COLD OPEN: Griselda Blanco. The Godmother. La Madrina. The Black Widow. The Columbian drug lord who came BEFORE the Medellin Cartel. Before Pablo. The woman who helped turn Miami into both the most murderous city in America in the early 80s - with brazen hits, machine gunning down a rival at a mall liquor store in broad daylight, ordering a hit on an entire family, and - one of the drug lords who helped build Miami’s skyline. 80’s drug money built a lot of those beach condos. Built a lot of those downtown skyscrapers.

Unlike most Columbian drug lords, Griselda did anything but keep the business away from her family. She forced her family into the business, and it cost most of those around her their lives. And yet she lived to the ripe old age of 69 - ancient by drug lord standards.

So let’s get into some cocaine. Let’s get into Columbia, New York, and Miami. Let’s go full Griselda in this coked up, machine gun, gangster edition of Timesuck!

PAUSE INTRO MUSIC

I. Welcome: Hello Timesuckers! What’s going on Cult of the Curious. I’m Dan Cummins and this is Timesuck. HAIL NIMROD!

Thanks to all the St Louis Suckers who came out this past week. I had six shows in St Louis and there were Timesuckers at every one. Thanks for letting me work out some new material to start the show off with you.

Quick tour date announcements and then we’re off to visit the Godmother - Griselda Blanco! All other announcements, including news about some new merch hitting the store this week and what this Friday’s bonus episode is going to be about after today’s tale. Details at the end of the episode!

This week I will be in APPLETON Wisconsin on Wednesday- one night only, December 13th at the Skyline Comedy Club. Come out and support me please! It’s a small market and if enough people don’t show up I won’t be back for a long time. I’ll also be at Comedy Club on State in Madison, Wisconsin, this weekend, December 14-16.

And then I’ll be rounding out the year at Comedy Works in Denver, Colorado, December 28 through New Year’s Eve.

And many 2018 tour dates are now posted at www.dancummins.tv and timesuckpodcast.com such as:

Indianapolis!! C’mon Indy. Be good to me again. Morty’s Comedy Joint January 5th and 6th. Providence, RI - The Comedy Connection January 19-20th. Chicopee, MA - Cabot Comedy Club Jan 21st Philadelphia! I’ll be at The Punchline January 25-27th. Chicago! January 31st through Feb. 3rd at Zanies in Rosemont. New York City - Gotham Comedy Club, one night only, Feb. 11th.

Two live podcasts now on the books for 2018!!!

Small Town Murder swap cast in Detroit on Feb. 16th, 2018 at the Magic Bag is happening! Live swap cast podcast tickets are on sale. Two shows now in one night - standup at 7PM, and the swap cast will start at 10PM.

Sisyphus Brewing in Minneapolis on March 3rd. Only $10 tickets for a live Timesuck podcast. Those aren’t quite on sale yet but you’ll know soon. I’ll announce first on Instagram. Small room - only 90 seats. And I’ll be doing standup shows there March 2nd and the 3rd as well.

Check the tour date section on the website for more info. Ticket links in the episode description.

And now… the Godmother!

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. Narrative 1. How do you become a drug lord? How do you get into the business? Do you start off in private, Catholic school in the suburbs with a doctor for a dad and a nurturing stay at home mom? Do you move from Homecoming Queen one year to ordering hits on rival dealers the next? Do you study finance and business administration so you can stay on top of the inevitable money laundering that comes with coke cash?

Not usually. Usually you start off in the dirt. With nothing to lose and everything to gain. Usually you’re born into a world of drugs where life is fast and cheap. And Griselda is no exception. So let’s take a long, hard look look at the birth, life, and death of Griselda in a Timesuck Timeline.

III. Timesuck Timeline

1. Feb. 15th, 1943: Griselda Blanco was born on Feb. 15th, 1943, even though her tombstone says Feb. 14th. There are a lot of discrepancies in the historical accounts of Griselda. Her life is shrouded in mystery. She embellished truths and let wild rumors grow to create more fear in her enemies and rivals and she concealed her identity numerous times to help evade capture. She was born somewhere in Columbia. She herself listed at least three different cities in accounts of her birth. Most likely she was born in Cartagena (“Carta-hey-na”), a coastal city on the Caribbean. An old city founded in 1533. A city where indigenous people had lived, according to archaeological evidence, since at least 4,000 B.C.

The Cocanos - the original harvesters and processors of cocaine. The Cocanos chewed on the leaves of the Coca plant. Then, thousands of years ago, they began crushing the leaves into a paste and then drying it for a faster high. Soon after that, the Krackano tribe figured out how to harden the paste, crystalize it, and smoke it in old pottery pipes. And then a third tribe, the Krackano Heados, who couldn’t make it themselves and would buy it from the Cocanos and the Krackano Heados started stealing everyone’s stuff and offering to fellate fellow tribe members for just one more hit of that sweet Krakano rock. Also, around this time, the ancient tribes invented a form of disco, began wearing all white suits, took to wearing sunglasses indoors, and drove nothing but soft top convertibles.

All that tribe stuff was bullshit. But the area has been inhabited since around 4,000 B.C.

In 1533, it was founded by Pedro de Heredia, a Spanish explorer and quickly became an important shipping center for sending Peruvian silver back to Spain. And, actually, the Spaniards truly did encourage the indigenous people of that time to chew the Coca leaves, because it did get them high, and kept them more obedient and allowed them to work longer hours in those mines.

How strange is that? On day you have an entire culture and way of life that has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. And then, the next day, some Spanish assholes on some boats show up and change everything. Suddenly, you’re a part of their culture. And not the good part. Yesterday, you may have been a respected warrior or village elder. Now, you’re some schmuck in a silver mine literally working yourself to death so some King across an Ocean, living in a country you’ll never see or benefit from, can get even richer than he already is and afford to fund more expeditions to find more indigenous people and fuck them over too. God the world REALLY just isn’t fair, is it? It really, really isn’t.

Anyway, Cartegna - that’s what I keep trying to talk about. honestly, the more I look into Cartegna, the more I want to go. It’s a gorgeous coastal city of about a million people with beautiful old Catholic churches, colonial architecture, and an average temperature of 82 degrees. Museums, beaches, shopping plazas, nightlife, and currently, not too much crime. It looks amazing!

If only Griselda could’ve grown up to own a cool beach restaurant or develop beachfront condos or run a nightclub. Something. She could still be there today, an elderly grandmother. So interesting with all of us how there are all these various paths we can take in our lives. So many points where if we would’ve zigged left instead of zagged right, we’d be an entirely different person now living an entirely different life.

Wherever she was born, Grisleda was baptized in Santa Marta, also on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, another bad ass looking place to visit of a little under half a million people. Founded on July 29, 1525, by the Spanish conquistador Rodrigo de Bastidas, it was the first Spanish settlement in Colombia. Another postcard of a city with the stunning mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range, ancient ruins, mangrove forests, hiking trails, beaches, and beautiful Columbian women. And the baptismal center of a woman who would lead a horrifically ugly life.

The man Griselda called her father, who might have actually been her stepfather, was a taxi driver named Luis Carlos Blanco. Griselda would later tell friends that she had been raised in poverty, unable to afford so much as shoes; others would say that Luis and Griselda’s mother, Ana, provided Griselda and her three younger siblings with all their basic needs. She’d carry his name her whole life.

2. Early 1940s/1946: And then, at some point very early in Griselda’s childhood, when she was around three years old, the family moved to the Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”), a decidedly not very nice at all neighborhood far from the beach in Medellin. Remember Medellin from the Pablo Escobar suck? The city Pablo was raised in. The city he’d be shot down in. The city he’d come to control for years through ruthless violence and bribes. Home of the Medellin drug cartel at the height of it’s power. The cocaine capital of the world, and, at times, one of the most violent cities in the world.

Now, Medellin is a city full of a lot of safe neighborhoods, declared the World’s Most Innovative City by the Urban Land Institute and Wall Street Journal in 2012. Well, Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) is a neighborhood in Medellin that is still, by all accounts I came across, a shit show. An underworld den of crime, vice, and corruption. And when Griselda was young, her mother Ana was said to have worked as a prostitute in this neighborhood full of brothels. The neighborhood had earned its name in the early part of the century for attracting rural migrants from the pueblos of the surrounding Antioquia district, who came to work in its hosiery factories. In the 1940s, it had attracted poor migrants from the Caribbean, like Griselda’s family.

The barrio was destitute, crowded, and at the time isolated from the rest of the city. In 1951, Medellín’s mayor, with the tacit blessing of the bishop and the city’s mercantile elite, decided that these very qualities made it an ideal place to establish a red- light district. The history of this barrio is so crazy to me. And it’s hard to find info on. Possibly a source of embarrassment for locals? I’m not sure.

Apparently, from what I could find, over the objections of local prominent citizens and Catholic priests, the mayor signed a decree designating Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) Medellin’s single “tolerance zone.” Basically, an anarchy zone. Do what you want to do in Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) and the police won’t fuck with you. Just keep your illicit doings away from the rest of the city.

The idea was to remove prostitutes, homosexuals, drug addicts, and thieves from the downtown business district, concentrate them, and isolate them from the general population. Only in Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) were women even permitted in bars in Medellin in 1951 —bars that, under the terms of this new decree, never needed to close or even turn down their music. Sounds like an exciting place to go if you’re 18 or 21, except for the lack of police protection. That doesn’t sound fun. It was a great place to hang until you got stabbed, shot, or murdered. Then, decidedly less fun.

On the first night of this new, unusual decree, thirty private homes were converted to brothels: yellow light bulbs were removed, and red ones screwed in. A true red light district, like something out of Amsterdam, was born overnight.

Barrio Antioquia’s (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) streets filled with cars, arrived from all parts of the city to party harder than they’d ever partied before. And, naturally, a statue of LUCIFINA herself was erected in the town square and drugged out citizens fucked beneath it to pay tribute to the sultry goddess of debauchery! The sister of Satan smiled down upon all those beneath her enjoying a new world with a new morality. A world of Why Not? Instead of Do Not! Hail Lucifina! Dark temptress of Timesuck! Orgy beneath my feet children, Lucifina commands it! Drink of the wine! Suck of each other! Stab and let your blood flow unto my dark altar!

Some of you get that. Those of you who don’t? Welcome to Timesuck.

Prostitutes arrived literally by the truckload, carried over from all around the rest of the city. Within a month and a half the little barrio boasted 215 brothels, most of which had until then been family homes; some had even been schools.

