Griselda Blanco’s life story reads like a script from a Hollywood crime drama. From her humble beginnings in Colombia to becoming one of the most feared names in the global drug trafficking scene, her life was fascinating and horrifying in equal measure.

The Netflix series Griselda, starring Sofia Vergara, throws the spotlight back onto the life and crimes of the so-called Cocaine Godmother, but how much of what we see on screen aligns with reality?

As a new six-part Netflix series that re-enacts the rise and fall of Griselda Blanco, Justin Vallejo explores the real-life psychotic spiral of the ‘cocaine godmother’ from drug-fuelled orgies to the homicidal paranoia that ignited Miami’s cocaine war.

By the time Bob Palombo, a crime buster, caught up with the “chameleon, who could change her appearance at will” after 11 years, she had been known by many names: La Dona Gris, La Gorda, La Gordita, The Black Widow, La Madrina.

In that moment of reckoning, she regressed to Betty, given for a long since passed resemblance to Betty Boop, if the 1930s character had spent decades in a psychotic spiral of drug-fuelled orgies and homicidal paranoia.

The cleft chin and cartoonish dimples remained, and like so many before him, Palombo was mesmerised. He kissed her on the cheek and introduced himself as the Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent who was to finally bring down The Cocaine Godmother: “Hola, Griselda. We finally meet.”

“She didn’t kiss me, I can only think what she would have liked to do,” Palombo, now retired, recalled to The Independent of her 1985 arrest.

Kill him, if he had to guess. And without remorse. Griselda Blanco killed lovers and enemies alike. Preferably with one of her Pistoleros hitmen, riding up on a motorbike, and shooting at point-blank in the preferred method that she popularised and how she, in a serving of street justice, was assassinated outside a Medellin butcher shop in 2012.

But for a short moment after being dragged out of a California townhouse in Irvine, Orange County, on February 12 – her birthday weekend – she showed a glimpse of the vulnerability beneath the bravado.

“She was pretty tough and standoffish, a typical Colombian move I would say, nonchalant, not really showing any real emotion, but when we put her in the car, I was in the backseat with her and the other agent was driving. We drove up to Los Angeles, and when we got close to the courthouse is when she became visibly shaken,” Palombo remembered.

Griselda Blanco, born in poverty in Colombia, transformed herself into one of the most powerful and deadly drug traffickers of the 20th century. Her criminal career, beginning in childhood with theft and kidnapping, escalated to running one of the most lucrative cocaine trafficking operations in the United States.

Known for her brutal methods of eliminating rivals, including the innovative use of motorcycle assassins, Blanco’s reign in Miami during the 1970s and 1980s is marked by unprecedented violence and bloodshed.

Blanco was not only a pioneer in cocaine trafficking, but she also had a knack for creativity in her smuggling methods. Her operation, which extended from Colombia to the United States, was notorious for its violence and the impressive volume of cocaine it moved.

Blanco diversified her drug supply sources and, in a move similar to her peer Carlos Lehder, advocated for the consolidation of assets and risk distribution among fellow narcotics traffickers. This approach laid the groundwork forming the Medellin Cartel, paving the way for Pablo Escobar’s notorious rise to power.

At her peak, Blanco’s network was smuggling tons of cocaine into the US, amassing millions of dollars monthly. Her ruthless elimination of competitors earned Miami the moniker of Cocaine Cowboy Wars city, plunging it into a dark era of public shootouts and murders.

Despite her wealth and power, Blanco’s criminal empire eventually crumbled. Arrested in 1985, she spent decades in and out of prison, facing charges ranging from drug trafficking to multiple murders. However, her 2012 assassination — mirroring the motorcycle hitmen method she popularized – marked the end of her bloody legacy.

Griselda Blanco’s life story inspires numerous films, documentaries, and now a Netflix series, with actresses like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sofia Vergara, and Jennifer Lopez bringing her story to the screen. Despite the glamorisation, the real-life consequences of her actions and the violence she propagated continue to be felt. Sofia Varga offers more insight into the truth behind her motivations and performance playing Blanco on Netflix.

The cleft chin and cartoonish dimples remained, and like so many before him, Palombo was mesmerised. He kissed her on the cheek and introduced himself as the Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent who was to finally bring down The Cocaine Godmother: “Hola, Griselda. We finally meet.”

“She didn’t kiss me, I can only think what she would have liked to do,” Palombo, now retired, recalled to The Independent of her 1985 arrest.

Kill him, if he had to guess. And without remorse. Griselda Blanco killed lovers and enemies alike. Preferably with one of her Pistoleros hitmen, riding up on a motorbike, and shooting at point-blank in the preferred method that she popularised and how she, in a serving of street justice, was assassinated outside a Medellin butcher shop in 2012.

But for a short moment after being dragged out of a California townhouse in Irvine, Orange County, on 17 February – her birthday weekend – she showed a glimpse of the vulnerability beneath the bravado.

“She was pretty tough and standoffish, a typical Colombian move I would say, nonchalant, not really showing any real emotion, but when we put her in the car, I was in the backseat with her, and the other agent was driving. We drove up to Los Angeles, and when we got close to the courthouse is when she became visibly shaken,” Palombo remembered.

In the 37 years since, Blanco’s place among the history of Colombia’s drug lords has grown in prominence, elevating her infamy alongside Medellin Cartel contemporaries Pablo Escobar and Carlos Lehder.

As in life, Blanco has become a chameleon in death. Her image as a Queen among Kings has seen her portrayed in TV and film with increasing star power and box office draw.

The year she was killed, Blanco was played by Luces Velásquez in the Colombian telenovela, Escobar, el patrón del mal. Catherine Zeta-Jones took the role in a 2017 Lifetime movie, The Cocaine Godmother.

Now, Sofia Vergara is starring in the Netflix series, Griselda, which is finally available to stream. And Jennifer Lopez will take the starring role in the Hollywood biopic, The Godmother, currently languishing in development.

Lifetime billed Blanco as a “pioneer”, Netflix calls her a “savvy and ambitious Colombian businesswoman” and Lopez praises her as an “anti-hero”, although her three murdered husbands and the families of the dozens – maybe hundreds – killed at her whim may say otherwise.

“She is all things we look for in storytelling and dynamic characters – notorious, ambitious, conniving, chilling,” Lopez said when signing on for the role in 2019.

The reality of Blanco’s life and crimes is less airbrushed. Long before being popularised among English-speaking audiences in the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys and its 2008 sequel Hustlin’ with the Godmother, Blanco’s story was already one of legend in the annals of the US’s crime-fighting apparatus.

In 1993, the DEA published an internal magazine titled Drug Enforcement to mark the 20th anniversary of the agency’s creation by former president Richard Nixon, to wage the never-ending “war on drugs”.

The DEA ranked Blanco’s capture above the biggest scalps of the United States’ home-grown underbelly: Leroy “Nicky” Barnes, leader of the largest drug ring in New York; Wayne “Akbar” Pray, the head of a New Jersey trafficking organisation with tentacles across the country, and chemist George Marquardt, responsible for 126 overdose deaths with a drug he manufactured to be up to 400 times more potent than pure heroin, the then little-known fentanyl.

What made Blanco so feared, and her capture so revered, among the men of her time? In the DEA’s own words from 1993:

“Griselda loved killings. Bodies lined the streets of Miami as a result of her feuds. She gathered around her a group of henchmen known as the Pistoleros. Initiation into the group was earned by killing someone and cutting off a body part as proof of the deed. It is said that one of the Pistoleros assassinated a rival by riding up to him on a motorcycle and shooting him point-blank.”

• A Tell Media report / From Bold Fact