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Two of the biggest crimes Popeye was associated with were the murder of presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán in August 1989, and the infamous Avianca plane bombing which came later the same year.

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 travelled from Bogotá to the western city of Cali, killing all 107 people on board and three people on the ground.

Photo by Archive

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.”