Hunting Pablo Escobar Feat. Steve Murphy

Summary

The Antihero Podcast: Hunting Pablo Escobar Feat. Steve Murphy
Release Date: January 13, 2025
Host: Brent Tucker and Tyler

---

Overview

In this riveting episode of The Antihero Podcast, hosts Brent Tucker and Tyler delve deep into the tumultuous journey of Steve Murphy, a former DEA agent who played a pivotal role in the hunt for the infamous narcoterrorist, Pablo Escobar. Combining firsthand accounts with insightful discussions, the episode offers listeners a comprehensive look into the complexities of international law enforcement and the relentless pursuit of one of history's most notorious criminals.

---

Introduction to Steve Murphy and His Early Life
Key Moments: [00:00] – [08:51]

Steve Murphy begins by recounting a formative incident from his youth that ignited his passion for law enforcement. At the age of ten, Steve and his friends attempted to break into a house in middle Tennessee to steal food. Their plans were thwarted when local police intervened. Faced with the choice between potential jail time or being taken home, Steve chose to go with the authorities, a decision heavily influenced by his father, a Southern Baptist minister who enforced discipline without spoiling him.

Steve Murphy [08:00]: "We looked at each other and said, take us to jail. Yeah, because I knew what was going to happen when I got old."

This early encounter instilled in Steve a profound sense of responsibility and the importance of making the right choices, laying the foundation for his future career in law enforcement.

---

Transition to the DEA and Early Career Challenges
Key Moments: [08:53] – [25:08]

After six years as a uniformed cop in West Virginia and six years as a railroad cop, Steve's career took a significant turn when he joined the DEA. The transition was motivated primarily by financial incentives, allowing him to better support his growing family.

Steve Murphy [17:47]: "Quite honestly, it was the money. My salary doubled when I went to the railroad."

His first posting with the DEA was in Miami in 1987, during the height of the "Miami Vice" era. Contrary to popular media portrayals, Steve describes his experiences as far from glamorous, focusing instead on serious narcotics operations.

In early 1988, Steve undertook his first undercover mission in the Turks and Caicos Islands, apprehending a shipment of 400 kilos of cocaine. This marked a significant escalation from the minor drug cases he had previously handled, showcasing the intense challenges that lay ahead.

Steve Murphy [24:27]: "I was addicted to cocaine at that point, but in a different way. I was so excited."

---

The Hunt for Pablo Escobar
Key Moments: [25:09] – [76:02]

Steve's most notable mission was the pursuit of Pablo Escobar, the kingpin of the Medellin Cartel. Alongside his partner, Javier Pena, Steve was stationed in Medellin, Colombia, where they collaborated closely with the Colombian National Police to dismantle Escobar's empire.

The operation was fraught with obstacles, including bureaucratic red tape and initial lack of support from local authorities. However, the introduction of elite units like Delta Force and DEVGRU agents significantly enhanced their operational capabilities.

Steve Murphy [44:25]: "We're going after the world's first narco terrorist."

After 18 relentless months, the team finally cornered Escobar in a three-story row house. Contrary to many dramatized accounts, Steve clarifies that it wasn't an American operator who shot Escobar but rather the combined efforts of trained Colombian officers.

Steve Murphy [76:02]: "We caught him in a crossfire."

---

Challenges and Internal Dynamics
Key Moments: [25:09] – [54:35]

Throughout the manhunt, Steve highlights the challenges of operating in a foreign country with its own set of political and law enforcement dynamics. Trust between American agents and Colombian officials was paramount, and Steve credits figures like Colonel Hugo Martinez for their professionalism and dedication.

Steve Murphy [82:43]: "The Colombian National Police are very professional."

Despite occasional friction and differing operational methodologies, the collaboration proved effective in undermining Escobar's operations. However, Steve also remarks on the personal sacrifices made, including extended periods away from family and the psychological toll of the relentless pursuit.

---

Views on the War on Drugs and Its Impact
Key Moments: [87:07] – [90:02]

Steve offers a candid perspective on the broader War on Drugs, emphasizing the need for continued aggressive actions against major traffickers while critiquing the domestic focus on drug demand reduction.

Steve Murphy [90:02]: "The murder rate in Medellin had dropped by almost 80%."

He underscores the importance of targeting high-level traffickers to mitigate widespread societal harm, advocating for policies that address both supply and demand facets of the drug trade.

---

Current Projects and Future Endeavors
Key Moments: [97:07] – [105:23]

Since retiring in 2013, Steve has remained active in law enforcement circles through his podcast "Game of Crimes with Murph in the Morning" and his speaking engagements under the banner "DEA Narcos." Additionally, he is involved in investigating historical cases like the "Lost Clipper," which pertains to the disappearance of 15 Americans in 1938 over Micronesia.

Steve Murphy [100:51]: "This would probably be the holy grail of the whole thing, is that maybe we could bring closure to 15 families."

Steve continues to advocate for enhanced drug enforcement measures and greater public awareness of the narcotics crisis, illustrating his unwavering commitment to combating drug-related issues.

---

Closing Thoughts and Media Portrayal
Key Moments: [76:16] – [80:56]

Steve expresses his frustration with Hollywood's often inaccurate portrayal of law enforcement operations. He recounts his direct involvement in ensuring the authenticity of characters in shows like "Narcos," emphasizing the stark contrast between real-life operations and their dramatized versions.

Steve Murphy [76:16]: "Made a little more authentic."

He advocates for truth over sensationalism, aiming to provide the public with accurate accounts of law enforcement's efforts and sacrifices in combating high-profile criminals like Escobar.

---

Notable Quotes

• Steve Murphy [00:00]: "We're establishing, we're re-establishing the search block."

• Steve Murphy [08:00]: "We looked at each other and said, take us to jail. Yeah, because I knew what was going to happen when I got old."

• Steve Murphy [17:47]: "Quite honestly, it was the money. My salary doubled when I went to the railroad."

• Steve Murphy [24:27]: "I was addicted to cocaine at that point, but in a different way. I was so excited."

• Steve Murphy [44:25]: "We're going after the world's first narco terrorist."

• Steve Murphy [76:02]: "We caught him in a crossfire."

• Steve Murphy [82:43]: "The Colombian National Police are very professional."

• Steve Murphy [90:02]: "The murder rate in Medellin had dropped by almost 80%."

• Steve Murphy [100:51]: "This would probably be the holy grail of the whole thing, is that maybe we could bring closure to 15 families."

---

Conclusion

"Hunting Pablo Escobar" serves as a testament to the unwavering dedication and courage of law enforcement agents like Steve Murphy. Through his detailed recounting of events, listeners gain an authentic understanding of the intricacies and challenges involved in international drug enforcement. The episode not only honors the sacrifices made by Steve and his colleagues but also underscores the ongoing struggle against narcoterrorism and the critical need for persistent and informed efforts to combat it.

Transcript

[Steve Murphy]

So the day he escaped that evening, the Colombian national, the head of the Colombian National Police, called our boss and said, hey, we want Pena, my partner, Javier Pena and Murph up there. We're establishing, we're re establishing the search block. The bloke de Buscara, a 600 man force whose sole responsibility is to find, capture or kill Pablo Escobar.

[Tyler]

Hold on, we're not recording.

[Brent Tucker]

Wanna buy a raffle?

[Tyler]

Do you wanna buy a shirt to support military dance? People wanna see their sausage get made.

[Brent Tucker]

An appropriate level of inappropriateness. Something happens in my family tonight. The delta for isn't coming to rescue my, my family, my kids like it is. First responders that are, that are going to save my, my family.

[Tyler]

They want the culture to be down. They want people to not want to be cops. And the people that do want to be cops are now walking into the job, scared to do the job.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm going to try to act like it didn't happen, although we, we all know it did.

[Steve Murphy]

JV Team for Life.

[Tyler]

The Anti Hero podcast has teamed up with the best in the game. Human Performance trt. There's a can measure when taking trt. Fat loss, muscle mass, no depression, high libido. But there's things that you can't measure, which is being a better family man, being a leader at work, making more money, being more successful. These are all things that are achievable with trt.

[Brent Tucker]

Not only do they cover trt, they cover weight loss, ketamine and peptides.

[Tyler]

Human Performance TRT is telehealth based, which means the consultation you have with your doctor is done via webcam or via phone and your prescription is delivered right to your door. There's no need to go to the.

[Brent Tucker]

Pharmacy if you're already on TRT from an inferior company. Don't worry. If you have recent lab works from the past six months, you can upload it to HPTRT.com and they will waive the lab costs.

[Tyler]

Not only will they waive the initial lab costs, there's no lab costs at all. While you're a customer with Human Performance TRT. To go to HPTRT.com, use promo code HERO and get 10% off not only your initial order, but every single month from here on out.

[Brent Tucker]

So don't wait any longer. Improve your quality of life with HPTRT.comJV team for life. Really?

[Steve Murphy]

That's good stuff. It's an adventure.

[Brent Tucker]

Love it. All right, speaking of adventures, I'm ready for this one.

[Tyler]

Are you all ready?

[Brent Tucker]

Yes.

[Tyler]

Start with me. There you go. Welcome back to the Anti Hero podcast. Part Delta force, part street cop, all truth. I'm Tyler, owner of Refractive Wolf Apparel. Use promo code anti Hero and get 15 off the best and outsider culture, graphic tees, hickers, stickers, flags, hats and even ranger panties.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'm Brent Tucker, owner of First Responders Coffee and first responder cigar company. Use FRCC 15, that's FRCC 15 to get 15 off the world's best coffee and cigars.

[Tyler]

And of course this episode is brought to you by Ghostbed. Sleep so good it's scary. Go to ghostbed.com forward/antihero and get 50 off your order. That's 50 or put in promo code antihero at checkout and again 50 off your order. They have 60,000 five, five star rating and reviews. They have all of their stuff handcrafted here in the United States and Canada. So it's time to replace the old mattresses in your house. It's cold outside, you're cranking the heat up inside. Utilize their cooling technology sheets. Go to ghostbed.com support them. They support us. So you're indirectly supporting us. Ghostbed.com forward/antihero. 50% off.

[Brent Tucker]

Do it. And don't forget the the Thursday night lives. Every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern Standard Time we go for two hours. It's a great time. Highlight of my week and the Patreon. For as little as three or five dollar contributions, you can be a part of the Anti Hero family and get inside information and get to ask us silly questions all the time that we love answering. Be honest with you, they are silly questions. Would you rather fight 1000 Chihuahua size Chuck Norris's or one Chuck Norris size Chihuahua?

[Tyler]

These are legit questions that we get. We're waiting.

[Brent Tucker]

Murf, I need an answer.

[Steve Murphy]

What type of armament do I have?

[Brent Tucker]

With us today we have Steve Murphy. I'm very interested in this podcast. Steve Murphy was a six year uniformed cop in West Virginia and then six years as a railroad cop and somehow we'll find out, transition that into a 26 year DEA career and was one of two DEA agents that was tasked with the hunting down of a little known criminal called Pablo Escobar. I don't know if anyone's ever heard of him. He may have made a name for himself. And you also wrote the book on it. You wrote the book Manhunters how we Took down Pablo Escobar. So thank you, thank you so much for coming on the show and I am really Looking forward to hear this story.

[Steve Murphy]

No, thank you guys for having me. It's, you guys are a little bit of a legend here in the central Florida area and probably bigger than I realize. So thank you guys for having me over and thank you for the cigar. Really. Oh, good cigars.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, absolutely. I'm, I'm sure it's got. The Pablo Escobar story obviously is, has taken legs and it's become. He's a legend now. And you're, you often wonder how much is true. Some things are so outrageous they can't be true, only to find out. Well, no, that's, that's actually how you know, how, how he lived. And so, you know, it's always interesting to see with someone who was there. There's, you know, again there's, we'll get into some of these rumors like there's this, this rumor mill of how, of how you know, who was involved, how it, how it took place. And, and even me, if you were to ask me before this episode, I would be like, I don't really know. But I'll tell you what, you know, what I, what I think and, and I don't. And from talking to you, I'd have been close, but I, I wouldn't have been completely right either.

[Steve Murphy]

I'll tell you the truth.

[Brent Tucker]

That's, that's, that's, that's what we expect. That's all we ask. Well, let's, well let's start at the beginning. What, what brought you into law enforcement?

[Steve Murphy]

You know, since I was a little kid and I'm thinking 10 years old, I just wanted to be a cop. I had my first run in with cops when I was 10. Lived down in.

