A 15-MONTH MANHUNT ENDS IN A HAIL OF BULLETS

Final Chapter of a Serial

The radio signal pointed Lt.  Hugo Martinez straight ahead. 

The line on his computer screen lengthened and the tone in his headphones grew stronger as his unmarked police surveillance van moved down a street in a middle-class neighborhood of Medellin on Dec.  2, 1993. 

Electronic surveillance from the air and the ground had traced calls made by fugitive drug trafficker Pablo Escobar to this neighborhood.  Hugo and his driver were trying to find the exact house.  They drove down the street until the signal peaked and then began to diminish, the line pinching in at the edges of the screen and the tone slightly falling off. 

They turned around and crept back.  The line stretched slowly until it once again filled the screen.  They stopped.  This was it.  They drove past that point again just to make sure; again the signal grew, peaked and then slightly diminished. 

The driver turned around again.  As they approached the house where the signal was strongest, Hugo looked up .  .  .  and saw him. 

A fat man stood in the second floor window.  He had long, curly black hair and a full beard.  The image hit Hugo like an electric shock.  It was Pablo Escobar. 

He was talking on a cell phone.  Suddenly he stepped back from the window.  Hugo thought he had seen a look of surprise.  Through his headphones, he heard Escobar say "Good luck," and end his conversation with his son. 

Hugo and his team had been eavesdropping on Escobar for three days as he telephoned his wife and son at a hotel in Bogota.  The fugitive was trying to get his family safely out of Colombia.  Until this moment, the officers had not been able to tell exactly where his calls were coming from. 

Now Escobar was literally right in front of them.  Years of effort, hundreds of lives, thousands of futile police raids, untold millions of dollars, countless man hours, all of the false steps, false alarms, blunders.  And here he was at last, one man in a nation of 35 million people, one man in a ruthless underworld he had virtually owned for nearly two decades, one man in city of more than a million where he was revered as a legend. 

Hugo leaned out and told the officers in the car behind him, "This is the house."

It was a simple two-story rowhouse in the middle of the block with a squat palm tree in front.  Hugo suspected Escobar had been spooked by their white van cruising slowly past, so he told his driver to keep going down to the end of the block.  Shouting into the radio, Hugo asked to be connected to his father, Col.  Hugo Martinez, commander of the Colombian police Search Bloc. 

"I've got him located," Hugo told his father.  "He's in this house."

The colonel knew this was it.  Hugo would not be saying this unless he had seen Escobar with his own eyes. 

"Station yourself in front and in back of the house and don't let him come out," his father said. 

Then the colonel ordered all units to converge on the house immediately. 

Two men positioned themselves against the wall on either side of Escobar's front door.  Hugo's van drove around the block to the alley.  There was a one-story garage with an orange tile roof extending from the back of the house.  With weapons ready, they waited. 

It took about 10 minutes for the rest of the Search Bloc force to arrive. 

"Martin," one of the lieutenants assigned to the Search Bloc assault team, stood ready as his men applied a heavy steel sledgehammer to the steel front door.  It took several blows before it went down. 

Martin sprinted into the house with the five men on his team, and the shooting began.  The first floor was empty, like a garage.  A yellow taxi was parked toward the rear, and a flight of stairs led up to the second floor. 

As the police pushed upstairs, Escobar's lone bodyguard, Jesus Agudelo, called "Limon," jumped out a back window and fell about eight feet to a grating on the garage roof.  As Limon sprinted out across the tiles, the Search Bloc force in the alley below opened fire. 

According to the police, Limon was hit at least four times as he ran.  Hugo said his momentum carried him right off the roof, and Limon fell lifeless to the grass below.  The fatal shot struck him directly in the center of the forehead. 

Escobar had come out the window behind Limon.  He had stopped to kick off his plastic flip-flops, and dropped down to the roof.  Police said he was carrying a pistol and a rifle.  He stayed close to one wall, where there was some protection. 

Police Maj.  Hugo Aguilar, who had climbed onto the roof overhead, could not get a clear shot down at him.  So there was a break in the firing as Escobar moved along the wall toward the back street. 

