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Detectives learned the intimate details of the hit from Jorge Ayala, the charismatic hitman who later testified against Blanco. He told police that Blanco wanted Castro killed because he kicked her son in the buttocks.
“At first she was real mad ’cause we missed the father,” Ayala told police. “But when she heard we had gotten the son by accident, she said she was glad, that they were even.”
She had been arrested in 1985 in a cocaine trafficking case in New York. Ultimately, she served 13 years in federal custody before she was handed over to Florida authorities.
Blanco seemed destined for Florida’s Death Row — but the prosecution’s murders case was dealt a severe blow.
The reason: Ayala — the case’s chief witness — engaged in phone sex with secretaries from the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. After an investigation, three secretaries were fired and a veteran prosecutor resigned.
Special prosecutors from Orlando took over the case, and Blanco cut a plea deal in 1998.
Blanco was sentenced to three concurrent 20-year sentences, of which she had to serve only about one-third because of guidelines in effect at the time of the murders. Even on her return to Colombia, she was believed to have held onto immense wealth.
In recent years, younger Miamians were introduced to Blanco via two “Cocaine Cowboys” documentaries made by filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman.
“This is classic live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword,” Corben said Monday. “Or in this case, live-by-the-motorcycle-assassin, die-by-the-motorcycle assassin.”
Miami Herald staff writer Jim Wyss contributed to this report.
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