The decree only lasted two years. It was rescinded in 1953. But it was too late to turn things back around. According to locals who lived there, Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) only got worse in 1953. Concentrating all of the city’s vice into one place created strong criminal ties and the beginnings of real, organized crime. That doesn’t just go away with another decree. You don’t build a criminal sanctuary, let them start making a shit ton of money on various forms of vice, and then, two years later, just be like:

(Mayor) “Hey cool cat! I know you’ve had a lot of fun the last few years partying all night long, gambling, pimping, running brothels and strip clubs, dealing dope and all that, BUT, after seeing our crime rate skyrocket around town the last two years, how’s about you fellas give it a rest, and go back to being cubes? Time to be square again Daddy-O!”

(Drug dealer) “What a drag! But I feel what you’re laying down. Yeah boss man - sure thing! Do you mind if we just sell the rest of our drugs real quick so we don’t lose money on all the product we’ve already paid for?”

(Mayor) “Well, don’t get frosted cool cat, but actually, we’d appreciate it if you just threw it all way or burned it.”

(Drug dealer) “Aw, wow, Daddy-O! Trying not to flip my wig right now! We’ll just trash our stash, I guess. What about the 200 prostitutes I have working in my brothels making me thousands of dollars a day? I got so many stacked Betty’s really revving the local boy’s engines, ya know?”

(Mayor) “Well, sorry cool cat. I hate to go all Mickey Mouse on you, but I’d like you to have them knock it all off. Maybe turn some of the brothels into some malt shops or drive-ins? Let ‘em work as waitresses, pay ‘em a decent wage.”

(Drug dealer) “Sure daddy-O, that’d be swell I guess. What about the gambling halls and 24 hour nightclubs I’ve been running, the ones making me millions a year?”

(Mayor) “Yeah, well, I hate to kick you in the wazoo again, but we gotta close all of that down. Maybe open up a gymnasium for local youth? Or perhaps a chess club? Reopen a hosiery factory and make some nice leggings for your swell gals!”

(Drug dealer) How about, instead of that, and, this is just an idea, I’m not married to it, daddy-O, but, how about you FUCK OFF! How about I take my well-armed army of thugs and put a bullet in your fucking family’s heads, a bullet in the heads of every fucking one of your candy-ass police officers, and I fist fuck you to death in the middle of the street and then just go back to running my criminal empire like nothing happened. How about that, daddy-O?

(Mayor) “Uhhhhhh. Heh heh. Um, you know, I’m hip to your jive cool cat. No need to flip your lid. I’m gonna make like a tree now and leave. And, please don’t kill my family.”

No. Nothing really went away. This place is STILL super dangerous. Still on travel advisory lists which basically tell you to stay the Hell out of this neighborhood. Always. It’s been a nightmare for over 70 years now. And it’w where Griselda was raised. Where she’d die many years later.

Author Alonso Salazar, a former mayor of Medellín between 2008 and 2012, and an accomplished chronicler of its underworld, wrote that in the mid-1950s, years before the first coca (“coke- uh”) paste arrived in Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) from Bolivia and Peru, the neighborhood was already breeding a uniquely cosmopolitan class of hustlers, smugglers, and thieves. These men flew from the barrio to Caracas (“Cah-rack-us”) , Panama City, and New York, often using false documents, carrying suitcases filled with marijuana, stealing in the streets. They returned with fine clothes and dollars to Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”), where they spoke in a suave and cynical language of their own: to kill was to “chuliar", or kiss; a corpse was a muñeco (“moon-yecko”), or doll. These men called themselves “galofardos”, a word that connotes “dandy” and “bum” all at once.

One of these young hustlers would be Griselda’s first husband. José Darío Trujillo, nicknamed Pestañas (“Piss-tan-yuh”), or “Eyelashes.” Pestañas emerged as one of the more glamorous galofardos of the 1950s, heading a loose cartel of like-minded traveling bandits.

One of the rumors surrounding Griselda is that she was a prostitute herself when she met Pestañas, something she always denied. This one probably is just a rumor. If it was true, she would have been a very young prostitute, for she married Pestañas when she was only around 15 or 16 and she gave birth to her first son, Dixon, when she was seventeen in 1960.

Other rumors persisted from her childhood that lasted until her death. The most violent one is that at the age of 11, she kidnapped a young boy for ransom. When his wealthy valley parents failed to pay, she killed him. Criminal and murdered at 11? Unsubstantiated rumor, commonly repeated rumor, and entirely possibly, especially if it’s true that she was raised by a prostitute and that she ended up running away from home by the age of 14 to escape the sexual advances of a man her mom was dating, all of that while living in one of the developed world’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Gonna grow up fast in a place like that. Good chance you’re gonna grow up violent in a place like that. 3. 1960-1967: Between 1960 and 1967, she’d give birth to two more sons, Uber and Osvaldo. While raising them, Griselda assisted Pestañas in some passport-forging and marijuana- smuggling businesses he had going. Pestañas died in 1970 after a flare-up of hepatitis he suffered in New York. Man, dying young of the hep! That sounds so crazy to me. So many diseases now we no longer worry about living in a first-world country.

There’s rumors that he did not die of hepatitis but that she had him killed over a dispute involving drug money.

Pestañas body was flown home from Queens, and his funeral was remembered as one of the first of the extravagant Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) send-offs, a street festival replete with aguardiente, marijuana smoke, mariachis singing, pistol shots in the air. Griselda Blanco would continue to live with Pestañas’s aging mother until the day of her arrest in California some fifteen years later.

Shooting bullets up into the air. I’ve always wondered, when I’ve seen footage of people firing guns into the air, don’t those bullets have to come back down? Of course they do. And couldn’t they hit and kill you? Well, according to one article I found, of course they could hit you, but it’s very unlikely. They make it all the way up to around 10,000 feet - they can stay in the air around a full minute, and then, initial trajectory plus that distance dictates they’re probably gonna drop a long way aways from you. And, they’ll never reach their initial firing velocity on the way back down, making it very unlikely they would kill you if you got hit, unless you got hit right in the eye or something.

However, a Newsweek article I found interviewing various members of the LAPD said that celebratory gunfire for sure results in woundings and fatalities. In 1999, a 9 year old kid was struck in the head and killed by a falling bullet, the 39th person to die from a stray bullet up to that time in LA. The same article said skulls can be penetrated at a velocity of 200 feet per second and that stray bullets can reach 300-700 feet per second. Damn. So - you know, probably shouldn’t do it I guess. Some jurisdictions will charge you, not with manslaughter, but homicide if your stray bullet results in someone’s death. What a strange way to die. Walking down the street and then a stray bullet falling from the sky takes you out. Somehow that seems worse than actually getting shot.

Anyway.

4. 1967-1970: In the late 1960s, the woman and now single mother, the lady from Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”), the killer would come to be known as the Godmother, Griselda Blanco, was introduced to Cocaine. It entered her life not long after Pestañas’s death. Cocaine was a novelty in Columbia in the mid-1960s. Coke had been in wide medicinal and recreational use in the United States until the 1920s, when it was prohibited for being addictive - if you want a more detailed history on that, visit or revisit Timesuck Bonus episode number 5, the Pablo Escobar suck.

In most of South America, coke would be outlawed as well, but it’s use was not widespread and it was only produced in small quantities. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was some illicit production of coca paste in Peru and Bolivia, and a cottage industry based in Chile processed it into hydrochloride powder, which was smuggled north by way of Panama. But it was fairly small time. There just wasn’t much of an international market for coke yet. That was all about to change though.

The combination of political chaos in Chile and the collapse of Medellín’s traditional textile industry helped push the processing trade to Medellín, where a businessman named Alberto Bravo, an old friend of Pestañas, was busy converting empty garment factories into cocaine labs by the late 1960s.

The counter culture revolution in the US in the 1960s opened the flood gates for all kinds of drugs. Marijuana, or course, psychedelics for sure, opiates like heroin - yup. And also uppers like speed and cocaine. And demand slowly grew over the decade.

In 1970, Griselda flew to Bolivia with a female friend and bought her first $500 worth of unrefined cocaine. The second time, she sent the friend to Bolivia alone to pick up ten times as much. She also start taking trips to NYC as Albert Bravo established some drug contacts there to sell coke.

5. 1971: In 1971, Griselda appears to have married Alberto Bravo in 1971, in Forest Hills, Queens. Bravo was better educated than Griselda and spoke English, a language Griselda was never fully able to master. Griselda and Alberto would buy cocaine paste in Peru, process it in Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”), and export a little bit at a time. Underemployed tailors gratefully accepted Griselda’s orders for custom lingerie, into which she’d designed pockets that accommodated packets of cocaine. A neighborhood shoemaker hollowed out dozens of thick platform heels for her coke mule girls. Griselda cultivated mules, most of them women, who flew to New York with as much as two kilos packed discreetly in their girdles, shoes, and wigs and flew home with them stuffed with cash. Griselda’s three young sons learned to line hard-sided Samsonite suitcases with cocaine, removing the interior shells and resealing them. Making it a family business! “Kids! Get in here! I need you to help Momma stuff her suitcase full of coke. Do you want to help stuff Momma’s suitcases with coke? Or do you want Mama to get caught for trafficking narcotics and end up in prison leaving you to fend for yourselves in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods? Help mom with coke? OR, probably get kidnapped and killed and possibly raped on the street? Stuff coke in mama’s suitcases? Or get stuffed by sick men in barrio basements? Your choice kiddos! Mama’s not making you do anything you don’t want to do. Mama loves you!”

I love that she used the local declining hosiery industry to her smuggling advantage to. Putting out of work tailors back to work creating lingerie for drug trafficking. “Baby, I love that teddy, but, what’s going on with your nipples?” “Oh, that. That’s just little packs of pure, uncut Columbian cocaine. Sorry. It came with the outfit. That’s why this little number cost $50,000.”

“Ohhhhh. Now I get it. I thought $50,000 was pretty expensive for a see through teddy.”

1970-1973: In the early 1970s, Griselda moved her residence from Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) to the more genteel Laureles, though she maintained her offices in the barrio. Gotta maintain that street cred! Can’t leave Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o- qi-ah”) - home sweet home! Gotta stay gangster as fuck to run a coke empire. She began to accumulate shoes and jewelry and, not being a dummy, a lot of real estate, including cocaine- processing ranches on the outskirts of town.

