‘Impossible’ tale of British author who claims to be Escobar’s son
HIS story was made for Hollywood; something straight out of a spy novel.
As a baby in the Colombian jungle, he was whisked from his dying teenage mother’s arms by an MI6 spy, who had raided the drug cartel’s lair.
The spy adopted him and raised him, sending him to a British boarding school aged nine and not telling him until he was an adult who his biological father was.
Phillip Witcomb says he was told in 1989 that his father was Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord.
More than three decades later, he has published a book, Son of Escobar: First Born, and embarked on a promotional tour.
Speaking to this newspaper, he made clear that he was open to approaches from Hollywood producers.
Asked why he ended his book with a cliff hanger about his father’s dying message – a note with code, and a whispered reference to “the cash” – Mr Witcomb alluded to the success of The Da Vinci Code.
“People love a treasure hunt!,” he said, suggesting he could star in a documentary about it.
Yet childhood friends of Mr Witcomb – who Ad Lib, his publishers, say should be known as Roberto Sendoya Escobar – have taken issue with his account.
They told the i newspaper that he was less long-lost son of the world’s biggest drug dealer, and more Walter Mitty.
Others pointed to Mr Witcomb’s claim he was born in 1965. Companies House records filed by Mr Witcomb give his year of birth as 1962, which would mean Escobar was 11 or 12 when he fathered him.
John Orrock, 57, a family friend, insisted the discrepancy was impossible.
Mr Witcomb, an artist who lives in Majorca, claims the discrepancy is the result of a lie his adoptive parents told on a form when he was a baby, to expedite a British passport.
Quite why his father, in MI6, would need to lie about his child’s birthday is left unexplained. Mr Witcomb says, as a result, he was in school with children three years older than him.
Mr Orrock said: “His story would have meant he went to prep school ‘aged five’, but really he was two. That’s actually impossible.”
Mr Witcomb has published only select, redacted pages of a baptism certificate and adoption papers, none of which confirm his account.
Ad Lib did not respond to The Daily Telegraph’s request for comment.
Asked about a DNA test, Mr Witcomb said: “Everyone always asks me this question in the end,” he said.
“I’ll ask a question back: have you had a DNA test to verify who your father is?”