Escobar's hitman Jhon "Popeye" Velásquez dies in Colombia

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  Source

He killed hundreds of people for Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel, but in the end the assassin known as “Popeye” went out not by a bullet but by natural causes, dying of stomach cancer at a Bogotá hospital.

Jhon Jairo Velásquez, 57, died Thursday, Colombia’s National Penitentiary and Prison Institute confirmed to media outlets. The mass killer, who got his nickname because he had once reportedly done a stint in the Colombian navy, had been in hospital since Dec. 31. He had been re-imprisoned in 2018 after first being released from prison in 2014, having served an initial 23 years after turning himself in in 1992.

 

With Escobar

The hitman admitted personally killing over 300 people for the cartel boss who lorded over Colombia in the 1980s and early 1990s. Escobar would be riddled with bullets on a Medellín rooftop in December 1993 after Colombian forces, America’s Drug Enforcement Administration and Escobar’s one-time drug world partners conspired, loosely, to finally end his reign. A constant presence at Escobar’s side, Popeye had been one of his main go-to hitmen — known as a sicario — helping the boss to set up hits on politicians, judges, prosecutors and police, as well as bombings that terrorized a nation descending into chaos fueled by the drug trade.

Galán, a revered figure in Colombia to this day, was viewed as being on the verge of a political breakthrough when assassins with machine guns stormed a political rally he was speaking at.

The Avianca bombing saw Escobar’s cartel explode a jet liner as it traveled from Bogotá to the western city of Cali, killing all 107 people on board and three people on the ground.

Presidential candidate César Gaviria, believed to have been the bomb’s target, wasn’t even on board, having decided against the flight at the last minute. Popeye told the Daily Beast in 2018 that the briefcase bomb was “a work of art.” It had been set off after the cartel persuaded an impressionable youth to open the case in mid-flight, by telling him they wanted to use it to record a passenger’s conversation. Instead, it triggered the explosion. The cartel had been bent, at that time, on taking out politicians who indicated that they would be willing to extradite cartel members to the U.S. Gaviria and Galán were two such politicians; Gaviria would go on to become president.

“We were all aware that if the bomb exploded in the wrong place it wouldn’t ignite the plane’s fuel tanks, and the captain could save the plane,” Popeye told the Daily Beast. “So we created a domino effect with the fuel stored in the wings of the plane, the dynamite in the briefcase and the pressurisation of the aircraft — a lethal composition.”