The True Story Behind Netflix's 'Griselda' (2024)

Netflix is set to release a six-episode miniseries about the "Black Widow" this week — no, not that one. The series, Griselda, is based on the life of Griselda Blanco, a prominent Colombian drug lord during the 1970s and '80s. Blanco wasn't just any drug lord, mind you, but one with a savvy for business who created one of the most profitable drug cartels in history while raising a family. The upcoming miniseries is led by Modern Family alum Sofía Vergara, and it's fair to say that this latest project places her Gloria Delgado-Pritchett character far in the rearview. In fact, Griselda is arguably set to be Vergara's most intense and dramatic role to date, and in order to truly bring "La Dama de la Mafia" to the small screen, it will have to be, for Blanco's real-life story is not for the faint of heart.

Griselda

TV-MA

Crime

Biography

Drama

Fleeing from Medellín to Miami, Griselda Blanco creates one of the most ruthless cartels in history.

Release Date

January 25, 2024

Creator

Eric Newman, Carlo Bernard, Ingrid Escajeda, Doug Miro

Cast

Sofia Vergara , Alberto Guerra , Juliana Aidén Martinez , Martin Rodriguez , Jose Velazquez , Orlando Pineda

Main Genre

Crime

Seasons

1

Streaming Service(s)

Netflix

Griselda Blanco's Life of Crime Started Early

Griselda Blanco was born in 1943, the daughter of an alcoholic sex worker and an absentee father, in Cartagena, Colombia. At a young age, Blanco moved to Medellin, where she lived in the slums with her abusive mother. What drove her penchant for extreme violence could be attributed to her upbringing or her circ*mstances, but whatever it was surfaced early. At the age of 11, a young son of wealthy parents was kidnapped by Blanco, who shot the boy dead when the parents didn't take her ransom demand seriously. Now out on the streets, Blanco turned to prostitution and pickpocketing at the age of 12, where she met Carlos Trujillo, a pimp and document forge. By 13, Blanco was living with Trujillo, and in the mid-to-late 1960s, they moved to New York. The pair would marry and have three children before Blanco turned 21, but when their relationship started going south over business, Blanco had Trujillo whacked.

In the 1960s, cocaine wasn't all that popular until the drug was crystallized late in the decade. Said crystallized form took off, and demand for it steadily increased. Sensing opportunity, the savvy Blanco backed off on the marijuana trade and, with her second husband Alberto Bravo, set up their smuggling operation in Queens, New York. It was an ingenious setup, with Blanco using Bravo's clothing import company to bring in product from the Colombian woman's underwear factory Blanco opened, where co*ke was hidden in secret compartments sewn into bras and girdles. A woman could carry seven pounds of cocaine in a single corset. Blanco and Bravo, who were making millions, also benefited from their Colombian connections, with the 1,500 dealers employed by the pair stocked with large consignments flown in directly from Colombia, on aircraft flown by their own pilots, through the Medellin Cartel and Blanco's old friend, one Pablo Escobar. Fun fact: Escobar's rise and fall was documented in the early seasons of Narcos, and the team behind that successful series is now also behind Griselda.

Griselda Blanco's Life Was Ruled by Success and Paranoia

A golden rule among drug dealers is that they should never become addicted to their product. Blanco, however, got hooked on basuco, a raw form of smokeable cocaine that is highly addictive, and became excessively paranoid as a result. That paranoia led to her keeping a private Learjet, fueled and crewed, on standby at all times. It paid off, with Blanco able to avoid arrest on federal drug conspiracy charges by DEA investigators during Operation Banshee by fleeing back to Colombia in 1975. Back home, the now 32-year-old called her husband into a meeting in a car park, only to accuse Bravo of embezzling millions from their operation. She then pulled a pistol out of her boots and shot Bravo repeatedly, while he managed to shoot Blanco in the stomach with an Uzi submachine gun. Bravo died, Blanco did not. One account of the event would go on to say that Blanco then grabbed his gun and took out the six bodyguards standing by as well. While that story seemingly borders on myth, given her nature and the many, many violent acts she committed, it may be true, or at least certainly in line with what she was capable of. And what she was capable of hit an unprecedented level when she, her new hubby Dario Sepulveda, and son Michael Corleone Blanco moved to Miami in 1978.

Her business had skyrocketed, with the previously cited Vice pegging her reported fortune, at the peak of her success, at $1.5 billion. You don't reach that level of prosperity in the underworld by playing nice in the sandbox with others, and Blanco wanted Miami's drug scene to herself. So, as per the Daily Mail, she eliminated her rivals one by one, aided by her enforcer and chief hitman Jorge Ayala and a squad of killers nicknamed "Los Pistoleros," who took body parts like ears or fingers from victims as trophies and were instructed to kill their targets and any man, woman, or child in the vicinity. One rival was stabbed with a bayonet as he got off a plane. Two other rivals were killed at a shopping mall when she had her assassins take an armored, gun-filled van to the scene and open fire. She had eight strippers murdered, suspecting they had been sleeping with her husband. The father of a girl who dumped one of her sons found himself "dumped." Customers who didn't pay, suppliers who she didn't want to pay, and even people who looked at her the wrong way were killed. The "Black Widow" would eventually have husband number three murdered in 1983 after he took off for Colombia with Michael. Sepulveda was offed in his car, with Michael sitting beside him. Blanco's depravity wasn't limited to murder, either, as she was known to force men and women to have sex at gunpoint and host orgies at her mansion.

Griselda Blanco's End Was Deathly Ironic

Miami police were completely overwhelmed. Blanco's people had access to an extensive arsenal, and had no qualms about using them freely. At the height of the bloodshed, Vice reports that 25 percent of the victims in the morgue sported automatic gun wounds, and the number of dead was so high that the medical examiner had to rent a refrigerated van from the local Burger King to accommodate the excess bodies. In 1985, Blanco's reign of terror came to an end when DEA agent Bob Palombo, as recounted in the Independent, caught up to her and brought her in, her long parade of fake names and falsified documents finally failing her. She was sentenced to six years in prison, before also being charged in 1994 with ordering three murders, including three-year-old Johnny Castro, who was shot while riding in a car instead of his father, who was the actual target. Of that murder, Ayala told police, "At first [Blanco] was real mad because we missed the father, but when she heard we had gotten the son by accident, she said she was glad, that they were even." Blanco was deported to Colombia in 2004, and in 2012 "the Godmother" was gunned down while in a butcher's shop by a hitman on the back of a motorcycle, an ironic death given that Blanco was the first crime boss to have her hitmen on the back of motorcycles, allowing them to attack their targets and then escape easily.

Her son Michael does share a different side of Griselda, one that gets very little press: Blanco as a mother. In an interview, Michael speaks of Blanco as a maternal figure, one who stepped up to feed her children and made sure they got a college education, a woman who would wake up every morning and make breakfast with the maid. However, she's also the mother whose four sons were all in the family business at one point — including Michael — with two killed as a result. Perhaps it's that dichotomy that makes Blanco so fascinating, a pioneering woman and a devoted mother against a ruthless, bloodthirsty drug lord. The plot synopsis for Griselda does reference those two sides, which would suggest that the series does plan on making her contradictory life a plot point to some degree. Griselda is not the first time Blanco's story has been told — Lifetime released Cocaine Godmother starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, for one — but with a powerhouse team behind it, and a Vergara who appears to be all-in, it could very well be among the best.

Griselda is available to stream on Netflix beginning January 25.

Watch on Netflix