A 15-MONTH MANHUNT ENDS IN A HAIL OF BULLETS

Final Chapter of a Serial

The radio signal pointed Lt. Hugo Martinez straight ahead.

The line on his computer screen lengthened and the tone in his
headphones grew stronger as his unmarked police surveillance van moved
down a street in a middle-class neighborhood of Medellin on Dec. 2,
1993.

Electronic surveillance from the air and the ground had traced calls
made by fugitive drug trafficker Pablo Escobar to this neighborhood.
Hugo and his driver were trying to find the exact house. They drove
down the street until the signal peaked and then began to diminish,
the line pinching in at the edges of the screen and the tone slightly
falling off.

They turned around and crept back. The line stretched slowly until it
once again filled the screen. They stopped. This was it. They drove
past that point again just to make sure; again the signal grew, peaked
and then slightly diminished.

The driver turned around again. As they approached the house where the
signal was strongest, Hugo looked up . . . and saw him.

A fat man stood in the second floor window. He had long, curly black
hair and a full beard. The image hit Hugo like an electric shock. It
was Pablo Escobar.

He was talking on a cell phone. Suddenly he stepped back from the
window. Hugo thought he had seen a look of surprise. Through his
headphones, he heard Escobar say "Good luck," and end his conversation
with his son.

Hugo and his team had been eavesdropping on Escobar for three days as
he telephoned his wife and son at a hotel in Bogota. The fugitive was
trying to get his family safely out of Colombia. Until this moment,
the officers had not been able to tell exactly where his calls were
coming from.

Now Escobar was literally right in front of them. Years of effort,
hundreds of lives, thousands of futile police raids, untold millions
of dollars, countless man hours, all of the false steps, false alarms,
blunders. And here he was at last, one man in a nation of 35 million
people, one man in a ruthless underworld he had virtually owned for
nearly two decades, one man in city of more than a million where he
was revered as a legend.

Hugo leaned out and told the officers in the car behind him, "This is
the house."

It was a simple two-story rowhouse in the middle of the block with a
squat palm tree in front. Hugo suspected Escobar had been spooked by
their white van cruising slowly past, so he told his driver to keep
going down to the end of the block. Shouting into the radio, Hugo
asked to be connected to his father, Col. Hugo Martinez, commander of
the Colombian police Search Bloc.

"I've got him located," Hugo told his father. "He's in this
house."

The colonel knew this was it. Hugo would not be saying this unless he
had seen Escobar with his own eyes.

"Station yourself in front and in back of the house and don't let him
come out," his father said.

Then the colonel ordered all units to converge on the house
immediately.

Two men positioned themselves against the wall on either side of
Escobar's front door. Hugo's van drove around the block to the alley.
There was a one-story garage with an orange tile roof extending from
the back of the house. With weapons ready, they waited.

It took about 10 minutes for the rest of the Search Bloc force to
arrive.

"Martin," one of the lieutenants assigned to the Search Bloc assault
team, stood ready as his men applied a heavy steel sledgehammer to the
steel front door. It took several blows before it went down.

Martin sprinted into the house with the five men on his team, and the
shooting began. The first floor was empty, like a garage. A yellow
taxi was parked toward the rear, and a flight of stairs led up to the
second floor.

As the police pushed upstairs, Escobar's lone bodyguard, Jesus
Agudelo, called "Limon," jumped out a back window and fell about eight
feet to a grating on the garage roof. As Limon sprinted out across the
tiles, the Search Bloc force in the alley below opened fire.

According to the police, Limon was hit at least four times as he ran.
Hugo said his momentum carried him right off the roof, and Limon fell
lifeless to the grass below. The fatal shot struck him directly in the
center of the forehead.

Escobar had come out the window behind Limon. He had stopped to kick
off his plastic flip-flops, and dropped down to the roof. Police said
he was carrying a pistol and a rifle. He stayed close to one wall,
where there was some protection.

Police Maj. Hugo Aguilar, who had climbed onto the roof overhead,
could not get a clear shot down at him. So there was a break in the
firing as Escobar moved along the wall toward the back street.

