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Hi, it's Phoebe. Before

0:33

we get to today's show, we're very

0:35

excited to announce that we're adding a

0:37

second leg to our 10th anniversary tour.

0:40

This fall, we're heading to cities

0:42

that we didn't get to visit

0:44

earlier this year. We'll be coming

0:46

to Austin, Tucson, Boulder, Portland, Oregon,

0:48

Detroit, Madison, North Hampton, and Atlanta.

0:51

Lauren and I had so much fun telling

0:53

these seven brand-new stories that we decided we

0:55

wanted to go back out on the road

0:58

again. Tickets will be on sale Friday,

1:00

July 26th. If you're a Criminal

1:02

Plus member, keep an eye on your email. You

1:04

can get your tickets even earlier, starting on Tuesday,

1:06

July 23rd. You

1:08

can find all the details

1:11

at thisiscriminal.com/live. See you

1:13

on stage very soon. What

1:17

is it like being so close to a

1:20

hippo? What do they

1:22

smell like? What do they... What's

1:24

their skin like? The

1:26

skin is not so nice. Sorry.

1:32

When they get hurt in the

1:35

wildlife hippos, they

1:37

have this... they can the

1:39

skin like blood, but it's

1:41

not blood. Dr.

1:43

Gina Palocerna is a wildlife

1:46

veterinarian. She spoke to us

1:48

from her apartment building where there is a lot

1:50

of construction. The

1:52

name hippopotamus comes from the Greek for

1:55

river horse. Hippo

1:57

spend most of their life in water, in

1:59

rivers, and lakes. lakes. When they're

2:01

out of the water, their skin dries out and

2:03

can burn. They make a fluid

2:06

to protect their skin. So,

2:08

they are like sweaty all the

2:10

time. Hippos can grow to be over 16 feet

2:13

long and about 5 feet tall. Male

2:16

adults weigh about three or four tons, about

2:19

as much as a large SUV. They're

2:22

the second largest land mammal on the planet,

2:24

after elephants. Hippos

2:27

are very territorial. They've been known

2:29

to attack lions and hyenas. And

2:32

sometimes, people. In

2:35

1996, during a canoeing trip, a

2:37

man was partly swallowed by a hippo. He

2:40

said later he could feel the water from

2:43

his waist down, but from the

2:45

waist up, he said, quote, I

2:47

was warm, and it was just

2:49

incredible pressure on my lower back. I

2:52

tried to move around. I couldn't. The

2:56

hippo spit him out. He

2:58

survived. Many hippo

3:00

attacks are fatal. Across Africa,

3:02

it's estimated that 500 people are killed by

3:05

hippos every year. Were

3:08

you scared the first time you got close to

3:10

one? Yes.

3:13

Yes, they are not nice.

3:16

So, I'm always really,

3:18

really careful about how I work with

3:20

them, and I'm really, really scared every

3:23

time I'm approaching a hippo.

3:28

Scientists think that the hippo's ancestors were

3:30

one of the first large mammals on

3:32

the African continent, before lions,

3:34

giraffes, and buffalo. Most

3:37

wild hippos are still found in Africa.

3:41

But there is a group of

3:43

wild hippos in South America, in

3:45

Colombia, where Gina lives. We

3:48

have hippos in Colombia because Pablo

3:51

Escobar brought four hippos, and

3:54

the actual population of

3:56

hippos that are here in Colombia

3:58

are from the these animals.

4:02

How many hippos are there now? About

4:06

two years ago, I

4:08

participate in study,

4:12

and we count more or less

4:14

160 hippos. So

4:18

from three to 160? Yeah,

4:21

and that, I think, now are more.

4:25

Pablo Escobar bought the land to build

4:27

his ranch, Hacienda Nopales, in

4:30

the 1970s. It

4:32

contained a mansion and several separate

4:35

residences, a sculpture garden,

4:37

a motocross track, 27 artificial lakes.

4:41

It had its own gas station, an airfield.

4:45

He kept a collection of classic cars there

4:47

and built life-size dinosaur sculptures.