[Brent Tucker]

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

[Steve Murphy]

Well, it was. Started out to be bad and then everything worked out but me and some buddies were camping out summer night and lived just south of Nashville in middle Tennessee. And we decided, you know, we riding our bikes around the neighborhood 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning and there was an all night laundromat with vending machines so we wanted some sodas and some peanut butter and crackers and things like that.

[Tyler]

You didn't have the money?

[Steve Murphy]

Did not have the money. So, you know, being 10 years old, we came with this great scheme to go break into a house and steal it. As we're outside of somebody's house, they're trying to figure out how to break in.

[Tyler]

I thought you were gonna break into the vending machine.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, you broke into the house.

[Steve Murphy]

That's what I Thought, too, oh, no, we took it to the next level. Felony, baby, gonna go. Go big. So as we're trying to figure out how to break in, the cops show up. They hit us with that spotlight, and we're like a deer in the headlight. We didn't run or anything. And they came over and listened to our story, and they said, well, boys, you got a decision to make tonight. You either can go with us and go to prison for the rest of your lives, or we can take you home to your parents. And we looked at each other and said, take us to jail. Yeah, because I knew what was going to happen when I got old.

[Brent Tucker]

Tell my mama, love her. We're out.

[Steve Murphy]

But, you know, of course, they took us home to our parents. I didn't camp out for about another year. Didn't sit down for a couple weeks. My dad, he believed, and he didn't spare the ride.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. So he didn't spoil the child.

[Steve Murphy]

Nope. But that was, you know, that was how.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, I already knew he didn't spoil the child because he didn't have enough money to get the peanut butter crackers.

[Steve Murphy]

And my dad was a Southern Baptist minister, so.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Household to start.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. But I mean, you know, no complaints. He. He taught my sister and I, you know, responsibility. He taught us this. There's consequences for our actions. We both turned out successful, or at least we think we're successful, and things worked out. You know, the thing was, you knew what was expected of you, and if you didn't live up to those expectations, you knew what the punishment was going to be.

[Tyler]

Well, yeah, we talk about, you know, how good cops nowadays are, people that toed the line with the law a little bit when they were younger. Because how are you going to know what is a real crime and who might be potentially committing that crime? Is it a kid that you got to ruin his life over, you know, or is it a kid that's done this 10 times and he needs to go to jail?

[Steve Murphy]

Right. And that was the thing. And I'm looking at your flag behind you there with the thin blue line. Most cops that, you know could have gone either way on that thin blue line.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

But no, you're absolutely right. It was. That's back when law enforcement had the discretion to make decisions on the street, which doesn't seem to be so much the case nowadays.

[Tyler]

No, unfortunately, they're. They're letting the. They're letting the kids that are breaking in to houses, stealing cars and committing violent crimes, they're giving Them one day in jail and then kids that are going out there getting a little bit of trouble, you know, ruining their life over it.

[Steve Murphy]

Yep. It blows my mind that, you know, the things that you read about and, and the different segments that you do on shows that they're letting people out on personal recognizance bonds for, for semi violent crimes.

[Tyler]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

It's, it's a pandemic with that, that honestly starts, starts with voting. And you know, I know across the country, I should, I should say I believe, you know, there's, there's different ways the, the DAs get, get, get put in place, but at the end of the day, if they don't get voted in, they get put in by the people you voted for.

[Steve Murphy]

Right.

[Brent Tucker]

So it all ends up with voting. And how you vote matters at a much granular level than, than I think people realize.

[Tyler]

They don't, they don't know how important that state attorney or that district attorney or whatever putting them into place. That's a huge, I mean, because if not, you'll get a Soros plant. And they're, call me conspiracy theorists, but those people are out there to cause problems in our country. They're out there to release violent felons. They're out there to make you and law enforcement not like each other. You know, that's, that's what they want.

[Brent Tucker]

I mean, really, I mean, think about it. Think about those, those prosecuting attorneys and what, what, what they decide to, to bring to, to the table via charges or not, how much they can affect your community, even, even your daily life. Your interaction with violent criminals. They, they impacted so heavily with one pivotal position. You know, because it's, it's a difference of, you know, once you, once you set that standard of, hey, this, this, this violent crime is now not really an offense. The gates are wide open, the floodgates are open and you want to see how fast take not even violent crime. Take, take theft in San Francisco and say, hey, well, we're not going to prosecute theft at anything over a thousand dollars and see what happened to every business in San Francisco.

[Tyler]

Oh yeah, they'll prosecute the business owner that puts hands on the bad guy.

[Steve Murphy]

Or defense, his store and businesses are closing down.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

I'll give you an example that's in the news right now. The Menendez brothers out in California, they murdered their mom and dad. There's no question that they did it. They've been found guilty. They were sentenced to life in prison. But now, you know, were they sexually abused? I don't know, I really don't know. And I've done quite a bit of research on this, on this topic. But now you get these pretty people that come out, the famous people, the musicians and the politicians and movie stars and people who become famous simply because their dad was somebody famous and they go to bat for them.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Why? Okay, let them out. They did. They've been in prison 30, 35 years now where your sentence was life, right?

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

If you let them out now, is mom and dad coming back to life? No. They committed murder. Knowingly committed murder, planned it premeditated, there's no question about that. But yet now there's a lot of people out in California want to let them out. Not just California, there's politicians that I mentioned to you. This is. These type of topics get me on my soapbox. It just burns my butt that these people don't find out the facts, but they take a stance. How do you knowingly take a stance when you don't know what the facts are?

[Brent Tucker]

We went over this with Breonna Taylor and one of the biggest stars in the athletic world, LeBron James, who openly said they were at the wrong house and she should have never lost her life. And he couldn't have been any more categorically wrong, yet said that, said that swayed public opinion over something that was absolutely wrong.

[Steve Murphy]

Absolutely. It's the one police officer that was shot during the Breonna Taylor raid, John Mattingly, a good friend of mine.

[Brent Tucker]

We had him on the podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah. Great, dude. Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Just find out the facts first before you take a stance. That's all I'm saying. Don't let the media tell you what to do. Don't let anybody tell you what to do. We're all intelligent.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, tell me what the topic is and then let me decide what I think.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Going back to, you know, your elected district attorneys and, you know, state attorneys, it takes a, it takes a lot. But you look at a four year term, what they can do in a community of cops, you get, let's say you get a gung ho state attorney back. All those cops have been subject to four years of scrutiny and they're just. And now it just doesn't click overnight. Now you have to have new cops come in that aren't tarnished and scared that they're going to get in trouble to do the job.

[Steve Murphy]

Right.

[Tyler]

You know, so.

[Steve Murphy]

Right. It's, it's. I mean, obviously I think you guys are in agreement. I'm not a dove when it comes to these Topics, I'm more of a hawk. I mean, you know, I taught my, I've got four kids, I've got five grandkids. I've taught my kids about consequences for decisions made. Well, you know what, they made a decision, so they need to live with the consequences.

[Brent Tucker]

That's the balance of society. Without, without any repercussion to bad decisions that you would, that you, that you intentionally make. Then, you know, then society is, it's, it's essentially anarchy. Yeah, you know it really, because it's a slippery slope to anarchy.

[Steve Murphy]

And the minute one of them in, one of the Menendez brothers, after he shot the parents, went out to the trunk of his car, reloaded and came back in to continue shooting the mother because she wasn't dead yet.

[Brent Tucker]

And the worst part is the people who are going to suffer the most are the good law abiding citizens are the ones who end up suffering, not the bad guys.

[Tyler]

That's always JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

Tyler, how many critical incidents do you think we've covered so far in this podcast, man?

[Tyler]

At least five, six.

[Brent Tucker]

And they're not going to stop, you know, there's, you cannot stop them all. So they're going to happen. And you really have, you know, two charters of that. Obviously one is to stop them from happening, but since you can't stop them all from happening, you owe it to the people that you protect and depend on you to react to those situations in the most effective and efficient manner. And right now, really, whether you're a fire department, ems, law enforcement, you're stuck with essentially radios.

[Tyler]

And Apollo is the best way to manage resources during these events because it's designed by first responders for first responders.

[Brent Tucker]

It gives first responders a common operating picture which allows them to see where everybody is in real time, overlaid onto a map to see where they are. You can drop pinpoints and let them know where they need to go. And without constant talking on the radio, everybody knows where the incident is, where it's happening and where they need to be.

[Tyler]

And Apollo is an app based application. This is just download and go.

[Brent Tucker]

It's an app and so it works with androids, it works with iPhones.

[Tyler]

Apollo makes sure on the back end everything works and you can just plug and go. They handle all the licensing, all the encryption compliance, all the security. It's all handled by Apollo. It's crucial to know where everyone is and what they are doing in order to effectively control chaos in one of these either natural disasters or, or shootings or anything like that.

[Brent Tucker]

So if you want to learn more about Apollo, scan the QR code and ensure your department is ready to react to any crisis in its most effective and efficient manner possible.

[Steve Murphy]

JV team for life.

[Tyler]

What made you leave, like I want to call it regular law enforcement and go to a specialized law enforcement like railroad industry?

[Steve Murphy]

Quite honestly, it was the money.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Were you kind of done running and gunning at that point? You knew it was going to slow down, right?

[Steve Murphy]

Absolutely. Absolutely. It was just straight. I. It was the money. My salary doubled when I went to the railroad.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, I, I started in 1975.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Police officer.

[Steve Murphy]

I was making $9,600 a year.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow. You have to laugh that hard. Sorry, it's. It still hurts. It still hurts.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, I was 19 years old when I started. Yo. But really, I mean, I was working as much overtime as I could get. I was working every off duty job I could get. I got the sports contract for the local state college in town there I worked as a electrician's helper for a fireman.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Steve Murphy]

I sold Amway.

[Brent Tucker]

Did you really?

[Steve Murphy]

I sold him. Way you were hustling much of it, but, but I mean you just, that's what, you know, I got married and we had our first son and yeah, you know, you got responsibility.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. You got to provide, take care of your family.

[Steve Murphy]

So. But anyway, went to the railroad, had to move down to Virginia beach, which. That was real tough.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And it was straight up money.

[Brent Tucker]

It was, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

The. And this is certainly not taking any way anything away from professional police officers that are railroad police because I've met some studs. But what I was assigned to do was basically a glorified security guard. And that's not at all why I got law enforcement.

[Tyler]

I'll take it away from him.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Railroad law enforcement is not the same as your municipality cop, your deputy sheriff. But if you know that, you know a lot of guys. Well, even if you're a regular cop, I mean, you do eight years, you're like, I just kind of want to go to a nice area now to respond to my calls, you know, I don't want to be chasing people down at three in the morning for crack rocks and getting hurt and getting in trouble and.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Gotta do your time as a cop.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. But it was, you know. And the reason I ended up leaving the railroad police, I was always interested in narcotics investigations. But a new railroad cop came on and joined us. I transferred back to West Virginia. New guy came along. That was his name's Pete Ramey, one of my best friends. Pete was a Virginia state trooper and he had worked with the DEA task force at Roanoke, as a matter of fact. And he started telling me about DEA and got me all pumped up and interested. Well, so I started thinking about it. At that time, you had to have a four year degree to get on dea, and I hadn't finished my four year degree yet.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

One night on the night shift and I'm the only railroad cop on duty for 26 counties. So you know, my backup, all the other law enforcement officers in those counties, so, excuse me, they're in Bluefield. One night I heard gunshots real close to the main office building. So being the nosy person I am, I went to investigate and I saw a police officer crouch behind his police car and he was exchanging shots with a guy in the third floor apartment. So the guy had the high ground shooting down at him. And what had happened is this guy came home, found the guy in bed with his wife. So the guy that came home shot the other guy in the butt, but he was able to escape. He got down to the sidewalk. The policeman came driving by and saw the guy laying on the sidewalk, went to investigate. Well, the guy upstairs that came home, he's shooting down, trying to kill the guy. He's trying to finish him off. So I go down and back up the officer. He's a rookie. He, you know, first thing I ask you, you got backup on the way, right? He's like, oh, no, I didn't call for help.

[Tyler]

Now your boys are closer than mine, trust me.