In New York, where Griselda and Alberto flew frequently, they developed an effective distribution system that included stash houses and drop-off points in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. Griselda was now employing a full-time document forger and had paid connections in Colombian and Venezuelan consulates. The couple and their increasingly prolific fellow smugglers and underworld business associates are laundering money through New York and New Jersey banks and Colombian businesses in Jackson Heights. Sweet, sweet money laundering. Make that coke money legit! Put it through Walter White’s Breaking Bad car wash. Get it clean. So clean.

6. 1973: Griselda’s New York years caught the attention of the US government and a federal investigation was created that became the Drug Enforcement Agency’s first major cocaine-smuggling case. Opened in 1973, it was called Operation Banshee because it involved so many women—often a cause for embarrassment among the male agents pursuing them. Sexism may have helped Grisleda thrive. A lot of the investigating officers had a hard time convincing their superiors that she was a big deal. “Boss, she’s moving a LOT of coke. And starting to kill a TON of people.”

“What!?! Little old Griselda? C’mon! That sweet little Columbian lady? The one with the lingerie business? Nah. So she does a little blow. Maybe sells a bit. Shit - I work for the DEA and I sell a bit. Sold a little bit at Club 54 last night!! This is New York baby! It’s 1973! We haven’t discovered AIDS yet or learned how bad this shit actually is for ya. Live a little Agent Debbie Downer!”

Griselda’s early New York years may have been the best of her life. She was moving a million dollars’ worth of cocaine every six months. Nothing compared to what Pablo Escobar would do years later but still a Hell of a lot of money.

She had a great business partner in husband Alberto Bravo, and the two had graduated from stuffing girdles and were sending cocaine in boats from the Colombian coast, sending marijuana in shipping containers. One of Griselda’s employees would pick up cocaine along the Mexican border, and “there were even reports of frogmen who were swimming in waterproof cases underwater,” Carey said. “They were jumping off ships and literally swimming coke into New York City!” Crazy.

7. 1974: In October 1974, a warrant was issued for Griselda’s arrest, and in April 1975 Griselda Blanco, Alberto Bravo, and thirty-six others were formally indicted for conspiring to manufacture, import, and distribute cocaine. Fifteen of them were arrested, and the rest scattered, becoming fugitives. Alberto and Griselda make it back to Medellín and avoid capture.

And back in Medellin, Griselda gets violent.

She puts a virtual chokehold on the airport, keeping everyone in her employ, from the police to the pilots, making sure rival cocaine smugglers stood no chance of getting their kilos on planes. The old Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”) really helped her out here, as it happened to be located next to Medellin’s international airport at that time. The airport is still there but a new international airport has been built far from that barrio. Good move.

Griselda carried a pistol, surrounded herself with thugs, and started gaining a reputation for arbitrary violence. During a party at one of her ranches, legend has it she had four young men shot dead by her guards, after accusing them of betrayal. Once they’d been carted off in a truck bound for the dump, she announced imperiously to her guests that “nothing happened here.”

“Don’t worry about the gunshots everybody! I just had to kill four of my employees. No big deal. Enjoy the taco bar! All the coke and liquor you want. Everything’s free. Just please don’t betray or annoy me or I’ll have to have you shot in the face. As you were! Seriously - go relax and have fun or I’ll kill all of you.”

Griselda is credited with masterminding the city’s first motorcycle killings. Medellín’s hit men had traditionally killed from their cars, until one of Griselda’s got stuck in traffic in the middle of a job and got arrested. The first fast Japanese motorcycles were appearing just then in Medellín, and Griselda informed her sicarios that there would be no more killing from cars. All motorcycle hits from now one.

Stroke of evil genius really. Way easier for one armed man to get away from police on crowded Medellin streets using a motorcycle than it would be on a car.

Back in Medellin around this time is when she first met a young Pablo Escobar too. Pablo was only six years younger than Griselda, but wasn’t essentially born into crime like she was and got into the coke biz a littler after her. Legend has it they met at a cock fight, which from what I understand, involves two naked men squaring off in a dirt pit using their hard weens to slap each other silly. Strange sport.

No, of course that’s not what it is. A cock fight is when two roosters slap each other to death with THEIR hard rooster weens. Or something like that. I know it involves roosters fighting.

Both Griselda and Pablo worked with a local smuggler named Alberto Prieto, with whom Escobar moved liquor and appliances from the Canal Zone in Panama. Griselda owned a numbers game with Prieto, and would claim that she had financed Escobar’s first cocaine purchase, a half-kilo, with Prieto’s encouragement.

Getting Pablo into the coke game! Interesting footnote to this tale.

The two did NOT become fast friends, and as Pablo’s business exploded, Griselda tried to have him killed and when it failed she and husband Alberto Bravo, fearing for their lives, left Medellin for Bogota.

Bravo would soon die in Bogata in a parking lot shootout. Some accounts say that one of Pablo’s men shot him. Other accounts say Griselda herself shot him after another drug money dispute. Along with the rumors of killing a kid when she herself was only eleven, now there are rumors she’s killed her first two husbands, the first one also the father of her three sons. There’s also accounts that she ordered the kidnapping and murder of Bravo’s brother shortly before Bravo’s death. Killing her own family. The lady did not fuck about.

RESTARTED HERE

Griselda herself was rumored to have taken a bullet in the shootout with Bravo. She’d deny it until her death but when she died, an autopsy did reveal a scar from an old bullet wound. a) LEESA MATTRESS MIDROLL:

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8. If only Griselda and Alberto slept on one! But they didn’t. And she probably killed him.

Shortly after Bravo’s death, Griselda shacked up with the brother of one her hitmen, a bank robber named Dario Sepulveda.

9. 1978: In 1978, Dario and Griselda have a son they named Michael Corleone Sepúlveda. Wow. They actually named their son after Al Pacino’s character in the Godfather. That is hardcore. That is commitment to the drug lifestyle. You’re not a casual criminal and coke dealer when you name your child Michael Corleone. You know, in the bottom of your soul, that you are NEVER getting out of the drug business when you do that. Just like you can’t name your kid Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or Adrian Peterson, and then just decide two years later that you aren’t really into football anymore. No - it’s a lifetime commitment. So fucked up. Weird for playdates.

“Hi little Bobby! How are you doing? I’m Griselda Mikey’s mom. I like your Scooby Doo lunch box. Did you know my son’s actual name is Michael Corleone? You know, like the Godfather, the ruthless mob boss who ordered not only the deaths of many, many rivals but also his own brother-in-law. Michael Corleone, the man who had you killed if you crossed him no matter who you were. Anyway, you two have fun! Let me know when you’re ready for lunch and I’ll make some Mac n Cheese and hot dogs."

Shortly after Michael’s birth, the family escaped Colombia for Miami. Leave one country where a more powerful rival drug lord wants you dead, and go to a country where there is still a federal warrant from Operation Banshee out for your arrest.

Griselda entered the United States under a new name with a Venezuelan passport and the Feds had no idea. She was now a Venezuelan housewife named Lucretia. She wouldn’t return to Columbia until the US government put her on a plane a quarter of a century later. Goodbye for now Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi- ah”)

B. The Miami Years 1. Griselda’s time in Miami would be much bloodier than her time in NYC. After the death of her second husband, Alberto Bravo, she was fully in charge of her drug business. Her third husband, Dario Sepulveda, was more hired gun and bodyguard than leader or mastermind. Time for the Godmother years. Time for some carnage. She became increasingly violent from 1978, when she arrived in Miami, to 1984, when she left.

Less than a week after arriving in Miami, she walked into a McDonalds and killed some poor dude dressed up as Ronald McDonald in front of a birthday party of about thirty kids. She said, “There’s a new clown in town motherfuckers.” And then she insisted that the kids stop crying when she spent the next twenty minutes or so trying to make some ballon animals. She finally gave up and demanded that the parents make balloon animals, killing each and every one of them when they failed.

And then she told the kids, “Now! Now you can cry you soft American little shits! Where I grew up, you had your parents killed in front of you at a birthday party every day. And you never cried about it!” And then one of the kids was like, “Wait. How does that work when you can only have one set of parents?” And then Griselda shot that kid and left.

Anyway, I just made up all that McDonald’s shit. Sorry. I’m not sure where that came from.

But there was a lot of murder when she showed up.

The killings attributed to Griselda, the Sepúlveda brothers, and their organization would continue unchecked from 1978 until 1984, when Florida law enforcement officials tallied more than forty murders. A single lieutenant of Griselda’s, Jorge Rivera Ayala, acknowledged taking part in twenty-nine. And the real body count may have been closer to 200.

Part of the violence was due to increased competition in the drug trade.

In Miami, the emergent Medellín cartel, led by Escobar and the Ochoa brothers, was beginning to monopolize shipments, sending planeloads of cocaine from Colombia through the Bahamas and into Florida. The kilos were coded or marked for the distributors who’d ordered them, and Griselda was now just one of many to squabble and fight over what little was left over after the bigger dealers got their shipments.

2. 1979: While a little slice of the pie may have been all that was left to her, Griselda and her Sepúlveda brothers distinguished themselves among the other local dealers with their extreme brutality to get all of that little slice.

In 1979, when they set out to murder a rival cocaine distributor, they reinforced the walls of a white Ford Econoline van and stenciled HAPPY TIME COMPLETE PARTY SUPPLY on its sides. And then they headed out for the for the Dadeland shopping mall, where Griselda’s men not only killed the distributor they were after and his bodyguard in a liquor store but sprayed the mall parking lot with automatic weapons. Two store employees were incidentally wounded.

Panesso and his companion didn't stand a chance. "They looked like Swiss Cheese," a medical examiner told the Miami Herald.

Interesting details of this shootout. The painted on words on the right sign of the van read: “Happy Time Complete Supply Party,” the left: “Happy Time Complete Party Supply.” There was a telephone number listed, but the line was disconnected. I love that they put this elaborate plan together but didn’t think to match each side of the van.

The mall they hit was Miami’s largest, in Kendall, a bedroom community 10 minutes south of downtown.

The driver drove slowly around the outskirts of the 50-acre mall and pulled up in front of Crown’s Liquors, then squeezed between a beauty salon and a deli.

Shortly after the van arrived, the target pulled up in a white Mercede’s sedan with tinted black windows, and then went in to place his usual order for several thousand dollars’ worth of Chivas Regal and rare cognacs. He and his bodyguard felt so comfortable that they left their guns in the car. Just getting my weekly several thousand dollars worth of liquor, no big whoop.

