The former hitman of Pablo Escobar, John Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, alias ‘Popeye‘, suffers from end-stage esophageal cancer, with lung and liver metastases, which has been cataloged by the “intractable” medical authorities, and by therefore incurable, affecting several parts outside the organ.
The henchman of the former drug trafficker in the history of Colombia is currently receiving palliative treatments and they point out that it is a matter of months that he dies at the National Cancer Institute of Bogotá, as reported by the Colombian newspaper ‘El Tiempo’.
Vasquez, who was instrumental in the criminal structure of the Medellin cartel, has been serving prison sentences even before Escobar’s death in 1993 for various crimes ranging from terrorism and drug trafficking to murder, including his own couple after an order from Escobar.
After spending 24 years behind bars, ‘Popeye’ was released in 2014, but four years later, in which he had time to acquire some media relevance due to the rise of the Pablo Escobar phenomenon in the media and in popular culture, he returned to prison convicted of extortion and association to commit crimes, after several families from the department of Antioquia denounced him after receiving pressure to put in his name a series of properties that in the past were acquired through illegal activities.
