In 2012, a 69-year-old woman leaving a Medellin butcher shop was shot dead by an assassin on a motorcycle, the very method she is credited with pioneering decades earlier. She was Griselda Blanco, the "Godmother," who built a cocaine empire so vast it reshaped American law enforcement.

This deep dive tracks Blanco from destitute Medellin childhood through the logistics and violence that let her architect the American cocaine trade. It examines her custom smuggling garments, her grossing of 80 million dollars a month at her peak, the Miami drug war she helped ignite, and the office scandal that let her dodge the death penalty. It questions how we mythologize such figures today.

• Shifting from bulky marijuana to compact, profitable cocaine
• Designing hidden-compartment undergarments for female couriers
• Weaponizing pub ...