I’m not envious of the violent aspects of the life of a drug dealer. BUT - having thousands to spend each week on tippy-top shelf liquor does sound pretty fantastic. Really fantastic actually.

They’d been in the store for less than a minute when two men from the Happy Time van walked in. Without a word, the taller one walked up to the target, 37-year-old coke distributor Jimenez Panesso, whipped out a .380 Beretta handgun with a silencer, and shot the Colombian drug lord four times in the face.

Four times. In the face. That seems excessive. Must have not been much face left after the fourth shot.

Hernandez, the bodyguard, and the store clerk, began running. The other gunman sprayed the store with a .45 caliber MAC-10 machine pistol, emptying the 30-round clip in a few seconds. Then the two gunmen calmly walked back to the idling van and jumped in back. An accomplice slammed the accelerator. As the Ford careened out of the mall, the two men fired indiscriminately out the van’s rear doors, smashing store windows, tearing up cars, and sending shoppers fleeing in terror.

And then they delivered a bunch of party supplies. After the whole Ronald McDonald execution, they had a lot of birthday party goodwill to rebuild in Miami.

No. They left the van in the parking lot, hopped into another getaway car, and were gone.

This brazen mall killing didn’t just attract the attention and raise the alarm of the local police, it caught the attention of the White House itself. They had to do something soon. These cartel gangsters are better armed than the local officers. They have machine guns while the police are still packing six shot revolvers.

3. 1980: The cops in Miami were so overwhelmed by the new coke game of the early 80s. Federal authorities estimated that by 1980, 70 percent of all cocaine and marijuana entering the country passed through South Florida.

And by 1982, 80 percent of South Florida coke dealers were overwhelmed with the awesome that was Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald’s debut album, If That’s What It Takes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWiA7U1JIv8 “How do I please you? How do I please you? How do I please you? How do I please you?” 4 stars in Rolling Stone magazine. Four. Stars. “If that’s what it takes! I don’t need to know anymore!”

Can’t wait to horribly sing in the new Timesuck studio when that’s built.

But seriously, the DEA said the annual Miami dope trade brought in about $12 billion a year, outpacing the area’s two largest legitimate businesses: $11 billion in real estate and $9 billion in tourism. And - strange side note - the drug trade REALLY helped the real estate trade. A lot of Miami’s early 80s and mid 80s condos and downtown high rises were built with drug money. The laundered it and deposited it in local Miami banks - billions of dollars in drug money that the banks were then able to loan to local real estate developers. So really, a lot of that $11 billion in real estate development can be attributed to the $12 billion in coke sales. Coke build 1980s Miami. It defended it.

Although Miami had previously already had a reputation for money laundering, an astonishing volume of narco-cash now passed through the city. Miami’s Continental Bank was typical of many small independent banks, 70 percent of them Latin American–owned, that had opened in recent years. It averaged $12 million in annual deposits during the mid-1970s. By 1980, it was flooded with more than $600 million. The Federal Reserve branch that covered Miami and Miami Beach had a $5 billion currency surplus, most in 50- and 100-dollar bills, larger than the 11 other Federal Reserve banks combined. Federal Reserve districts elsewhere were running deficits. Crazy money was being made by these cartels, and they were able to hire armies to protect themselves and their profits.

And then - adding to the exploding coke business in Miami was a sudden and unexpected massive influx of man power.

On April 20, 1980, the Castro regime announced that all Cubans wishing to emigrate to the U.S. were free to board boats at the port of Mariel west of Havana, launching the Mariel Boatlift. 125,000 Cuban refugees were sent to Miami, many arriving from the Mariel the very next day.

And, as it turned out, Castro - a future Suck for sure - wasn’t exactly sending over the cream of the crop. A number of the exiles had been released from Cuban prisons and mental health facilities. More criminals and murderers flooded Miami’s streets. And they’re looking for work. And cocaine rich and ambitious kingpins like the Godmother were ready to hire.

“Can I see you’re resume? Two tear drop tattoos under your eye, four bullet wound scars in your face? You’re hired!” a) Miami Murder Rates: Miami’s murder rate skyrockets after this Cuban invasion. In 1980, the Miami murder rate was 25 percent higher than in any other major city in the country. And a shitload of people were still being killed in East St Louis, Detroit, Newark and other notoriously violent cities.

Miami had the highest overall violent crime rate in the nation in 1980, with robberies increasing by 105 percent, aggravated assaults by 106 percent and rapes by 33 percent from 1979. In the early 1980s, Miami-Dade County would regularly record over 500 homicides a year — with 1981 logging a staggering 621 murders. Roughly two murders a day, every day, all year long. So much murder. For the state of Florida as a whole, murders jumped up from a total of 1,084 in 1979 to 1,522 in 1981, while the population rose That’s a lot more murders. The population increased just under 15% in those two years and the murder rate increased roughly 50%. And it’s safe to say Miami’s new drug war had a LOT to do with that.

Statues of Lucifina magically popped up all around the state. Praise Lucifina! Murder for her! Snort the white powder! Snort! Fuck! Kill! And praise the dark mistress!

Lucifina is a little Timesuck goddess if you’re a first time listener. Statues didn’t go up in the world you’re familiar with. They went up in the parallel Timesuck dimension.

Griselda did actually have a lot to do with this rise in violent crime. She LOVED murder. Loved to order hits. Sometimes in outlandish fashion. When Griselda sought to kill Papo Mejía, a former drug trade ally who had recently stolen a few kilos from her, she sent a thug to greet him at the airport with a fucking bayonet. As in a knife attached to the barrel of a gun. Dude took a bayonet and stabbed Mejía ten times. Mejía survived. Barely. Griselda’s son Osvaldo later ordered gold-plated bayonets to commemorate the attack. What a strange weapon to be attacked with.

“What kind of knife did you get stabbed with?”

“The kind at the end of a gun!”

“A bayonet? Did you get attacked after falling into a time machine and ending up in the Civil War? Who uses a bayonet??”

“The asshole who stabbed me, that’s who! That’s how he stabbed me ten times! If he would’ve of used a knife or even a sword I could’ve defended myself. But for the first 8 or 9 thrusts I just laid there thinking, what the fuck is that? Is that a bayonet? Am I going to be killed by a bayonet in Miami in 1980???”

Griselda also had Mejía’s father killed and bombed his house. She allegedly secretly ordered Darío Sepúlveda’s brother killed just like she had Alberto Bravo’s brother a few years earlier, and then she wept inconsolably upon news of his death.

Unlike Pablo Escobar, the Ochoas, and other principal high- ranking cartel families, she didn’t shield her family from the violence or the drug business. Two of her older sons, became her soldiers. Dixon was said to have been one of the three shooters in the Happy Time Complete Party Supply van, and the teenage Osvaldo was already ordering around other hired guns.

4. January 1982: The White House was getting sick of all the murders in Miami. Cartels were turning the city into a third world country. A task force formed by Ronald Regan in January, 1982, headed by vice-President George H.W. Bush. It was called Centac 26, Centac being an abbreviation of central tactical, the 26th meaning it was the 26th such task force, and it was a joint effort between DEA, US Customs, the FBI, the US military, and BOJANGLES!! Three legged, one-eyed, steel-nerved Hound of the Suck! Bojangles was chosen to lead based on his work on narco traffickers and commies in Latin America. Little known fact - Bojangles is the inspiration for Don Johnson’s character in Miami Vice. I’m kidding - Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald was the inspiration and Tubbs was based on James Ingram. Bojangles actually developed a massive coke problem. He went undercover and went too deep. He dated Griselda for six months and when she found he wasn’t actually a drug dealer she was furious. When she found out he wasn’t actually a man, she was embarrassed. How did she not know her man was actually a three-legged dog? All the signs where there. The fur. The ball licking. The not walking upright. The sharp teeth. The red weiner. Bojangles had become a shell of his former self. He’d gotten so into coke he’d actually had a prosthetic leg of his turned into a pipe to freebase coke with. In the mid-80s you could often find him passed out or borderline OD’d on South Beach. Dark times for Bojangles. He was spotted at least twice with Timesuck 56 topic John Holmes, the creepy, abusive, coked out horse-cocked porn star who was also in Florida around this time, hiding out and avoiding a warrant for the Wonderland murders back in California. Two three-legged cokeheads hanging out in Florida. Real dark times for Bojangles.

No. Centac 26 was a joint-operation formed specifically to deal with Latin, drug-related homicides in South Florida. Miami was flooded by federal agents. Local law enforcement finally had more fire power than the gangs they were fighting.

And no fucks were given by Griselda.

Later in 1982, when Chucho Castro, one of Griselda’s hired shooters, kicked her son Osvaldo out of his house after some kind of argument, Osvaldo was rumored to be a petulant asshole - the boss’s kid man, always the worst! Griselda sent Jorge Ayala, her most trusted hitman, one of the most feared hit men in Miami, to shoot him. Ayala accidentally killed Castro’s two year old toddler son instead. Shot him twice in the head. Two shots to the head doesn’t sound THAT accidental.

“At first she was real mad ’cause we missed the father,” Ayala would later told police. “But when she heard we had gotten the son by accident, she said she was glad, that they were even.”

Jesus. So much for the task force cramping her killing style.

5. 1982. Also in 1982, after allegedly failing to pay cash to Griselda Blanco for some cocaine they had taken out on consignment, Miami coke dealer Alfredo Lorenzo and his wife became the victims of one of Griselda’s most ruthless and infamous attacks.

Three of Blanco's enforcers went to the Lorenzo household during dinner and murdered the husband and wife in front of their three children.

Blanco had actually ordered them to murder of everyone in the house, according to testimony given later by Jorge Ayala but he claimed that he made sure the children lived. According to Miami-Dade homicide detective Al Singleton, the son and one of the daughters of the Lorenzo family were found playing with the bloody dead body of their mother.

FUCK. This woman was brutal!

Then, a 1982 seizure of $100 million worth of cocaine from a Miami International Airport hangar permanently altered U.S. law enforcement’s approach towards the drug trade, bringing in even more heat. Vice President Bush, under a directive from Regan, established the South Florida Task Force, launched the most ambitious and expensive drug enforcement operation in the nation's history.

And, despite this new task force, drug trafficking continued to grow. Four years later even more coke would flow through Miami than when the task force was started. Coke was just too popular to stop. It was a prestige drug. It wasn’t the drug of back alley junkies it was the drug of Wall Street of the disco, Club 54 New York scene, it was the drug of movers and shakers and people who knew how to have a good time. If you didn’t have some nose candy in Miami on a Saturday night in the 80s, you weren’t actually partying. What are you, some fucking loser who doesn’t know how to have a good time? Snort a few lines and let’s go!

