Carlos Lehder rose from a petty criminal to become one of the major players in the Medellin Cartel.Compared to Pablo Escobar, he is one of the lesser known members of the cartel, but if it was not for him, the cartel’s cocaine smuggling may never have really got off the ground.. Carlos, the Colombian Drug Lord is in prison today because of his narcotic deals. This was the last straw for Escobar, who was close to his assassins, as they were to him. In 1988, Lehder was imprisoned for life without parole plus 135 years. At 6 a.m. on February 4, 1987, on a ranch near Medellin where Lehder was again embracing his hedonism, Colombian police and soldiers moved in, capturing Lehder after a brief firefight. The Colombian National Police raided a property where they found millions of U.S. dollars, along with wall-to-wall Hitler photographs and memorabilia. “Lehder started to develop kind of like a neo-Nazi group there, that would protect the planeloads of coke and intimidate the people that lived there,” said Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations for the DEA to “He spent untold hours plotting a political career, aiming at the Colombian presidency. There he became cellmates with the drug dealer, Jung, who’s drug dealing days are portrayed in the movie “I said, ‘Why don’t you tell me about [the cocaine business].’ And he said, ‘Did you know it sells for $U.S.60,000.00 a kilo in the United States?’” Jung added that a “cash register started ringing up in my head,” and after the pair’s release in the late 1970s, they basically revolutionized the smuggling of cocaine by bringing it into the southeastern U.S. from Colombia by the planeload.Soon they were working with Escobar and other drug lords out of Medellin. He was a vocal anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, and considered Adolf Hitler a genius.At the same time, Lehder also idolized Beatle John Lennon. Lehder had become a liability to Escobar. We've received your submission.Druglord Pablo Escobar’s top smuggler — a wild and wily cocaine trafficker named Carlos “Crazy Charlie” Lehder — has been quietly released from prison in Florida and deported to witness protection in Germany, his lawyer announced this week.Lehder — who has dual German-Colombian citizenship and got his start as a teenager selling pot by the hundreds of pounds in New York City — is now 70, and after serving 33 years in federal custody, is reportedly in poor health.But in his heyday, he flew Colombian cocaine into the US by the ton from a Bahamian island he owned just 200 miles off the Florida coast, deploying a sneaky fleet of low-flying small planes and bribing local pols to look the other way.And as a backstop, Lehder joined forces with no less than corrupt dictator Manuel Noriega to funnel still more cocaine and drug money through Panama.By the time he was captured in 1987, Lehder had revolutionized the previously inefficient, drug-mule method of smuggling and risen to the top of Escobar’s Medellin cartel.The handsome ladies’ man and cold-blooded killer was responsible for four out of every five bags of cocaine that reached the US, prosecutors said at the time.“He was to cocaine transportation what Henry Ford was to automobiles,” the US Attorney in Tampa who prosecuted Lehder, Robert Merkle, would tell jurors in his opening statement.“He saw America as a decadent society. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Allegedly, Escobar gave up Lehder’s location to Colombian authorities and on February 4, 1987, Lehder became the first to be extradited under the treaty between Colombia and the U.S.From his federal prison cell in Marion, Illinois, Lehder’s attempt to broker a deal with U.S. authorities failed, after his so-called information on Escobar was deemed worthless since his split with the drug kingpin in the mid-1980s. And Jung would be first on the witness stand against Lehrer, telling jurors how they met in a Danbury prison as teens.Lehder’s his last night of freedom came in 1987, when the trafficking mastermind, on a fleeting impulse, shot dead one of Escobar’s own hitmen during a raging party at a sprawling jungle hacienda in Rio Negro, 18 miles outside Medellin.The hapless victim had happened to knock on Ledher’s door while the trafficker was enjoying the company of a prostitute and a pile of cocaine.Lehder was furious over the interruption; the resulting shots rang out above the pulsing salsa music.“Lehder apologized to Escobar, the body was disposed of, and, of course, the party went on,” as But Lehder’s unpredictability was too much, even for Escobar, who, hoping to get into the Feds good graces, immediately tipped the Colombian police off to Lehder’s whereabouts.Lehder — who once said he would prefer a tomb in Colombia to a jail cell in the U.S. — was captured the next day after a gunbattle between local police, federal agents and his 15 possibly hungover bodyguards at the Rio Negro ranch.He was the first of several hundred drug smugglers Colombia would extradite to the US.But he would have few rivals when it came to audacity. By the time he was captured in 1987, Lehder had revolutionized the previously inefficient, drug-mule method of …

The island became his private domain.