Virginia Vallejo García (born 26 August 1949) is a Colombian author, journalist, television and radio director, anchorwoman,[1] model, columnist, socialite, and political asylee in the United States of America.

She is one of the most relevant media personalities of her native country, known for her interviews of presidents, politicians, international celebrities, musicians, authors and scientists.

[8] Due to her voice, education, beauty and elegance, Vallejo has become an icon of the Colombian media, and thanks to her unique story, a contemporary legend.

[10] On 18 July 2006, the DEA took her out of Colombia in a special flight to save her life and cooperate with the Department of Justice in high-profile cases, after she had signaled several Colombian presidents and politicians as beneficiaries or accomplices of the leading cocaine cartels.

[11][12] In 2007, she published her first book, Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, which led the Colombian Supreme Court to reopen the cases of the Palace of Justice siege in 1985, and the assassination of the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán in 1989.

In 1972, while she was working as director of public relations of Cervecería Andina, she received an invitation to join an upcoming television program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Aníbal Fernández de Soto.

Inravisión, the official broadcasting entity, leased spaces to independent television producers known as programadoras, many owned by prominent journalists or presidential families.

[33] In January 1978, she became the anchorwoman of Noticiero 24 Horas, which aired at 7:00 PM, and was directed by Mauricio Gómez, Ernesto Rodríguez Medina[34] and Sergio Arboleda.

The same year, she was elected as the vice-president of the board of directors of the ACL, Asociación Colombiana de Locutores (Association of Colombian Speakers).

In 1978, 1979 and 1980, she won the award as the Best Television Anchor of the APE, Asociación de Periodistas del Espectáculo (Association of Entertainment Journalists).

She was the only journalist sent by a Colombian media outlet to London to cover the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981.

In 1984, she made a television commercial for Medias Di Lido (pantyhose), in Venice, Italy, followed by another three in Rio de Janeiro, San Juan and Cartagena.

In October 1994, she ended her career in the Colombian media to open the South American operation of a multilevel company based in the United States.

[45][46] In early July 2006, Vallejo offered her testimony in the case against Alberto Santofimio,[47] a former Justice Minister and associate of Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín cartel and her lover from 1983 to 1987.

[49] In 2007, Vallejo published Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar (In English: Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), in which she describes, among other topics, her romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín Cartel, from 1982 to 1987; the origins of the rebel organizations in Colombia; the reasons for the explosive growth of the cocaine industry; the birth of MAS (Muerte a Secuestradores), which in English means 'Death to Kidnappers', The Extraditables, and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia; the links among the Medellin and Cali cartels, Caribbean dictators, and the Colombian presidents Alfonso López Michelsen,[50] Ernesto Samper,[51] and Álvaro Uribe;[13][52] the siege of the Palace of Justice in 1985;[53][54] Escobar's relationship with the extreme left and extreme right rebel groups; the horrors during the era of narcoterrorism from 1988 to 1993; and the hunt for and death of her former lover on 2 December 1993.

[62] To grant her political asylum, the State of Department and the Immigration Court of Miami examined Vallejo's life and could not find any investigation against her; only hundreds of threats from members of the Colombian government,[63] media outlets owned or directed by the family of vice president Francisco Santos Calderón[64] and defense minister Juan Manuel Santos,[65][66] and the paramilitary squads Águilas Negras (The Black Eagles).

She received it due to her political opinion about powerful politicians,[69] her testimony in high-profile criminal cases, a brutal car crash she had suffered on her way to testify in the Colombian Miami consulate, and thousands of threats against her life and integrity posted under her name in the Internet.

[75][76][77] The journalist signaled also the lack of action of President Belisario Betancur: "The rebel commanders of the M-19 took the Justices as hostages, to force the government to listen to their claims, including the elimination of the extradition treaty with the United States.

[78][79] In her testimony under oath, she described what Pablo Escobar had told her the following year, after 10 months of separation: "The people detained after the fire, many with third degree burns, were sent to military garrisons where they were tortured – and the women gang-raped[80][81] – to find the hiding places of other rebel commanders, and the money that I had paid them to steal my files before the Court ruled on our extradition;[72] later, they were killed and disappeared in cans of quicklime and sulfuric acid.

"[82][83] At the end of that chapter, Virginia Vallejo summarized the tragic events: "That conflagration was the holocaust of the Colombian justice system, with the triumph of the establishment, the traditional parties, and "Los Extraditables" with Escobar at the head".

In mid 1982, she, her fiancé and his children - now Carlos Ardila Lülle’s stepchildren - were invited to see the zoo of Hacienda Nápoles, owned by the young congressman Pablo Escobar.

David Patrick Metcalfe,[108] grandson of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, and godson of Edward VIII, the future Duke of Windsor.