Terrifying drug-lord ‘The Cocaine Godmother’ invented the method that killed her
It's not only Pablo Escobar and El Chapo who hold the statuses as the world's major drug kingpins, as one far-lesser known woman once took on the queenpin title in the cocaine industry.
Griselda Blanco was once a top player in the famous drug wars that tore through Miami, US back in the 1980s.
Not only this, but Blanco went on to invent the shocking method of murder that eventually brought an end to her reign and led her to her own demise.
Talk about irony.
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Blanco, who took on the title 'Godmother of Cocaine' or 'La Madrina', lived a life full to the brim with crime, violence and ruthless escapades.
She was responsible for a string of gory murders and violent revenge attacks while acting as a central figure in Miami's infamous drug wars.
Between the late 1970s all the way through to the 1980s, Blanco banked billions of dollars working the drug trade before being convicted of three murders - one of which included that of a two-year-old boy.
She was later suspected of being responsible for at least 40 other murders, possibly as many as 200.
So, it almost made sense that 'The Cocaine Godmother' went on to die exactly how she lived - quite literally.
Blanco has long-been credited for a particular method of killing which, ironically, went on to be the cause of her own death back in September of 2012.
The drug-lord reportedly coined the idea of drive-by motorcycle murders, which oddly ended up becoming the exact method that took her life.
After serving almost two decades in US prisons and being deported back to Colombia in 2004, she was standing on the street outside a butcher shop in her hometown of Medellin when two hitmen racing past on motorbikes gunned her down.
They shot her twice in the head and she died instantly, aged 69.
Speaking of the irony that La Madrina pioneered the very murder method that went on to kill her, Professor Bruce Bagley, head of the University of Miami's department of international studies, put it down the whole thing down to karma.
"It's some kind of poetic justice that she met an end that she delivered to so many others," he told The Guardian at the time.
"Here is a woman who made a lot of enemies on her rise and was responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of people.
"She might have retired to Colombia and wasn't anything like the kind of player she was in her early days, but she had lingering enemies almost everywhere you look," the professor explained.
"What goes around comes around."
Clearly.
Bagley also went on to comment on the fact that Blanco should be remembered for her avalanche of heinous crimes rather than her gender in the previously majority-male industry.
He added: "The danger is she will be remembered not for her cold-heartedness and brutality but for being a woman entrepreneur in an emerging field dominated by men."
Rhiannon Ingle