SPEAKER_02 0:44

Welcome to the Femme Fatal, a true crime podcast with an astrology twist. I'm your host, Stacey Dotson. Each week I'll be joined by a guest host because this femme fatale prefers not to work alone. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Femme Fatal. Today I'm being joined by my good friend Terry. How are you, Terry?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I am doing great. So glad to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Yes. And today we're going to be talking about Griselda Blanco. What made you pick Griselda, Terry?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Well, actually, I had never heard of Griselda until the Netflix series came out. And I was actually curious about it because I've only ever seen Sophia Vergara play a comedic actor. And so I was curious about how she was gonna play this drug lord s. That's kind of what got me interested.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah, she did a good job too. She did. Well, cool. Well, you want to just jump on in?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Sure. Okay, so I'll give you a little brief overview first. Grisel de Blanco was a cocaine trafficker who built a colossal empire and was a central figure in the violent drug wars in Miami in the 70s and 80s. She gained notoriety by heading a billion-dollar bloody drug empire stretching from Colombia to the United States. She was smart and ruthless, connected to hundreds of murders, even two of her husbands, maybe all three, which provided one of her nicknames, the Black Widow. It's rumored that Pablo Escobar said, the only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named GriseldaBlanco.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, that's a great quote.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

She had many aliases. Aside from the Black Widow, she was also called Queen Pen and La Madrina, the godmother. She dug into the culture, even naming her youngest son Michael Corleone. Oh yeah. She was one of very few women to ever reach the top of the international drug trade, and she did it in a world entirely dominated by men. Miami had been a sleepy town of old men in slippers with their shorts pulled up past their waist and very tan women in their flowery polyester pantsuits and moo moos. But by 1980, an estimated 70% of all cocaine entering the United States passed through South Florida. And Griselda was in the middle of all of that.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

That's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah. So to the beginning. Griselda Blanco Restrepo was born February 15th, 1943, in Cartagena, Colombia, or possibly a town called Santa Marta, where her baptismal record is. Her mother was Ana Lucia, and she moved them to Medellin when Griselda was three years old. So from a young age, Griselda was surrounded by violence. Colombia was going through a time called La Violencia. That started with rioting after the Liberal Party candidate Jorge Gaitán was assassinated. A civil war broke out between the Colombian Conservative Party and the Colombian Liberal Party, and they each tortured and murdered throughout the cities and the countryside. It's estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed over 10 years, about 2% of the population. So aside from that, Ana Lucia was a sex worker, and there's a likelihood that Griselda was being assaulted by her mother's clients from a very young age. And we don't really know anything about Griselda's father, so her mom was the breadwinner, and you know, she had to do whatever she had to do to provide for the family. In 1954, Griselda was 11, and she had joined a gang by this time, petty theft, pickpocketing, and things like that. It's amazing to think about this, but there were so many dead bodies lying around. The kids would dig holes during the afternoon to bury these bodies. Like they didn't have playgrounds, they didn't have anything to do, or you know, they were just in the streets. And, you know, it got me thinking, like, what were you doing when you were 11? Like, I was probably reading, Are You There, God? It's Me Margaret.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Margaret, yeah, any Judy Bloom books. Yeah, I was not doing that. They grew up hard.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and thinking about training bras and stuff. I mean, yeah, yeah, really, really tough. They were making little piddly amounts of money, pickpocketing and doing whatever just to find some money. So one day she and her gang decided to kidnap a 10-year-old boy. She's 11. Kidnap a 10-year-old boy from an affluent family, and they wouldn't pay the ransom, which is weird. The family wouldn't pay the ransom? The family wouldn't pay the ransom, and she committed her first murder. She killed the kid. She killed the 10-year-old boy? And she was 11 years old. Oh my god. It's wild, right? So, you know, you have to wonder also like, did that affect her in any way? Because she saw so much death around her as it was. Like, did it really mean anything to her? You know, a child's brain processing all of this stuff, you know, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 5:56

It seems like just death was right in front of her, and it was something that she became desensitized to as an early child.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

