Hit man says he killed 300 people

• John Jairo Velasquez was the top hit man for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in the '80s


• He says he killed about 300 people, masterminded about 3,000 other deaths


• Velasquez served 22 years in prison for the murder of presidential candidate


• Some victims' relatives protest his release, but others have forgiven him

(CNN) -- John Jairo Velasquez -- the top hit man for notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in the '80s, known in Colombia as the "narcoterrorism era" -- is a free man for the first time in 22 years.

The 52-year-old Velasquez, also known as "Popeye," was released Tuesday night from a maximum-security prison in the Colombian province of Boyaca, northeast of Bogota, the capital. He left the prison under heavy police protection.

Velasquez surrendered to authorities in 1992, telling a reporter at the time, "I don't owe anything to anybody. I haven't done anything wrong."

But in jailhouse interviews, he admitted several times to killing about 300 people, including soldiers, police officers, rival cartel members and civilians. He also confessed to masterminding the killings of more than 3,000 other people, most of them civilians.

Some of his victims died in car bombings in cities across Colombia including Bogota; Medellin, his cartel's home base; and Cali.

Velasquez was also responsible for a number of high-profile kidnappings, among them that of Attorney General Carlos Mauro Hoyos in January 1988. Velasquez confessed that he killed Hoyos in captivity.

Also in January 1988, Velasquez kidnapped Bogota mayoral candidate Andres Pastrana. Pastrana survived the ordeal and went on to become the 57th president of Colombia, serving from 1998 to 2002.

The victim and his kidnapper met again in 2012. Still in prison, Velasquez apologized to Pastrana and his family.

"I ask you for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart," he told Pastrana, "for what the Medellin cartel did, for risking your very important life."

He also told Pastrana he dismembered some of his victims, something he says he deeply regrets as a man who's turned his life to God.

Velasquez spent 22 years in prison, three-quarters of his sentence for the murder of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in 1989, the only murder for which he was convicted.

The victim's family has forgiven him.

"He was sentenced for my father's murder," said Juan Manuel Galan, the victim's son and a liberal senator. "He gave us the truth and asked for forgiveness. In my case, I forgive him."

Velasquez told local media that he fears for his life as a free man and that there's an 80% chance that his many enemies will kill him, especially those members of the Medellin cartel whose names and crimes he disclosed to authorities.

Relatives of many of his victims angrily protested Velasquez's release, saying that 22 years in prison was not punishment enough for the countless atrocities he committed during the narcoterrorism era and cocaine turf wars of the '80s and '90s.

But Colombian Sen. Armando Benedetti said that Velasquez was being freed for good conduct, as any other prisoner would, and that his release complied with the law.

"The debate about his release has to center on the fact that in Colombia, we respect the rule of law, and we abide by the constitution, even in those cases where we are in disagreement with the consequences of some decisions," Benedetti said.

Medellin reborn: Colombian city moves out of Escobar shadow

Why some travelers seek out the world's most dangerous locales

How grandma got hooked on heroin

• Cynthia had it all -- a career and a family of 8 children and 18 grandchildren


• She abused prescription painkillers and then used heroin because it was cheaper


• Prescription opiate abuse can be a gateway drug to heroin, doctor says


• "Prescription drug abuse is a massive problem in the United States," doctor adds

Watch CNN's special series, "Deadly Fix," this week on CNN Newsroom at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET.

Denver (CNN) -- Cynthia Scudo is a portrait of an all-American mom of eight and grandmother of 18 who survived an extraordinary journey lasting a decade: She became addicted to prescription painkillers and then to heroin.

You'd never guess it. Trim, petite, with a bob and easy smile, Scudo had enough energy to work full-time and preside over a large family in Denver.

She had it all -- until it crumbled.

Her dark secret about a taboo drug is not as isolated as it seems, especially with the revelations of public figures whose early deaths involved heroin, such as actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who overdosed on a cocktail of legal and illegal drugs.

Prescription drug abuse is now a health epidemic in America, worse than crack in the 1980s, and Scudo's story is one example. Her addiction to a handful of prescription drugs, with OxyContin as first and foremost, led to heroin because it gave her the same high at a cheaper price. Both are opiates.

"In the beginning, it was a feel-good," said Scudo, 55. "At the end, it was black."

