The wild life of Carlos Lehder, Pablo Escobar’s drug trafficking partner

A neo-Nazi and a Beatles fan

It’s said that Lehder was the only Colombian drug boss with more fans than employees. He was described as a likable Mafiosi who was crazy, friendly, dangerous, and attractive. In a letter to Colombia’s former President Juan Manuel Santos, he even bragged that drug smugglers had been visionaries that succeeded where millions of chemists had failed: in turning a kilo of coca leaves into a kilo of gold.

Lehder admired John Lennon and even had a sculpture of the Beatle — nude, with a guitar in hand and a Nazi helmet on his head — cast in bronze and installed in his hometown. He also admired Adolf Hitler and constantly railed against Jews, just like his father Wilhelm, an engineer who emigrated to Colombia before the start of the Second World War.

He also loved Coca-Cola, calling it the “only good thing about imperialism.” He constantly smoked marijuana, the “peoples’ drug,” while describing the cocaine he sold as a way “to tear the money out of rich people’s pockets and to destroy the US’ decadent society.” And he never failed to point out that, “terrorism is the atom bomb of the poor.”

Now, at 70, Lehder is in Germany, but the days of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll are definitively over for Crazy Charlie.

The wild, impulsive and unpredictable Lehder is said to be critically ill.

The article was originally published at DW.com.