So absolutely. So around 13 years old, she met Carlos Trujillo. He was a small-time hustler, a marijuana dealer, and a coyote, trafficking people to the United States. He was really good at forging documents, passports, pizzas, and things like that. They married in 1959 when she was 16. And this was probably self-preservation. They had three kids together. They were Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo. She worked with Carlos in the marijuana business, and they had a falling out over a business deal and ultimately divorced in 1964, but they continued to work together. But Griselda, you know, she's just not good at letting things go. And considering that later in life she ordered the execution of a person that she suspected of kicking one of her sons, it's very likely that she murdered Carlos. On the flip side, he was an alcoholic. And while some people believe that she poisoned him over time, it's highly likely that he died from cirrhosis. When did he die? I don't have the year on that, but I know that they worked together even after they divorced. And I think it might have only been about four years later, because she married her next husband when she was about 20, 21 years old. His name was Albert Bravo, Alberto Bravo, and he's the one who introduced her to the cocaine industry. So she became involved in the cartel, working to push cocaine from Colombia into the U.S. Griselda and her family, that was Alberto and her three sons, they entered the U.S. probably using documents that she forged because she became good at forging documents as well that, you know, she learned from her first husband. And they set up in Queens. And while they were figuring out how to get set up in New York, she used her pickpocketing skills and her forging skills to bring in money. So one day, Griselda had an idea to begin using women as mules to bring in drugs into the U.S. from Colombia. You know, most people had never thought of this. Like it was all men doing this business, right? So they were much less likely to arouse suspicion from drug agents. And, you know, there were no sniffing dogs and all this stuff at that time. So Griselda had a friend named Maria Gutierrez who she worked for a travel agency, and Griselda leaned on her to book all the flights. So she had this ingenious idea to replace the padding and bras and girdles and stuff it with packets of coke. It was very ingenious. Yes. She even created a custom lingerie line, probably called Griselda's Secret. And that was a legitimate business. Like she actually manufactured and sold this lingerie to everybody, right? So everywhere she looked, she thought of new ways to bring drugs in. Elderly people in wheelchairs, she thought of soles of the shoes, linings and suitcases, all of this stuff. Like she was kind of a genius. At this time, New York's drug industry was controlled by the mafia, but with her innovations, she and her husband soon took over a large share of the market. By the mid-70s, business was booming. Blanco and Bravo had profits of 10 million a week from their Queen's New York headquarters.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Drug sell. Drug sell. So in the mid-70s, the DEA created Operation Banshee, and this was focused on the increased violence and drug influx into the country. Maria, the travel agent, you know, she never wanted to be involved in this in the first place. She gave evidence to the DEA. And on April 30th, 1975, Griselda and Alberto were among 38 co-conspirators who were indicted. The problem was the DEA couldn't find Griselda. She's an enigma, right? So they both fled with the kids back to Colombia to escape, you know, once they knew that something was in the air. And around this time, Griselda accused Alberto of skimming millions of dollars from their enterprise. In the Netflix series, it suggested that Alberto was in debt to his brother Fernando over a failed shipment, and he forced Griselda to sleep with his brother to absolve the debt, right? Like indecent proposal or something. Right. Try to make money. And she kills him for that. And that made a good, you know, storytelling in the show. Good for TV, yeah. Yeah. The truth is, gritty as well. He was also cheating on Griselda. And you know what they say about a woman scorned, right? Yes, that's right. Nothing worse than a woman scorned. So they set up a meeting and met in the parking lot of a Bogota nightclub. And each was accompanied by gun-toting bodyguards. And it wasn't long before it turned into the Wild West. Griselda was hit in the stomach, and six bodyguards were slaughtered, and Bravo, her husband, was killed as well. She survived the belly wound and she took control over the entire operation. And this is when she got the nickname the Black Widow.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Because now two of her husbands are gone, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Exactly. She's still in Colombia at this time, and she meets Pablo Escobar. He was already working for Alfredo Gomez Lopez, who was El Padrino, the godfather. And he was small time, he was stealing cards and robbing graves. And then he moved on to kidnappings, bribery, and was muscle. Griselda was a mentor to him and she helped him move up in this business. So in 1977, she meets Dario Sepulveda. He's an assassin and bank robber. She's hanging out with some great people, you know? Oh, yeah. Quality people. He becomes Griselda's bodyguard and they marry in 1978 and welcome a son who she names Michael Corleone after the godfather.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yeah. So she's been running her business from Columbia, and in the late 70s, she returns to the U.S. to Miami with her family. They must have continued to use false names and documents because, you know, she still, she just wasn't on the radar.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