At the corner, Hugo said later, Escobar pointed his weapons in both directions, shouted, "Police mother---s! Police mother---s!" and fired rounds that hit no one. 

Then he broke for the crest of the gently sloping tile roof, trying to make it to the other side.  A cascade of fire felled him at the center of the roof.  He sprawled on his broad belly on the dislodged orange tiles, hit by a round in his thigh and another in his back, just below the right shoulder blade. 

Accounts differ as to what happened next, but this much is certain: Escobar was killed by a round that entered the center of his right ear and exited just in front of his left ear. 

According to Hugo Martinez, the shooting then continued.  Inside the house, Martin and his men fell to the floor as rounds fired by Search Bloc members on the street below crashed through the second-floor window and into the walls and ceiling. 

Martin believed he and his men were taking fire from Escobar's bodyguards.  He shouted into his radio, "Help! Help us! We need support!"

Finally, the gunfire stopped. 

On the rooftop, Maj.  Aguilar shouted: "It's Pablo! It's Pablo!"

Men were now scaling the roof.  Someone found a ladder and placed it under the second-floor window, and others climbed down to the roof from the window. 

Aguilar reached for the body on the roof and turned it over.  The wide bearded face was splashed with blood and already it was beginning to swell.  It was wreathed in long, blood-soaked black curls. 

Aguilar grabbed a radio and spoke directly to Col.  Martinez, speaking loudly enough for even the men on the street below to hear:

"Viva Colombia! We have just killed Pablo Escobar!"

It is difficult to reconstruct precisely what happened on the rooftop.  Each Search Bloc member interviewed for this story provided an account based on what he had seen.  Certain details differed.  In some cases, these accounts included descriptions given to Search Bloc members by other witnesses. 

Official reports said Escobar was shot dead as he ran across the rooftop during a gun battle with police.  But a senior Colombian National Police commander now says Escobar was executed at close range.  Autopsy reports and photos show that the fatal round went directly into his right ear. 

"I believe it is true that Escobar was shot in the head after he was wounded on the rooftop," said Col.  Oscar Naranjo, who was chief of intelligence for the Colombian National Police at the time.  "You have to understand, the anxiety of that team was so high.  Escobar was like a trophy at the end of a long hunt.  For him to have been taken alive .  .  .  no one wanted to attend that disaster."

Col.  Martinez said there was "no point-blank 'coup de grace.' " He indicated that the fatal shot was fired from at least three feet away. 

Maj.  Aguilar told the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo that he fired the 9mm round into Escobar's ear, but he did not say from what distance. 

Steve Murphy, a DEA agent working out of Medellin, was the first American on the scene.  He had heard the news at Search Bloc headquarters, and had immediately phoned his boss Joe Toft in Bogota.  Toft told him: "You better get your ass out there and bring pictures back."

Murphy grabbed a camera, ran outside and flagged down a police vehicle that was taking Col.  Martinez to the killing scene. 

They arrived as the colonel's men were setting up barricades.  Crowds had begun to form as word spread that Escobar had been killed. 

Murphy climbed to the second floor and was directed to look out the window to the rooftop.  There he saw Escobar's barefoot body stretched on the orange roof tiles.  Men from the raiding party stood around the bloodied corpse, sharing swigs from a bottle of Black Label Scotch. 

Murphy shouted and the men posed for his camera, raising their rifles triumphantly.  He climbed out to the roof and took more pictures, with more of the men posing around the slain fugitive. 

Then Murphy gave the camera to an officer and posed next to Escobar's corpse himself.  One of the men took a small knife and carefully scraped off the corner of Escobar's bloodstained mustache for a souvenir.  Another man scraped off the other corner, leaving Escobar with a bizarre Hitler-style mustache that would be featured in news reports, a final indignity inflicted upon the fugitive drug boss by his pursuers. 

There was a commotion on the street as Escobar's mother and sister arrived.  The mother, Hermilda, was a short, slightly stooped woman in her 60s, with gray hair and spectacles.  She pushed her way up to a corpse on the grass and saw that it was Limon. 

"You fools!" she shouted.  "This is not my son! This is not Pablo Escobar! You have killed the wrong man!"