4:51

And then, Pablo Escobar got the

4:53

idea to build his own zoo. For

4:57

his zoo, Pablo Escobar smuggled in over

5:00

1,000 animals from

5:02

wildlife breeders in other countries,

5:04

like Brazil and the United

5:06

States. Most

5:08

of them had to be flown into

5:10

the country late at night on military

5:12

transport planes. Black

5:14

parents, ostriches,

5:16

elephants, rhinoceroses, camels,

5:19

dolphins, kangaroos, and

5:23

hippos. I'm

5:25

Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Growing

5:29

up, Gina used

5:32

to visit the

5:34

zoo at Hacienda

5:38

Nopales. She

5:45

was always interested in animals. She

5:48

went with her father when he drove out to their

5:50

cattle farm, but her father never

5:52

let her do any work. He

5:54

said that girls are not

5:56

made to be in their farms. But look

5:59

at me. wildlife bed, so... The

6:04

farm was in Dora Dal, a

6:06

few hours outside of Medellin, near

6:08

Hacienda Nápolis. So every

6:10

time we go to the

6:12

cattle farm, we stop in

6:14

the Hacienda Nápolis Sioux

6:17

because it was open to the

6:19

public, so anybody can

6:21

go there and visit the animals.

6:23

So because of my

6:25

love for animals, I always say

6:27

to my dad that please stop

6:30

there, so we were going like

6:32

every two weeks more or

6:34

less. I

6:37

did not remember the hippos. My

6:39

mom remembered it, but I did not remember

6:41

because for me it was not like so

6:44

cool. For me it was

6:46

more cool or big animals like elephants

6:48

and giraffes. So

6:51

you always went straight for the elephants. What

6:54

did the zoo look like? It

6:57

was an open zoo. It

7:00

did not have a lot of cages,

7:04

so you can go through the

7:06

road and you can stop and

7:08

see the animals and touch the

7:11

animals. Well, the animals that you

7:13

can interact with. The

7:15

wild animals were like far. You

7:19

can see it, but it was not like

7:21

in big cages now. It

7:23

was like completely different from

7:25

the other zoos that I

7:27

used to visit in Medellin or

7:30

in other cities. Did

7:34

you know that it was owned by Pablo

7:36

Escobar? No, it was like

7:38

a small girl. And

7:41

at that time, Pablo

7:44

didn't have this

7:49

bad image. For

7:52

the people of Colombia, especially

7:54

in the Medellin zone, Pablo

7:56

Escobar was like a hero. So, for me, it was

7:59

like a big girl. He was only a nice

8:01

guy who has a lot of animals and

8:03

you can see it free. Pablo

8:06

Escobar said, this zoo

8:08

belongs to the people. As long

8:11

as I'm alive, I'll never charge an

8:13

entrance fee. This

8:17

is a big question to ask, but tell

8:19

me, who was Pablo Escobar? Pablo

8:22

Escobar was born in

8:24

Embigado. Embigado is a city

8:26

next to Medellin. Right now

8:28

they're the same metropolitan area, like it's

8:31

the same thing. But in those days,

8:33

Embigado has its own thing, has its

8:35

own vibe. It's a city

8:38

that's like,

8:40

I don't know, Manhattan and Brooklyn, right? You

8:42

know where you are when you are there.

8:45

Jorge Caraballo is a journalist from

8:47

Medellin. And Pablo Escobar

8:49

was from a family that was very humble. Eventually,

8:52

when he was young, he started

8:55

leading this little gang

8:58

and they used to steal cars.

9:00

That's what they started doing.

9:02

And then eventually he got

9:05

connected to the

9:07

big business in those years. This is the

9:09

70s, the big business in those

9:11

years, which was marijuana and

9:13

later cocaine. He started dealing with

9:15

these drugs, moving these drugs. And

9:19

I say that it was a big business

9:21

because it was not

9:23

that huge problem in

9:25

the public health, in the

9:28

newspapers, in the politicians

9:31

agenda. I

9:34

know people, for example, that

9:36

in those years told me

9:39

that they carried cocaine from a

9:41

plane from Medellin

9:43

to Miami in a suitcase.