Cynthia Scudo became addicted to prescription drugs and turned to heroin when she needed a cheaper fix.

Scudo didn't shoot heroin. Rather, she smoked it using a straw, tinfoil and a lighter to inhale a smaller than pea-sized pinch of "black tar" heroin. She exhaled the smoke through a fan vent in the basement bathroom of her home, sometimes at 2 a.m., so her children wouldn't smell anything.

"There's such a stigma about heroin, that it's dirty and it's IV users under the bridge and homeless people, and that is so not the case," Scudo said. "Heroin crosses all borders, all socioeconomic groups."

Scudo's addiction was far from unique. The path from prescription drugs to heroin is well traveled, according to Dr. Patrick Fehling, a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado Hospital's Center for Dependency, Addiction and Rehabilitation.

"That is very common. I have a lot of patients that ask me, 'Are prescription opioid painkillers gateway drugs towards heroin?'" Fehling said. "Absolutely."

Scudo's drug use, while extreme, shouldn't obscure one reality: "Prescription drug abuse is a massive problem in the United States," Fehling said.

How it began

For Scudo, her addiction began -- as they all do -- innocently enough.

She sought relief from hip pain, possibly caused by scarring from cesarean sections she had delivering several of her children.

Her then-husband recommended a physician.

"There was no physical therapy offered," she said of the doctor's visit. "The first reaction was, let's give you some drugs."

He put her on OxyContin.

By the second week, she was physically addicted.

She was popping so much of the painkiller and other drugs such as anti-anxiety Valium that they equated to a dosage for three men.

A second doctor reduced her prescription, causing Scudo to experience withdrawal symptoms, or become "dope-sick."

"When you start withdrawing from opiates, it focuses in your lower back and your legs, and it is like somebody has clamped a vice on both sides of your hips and is just smashing you. Hitting my back with a baseball bat would have been more comfortable," Scudo said.

She was desperate for more OxyContin.

"Some people are not addicts and can take drugs as prescribed," she explained. "But for the few people who are addicts, it's a whole different ball game."

To feed her cravings, Scudo leveraged her maternal authority: She found drug dealers who were friends of her eldest children.

Cynthia Scudo sleds with all of her eight children.

"When you have eight children," she said, "you're bound to know people."

It was so easy.

But it was also so expensive. One OxyContin pill cost $80 on the street.

"One OxyContin wouldn't last me at all," she said. "I could never take just one OxyContin. That wouldn't even keep the dope-sick away."

So she turned to heroin.

Why?

Her fear of withdrawal was greater than her fear of the drug.

Living fearlessly

Like OxyContin, heroin was abundant on the street. In Denver. In the suburbs.

Once you bought from one dealer, several more approached you, she said.

She bought seven balloons -- or seven grams -- of heroin for $100, she said. That kept her high for up to three days.

"I would do some crazy stuff to get drugs," she said. "Like 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm making a run to downtown Denver. Like picking up my grandkids in the car (to go to a drug deal), praying that I was not going to get busted."

No risk was too great.

Never did she think of what she had to lose.

"Not once," she explained. "That's the addict in me."

After almost 10 years of heroin addiction, she wondered how much her family knew. Her children stopped bringing the grandchildren to visit her. She pawned family heirlooms. Her second marriage failed, and she stole from her ex-husband.

"I know they knew that I was struggling, but they didn't know how to help. I'm sure that they were scared to death for me," she said, "and the sad part is...I didn't care."

She fooled herself. After all, she was good at lying. Her job was going well. The bosses promoted her a few times. Everything was manageable, except when she got home from work at 4 p.m. and was in bed for the night at 4:30 p.m.

"I didn't want to think. I didn't want to feel. Actually I didn't care if I lived or died," she said.

The only person she couldn't fool was her alcoholic mom in recovery, who noticed Scudo's weight loss and asked her, "Are you ready for help?"

Scudo responded with an "I got this, mom, I got it."

I went from heroin addict to PTA mom

What the mirror told her

The breaking point came one morning after taking a shower.

Scudo looked at herself in a full-length mirror, naked, for the first time in six months.

A photo that Cynthia Scudo would rather forget: Her intake photo for drug rehab.

