Florida Department of Corrections

Griselda Blanco in 2004.

The convicted Colombian drug smuggler known as the “Godmother of Cocaine,” Griselda Blanco, 69, was gunned down by a motorcycle-riding assassin in Medellin, Colombian national police confirmed late Monday, according to the Miami Herald.

Blanco spent nearly 20 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking and three murders before being deported to Colombia in 2004, the Herald reported.

Two armed riders pulled up to Blanco as she was leaving a butcher shop in her hometown, and one shot her twice in the head, the Herald reported, citing a report in El Colombiano newspaper.

Family members said Blanco had cut her ties to organized crime after returning to her country, the BBC reported. Police said they were investigating the motive.

Blanco was one of the first to engage in large-scale smuggling of cocaine into the United States from Colombia and set up many of the routes used by the Medellin cartel after she was sentenced in the United States in 1985, the BBC reported.

Investigators told the Herald that they estimate conservatively that Blanco was behind about 40 slayings. She was convicted in connection with three murders: Arranging the killing of two South Miami drug dealers who had not paid for a delivery, and ordering the assassination of a former enforcer for her organization, an operation that resulted in the death of the target’s 2-year-old son, the Herald reported.

Read more on Griselda Blanco in The Miami Herald

Three of Blanco’s husbands were killed in violence related to drugs, the Herald reported, and one of her sons was named Michael Corleone, a reference to “The Godfather” movies.

Blanco is credited with originating motorcycle assassinations, the Herald reported.

“This is classic live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword,” filmmaker Billy Corben, who with Alfred Spellman made two “Cocaine Cowboys” documentaries, told the Herald. “Or in this case, live-by-the-motorcycle-assassin, die-by-the-motorcycle assassin.”

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John Vizcaino / Reuters

Police take away Erickson Vargas Cardona after a shootout Wednesday in Girardota, Colombia, near Medellin.

Erikson Vargas Cardona, the head of what remains of the murderous cartel founded by the late druglord Pablo Escobar, has been arrested and will be extradited to the U.S., Colombian authorities said Wednesday.

M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

President Juan Manuel Santos announced the arrest of Vargas, who is known by the nom de guerre "Sebastian," on his Twitter account Wednesday. Adopting Olympian metaphors, he called the arrest a "triple jump" against crime and awarded symbolic gold medals to the police.

Police acting on a tip found Vargas in Girardota, near Medellin, ground zero for Colombia's deadly drug trade, said Gen. Jose Roberto Leon Riano, chief of the national police. Riano said Vargas would be extradited to New York, where he is wanted on drug trafficking charges.

One of Vargas' bodyguards was killed and another was captured in a shootout with police, the Colombian newspaper La Republica reported. 

Authorities said the capture of Vargas could signal the beginning of the end for La Oficina de Envigado, which Vargas took over when his predecessor, Maximiliano Bonilla Orozco, also known as Valenciano, was arrested last year. Bonilla, too, was extradited to the U.S.

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"No one can escape," Santos said later Wednesday at a news conference in Bogota, according to the Prensa Latina news agency. "Everyone is going to fall, as they have been falling, one after the other. Those who thought they were untouchable are in prison or in the grave."

La Oficina de Envigado represents the remnants of the Medellin Cartel, the ruthless drug empire built during the 1980s by Pablo Escobar — an operation so widespread that Forbes magazine once estimated his worth at $24 billion, making him the seventh-richest man in the world at the time.

After Escobar was killed by police in 1993, the cartel fractured, eventually re-coalescing in recent years under the leadership of Bonilla and Vargas, a resurgence that Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón attributed in part to an alliance with the Los Zetas cartel in Mexico.

"It's important to note that this is beneficial not only for Colombia, but it also has an international impact," Pinzón said.

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