9:46

No hiding it, no nothing. There

9:49

was no problem. There was no problem in

9:51

taking drugs from Colombia to the US because

9:53

there was not that security

9:56

infrastructure that you see today. So

9:59

he started doing it. that Pablo Escobar started moving

10:02

drugs from Colombia to the US

10:04

mainly and he

10:06

started making a lot of

10:09

money and he was not hiding

10:11

it. I mean how much money are we

10:13

talking about? We're talking about millions of

10:15

dollars, eventually billions

10:17

of dollars. In

10:19

1987 Forbes magazine listed Pablo Escobar as

10:22

one of the richest men in the

10:24

world. He would stay on

10:26

the list until his death. He

10:28

made so much money that he didn't have time

10:31

to launder it all. Instead,

10:33

he would bury stashes of money around

10:35

Colombia. Pablo Escobar's

10:37

brother and accountant Roberto

10:39

Escobar said that every year he

10:41

would write off 10% of the

10:43

cartel's profits from cash being

10:46

lost or damaged from water

10:48

or rats. Pablo Escobar

10:50

started building complete

10:52

neighborhoods for poor people and

10:55

like developing neighborhoods for

10:58

people that had no money. He

11:01

started building houses,

11:03

buying planes, buying farms,

11:05

helicopters, animals. This

11:08

is something that was kind of like

11:11

he was extravagant and

11:13

everyone in the city

11:15

knew that and people

11:18

said that this is an incredibly

11:23

smart businessman. He

11:25

knows how to do business. That's why he's

11:27

rich. He's a developer. And

11:31

if you, I was yesterday,

11:33

I was talking to this woman

11:35

who told me that in the 70s

11:40

she heard about Pablo Escobar. She had

11:42

nothing. She was living basically on the

11:44

street and she went with this

11:47

friend every single day to

11:49

a shopping mall that he had built

11:51

in downtown Medellin just to

11:53

see if they found him and asked

11:55

him for money because that's what he was

11:58

famous for. Like if you met at him,

12:00

he was so warm.

12:02

He was so helpful. He was so

12:04

generous that he would give you money.

12:06

He would just give you money away.

12:08

He would give you a pack

12:11

of bills for you and

12:13

your family. He could even

12:15

give you a house. He was that. He

12:17

had so much money that he was just

12:19

giving it away in ways

12:22

that people found almost fantastic.

12:24

Is this real? Yes, it was

12:26

real. He was giving that much

12:29

money to people in the city. There

12:32

were covers of magazines talking

12:34

about him, talking about him as Paisa

12:36

Robin Hood. Paisa is the way that

12:38

people call people in

12:41

Medellin, in my region, we are the

12:43

Paisas. So he was the Paisa Robin

12:45

Hood. And eventually

12:47

what happened is that in

12:50

his plan, it was not enough

12:52

for him to be

12:54

extremely rich, to be extremely

12:57

popular. He wanted more.

13:00

So in the 80s,

13:03

early 80s, he started a new

13:05

campaign, a new mission for himself.

13:08

He wanted to become Colombia's president.

13:10

He started by running for Congress. He

13:14

won as an alternate representative in 1982. He

13:18

pushed for the Colombian government to back

13:20

away from a treaty that would allow

13:22

the United States to extradite drug traffickers.

13:26

And there was nothing, nothing that

13:29

a drug dealer in

13:31

Colombia feared more than

13:33

going to the United States justice

13:36

system because they had no power

13:38

there. Right. If

13:40

they were caught in Colombia, there

13:42

was a way. It was usually

13:44

a way for them with so much power,

13:46

with so much cash to get out. But

13:49

if they were caught and they were extradited to

13:51

the United States, that was the end of them.

13:54

There was the end. There is a

13:57

very, very, very powerful drug dealer of

13:59

those years called. Carlos Leder, and

14:02

he was extradited in the late 80s. And

14:05

he is still in an American

14:07

prison today. He's still there.

14:11

As a member of Congress, Pablo

14:13

Escobar had parliamentary immunity. He

14:16

was also still running the Medellin Cartel's

14:18

operations. The

14:20

Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lara

14:22

Bonilla, criticized Pablo Escobar

14:24

for being a drug trafficker. But

14:28

in public, Pablo Escobar responded that

14:30

he had no record of any

14:33

drug trafficking charges. Then

14:36

the Columbia newspaper, Ellis Bectador,

14:39

ran a front page article about him, saying

14:41

that in 1976 he'd been

14:43

arrested for possession of 39 pounds

14:46

of cocaine, and that

14:48

afterwards the government agents who arrested

14:50

him were killed. After

14:54

the article came out, a judge reopened

14:56

the investigation into their deaths. Pablo

14:59

Escobar's immunity was revoked, and

15:02

shortly after he resigned from his post

15:04

in Congress. A

15:07

few months later, while on his way home, Justice

15:09

Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla was shot

15:11

by two gunmen on a motorcycle.