I mean, I don't know how you're not on someone's radar when you name your son after Michael Corione. Correct. It's like, how are you not on the radar? Like, they're just putting it out there.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

I know, I know, totally. It's crazy. Cuban gangs were running South Florida at the time when the Colombians took over. And this is about the time that they called it the cocaine cowboy wars. This is when this starts. So she has no problem turning to violence to ensure that she stays at the top and she's the queen pin, right? She'd eliminate people to avoid paying money she owed, if they owed her money, or if she felt in any way disrespected by someone. These were people in her own circle. So you know she was happy to eliminate her competition as well. It's noted that she was responsible for over 200 of South Florida's murders between 1979 and 1981. How many? Over 200. Over 200, wow. Yeah, that she was responsible for, that she played some role in. She had dozens of hitmen on her payroll, and she initiated the use of drive-by shootings by motorcycle, which allowed assassins to get away quickly and easily.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Another innovative idea.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Exactly. She established a massive narcotics ring that at its height was reportedly trafficking 3,400 pounds of cocaine each month and pulling in 10 to 80 million a month. Her own worth was about 500 million at this time. And this is still late 70s. I mean, what is that even now? Ginormous amount of money, right? She's Elon.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

No, not quite, but she's in the billions for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yeah. So she had a penthouse in Manhattan, she had a mansion in Miami. She had boats. She had cars. I mean, she had everything. And she would do ever to keep her station. And I think part of this mentality goes back to growing up the way that she did. Like by any means necessary. You know, I'm never ever gonna live like I lived as a child. And she didn't want that for her kids either. So she was flying back and forth between New York and Florida. She was partying. She was getting high off her own supply, which we all know is a big no-no. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, first role. She was having orgies, which she was participating in. She was a little sadistic too. She would force people at gunpoint to do sex acts. It made me wonder if anybody did that to her when she was doing sex work. You know, she had to dabble in that a little bit when she was younger before she met her first husband. And, you know, she learned it from her mom. She saw that her mom was doing it, and I think maybe she thought, this is an okay kind of living. Maybe I can do it. It's scary. It's sad. It is very sad. So on July 11, 1979, so normal Wednesday afternoon, there was what was called the Daydeland Massacre at the Daydeland Mall, which was one of Miami's busiest suburban shopping centers, full of ordinary people, right? The target was a dealer named Herman Pineso. Griselda owed Pineso a substantial amount of money and didn't want to pay it back. She sided with a Miami crime boss named Carlos Ramirez in the dispute that the two of them were having. And so she sent a hitman to deal with Pineso. So her assassins arrived on the scene in a white van with the words, happy time, complete party supply. Like you would never think that there's a truck of assassins in a party bus. So their target Pineso, he was in the liquor store. They opened fire from the parking lot, shot and killed him, as well as his bodyguard Juan Hernandez. And there were two clerks in the store. They both got hit, but they survived. And nobody else died, just him and the bodyguard? Nobody else, just them. I mean, people were probably freaking out with gunfire all in the parking lot and everything. So, you know, this event happening in broad daylight was a wake-up call to the authorities. This is probably what got them looking for her again, you know, the spark. And the public was now aware that there were some crazy things going on. They wanted something to happen. I'm sure there was a public outcry for this, too. It only got worse from after that. The murder rate set records every year: 349 murders in 79, 569 in 80, 621 in 1981. And 50% of the murders were drug related. There were so many bodies that the Emmy's office they physically couldn't store them. They had to rent refrigerated trailers to store all the bodies. Wow. So yeah, after the Dayland Massacre and a Time magazine cover story called South Florida Trouble in Paradise, Syntac, a branch of the DEA, begins operating in Miami. So in 1982, Griselda orders a hit on Jesus Chucho Castro, which was one of her henchmen, after he allegedly insulted her sons. There's another version that Chucho kicked her son in the butt like one time, like playing. And there's also a version that he wouldn't go through on some orders that were given to him. In any case, you can't cross Griselda. And this is where George Rivi Ayala comes into the story. He was one of Griselda's on-call hitmen, and he was responsible for at least 35 murders. Rivi is accompanied by Miguelito Perez, and they approach Castro's car at a red light and carry out a drive-by shooting. Only instead of hitting their intended target, Castro, they hit his little two-year-old son Johnny and killed him.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