Coke is a good time drug and Miami was having a good time, apart from the murders, in the 80s. Business is booming, condos, homes, and new business are blowing up all over the city. The weather’s always warm, the girls are in swim suit shape all year round - let the good times roll!

And there’s coke - right in the middle of the party. Hardly anyone even thought it was bad for you back then. Might give you a runny nose but who gives a shit. Sniffle and snort motherfucker! Let’s talk about something we didn’t care about ten minutes ago as if it’s the most important thing in the world right now.

6. 1983: The next year, in 1983, things took a brief turn for the worse for Griselda.

Dario Sepulveda made the mistake of leaving Griselda and the bigger mistake of taking her youngest son Michael Corleone with him, heading back to Columbia. Ayala would later claim that Griselda had Darío Sepúlveda shot and killed in Bogotá, with the aid of police or men dressed as police. Michael, who came very close to dying in the attack that killed his father, has always vigorously denied his mother’s involvement, blaming her enemies instead.

Three husbands and three rumors of having them killed. This is how she got one on her other nicknames, “The Black Widow”. And here I thought it was because she had a shiny black torso, a weird red hour glass looking birthmark on her stomach, and eight very long, very skinny legs that ended in points instead of feet. Turns out I was WAY off about that nickname.

7. 1984: By 1984, her violent ways had alienated her from the Medellin coke suppliers in Miami and from other local drug lords. She ran up a tab of nearly $2 million to one important wholesaler, a female cousin of the powerful Ochoa brothers, and instead of paying her back when payment was due, Griselda is said to have tortured and killed her, with the help of her son Osvaldo. This doesn’t set well with the Ochoas, the Medellin cartel, or anyone else, and six different assassination attempts are made on her life in Miami. Turns out drug lords get SUPER mad for some reason when you torture and kill a member of their family They’re very sensitive about stuff like that.

How reckless was she? How do you not think that’s gonna come back to haunt you? That shows how vicious she was. Vicious to a fault. Violence when it doesn’t make sense for business. And the violence cost her a presence in Miami.

Fearing for her life now, the Godmother flees to California. Her sons had been setting up incrementally for years and where a new Brazilian connection. She lives a quiet life in Irvine with her elderly mother and youngest son, Michael. I saw some pics of her house there, very non-descript.

Just a random 41 year old Columbian woman and her mom and her son living in the burbs. How strange is that, how she could have been your quiet neighbor? Weird how we don’t know much about, or anything about, the people who live right next door to us in many cases. I know I’ve mentioned her before on this podcast, but, it reminds me of the little old lady who lived down the street in my quiet little down of Riggins, Idaho. Not friendly, but not unusual. A little 60 something lady who then was arrested in her 70s for either a parole violation or sneaking out of prison a bit early - one of those work release things if I remember right, where she just didn’t return to prison one night. Turned out she had killed both of her children decades earlier in Texas. A child killer living down the street. You never know what secrets the people around you are keeping. Think about that when you’re falling asleep tonight. You’re welcome.

Griselda was hiding but apparently not retired. She was overseeing a nationwide drug distribution organization ran by her older sons. Uber, Dixon, and Osvaldo where bouncing around between Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, distributing significant quantities of coke.

8. 1985: By 1985, federal agents who’d been looking for since her New York City days, since Operation Banshee, had been tipped off to her general whereabouts and set up surveillance on her. They had an informant, a former Griselda employed drug dealer who was serving time in Texas. The FBI got him out under the condition he locate the Godmother. He was able to locate her address for them, and on a Sunday morning, Feb. 17th, 1985, DEA agents surrounded her home. And when the busted in her front door they found the Godmother sitting in her room, reading her Bible.

“Who me? No - I’m not a ruthless killer and drug lord who brought my own sons into the business. No! No way. I’m just a harmless Columbian, I MEAN, Venezuelan lady, ‘cause that’s what my passport says. I’m not Griselda - I’m Lucretia”

Griselda was arrested by DEA Agent Bob Palumbo, who had been chasing her for ten full years, on drug-trafficking charges dating back to the original New York case. Her arrest barely made national news, because in 1985, there were SO MANY coke lords. Sad sign of the times. 80s baby! SO much coke!

She initially tried to stick to her story that she really wasn’t Griselda, she was just some lady from Venezuela. She was just, as she claimed, a Venezuelan housewife named Lucrecia. But, the judge had her knock that shit off. We got prints dummy, we know it’s you. This isn’t Columbia. You can’t just talk your away out of jail after getting arrested.

Blanco's trial, which began in New York in June 1985, ended with only a conviction on one count of conspiracy to manufacture, import into the United States, and distribute cocaine. Despite being accused of several Florida slayings, she escaped murder charges, and was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.

All the shit she did, and she gets 15 years. Her three oldest sons, who had also been arrest, each got 12 years.

After going to prison, she met a man named Charles Cosby, a former small-time crack dealer, 25 years younger than her, while she was in federal prison in California. And, if Cosby’s later tales are to be believed, Griselda was at least still marginally involved in the cocaine trade during her incarceration in the early 1990s.

Cosby showered Griselda with cards and letters, visited her often, and looked after young Michael; for awhile. They even managed to consummate their relationship, every so often, by paying guards to let them sneak off.

Griselda signed her letters to Cosby “your wife,” or “your woman.” And her three older sons, when they got out, supplied Cosby with high-grade cocaine to sell, making him rich. When their romance finally ended, Griselda nearly had Cosby killed, using her adolescent son, Michael, to help set him up for an ambush where he escaped with minor wounds. Of course she did! She’s the Black Widow! That’s what she does. Damn near four for four when it came to killing significant men in her life. Clearly had some serious daddy issues. Some bad stuff happened to her as a kid back in the Barrio and someone’s gonna pay for it.

Also, according to Cosby, who would later testify against Griselda in a Florida court, she had revealed to him a plot to kidnap John F. Kennedy Jr. and hold him hostage until she was flown to Colombia and relieved of her homicide charges.

And while all this is going on, Miami-Dade Sergeant Al Singleton and his CENTAC 26 team raced to build a capital murder case against her. Finally pin some of those Florida murder charges on her.

Also, while she was in prison, while she was safe from her enemies, her family was not. Shortly after being sentenced her brother Luis, who ran a garage, was shot to death while working on a car.

Her three sons were released long before she was, and, while Dixon was allowed to stay in the US, Uber and Osvaldo were deported. Osvald tried to reestablish a relationship with Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, but Pablo put a hit out on him.

9. 1992: In September 1992, Osvaldo was shot in the leg and shoulder in a Medellin nightclub. He leapt off the club’s balcony, trying to escape, and bled to death in the hospital. A little over a year later, Escobar, too, would be dead.

Uber returned to Medellín, initially without incident, followed by Dixon, while Griselda’s youngest son, Michael, remained in the United States, under the care of family friends, relatives, and, at times, strangers. At some point the Corleone was dropped from his name and he became Michael Sepúlveda Blanco.

10. 1994: In 1994, the Miami district attorney’s office began taking depositions on murder charges against Griselda, and she was transferred to Florida to face them. Jorge Ayala, her old number one - her top lieutenant and hitman, emerged as a spectacularly damaging witness, having had a hand in some three-quarters of the killings attributed to Griselda’s organization. By agreeing to testify against her, he averted a death penalty case of his own.

The government charged Griselda with the three murders for which they had the strongest evidence, including that of Chucho Castro’s toddler son, and sought the death penalty. But in 1998 their case collapsed when Ayala was found to have had phone sex with two secretaries in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. The scandal from this so humiliated prosecutor Katherine Fernandez Rundle she chose to plea bargain with the Godmother to avoid any further embarrassment.

God that DA had to have been SO pissed with those secretaries. “Seriously, you’re having phone sex with our STAR WITNESS? This is an entire city full of swinging, Latin dick and that’s the one you mess around with? The one you can’t even touch? You idiots. You fucking idiots.”

Guessing they were fired immediately. And how much game did Ayala have? Man - talk about a smooth talker.

11. 1998: In 1998, Blanco pled out under the terms of the plea deal to three second-degree murder charges and received a 20-year sentence. She would only remain in prison an additional 6 years. 6 years for ordering the murder of three people. True travesty of justice. She should’ve been executed.

12. 2000: In 2000, her second son was killed in Columbia. Uber was shot to death while leaving a Medellin gymnasium. Griselda blamed Papo Mejía, her onetime Miami collaborator and dude she had bayoneted ten times. People don’t tend to forget getting stabbed ten times with a bayonet. Imagine you dwell on that for a minute. “You bayoneted me you bitch! Ten times! Oh, you’re gonna get it. You are gonna get it! Damn it. Every time I scream my scar tissue hurts. Scar tissue from my MANY BAYONET WOUNDS!”

13. 2004: In 2004 Griselda’s released as a free woman and was sent straight back to Medellin. And Papo Mejia probably would’ve had her killed too, but he died in a car crash shortly before she returned home. Lucky for her. Other formerly devoted enemies of Griselda’s, such as Pablo Escobar, were also dead. Chucho Castro, the father of the little boy killed by Ayala in Miami, was back in Medellín as well but, luckily for Griselda, had lost his taste for revenge and stayed away from his old life and contacts.

Upon returning home, she found her son Dixon, her oldest, in a rehab clinic. He’d become a serious coke addict. Of course he did - he’d been raised in coke. He was lining mom’s suitcase in coke when he was in grade school. He’d been shooting up people at a mall in his twenties in Florida. All at his mom’s request. That’s gonna fuck a kid up.

Michael Corleone though, somehow is doing okay, and re-enters her life.

Michael would end up getting arrested, in a Miami Beach Dunkin’ Donuts, on two felony counts of cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine later in 2011. Police said he was trying to buy five kilos for some hip-hop artists he knew, offering as payment a motorcycle, $10,000 cash, and a diamond pendant necklace inscribed with the phrase KILL ALL RATS.

While she had lost her wealth from the 1970s and 1980s, lost to wars and lawyers and frozen Panamanian bank accounts, Griselda retained many of her old Columbian properties, and by renting some and selling others she was able to purchase a large home in the El Poblado commune of Medillin, a home in a nice neighborhood that would remain hers until her death.