"I looked like an Auschwitz survivor," she said. "I was a skeleton. I had this lovely green glow going, so I knew my liver was shutting down. The skin was hanging, literally hanging off my body.

"And something about that moment when I saw myself triggered something in my head," she said.

The next day, her ex-husband called her at work in a confrontation about a problem. Scudo had enough. She wanted to drive her car off the highest overhang on Interstate 70, but feared she wouldn't die immediately and would end up in pain. She went home, kissed the two children still living with her, went to the bedroom and cried. She closed the door. She found eight OxyContin pills, but that wasn't going to be enough to kill her. She was used to downing six at a time, crushed.

She fell asleep and took a sick day from work the next morning.

How heroin kills you

Hitting bottom

Her mother knocked on her door at 10 a.m. Her son-in-law, who worked at the same company as Scudo, told her that Scudo took a sick day.

"Have you damn well had enough?" her mother asked her.

"And for some reason, 'yes' came out of my mouth," Scudo said.

They checked her into a 30-day inpatient program for addiction on April 19, 2011, the last day she took drugs.

That meant her first day without dope was, ironically, also the unofficial, international get-high day of April 20, she noted.

Her detoxification was "six days of hell," she said.

"I lost 9 pounds in six days," she recounted. "I threw up every 15 minutes. I would have to live in the shower with the water temperature of 120 degrees to burn the skin to not feel the pain in my back."

She's been clean for three years now, she said.

She's on her third marriage.

She's changed jobs, becoming an office manager over 200 employees at a credit card company.

And she no longer wants to die.

"I am not ashamed of the fact that I am who I am. The only way that I will not make this is if I start keeping secrets from myself and other people and then my head gets to start playing games with me and telling me it has a good idea," Scudo said. "And I have got way too much to live for to go back."

She now hosts a monthly family dinner -- for 45 people in her little green house.

And the grandchildren visit again the once-lost matriarch.

New abuse-deterrent painkiller approved

FDA aims to tighten control of hydrocodone

FDA fights drug overdoses with new labels for prescription painkillers

DEA turns to texting to fight prescription drug abuse

CNN's Ana Cabrera and Sara Weisfeldt reported from Denver; Michael Martinez wrote from Los Angeles.

Watch CNN Newsroom weekdays 9am to 3pm ET and weekends. For the latest from the CNN Newsroom click here.

13 of America's most photogenic places

Get to Arizona's Antelope Canyon when the sun is at its highest, travel photographer Gary Arndt says, to see this light streaming through the slot canyon.

Utah's Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which is part of the Navajo Nation's parks and recreation system, has been a backdrop for countless Western movies.

The most popular national park in the United States, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, hosted more than 9 million visitors in 2013. The park straddles Tennessee and North Carolina.

Chicago's Millennium Park features cutting edge architecture and art, including Cloud Gate, shown here, which is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work in the United States.

Skagway in Alaska was the starting point for the Klondike gold rush, which is why it swells in the summer months with cruise ship passengers. Book a trip on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad to travel the same route prospectors took to get to the Yukon.

Everglades National Park in Florida is the largest protected wilderness area east of the Mississippi River.

The Grand Canyon should be on everyone's list of places to visit, says Arndt. "It is hard to take a bad photo of the Grand Canyon," he says. "Most people visit the South Rim of the canyon, but consider visiting the North or East rims as well. For the more adventurous, also consider rafting down the Colorado River or hiking to the canyon floor."

Because North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park manages a herd of about 100 feral horses, visitors can experience the badlands as it was when Theodore Roosevelt visited for the first time in 1883.

Arndt likes to visit Yosemite National Park in California in early to mid-May, avoiding the summer crowds, but still witnessing the waterfalls at their peak.

The Golden Gate Bridge, which connects the city of San Francisco with Marin County, is named after the Golden Gate Strait. The straight is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean.

While the Big Apple offers plenty of landmark buildings and space to photograph, "I think the most photogenic parts of New York isn't the skyline or the buildings, but the small things you can see walking around almost any neighborhood," Arndt says.

Visitors to Glacier National Park in Montana shouldn't miss driving the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a 50-mile road which crosses the park from the borders of its east to west entrances.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park has the "most beautiful cave in the United States," says Arndt. "The stalagmites and stalactites are lit up to enhance their beauty."