[Steve Murphy]

So we, you know, for a couple hours or we exchanged shots with him guy and we never hit him. He never hit us. We killed that building better than hell. But, you know, that was the end of the story. But he finally surrendered. Well, that morning I went in and called my railroad police chief to report I'd been involved in a shooting. And it was about 6:30 in the morning. He ordered me, he said, you don't leave the office. You wait till I get there. And he was very mad about it, very upset. So he comes in and he'd never been a real policeman. So he comes in and he asks what's happening? And I tell him. And he is just. I mean, he's called me every name in the book. He's telling me he's gonna get me fired for getting involved. Yeah, I had no business because it was not railroad business. I shouldn't have gotten involved. I told him, I said, chief, I'm the only railroad guy. On duty for 26 counties. Who do you think I call for help when I need help?

[Brent Tucker]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

So we had words back and forth and, and it was my quitting time. And he said, get out of here, you know, and, and he said, but I want you to know I'm getting your job for this. I'm going to get your job for.

[Brent Tucker]

Helping out another law enforcement.

[Steve Murphy]

And so as I'm walking out the door, I said, chief, given the same set of circumstances, I'm telling you now, I will react the same way.

[Tyler]

Good for you.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. The chief at the, you know, this is my old pd. This is the old Bluefield Police Department. So the chief at that time was a detective. When I was there at the, at the agency, at the part at the department, they found out that, you know, I was in a little bit hot water. And so the city, they gave me a big proclamation and an award for coming to the rescue of a fellow officer and all that kind of stuff. And thankfully, higher heads and railroad police had been law enforcement. And they're like, murph, don't worry. You did the right thing. Well, then they didn't do anything to the chief, you know, they just, they just let him keep being the chief.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And I just thought at that point, I don't want to, you know, that's not why I want to be a cop. I'm not going to work for somebody like that.

[Tyler]

He's going to find something else.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Yeah.

[Tyler]

He's going to find something else.

[Steve Murphy]

So I finished up my college degree and applied for dea. It took two years to get on the job, but once I got on, I never looked back. It was a blast.

[Brent Tucker]

26 years. What, what was, what was the. We'll, we'll get to the Pablo thing, you know, here. Pretty sure we'll. So we'll fast forward this a little bit, but tell us like the, the first, the first 10 years of, of it, you know what, how did the places it took you, the different jobs you did?

[Steve Murphy]

I, I, My first posting out of the academy was Miami in 1987.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow. Sounds horrible.

[Steve Murphy]

It was the one.

[Brent Tucker]

Right, right. In the Miami Vice days.

[Steve Murphy]

It was. Well, you know, we all watch Miami.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Steve Murphy]

Long hair.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And all the bling and you know, the go fast boats and the same fancy cars.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Steve Murphy]

None of that happens.

[Brent Tucker]

But here's the reason why I still know what a Ferrari Testarossa is.

[Steve Murphy]

There you go. So when I got to DEA in Miami, I got there in 87. My first undercover was in early 1988. And we went down. We took an undercover yacht down the Turks and Caicos Islands, which I had never heard of.

[Brent Tucker]

You just said the fast cars and all that definitely didn't happen. And your very next story is taking an undercover yacht to Turks and Caicos.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, I'm just a dickhead.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. All right.

[Steve Murphy]

So now, before joining dea, the most powder cocaine I'd ever seen was two ounces.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

So baggy. About like that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

We went down to the Turks and Caicos Islands. A plane flew in from Cuba. It landed on the airstrip, went to the end. As it's turning around, the back door throws open, and they threw all these duffel bags out.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

400 kilos of Coke. So I went from 2 ounces to 880 pounds of Coke. And you know what? I was addicted to cocaine at that point, but in a different way. I mean, I. I was.

[Brent Tucker]

And confiscating it.

[Steve Murphy]

Oh, I was so excited. Yeah. I mean, it's just the most exciting thing I'd ever done in my life at that point. And then. And then you come back and it just continued.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, it's case after case. I did four years there and then volunteered to go to South America, to Bogota. Love being went down there for three years.

[Brent Tucker]

Seems like a natural progression. Let's just get right to the source then, you know.

[Tyler]

Right.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, I completely agree with what you. With. With what you said, which is essentially a lot in the same. And in different jobs, whether it be special operations, whether it be, you know, and counter narcotics or even to some businessmen, like, the thrill of the chase, the thrill of closure, of whatever it is you have your mind set on is absolutely addicting.

[Steve Murphy]

The adrenaline that goes with it.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's. And the only thing that'll satisfy it is to. Is to do it again. Yeah, Yeah.

[Tyler]

I mean, what we end up going to, the whole point of the story is, what's that saying that there's no other thrill like hunting. The hunting of a man.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Ernest Hemingway, of all people. Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Like, actually, I never thought of it like that, but I think you're right.

[Tyler]

Yeah. Now, how do you top that? You just the top kingpin in the world for narcotics. Now, where do you go behind the desk?

[Steve Murphy]

I went to Greensboro, North Carolina. But it's. It's as. Anything is as good or as bad as you make it.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely. Absolutely, you can.

[Steve Murphy]

But if you want to go every day and make the best out of it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

The best. You Can.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Some of the worst situations I've been in, I've had the best time. And. And it had to do, really, because of the guys I was with, you know, and those guys refused to make it a bad time, so it wasn't a bad time.

[Steve Murphy]

That's it. You know, it's. And you become the culture. I talk about a lot about the law enforcement culture. And it's the same in the military. When you're continuing going through life or death situations and you come out alive with your brothers and your sisters, you know, you just. There's a bond that develops that's closer than brotherhood, 100%.

[Brent Tucker]

When you get down to. To South America and Colombia specifically, was it. Did you work in more than just Colombia or. Okay. Bogota is a horrible place. No, the traffic sucks. Traffic does suck there in Orlando. I'm surprised at how cold Bogota can be at any point during the year. It's. It's nestled up there in the mountains, and it seems like it's always foggy and just a little bit cold at night.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, it's. It's 8,500ft up in the.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, it's up there.

[Steve Murphy]

So it never got. It never got hotter than, what, 78 degrees? Never got colder than maybe. Yeah, 48. Something like that.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. It surprised me because, you know, you think of, you know, a South American big city, just. I used to think everything's hot.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Bogota was not as. I did not pack well for Thankful. I was thinking I wasn't in Bogota very long, but.

[Steve Murphy]

And, but you go out in the sun, done. And. And, you know, I'm. I'm English, Irish heritage. I got sunburned.

[Brent Tucker]

It'll still get you. That's right. Yeah. It'll still get you. Or the. I'm. Did you end up traveling all over South America? I mean, I'm sorry, Colombia. Bogota, Medellin. Yeah, it was Cartagen. Yeah. Did you ever. You ever get as far to the coast, like Cartagena as well?

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, but that was for vacation.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, the wife and I went up there and.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, good for you.

[Steve Murphy]

San Andreas, they call island that comes Colombian was off the coast of Honduras. Went up there for a long weekend. But you do you. You know, and when we were down not working, my wife and I, we. We went down to the Amazon jungle for a long weekend down in a little place called Leticia, which is where Colombia, Brazil and Peru all come together. Right on the Amazon River.

[Tyler]

That's like a. It's like a vacation.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. Long weekend and then you Know, never.

[Tyler]

Thought of the Amazon jungle as being a vacation spot, but it was very primitive.

[Steve Murphy]

Let me say that we went out, we were taking these little tours and they had, they had one night tour where you could go out on these, these like 25 foot canoes. They had a little outboard motor on them and there might be 15, 20 people on there. And the guy on the front had a spotlight with a battery. Car battery.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

So you go up these tributaries off the Amazon and he's spotlighting the alligators and crocodiles, caimans back there. Crocodiles is what they are. And he'd jump out in the water and I think the biggest one he caught was a couple feet. They would take the mouth shut and then they pass it along. Everybody pet it.

[Tyler]

Well, white people.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, we didn't realize. You think that they would realize this, but the Amazon river is actually a tidal river. Tide went out, we're up in a tributary. We couldn't get out.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Kept hidden sandbars. We spent the night on this canoe with, you know, they gave us these big hooded ponchos, real thick ponchos. You could hear the bugs hitting the side of your poncho all night long. I had on jeans and, you know, the poncho covered the rest of it, but I didn't have socks on. The next morning we got back to Leticia. My ankles were swollen from all the mosquito bites.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, it was, it's my nightmare.

[Steve Murphy]

It was scary being out there. We were the only English speakers on the boat.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

No weapons.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

But you know, makes for a good story later in life.

[Tyler]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Brent Tucker]

Sheesh. The were were you doing counter drug operations, you know, the whole time there? I assume, I assume that. And when did it start getting, I want to word this like closer or more directly linked to Pablo Escobar himself?

[Steve Murphy]

Well, when I got there, you don't know what case you're going to be assigned to when you get there. And it takes a few days to get all your security clearances and access and all that stuff. That first week I was there, when is when Pablo surrendered to his custom built prison.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

What I usually. I started telling everybody, I said, hey, you heard Murphy's in town. He just joke, right. But yeah, he, he got.

[Brent Tucker]

Gosh, he cut a sweetheart deal on that, didn't he? It's the worst plea bargain in the history Explained the. I only know this because there was the movie or a documentary that, that I watched on it, but explain how horrible this deal was and he got away with it.

[Steve Murphy]

So they created what they called a self surrender program. And this was the attorney general. And in Columbia, the attorney General is elected, you know, whereas our attorney general's appointed by the president. Down there, they're elected, so they're autonomous from each other. So the attorney general created this self surrender program. And I think he had, you know, the best of the public in mind, because it would. The goal was to stop the bombings. I mean, the murder rate down there was just skyrocketed. It was unbelievable. So Pablo sent a couple of his underlings in, and they tried it, and it worked. So he goes in and he says, okay, I'll surrender. And of course, the government's like, oh, that's great, Mr. Pavlo and Mr. Escobar, thank you so much, and we appreciate you. He's like, whoa, whoa, I got a few stipulations to go along with this agreement. He said, first of all, I'm going to build my own prison because it's got to be a place that I feel safe in. But you know what? I'm going to pay for it. I don't want the citizens to have to bear that tax burden. And the attorney general said, okay. He said, well, listen, all the guards and everybody, I'm going to pay their salaries, too, because again, you know, I don't want the citizens of Columbia to bear that tax burden. He said, okay. He said, well, noble man, yes, he's the man for the people, right? So he says, well, listen, my inmates, my fellow inmates, I'm going to hand pick them because, you know, people hate me from around the world. People will try and kill me. So I'm going to pick people that will be, you know, loyal to me. And there was only 14 prisoners in Captain Pablo. So they said, okay. He said, well, listen, you know, the good guys, the Colombian national Police, Colombian military, and those gringos from dea, they're not allowed to come within two miles of the perimeter of my prison because I don't want them spying on me and trying to get in there and get me. They said, okay. He said, well, listen, I'm only going to do five years, man. They said, okay. And then in exchange, he got absolved of every other crime he committed in his entire life, to include tens of thousands of murders. And there were no stipulations to take any of his assets. His estimated wealth was at $30 billion. Gosh, $30 billion. I can't even imagine. I might have 20 bucks in my pocket here.

[Brent Tucker]

It's crazy.

[Steve Murphy]

So that's why I Say it was the worst plea bargain in the world, but here's the truth, and we all know he was in prison for one year before he escaped. That one year he was in prison. The bombings did stop now.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, describe the prison he built for himself.

[Steve Murphy]

Oh, it was a joke. We couldn't get up there to see it until he escaped.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

So the day he escaped, that evening, the head of the Colombian National Police called our boss and said, hey, we want Pena, my partner, Javier Pena, and Murph up there. We're establishing. We're re establishing the search block, the Loqui de Buscara, a 600 man force whose sole responsibility is to find, capture, or kill Pablo Escobar. So the next day, Javier and I were. We jump on Avion. Well, actually, we had the DEA plane fly us up there. And for the next 18 months, we lived in Medellin working with the Columbia National Police, living on their base. A police base in Columbia is like a military base here in the United States. You've got your. In and around the perimeters, serpentine driveways and pillboxes and all that stuff. So. But, you know, that mean I had to leave my wife in Bogota. There were. We would sometimes get to come home on weekends. I think the longest I ever spent up there without coming home was five weeks. But I can tell you, my wife's one tough girl.

[Brent Tucker]

They, they. They rarely get enough credit, and the, they always. They always seem to be cut from the same cloth. Just. She's just a.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, when I first a woman.

[Brent Tucker]

That takes more than. Than you feel like any, any other, you know, woman could or should take, you know, and that type of line of work that their husbands do and they have to deal with.

[Steve Murphy]

And We've been married 40 years now. She's still putting up.

