willing to take their life in their hands, Velasquez was charging $350 per day to tour the haunts where he butchered Escobar’s enemies, with a free t-shirt thrown in
Velasquez poses for pictures and selfies with a group of children who all know his signature pose showing off his tattoos that read: ‘The general of the mafia’
Fans pose with Velasquez, but Palau issued a warning for those who signed up for the mobster’s tours. ‘The guy had so many enemies, there was no way it was safe for tourists to walk around Medellin beside him,’ he said
After the cartel violence subsided Palau returned to Colombia and founded a tour company, Medellin Paradise Travel, whisking tourists around Escobar’s former turf and telling them about the sacrifices of his comrades. Soon after, Velasquez got into the business as direct competition
‘Popeye may have thought he was a celebrity but he was a criminal, a terrorist,’ Palau says. ‘The world is a better place without him’
Born in Yarumal, 70 miles north of Medellin, Velasquez had originally trained as a marine in the Colombian Navy but dropped out at 17 to become a bodyguard for one of Escobar’s many mistresses.
Escobar tired of the lover but sensed promise in the fearless young Velasquez, who earned his ‘Popeye’ nickname because of a protruding chin which he later fixed with surgery.
His first execution was as mundane as it was brutal.
The son of an elderly lady complained to Escobar that she fell while getting off the bus and the driver never helped her.
Velasquez announced himself on the killing scene by coldly pumping two bullets into the back of the driver’s head.
Another assignment involved kidnapping one of Escobar’s girlfriends, Wendy Chavarriaga, and forcing her to have an abortion.
Remarkably, the pair became an item but when Velasquez learned the woman was leaking information to DEA agents he arranged a romantic rendezvous – then had her shot six times as she sat waiting for him in a restaurant.
By the time the 5ft 7in mobster had climbed the ranks of the Medellin Cartel his body count would include politicians, journalists and rival drug traffickers.
Innocent civilians caught in the line of fire when the bullets started spraying were dismissed as ‘collateral damage.’
Velasquez’s most lucrative assignment was the murder of Carlos Mauro Hoyos, the Colombian Attorney General, for which he was paid $1million.
He celebrated by buying weapons and swank cars for his team of assassins but always maintained that he barely touched alcohol and never once tried cocaine.
After his release, Velasquez offered only limited remorse for his crimes, likening his killing spree to a general carrying out orders.
Velaquez went on a tour of Comuna 13 in 2017 with DailyMail.com, one of Medellin’s most notorious slums and a former Escobar stronghold, and was greeted like a returning hero and taking photos with children
An American bachelor party went on a tour where they posted around Pablo Escobar’s grave at the Jardins Montesacro cemetery in 2017
Velasquez claimed on his tour company’s website: ‘I am repentant and determined to help build the truth for those who lived the reality of the Medellin of the ’80s and ’90s firsthand’
He insisted that the Search Bloc was every bit as lawless as the cartel, butchering his comrades with drills, cutting of their fingers and throwing them out of helicopters.
He would also deny involvement to his dying day in some of Escobar’s bloodiest massacres, including the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 which claimed 110 lives, and the blast at the DAS building in Bogota in which 52 people were killed.
‘I am repentant and determined to help build the truth for those who lived the reality of the Medellin of the ’80s and ’90s firsthand,’ he claimed on his website.
‘I wake up daily and with the decision to show the scars that make me what I am but do not define what I will be today and tomorrow.’
Behind the scenes however, Colombian authorities suspected ‘Popeye’ was back to his murderous old tricks: blackmailing the children of slain cartel members into handing over assets and property he felt entitled to.
He was charged in 2018 with extortion and criminal conspiracy but as cancer spread from his throat to his lungs, liver and other organs it became apparent this was one enemy he could never overcome.
‘Popeye may have thought he was a celebrity but he was a criminal, a terrorist,’ concludes Palau. ‘The world is a better place without him.’