14. 2012: And then, after a number of seemingly quiet years, on September 3rd, 2012, Griselda Blanco (aka La Madrina, the Godmother, the Black Widow, Cocaine Cowgirl, Queenpin) was killed outside a butcher shop in Medellín, Colombia at 3 PM on a Monday when two men on a motorcycle pulled up and one shot her twice with a revolver.

Killed by a gunman on a motorcycle, the assassination method she pioneered. Shot dead on the mean streets of Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi-ah”), the crime den she grew up in.

Who did it? Who killed her?

Her death may have had to do with the scores of people she ruthlessly murdered throughout the 70s and 80s.

Medellín papers wondered if Griselda might have developed ties to one of the small-time drug-trafficking gangs that warred endlessly in Barrio Antioquia. Was she still in the game all these years later, when she could’ve of just lived on her rental properties?

Was she killed because of her properties? She had four buildings in her own name and more under other names. Maybe someone wanted them. Maybe she was loan-sharking, a common practice in Medellín.

Did the few people she’d been living with in her final years, a few people unrelated to the drug trade, some free loaders, did one of them have her killed? There was this woman named Carmen, who was Griselda’s age or just a few years younger, who had in recent years become Griselda’s constant companion. Griselda had never characterized their relationship to anyone, even her own family members, as romantic, but it could have been. There were rumors for years about her bisexuality. The walls of her final home was covered in nude paintings of both men and women, some of them in orgy situations. She was fascinated with orgies.

Did Carmen and Carmen’s son Franklin and his girlfriend, Yésica, who at the time of Griselda’s death was seven months pregnant, did they conspire to have her killed? Make sure they’d get to keep the gravy train moving along.

They all continued to live in her house after her death until her son Michael had them kicked out months later. They drove her car, used her bank accounts. That’s weird.

Did Chucho Castro, the father of the little boy killed by Ayala in Miami all those years earlier finally decide that he couldn’t just let her live?

Or, did her drugged out son Dixon have anything to do with it? He also lived off of Griselda. And may have hated her for bringing him into her world of drugs and murder. Junkies are always looking for someone to blame other than themselves, and she actually would be a very valid person to blame.

No one will probably ever know. Apparently, based on some sources I read, the local police had no real interest in finding her killer. Despite Medellin being much cleaner than it used to be, there is still enough crime to keep it’s detectives busy and they have more important cases to solve than tracking down the killer of a killer. Based on the manner of execution, the only thing that seems for sure is that the life she led, the life of drugs and murder, is what eventually took her down. Took her down after taking two of her sons, her brother, the three main men in her life, whether she killed them herself or not, countless friends and associates, left one son a junkie and the other, I’m assuming, currently in jail or just recently released from jail for cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine.

When you name your kid Michael Corleone you know you’re never going to walk away from a life of violent crime, and when you choose to commit to a life of violent crime, a part of you has to know, odds are, you’re not going to die of old age.

Griselda Blanco almost made it. But then she took a shot in the shoulder and another one in the forehead at the age of 69. And that, takes us out of this Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE

IV. Narrative, cont… A. Alright, so you now you know the nuts and bolts of Griselda’s story. The basic gist of who she was. She grew up in a tough, crime- riddled neighborhood where life was cheap and that’s how she lived her life. Doesn’t make it right but that’s what it was. Plenty of people grow up in those same neighborhoods and turn out fine. Most people overcome the negative aspects of their childhood environment, I’d argue. We’re an incredibly resilient species. But environment had it’s effects and Griselda grew up in an environment of vice and blood and instead or rejecting that environment and rising above it, which is a choice you can always make, she embraced it.

But that’s just what I think. Let’s see what the masses think about Griselda. Let’s check in with today’s Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET

V. Idiots of the Internet A. For today, I checked the comments in a video called “Griselda Blanco | The Black Widow | Cocaine Godmother | HD” posted by the Channel MVV on August 2nd of this year, already over 300,000 views. The video is a Bio. Channel“America’s Most Evil Gangsters” episode, a biography on Griselda.

It’s a good one, in my opinion. 41 minutes long. Jammed with a lot of info and testimony. I watched the whole thing. Good summary of her life and darkest drug deeds. Well produced true crime show.

User 12T90 LSD25 goes off on quite the rant. One of those comments who LOVES capital letters. He writes:

“ This whole there would be know Pablo Escobar is such “BULLSHIT”.

Gotta stop here real quick. He types K-N-O-W instead of just N-O. And then for some reason “bullshit” is in both caps and quotation marks which is VERY confusuing. The all-caps denotes, one would assume, that you REALLY think it’s BULLSHIT! But the quotes suggest you don’t think it’s bullshit. Like, if you say someone’s awesome, but you put “awesome” in quotes. You clearly don’t think they’re awesome. Really a mixed signal to start your rant off with guy who has a Confederate flag in his profile pic. And then he goes on, in all caps:

SHE NEVER MADE TO ESCOBAR STATUS SUCH BULLSHIT THEY TAKE THESE STORYS AND TWIST THEM AND I KNOW THAT IT WAS SAID IN COCAINE COWBOYS THAT AND THE ALSO SAID THAT FABIO OCHOA WAS THE BIGGEST AFTER DOING RESEARCH I FOUND THIS TO BE TRUE OCHOAS, ESCOBAR, THEN El CHAPO

All of that was in caps and I think it’s all part of one sentence. Apparently, User 12T90 LSD25’s period key is broken. He doesn’t use them. All I got out of that was that he’s done some research and that Griselda never made it to Escobar status which, by the way, the documentary never claims. Not once.

I love that. When people leave comments where they are outraged by an aspect of someone’s content that doesn’t actually exist. They twist the message of the video they watch and then become outraged at their own misguided interpretation and type said outrage down in a barely literate form making it even more confusing. You didn’t do any research buddy. C’mon. Stop it.

But he doesn’t stop it. He does release the Caps Lock key.

Griselda Blanco was too much of a drama queen she wasn't a very good business woman that's why her and her entire family are dead and I don't care who you are probably Escobar was the biggest since El Chapo Guzman I don't believe for one second that had there been no Griselda Blanco there would be no Pablo Escobar that's just plain BULLSHIT!!! Do the research yourself never assume these documentarys are 100% fact there filmed and shown for entertainment purposes more so than for fact

Thanks User 12T90 LSD25. I did do my research. And because I did it, I’m confident that you don’t have any idea what the fuck you are talking about. They never said she was on the same level as Escobar. They mentioned that helped introduce Escobar to the coke business and even may have fined his first purchase of cocaine, which may very well be true. That doesn’t mean she build him into the drug lord he became. Neither she, nor the documentary, claim that. So calm down and stop inventing meaningless drama that then engages you. I love that you call HER a drama queen when you are SUCH a drama Queen.

B. Alright. Next idiot. User VBS Network who decides to pivot the comment section into an excuse to release some of their own anti-colonial, anti-white rage, posting:

“White people is a motherfucker they are bullshit people just look how they came to the United States this is not their fucking Land we all know that but is soon as someone else or another nationality do some shit they don't like they consider us as fucked up”

Wow. Where to start VBS Network? Well, first off, not all white people are motherfuckers. Some are. Just like some brown people are. Like some black people are. Race doesn’t determine motherfuckery. We can all be motherfuckers.

And, actually, this IS the land of the white man in the sense that Europeans won the battle of colonialism. Sorry. Not saying it’s right! But, the indigenous people of the Americas tried to fight off their European invaders, and, by any and all measures, they lost. They were killed, exploited, and subjugated. Again, not saying that’s cool, but, it definitely happened. Let’s not pretend it didn’t. The war’s over.

And, turning going after drug cartels into another example of white oppression is ridiculous. A task force wasn’t sent in to protect white Americans from coke. It was sent in to keep American’s of all colors from being murdered. It was sent in to slow the increasing rate of violent crime for all people in Miami.

White people have done some fucked up shit, but c’mon dude - capturing Griselda Blanco isn’t on that list. Ease up on the white hate dude. You’ve become what I’m guessing you hate - a racist.

VI. And then there’s user K Dot, who is more asshole than idiot, commenting: “Can’t watch because of the buck toothed prick. Shame.”

Okay. So, let’s explain where this comes from.

K Dot says this because one of the sources used in the documentary has buck teeth. And he’s on screen maybe 3% of the time. And he can’t watch the documentary because of it. That’s so messed up.

It’s just buck teeth! What’s the big deal? I can see not watching the documentary because his face is covered in boogers. That would be grotesque and outrageous and unnecessary.

And so confusing.

You’d just think - “How did they let him go on camera like that? They’re not even trying. Jesus. Clean him up already! Wash your face you fucking animal! Why did you put so many boogers on your face in the first place? Are they even your boogers? Did someone else put boogers on your face? Why are anyone’s boogers on anyone’s face?” It would be so distracting it would make the documentary unwatchable.

I can see not being able to watch it if every time he was interviewed, he had a dog in his lap, and he was clearly petting it’s balls.

That would be unnerving and very distracting as well.

“Dude. Why are you doing that? Never pet a dog’s balls. Not ever. There’s literally never a good reason to pet a dog’s balls. And, why do you have to be petting them right now? Is this really the best time to pet your dogs balls? You’re on camera. You’re being interviewed. This would only make some sense if you were being interviewed about why you pet your dog’s balls. Is it even your dog?”

But - this guy just has buck teeth. Maybe he can’t afford braces, ok? Maybe he doesn’t care that he has buck teeth. And, I saw them too, and they were clean. At least he cleans them! I’d get it if they were filthy bucked teeth. That’s unacceptable. “Dude, you know that everyone is going to focus on your teeth. You know that. If you’re not gonna angle ‘em back into your mouth, you gotta at least keep ‘em real clean.”

Ol’ K Dot is just a petty asshole. “I’ll watch your documentary - BUT only if everyone’s teeth are fucking PERFECT. There’s TWO things I care about when I watch a documentary. Accurate and compelling presentation of facts and VERY NICE TEETH! Shame!”

No. Shame on you K Dot. Shame on you for being a shallow idiot of the internet. PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET

VII. Conclusions. A. Alright. So Griselda. The Black Widow. The Godmother. La Madrina. Not a good person. A very bad person. But, an interesting person to me in the sense that she rose to a high level of power, making millions and running an organized criminal drug distribution empire in a very violent, very male dominated world. Not a role model by any stretch of the imagination, but, incredible that this little five foot nothing Columbian woman, a woman who by the age of 45 already looked like a harmless little grandma, could do what she did. And let’s look at what she did, one more time, with some Top Five Takeaways.

