In mid-February 2023, the police investigators who were following the trail of “Siopas”, the deputy commander of the Clan del Golfo, were perplexed by a telephone interception. “I need you to help me find a witch to tell me if Wilmer is alive or not.”
The conversation was between the ringleader’s mother and one of her daughters. Both were worried because their loved one had disappeared from the map, after attending a meeting with other criminals from their group in a camp in the Chocoan jungle.
The information triggered alerts among the Intelligence agencies, which activated their human sources and telecommunication systems to confirm if that mother’s hunch was true.
The search ended this Wednesday morning, on the highway that leads from the municipality of Uramita to Dabeiba, in western Antioquia. There, in a sector called La Recta, a corpse was thrown from a vehicle.
The victim had multiple bullet wounds to the head, face and neck. She was left lying face up on the asphalt, wearing rubber boots, military green pants and a black jumpsuit.
The fire department transferred him to the Dabeiba morgue and the fingerprints were sent to the Scientific and Criminal Police Laboratory of Region No. 6, based in Medellín, where the system revealed the identity of the deceased: Wilmer Antonio Giraldo Quiroz, better known in the underworld as “Siopas”.
“We will continue with the investigation to establish the motives for the homicide,” Colonel Óscar Cortés, commander of the Urabá Police, declared hours later.
Life and death in crime
“Siopas” was born in Apartadó, Antioquia, on September 27, 1980 (42 years ago).
His beginnings in the criminal world were in the FARC’s fifth front, which recruited him at the age of 15.
He was a member of that guerrilla from 1995 to 2008, when he deserted to join the Clan del Golfo the following year.
Dairo Úsuga David (“Otoniel”), the top leader of the organization, saw its potential for violence and in 2015 gave him his first important assignment: the command of the Zuley Guerra front, which commits crimes in Arboletes and the coastal area of Córdoba.
There he was characterized by ordering frequent attacks on the Public Force, with methods learned in his time as an insurgent. Among the most terrible attacks was the one on April 11, 2018 in the municipality of San Pedro de Urabá, against a caravan of official trucks that were doing land restitution tasks. A bomb exploded in its path, killing eight policemen.
In 2019, he rose in the hierarchy and went to the Pacific bloc, commanding 600 men from the fronts that act on the coast, from Chocó to Nariño, including the Southwest of Antioquia.
At the same time, he obtained a position in the general staff, the leadership of the cartel, together with “Otoniel” and three other commanders. All of this made it a highly strategic target for Colombian and US security agencies.
They issued multiple arrest warrants for homicide, terrorism, kidnapping, forced displacement, illegal recruitment, obstruction of roads, and extortion, among other crimes. In the government of Iván Duque, he was assigned a reward of up to $5,000 million for information that led to his capture.
Who killed him?
The strongest hypothesis of the researchers is that “Siopas” was killed by an internal reckoning in the Clan del Golfo.
When “Otoniel” was captured in 2021 and extradited the following year, there was a reorganization in the general staff. “Chiquito Malo”, “Siopas”, “Gonzalito” and “Rodrigo Flechas” remained, but there was no consensus on who should be the new boss.
Some fronts supported Jobanis Ávila (“Chiquito Malo”), a former paramilitary member of the Bananero bloc who was an expert in money management and drug trafficking; and others nominated “Siopas”, due to his strong gift of command over the troops.
In the midst of that discussion there was a new distribution of businesses, the four blocks and 23 fronts of the Clan, scattered in 20 departments.
“Chiquito Malo” and “Siopas”, according to judicial sources, did not agree on who should control the front Carlos Vásquez, who commits crimes in Urabá and has an operations base in Apartadó, where the ex-guerrilla was born. This structure is one of the most powerful in the Clan, since it controls the El Zungo (Carepa) wharf and has tentacles in the Catatumbo and Llanos Orientales regions.
The pulse was won by “Chiquito Malo”. This produced fissures in the line of command, which were confirmed when the group began exploratory talks with the government of Gustavo Petro, in 2022. As spokesmen for peace, the Clan proposed “Chiquito Malo”, “Gonzalito”, “Negro Perea ” “Arrows”, “Byron”, “Chirimoya”, Alex Sierra and Luis Pérez.
“Siopas” did not appear on the list, apparently because he was not sure of participating in “total peace”. This, according to preliminary investigations, may have hastened his death.
Regarding the crime, it is believed that Giraldo was kidnapped for two weeks, after the aforementioned meeting in Chocó, before his execution. “It is likely that during that time they tortured him so that he would hand over drug trafficking routes, money, property, weapons and other things,” said an investigator.
Due to the characteristics of the injuries, the agents believe that he was murdered a few hours before leaving his body on the road. For them, it is very telling that his executioners did not leave his body in the jungle, to be devoured by worms and oblivion, but rather they would have transferred it to a main road, in full view of the whole world. It is a way of sending a message to the troops: that there is only one boss in the Clan del Golfo.