[Tyler]

I'm gonna go smoke cigars in a podcast.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, well, you know what her response is? I'm gonna go shopping.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Oh, she, she got the better into that deal. The. Now, if, if. And, And I could be wrong about this, but at some point when the Colombian government agreed to all this, whether they completely knew it or not, at some point he goes out and the prison he builds is. Is a mansion, and he. And he basically stocks it with his friends. And he still. Although the bombings did stop, he was still running his. It didn't stop his enterprise. Now, he had his own personal building that you guys couldn't come within two miles of, and he could basically run his enterprise unabated in this mansion that is now a quote unquote Prison. And at some point, the Colombian government knew that they looked foolish taking this. It was. It became like a black eye to. To the Colombian government, that, that he. That he did that and he's kind of. And he's flaunting it now. Is there. Is there. Is that roughly the. The truth?

[Steve Murphy]

It is. He was. He was seen. I mean, he came and went as he pleased, you know, Right. If he wanted to go spend a long weekend with his family, he just went down. And they owned the Monaco building, an eight story condo building where his family lived with guards and servants. If you want to go to a soccer game, he went. If you want to go to a.

[Tyler]

New restaurant, why do you escape?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that's. That's actually my next question. Yeah. Then why do you end up escaping? Well, were they going to renege on the deal or.

[Steve Murphy]

There's a. There was circumstances that preceded that, that led up to it.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

Some of his sicario's route and two of his lieutenants. It was Kiko Moncada and Fernando Galeano. Kiko and Pablo grew up together, childhood friends. And so the sicarios went out and they found, excuse me, a stash of money that has been reported between 10 and $23 million that had been shrink wrapped and hidden in a cave. Well, the shrink wrap had come loose, and now you got air and moisture coming in there. And this millions of dollars is rotting away. So they bring it in and they plop it down in front of Pablo. Pablo puts out the word, hey, I have Kiko and Fernando. Call him. Come on up here. Tell them, don't bring their protection details, which tell them we're going to have a party this weekend. And then. Which. They had a. They had our nightclub inside the prison. I mean, complete bar, music, everything. So they show up and we found this out from an informant. When Kiko walked in, he saw the money. And he looked at. Said. He saw Pablo's face and he said, well, Pablo is not what you think. You know, that money's been buried for a long time. Quite honestly, we've forgotten about. They have so much money, they forgot where they buried millions of dollars. And so the. The sicarios are egging Pablo on. Pablo, he's lying. They're lying. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Pablo becomes so incensed, he grabs a stick and he kills. He beats Kiko to death. The sicarios, they jump on Fernando. They beat him to death. Not sure what happened to the bodies. They were never found. Pieces of the bodies Pablo would mail to their families. Just to screw with them. But when that. When we found out about it, the United States went to the President of Colombia and said, you got to do something.

[Tyler]

Yeah, this.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, you're the laughingstock of the world now. So the plan was, okay, we're put. We're going to put Pablo in a real prison, but we're going to tell him, hey, we're just going to put you here temporarily while we enforce. Reinforce your prison to make you safer. Pa's not that kind of a fool. So they sent the Deputy Justice Minister up with a Colombian military lieutenant colonel. Colonel, I think he was a colonel and in a military detail. They didn't send the Colombian National Police, because you know what? They would have gone in there taking care of business. Well, the Deputy Minister of justice. Kid's 25 years old. He goes and said, Mr. Escobar, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to relocate you temporarily, for your own safety. Pablo's not a fool.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, I don't like to give this guy a lot of credit.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

He saw through that one. They took the dust, the. The Justice Minister hostage. There was a big standoff. Next thing, they bring in a specialized unit, what we call operators.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay?

[Steve Murphy]

Copas and the Copus raid the prison. Not a single good guy was hurt. Several of the guards who were fighting against the good guys. Because Pablo pays their salary, right? They were.

[Tyler]

Imagine that.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Where's your loyalty?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Where your paycheck comes from. Right?

[Brent Tucker]

Exactly.

[Steve Murphy]

And long story short, they were able to get the Justice Minister out. And then Pablo somehow though him, and I don't think it was. Six of his cohorts escaped. Now this prison's surrounded by 600 cops or military. How did he walk out?

[Brent Tucker]

Might have been some money.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, that's what I think. We've never proven that. But anyway, that's what led to Pablo's escape. Then the next day, we moved to Medellin. Javier and I are getting, you know, we're getting logged in there. We've been working with these guys for as long as I'd been in Colombia. And Javier got there three years before I did, so he'd been working with him for quite a while. A couple weeks goes by, maybe a week goes by, the ambassador calls us back to Bogota, and he says, we've got some. We're sending some help up there for you. So we ended up meeting a guy named Colonel Jerry Boykin. Colonel Boykin was the head of Delta?

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Steve Murphy]

So, in fact, Jerry got his first star. First general Star while he was in Columbia. So we've got. We now have Delta operators coming to Medellin with us. And then a few days go by and they send up some SEAL Team 6 guys, some guys from Devgru. And I'll be honest, I know where. I know what your background is, because we were talking. Delta and Devgru are the biggest freaking studs in the world.

[Tyler]

Don't give him.

[Steve Murphy]

I've seen them. I've seen what your capabilities are. And we at every speech, presentation, address that Javier and I give, we tell the world if we're ever kidnapped, that's who we want to come and get us. Because I've seen what your capabilities are. I've seen the dedication. And I mean, just. I'm in all of these guys and you.

[Brent Tucker]

That. To answer that real quick, though, the truth is because of the guys who you worked with are who held the standard. And, you know, the only reason why we are still as good as we are is because no one ever wants to let down the guys before us. The legacy, they. They've been holding the standard for a long time. And it's. It started before those guys, but those guys continue to hold the standard. And I'm so glad to hear that. I wouldn't believe I'd ever hear anything different. But be honest, it's always. It's always nice to hear.

[Steve Murphy]

I'm getting goosebumps just thinking. I mean, I'm just truly in awe of those two groups. But the embassy.

[Brent Tucker]

And it was nice for you to include DEV group into that.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. There was no friendly competition.

[Brent Tucker]

Everybody was just like.

[Steve Murphy]

But actually, we did get all great up there. Yeah, it was funny when they would get to bantering back and forth. Yeah, I just get back. Yeah, you guys have at it. But the embassy put the rules of engagement on us, and that was that. We were. None of us. None of the gringos were allowed to leave the base. Well, military. You guys follow orders in law enforcement.

[Brent Tucker]

That's correct.

[Steve Murphy]

We kind of look at them as strong suggestions, guidelines. There you go.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that's right.

[Steve Murphy]

So we didn't. We broke. Javier and I broke rules, policies and procedures every day by going out of the compound. But we never broke the law. We had zero jurisdiction down there. We had diplomatic immunity. The Colombians allowed us to carry weapons. And we were. We never did anything unilaterally. Always with the Columbia police, which is smart. So you're going. We're going out on the Huey gunships every day on raids, nice surveillance.

[Brent Tucker]

We're talking to informants Would they limit you with what you could carry?

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Was it like a pistol or, you know, is there anything. Or you could, you could carry essentially whatever, whoever you were with up, up to what they were carrying, if that makes sense.

[Steve Murphy]

We were limited to our 9 millimeters to your pistols.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

And I had a 38 caliber model 15 Smith and Wesson snub nose revolver on my ankle.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

But the, I mean, the truth is you're going out on operations. I mean, you're coming into hot landing zones, you're being shot at, and people go down on the field.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. There'll be.

[Steve Murphy]

If a long gun comes in very handy. I don't care if it didn't belong to me.

[Brent Tucker]

Right. There will be one around if you needed to watch it.

[Steve Murphy]

I'm not saying we did that, but yeah, you know, they were available.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Steve Murphy]

The.

[Brent Tucker]

How, how long did it take? And I'll get this answer, but then we'll, we'll walk through this timeline after he escapes and that's, and that kind of triggers, like you said, that 600 man force to go find him. How long was he on the run for? How long do you guys hunt him down?

[Steve Murphy]

18 months.

[Brent Tucker]

18 months, that's a long time. Every day waking up for 18 months. That's. That's, that's your job. Yeah. In a weird way, it's great because sometimes you have a job that pulls in a bunch of different directions.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Which is nice sometimes because you're always kind of.

[Tyler]

You always have some days there's no leads.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You always have something new to do. But you know the, the other bad part about that? Sometimes when you, when you, when you work in so many different things, you don't have time to, you know, sometimes. Nice just to drill down on something. Did you find it nice to. Pretty much. I don't want to say you only worried about one thing, but that was safe to say that was your end goal, that you just had one thing that you could drill down on and put all your time and energy and effort into.

[Steve Murphy]

It was. It was, it was the priority of the US Embassy. It was the priority of the United States government. From the DEA perspective, it was a priority of the Colombian government. But, you know, we're going after the world's first narco terrorist. That was Pablo Escobar. People say, what's a narco terrorist?

[Tyler]

I was just about to ask you what that just.

[Steve Murphy]

Basically a narcotics trafficker that employs terroristic activities in his daily Occupation, you know, killing people, torturing people, robbing, kidnapping. I mean all the crimes that go along with it. This guy was responsible for 80% of the world's cocaine. I mean think about it. You've got a podcast. Wouldn't you like to be have 80% of the world's podcast listeners?

[Brent Tucker]

I was just about to have 80% of anything. 80% of the world's licorice sales. You'd be right.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Now we're talking cocaine. Like gosh, and this is, that's crazy.

[Steve Murphy]

This is at a time when they could produce cocaine for roughly a thousand dollars in college Colombia. Then your transportation fees to get it to the United States was roughly three to four thousand dollars. So you got a five thousand dollar investment per kilo at wholesale. They're selling it at wholesale for as much as $60,000. A $5,000 investment returns 60,000.

[Brent Tucker]

Now you're talking high margin on top of that.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean that's how the guy had, you know, estimated wealth of $30 billion. Gosh, the richest criminal that's ever been that. You know, you look, I still keep up with research on narcotics traffickers and you look at Chapo Guzman, who was the Mexican.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Estimated wealth was 4 billion.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow. Still impressive. Yeah, that's crazy.

[Steve Murphy]

But that was, it was. I mean you talk about an adventure, a challenge. But also keep in mind that at 18 months 137 clothes Columbia National Police officers were killed in one investigation trying to get him 137 JV team for life.

[Tyler]

And of course we got to give a shout out to our boys in 09 holsters. Custom built ruggedized duty gear. Made in the USA for cops by cops. A Leo and veteran owned small business. They do an upgraded solutions for duty gear including cases for portable radios, body cameras, tourniquets and pretty much everything you need to carry on duty. So go to 09holsters.com and use promo code anti hero10zulu9. That's antihero10z9. And get yourself 10% off your order.

[Steve Murphy]

Revenge is an act of passion. Vengeance is an act of justice. Injuries are revenged. Crimes are avenged. Almost a century ago, big pharmaceutical companies re engineered medical school curriculum and faculty with one goal. Putting profit before progress. Anyone pushing back against the medical matrix they carefully crafted was threatened, silenced, censored.

[Brent Tucker]

Financially ruined or worse.

[Steve Murphy]

They are the problem. We are the solution. You're clear to engage with weapons. You're clear to engage with weapons.

[Tyler]

JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

Now in those 18 months, did you ever have days where like this is a lead. This is a solid lead. This might be the day. Or is it, you know, was it. Or was it just always like chasing a ghost, just hoping, you know, that you'll close down them one day?

[Steve Murphy]

When we initially got there and once. Once Delta and Devgru showed up, the operators brought technology that we didn't have access to, and they were coming up with hot leads. The colonel in charge of this whole thing, the Colombian colonel, I won't mention his name, but we refer to him as pajamas or PJs, because when you go to his bunk room in the middle of the night, knock on the door, he'd come to the door and silk pajamas, PJs. And so the operators are coming up to these leads. They come over and tell Javier and I about it. We tell our counterparts in the Columbia National Police, we've got to get authorization from the colonel to go out. And so you knock on this door at 3:00am, Colonel, we got a hot lead. We think we, you know, maybe 80% confidence this is where Pablo is. We need some cut. We need some vehicles, and we need some personnel. Oh, I don't. It's 3:00 in the morning. We've got. We've got PT in the morning at 6, and then we inspection, breakfast, and, you know, and all this, all these excuses.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Tyler]

Go out that never. That never changes. I want to know why. Because it's not his idea. You have great information you need to act on right now as well. It's not my idea. So.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. And so that happened time and time again to the point where we finally went to the head of the Columbia National Police, we being dea.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And said, you know, you got to get rid of this guy. He's. He's. We're not saying he's corrupt, but you slow us down, job done.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And so, I mean, there was place, times we'd go out on operations, and there would literally be a hot cup of coffee and a cigarette still burning. Yeah, we were getting that close.

