Leonidas Vargas had obviously made some serious enemies. Days after the Colombian drugs baron was shot dead by professional hitmen in a Madrid hospital, his brother and girlfriend were gunned down.

Fabio Vargas, 47, and Liliana Andrea Lozano, 30, a former beauty queen-turned-TV actress, were murdered in a hotel in Palmira, southeast Colombia. The couple were killed two days after Vargas, known as El Viejo (The Old Man), was murdered by two gunmen last Thursday.

Leonidas was known as the King of Caqueta, the southern Colombian region from where he ran his multimillion-dollar cocaine empire. He had been an associate of the late Pablo Escobar, the drugs kingpin once named by Forbes magazine as the world’s seventh richest man.

Spanish police, investigating Leonidas’s killing, believe he was murdered to settle scores between rival drugs gangs. But the shootings of his brother and Ms Lozano appeared to signify that his enemies have embarked on bloody war to take over his cocaine business.

Colonel Nelson Acero, police chief in Valle de Cauca, Palmira, said locals reported gunfire and two bodies were discovered in a hotel. Fabio Vargas and Ms Lozano were not identified until Tuesday.

Colonel Acero declined to speculate on the motives for their murders.

Spanish police were today still searching for two gunmen who stole into Leonidas’ room last Thursday in the October 12 Hospital in Madrid and shot him four times with a pistol fitted with a silencer. He died instantly.

One gunman first asked another patient, who was sharing the same room, if he was Vargas. Innocently, he said no, only to watch as the assassin dispatched Vargas, before escaping with an accomplice.

The gunman told the terrified patient: “Don’t move, don’t say anything. This has nothing to do with you.”

Police threw a massive dragnet around the hospital, but both men escaped.

Spanish police described the assassins as professionals who were thought to have come from eastern Europe.

Vargas, 59, was awaiting trial for drugs offences. A Spanish judge had released him on conditional bail, which meant he had no police guard in hospital, where he was being treated for heart problems.

Vargas ran large laboratories processing cocaine deep in the jungles of Caqueta province. Colombian authorities believe he was in league with the Marxist Farc guerrillas.

He was jailed in Colombia in 1995 for 19 years and fined $1.5 million for drugs offences plus another 25 years in jail for murder and fire arms offences. While in prison he survived a bombing assassination attempt.

Vargas was also accused of ordering the murder of the Colombian presidential candidate Horacio Serpa. He was released in 2002 but authorities seized assets to the value of $29.3 million and 135 properties, cars and froze bank accounts.

Vargas had three passions: women, drink and football. The last one proved to be his undoing; he was arrested in 2006 in Madrid while on his way to the World Cup Finals in Germany.

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