At the corner, Hugo said later, Escobar pointed his weapons in both
directions, shouted, "Police mother---s! Police mother---s!" and fired
rounds that hit no one.

Then he broke for the crest of the gently sloping tile roof, trying to
make it to the other side. A cascade of fire felled him at the center
of the roof. He sprawled on his broad belly on the dislodged orange
tiles, hit by a round in his thigh and another in his back, just below
the right shoulder blade.

Accounts differ as to what happened next, but this much is certain:
Escobar was killed by a round that entered the center of his right ear
and exited just in front of his left ear.

According to Hugo Martinez, the shooting then continued. Inside the
house, Martin and his men fell to the floor as rounds fired by Search
Bloc members on the street below crashed through the second-floor
window and into the walls and ceiling.

Martin believed he and his men were taking fire from Escobar's
bodyguards. He shouted into his radio, "Help! Help us! We need support!"

Finally, the gunfire stopped.

On the rooftop, Maj. Aguilar shouted: "It's Pablo! It's
Pablo!"

Men were now scaling the roof. Someone found a ladder and placed it
under the second-floor window, and others climbed down to the roof
from the window.

Aguilar reached for the body on the roof and turned it over. The wide
bearded face was splashed with blood and already it was beginning to
swell. It was wreathed in long, blood-soaked black curls.

Aguilar grabbed a radio and spoke directly to Col. Martinez, speaking
loudly enough for even the men on the street below to hear:

"Viva Colombia! We have just killed Pablo Escobar!"

It is difficult to reconstruct precisely what happened on the rooftop.
Each Search Bloc member interviewed for this story provided an account
based on what he had seen. Certain details differed. In some cases,
these accounts included descriptions given to Search Bloc members by
other witnesses.

Official reports said Escobar was shot dead as he ran across the
rooftop during a gun battle with police. But a senior Colombian
National Police commander now says Escobar was executed at close
range. Autopsy reports and photos show that the fatal round went
directly into his right ear.

"I believe it is true that Escobar was shot in the head after he was
wounded on the rooftop," said Col. Oscar Naranjo, who was chief of
intelligence for the Colombian National Police at the time. "You have
to understand, the anxiety of that team was so high. Escobar was like
a trophy at the end of a long hunt. For him to have been taken alive .
. . no one wanted to attend that disaster."

Col. Martinez said there was "no point-blank 'coup de grace.' " He
indicated that the fatal shot was fired from at least three feet away.

Maj. Aguilar told the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo that he fired the
9mm round into Escobar's ear, but he did not say from what distance.

Steve Murphy, a DEA agent working out of Medellin, was the first
American on the scene. He had heard the news at Search Bloc
headquarters, and had immediately phoned his boss Joe Toft in Bogota.
Toft told him: "You better get your ass out there and bring pictures
back."

Murphy grabbed a camera, ran outside and flagged down a police vehicle
that was taking Col. Martinez to the killing scene.

They arrived as the colonel's men were setting up barricades. Crowds
had begun to form as word spread that Escobar had been killed.

Murphy climbed to the second floor and was directed to look out the
window to the rooftop. There he saw Escobar's barefoot body stretched
on the orange roof tiles. Men from the raiding party stood around the
bloodied corpse, sharing swigs from a bottle of Black Label Scotch.

Murphy shouted and the men posed for his camera, raising their rifles
triumphantly. He climbed out to the roof and took more pictures, with
more of the men posing around the slain fugitive.

Then Murphy gave the camera to an officer and posed next to Escobar's
corpse himself. One of the men took a small knife and carefully
scraped off the corner of Escobar's bloodstained mustache for a
souvenir. Another man scraped off the other corner, leaving Escobar
with a bizarre Hitler-style mustache that would be featured in news
reports, a final indignity inflicted upon the fugitive drug boss by
his pursuers.

There was a commotion on the street as Escobar's mother and sister
arrived. The mother, Hermilda, was a short, slightly stooped woman in
her 60s, with gray hair and spectacles. She pushed her way up to a
corpse on the grass and saw that it was Limon.

"You fools!" she shouted. "This is not my son! This is not Pablo
Escobar! You have killed the wrong man!"