PAUSE TOP 5 TAKEAWAYS

VIII.Top Five Takeaways 1. Number one. It’s estimated the Griselda Blanco may have been responsible for approximately 200 murders, authorizing hits on entire families, including a few kids and… probably her first three husbands.

2. Number two. Griselda Blanco pioneered the use of motorcycles for drug hits, and then, ironically, was killed years later by a hitman on a motorcycle. Killed by her innovation. Poetic justice.

3. Number three. Griselda grew up in Barrio Antioquia (“An-ti-o-qi- ah”), and lived there as a child during the two years that neighborhood basically was lawless, from 1951-1953, when you could do whatever drugs you wanted, prostitution was legal, the clubs ran 24 hours a day, and the area’s thieves and killers made the barrio their home base. Griselda would live in NYC and Miami and Orange County, but really, she was always in that Barrio. She ended up getting murdered in the neighborhood she’s rumored to have murdered others in when she was as young as 11. 4. Number four. The criminal life Griselda was so enamored with she named her youngest son after Al Pacino’s Godfather character, ended up taking the lives of two of her four kids, her brother, and the lives of both of her kid’s fathers before it took hers. And her other two kids are felons and one’s continually out of rehab. The money and the power rarely last long in the drug game. Griselda started with nothing and she ended with even less.

5. Number five. New info! There is a Griselda Blanco movie coming out this January. I got the Youtube link right here in my notes, and you can get all my show notes on the Timesuck app now. The movie stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Griselda, and, it’s actually a Lifetime movie. And wow - this is not one of your mom’s Lifetime movies. I’ve always made fun of that channel but this movie looks like a big screen production. Good for Lifetime. Holy shit. Looks like they dramatized it in all the right ways. I’ve only seen the trailer, but wow. Looking real good. Nice to see Catherine back. Always liked her as an actress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIefEWw2Fng

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

IX. Closing announcements A. THE APP: We did it! Episode 65 is in the can! And you can listen to it, if you don’t already, on the new Timesuck App. Thanks for rating the app everyone in the Apple and in the Google Play store - really appreciate that. Ratings anywhere and everywhere help so much! Especially good ratings! Keep those trolls at bay!

Thanks to the Bit Elixir team for continually debugging it and taking in everyone’s feedback.

Variable speed playback - yes, that will be a feature coming to the app! Give us some time on that one. Might even take a few months because the app team is working on getting the features ready for the Feb. 1st Space Lizard launch. Gotta have the topic list ready for that launch, the one you can vote on if you’re a Space Lizard. Gotta get the voice message feature ready for that. Send in those voice messages if you’re a Space Lizard.

Sending in topic suggestions- text messages, basically - via the app. That is a feature that is also coming. A feature for everyone. Hopefully pretty soon on that one.

A tour date page is coming for upcoming standup and live podcasts.

Photos, I’m afraid, are not coming. At least not anytime soon. Not to the app or the website. That’s a legal issue. Don’t technically have rights to them, and, I post a lot of pics anyway at @timesuckpodcast on Timesuck. And, honestly, too much other time consuming content right now to worry about pics for the near future at least. Sorry.

Glad you guys like the features so far! I think it’s a cool, stylish podcast player - Hail Nimrod! There’s little Easter eggs hidden it too. Some places you can tap three times to have the app talk to you.

More Avatar artwork will come soon - I just have Danger Brain working on too much stuff at the moment.

B. NEW MERCH: Speaking of Danger Brain by the way - there is new Danger Brain merch hitting the store this week. The fifth and sixth generation shirts will be in. And the first generation hoodie. AND, the first generation pullover hoodie. Six new products hitting the store and sorry for the delay on the other products. Keeping a lot of balls in the air right now.

Starved, elderly moleskin is the rare animal product I’ve chosen for the two new shirts.

Turns out, if you slowly starve an old mole to death - put it in a box with no food or water for a solid two weeks, and then, right before it does dies, violently smash it with a hammer wHile playing loud death metal and screaming like a banshee, well, the fear soaks into the frail old skin and it makes for a very luxurious fabric. And, if all of that seems cruel, listen, it is. PETA is up my ass right now about the shirts, but fuck ‘em. I gotta go with what’s best for the customer. Each shirt made from 251% domestic starved, elderly moleskin.

The zipper hoodie is made with Arctic Fox Tail Skin. We trap Arctic foxes with old, pioneer era bear traps. Then, cut their tails off, then leave the rest of the fox in the trap to attract other Arctic foxes that we then also trap and cut the tails off of. It takes about 30 tails to make one hoodie. Violent? Yes. Monstrous? Of course. The will of Lucifina? Obviously. But, it’s how you get a good zipper hoodie. Each zip up is made from 400% imported arctic fox tail.

For the pullover hoodie, I ended up going with humming bird tail feathers. We catch, crush, and pluck the tail feathers from approximately 700 hummingbirds for each and every pullover. So far, we’ve singlehandedly caused three separated subspecies of humming birds to go extinct. But - that’s what gets you a soft pullover! Each pullover made of 605% hummingbird tail feathers. Imported. Totally worth it.

NOTES ON THE SHIRTS! The new shirts are NOT the Bella tri- blends of the first four generation. Danger Brain prefers to use Next Level tees, which are also super soft but are definitely a slim fit. So get a size up from what you wear in other shirts. They are between a half to a full size up. I go back and forth between large and extra large in tees and I definitely wear an extra large next level shirt.

And - I will eventually get more stickers - and a new sticker pack - to ship along with merch.

Been so busy touring like a maniac and getting a podcast studio created which is what you have to do when you live in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. Not like there is an existing studio to use or move into. Gotta make it yourself! Which I love actually. I’m a total control freak. For sure.

Thanks for your patience with the growing pains. You Timesuckers are the best. Love meeting you at the shows. God I’ve met some wonderful people the past few months.

As far as the first four shirts, books, and CDs - my vendors, as we approach Christmas, are SO backed up. I tried to pay more to cut to the front of the line even and… no go, which I respect actually.

And I need to get home and send more signed books and signed albums to the store. Store’s almost empty!

C. RATINGS: Thanks all the iTunes and Facebook reviews and ratings again this past week Thank you, thank you, thank you!! Over 2,000 ratings on iTunes which is incredible! Any place you leave a rating is SO important. It entices new listeners to join. It’s the best thing you can do to spread the suck outside of telling people to listen. There’s so much content out there - I depend on you guys to let people know how to find this content.

Also, Timesuck is getting on Youtube. Steadily now. Had a lot of big files to upload but it’s happening.

Special thanks to Timesuckers G Witherspoon, Travis Heimer, Scott Schultz, Jen Killian, and Justin Adkins for suggesting today’s topic. Hope I did it justice. So your suggestion doesn’t get lost, please email them to [email protected] Much easier to find them later in the emails than they are from private messages on social media.

Thanks to Sydney Shives for killing it on social media, Harmony Vellekamp for all of her help and Jesse Dobner for his editing wizardry once again!!

HUGE thanks to PayPal donators Daniel Jarvis and Nicholas Peditto. Super generous. Thanks to all of you who have donated. Means so much. And those of you who hit that Amazon button on the website. It really helps. It all helps!

Okay - bonus episode coming up!

3. NEXT WEEK: This Friday - bonus episode 14 - is gonna be the Oak Island mystery! I’m so surprised. I thought for sure Lucifina would swoop down and pick the Night Stalker, but Richard Ramirez got the least amount of votes. Oak Island barely edged out David Koresh and the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco. Both Koresh and Ramirez will get sucked at some point for sure.

Be sure to follow the Suck on Instagram, @Timesuckpodcast to vote on future bonus episodes. And soon you Space Lizrards will be picking half of the regular episodes. I’m excited to see where you steer me. What will be the will of Nimrod??

Oak Island: 271 Ramirez: 154 Waco: 251

Now let’s check in with the Cult of the Curious. Time for Timesucker Updates.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

X. Timesucker Updates

A. Updates - Okay - I’m not exactly sure what this first update is regarding, but, I do remember at one point saying Bill Clinton was almost impeached over a blowjob, and that is NOT TRUE. Sorry about that. Kevin Kuntz and others pointed out that Bill Clinton did NOT almost get impeached by getting a blowjob in the Whitehouse. He almost got impeached for lying about it - perjury and obstruction of justice.

That’s an important distinction and I was guilty of furthering the false narrative that a blow job almost cost Bill Clinton the presidency. Lying about it almost cost him his job.

B. Pizzagate: Pizzagate! Oh shit. Let’s get this out of the way.

I said last week that I was gonna get some angry emails about Pizzagate and I was right! Too many to include all in this episode’s updates, but, the gist of a lot of them was that I was favoring liberals. I wasn’t. I just don’t buy insane Satanic pedophile accusations.

I think the evil a lot of politicians commit, both Republicans and Democrats, isn’t cartoonish - it isn’t some outlandish Satanic pedophilia. It isn’t weird illuminate shit. That all feels like a witch hunt to me. I think the evil agenda politicians often commit is committed right out in the open. Right in front of us. It’s stuff like giving giant corporations legal leverage to exploit the common worker. Letting citizens bear more of the tax burden, and huge immensely profitable companies bear less. Reaganomics has been motherfucking us for decades now. We should all be focused, in my opinion, liberals and conservatives, on keeping big business from taking over the entire nation if they haven’t done so already.

But! I did fuck up. I didn’t relay any of the actual emails as extremely worked up Timesucker Gregg Deon pointed out in one of the many angry emails he sent me this week. Easy Gregg. In an email with a subject of “Fake News. Sad!”, Gregg wrote:

“Cummins, I don’t care if it’s completely fabricated, the dumbass story behind pizzagate is what makes pizzagate entertaining. The difference between pizza Gate and space lizards is if someone asked me what the space lizard conspiracy was I could go on for 30 minutes about moon dwelling space lizards that would literally grind a dinner party to a standstill in a matter of seconds. If someone asked me about pizza Gate? A bunch of crap about fake news? Sad!”

Well Greg, I disagree with your sentiment. I think the fake news angle is BY FAR the most interesting angle on Pizza gate. I carefully walked you through how a few fake posts turned into a giant tornado of misinformation. Not sure how that equates to “a bunch of crap about fake news”.