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

• Travel photographer shares his picks for the most photogenic spots in America


• "If you go to the Grand Canyon, it's pretty hard to screw up," he says


• Avoid shooting in the middle of the day for the best light, he suggests

(CNN) -- Photography-wise, you really can't go wrong in a national park or a big city.

They "tend to be the best places to photograph," says Gary Arndt, a blogger and photographer who sold his house in 2007 and has been roaming the globe ever since. The Society of American Travel Writers named him 2014 Photographer of the Year, and he has already visited 25 countries this year.

This week, Arndt will surpass mile 11,000 of this summer's North American odyssey.

Arndt has picked more than 20 of the most photogenic spots he's visited to highlight on Pinterest. A selection is featured in the gallery above. Visually rich and undeniably gorgeous, these American destinations are ripe for photographers of all skill levels.

"If you go to the Grand Canyon, it's pretty hard to screw up," Arndt said.

Here are three tips from Arndt to get you started:

-- You don't have to be in the photo. "Everybody wants to have a picture of themself in front of something, no matter what that something is." The majority of the most interesting travel shots are not the proof-of-visit variety.

-- Avoid shooting in the middle of the day. "You want to try to take your photos within say, two hours of sunrise or sunset," Arndt said. There are exceptions to every rule, but these hours tend to yield the best shots in most situations.

-- A little familiarity with your camera goes a long way. You don't need to master every setting and the science behind it, but definitely "experiment a little bit before you go somewhere." Don't let technical difficulties get in the way of your chance to capture something truly spectacular.

50 states, 50 spots: Natural wonders

Solar system is inside bubble?

• Scientists believe that a hot gas bubble was formed by multiple supernovas


• The event occurred 10 million years ago -- that's recent for a 13.8-billion-year-old universe


• The supernovas didn't explode close enough to wipe out our evolutionary ancestors


• There have been doubters but experiments corroborate existence of the hot gas bubble

(CNN) -- Ever feel like you live in a bubble?

You do. We all do.

Our whole solar system appears to, say space scientists, who published work last month corroborating its existence.

And, oh, what a bubble it is: About 300 light years long (about 1,764,000,000,000,000 miles), and its walls are made of hot gas. How hot? About a million degrees.

In honor of American Archives Month, NASA has released a selection of eight never-before-seen images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a telescope in space. This image is of a galaxy, NGC 4945, that is about 13 million light years away from Earth. It looks like the Milky Way, but it contains a supermassive black hole within the white area near the top of the image.

When radiation and winds from massive young stars impact clouds of cool gas, they can trigger new generations of stars to form. This is what might be happening in this object, known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula.

This galactic supernova remnant, known as 3C397, has an unusual box-like shape. Researchers think that is because the heated remains of the exploded star are running into cooler gas.

This supernova was likely produced by the collapse of a star's central core.

This region of glowing gas, in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way, is about 9,000 light years from Earth.

In the past century, eight supernovas have been observed in the arms of NGC 6946, a galaxy about 22 million light years away from Earth. NGC 6946 is also nicknamed the "Fireworks Galaxy."

This image was produced by the explosion of a massive star in the Milky Way.

Giant plumes of radiation are seen near galaxy 3C353, the tiny point at the center of this image.

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Never-seen images of the cosmos

Photos: Never-seen images of the cosmos

Life beyond the planet

NASA: Voyager has left the solar system

It's called the "Local Bubble" or "local hot bubble" and is shaped a little like a peanut.

Scientists believe it was formed by supernovas, the largest explosions in space, as NASA calls them, that occur when a large star blows up.

One supernova blasts out more energy in less than a second than our sun gives off in a million years, NASA says. A single explosion can outshine an entire galaxy.

'Like popcorn'

They usually occur about twice a century. But about 10 million years ago, a slew of them exploded right near our solar system.

"Supernovas went off like popcorn," NASA says.

In a universe about 13.8 billion years old, that's a recent event. Humans did not yet walk the Earth 10 million years ago, but monkeys did.

Those supernovas may have sent our evolutionary ancestors running scared, but they weren't enough to annihilate them.

Galactic hole

Fast forward 10 million years to the 1970s and 80s, when humans first began noticing what they'd later postulate was the bubble.

