MIAMI – When Nelson Andreu, the retired chief of the West Miami Police Department, was a Metro-Dade detective, he thought of Griselda Blanco as a serial killer.
Local 10 News anchor Dwight Lauderdale reported on the “turbulent time” that inspired “Miami Vice,” a 1984 drama, and later the “Cocaine Cowboys” documentaries and “Griselda” on Netflix.
“It was a money drug battle ... If she bought drugs from you and didn’t want to pay you, she would have you killed. If you bought something from her and you owed her money and wouldn’t pay her, she would kill you,” Andreu told Lauderdale while Blanco was in prison.
Detectives suspected Blanco was behind dozens of murders while she lived in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and Medellin. In Miami-Dade, she was convicted of three and sentenced to three concurrent 20-year sentences that she didn’t serve.
In 1982, Blanco was behind the murders of Alfredo and Grizel Lorenzo while they were home with their kids and the murder of 2-year-old Johnny Castro during a hit to his father Jesus “Chucho” Castro, who survived.
“The son was sitting on the armrest of the car and, unfortunately, he got struck and killed -- shot in the face,” Andreu told Lauderdale about Johnny’s murder.
The Lorenzos owed her money, and Castro owed her for allegedly mistreating one of her sons. Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, a hitman from Cali, Colombia, testified against her.
“At first she was real mad because we missed the father, but when she heard we had gotten the son by accident, she said she was glad,” he told police, adding, “They were even.”
“She is going to be deported. Fortunately, not left in the United States, and I think she is going to face the fate of her sons and other family members that were part of that organization, and I really don’t think she is going to last that long alive in Colombia,” Andreu told Lauderdale in 2004.
About eight years later, the infamous “Godmother” died in the streets of Medellin. An assassin on a motorcycle shot her outside of a butcher shop. She was 69.
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