Pablo Escobar’s Son Reveals What He Did To His Father’s Betrayers

Juan Pablo was only **16** when his father was gunned down on a rooftop in Medellín, Colombia. But his father wasn’t an average dad—he was **Pablo Escobar**, the DEA’s Most Wanted man, a notorious kingpin chased by American and Colombian authorities for nearly two decades. To the world, Escobar was a monster; to Juan Pablo, the picture was never that simple.

“When I was seven years old,” Juan Pablo recalled, “after he killed the minister and we went to Panama, he told me he was abandoned.” And when a man who gives you love every day tells you he’s abandoned, it becomes difficult—especially as a child—to judge him cleanly. If Pablo Escobar hadn’t died that day, would his son have become his right-hand man? And after the rooftop shooting, what did Juan Pablo do with the anger, the fear, and the name he could never outrun?

This is the story of **Juan Pablo Escobar’s** relationship with his father’s world—his attitude toward “betrayers,” and his life after Pablo Escobar. It’s also a story about what happens when a family inherits consequences they didn’t create, and a choice that has to be made: repeat the cycle, or end it.

To everyone who knew him in the streets, Pablo Escobar was a feared figure at the peak of his criminal career. The narrative goes that he made **$140 million in cash every day**, and he did it by destroying anyone who stood in his way. Even people he merely suspected might stand in his way. Sometimes, he killed their families too.

Escobar grew up poor, dreaming of quick cash and seeing little hope in school. He started with petty crimes, escalating from stealing tombstones to commercial business robbery. Over time, he developed a taste for violence—offering “protection” for money, giving loans, and beating or killing anyone who refused to pay.

Then came kidnappings: rich politicians targeted for ransom. After receiving a **$50,000** ransom for politician and philanthropist **Diego Echeverria**, Escobar killed him anyway. And after that, the Medellín cartel era of the 1970s and 80s turned his operation into a global engine of narcotics trafficking.

The cartel’s success, as described here, helped fuel the white powder addiction epidemic in the United States. That put Escobar high on the DEA’s Most Wanted list. And the tighter authorities closed in, the more paranoid he became—and the more violent his reactions grew.

In **1989**, he brought down a civilian plane, killing **110** people, because he believed an enemy politician was on board. The target had canceled at the last minute, but the passengers still paid for Escobar’s error with their lives. On **January 30th, 1993**, he attempted to assassinate the head of the Colombian Security Office with a car bomb—failing again to hit the target, but killing **21 civilians** and maiming dozens.

What made it worse was who those civilians were. Many were children waiting for the school bus. One observer described arriving in Medellín and seeing a beautiful, progressive city—skyscrapers, construction, momentum—only to start noticing bodies throughout the city within a month, back when Medellín was known as Colombia’s murder capital.

To many, Pablo Escobar was a terrifying lord: a psychopathic killer and ruthless businessman. But not to his son. To Juan Pablo Escobar, Pablo was a loving father—someone he says he loved so deeply he would have given his life for him.

Juan Pablo Escobar was born on **February 24th, 1977**, around the time Escobar was becoming one of the richest men in the world. Yet Juan Pablo says he didn’t understand how ruthless and violent his father truly was until late in his teenage years. Pablo worked hard to shelter him and shape how he saw the world—and how he saw Pablo’s actions.

When asked whether enjoying family riches made him feel his father’s criminal work was “okay,” Juan Pablo said no—because he didn’t know exactly what his father did. Still, as he grew up, clues slipped through. Sometimes the family would pack up and leave the country after Pablo murdered a public figure, but even then, Pablo wrapped the darkness in a story his children could live with.

Juan Pablo remembers his father telling him at seven years old that he’d been “abandoned,” right after killing a minister and fleeing to Panama. To a child, the word “bandit” doesn’t automatically translate into mass murder; it could mean a petty thief, or even something as small as jaywalking. Pablo was never going to explain to his son that he’d ordered violence against the wives and children of judges who threatened to arrest him.

What’s striking is that Juan Pablo says he didn’t judge his father—even after discovering the reality of his crimes. Even after the life on the run, the threats, and the poverty that eventually followed, he insists there was “no chance” he could hate him. In his telling, love didn’t erase reality—but it complicated the way he could emotionally process it.

Before he understood what his father truly was, Juan Pablo remembers a man who gave him love and was present at home with the family. He describes Pablo as “a very good man” with him, and says he received a lot of love. That’s the memory that stayed—because children don’t grow up with headlines; they grow up with moments.

And there was another layer: to many poor people in Colombia, Escobar was once viewed as a kind of Robin Hood figure. Because he kidnapped rich politicians for ransom, he gained an image—rightly or wrongly—of stealing from the rich and helping the poor. Juan Pablo recalls visiting poor villages with his father to offer help, and says that’s the father he knew at the beginning.

Escobar built football pitches, restaurants, hospitals, and even a neighborhood to house homeless people in Medellín. For a son, that creates a confusing emotional inventory: generosity on one page, terror on the next. And even when Pablo tried to keep his business hush-hush at home, his pride and violence leaked through in smaller ways.

When asked if his father ever expressed regret about anything, Juan Pablo said no—Pablo believed he was doing the right thing. The same need to dominate showed up in games at home. Juan Pablo called him a “bad loser,” saying Pablo didn’t want to lose and would cheat—even against him, even against Juan Pablo’s mother.

They played soccer, Juan Pablo recalled, and the game only ended when Pablo was winning. They played Monopoly too, and Pablo would hide money so that even if he was losing, he still “won.” To Juan Pablo, Pablo could be like a little kid sometimes—charming, intense, and obsessed with victory.

