Pablo Escobar's sister trying to pay for the sins of her brother

The sister of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drugs lord responsible for thousands of murders, has spoken of her attempts to make amends – leaving letters on the graves of his victims, and trying to atone for his crimes.

"Every day I think of all those people who suffered or are suffering because of my brother – because of the war he waged," said Luz Maria Escobar, the 59-year-old sister of Escobar.

One of seven siblings, Ms Escobar still lives in Medellin – the city from where Escobar ran his drugs cartel during the 1980s and 90s, supplying 80 per cent of all America's cocaine and making the mustachioed mafia boss the second richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $30 billion (£18bn).

Escobar's brother Roberto wrote a memoir called The Accountant's Story, and told how the cartel spent $2,500 every month just on rubber bands for the money, and even owned two submarines for transporting cocaine

But Ms Escobar said that she had no idea of her brother's illicit enterprise until he sat the family down and told them he had made a will.

"My mother was very upset. She said to him, 'Why are you doing this – are you terminally ill?'" Ms Escobar told the BBC World Service in a radio documentary, The Cult of Pablo Escobar.

"And he said, 'I'm in the mafia. Those in the mafia never die of natural causes or illness. Mafiosi die from bullets.'

"We didn't even know what 'mafia' meant. That night, my mother and I got out a dictionary – but the word wasn't in there."

At that time, Medellin was the most murderous city in the world.

At the peak of Escobar's reign, in 1991, the murder rate was 381 per 100,000 people. To put that into context, the current most violent city on the planet, San Pedro Sula, in Honduras, has a murder rate half of that; 187 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Escobar had political aims – he styled himself as a Robin Hood figure, building schools in poor districts and even, in 1982, being elected to Congress. But his murderous past caught up with him and he was forced to resign.

"Pablo Escobar was a psychopath with too much money," said Luis Ospina, whose father Alfonso, a senator, was murdered by Escobar for supporting the extradition of traffickers to the US.

"We even had to pay ransom for the body – that's how bad things were here in Medellin."

And it was when he ordered the assassination of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the minister of justice, in April 1984 that his sister realised what her brother was involved in.

"That day was awful for me. That's when I knew what he was involved in and what my brother was capable of.

"We often went looking for him – I always went with my mother. We spoke to him when there was so much bloodshed, all the massacres.

"But he was able to convince you the other way. And after my father was kidnapped in 1985, Pablo said to me, 'It's either us or them.' He was carrying a gun for self-defence and to defend the family.

"I didn't think at that point it would all go so far – that he would leave such a historic, sad, painful mark on the world."

Her brother was killed by police in 1993, and his widow Victoria Eugenia Henao and children, Juan Pablo and Manuela, moved to Argentina.

"Sometimes I feel like I should have done more," Ms Escobar told El Nuevo Herald newspaper, in 2013.

And she said that, on the 20th anniversary of his death last year, she organised a public memorial for the victims.

"Seven or eight people whose families were victims of my brother's violence came," she said. "And the nicest thing, something that filled me with happiness, was that people hugged me and told me they weren't full of bitterness towards my brother."

"I just ask for forgiveness."

Once she left a letter on the grave of a mother whose son had been murdered on the orders of her brother.

"I assured her that my heart is here, full of love for all the victims and all the people who were killed."

"I don't have anything to repent for in my life like drug trafficking or crime. But your family history is your family history, and it forms part of your heart. And Pablo was my brother."

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