32 years after the murder of Pablo Escobar, where is the man who shot the drug lord to death today?

Hugo Aguilar Naranjo The name of the man who was shot dead on December 2, 1993 Pablo Escobar.

It was on a rooftop in the Los Olivos neighborhood. The Medellin cartel leader, who had turned 44 the day before, had holed up there with his bodyguard Limon, months after escaping from La Catedral prison.

he Search block Which Aguilar was a part of, discovered his whereabouts after intercepting one of the six phone calls he made to his wife, María Victoria Henao, to find out her condition. The group of kidnappers, made up of members of the police, military and DEA, took advantage of the vulnerability of the drug lord who was increasingly lonely.

Legend has it that Aguilar shot and killed Escobar after a short chase across the rooftops of the neighborhood. After achieving the goal, the commander would call and shout: “Long live Colombia, we have won.” Then came the famous cover photo of Naranjo carrying the dismembered body of the drug trafficker.

The official account of Escobar’s killing places Aguilar as the man who shot him. However, the end of the drug dealer would, as of December 2, 1993, be the center of many myths. Was he killed by a hostile drug group? Did he take his own life?

If we stick with the version adopted by public opinion, we have to wonder where the man who was credited with the death of the largest drug trafficker in South America is today. What happened to Hugo Aguilar Naranjo?

Hugo Aguilar is alive; He is 73 years old and has had a long career as a politician. He retired from the security forces with the rank of lieutenant colonel to enter politics for a long time. to rule Santander From 2004 to 2007. His children continued his legacy.

Aguilar has never denied the fact that made him famous all over the world. In 2015, he published a book entitled “This is How I Killed Pablo Escobar,” in which he recounts the details of the event.

His heroic character was distorted when his relationship with justice was upended. In 2011, he was dismissed from his position by the Attorney General’s Office and banned from holding public office for 20 years. The court concluded so He had links to the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)..

Two years later, after the confession of former paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso, Naranjo was sentenced to 9 years in prison for murder. Conspiracy to commit a serious crimeBut in 2015 he was released on conditions. He never admitted his guilt.

In 2018, a money laundering and illicit enrichment case known as the “Porsche case” was added, a process with which he will remain linked.

Added to these cases is a case Irregular management contracts associated with a national parkWhich dates back to the first decade of the twenty-first century, and of which he was acquitted at the beginning of 2025.

Later, in the middle of this year, he was also charged with alleged corruption in the case “Happy reward”He is accused of stealing money that was to be used for Christmas gifts for thousands of children.

According to the local website weekThe prosecution accused Aguilar of “allowing the foundation to allocate an amount of 416 million pesos, which greatly harms the real estate interests of the regional entity and constitutes the amount of the crime of embezzlement (…) At the implementation stage, he was supposed to buy 130,000 toys, but he only delivered 36,000 toys.”

At that time, Aguilar was also arrested on charges that he used the names of two people to hide a large sum of money.

The latest news linked to Hugo Aguilar comes from Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, who this year revealed through a book about his adventures as leader of the Cali cartel what happened on the day Escobar was killed.

He confirmed that on December 2, Aguilar called and said “Long live Colombia, we won!”They revealed the amount of money they promised them as a reward: “And they actually won: $10 million, because we agreed to increase the reward for Aguilar and Gonzalez. That night there was joy between us, we drank a toast until we got drunk, and in the middle of the celebration I hurt Pacho on his carpet.”

The middle Colombian “In Aguilar’s ​​recent appearance before the JEP, which has been supported by paramilitaries in its campaigns, he talked about the reward for Escobar’s death but never said anything about money from the Cali cartel,” he notes.

At the time, Aguilar said: “It was the same P5,000 million that the national government offered to capture or kill Pablo Escobar, which was electronic intelligence via Thompson Radio that I ran with 23 men, and they distributed P5,000 million to us, the 23 men. The recommendations were not to show off that money, but that’s where my property resources came from.”