Who was the real Griselda Blanco? Nelson Andreu, a former West Miami Police chief, spent a decade of his life trying to convict the Colombian drug dealer depicted in the new Netflix series for murder — and says she was "ruthless."
"I hope they don't portray me as being sympathetic toward her. I wasn't," Andreu tells TODAY.com.
Andreu isn't a character in the Netflix show, but other real-life members of law enforcement he worked with are, like homicide detectives June Hawkins (played by Juliana Aiden) and Alan Singleton (Carter MacIntyre).
Though Andreu was featured in the documentary “Cocaine Cowboy” about Blanco, he says Netflix didn’t reach out to him for “Griselda.”
“They’re not going to portray her as she really was. They never do in movies. They make what they think is going to sell and what people are going to like. Very close to the truth, but not the truth,” he says.
"She had to be the way she was because she was the only woman in a man’s business."
Nelson Andreu on Griselda
Andreu and Singleton worked the case for 10 years, he says. "Not every day. But whenever we got a chance or a lead, we'd go back to Griselda," he says.
Blanco was one of the first to engage in large-scale smuggling of cocaine into the United States, and the only woman in her peer group.
"She had to be the way she was because she was the only woman in a man's business," Andreu says. "There were no other women in that high of a capacity dealing cocaine at the time."
Looking back, what Andreu remembers about the real Blanco is her heartlessness, especially when it comes to her killings. Blanco pleaded guilty to and was convicted of three counts of second degree murder but is thought to be associated with many more.
"She had no scruples. She would kill you if she owed you money and didn't want to pay you. And if you owed money and couldn't pay her, she would kill you as well. It was a win-win for her and a lose-lose for everyone else," he summarizes.
Andreu points to an incident depicted in "Griselda." One of Blanco's four sons needed shelter and went to the home of Jesus “Chucho” Castro, one of Blanco's former henchmen.
"Castro said, ‘No, I’m out of the drug business. I don’t want anything to do with you. Go back to your mother, find someplace else to go. I’m not going to help you.’ Griselda was so offended by Castro not helping her son that she put a hit on him," Andreu recalls.
Castro went into hiding. When Blanco's hitmen, Miguelito Perez and Jorge "Rivi" Ayala, caught up with him, Castro was in the car with his 2-year-old son, Johnny Castro, who was killed.
Andreu, who interviewed Ayala when building the case against Blanco, says her reaction to the news demonstrates her heartlessness. “They said, ‘Listen, we missed. We hit the kid instead of him.’ And she said, ‘Well, that’s better. He suffers more by having his kid dead than by us killing him anyway. So, I’m glad that you killed the 2-year-old,’” Andreu says.
Blanco was later charged with first-degree murder in Castro's 1982 death in 1994 and the deaths of drug dealers and married couple Alfredo and Grizel Lorenzo, per the Tampa Bay Times' 1994 reporting. Perez was charged with first-degree murder in Castro's death and was sentenced to life in prison in 1997.
At the time of her indictment, Blanco was serving a 15-year sentence for conspiring to manufacture, import into the United States, and distribute cocaine, brought by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Andreu says he felt a "sense of relief" when Blanco was eventually charged with the three murders by the state of Florida.
"We were working other cases and doing other things. This was the little pin in the back of your neck where you're always wondering, 'What else can we do? What else could I have done? Who else could I talk to?' I breathed a sigh of relief," he says.
The feeling was short-lived, however. "That relief turned into despair when we learned what happened at the State Attorney's Office," he says.
Andreu is referring to the scandal depicted in "Griselda," when Ayala, Blanco's hitman and a key prosecution witness in the case again her, was found having phone sex with secretaries from the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. One of the three secretaries fired was cleared of wrongdoing, per the Orlando Sentinel.
Ayala had pleaded guilty to three murders in 1993, and was serving a life sentence at the time of the scandal. He was denied parole in 2012, per the Miami Herald.
Ayala's lost credibility marked a turning point in the case against Blanco. Blanco was able to cut a plea deal in 1998 after pleading guilty to three counts of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to serve three concurrent 20-year sentences.
Blanco was deported to Colombia 2004 and assassinated in 2012. Colombian national police confirmed her death according to the Miami Herald, NBC News reported at the time. She was 69 years old.
Andreu worked in homicide for 21 years. Blanco remains the "most brutal" and "responsible for the majority of the homicides" on the drug scene in his era.
"She didn't care," he says.