But then the soldiers directed the two women to stand to one side, and
from the roof they lowered a stretcher bearing the corpse of her son.

As she left the place, she pulled her mouth tight and betrayed no
emotion, and paused only to tell a reporter with a microphone: "At
least now he is at rest."

Shortly after Escobar was shot dead, Colombian Police Gen. Octavio
Vargas telephoned his good friend Toft, the DEA country chief in Colombia.

"Jo-ay!" Vargas shouted happily into the phone. "We just got
him!"

That was just seconds before the call from Murphy. Toft stepped out
into the hallway and shouted: "Escobar is dead!"

Then he ran upstairs to tell Ambassador Morris Busby, the man who had
directed the American effort in this 15-month manhunt.

Busby was ecstatic. He grabbed a phone and called Washington. He asked
to speak with Richard Canas, the National Security Council's drug
enforcement chief at the Executive Office Building, across the street
from the White House.

Canas took the call and heard Busby say: "We got Escobar."

"Are you sure?" Canas asked.

"Ninety-nine percent," Busby said.

"Not good enough. Have one of our people seen it?"

"Give me a few minutes," Busby said.

It did not take long for Busby to get absolute confirmation: Steve
Murphy had turned over Escobar's body and had looked into the lifeless
face of the man who had been the most powerful criminal in the world.

Busby called Canas back.

"Got him," he said. "Dead. Got him. Gone forever."

At the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, a party erupted. Champagne bottles
popped. Banners were draped that read "P.E.G. DEAD." Pablo Emilio
Escobar Gaviria was finally gone.

Ambassador Busby felt a deep sense of satisfaction. After nearly 20
years of counterterrorism work, he felt this was the most impressive
feat he had ever been involved with. They had stuck with the chase for
15 hard, frustrating, bloody months. The effort had involved U.S.
military, diplomatic and law enforcement agencies spanning two
administrations and two continents.

It had been ugly. Since Escobar's escape from prison in July 1992, 209
people associated with Escobar or the Medellin cartel had been killed.
Fifty-two of Escobar's associates had been captured, and another 29
had turned themselves in under a generous government surrender offer.

Busby visited the Presidential Palace that afternoon to personally
congratulate President Cesar Gaviria. Extra editions of the Bogota
newspapers were already on the street. El Espectador ran an enormous
page one headline that read "FINALEMENTE SI CAHO" (FINALLY, HE'S
DOWN). Gaviria signed a copy for the ambassador.

The death of Pablo Escobar may have been cause for celebration in
official circles in Washington and Bogota, but for many Colombians,
especially in Medellin, it was an occasion for grief. Thousands
attended Escobar's funeral, following his casket through the streets.
They swarmed to get closer, and some mourners opened the casket lid to
stroke the dead man's face.

There were chants of "We love you, Pablo!" and "Long Live Pablo
Escobar!" There were shouts of anger toward the government, and
threats of revenge.

Escobar was their martyr, slain by a government they believed had
persecuted him. Even today, it is not unusual to find Escobar's framed
photograph in Colombian homes.

Escobar's grave is still carefully tended. It is framed by flowering
bushes, and ornate iron bars support three flowering pots. On the
simple gravestone there is a photograph of a mustachioed Pablo in a
business suit.

On the day Escobar was killed, Col. Hugo Martinez ran into the hideout
and found the drug boss' portable phone. That was his trophy. He used
it to phone his superior, Maj. Luis Estupinan, to congratulate him on
the kill.

That evening, the men of the Search Bloc in Medellin partied late.
Col. Martinez and his son Hugo did not join them. Such overt displays
were not the colonel's style. When the men began firing their weapons
into the air, the colonel put an end to the party.

The next morning, the colonel, Hugo and some of the other top men in
the Search Bloc were honored in Bogota. That evening, back at their
home, the colonel's youngest son, Gustavo, age 10, was looking through
a sack of Escobar's personal items that the colonel had collected. In
the bag was a small loaded handgun. As Gustavo examined it, the gun
went off.