When they report to Griselda, at first she's really angry that they missed Castro. And she reportedly had no remorse and then reasoned it by saying, Well, that's better. He suffers more by having his kid dead than by us killing him. So I'm glad that you killed the two-year-old. She's a piece of work. She is, right? By this time, about 1983, Dario, her husband, he's a bit fed up with it all. And he's also cheating on Griselda. He's got his little side piece, and she finds this out. She's furious, she wants a divorce, and they argue over custody. So one day, Dario comes to pick up Michael with the excuse that he's gonna take him shopping, but in fact, gets on a plane to Colombia. I mean, this dude must be crazy, like thinking that he can get away with this.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Agree 100%. You do not cross her.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

No, she has so many connections in Colombia, you know. And after a short time, some men impersonating police pulled Dario over and shot him right in front of Michael.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

And somehow Michael gets returned to her in Miami. I guess, again, because she knows plenty of people. She was, you know, probably had a lot of police paid off in Colombia. You know, it wouldn't be hard to get Michael out of there. And I'm sure some in Miami, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. She's still rolling in the dough in 1984. She has about 1,500 dealers working under her, but things are getting bad for her as rivals are attempting to murder her, and she's got the feds looking to apprehend her. In fact, even though Dario was not very involved in the Coke business, his brother was one of her hitmen. And there were others that were loyal to him, not really to her. So she's starting to lose confidence in her crew. And after surviving six assassination attempts, she packs up her family and moves to California. There she brings her three older sons, Dixon, Hubert, and Oswaldo, on as capos. And they're almost the only people she believes she can fully trust. So her Miami connections won't ship to California, so she's got to find a new source. And she contacts Martha Ochoa, who's a relative of the founder of the Medellin cartel, and she makes a deal for 1.8 million worth of Coke. So Greedy Griselda, she decides she'll have Martha killed so she doesn't have to pay her. Yeah. I think all that drug use has like messed her up a little, you know?

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Her brain's insane, but I like Greedy Griselda. That's a good nickname.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah. So the Medellin cartel puts a $400 million bounty on her. So she's not safe anywhere, right? But she's a master of being invisible. So in California, she's making money, but she's laying low in a modest home in Irvine with her mother Anna and her young son Michael. Her older sons are all out there hustling on her behalf, but you know, they're making it good for themselves too. So at this point, the DEA shifts to her sons in an operation called Los Niños, the Boys. In 1984, DEA special agent Robert Palumbo was actively tracking the sons for suspected drug smuggling and money laundering. During this investigation, agents monitored a DEA informant who was handling money for the sons. This led the informant to a meeting in Newport Beach, California, a hotel lobby, where Griselda herself showed up in a blonde wig. To hand over a large cash payment. So the DEA, you know, they remained cool. They didn't want to arrest her at this point because they wanted to protect the informant and they wanted to keep the case open on the boys. You know, they wanted to get everybody, right? So the DEA continued surveilling, and on February 17th, 1985, she was arrested in her home. She was in her bed reading the Bible when they busted in.