[Brent Tucker]

I mean, you would think for, you know, a guy that's killed over 100. Well. Well eventually kill over 130 something of their own counterparts, that there would be like, a dedicated task force that's always ready to roll with minimum approval process, because that's what it takes to get someone like this.

[Steve Murphy]

Got to be ready to go and.

[Brent Tucker]

But they. They didn't. They were kind of doing as usual. This guy was right. Yeah. At least the beginning.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. So we got him removed, and they brought back the original Head of. In the first manhunt before Pablo surrendered, there was a Colombian colonel named Hugo Martinez. That man's a hero.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

He's a man that you guys would love to work for. He's. He's like, let's go, let's go, let's go. You're a can do kind of guy.

[Brent Tucker]

Love it.

[Steve Murphy]

So they brought Colonel Martinez in, and that's when we started to see more progress.

[Tyler]

But we can't be living in comfort at this point. He's running.

[Steve Murphy]

Oh, Pablo.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. He's. Well, he's still got a lot of allies.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, at one point, he had as many as 500 sicarios protecting him. So he's got his own army.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

And there are no rules of engagement with these guys.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, if you kill the wrong person, that's just collateral damage.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, it was. It was horrible what was going on. Eventually, you know, after all this was over, Javier and I, people would ask us how many murders Pablo was responsible for. For. We would say 10 to 15,000, maybe 20,000 several years ago. And this guy's dead now. But it was one of Pablo's remaining sicarios that had finished his time in prison. He didn't escape. He stayed in prison. He did his prison time. He came out, he got very popular. He had his own Netflix series. He wrote his own book. He was more popular than we were on the Spanish side. And he says, you know, and this is on a documentary. The words come out of his mouth that, you know, the gringos think that Pablo killed 15,000 people. The numbers, more like 50,000. I mean, I don't know.

[Brent Tucker]

That doesn't surprise me, actually.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, this same Sicari is referred to as Popeye, was a street name. John Row Velasquez Vasquez, his real name. On that documentary, he admits to murdering 300 people himself and arranging as many as 3,000 murders.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Just off of him alone.

[Tyler]

You got to be a soulless cat to do that. No? No justice, no reason. Just. Pablo wants him dead.

[Steve Murphy]

That's it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, blind loyalty.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. After. I'll tell you what. One thing that's. I know, at the end of the day, like, you wrote the book about it. I'm sure that helps to some degree. And. And you still speak on this stuff, but after. After all these years, you still know all these guys names, like, by heart. Like, you haven't had to think for a second, you know, like, oh, what was that guy's name? And they're. And they're foreign names, so it makes it so it's not like it'd be even easier if they were American names. You think you'll ever forget any of these guys names?

[Steve Murphy]

Probably not. I don't know. I don't know. The older I get, the less my memory works. But no, you know, I mean, we, we talk about this in our presentations and like I said, we've been doing this for nine years.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

We're booking events for next year already and it's, it's, it's odd that it continues, but it just shows you the interest of the world about. I mean, why do we find criminals so intriguing?

[Tyler]

It's a great question.

[Brent Tucker]

That is a good question. Actually. I just got done watching Peaky Blinders. Okay.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And, and you know, I'm just as, you know, as bad. If that had been a, you know, a series about, you know, good guys doing good things, I don't know if I'd have watched it as much as it was. Same way street gangs, you know, in, in Birmingham. I don't know. That's a, it's a great, that's a great question.

[Tyler]

Philosophical question. Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And what it does. Yeah, yeah, it's a little deep for me.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

But it, what it does is it gives us an opportunity to tell the truth because Pablo sun is out on the speaking circuit also and he's, he's not telling things the way we remember. I'll tell you that now.

[Brent Tucker]

The. Was it? I doubt it. But, but I'll ask a question. Was it ever an option, a two part question then. Was it ever an option to get more of an American presence into the hunting of, of, of Pablo? Because it was. Because, because his reach was so damaging, you know, to the United States. And if they would have, do you believe it, the, it wouldn't have taken 18 months to get them.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, here's what we brought to the table because Columbia National Police is a professional organization.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

They, I went down to Columbia thinking everybody in Columbia was corrupt and I was, I was 180 degrees off the whole time. The three years I was in Columbia.

[Brent Tucker]

How about 179 degrees off?

[Steve Murphy]

I was completely. There were three police officers in my three years there that, that chasing Pablo, that they were very low ranking and all they were doing is as we would load up the troops to go out on an op, they would make a phone call. Well, they knew we were doing, everybody knew we were doing wiretaps. They got picked up on wiretaps.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

So they went to prison. Okay. But what we brought to the table was technology. We brought access to certain investigative platforms that they necessarily might not have access to. DEA has the largest footprint of federal law enforcement agents from any US Federal agency. We've got the largest footprint in the foreign arena. I think it's 91 offices in 78 countries or something like that now.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Steve Murphy]

But what that does is as you get intelligence in, we can disseminate it around the world to our people.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

That was the top priority for dea. So if, if I'm sending you a lead and you're, I don't know, in Brussels or Japan or wherever it might be, that takes precedence over everything. So they were seeing like we started raising the money houses and not that you're getting large amounts of money, but you're getting the intel that leads to bank accounts around the world and we're able to immediately disseminate that information out. And you know, the seizures are being made in all parts of the world. We're identifying sales of the organization in the United States. Everything was very compartmentalized, so our US Based agents and law enforcement were able to take those down. I mean, just unbelievable. Mexico, they were killing it. There was a friend of mine, Aaron Graham, was stationed in Mexico during that time and we were feeding him leads and they're knocking off 5,000 kilos in a pot.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Steve Murphy]

They were shit. Yeah, they were. They were knocking them dead there. But that was the benefit of having DEA on there. There's, you know, there's really nothing special about Javier and I. We are, both of us are small town country boys. We do have the ability to focus on an operation and stay focused to reach a successful conclusion. But I mean, it's not like we were Superman wearing capes coming in there, you know?

[Tyler]

Yeah, but those only two.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

That's kind of fun.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, well, let me ask it a different way then, actually. And, and I, I think you've already alluded to this, but man, I'll, and I'm gonna circle back around and, and get you, I guess, to more directly answer that question. So I think essentially you're saying is, is no more, more American presence may, may not have helped much because they were a, they were a good, competent police force. So I believe that's your answer.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, it is. The Columbia National Police are very professional. If they would have done it themselves.

[Brent Tucker]

If, if we took away those American assets between you guys and the American military, do you think they, they, they would have, that they would have got them at all?

[Steve Murphy]

I'm going to say Yes. I think it might have taken longer.

[Brent Tucker]

Just would have taken longer.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. And I mean, things that. I mean, we provided not only technology, but we provided bullets, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Because these guys are in firefights every single day. They. We provided money. You know, you gotta have money for performance.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Your cars, they're not riding around, police cars, you got to rent, you know, keep changing your rental cars so you can blend into the community. So, you know, I'm sure that a lot of them saw us as a checkbook, but that was fine. And they were letting us go out on operations with them. And in my book, that was an adventure.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. But. But you're absolutely right on that. When you think about the amount of devastation that, you know, that. That one man can put on the world, you know, the difference between catching in 18 months and 36 months is. Is huge. You know, allowing that network to run rampant for another 18 months or whatever, it would have been.

[Steve Murphy]

Right.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, you have to stop someone like that as soon as humanly possible.

[Tyler]

What. So not to jump into the war on drugs yet, but the. The American reasoning for anything or the worldwide reasoning, obviously he was causing heinous crimes in Colombia that he needed to be caught and tried for. But what. Why was America invested, Like, why was our government invested in the DEA being part of this?

[Steve Murphy]

You know, the. And this is not a good reputation to have, but the United States is the number one consumer country in the world still to this day when it comes to illegal narcotics. I believe it. We were the big market. They weren't even shipping to Europe yet. Now, you know, eventually they did. Europe, Australia, all parts of the world. DEA's bread and butter. Because when they have a full complement, I think DEA's authorized like 4,500 agents typically. I think right now there's probably only about 3,800 agents.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

When you're working a worldwide program, that's not a lot. It's just not. But the beauty of DEA is that form presence, that's DEA's bread and butter. That's what makes DEA successful. You know, it's funny because you get new administrators that come in from dea, and they're all. Not all, but most of them are political appointees. And they all want to leave their legacy on the agency before their time's up. And I know that they did a review. They had the Office of Inspector General come in and do a complete review of DEA's international program, thinking that, well, there's a way to save money because it is expensive. But once they Saw the results of what was going on, they realized the importance. Importance of the program.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, well, that's the. I know it sounds maybe not so fiscally conservative, but I, I don't mind spending money when you get results, but when you spit. Yeah, but if you're going to spend, if you're gonna have that type of budget, you better have some results or, or else you're on the chopping block, like the Department of Education should be, or the agent. The, the, the actual. Let's talk about, like, you know, because there's other things I want to get into, kind of like the war on drugs, but I want to finish off the, The Pablo story. Tell us about when you guys got them. Like, were you expecting to get them that day? Was that just another swing you guys were taking? Was a high percentage swing. Was there anything that you felt was different about that day?

[Steve Murphy]

We went through. So in that 18 month period, about month, I don't know, maybe 16. It's just like the tips dried up. We. We had established an 800 tip line. The United States was offering a 5 million dollar reward for information on Pablo's capture. All of a sudden, we're not getting anything. And, you know, the narco series shows that he'd gone to the. His father's. Excuse me. He'd gone to his father's farm and was hiding out there. Well, that's Hollywood. If we'd known that, we'd have gone out there and got him. Right?

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

So we, you know, my wife's back in Bogota. She and I had adopted our first daughter. My two sons from my first marriage were still in the United States with their mom. I'm stuck in Medellin. I'm not getting to spend time with my wife or my new child. You know, and you kind of. I hate to say this, but you kind of start feeling sorry for you.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Yeah. No, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And Javier and I, we talked about. It's like, just let the guy surrender and go back to prison. Let's all. Yeah, but then the Columbians will go out, do an operation, and some of your buddies get killed, and then you come. They come back in. It's like, you know what? Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Get back to doing your job. That's what you're getting paid for. That's why you're here. And so in month 17, feel like.

[Tyler]

An honor at the time. Did it feel like an honor at the time to be to the two DEA agents that were tasked with this?

[Steve Murphy]

I tell you what, would it feel.

[Brent Tucker]

Like A punishment at times.

[Steve Murphy]

There's lots of times that you're. Maybe you've been on ops all day and you come back and you have dinner, which our dinners consist, you know, pretty much consisted of rice and potatoes, a lot of starch, occasionally get a little piece of chicken. But in the evenings, maybe you're having a cold beer and talking to some guys, and you're thinking, you know what? There's not another DE agent or world. And I know they would all trade places with me.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

But you know this. I'm here.

[Brent Tucker]

Did. Did you feel the pressure of, hey, it's been 14 months, 15 months, 16 months. And did you feel the pressure of. We've like, man, it. It sounds a little ridiculous, but it's. It's the pressure we put on ourselves. Like, my country is counting on me. They sent two people here and they expect results, and now the tips have dried up, you know, how do we get this thing back on track?

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, there was a lot of pressure.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

When. And when we would come back into to Bogota weekly, the ambassador would hold what they call a country team meeting. And that's where all the heads of all the agencies in the US Embassy come together. And they talk about, you know, the price of soybeans or whatever, you know, whatever those other agencies do.

[Tyler]

Everyone's like, let's move on to Pablo.

[Brent Tucker]

Let's move on to Pablo.

[Steve Murphy]

That was always first time. If we were. If Javier and I were there, then our boss would bring us up and we'd have to brief the country team on everything. And our ambassador was a retired naval commander, Lieutenant Commander Morris Busby was his name. I love the guy. Big man. I mean, physically big man, but physically can do kind of man, too. And he's one that brought in Delta and Deb Gru. But it was. He didn't mince words with you. You'd brief him on everything, and he's like, murphy, what the hell are you guys doing up there? He called Javier one night on the phone, Ambassadors residence. And it's like midnight.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And ask him. He's like, murphy, he said, what are you guys doing up there? What the hell is going on? Why are you not capturing this?

[Brent Tucker]

It's right.

