Lion remembers being there when Pablo made his decisions. “When Pablo talked it was an order. Everybody knew that what he said was going to happen. So he would say, ‘You have to kill this guy,’ like it was nothing. He would say it as if he was asking for more water. But I never saw Pablo doing anything himself. None of the executives ever saw that.”

There are people who tell stories about things they supposedly saw at the Hacienda Napoles. George Jung, the original partner of Carlos Lehder, said that he was at Napoles when a man was brought there by two bodyguards. Later Jung was told the man had been caught providing information for the police. This man believed that if he had escaped his whole family would have been killed so instead he gave himself up. Jung claims that as he watched, Pablo got up from the table, walked over to the man, and from a few feet away shot him in the chest.

This is typical of the stories told about Pablo, but like most of them I don’t believe it to be true. I know what the world believes about my brother and I know his legend has been built on tales of brutality like this one. People have their reasons for telling these stories. And I know that when I protest against them people think that I am protecting my brother. But I am telling the truth as I know it to be.

The violence was always part of it, but it was never the soul of Napoles. Napoles was Pablo’s favorite home, it was his finest possession, it was loved by the family and all our friends, and it was a place unlike any that had ever been built in Colombia.

Hacienda Napoles was a drive of several hours or a brief flight from Medellín. Far enough away from the problems, and the people, of the city. Pablo and Gustavo bought the land and began building their dream kingdom in the late 1970s. It was ready in 1980, almost 7,500 acres of beautiful land, with a river running through the property. The land was spread over two departments, or political regions. Eventually it would contain several houses in addition to the large main house, a complete zoo opened for free to the people, as well as some runways for airplanes to do business. For someone who had been raised as simply as he had, Pablo somehow understood and appreciated great quality in all parts of his life. And Napoles was the fulfillment of all his material passions.

There are two things that everyone who was ever there remembers: Above the entrance gate he had mounted that first Piper airplane that he used in the business. He believed that airplane had started his fortune. After passing through the strong security at the gate, people would drive on a winding road past fields of lime trees, lemon trees, and all sorts of tropical fruit past the open meadow with several thousand grazing purebred Braham cattle, for almost two miles until they reached the zoo. The zoo was another crazy dream of Pablo’s that came true. Who builds a zoo at his house?

This was a real zoo with many big animals, including hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, giraffes and ostriches and elephants, emus, a pink dolphin, zebras, monkeys, and a kangaroo that liked to kick soccer balls. There were also many types of exotic birds. Pablo loved birds, especially parrots, and wanted to have a male and a female of every species. He had a favorite parrot, Chinchón, who could name most of the great soccer players of Colombia. However, Chinchón also liked to sip whiskey and would fall asleep. Unfortunately, one evening she fell asleep on a table and one of the cats ate her. After that Pablo prohibited cats from Napoles—even big cats like lions and tigers.

Pablo bought the animals from the circuses that performed in Colombia as well as from the United States. It was legal to buy them in America, but not legal to import them into Colombia without a special license. Bringing those animals in from America was a big problem, a very big problem. How do you smuggle a rhinoceros? Pablo was careful, and a veterinarian traveled with each animal to advise our keepers about the proper care of the animal. Usually they were landed on our business runways and transported by our disguised trucks to Napoles. One time, though, a rhino arrived illegally in Medellín but