unknown 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

She gave a false name saying, Me llamó Patti. My name is Patty, and said she was a housekeeper from Venezuela. While searching the premises, they found a 38-caliber pistol and they didn't doubt that they had the right woman. So Agent Palumbo, he's thrilled. He's been searching for Griselta for a long time. He noted that she was tough and nonchalant, not showing any emotion upon her arrest. But as they drove towards the Los Angeles courthouse, she was a bit shaken. The trial was from June 25th, 1985, and ended in July 9th, 1985. And she was convicted and sentenced to 15 years based on the testimony of a person named Carmen Caban, a drug dealer who testified at length about the business operations that occurred between 1972 and 1975. This was only about drugs, no murders.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Yeah, so it was only about that one transaction, the big transaction.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Just about drugs, yeah. All of her sons had been arrested and they eventually get convicted as well. So Griselda, you know, she gets convicted. She's serving time in California, but you wouldn't know it because she ate better than anyone else, and she wore her own clothes. And so one evening, there's a young man named Charles Cosby watching TV, and he saw a news report about Griselda Blanco being arrested, and he was in awe. He was dealing crack in Oakland and he was making about $300 to $500 a day and was amazed first that any drug dealer earned a billion dollars. But a woman doing this was beyond his imagination. So he knew that he had to meet her. So he wrote to her, and one day she called him and he couldn't believe it. And he said, I don't know what to call you. And she said, Call me godmother. Yeah. So she called the next day and then the next day, and then she would call two, three, four, five times a day. And after six months of writing letters and talking to him on the phone, she wanted him to meet her son, Michael, who's a little older at this point. He's teenager-ish. So in June of '92, Charles went to meet Griselda, where she was imprisoned at FCI Dublin prison in California. She was still earning a ton of money while in prison. Like her operation was still going. And so over the phone, she had alluded to Charles that she would help him in the business. And you can't talk too much on the phone because, you know, all that's being recorded. So in person, he came to visit and he told her that he'd like to start with 50 kilos. So a few days later, a lady came to his door and drops off two boxes that have 50 kilos of cocaine in them. She's still running an empire from prison. Yes. He was able to move that really quickly, like 200 million, and he pocketed 200K in commission. So he went from earning $200,000, $300 a day to $200,000 off of that $2 million.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

The one deal, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Basically, he was a forty a millionaire after 45 days of working with Griselda. But what does he owe her? Yeah, right. She had never dealt with a black man in her work, and her associates didn't like it at all. But she was basically like, screw you guys, like he's working for me, like he's doing what he needs to do. But they were also lovers. She would pay $1,500 whenever he would come to visit for the guards to unlock a room for them to go in when he would visit.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Oh, for conjugal visits.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Exactly. And she's like 20 years older than him, but you know, they're cool. They're just carrying on like they were living out in the world somewhere. She finds out that he's seeing somebody and how she gets all this information, like I don't know. But you know, he's on the outside. Of course he's getting with other people. Right, right. So she tried to have him executed, you know, a shooting while he's driving, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest. So this guy's got balls. Like he went to see her in prison and pleaded with her to see that he was helping take care of the business. He was helping her to take care of Michael. He was there for Michael. He was helping her with her mom. And he was keeping the money flowing. And oddly, like, she forgave him.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I guess he was straight with her.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

I guess, yeah. So she needed him. She needed him for all those things, though. So in November 1993, Rivi, the guy who killed the two-year-old boy back in 1982, he was accused of 60 murders. And he was facing the death penalty. This is back in Miami. And he turned state's evidence against Griselda. So she came up with some crazy plan to kidnap JFK Jr. Huh? I'm trying to tie it into what you just said.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

So the guy is going to turn on her to obviously not get the death penalty, probably.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

And in order to get out of that, she's going to kidnap JFK Jr.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yes. I I don't I don't know where the thinking came on this, but that's what it is. So yes, so Charles travels to New York City and he hands over $100,000 to a lady named Christine Ramirez and four associates who would do the kidnapping. And they cased RFK Jr. for a week and they came really close one day to snatching him. But an NYPD squad car drove up and parked right at the corner of his apartment. So the operation stalled. So Charles spoke to Griselda on the phone and he asked, probably in some kind of coded language, but he still said JFK. You want to continue with the JFK plan. And of course, since the calls are recorded, the next day the Kennedy family was alerted. And then Charles was subpoenaed in the Miami case. Somehow in here, he got, you know, pulled into the case in Miami. So in 1994, she's transferred to Florida. She's transferred from California to Florida to face the three murder charges. This is going back to Rivy basically saying she's the one who had me killing people. One of the ones she's charged for is a two-year-old boy, and the other is for a drug dealer married couple or married couple who was dealing drugs together named Alfredo and Grisel Lorenzo. So you think like the death penalty is looming in front of her, right? Rivy's the star witness in the case against Griselda. There's no DNA, there's no fingerprints, there's really not any physical evidence to link her to anything that's happened. And in a strange twist, like uh Truth a Stranger, then fiction type of thing, there's a sex scandal involving Rivy and up to three secretaries in the state attorney's office. Like he's having phone sex with these with the people that work there.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