15:15

It was believed to have been retaliation from

15:17

the drug cartels. The

15:20

Colombian president declared war on

15:22

drug traffickers. He promised

15:24

to arrest an extradite all drug traffickers

15:26

to the United States. Pablo

15:29

Escobar went into hiding. He

15:32

was so powerful that

15:35

he was like, okay, you

15:37

think I'm hiding? I'm going to show you that

15:41

I'm here. So he started this

15:43

cruel war against everyone,

15:46

against the

15:48

government, against the army, the cops, against

15:51

the judge. Every

15:54

judge, if he needed something and

15:56

a judge resisted, he would kill the judge,

15:58

he would kill the journalist. he

16:00

started this war to pressure

16:04

Colombian government to not be extradited.

16:08

In 1985, guerrillas took over the

16:10

Colombian Palace of Justice and

16:12

held 300 people hostage, including

16:15

the country's Supreme Court justices.

16:19

The United States and Colombian governments

16:21

suspected that the guerrillas were working

16:23

with Escobar. In

16:25

the end, after the Colombian army retook the

16:27

building, a hundred hostages

16:29

had been rescued, but

16:32

many had been killed, along with many of

16:34

the guerilla fighters. In

16:37

the 1980s, many officials involved

16:40

in investigating and prosecuting drug

16:42

traffickers were killed. In

16:44

1987, the New York Times estimated that

16:47

50 judges had been killed

16:49

because of drug violence. Some

16:53

Colombian judges resigned in protest,

16:56

and even more threatened to resign if

16:58

the government didn't give them more protection.

17:02

Eventually, Colombia granted anonymity

17:04

to judges. They

17:07

were called faceless judges. What

17:10

did your parents tell you about what was going on?

17:12

How did they explain it to you? It

17:15

was complicated. It was complicated because, of

17:17

course, I was too little. So

17:19

they didn't say that much. I knew

17:22

that we were in a dangerous territory,

17:25

and I knew it because I saw it. I knew

17:27

it because I heard the bombs. I

17:29

remember one night when

17:32

this huge explosion, this

17:35

tremendous explosion blew

17:37

out the windows of our house.

17:41

We are surrounded by

17:43

mountains, so this loud bomb

17:46

resonated for seconds. Let's

17:48

say 10 seconds. So it

17:51

exploded, and then you were inside of

17:53

it for 10 seconds. I was

17:57

sleeping in the bedroom next to

17:59

my parents. and I run to their

18:01

bed, and I was shaking, and they were

18:03

like, don't worry, we're fine, we're fine. And

18:06

then we went out to the

18:08

street. After the

18:10

shock, we went out to the street, and

18:12

all of our neighbors were coming out of

18:14

the houses. And I remember this woman who

18:16

had blood on her face

18:18

because the windows, the glass

18:20

of the window, cut her. Later,

18:23

Jorge's family heard that the explosion was

18:25

from a car bomb at an army

18:27

base near their house. People

18:30

said that the Medellin cartel had put it

18:32

there. In

18:35

1988, Time magazine reported more than

18:37

3,000 people had been

18:39

murdered in the past year in Medellin,

18:42

a rate five times higher than in New

18:44

York City. In

18:46

18 hours, the police reported 13 murders.

18:51

Time called the city of Medellin the

18:53

most dangerous in the world. We'll

18:58

be right back. Support

19:10

for criminal comes from ritual. I

19:12

love a morning ritual. We've spent a

19:14

lot of time at criminal talking about how everyone starts their

19:16

days. The Sunday Routine column in

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Support for criminal comes from Quince. Something

20:12

I really enjoy is packing as lightly as possible

20:14

for a trip. This takes some

20:16

planning and finding the right clothes that you can

20:18

wear and re-wear, no matter what you're doing. If

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365-day returns

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quince.com/criminal. In

21:07

the 1990s Jorge Caravallo's father was

21:09

a doctor and his mother

21:12

did x-rays and ultrasounds and

21:14

other diagnostic tests on patients.