This topic seems to have triggered you. But, I should’ve included at least one example of text from one of Podesta’s original emails, as opposed to just “phoning it in” as you accused me of doing in another email. Actually, just copying and pasting emails and then joking about it would of been phoning it in. That would be easy. But, anyway - here is an example of an email conspiracy theorists point to as proof of a pedophile ring.

This is the email that started the conspiracy. It’s from someone at the Sandler foundation writing Hillary campaign manager John Po)desta.

“Subject: Did you leave a handkerchief”

And it says:

“Hi John,

The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related). Is it yours? They can send it if you want. I know you’re busy, so feel free not to respond if it’s not yours or you don’t want it. Susan."

And then:

“Susan and Herb I just came from checking the Field House and I have a square cloth handkerchief (white and black) that was left on the kitchen island. Happy to send it via the mail if you let me know where I should send it. “

And this how someone interpreted this:

“If this is not speaking in code, then it makes absolutely no sense. Not a single person from Podesta’s legal team nor mainstream media has been able to offer a coherent explanation on what this could mean if ACTUALLY pizza and map related. The initial email merely mentions the cloth is white with black, which is then translated by Podesta’s personal assistant into ‘containing a map’. Handkerchief code for sexual preference is a well documented phenomenon. “Cheese pizza” has long been known as code for child porn in pedophile communities comprising the deep web.”

Wow! Talk about seeing what you want to see. Creating smoke where there is no fire. This is why I didn’t examine these emails. This shit is mind-numbingly dumb. So stupid it makes me angry.

Does this email make sense? No. Not on it’s own it doesn’t because it doesn’t include the context of previous non-email conversations. It doesn’t have a glossary of inside jokes and inside references. It’s shorthand, which is a way people who aren’t childlike idiots are able to communicate with each other. People who aren’t complete fucking morons don’t need to simplify every message to it’s most basic and understandable tenants. People don’t write messages for the public to see and they shouldn’t have to.

I bet people could read a lot of craziness into some of your emails. There sure could with me.

I’ll give you an example. This is a text exchange I had with a buddy of mine I worked on some reality shows with as a writer. I’ll leave his name out of it and just refer to him as “B”.

B says, “I feel unsafe Dan!” to which I reply, “OH GOD NO!! Tell me where you are and I’ll have the police release an Amber Alert!!” to which he says, “I’m in a Hollywood Mobil gas station bathroom. Masturbating in the men’s room stall. Before I came in here I saw a suspicious Indian man behind the counter. Also I heard some rap music coming from a car that drove by about 12 minutes ago. (Crying emoji) to which I say, “The police will be there any moment. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re safe now. The Indian guy is already dead.”

To which he says, “OH THANK GOD”.

This exchange is one of the least offensive exchanges we’ve made. Does it make sense to anyone but us? No, it doesn’t. It’s a private conversation built on years of inside jokes and references. Taken out of context it looks insane. Context. Why can’t more people understand the importance of context?

Pizzagate is a rumor started by conspiracy theorists, kept alive by idiots.

I’m sure more angry emails will come in because of that statement and I will respond to none of them because it’s a waste of energy.

But, this is all just my opinion. One I strongly feel.

Feel free to disagree, like iTune reviewer “Crack Yo”, who posted on Dec. 4th, “I was a fan until I listened to the Pizzagate and 9-11 episodes. I’m shocked someone who seems so smart can eat up all these official stories and believe every detail from the government”.

Eat up every word? Did you hear the JFK episodes? Have you heard me rail against the powers that be in so many episodes? Far from eating up every word. I just don’t eat up the dumb ones. That’s a listener who was bound to live eventually.

C. Alright - let’s end this week’s update on a much more positive note!

So many of you send in so many touching, heartfelt episodes. It means so much to me when you do. It keeps me going. This was one of the ones that really got me this week. It’s from Timesucker Jennifer. Not sure she wants her last name released because of the personal nature of her message.

“Hi Maestro Suck, I wanted to share this with you because it meant a lot to me, and I think you have the kind of heart that it will mean something to you too. I am 16 to years older than my brother, and we have always been super close. He fell while I was babysitting him when he was 5 and he had brain surgery and survived, then he refused to eat until I came back from my mastectomy when I had cancer because of a joke I made about being hungry and killing for some chicken breast or something like that and he realized I couldn't eat before surgery and didn't want me to be the only one who felt hungry; he cried my whole wedding when he was 6, explaining in his speech that I was the best sister, and how he wouldn't let be get taken away.

Now he is 18, and last year he got kicked out by our mom because he was going to be removed by DCFS; he courageously sought help after admitting to me he was so depressed due to his dad's recent stroke, my mother's subsequent neglect and blame (yes she told him he was to blame for his dad's stroke), and he would "play a game" where he would sit on the train tracks with music blasting, head down, and one of three things would happen: the song would end and he would move, a car would honk and he would move, or a train would come.

He moved in with me after that, and I expected to be happy, but instead my mom tried to strangle me then turned my family against me to hide, my brother missed his senior year because the school thought his life was too much for classes and put him on computer classes and I couldn't talk to them because I wasn't a parent, and most significantly, I saw a marriage that I was in and how much I didn't want him to think it was normal: I found myself, despite me thinking I was too smart to end up here, in an abusive relationship, which turned into physical abuse from severe psychological abuse when I started to stand up to being told no one loves me and that I was a fuck up who failed everybody.

When he spit on me the day after a Christmas spent alone, my little brother decided he had enough, and unfortunately he lost his 16 year relationship with my ex. My husband was arrested for domestic violence and is taking it to trial instead of taking a plea bargain to get counseling for a year (bc he is an idiot who thinks he will get alimony). I know, long story. I'm sorry. But I wanted you to understand all the stress, trauma, dysfunction, abuse, and other crazy fucking issues that we have had to face to bring us to a point where me and my brothers relationship had become broken.

He blamed himself for my divorce, I blamed myself for not giving him a happy home. He felt like he had failed to be there for me when I kicked Mike out, I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. I got diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease and possibly cancer but definitely am riddled with tumors and have to go to Mayo due to the complexity. This will be my 10th major surgery, not counting shit like getting my wisdom teeth out. And I have no one to help me through that except my 18 year old brother who wants to be a normal college kid. He didn't ask for this. And we found ourselves on a road trip from Chicago to Texas to see our parents. And we were fighting about everything. Every day leading up to the trip, every conversation it seemed. Everything was toxic. Our relationship was over. Broken irrevocably.

We couldn't understand each other any more. And I knew I wouldn't get reception in that fucking terrible state (Nebraska I mean, not my emotional state).

I listen to small town murder and crime in sports, where they talk about you all the time, and I thought your podcast seemed like something my brother might like so I downloaded some episodes. And we listened. He laughed. We talked about the episode. We still fought. I downloaded more episodes. We laughed more. We talked more. He listened to your show in bed. We talked more. About the show. About our life. About how fucking dirty texas is and about how every store was playing an "I love Texas" song and how they should just leave the union already.

And at some point, we stopped fighting, but we rolled into Chicago listening to timesuck. I honestly thought I wouldn’t live long enough to laugh with my brother again, and if it wasn't for your podcast and our twisted and fucked up sense of humor (something you have to have when you have your heart broken your whole life I think), I don't know if we would have. I think we listened to the Caligula episode first, and I had to pull over because we were laughing so hard about you having to Google fishing. I wanted to thank you.

I am hoping to make it to Detroit with my brother, Josh. But I wanted you to know that without knowing it, you were changing my life this week. You were saving my soul. I don't just mean as Nimrod god and ruler of the universe.”

Wow. Thank you Jennifer. That was intense. That was beautiful. I’m so glad this silly show could have some small part in helping your relationship with your brother.

Whether you agree or disagree with all the shit I say, I hope it makes you think. I hope it creates intense discussions. Discussions that deepen the relationships with those who you care about the most. Really knowing the people around you and sharing your life with them is such a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Being able to talk about everything with someone, someone who isn’t going to judge you for how fucked up your thoughts might be, is so important. So honest. And sadly, so rare.

Glad I can spread a little bit of that. Keep me updated on your illness Jennifer. Get better. Keep taking about fucked up shit with your bro in this fucked up world of ours.

And fuck everybody who doesn’t get how important that is to have in your life.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES

XI. Goodbye! A. Well that’s all for this week. Hope to see you in Appleton and Madison. Hope you don’t join the drug trade and bring your family into that dirty business, and for the love of Nimrod, keep on sucking.

Cast of characters: Griselda Blanco - the Godmother Pestañas aka José Darío Trujillo - first husband and father to Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo. Died in 1970 in NYC of Hepatitis. Dixon - oldest son Uber - second oldest son Osvaldo - third oldest son Albert Bravo - second husband of Griselda. Jorge “Rivi” Ayala - main hitman

Primary source - Cocaine Cowgirl by Jennie Erin Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griselda_Blanco#cite_note-7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartagena,_Colombia http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/colombia-cartagena-safer-travel- article-1.2159836 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3b5jz8/griselda-blanco-so-long-and- thanks-for-all-the-cocaine https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/colombia/articles/from-world-s- murder-capital-to-the-medellin-miracle/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Medell%C3%ADn http://fiftiesweb.com/fashion/slang-c/ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/03/ watch_out_for_falling_bullets.html http://www.neurosoup.com/history-of-cocaine-use-in-the-united-states/ https://nypost.com/2012/09/05/drug-thugs-kill-the-queen/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/08/13/the- cocaine-wars/80a37246-219d-4331-9ea0-8c350ee06551/?utm_term=. 82416dfda197 https://www.thedailybeast.com/cocaine-cowboys http://flashbackmiami.com/2014/09/10/miami-drug-wars/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/03/17/Miamis-murder-rate-in-1980- was-25-percent-higher/5376353653200/ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article133388029.html http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/flcrime.htm Bio. Channel “America’s Most Evil Gangsters” biography on Griselda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9xuuNJ1nhc http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19482931 https://www.ranker.com/list/horrific-cocaine-cowboys-murders/jacob- shelton?page=2 http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/ article1942420.html http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/04/us/4-year-fight-in-florida-just-can-t- stop-drugs.html?pagewanted=all http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/michael-corleone-blanco-lives-in- the-shadow-of-his-cocaine-queen-mother-6384800 https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/first-blog-post/ https://www.google.com/search? q=catherine+zeta+jones+lifetime+movie+griselda&oq=catherine+zeta+jon es+lifetime+movie+griselda&aqs=chrome.. 69i57.7906j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8