They were aiming more advanced telescopes at what's called the interstellar medium.

Between the planets and the stars of our galaxy is not just empty space. There are gasses, dust, ions -- and more -- sweeping around.

When astronomers poked around in our solar system for it, they found little to nothing. It was like we were living in a virtually empty hole, one that has only a single atom per every liter of space.

Around the same time, sensors launched outside of Earth's atmosphere revealed an abundance of something else coming from all directions -- x-ray radiation.

The idea that we live in a bubble was born:

So much interstellar medium was gone, because the exploding supernovas have blown it away, and and left us surrounded with their remnants of radiating gas.

Doubt, corroboration

But some scientists, in recent years, cast doubt on the Local Bubble model, saying the radiation could be the result of "charge exchange" -- passing solar winds stealing electrons and thereby emitting x-ray radiation.

Scientists from the University of Miami in Coral Gables picked up the gauntlet and developed a sensor to measure charge exchange radiation and fired it out of Earth's atmosphere atop a small NASA rocket two years ago.

It only took about five minutes for the detector to take a reading. Analyzing the data, the scientists determined that only 40% of the background x-ray emanates from within our solar system.

The rest of the glow, they say, must come from the searing gaseous walls of a big bubble we live in.

CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report

Hate crime convictions of Amish tossed

• Appeals court overturned hate crime convictions of 16 Amish men and women Wednesday


• They were convicted in 2012 for beard and hair cutting attacks on fellow members of their faith


• Majority of appellate judge panel found that it was not religious beliefs that led to the attacks


• Amish leader was sentenced to 15 years in prison

(CNN) -- An Ohio appeals court Wednesday overturned hate-crime convictions of 16 Amish men and women in connection with a spate of beard- and hair-cutting attacks on members of their faith, according to court documents.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati found that the jury in the original case was given incorrect instructions on how to deliberate the role of religion in the attacks, the documents say.

Sam Mullet, leader of the breakaway Amish sect in eastern Ohio, denies allegations he's running a cult.

The leader of a breakaway Amish community, Samuel Mullet Sr., and 15 of his followers were found guilty in 2012 in connection with what authorities said were the religiously motivated attacks on several Amish people. Mullet and others were convicted of conspiracy to violate a federal hate-crime law.

Prosecutors said Mullet's followers, at his instruction, shaved the beards and cut the hair of Amish people who had left his group over various religious disagreements.

Five attacks happened in four eastern Ohio counties between September and November 2011.

"No one questions that the assaults occurred, and only a few defendants question their participation in them. The central issue at trial was whether the defendants committed the assaults 'because of' the religion of the victims," according to decision.

Two of the three judges on the appeals panel found that "when all is said and done, considerable evidence supported the defendants' theory that interpersonal and intra-family disagreements, not the victims' religious beliefs, sparked the attacks," according to the documents.

Mullet was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the crimes. Four of his followers were sentenced to seven years, three received five-year sentences, two were sentenced to two years and six were sentenced to a year and a day, according to the Justice department.

Federal prosecutors presented this undated black and white photograph as evidence in trial of 16 Amish men and women charged with hate crimes for beard-cutting attacks against Amish men.

The jury also had convicted various defendants with separate assaults, and Mullet with concealing or attempting to conceal evidence, including a camera and pictures of the attacks, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Those charges, which were not part of the appeal, still stand.

It is unclear if any defendants will be released as a result of the overturned hate crime convictions.

U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach released a statement following the decision.

"We respectfully disagree with the two judges who reversed the defendants' hate crime convictions based on a jury instruction," the statement said. "We remain in awe of the courage of the victims in this case, who were subject to violent attacks by the defendants. We are reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

Usually, the Amish resolve disputes without involving law enforcement, but some Amish members reported the beard-cutting incidents to police.

Mullet's group, which had broken away from a larger Amish community, is made up primarily of his relatives living on and around an 800-acre compound in a remote valley outside Bergholz, Ohio.

To the Amish, a beard is a significant symbol of faith and manhood, and the way Amish women wear their hair also is a symbol of faith.

Calls to defense attorney Wendi Overmyer by CNN were not immediately returned.

CNN's Tricia Escobedo, Jason Hanna and Mallory Simon contributed to this report.