But then the soldiers directed the two women to stand to one side, and from the roof they lowered a stretcher bearing the corpse of her son. 

As she left the place, she pulled her mouth tight and betrayed no emotion, and paused only to tell a reporter with a microphone: "At least now he is at rest."

Shortly after Escobar was shot dead, Colombian Police Gen.  Octavio Vargas telephoned his good friend Toft, the DEA country chief in Colombia. 

"Jo-ay!" Vargas shouted happily into the phone.  "We just got him!"

That was just seconds before the call from Murphy.  Toft stepped out into the hallway and shouted: "Escobar is dead!"

Then he ran upstairs to tell Ambassador Morris Busby, the man who had directed the American effort in this 15-month manhunt. 

Busby was ecstatic.  He grabbed a phone and called Washington.  He asked to speak with Richard Canas, the National Security Council's drug enforcement chief at the Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. 

Canas took the call and heard Busby say: "We got Escobar."

"Are you sure?" Canas asked. 

"Ninety-nine percent," Busby said. 

"Not good enough.  Have one of our people seen it?"

"Give me a few minutes," Busby said. 

It did not take long for Busby to get absolute confirmation: Steve Murphy had turned over Escobar's body and had looked into the lifeless face of the man who had been the most powerful criminal in the world. 

Busby called Canas back. 

"Got him," he said.  "Dead.  Got him.  Gone forever."

At the U.S.  Embassy in Bogota, a party erupted.  Champagne bottles popped.  Banners were draped that read "P.E.G.  DEAD." Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was finally gone. 

Ambassador Busby felt a deep sense of satisfaction.  After nearly 20 years of counterterrorism work, he felt this was the most impressive feat he had ever been involved with.  They had stuck with the chase for 15 hard, frustrating, bloody months.  The effort had involved U.S.  military, diplomatic and law enforcement agencies spanning two administrations and two continents. 

It had been ugly.  Since Escobar's escape from prison in July 1992, 209 people associated with Escobar or the Medellin cartel had been killed.  Fifty-two of Escobar's associates had been captured, and another 29 had turned themselves in under a generous government surrender offer. 

Busby visited the Presidential Palace that afternoon to personally congratulate President Cesar Gaviria.  Extra editions of the Bogota newspapers were already on the street.  El Espectador ran an enormous page one headline that read "FINALEMENTE SI CAHO" ( FINALLY, HE'S DOWN ).  Gaviria signed a copy for the ambassador. 

The death of Pablo Escobar may have been cause for celebration in official circles in Washington and Bogota, but for many Colombians, especially in Medellin, it was an occasion for grief.  Thousands attended Escobar's funeral, following his casket through the streets.  They swarmed to get closer, and some mourners opened the casket lid to stroke the dead man's face. 

There were chants of "We love you, Pablo!" and "Long Live Pablo Escobar!" There were shouts of anger toward the government, and threats of revenge. 

Escobar was their martyr, slain by a government they believed had persecuted him.  Even today, it is not unusual to find Escobar's framed photograph in Colombian homes. 

Escobar's grave is still carefully tended.  It is framed by flowering bushes, and ornate iron bars support three flowering pots.  On the simple gravestone there is a photograph of a mustachioed Pablo in a business suit. 

On the day Escobar was killed, Col.  Hugo Martinez ran into the hideout and found the drug boss' portable phone.  That was his trophy.  He used it to phone his superior, Maj.  Luis Estupinan, to congratulate him on the kill. 

That evening, the men of the Search Bloc in Medellin partied late.  Col.  Martinez and his son Hugo did not join them.  Such overt displays were not the colonel's style.  When the men began firing their weapons into the air, the colonel put an end to the party. 

The next morning, the colonel, Hugo and some of the other top men in the Search Bloc were honored in Bogota.  That evening, back at their home, the colonel's youngest son, Gustavo, age 10, was looking through a sack of Escobar's personal items that the colonel had collected.  In the bag was a small loaded handgun.  As Gustavo examined it, the gun went off. 