The bullet scratched the skin of his belly, but the boy wasn't
seriously hurt. The colonel gathered up the items and delivered them
that night to police headquarters, as though they were a curse.

Martinez says he still feels haunted by the dead drug boss. He says he
derived personal satisfaction from Escobar's death, and he finally got
his promotion to general, but he paid a heavy price.

"When I think about Pablo Escobar, I think of him as an episode in my
life that completely altered the way I was living," Martinez said in
an interview last summer in his home village of Mosquera. "I don't
blame him as a person or anything like that. However, being involved
in those operations, I abandoned my family and my sons who needed me
in what was a crucial time in their lives."

Martinez was accused of accepting money from the Cali cartel and of
being involved with the illegal activities of Los Pepes - accusations
he denies. He said the allegations were first made by Escobar himself,
and spread by the Colombian press.

Martinez was never charged with any crime. For a while, for safety
reasons, he considered moving with his wife and family to Argentina.
But just as he began to inquire about emigrating there, he read news
reports that Pablo Escobar's wife and son had been arrested there.
Martinez said he felt sympathy for Escobar's family.

"Just as I was trying to go someplace else for security, so were
they," he said. "I hurt to see they are still suffering for something
that happened so long ago. They are also trying to escape from all
that."

Escobar's wife and children are believed to still own a substantial
part of his illicit fortune. They live under assumed names in Buenos
Aires, where Maria Victoria and Juan Pablo were charged in 1999 with
attempting to illegally launder money. A family lawyer says Juan Pablo
works for a computer graphics company, and Manuela, who is still a
teenager, is a student.

Not long after Escobar's death, Juan Pablo paid an unexpected visit to
the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. He asked to see Busby, who called
downstairs to Toft.

"Hey, Joe, Pablo Escobar's son is downstairs. I'm not going to see
him, OK?"

Toft agreed to meet with Juan Pablo. He stepped into the room to
encounter a soft-looking young man. Toft was impressed with the boy's
poise under the circumstances.

"He told me that he and his family were in great danger, and they were
appealing for visas to save their lives," Toft remembers.

"What will it take for me to get a visa?" Juan Pablo
asked.

"All of the cocaine and cocaine money in the world would not get you a
visa," Toft told him.

Juan Pablo did not appear surprised by the answer.

"Are you sure we can do nothing?" he asked again. "Is there anything,
anything we could do to earn a visa?"

"Even if you helped put the whole Cali cartel in jail we would not
give you a visa," Toft told him.

And Juan Pablo left.

During the celebration at the embassy after Escobar was killed, Toft
felt a knot in his stomach. He felt it all the while he was smiling,
embracing colleagues, talking to the Colombian press. Toft was
troubled by a feeling that somehow, they had sold their souls to the
devil.

Even so, he framed a certificate presented by DEA Special Agent Kenny
Magee to those directly involved in manhunt. It read, in part:
"Because of your selfless dedication and willing sacrifices, the
world's most sought after criminal was located and killed. . . ." At
the bottom were the signature and thumbprint of Pablo Escobar.

In his briefings in Washington over the previous year, Toft had
soft-pedaled evidence of links between his own agency and the
vigilantes of Los Pepes. He knew his agents had seen self-confessed
Los Pepes leaders at the headquarters of the Search Bloc, the police
team funded and guided by the United States.

He knew that certain murders of Escobar associates by Los Pepes came
after the victims had been located by U.S. intelligence, and the
information had been passed to the Search Bloc. On the one hand, Los
Pepes were dismantling Escobar's Medellin cartel and stripping away
the layers of protection around him. On the other hand, their brutal
methods troubled Toft's conscience.

Now, with Escobar dead, Toft worried that the effort against Escobar
had created a monster. It had opened a bridge between the Colombian
government, its top politicians and generals, and the rival Cali drug
cartel - what the DEA came to call a "super cartel." In the years the
Americans had focused on Escobar, Toft feared, the Cali cartel had
consolidated its operations, cemented its relationship with the
Colombian government, and emerged as a cocaine monopoly.

In 1994, Toft resigned from the DEA.

"I don't know what the lesson of the story is," he said recently. "I
hope it's not that the end justifies the means."