[Steve Murphy]

That question continues. But you got to remember, we're mostly at the. We're under the Columbia National Police. If they're not going to act, there's so much we can do.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, you won't push so hard.

[Steve Murphy]

And it's not like we could go out unilaterally and do something because we don't have any jurisdiction. Yeah, I don't blend into a Hispanic country. I stick out because the way I look.

[Brent Tucker]

But so the, the. Did the tips start coming back in? How'd you guys get, you know, get back on the scent?

[Steve Murphy]

Okay, so the. This is all declassified now. The. The agency was there. CIA was down there. They brought in. They had an operation called Center Spike. Center Spikes. Basically twin engine King Air aircraft that would fly over the city of Medellin with radio intercept equipment. And the telephones that Pavel was using were not, you know, nothing like we have today. 4G, 5G. It was basically a radio telephone right off radio frequencies. So if Pablo wanted to thwart our efforts of. He knew we were listening. And if he wanted to thwart our efforts, well, he just changed the frequency. But it's not quite that simple because he's got to get that frequency to the people he wants to talk to.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Steve Murphy]

More challenging than that. So whenever he would change that frequency, then Center Spike would be up, and they were searching all the freaks, and they had voice exemplars of Pablo's voice. Well, Pablo had tried to get his family out of Colombia. And be real honest, that was his Achilles heel right there. His wife, his son, his daughter, and his mother. He tried to get them to Miami. And just. It just so happened that Javier was at the airport in Medellin one day with the police, and somebody came up, told them that the Escobar family had just gotten on a flight heading to Miami. Now, how the hell did they get visas? To this day, that question has never been answered. But they had US Visas in their passports.

[Brent Tucker]

Our government.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, so the Javier. Javier calls the office, they get the ambassador on the phone, he gets Javier and he says, Those visas are U.S. property. Go tear them out of their passports right now. They are not coming to the United States. Well, you can imagine the commotion that created. Yeah, you know, I mean, screaming and yelling and all that stuff going on. Anyway, they got him back into the Medellin, into the city. A couple of weeks later, we got intelligence that he was going to send his family to Frankfurt, Germany.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

So we have, you know, happened to be in Bogota. We got. One time I blended in because I always had a. I always had cameras with me. And we go out to the airport, El Dorado, and I'm just blending with all the other media people. They're from all over the world. We're taking pictures of. Of the son and daughter and the mother and their group, and they're going to Frankfurt. So we put an undercover, two undercover DEA guys and about three undercover Colombian police officers on the plane on a Lufthansa flight. And while that flight is traveling to Germany, our ambassador is talking to the State Department, is talking to the President, who's talking to the President of Columbia, who's talking to the Chancellor of Germany, and everybody's. What we want is we don't want the family to be allowed to enter Germany. I'm back in Colombia.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

Because that kept Pablo distracted.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

So since that time a few years ago, Javier and I were speaking somewhere, and a retired DE agent came up to us and said, hey, I was one of the agents in Frankfurt at the airport when the family got there. And he said, I don't know if you know this, but half of the Germans wanted to allow the family to stay, and half of them wanted to kick them out. And luckily, you know, the Chancellor stepped up, did the right thing, kicked the family back to. To Colombia.

[Brent Tucker]

Why would they want that family in their country?

[Steve Murphy]

I have no idea.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Just, you know, you think Germany would want to stay away from.

[Steve Murphy]

You'd think so.

[Brent Tucker]

That type of bad people perception in there.

[Steve Murphy]

And. And if they had been allowed to stay, who knows where they would have ended up.

[Brent Tucker]

No kidding. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Once you get into Europe, it's easy to bounce around.

[Steve Murphy]

Exactly.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

So when they come back, they put them in the Tekkendama Hotel, this hotel downtown Bogota, five star, and it has apartments, and that's where the family's staying.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

The Attorney General's protection detail is there protecting them. And here's the funny thing. When the Escobar family moved in that hotel, I mean, this is a high end hotel. Everybody else packed up and left because there was this group called Los Pepys, and they were afraid that those Pepes would bomb the building. And you know what? That was a legitimate concern. So there's the protection detail. Inside the apartment was the Attorney General's detail. And. And one of those guys happened to be an informant of my partner, Javier. And he's walking by one day when Pablo's son, Juan Pablo, is talking to Daddy. He looks down, he sees the frequency, memorizes it, calls Javier. We call the agency, pass it on. They get it to center spike. Centerpike goes to that frequency. There's a man talking. They compare it to the voice exemplar Pablo, and we get a positive identification. That's great. Where is he? Because that's what we want.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, the. The government of France had donated these white vans that had radio directional finding equipment.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

And the algorithm used back then was called triangulation.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

They triangulated on the signal, and that tells you put three vans around the city. Medellin is built kind of in a bowl, so it was great area to use this technology. And where there's three vans are shooting out their signals, where they. Where those three signals cross, that's where your signals are going to emanate from. Yeah, well, the margin of error back during that time was very large. So to refine that margin of error, you send guys out holding these big antennas right down the street, hold them out the window.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Nothing obvious about that is. See that every day. Right. And so the guy that's holding that antenna is Lieutenant Hugo Martinez, who happens to be the son of Colonel Hugo Martinez, our boss, Medellin. So he's driving down the street, he's holding an antenna, he's got a driver and he's got his little meter, and his meter's pointing to look over, and he looks up and he sees Pablo on the phone looking out the window. Now, he says Pablo looked at him as he drove by, and he's got that antenna. Yeah, we went back, he said there was no reaction whatsoever from Pablo, and we went back and listened to the tapes of the conversation. And there's no indication in the conversation like he's telling his son, listen, this is what I want you to. Oh, what the hell is that?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

There's the only explanation we've ever come up with is that, you know, as you and I are sitting here talking today, I'm in my mind viewing things in Columbia. I'm not seeing what's in front of me, even though it's right here in front of me. You're engrossed in your conversation. That's the only explanation we ever came up with, is that Pablo was so engrossed in his conversation, he realized what he was looking at.

[Brent Tucker]

That. That. I'm not surprised at all. That happens all the time in surveillance work where you. You think you're burned, but yeah, you. Because you know what you're doing, you know, it is wrong, you know, of sort. Not wrong, you know, but, you know. Yeah, you know, you believe that you're standing up more than you are. And although he's holding antenna, it's pretty crazy. But, yeah, I'm not completely surprised, you know, because you always. You always think, you always feel that, like, you know, the worst is going to happen when. When you're the guy you Know, in that, in that scenario, I think, I think.

[Steve Murphy]

And you, you can relate to this also. Tyler is, is, I think every surveillance we ever went on, you're not out there 15 minutes and somebody's going, I've been burned and you haven't.

[Brent Tucker]

Right? Yeah.

[Tyler]

Crazy. The what you can do in a Mars patrol car. You think you're like, who wouldn't notice this? But if you don't move and you just sit there and you just let the environment do its thing, like, oh.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we, you know, for us, we say this all the time, you know, and, and unless you're going to call a, you know, like, you've been burned call, like, it's not, it can't be just like someone looking at you, staring at you, making eye contact. Like, it has to be like a visible, like, visceral reaction that they suddenly change. Like, that's, that's, that's a compromise, you know, and it's, it usually takes that. And if you, if you don't get that more, more times than not, you're, you're good, but in your mind, you're so, you're, you're so busted.

[Tyler]

Is that. Did he have his 500 man army with him at this point?

[Steve Murphy]

No. And that was surprising. I mean, so we expected, you know, whenever he was finally located, there was going to be a massive firefight.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

[Steve Murphy]

He's down to one bodyguard.

[Brent Tucker]

No way.

[Steve Murphy]

That's all he had to do.

[Brent Tucker]

How long did it take you guys? Affects everyone. How long did it once, once you have a known location on him, how long did it take to, you know, to move an assault force into position?

[Steve Murphy]

Well, so I'm, I'm in the room with all the American operators, you know, and I mean, you know, it's just nice to talk to somebody that speaks English, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And, and we're in the quad where the Colonel's office is here, our barracks is here, and we got all these officers along the side. And I see the Colonel's executive staff run into his office. And those guys don't run for anything.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay? I told you, it's a good sign.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, I told the guy, I said, hey, something's going on. I'm going to go check it out. And we had a good enough relationship with Colonel Martinez that when I walked up to his doorway and he's got his lieutenant colonels and some majors in there, and he looks at me and he's like, come on in, come on in. And he's on his Portable radio. And he's talking to his son, and his son's saying, I just saw Pablo. You know, this is 100% confirmation I got him. And so there was a specialized group of Columbia Police officers called Deheen that we worked with. That's the guys we worked with all the time they were out there with. The Lieutenant, okay. Colonel told him, he said, look, we're mounting up the search blocks, 600 people. You know, you don't do that in a few minutes. Yeah, he said, but you guys secure the location. Whatever you do, do not let him escape.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep. Containment. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

The Daheen guys, they're not one to wait. So through one thing, one real benefit the operators brought to the Columbia National Police is they spent a lot of time training and they taught them how to use det cord to blow doors open. And they, you know, all these entry techniques and different ways to keep themselves alive. So the Daheen guys, they blew the front door off this three story row house with the deck cord. They went into the first floor. The first floor was a combination garage, kitchen, laundry room, and storage room. And the garage was actually open. There was no designation between the garage and the kitchen. Taxi cab sitting in there, right at the kitchen. So they make their way up to the second floor. As they are, Pablo and his son, his lone guard, Limon, are making their way to the third floor, okay? And they, so they start shooting at the cops. Cops are shooting back. Limon gets up to the third floor first. There's a window that the row house behind him was a two story, okay? So he jumps out that third floor window to the roof of the two story. He makes, you know, I don't mean this to sound derogatory towards the Columbia National Police, but they did not usually send people to the the back, which makes no sense, but it's our country. Well, this time they did. So Limon's up there, he sees the cops, they tell him to drop his weapons. He starts shooting at them. They shoot him, he falls off the roof dead. Now, Pablo knows the cops are coming up the steps. He's at the window. Now he's heard Limon get shot outside. So he knows there's good guys outside.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Steve Murphy]

He jumps off at that window to the third floor, supposedly, according to what the cops told me, is he tried to make his way along the wall and, and, but he had to come out in the open at some point because these guys are going to have direct line of sight on him. Yeah, so he makes a little dash across there. They Yell at him. When they get to the third floor window, he turns right. He's got 2.9millimeters. He starts shooting at him. And they left him laying on the roof that day. Caught him in a crossfire.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice.

[Steve Murphy]

The Narco series shows that I was on the roof when Pablo was killed.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

I'm still back in the colonel's office.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Thanks, Netflix. They lied.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. Well, that's one thing we learned about Hollywood is they'll never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story.

[Tyler]

Yes. And, I mean, it's really cool. I mean, what's it like having a Netflix series and a character? Oh, did you get to choose this character? Did you meet this character? Oh, this actor.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. In fact. So Boyd Holbrooke played me, and Pedro Pascal played Javier. Well, Pedro's.

[Brent Tucker]

He's really blown up, Right? Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, we tell him, hey, we're the ones that made you famous.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Steve Murphy]

But we came. Javier. I came with this idea before they ever started filming, and we got Netflix to pay for it, and the DEA administrator approved it. We brought Boyd and Pedro to Washington. I still lived up in D.C. at the time, and we embedded them in the Academy for a week.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

So at nighttime, we were staying at a hotel, and the four of us, and we'd get together and have a cold drink and smoke cigars at night. These guys had to go through pt. They had to go on the range. They learned how to do all the different types of surveillance, static surveillance, moving surveillance, felony car stops, all the different things that you get to have fun with. And they told us that it's the best training they'd ever got for a role because they were going to portray us like what they thought uniform cops do.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

And it's completely different.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

There's not even any similarities in it. So that had a lot to do with bringing more authenticity. They. My wife allowed them to portray her in the show. They use her real name. Her name's Connie. They brought in Joanna Christie was the actress that played her. She's British. She was able to hide her British.

[Tyler]

I always think that's so amazing. I know British people play Americans and they.

[Brent Tucker]

I know.

[Steve Murphy]

She did. Fantastic.

[Brent Tucker]

Every time I hear Beth from Yo. From Yellowstone.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Talk on a late night show, I'm like, that's. That's not. It hurts my ears. Like, what?

[Steve Murphy]

We just watched final episode of Yellowstone last night. Oh. Very last one.

[Brent Tucker]

All right, well, I haven't. I haven't caught up to Yellowstone yet, but.

