Griselda Blanco, gunned down in Medellin, Colombia Two armed riders pulled up to Blanco as she was leaving a butcher shop in her hometown

Florida Department of Corrections

Griselda Blanco in 2004.

The convicted Colombian drug smuggler known as the “Godmother of Cocaine,” Griselda Blanco, 69, was gunned down by a motorcycle-riding assassin in Medellin, Colombian national police confirmed late Monday, according to the Miami Herald.

Blanco spent nearly 20 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking and three murders before being deported to Colombia in 2004, the Herald reported.

Two armed riders pulled up to Blanco as she was leaving a butcher shop in her hometown, and one shot her twice in the head, the Herald reported, citing a report in El Colombiano newspaper.

Family members said Blanco had cut her ties to organized crime after returning to her country, the BBC reported. Police said they were investigating the motive.

Blanco was one of the first to engage in large-scale smuggling of cocaine into the United States from Colombia and set up many of the routes used by the Medellin cartel after she was sentenced in the United States in 1985, the BBC reported.

Investigators told the Herald that they estimate conservatively that Blanco was behind about 40 slayings. She was convicted in connection with three murders: Arranging the killing of two South Miami drug dealers who had not paid for a delivery, and ordering the assassination of a former enforcer for her organization, an operation that resulted in the death of the target’s 2-year-old son, the Herald reported.

Three of Blanco’s husbands were killed in violence related to drugs, the Herald reported, and one of her sons was named Michael Corleone, a reference to “The Godfather” movies.

Blanco is credited with originating motorcycle assassinations, the Herald reported.

“This is classic live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword,” filmmaker Billy Corben, who with Alfred Spellman made two “Cocaine Cowboys” documentaries, told the Herald. “Or in this case, live-by-the-motorcycle-assassin, die-by-the-motorcycle assassin.”

Daniel Rendon, known as Don Mario, has offered his gunmen nearly $1,000 US for every police officer they murder

Colombia's most-wanted drug lords has offered his gunmen nearly $1,000 US for every police officer they murder in a major coca-growing region, a senior official said on Friday.National police chief Gen. Oscar Naranjo said Daniel Rendon, known as Don Mario, had made the offer in a bid to halt police operations targeting his drug trafficking ring and coca crops in the hills of Antioquia province."When a criminal gives an order like Don Mario's, to pay two million pesos for the death of each and every one of my police officers, I know my officers are fulfilling their duties," Naranjo told local television.Colombia's most infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, who was shot dead by security forces in 1993, used a similar strategy in the 1990s and his hired gunmen killed dozens of police officers in Medellin, Antioquia's main city.Rendon is one of the three most-wanted drug traffickers in the Andean country, the world's biggest cocaine producer, and authorities are offering a reward of up to $2.2 million for information leading to his capture.
He belonged to one of the paramilitary groups that began demobilizing after a 2003 peace deal with the government of President Alvaro Uribe, but he refused to confess his crimes as required under the accord and went into hiding.Early last year, Rendon's group kidnapped 25 men he had accused rivals of sending to kill him in a turf war.Uribe has sent troops to secure areas once controlled by armed groups and violence has ebbed, but leftist rebels and former paramilitaries still battle for control of the nation's vast cocaine trade.