Esteban Calderone (died 1985) was a Colombian drug lord who ran an operation that extended from Bogotá to Miami and Los Angeles in the United States. He became very wealthy, and he was arrested in September 1984 before being released on bail. Calderone was responsile for half a dozen drug-related murders in Miami during the early 1980s in addition to the killing of an undercover New York Police Department detective in New York City; in 1985, he was tracked down by Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs and was killed.
Biography[]
Calderone in a surveillance photo
Esteban Calderone was from Bogotá, Colombia, and he was responsible for smuggling cocaine into the United States. Calderone lived in both New York City and Miami while he was managing his cocaine-smuggling cartel, and he killed New York Police Department detective Rafael Tubbs. In September 1984, his brother Rico Tubbs went after Calderone, who escaped from a New York nightclub before heading down to Miami. He killed the treacherous drug dealer Corky Fowler and undercover cop Eddie Rivera with a car bomb in Miami when Fowler decided to become an independent drug dealer, leading to the late Rivera's partner Sonny Crockett joining forces with Tubbs. Calderone used DEA agent Scottie Wheeler's leaks to evade capture; even when he was arrested by Tubbs and Crockett in late September 1984, he paid his $2,000,000 bail and managed to escape. He proceeded to arrange the assassination of police lieutenant Lou Rodriguez, and he was tracked down to the Bahamas, where he was killed in a shootout with the police. His son Orlando Calderone would later die trying to avenge his death.