[Tyler]

Yeah. Well, I Mean at adv, having good advisors on any movie. I'm so you ever watch an action movie, Brent? Or you're like, oh, they got, they're, they have good advisors.

[Brent Tucker]

What ticks me off about they almost did is this is what upsets me about Hollywood. At the same time, it's not the, you know, you know, over dramatized thing. They're Hollywood. Like that's their job. But not to get certain things like tactically right or how hard is it to find the right person to be the advisor. You, you know, if you're portraying this, this man's life.

[Tyler]

I would have said that I would do this.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steve Murphy]

Even the weapons they use. So they would write episode, they would email it to Javier and I, we, we would read through it, try to pick out things to make it a little more authentic or just, you know, recognize things are just complete bs. That's not all going to work. In fact, Joanna, she's playing my wife is a registered nurse.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

Joanna is doing the scene where a kid has a swallower has swallowed a lot of cocaine and one of the condoms had burst.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

He's in the emergency room. And the writers wrote up the script a certain way. And she calls Connie from the set as their family. She says, here's the situation. What's the wording I would use? This is what they're told me to say.

[Brent Tucker]

Perfect.

[Steve Murphy]

And my wife said that has nothing to do with what they're telling you to say. Has nothing to do with the medical situation. She gives us the terminology. Yeah, that's what Joanna used in the show. And just wow. Made a little more authentic. But when they showed me the weapons that they were going to use, they had these big 6 inch chrome plated semi automatic 9 millimeter revolvers that nobody's going to carry. And so I took pictures. We both carry Smith, smith and Wesson model 659s back then.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

Stainless steel, no hammer on it. You could tuck it in there. It's not going to snag on you.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah. And my snub gun sent him a picture of that. And finally the executive producer, the creator, Eric Newman, who's fantastic. He calls me Psych Murphys. We appreciate your input. The prop company in Columbia, that's all they have. That's why we're using.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

Gotcha, boss.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, to much of some of the listeners maybe dismay and maybe my own personal the. The Delta Force sniper did not shoot Pablo in the ear. On his, on his. On his way running across the rooftop and nor, nor did the dea. No. No American gets. Gets the claim some sort of shadowy government role and direct and directly taking Pablo's life.

[Steve Murphy]

Let me say the reason I know this, because I was with him when this operation was going down. But I'm not taking anything away from our operators because I. No doubt my mind. A US Operator could have fired a sniper shot from a mile away.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Drilled him right here. So it's. I think they have capability, but I just know for a fact, because I was with them.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And the truth matters more than a good story.

[Steve Murphy]

It does, it does. And it's, you know, some there after Pablo's dead, and, I mean, thousands of people are coming out because you just had this big, massive firefighter. And the media started to show up. And for whatever reason that day, I always wore polo shirts going on operations, and I had a red one on, stick out like a. And we didn't want. We didn't want the impression that the United States ran this up, because we didn't.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Steve Murphy]

We supported them, and we wanted the Columbia National Police to have all the credit. So I went to one of the lieutenant colonels and I said, you know, I probably shouldn't be here. And he's like, you're right. So they gave me a protection detail. Take me back to the base, and then a few hours later, the whole team comes back in. Well, that night, I mean, we tripled the guards around the base because we were expecting retaliatory. Retaliatory retaliation attacks.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

We thought we were going to get attacked. It was the quietest night I ever spent Medellin, really. I mean, the quietest night.

[Brent Tucker]

Why, to some of the listeners, they may have this question, why is it so important to. To prop up the government, you know, of Colombia? And, you know, I don't say overly play up their role in it, because their role in it was. Was absolutely significant, but more, I guess, more diminish our role into it. What. What is. What's the purpose behind that? Why is that a good thing?

[Steve Murphy]

And it's not that we wanted to give kudos to the Colombian government is to the Colombian National Police, because, I mean, look at all the people they've had killed there were over in Pablo's reign of terror all those years, he's credited with the deaths of at least 1000 Colombian National Police officers.

[Brent Tucker]

That's crazy.

[Tyler]

Did they want the citizens of Colombia to trust that their government can. That handled it?

[Steve Murphy]

Yes. Yeah, that had a lot to do with it. And the truth is they did.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that's super important. Yeah, yeah, it really is.

[Steve Murphy]

It's, you know, I. I say it in all our presentations. The reason you can forget everything else that we say during our presentation, your takeaway, your one takeaway, is who the true heroes are. And it's the Columbia National Police, because they took their country back from this piece of shit.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Well said to the point. And well said did that.

[Tyler]

And was everybody kind of. Because obviously when he was in his prime, he was kind of like a Robin Hood in the sense that, like, everybody supported him and loved him and he was this nice guy. He gave back to the community. But had everybody seen through it at that point where it was like, we know he's a giant piece of shit.

[Steve Murphy]

It was funny because this, and I'm glad you brought that up, because that is one of the big myths that's out there, that he's a Robin Hood. When Los Pepys, which is nothing more than a bunch of vigilantes, just as everybody, as deadly, as murderous as Pablo Escobar, what they did is they used Pablo's tactics against him and they were successful. That's what put all the pressure on Paolo. That's what resulted in a lot of his organization disappearing. You guys have seen it being in other countries. In their media, they post pictures of dead people, of gruesome things that we won't post in the United States. We always, oh, this. Just warning you now, this might upset you, what you're getting ready to hear about. Well, they post everything. You see it. So the surprising thing was that the initial reaction of the public was pro Los Pepys. Pablo's getting a taste of his own medicine. I mean, the sentiment was pro government, pro police. Well, then Los Pepys killed two of Pablo's attorneys one day, but one of them had a 10 year old kid with him and they killed the 10 year old kid.

[Tyler]

That tarnish your image a little?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

That turned cinema against Los Pepys. That turned the US sentiment about, you know, supporting the Colombian government turned it. I mean, they wanted to. You gotta love our government. They wanted to pull all our special operators out. And we didn't have SOCOM back then. We had Southern Command in Panama.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Steve Murphy]

They were wanting to pull the operators back up to Panama. They wanted to pull us out of Medellin, they want to pull the agency out, get all the gringos out of there. And our ambassadors, the one that had the stones to stand up and say, no, this is what we're doing. We're making progress.

[Brent Tucker]

We've. We've really lost that type of person and high up places to stand up and go. No, like this is. We just have so many yes men and in high positions. It's, it's sickening.

[Steve Murphy]

It's, it's, it seems like today it's more not what's best for our country. What's best for my political career.

[Brent Tucker]

Careerism. We say in the military, we say in the police, we, it's, it says it's, it's rampant.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And it has to stop. And it kills me when you're, when we're talking about an ambassador level or when it's a general level or whatever. When it happens at a high up level. But let's just take it, you know.

[Steve Murphy]

Ambassador.

[Brent Tucker]

You're already an ambassador. What, what. What more do you want? Like you, you've had a successful career. It's. Oh, it's okay to die on a hill. Yeah. At this point. Like, you know why they never want the ride to end. You know, and thinks that there's some other level that they're. There's. It, it's you're okay. And they're usually because they're an ambassador. They're already older. You know, they're 50s, 60s. Your career set stand for something right off in the sunset. You don't have to, you don't have to be, you know, drenched in careerism your whole life. My gosh, man, that's.

[Steve Murphy]

I have the utmost respect for, for, for Morris Busby. I talked to him a few years ago. I did some research. I found his number and I guess he's changed it or hidden it now because I called him to talk about something else and you know, catching up. Hadn't talked to him in years.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

I'm still calling Mr. Busby out of respect.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

He's like Murph, you can call me Buzz now. I just. The utmost respect. He had a lot to do with bringing that to a successful conclusion.

[Brent Tucker]

It wouldn't surprise me. By the time this thing airs, give us a week. Someone, someone will probably give us his number to, to give.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that'd be cool. Which reminds me remind me of a story like that. We're done with this about the, the Brianna case. And I'll, I'll, I'll update you on. On some things. The last question. Second last question I got for you. When. When did you retire?

[Steve Murphy]

2013.

[Brent Tucker]

2013. Good. It was what. I know this is a, a broad question, but what is Your opinion after 26 years on the war on drugs have. Was it, was it a big waste you know, was it a good try? Is it time to. To retire the war on drugs and focus on something else? What. What happened with the war on drugs?

[Steve Murphy]

I've got several opinions on this.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, I'm. I'm interested.

[Steve Murphy]

First of all, we're going after the world's first narco terrorist. We're going after the world's biggest manufacturer, distributor of cocaine. We're going after. You've heard of America's Most Wanted?

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Actually flew down for a week and did one episode only of the World's Most Wanted.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Steve Murphy]

So he's the world's most wanted fugitive. When you've been in war, you've been in battle. When we go to. When we go to a war, we get our allies lined up, we get our material lined up, we go in to win. Well, this war on drugs, what do we send two guys? I mean, it's, you know, thank you for the confidence, but it was. It's a joke. And, and, you know, please, anytime I say this, I asked, whoever I'm talking to doesn't cut this out. I'm certainly not taking anything away from all the brave men and women that are out there fighting that battle. There's been so many that have made the ultimate sacrifice. We see what's going on in our country today. We're having over 100,000 overdose deaths because of our Mexican and Chinese enemies that are out there. It just drives me crazy. But so people say, well, did the War on Drugs have any positive effect? You know, well, as screwed up as we are now, what would we be if we just didn't fight the narcotics traffickers?

[Tyler]

That point right there is to say to not fight it. Look, what. Where would it be today to not put up a fight? It's like anything. It's like crime. If, you know, we were talking before this podcast about. During the podcast about how policing is suffering because we can't enforce any laws and the criminals are running rampant. But if we still weren't out there doing what we can, it would be complete. It would be anarchy. It would finally fall to anarchy.

[Steve Murphy]

Right. Well, and then people challenged me also that every presentation we do around the world, and we've done hundreds and hundreds of them now in nine years, we always have a Q and A at the end. And people will say, well, not so much law enforcement conferences, but when you're talking to the public, they'll ask you, did you have any positive effect by taking out the entire Medellin cartel? Which, believe it or not, was the first time a International cocaine manufacturing distribution organization had been completely decimated and dismantled. I know that sounds strange. You'd think it happened every time, but it wasn't. Did you have any positive effect on cocaine trafficking when Pablo was killed?

[Brent Tucker]

That's a good question, actually.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, we did last about two weeks. Yeah, Because Cali stepped up, and then North Valley stepped up, and then a guy named Don Burner stepped up, and all those people have been taken out. But the truth is, can you go to almost any street corner in the United States today and buy cocaine? We know we can't. I mean, I don't know my way around Orlando all that good, but I'm.

[Tyler]

Pretty sure I can show you where you can get it.

[Steve Murphy]

We can find a place.

[Tyler]

Yeah. And I mean, it's. And it's bad now because as cliche as it is, you know, if I. If I stop, you know, somebody that was going to be dealing, and I charge them with sale and delivery. The way to look at it is, you know what? That might be one kid that doesn't overdose. Because the reg. The cocaine. Now everything's MDMAs and everything. Fentanyls and everything. It's. It's a. Now it's just a hodgepodge of that. People are taking. Kids are. Kids are smoking weed and overdosing on fentanyl. People are doing cocaine to go out for the night, and I will show up on an overdose call, and they're like, well, it was just cocaine. It was just cocaine, you know, and it's like, well, that cocaine was laced with something.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, the other thing I like to point out is, is we looked at. In Colombia, we looked at the murder rate, and I challenged you guys, your listeners, go do your research. Don't believe what I'm saying. Don't accept what I'm saying is 100% true. Do your own research and you make the decision. But in 92 and 93, Medellin was the murder capital of the world. I'm not making it up. This is research. It. You'll find out. So what we did is we looked at the murder rate in Medellin prior to Pablo's death, and then we waited. A couple months after he died, the murder rate in Medellin had dropped by almost 80%.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Steve Murphy]

So we had a major effect on the people in Colombia, but that translates into the world as well. My hot topic now is why are we not coming down harder on the demand for cocaine and other illegal drugs in our country when we're having over 100,000 people over 300 people a day, every single day of the year, are dying in the United States from drug overdose. Whether it's an intentional overdose or what they call poisonings, which is people taking drugs that they're not supposed to have access to that have been laced with fentanyl. What if a major US airline that carries 300 passengers crashed every single day in our country? What was our response be then probably.

[Tyler]

Shut down that airline.

[Steve Murphy]

Oh, man. We would shut down air traffic.