As a child, Juan Pablo received more than **30 motorcycles** from his father. He and his sister were showered with expensive gifts and lived on the most luxurious ranch in the country, complete with a private zoo, pools, and anything they requested. But after Pablo’s death in **1993**, Juan Pablo, his sister Manuela, and their mother María Victoria would experience a complete 180.

Whoever your parents are, they teach you the world from their perspective. If they teach you murder is acceptable, you might start believing it. Many children of kingpins enter the illicit world as their parent’s right-hand person—but Juan Pablo never did.

He was 16 in December 1993 when Pablo Escobar fell on the roof of his aunt’s Medellín house after his final encounter with the DEA. When Escobar was killed, the first message transmitted over the radio was: “Viva Colombia, matamos a Pablo Escobar”—Long live Colombia, we’ve just killed Pablo Escobar. Sixteen months after escaping from prison, Pablo Escobar was dead.

Only then, the narrative says, did Juan Pablo fully grasp the extent of his father’s crimes. Pablo had been on the run for 16 months, and Juan Pablo’s family—María Victoria, Manuela, and Juan Pablo—were already under police supervision. In fact, it was Pablo’s call to Juan Pablo on **December 2nd** that allowed him to be tracked and shot down.

Juan Pablo and his family were with the police when they received the news. His first reaction was rage—he threatened to kill those who killed his father. But he didn’t truly mean it: he had never laid a finger on anyone, and he wasn’t going to start now.

Throughout adolescence, Juan Pablo says he tried many times to convince his father not to attack civilians anymore. His anger, he admits, lasted about ten minutes. “In that moment,” he said, “yes… the first 10 minutes.”

Then he did something unexpected for a teenager living inside that kind of shock. Ten minutes after that rage, he called the press and said he would never do anything to continue his father’s steps. The second “threat,” he said, was peace—and that’s the only one he’s lived by since.

He did nothing to those who betrayed his father. He concluded that violence only leads to more violence, and that Pablo died because of the pain he caused. But soon Juan Pablo felt betrayed again—this time by what happened after Escobar was taken down.

As soon as Pablo was killed, Juan Pablo, Manuela, and María Victoria lost their assets to rival cartels. Whatever remained, the authorities seized. They became poor and homeless, even though Pablo still had barrels of cash buried underground.

When they tried to flee Colombia, no one would sell them plane tickets. The United Nations didn’t want to help the Escobars either. Juan Pablo later took the name **Sebastián**, explaining that airlines refused to sell tickets to the Escobar name, and they were trying to escape violence.

Death threats came daily. They stayed in a hotel room and paid bodyguards to protect them from people flooding the corridors. But with their money gone, they couldn’t afford the hotel or the guards anymore.

“We stayed in Colombia for a year waiting for somebody to help us,” Juan Pablo said. They asked the Vatican and the United Nations—no one wanted to help. Changing identities became their last option if they wanted to stay alive.

The next day, they changed their names and could fly without problems. They became the **Marroquin** family, and Juan Pablo became Sebastián. He described it as the only way—once the names changed, they were “free,” at least from the immediate trap of the surname.

But even in Argentina, staying out of trouble wasn’t simple. Sebastián was arrested for money laundering, kidnapping, and blackmailing—crimes he says he didn’t commit. He was being arrested for being his father’s son.

In **1999**, the family was arrested for Pablo Escobar’s crimes, though they were soon released. The experience pushed Manuela—now using the name **Juana**—into extreme anxiety and depression. The narrative says she even tried to take her life, and today lives with her brother for health and safety.

Sebastián and Juana lived in poverty for decades—something they had never experienced before. Ironically, Pablo’s main motivation had been escaping poverty and proving he wasn’t the poor farmer’s boy he once was. He claimed he did everything to provide for his children, but once the children were left without a father, they lost everything.

This is what happens, the story argues, when money comes from a life of crime. Yet Sebastián and Juana paid for their father’s actions, not their own. They carried punishment without being the ones who committed the crimes.

Slowly, Sebastián got on his feet. He became an architect and a lecturer, living and working in Argentina. He began speaking publicly about living in Pablo Escobar’s shadow and warning people not to idolize him—because before he was a famous kingpin, he was a ruthless criminal.

Asked how many murders Escobar was responsible for—directly or indirectly—Juan Pablo said there’s no official record, but he believes it’s around **3,000**. And still, when asked what Sebastián did about those who betrayed him or his father, the answer is the opposite of retaliation. Not only did he not seek revenge; he worked to seek forgiveness from the families of those killed by Pablo Escobar.

He fought the urge for revenge with peace and love. Considering he grew up under the same roof as Pablo Escobar, the strength required to make that choice is hard to ignore. Over time, he stopped hiding behind “Sebastián” and reclaimed his story more openly.

He spoke about anonymity as “the greatest prize,” then explained why he gave it up. He didn’t kill anybody, he said, and he didn’t harm anybody—so he didn’t want to hide. He made a distinction that stayed consistent throughout: he was not proud of his father’s violence, but he was proud of his father’s love for him, his mother, and his sister.

He also acknowledged the contradiction others feel. People have the right to love Escobar for what made them love him, and to hate him for what made them hate him. “That’s my father,” he said—holding both truths in the same sentence.

In the end, Juan Pablo offers a lesson aimed at children of cartel members and criminals: you don’t have to follow in your parents’ footsteps. Choose love over hate, and forgiveness over revenge. That choice doesn’t rewrite the past—but it can stop the past from writing the future.