Look up gunman in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Gunman or Gunmen may refer to:

• A word sometimes used to describe a criminal, armed with a gun
• A word used to call a gunfighter before the 20th Century
• Gunman (film), 1983 Thai crime film directed by Chatrichalerm Yukol
• "Gunman" (song), 2000 single by aggrotech band Funker Vogt
• Gunman Chronicles, 2000 computer game by Rewolf Software
• Gunmen (1994 film), action-comedy film directed by Deran Sarafian
• Gunmen (Gurren Lagann), mecha robots from the anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

See also[link]

• Gun (disambiguation)
• Gunner (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since October 2010. It includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Tagged since October 2010. It relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Tagged since September 2008.

Griselda Blanco (born February 15, 1943) is a former drug lord for the Medellín Cartel, and was a pioneer in the Miami-based cocaine drug trade and underworld during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Biography[link]

Blanco was born on 15 February 1943 on the north coast of Colombia, and moved to Medellín when she was three years old. In the film Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' with the Godmother, Blanco's former lover, Charles Cosby, recounts how Griselda, at age 11, allegedly kidnapped, tried to ransom, and eventually shot a child from the upscale flatland neighborhood near her hillside slum neighborhood.^[1][2] By her preteens, she had become a pickpocket, and at the age of 14 she ran away from her physically abusive mother and resorted to prostitution for a few years in Medellín,^[1][2] until age 20. She married her first husband, Carlos Trujillo at that time, and bore him three sons: Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo.^[3][4]

In the mid-1970s, Blanco and her second husband, Alberto Bravo, emigrated to the United States, settling in Queens, New York. They established a sizable cocaine business there, and in April 1975, Blanco was indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges along with 30 of her subordinates, at that time the biggest cocaine case in history. She fled to Colombia before she could be arrested, but in the late 1970s she returned to Miami.^[1][2]

Blanco was involved in much of the drug-related violence known as the Cocaine Cowboy Wars that plagued Miami in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when cocaine supplanted marijuana.^[5] Her distribution network, which spanned the United States, brought in US$8 million per month.^[1] Blanco's violent business style brought government scrutiny to South Florida, leading to the demise of her organization and the free-wheeling, high profile Miami drug scene of those times. She is suspected of having masterminded over 200 murders during this time in Dade County.^[5]

In 1984, Blanco's willingness to use violence against her Miami competitors, or anyone who displeased her, led her rivals to make repeated attempts to kill her. She moved to California to escape the assassination attempts. On 20 February 1985, she was arrested by DEA agents in her home. Held without bail, Blanco was sentenced to more than a decade in jail. She continued to run her cocaine business while in jail. By pressuring one of her lieutenants, the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office obtained sufficient evidence to indict her for three murders. However, the case collapsed, largely due to technicalities and Blanco was released from prison and deported to Colombia in 2004.^[1] Her whereabouts are unknown, but she was last seen in Bogota Airport in 2007 where a photo was taken of her.^[2]

Blanco bore her youngest son, Michael Corleone, with Dario Sepulveda. Dario left Blanco in 1983 and returned to Colombia, kidnapping Michael when he and Griselda disagreed about who would take custody. Blanco paid to have Dario assissinated in Colombia, and had her son returned to her in Miami.^[2][6][7] According to a report in Miami New Times, "Michael's father and older siblings were all killed before he reached adulthood. His mom was in prison for most of his childhood and teenage years, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother and legal guardians."^[8]

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Smitten, Richard (1 November 1990). The Godmother: the true story of the hunt for the most bloodthirsty female criminal of our time. Pocket Books. ISBN 978-0-671-70193-2. Archived from the original on 7 February 2009. http://replay.web.archive.org/20090207084259/http://www.richardsmitten.com/godmother.html. Retrieved 3 October 2010. 

External links[link]

• Cosby, Charles. "Charles Cosby: From Early Childhood to Cocaine and Hustlin’". Charles Cosby. Charles Cosbyat theblogunion.wordpress.com. Meeting Griselda Blanco. 

 | url = http://theblogunion.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/charles-cosby-from-early-childhood-to-cocaine-and-hustlin%E2%80%99/

• Washington Post: Drugs
• Red Orbit: Cocaine 'Godmother' Released From Prison
• Female Scarface