And this started after he got arrested.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Yes. Yes. He's because he's already been in jail. Like he's already been in jail for a while. Yeah. Was he very good looking? You know, I did see him in one of the documentaries that I watched. And yeah, I mean, he's a good-looking man, but he's older now, you know. Maybe then he was but he was sending them gifts and things, and how he was able to do this. I mean, maybe he was still making money inside of jail, too. I don't know. So since the secretary's all had access to the case files, integrity of the case is shot, the whole thing's compromised. So Griselda makes a deal and she pleads guilty to three murders in exchange for a reduced sentence. So the case goes from a death penalty case to time served, 20 years with her time served. So she's gonna be out in like five years. She's got like this crazy luck. I know. She's untouchable. Yes, absolutely. So in 2004, she gets released from prison. She gets deported back to Colombia, where she was purportedly living life as a born-again Christian and trying her hand at real estate. It's nearly unbelievable that she went from running an $80 million a month empire to selling property in Medellin. It's just crazy. Sadly, all of her sons, they had all been in jail. And once they were released and also deported to Colombia, they were all murdered.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

They were all murdered for their like being involved, probably.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Exactly. Her youngest son, Michael Corleon Blanco, is he still alive? I think he may have been involved in the drug business when he was a lot younger, but he figured out that he needs to get out of that. I'm sure after seeing all that death, you know, his closest family. He's living in Miami with his wife and three children, where he runs a legitimate lifestyle and cannabis brand called Pure Blanco. They've got a website and everything.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Pure Blanco. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Yeah. So, in an ironic twist of fate, she was murdered by the method that she is said to have invented. It was September 3rd, 2012, and she was at the neighborhood butcher shop with her daughter-in-law buying some meat. And as they exited the building, two men on a motorcycle drove up. The man on the back got off, came in close range, shot her twice in the head, got back on the motorcycle, and zoomed off into the busy afternoon traffic in Medellin.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Died by her own invention. Yeah. She's fascinating. You're right. Truth is stranger than fiction. You can't make that up.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Yeah, she is a fascinating character. And you know, one thing that I found kind of interesting is that when you look at pictures of her as an older woman, like she's not beautiful, but most women are not beautiful as they age. I mean, you're still beautiful. That was the wrong way to say that. You're so beautiful. You just change. Your looks change. But pictures of her when she was younger, she's a tiny woman. She's like five feet tall. When she was younger, she was very attractive. She had dimples and she had a cleft in her chin, like which would be one of the things that would be very pronounced, you know, that people you'd think that people would be able to spot her immediately because of those things, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Right. Identifiable characteristics, yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, but I found it really interesting that they made Sophia Vergara's character like they put a lot of makeup on her and made her look really ugly. And I just kind of wonder if the point of that was to prove like the ugliness of a person, like the inside of a person, how ugly they could be.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

It's funny that you bring that up because I have this in to talk about in the pop culture. So what I did was I looked up, I was like, what did they do to make her look like? And so she had a prosthetic nose piece to pull down her naturally cute nose. That's what they said, because she is She's gorgeous. She's gorgeous, right? She had prosthetic eyebrow covers placed over her real eyebrows with false, thin, tweezed-out, late 70s style eyebrows glued on top. And a plate of fake teeth that were slightly bucked, slightly uneven, and discolored, with the bottom teeth yellowed further to reflect Griselda Blanco's heavy smoking habit. And then the prosthetic pieces were made from translucent silicone, and Bergara wanted the overall makeup to be two or three shades darker than her natural skin tone. As the series progressed, the makeup got darker and more haggard, heavier black around the eyes, sunken shadows beneath them, and hollowed out cheeks to reflect Griselda's growing paranoia. And for her final prison scenes, a prosthetic neck waddle piece was added to create an age sagging look along with the stippling techniques to age her further. And then it says the entire transformation took three hours every day, an hour and a half for prosthetics and makeup, another hour and a half for the wig, body, makeup, and wardrobe. The goal, as makeup artist Todd McIntosh put it, was to take her absolutely exotic face and turn it into an average face. Subtle enough that Vegara's performance could still shine through without prosthetics doing the acting for her.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

And she was nominated for an Emmy in that role. She was. That's pretty awesome. I mean, I really enjoyed the series. I thought it was very well done. I appreciated the acting, the storytelling. You know, it's hard when you watch something and you think, oh, this is the way it went, and you start reading things and you don't get the full story or things are changed around. But, you know, I know they want to make it flow a little bit differently and they do that. Creative liberties, yeah. I mean, it's already a really dramatic story, but they want to bring it to a certain dramatic level. I watched the Cocaine Cowboys 2 documentary, which is the one that Charles Cosby is telling the story. I've noticed in these other things, he's not even mentioned. Like he's kind of an afterthought, which I think he played a big role, you know, later on. So I find that interesting. And then I also watched the what was the one with Catherine Zeta Jones?

