A Florida mansion once owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is being demolished.
The mansion’s new owners have hired professional treasure hunters to comb through the rubble in the hope of finding items belonging to the former leader of the Medellin cartel.
The pink mansion in Miami Beach was seized by the US government in 1987.
Pablo Escobar, who was one of the world’s richest men at the time of his death, was killed by Colombian police in 1993.
Christian de Berdouare and his wife Jennifer Valoppi said they were unaware of its history when they bought the four-bedroom mansion from a private owner in 2014.
Pablo Escobar bought the mansion in 1980 and had it for seven years before it was seized by the US authorities.
The new owners said Pablo Escobar never lived there but had visited the property on occasion.
They have hired a team to search for stashes of drugs, money or jewellery, which they suspect may have been hidden inside the mansion or its garden, as was the custom of members of the Medellin cartel.
Jennifer Valoppi said the workers had found a buried safe but that it was stolen before they could open it.
“It was in the ground under some marble and was discovered by some of our workers, but before we even had a chance to remove it, it was stolen, so we’ve been working with police on that,” she said.
Christian de Berdouare, who paid just under $10 million for the mansion, said he was “very excited to see the house of the devil disappearing right before our eyes”.
“This was the biggest criminal in the history of the world. I would like to be associated with something more uplifting, but nevertheless it’s part of the city,” he added.
He said that he believed Pablo Escobar bought the mansion in a residential neighborhood in order “to conduct illicit trade”. He plans to build a new mansion on the site.
Miami was a key entry point for drugs flooding in from South America in the 1980s and many drug lords had mansions and luxury apartments in the city.
The Miami mansion was built in 1948 and has direct access to Biscayne Bay and views of the Miami skyline.
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