The bullet scratched the skin of his belly, but the boy wasn't seriously hurt.  The colonel gathered up the items and delivered them that night to police headquarters, as though they were a curse. 

Martinez says he still feels haunted by the dead drug boss.  He says he derived personal satisfaction from Escobar's death, and he finally got his promotion to general, but he paid a heavy price. 

"When I think about Pablo Escobar, I think of him as an episode in my life that completely altered the way I was living," Martinez said in an interview last summer in his home village of Mosquera.  "I don't blame him as a person or anything like that.  However, being involved in those operations, I abandoned my family and my sons who needed me in what was a crucial time in their lives."

Martinez was accused of accepting money from the Cali cartel and of being involved with the illegal activities of Los Pepes - accusations he denies.  He said the allegations were first made by Escobar himself, and spread by the Colombian press. 

Martinez was never charged with any crime.  For a while, for safety reasons, he considered moving with his wife and family to Argentina.  But just as he began to inquire about emigrating there, he read news reports that Pablo Escobar's wife and son had been arrested there.  Martinez said he felt sympathy for Escobar's family. 

"Just as I was trying to go someplace else for security, so were they," he said.  "I hurt to see they are still suffering for something that happened so long ago.  They are also trying to escape from all that."

Escobar's wife and children are believed to still own a substantial part of his illicit fortune.  They live under assumed names in Buenos Aires, where Maria Victoria and Juan Pablo were charged in 1999 with attempting to illegally launder money.  A family lawyer says Juan Pablo works for a computer graphics company, and Manuela, who is still a teenager, is a student. 

Not long after Escobar's death, Juan Pablo paid an unexpected visit to the U.S.  Embassy in Bogota.  He asked to see Busby, who called downstairs to Toft. 

"Hey, Joe, Pablo Escobar's son is downstairs.  I'm not going to see him, OK?"

Toft agreed to meet with Juan Pablo.  He stepped into the room to encounter a soft-looking young man.  Toft was impressed with the boy's poise under the circumstances. 

"He told me that he and his family were in great danger, and they were appealing for visas to save their lives," Toft remembers. 

"What will it take for me to get a visa?" Juan Pablo asked. 

"All of the cocaine and cocaine money in the world would not get you a visa," Toft told him. 

Juan Pablo did not appear surprised by the answer. 

"Are you sure we can do nothing?" he asked again.  "Is there anything, anything we could do to earn a visa?"

"Even if you helped put the whole Cali cartel in jail we would not give you a visa," Toft told him. 

And Juan Pablo left. 

During the celebration at the embassy after Escobar was killed, Toft felt a knot in his stomach.  He felt it all the while he was smiling, embracing colleagues, talking to the Colombian press.  Toft was troubled by a feeling that somehow, they had sold their souls to the devil. 

Even so, he framed a certificate presented by DEA Special Agent Kenny Magee to those directly involved in manhunt.  It read, in part: "Because of your selfless dedication and willing sacrifices, the world's most sought after criminal was located and killed.  .  .  ." At the bottom were the signature and thumbprint of Pablo Escobar. 

In his briefings in Washington over the previous year, Toft had soft-pedaled evidence of links between his own agency and the vigilantes of Los Pepes.  He knew his agents had seen self-confessed Los Pepes leaders at the headquarters of the Search Bloc, the police team funded and guided by the United States. 

He knew that certain murders of Escobar associates by Los Pepes came after the victims had been located by U.S.  intelligence, and the information had been passed to the Search Bloc.  On the one hand, Los Pepes were dismantling Escobar's Medellin cartel and stripping away the layers of protection around him.  On the other hand, their brutal methods troubled Toft's conscience. 

Now, with Escobar dead, Toft worried that the effort against Escobar had created a monster.  It had opened a bridge between the Colombian government, its top politicians and generals, and the rival Cali drug cartel - what the DEA came to call a "super cartel." In the years the Americans had focused on Escobar, Toft feared, the Cali cartel had consolidated its operations, cemented its relationship with the Colombian government, and emerged as a cocaine monopoly. 

In 1994, Toft resigned from the DEA. 

"I don't know what the lesson of the story is," he said recently.  "I hope it's not that the end justifies the means."