DRUG LORD'S GIRLFRIEND TELLS HER STORY, SHAKES COLOMBIAN HIGH SOCIETY

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- If history's most notorious drug trafficker was
such a low-life, how did he manage to seduce a sophisticated socialite who
was a superstar model, actress and TV hostess?

The question has been obsessing Colombians ever since the late Pablo
Escobar's former lover surfaced in the United States in July and held up an
unflattering mirror to Colombian society by detailing alleged ties between
the elite and organized crime.

In an hour-long statement broadcast on Colombia's RCN network, Virginia
Vallejo alleged Escobar had ties with various prominent Colombians,
including two former presidents. Having already named some names, she is
reportedly planning to publish a book next month, and Colombians are
excitedly waiting to see who else she'll drag through the dirt.

She also supported allegations that veteran politician Alberto Santofimio
had urged Escobar to kill Luis Carlos Galan, a presidential candidate
crusading against the drug lords.

"This man is a killer, the only thing he didn't do was pull the trigger,"
Vallejo said of Santofimio, who is on trial for his alleged role in the
1989 assassination of Galan, his political rival, by Escobar's hit men.

In this land that produces most of the world's cocaine, Vallejo's affair
with Escobar is seen as a telling example of the establishment's easy
relationship with drug traffickers - the legitimate businesses that launder
drug earnings, the elite social clubs that open their doors to drug lords,
and the politicians who exchange favors for briefcases of cash.

"The political class, with few exceptions, also went to and continues to
get into bed with the mafia," Oscar Collazos said in a column on Vallejo in
the El Tiempo newspaper.

In her statement, which she taped and delivered to RCN for broadcast after
she left Colombia, Vallejo claimed that Escobar maintained close relations
with former presidents Belisario Betancur and Alfonso Lopez, and helped
fund Lopez's political campaign. Neither has responded to repeated requests
for comment by The Associated Press.

Many Colombians wonder how the woman they saw on TV, beautiful and refined
at 56, could love a pudgy drug baron with dead, shark-like eyes who was
blamed for the murder of thousands of Colombians in the 1990s drug wars.

"I fell in love with a philanthropist, a man loved by his people," she
explained. "He was the only rich man in Colombia who was generous with the
people, in this country where the rich have never given a sandwich to the
poor."

Colombia would much rather be famous for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, its Nobel
literature laureate, but their fascination with Escobar is still strong, 13
years after he was killed in a shootout on the rooftop of a humble house.

A recent autobiography by one of his top hit men, known as Popeye, revealed
how Escobar thought and how he would relax with marijuana in the company of
models who were his girlfriends. Yet another TV documentary about him,
"Pablo Escobar: The Godfather of Death," is about to be aired.

Vallejo learned, however, that high society might accept the drug lords'
money, but not their mistresses, especially one who was sleeping with
Escobar at a time when he was waging a war of bombs and assassinations
against Colombian society to head off his extradition to the U.S.

"She was totally cut off," said her friend, filmmaker Gustavo Nieto Roa.
"Before, she would have a reception or a cocktail and every important
person in the city would attend. But after it became known she was his
girlfriend, nobody wanted to be seen with her."

She disappeared from the social pages and was struck off the invitation
lists. She was reduced to selling cosmetics to stores, and friends say she
had approached them looking for work in recent months.

On July 18, after she first voiced accusations against Santofimio, the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration spirited her out of Colombia. It isn't
saying what help, if any, she has provided, nor revealed any details on her
whereabouts.

Gonzalo Guillen, a Bogota-based journalist for El Nuevo Herald who has
known her for the past year and has interviewed her, doubts she'll be back.

"If she leaves the United States it will be to go on to a third country,
but she's too scared to return here," he said.