“Sometimes I feel like God...when I order someone killed, they die the same day.”--Pablo Escobar

To read about our previous days in Medellín with Pablo Escobar's former right hand man Jhon Jairo Velásquez aka “Popeye,” click here: Sneak Peek and
Pre-Departure & Day 1

Sunday, February 12, 2017 – Day 2

Still buzzing from our successful meeting the night before, we stuff our bags to the brim full of recording equipment. Today's stop? A hotel room of our choice where we'd be conducting an official sitdown interview with Popeye on camera. But the interview would be the easy part.

Before flying down, Rene @world5list and I were warned by countless others to always keep the advantage of being the decision-makers in our hands. With that in mind, we agreed that the safest call would be to choose a hotel in the middle of the city where we could film in private but still be surrounded by the general Colombian population, just in case Mr. Velásquez attempts to pull any sneaky moves on us; “safety in numbers.” Not only was the location important, but the interior as well: too many hard objects would cause the sound to bounce, a room facing the sun would interfere with our lighting, and too close of proximity to street congestion may cause disruptions in our filming. The final location? Hotel Egina near Medellín's main soccer stadium.

We arrive, check in, and are greeted with Medellín's lush, green mountains serving as the backdrop to our balcony's view. After a couple minutes of taking this in, we deliver a flurry of orders to rearrange the furniture and set up all the equipment in as optimal of a filming setting as possible. The dust settles and Popeye arrives: perfect timing. After exchanging a series of warm welcomes, he and I mic up, take a couple test shots, and begin rolling.

Over the next few hours our minds are saturated with stories about his life, escapades with Escobar, assassinations, EVERYTHING! This man is sick...in more ways than one. (Fun fact: by the height of the cocaine trade in 1989, the five Colombian cartels owned 20% of all the world's American hundred dollar bills!)

Behind-the-scenes of our shoot with Popeye at Hotel Egina - Medellín, Colombia

Popeye began his sicario (hitman) career by carrying out some bodyguard work for one of Pablo's lovers. But a breakup in the relationship caused Popeye to soon be out of work. So what did the audacious future assassin do? He took his father's car, drove to see Pablo, and upon arriving Pablo asks, “What are you doing here?” He replied that he didn't have a job and that Pablo should either kill him or hire him, for his will to work for Pablo was greater than his will to live. When asked whether or not he was worried Pablo would kill him, he said that if he were to be killed, he'd be at peace with it because in his eyes, “Pablo was never a boss, he was a religion.”

He proceeds to tell us all about his first assassination and how he—among all the other sicarios in Pablo's crew—managed to rise up so fast in the ranks of the Medellín Cartel, an organization that holds the record for the most police killings within the shortest amount of time: 540 dead and 800 wounded, all within a span of just four years. So what set him apart from all the other sicarios? What exactly was his X factor?

According to Popeye, all Colombian assassins are similar in regards to valor and looks. But what set him apart was his discipline. While his counterparts indulged in the sinful lifestyle surrounding them (women, drugs, parties, etc.), Popeye almost always stayed sober and stayed true to business; true to Pablo. This quickly earned him El Patrón's (The Boss's) trust, which put him at the height of his rank within the Medellín Cartel by 1989; the Cartel's bloodiest year, the year he helped orchestrate the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán. At the peak of his career, Popeye was worth US$12 million. Although this is a huge amount to almost anyone—especially in a country like Colombia where the minimum monthly wage is only $246—Popeye modestly stated that this is merely sicario money, and that it's dwarfed in comparison to the billions Pablo was earning through drugs.

The evening carried on with sporadic breaks between filming. What may appear to an outsider as a normal interview in a hotel room was, to us (us = Rene and I as well as our translator Diego and the “film crew” consisting of my girlfriend and her sister), a journey in time through Colombia's bloodbath of a past. To call it an emotional roller coaster would be an understatement. From dropped jaws one minute to heart-racing fear the next, we were entranced in a dark underworld barely exposed and unbeknownst to most foreigners. At one point he even complimented us on our craft, stating that us YouTubers have asked way more interesting questions than journalists; questions that have forced him to stop and truly think about how he should respond...questions that challenged him. Fortunately for us, he was up for the challenge!

We end late in the evening and, exhausted, say our goodbyes to get ready for another day of filming to follow. In my mind I can't wait, for that's when things would start getting really interesting :) Because from that point on, everything we document would no longer be in the safety of the hotel room. From that point on, he'd be exposing us to the raw, the nitty gritty: the streets of Medellín!

As usual, here's a sneak peek available exclusively here on Steemit of what's to come in our docu-series available soon: