Is Your Girl Really A Secret Assassin?

Jason Howe and girlfriend Marilyn / Photo: Jason Howe

This dude’s was. Photojournalist Jason Howe fell in love with his girlfriend Marilyn and later found out she had a slightly sinister secret life: an assassin for death squads in Columbia. Howe set out for the countryside of the coke-torn country to interview and profile the real deal Columbians about the internal politics of the drug trade. That’s where he met his girl Marilyn. She invited him to come meet the fam and allowed him to use her house as a sort of home base, allowing the photog some freedom in patrolling around the region and shooting the coca fields and the paramilitary soldiers that guard them. After gathering what he needed, he left for a few months, but eventually returned to see Marilyn. It was then that she dropped this bombshell:

She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors. So far, she told me, she had killed at least 10 people in the area. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, Marylin looked at me through the smoke as I exhaled, waiting to see how I would respond to what she had just told me.

Read more of Jason’s amazing account here. He’s also got a book, Columbia: Between the Lines, coming out later this year. Or if you’re really lazy you could always wait for the movie, a story like is too good to not exploit.