[Brent Tucker]

It'd be like, man, that's a. That's a good way of describing it.

[Steve Murphy]

It is. It's the best. And I stole it from a retired agent up in New York City. So I want to give. I'm not smart enough to come up with a comparison like that, but yet we're not doing it. Before COVID Javier and I teamed up with a lobby group out of San Francisco that represented pharmacists and pharmacies. Not big pharma. Okay. At CVS's and Walgreens. And the point was, we were trying to bring attention to counterfeit medications, which eventually, that's what Fenton was involved with. One year we went to Congress or we went to the House side. The next year we went to the Senate side. The next year we spoke at the National Legislative Exchange Conference, where there were representatives from all 50 states. It was amazing how none of them, the people who are responsible for making our laws to protect us from things like that, almost none of them had an inkling that counterfeit medications was even an issue in our country.

[Brent Tucker]

Country.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, they got staffers. That's their job, is to say stuff like that.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Steve Murphy]

So it just. It just tells you that we're. Now we're finally getting to the point, I think, where our politicians are recognizing the problem. Not all of them. I know there's a good retired agent that I'm. I was his executive assistant for a number of years. I think the world of this guy, and he's from Long Island, New York, and he will. He'll tell you what's on his mind. And he's in front of a subcommittee and testified about fentanyl. And at the end of the meeting, after they were ready to adjourn, one of the congressmen sitting on the panel said something to one of the other people on their battle. What a waste of time this was today. And my friend, he's not one to take that lightly. And so he spoke up and made some statements, and they threatened him with contempt of Congress because he challenged an elected public official. Why the hell can they talk crap to us, but we can't talk back to them?

[Brent Tucker]

What a disrespectful thing to say, by the way.

[Steve Murphy]

It's horrible.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

And my buddy, you know, his name's Derek, I'll just. He's. If you, if you look at anything on social media about fentanyl, the dangers of fentanyl, you probably see Derek on there. He's. He's taken on the challenge. He works with these groups that are called the Faces of Fentanyl, which are representative victims of fentanyl. He's. He's actually teamed up with Dr. Phil to do a lot of presentations and a lot of talks. So it's hats off to him. He's. He's a leader of men.

[Tyler]

We just talked, I think this last week, this last live, about Publix down here in Florida or any major grocery chains carrying Narcan and it's available to the public. And we were like, you know, instead of addressing the problem, which is the heroin and fentanyl entering our country and getting in into people's hands, we're just giving them the solution.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Which isn't a solution. We're just giving them a, you know, a slight cover up.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, it's not a solution.

[Steve Murphy]

I didn't know this, but people have told me that especially out in the Midwest on the interstates, at the rest areas, there are vending machines with Narcan in them.

[Tyler]

Yeah. I went to an event as a. To. It was actually a public event. It was a. It was a county magistrate or somebody doing stuff for the people. And those rides out there for kids and everything's going on. And I went to this booth, it was a Fentanyl booth. And they were given. Not Fentanyl booth. Jesus. Narcan booth. Yeah. And they're spinning the wheel. And kids were. And I'm like. I was like, why are you giving Narcan to kids? And they were. And I was like, oh, is it because maybe they're like dad or mom is. You know, it's in a lower income, maybe family member. They could go. They're like, no, it's in case they get. They start taking fentanyl or heroin. I'm like, so we're not addressing the fact that this is a huge problem that 6 year olds, 7 year olds, 10 year olds are getting.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, out of curiosity, do you carry Narcan in your cruiser?

[Tyler]

We have to carry on us. But the Narcan, I can't speak for every agency, but the Narcan is meant for my partner.

[Steve Murphy]

There you go.

[Tyler]

It's meant for me and my partner. And that's one of those things where it's like, if someone is overdosing right in front of you, paramedics are on the way. They're coming. So it's. It's up to that officer if he wants to deploy that Narcan or not.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, that's. Other police officers told me the same thing. Yes. A good friend of mine, retired agents, the sheriff up in Northern Virginia, he has got all of his officers, I think 400 sworn, something like that. And everyone carries Narcan in their cruiser. And when I talk to the majors and some of the friends I have in that agency, they say it's. It's not for them, it's for us.

[Brent Tucker]

Interesting. Murph, what's next for you? Yeah, tell us about your book, where you can get the book, your podcasts, you know, your speaking engagements. What's. What's next for you?

[Steve Murphy]

It's, you know, I'm busier now. I think that I have the weekly true crime podcast, Game of Crimes with Murph in the Morning, going three and a half years now, just like you guys have a guest on every show. I don't do it in person. It's. It's virtually. But just, you know, you just like you guys, you get to talk to some real heroes and some real studs out there.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely.

[Steve Murphy]

So that keeps me really busy. Our speaking business is still going. We're finishing our ninth year. We call it DEA Narcos. And for the website, you can go to gameofcrimespodcast.com and. And that's my website. And then for the speaking business, we have deanarcos.com on there. You can. Our book tells the true story of Pablo. It's been out for a number of years now through St. Martin's Press. You can order it through Amazon. You can only get paperback copies now. Printer won't give us any more hardback copies. We sold them all. But if you go through our website, deannarcos.com we have a shop on there and you can order the book. I'm the one that sends them out. So they're all autographed by Javier and I both. And we can even put a little personal message in there to you.

[Tyler]

If I buy one, will you put that? Dev Grew was actually the better team.

[Steve Murphy]

I'll give you a copy and you put what you want to.

[Tyler]

That doesn't look like his handwriting.

[Brent Tucker]

And then I'll have to buy One to counter. It's a brilliant business move. Actually, it's a two for one.

[Steve Murphy]

So.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Steve Murphy]

Get you guys going against, but still doing a lot of documentaries and TV stuff. And then there's one investigation which Javier and I are the lead investigators for this cold case operation called the Lost Clipper, and that involves the disappearance of 15Americans in 1938 over in Micronesia in the South Pacific. We believe there's a lot of theories out there that are going on. But I've been over to the country of Chuuk, if you know where Truk Lagoon is, that's supposed to be the best wreck diving site in the world because that was Pearl harbor, that was the Japanese Pearl Harbor. So we were over there the last trip, my second trip over there this past April. We'd gone over a few years earlier. We took over ground penetrating radar looking for these bodies. Well, we found some anomalies. We didn't find any bodies. But this year we took over two cadaver dogs and both alerted. So we brought back big slabs of concrete that we believe have DNA in them. And we're going through the process now trying to extract that and have it tested really for familiar check, you know, familiar DEA family members of the victims on that plane. The really interesting part of that is one of the businessmen on that flight was Asian man who owned three Asian restaurants in Newark, New Jersey back in the 1930s. He was reportedly carrying $3 million in what we would refer to as bearer notes or bearer bonds. He says that his story was he was going to give that money to Chiang kai Shek because $3 million would buy 50American fighters and a year's worth of maintenance. And China was in war against Japan at the time.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

What we believe is he was going to use that $3 million to use his ransom to try to get Amelia Earhart back, who disappeared in 1937. So we're, we're on the verge of, you know, all the production company, all the networks want to do a show with us, but you got to give them a piece of tangible evidence first.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Okay, so this DNA, once we get it tested, that may be the, you know, the smoking gun that we've been looking for if we can prove all this. Because there were, there were American military personnel on that were in among those 15.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

If we can prove this, the first skyjacking in the history of the world would be the skyjacking of the Hawaiian Clipper, which is a Pan Am seaplane.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

The first act of war against the United States by Japan will not be Pearl harbor, it'll be the skyjacking of the lost Clipper. And we, you know, we've got an opportunity now, and this would probably be the holy grail of the whole thing, is that maybe we could bring closure to 15 families whose family member just got on a plane to go somewhere.

[Brent Tucker]

One day and never, never came back.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah, I mean, I get, I'm getting.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that's, that's crazy to think about. I hope you can connect those dots. That'd be an amazing story.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I watched that show.

[Steve Murphy]

We're trying. Our lead guy is a retired naval intelligence officer, which you probably say is a misnomer because don't go together. But that, that would be your story, not mine. But he's been working on this for like 22 years. This was his, this was his topic in staff and command college. So I mean, he's, he's. And we all, we don't have a sponsor. We're all, you know, paying money.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Self funding it.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

I have a question right before we get to our last question with you being, you know, in the da, You're a government employee for a long time. Is it possible that the CIA was the ones that introduced crack into lower income neighborhoods in the 90s?

[Steve Murphy]

You know, I've heard that over the years. I, I can't say yes or no. I, I don't have.

[Tyler]

I'll take it.

[Steve Murphy]

Ammo to go.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[Steve Murphy]

I don't know, it's. I mean, we all, you know, we. One, one of the true things in narcos is we did not get along with the CIA. That and, but what it came down.

[Brent Tucker]

Was who does.

[Steve Murphy]

This came down between. The chief of station didn't like us because he thought we were encroaching on their areas of responsibility. And we kept telling him no, you know, we're just trying to collect evidence to prosecute somebody in the US court. Yeah, well, he said, you know, you're investigating FARC. Well, when FARC's providing security on Pablo's cocaine labs in law enforcement, we call that a clue, don't we?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

So it was.

[Brent Tucker]

Didn't take a big leap there, did you?

[Steve Murphy]

No, not at all.

[Brent Tucker]

Pretty well connected.

[Steve Murphy]

So. And I'll be honest with you, I think personally, this is Murph's personal opinion. I think the CIA does a pretty good job. It's just they can't tell us because it's secret.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

You know, I've met a lot of CIA personnel. Some alike, some I don't like some have impressed me, especially chiefs of station from other parts of the world. So it's, you know, it comes down to a personal opinion. I really hate to think that a U.S. government agency would introduce illegal narcotics, but I can't say that they did not. Which, you know, I sound like a politician giving an answer because it's a very wishy question.

[Brent Tucker]

You're right.

[Tyler]

I mean, it's like, it's. Is it logical? Maybe. Is it outside of possibility? No. So. But do you have anything to go off of? No. So it's kind of.

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, there's. There's accusations about Barry Seal, who was the pilot in American Made. You know, he was. He was a commercial airline pilot who became kind of an adventure junkie and started flying. I do believe he was probably flying weapons into Central America for the United States. But then if you, you know, the rumors are that. Well, then he got into cocaine trafficking, and he did. He was. He was flying loads for the Ochoa brothers, which were Pablo's colleagues in the Medellin cartel. But he's also the guy that put the cameras on his plane that we've got video documentation of Pablo and the Ochoa brothers and some government officials in Nicaragua unloading cocaine off a plane. And then he was killed by the. The OA brothers once they found out he was a snitch.

[Tyler]

Hey. I mean, yeah, they were Operation Fast and Furious. The one we did about the atf, I mean, that. That blew my mind, what our government did.

[Steve Murphy]

So that was.

[Brent Tucker]

Unfortunately, the best intel usually comes from the. The. The dirtiest of people.

[Steve Murphy]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know. You know, it's hard to get good intel from clean people. They're not. They're not close enough to the action.

[Tyler]

Like Hitler's medical science, you know, the atrocities he did to the Jews. You know, we have leaps and bounds in the medical field, so.

[Steve Murphy]

Well, and, I mean, you've been on the witness stand. The defense attorneys always attack your informants.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Why should we? You know, I've heard judges say, you know, they'll shut the certain judges. Not all, certainly, but, you know, they'll tell. They'll tell the defense attorneys. Who. Do you, you know, do you know any priests?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, because choir boys don't know anything about this. That's why I got a. I got a question that will be a little more fun to answer than the CIA one, and I know you got one. Hopefully it's. It's South America related, but it could be anything. Give us. Give us a funny story. 26 years in the DA. Some. Some silly happened.

[Tyler]

You can give us one about Javier.

[Steve Murphy]

So you know how this, the narcos is a lot of truth, but a lot of fiction. And if you remember, they portrayed Javier as dating communists and hookers and informants. And he was, you know, he was hitting anything that I gotta tell you.

[Brent Tucker]

He's getting intel.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Steve Murphy]

Javier was single. He was not dating hookers or informants or communists. But you know what? Every other woman in Columbia was fair game. Yeah, but I gotta take up work. He's my partner. Yeah, one of his girlfriends was a former Miss Columbia.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Steve Murphy]

I mean, he was. He would bring some beautiful young ladies to our get togethers, man.

[Brent Tucker]

Hunting Pablo during the day and hunting something else tonight. What?

[Steve Murphy]

What?

[Brent Tucker]

What? Wasn't the worst life for your partner, was it?