SPEAKER_02 36:24

The lifetime movie called Cocaine Godmother.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

That one was okay. That one, they really leaned in on that she was in a lesbian relationship.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

I was gonna talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

I mean, you said she had orgy, so obviously she had Yeah, so I think the difference is that women didn't call themselves bisexual. She was obviously at least bisexual. She had husbands and kids, but you would also sleep with women too, at least later. No telling if she did that earlier in life. I mean, as a prostitute, as a sex worker, she might have had sex with women. I don't know. They leaned so hard into it, like that even on her wedding night, instead of sleeping with her husband.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

I know, but she slept with her lover. I watched that too. You were talking about her mother, and in the very first scene, like she's getting dressed after an old man has obviously, you know, had sex with her, and he says, Tell your mother I'll pay her later.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

And then her mother beats the shit out of her, telling her, Money first. What did I tell you? Money first. This little girl looks like she's like eight years old.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

I know it was so young. So that was a really disturbing way to completely start the series.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

But But that might not be absolutely untrue. I mean, I just can't even imagine. It's sadly probably true.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yeah, so those were the two dramatic versions of her story and played by two extremely beautiful women. Like, you can't get more beautiful than those two. And then I didn't finish Griselda, so, but I did look into it. I did watch the first episode, and it's I did it to prepare for this. Yeah, so I'm definitely gonna finish that. And you might want to keep watching it.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Yeah, it's a good show.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

That was really pop culture. The only other thing I wanted to talk about with pop culture was okay. So she's been a fixture in hip-hop for decades. Rappers have used her name as a short hand for power, drug empires, and ruthless ambition for years. Nicki Minaj has referenced her and Drake and Travis Scott. Uh, Little Kim has invoked her. Cardi B also gave her a nod. Meek Mill and Rick Ross referenced her on their 2012 track, Believe It. And then the most direct tribute of all, the rap collective simply called Griselda, founded by West Side Gun, Conway the Machine, and Benny the Butcher. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

I think there might also be a record label, a hip-hop record label called Griselda Records. I think that might be there too, somewhere in there. Folks who put her on a pedestal, you know, I mean, and I think it would be the same as like Scarface and the Godfather movies, like people kind of love these movies, or, you know, this kind of culture where people come from nowhere, like from the humblest beginnings and they make their way to the top. It's just what happens in the end, like not knowing when to get out, not knowing when to stop.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

And that's the thing is like at one point you would think you would be like, I have enough money and I've been getting away with it. So guess what? I'm gonna go live a good life somewhere else and let someone else take over my empire. That's what I think I would do. I mean, well, obviously, I don't think I would raise to the top in that profession, but but yeah. Let me do the astrology real quick. Okay, great. It's interesting, it really is. So Griselda was born on February 15th, 1943, making her an Aquarius, and she has a life path number of seven. Okay, before we go any further, I'll break down what a life path number is. It's numerology, and your life path number is essentially what your sun sign is in astrology. So your overall personality. It's your most important number in your chart, and you calculate it by adding up every digit in your full birth date until you land on a single number. And so for Griselda, February is the second month, and she was born on the 15th in 1943. So it's two plus one plus five plus one plus nine plus four plus three, and that gives you twenty five, and then two plus five gives you seven. So your life path numbers believed to reveal your core personality, the central theme of your life, and what you're here to learn and the way you naturally move through the world. And life path seven is the number of the loner, the strategist, the one who operates in the shadows and trusts absolutely no one. Sevens are deep thinkers, obsessive investigators, and they rarely, if ever, let anyone truly in. They figure everything out independently, and they take nothing at face value, and that tracks for Griselda. She built a billion-dollar empire largely by keeping herself untouchable, staying several steps ahead of everyone around her, and trusting no one, her husbands, her allies, not even the people closest to her. Okay, so let's go back to the actual placements, the astrology. So she was an Aquarius son, and you know, I know tons of Aquarius. They're usually humanitarians, visionaries, quirky, you know, creative types, but every sign has a dark side. So Aquarius is ruled by two planets: Uranus, the planet of rebellion and chaos, and Saturn, the ancient ruler of structure, discipline, and control. And um, an astrologer, Liz Green, wrote that where Aquarius consciously strives for selflessness, the shadow side is completely self-centered and fully dedicated to the upholding of control. And she didn't want just power. She wanted to control everything, right? She wanted to do it by her own terms, her own rules. And so it's fixed air energy at its most dangerous. In the darkest expression, Aquarius can be cold, calculated, unfeeling, and utterly ruthless. Griselda, you know, allegedly murdered three of her husbands. She allegedly had her first killing at 11. Well, you're saying it happened.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

