Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug trafficker known as the "queen of cocaine," was shot and killed in Medellin, Colombia on Monday.
Two motorcycle assassins shot Blanco, 69, as she was leaving a butcher shop, reported Colombian newspaper El Colombiano. According to the Miami Herald, the drug trafficker spent close to 20 years in prison in the United States before being deported to Colombia in 2004.
Blanco, who was among the first Colombians to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to the United States, was linked to nearly 40 homicides, the Miami Herald reported. According to the paper, Blanco was only convicted of three murders, including the killing of a 2-year-old boy in Miami.
Former Miami homicide detective Nelson Andreu told reporters, "It's surprising to all of us that she had not been killed sooner because she made a lot of enemies. When you kill so many and hurt so many people like she did, it's only a matter of time before they find you and try to even the score."
El Colombiano reported that Blanco was obsessed with the Sicilian mafia and even named one of her sons, Michael Corleone. She allied herself with infamous drug trafficker Pablo Escobar Gaviria during the 1970s and later ran her trafficking organization with three of her sons.
Blanco was captured in 1984 in Los Angeles, El Colombiano reported, and returned to Medellin in 2004 after being deported. Family members told the BBC that she cut her ties to organized crime when she returned to Colombia.
According to El Colombiano, Blanco lived off the rent of some properties she maintained and stayed out of the limelight after her return to Colombia. She will be buried on Tuesday in a cemetery south of Aburrá Valley in the Colombian Andes, the paper reported.
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