Pablo Escobar's Family: Wife, Son, Daughter — Where They Are Now

Pablo Escobar left three people when he died on 2 December 1993: his wife, his son, and his daughter. All three were in Bogotá on the day he was killed. All three left Colombia within weeks and none of them have publicly returned to live there since.

María Victoria Henao — the widow

Then: María Victoria Henao was born in 1961 in Palmira, Valle del Cauca. She married Pablo Escobar in 1976 when she was 15 and he was 27. She spent the entire Medellín Cartel era at his side, raised their two children through the war years, and was in the Bogotá Tequendama hotel with them on the day he died.

Now: She lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the name María Isabel Santos Caballero. In 2018 she published a memoir in Spanish, Mrs. Escobar: My Life With Pablo (translated to English 2019), in which she describes the marriage as beginning as love and becoming survival. She has given interviews with Argentine and Colombian outlets, but has not returned to Colombia to live. Colombian and US authorities have not pursued charges against her; multiple attempts by third parties to sue her in Colombia have gone nowhere.

The name change was made legal by Colombian authorities in the mid-1990s, at the family's request, on the grounds of physical danger.

Juan Pablo Escobar — the son

Then: Juan Pablo Escobar was born on 24 February 1977 in Medellín. He was 16 years old on 2 December 1993, in Bogotá. He was on the phone with his father in the minutes before the fatal call was traced. His father's last recorded words on that call — the ones he was speaking when the Search Bloc closed on the Los Olivos house — were reportedly to the effect of don't say anything more, they're tracing.

Now: He lives in Buenos Aires under the name Juan Sebastián Marroquín Santos. He trained as an architect. In 2009 he participated in the reconciliation documentary Sins of My Father, in which he met the sons of the Colombian officials his father had ordered killed — including the son of the Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla — and asked their forgiveness on camera.

His two books — Pablo Escobar: My Father (2014, Spanish; 2016 English) and Pablo Escobar in Fraganti (2017) — are the principal insider account of the Medellín Cartel from the family perspective. We reference the first extensively in our analysis of the cartel's finances.

He speaks publicly against his father's legacy and against the drug trade. He has not been charged with any crime in Colombia, the United States, or Argentina.

Manuela Escobar — the daughter

Then: Manuela Escobar was born on 25 May 1984 in Medellín, the second and youngest child. She was 9 years old on the day her father died. Family accounts describe her as her father's principal emotional focus during the last two years of his life; his 1992–1993 letters to her during his period on the run from Los Pepes are among the most-quoted documents of the final period.

Now: She lives in Buenos Aires, under a legally changed name that the family has consistently refused to make public. She is described by her brother in interviews as living a private life outside public view, having declined to give any interview or make any public statement of any kind since 1993.

She is 42 years old as of 2026. She is the only member of the immediate family who has fully declined the public arena.

Why Buenos Aires

The family relocated to Argentina in late 1993 and formally settled there through the mid-1990s. Argentina was chosen for three specific reasons that María Victoria Henao has publicly discussed:

• No US extradition of family members. Argentina's 1990s legal position was that Colombian family members of a deceased trafficker were not subject to US federal prosecution.
• A functioning refugee-status process. The Argentine state processed the family's residency claim on the basis of documented death threats.
• A geography that was not Colombia. The family had received specific and continuing death threats from surviving Cali Cartel and Los Pepes networks throughout 1993–1996. Colombia was not survivable for them.

They have lived in Buenos Aires continuously since 1994. All three have Argentine legal identities. Colombia is a country they visit in interviews and not in life.

What the Escobar family does not have

• The money. Colombian and US authorities seized substantial cartel assets in 1993–1997. What remained accessible to the family after the seizures and the flight was — by every credible account — a small fraction of the accumulated fortune. Juan Pablo has consistently described the family as middle-class since 1994.
• The property. Hacienda Nápoles, the family's Medellín estates, and the Miami and Bahamas holdings were seized. Hacienda Nápoles is now a public tourist park run by the Colombian government.
• The name. All three members changed their legal identities. Only the widow's memoir cover and Juan Pablo's book jackets use "Escobar".

What they do have

• The record. Juan Pablo's two books and María Victoria's memoir are the only three primary-source Escobar-family accounts of the Medellín era in existence.
• A working position on the drug trade. All three, in the family's public statements, oppose the trade. This is not necessarily a moral conversion — it is a survival position based on having lived through the direct consequences of the war their patriarch conducted.
• A quiet life. Which is, ultimately, the outcome the family sought and the outcome the Colombian and Argentine legal systems allowed.

Further reading

Pablo Escobar: My Father (Juan Pablo Escobar) is the essential family account. Mrs. Escobar: My Life With Pablo (María Victoria Henao) is the widow's version. Both are available in English translation.

For the broader arc that made this family history possible — including the doctrine that would have extradited the father had he lived — see our long-form on Carlos Lehder, the doctrinal predecessor of the entire hunt.