21:17

Every single day her

21:19

patients were wounded people. Wounded

21:22

people buy gunshots, wounded

21:24

people buy knives, wounded people buy

21:27

bombs, explosions and my

21:30

mom has something in her is that

21:34

she is the best person I know asking

21:37

questions. Like she can get into

21:39

intimate conversations in one minute. So

21:41

she was seeing patients

21:44

that were hitmen of

21:46

Pablo Escobar. She was seeing

21:48

cops. She was seeing military. She was

21:50

seeing civilians and then she would get

21:52

home and every day at dinner

21:55

time she would tell me about this

21:57

hitman how they were scared. weeks

46:00

of following them with the trail

46:02

cameras and then putting

46:04

the food in the

46:07

corals so they can get it. For

46:09

one surgery, it's like two

46:11

months of work. Everything

46:14

gets difficult, expensive, in

46:16

hippos. Name it, and

46:18

I told you why it's difficult and

46:20

expensive. Every

46:24

time I'm saying, this is the

46:26

last time, why are we doing this?

46:28

This is not the solution. They

46:32

keep growing. The population

46:34

keeps growing. Everyone

46:37

knows that hippos are

46:41

Paolo Escobar hippos, right? Whenever

46:43

people talk about hippos, Paolo

46:46

Escobar comes after. Every

46:49

couple months, a new story comes up

46:51

and of course, Los hippopotamos de Paolo

46:54

Escobar. So

46:57

yes, everyone knows that this is

47:00

a problem that started with

47:02

him. It's interesting because

47:06

these are animals

47:08

that are huge, that

47:10

are powerful, that are

47:12

voracious. These are animals

47:14

that are into hiding, right? They're not

47:16

easy to detect. They

47:18

attack from nowhere. And

47:23

somehow, they are

47:25

like his echo, right?

47:28

They are like his resonance on

47:30

Colombia. This somehow is like,

47:32

you cannot forget me. I

47:35

am always there. And it's

47:37

fascinating that we still don't know

47:39

what to do. The

47:42

Colombian government is hoping to sterilize 40 hippos

47:44

a year. They're

47:47

also considering relocating some of

47:49

the hippos to sanctuaries and

47:51

zoos in Mexico, India, and

47:53

the Philippines. In

47:56

2023, Gina stopped working

47:58

with hippos. She

48:01

now works for Panthera, an

48:03

organization working on big cat

48:05

conservation in Colombia. Do

48:08

you think you're really done with hippo surgeries

48:10

now, or do you? Yeah,

48:12

I don't want to do. Is

48:14

it harder to catch a hippo or a jaguar? A

48:18

jaguar. Harder. It's

48:20

harder, yeah. But you'd rather do

48:22

it. You'd rather be catching

48:24

a jaguar than a hippo. Yes. Yes.

48:31

The Criminal

48:39

is created by Lauren Spore and me.

48:42

Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie

48:44

Bishop is our supervising producer. Our

48:46

producers are Susannah Roberson, Jackie

48:48

Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Silison,

48:51

and Megan Knane. Our

48:53

show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Semenetti.

48:56

Special thanks to Stan Alcorn. Julian

48:59

Alexander makes original illustrations for each

49:01

episode of Criminal. You can see

49:03

them at thisiscriminal.com. Jorge

49:06

Caraballo reported an episode about

49:09

narco tours for the podcast

49:11

Radio Ambulante. You

49:13

can listen at radioambulante.com.

49:17

And you can sign up

49:19

for a newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter.

49:22

We hope you'll join our new membership

49:24

program, Criminal Plus. Once

49:26

you sign up, you can listen to Criminal

49:28

episodes without any ads. And you'll

49:31

get bonus episodes with me and Criminal

49:33

co-creator, Lauren Spore, too. To

49:35

learn more, go to

49:37

thisiscriminal.com/Plus. We're

49:39

on Facebook and Twitter at

49:42

Criminal Show and Instagram at

49:44

Criminal Underscore Podcast. We're also

49:46

on YouTube at youtube.com/Criminal Podcast.

49:50

Criminal is part of the Vox Media

49:52

Podcast Network. Discover more

49:54

great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm

49:57

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