That's what the story says. And I would imagine that there were people there that saw it happen.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Yeah, so there's no emotional friction, no hesitation. That chilling detachment and the ability to look at a human being and make a completely dispassionate decision about their fate is dark Aquarian energy. Fixed air that observes the world from a godlike distance and feels nothing. And Aquarius is also the sign of innovation, of doing things that no one has done before, or breaking the system just to rebuild it your way. And Griselda had lingerie designed with secret compartments to move cocaine across borders that went even further and opened an entire factory, as you said, to manufacture those smuggling garments at scale. And that's an Aquarian brain at full throttle. Unconventional, original, and always 10 steps ahead of the rules. Now, let's talk about our moon sign. Her moon is in Taurus. We're both Tauruses, so we're gonna get to hear some dark sides of our signs. But the moon rules your emotional world, your inner life, and what makes you feel safe, what you need to function. And Taurus moons crave security, comfort, luxury, and above all else, control over their environment. And when you combine that emotional blueprint with the kind of obscene wealth Griselda. Accumulated from the drug trade, you get someone who is not just enjoying material success, she's psychologically dependent on it. And stability at any cost, safety at any cost. So Taurus is also one of the most stubborn, I can attest, uh immovable possessive signs in the entire zodiac. And Griselda allegedly reacted to betrayal and disloyalty with extreme, decisive vengeance. That is, Taurus Moon energy turned frightening. Because when a Taurus Moon feels that what is theirs has been threatened or taken, the response isn't emotional and messy. It's slow, deliberate, and absolute. You don't just fight, you disappear. Now, the placement that might be the most telling of all is her Mars and Aries. And Mars is the planet of aggression, conflict, violence, and how we pursue what we want. It govers our instincts when we're challenged and when we feel backed into a corner, when we decide someone needs to be handled. And she did that quite a bit. Mars and Aries acts first and thinks later. It's bold, fearless, impulsive, combative, and completely comfortable with confrontation. In darker manifestation, it creates explosive aggression and absolute willingness to dominate through force, not because you have to, but because it comes naturally. So when you put this chart together, so-called controlling Aquarius Sun, the security obsessed, possessive Taurus Moon, the impulsive, aggressive Mars and Aries, and a Life Path Seven that made her lone strategist who trusted no one and operated entirely in the shadows. You don't get a woman who stumbled into power, you get someone who was wired from the very beginning to take it and to keep it. So there she is. There she is. And you know, Taurus, we're like maternal, you know what I mean? We're very maternal signs. And so a lot of the stuff portrayals and stuff that I saw, like she was very would do anything. If you hurt her sons, you know what I mean? She's gonna take you out. So that's that deep mother moon right there working for her.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah, absolutely. And I I think she felt like a mother over her business too. And maybe that's why she could not give it up, she couldn't think about you know, leaving this behind. Because it was her baby.

SPEAKER_02 46:18

It was her baby. Okay, well, thanks for joining me. And that was I did not know a lot about her, and so now I feel like I know a lot about her. I know a lot more about her, too. I'm gonna look for maybe some books that have been written. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

I bet there's tons of stuff out there. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Yes, thanks for joining me. We'll do it again. Absolutely. Love you, girl. Love you too. Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

The Femme Fatal. Created and hosted by Stacey Dotson, produced by Mark Williams. Music by Marcia Yingling, Chad Chang, and Greg Loycano.