Before Lehder, drug smuggling into the United States was a retail operation. Couriers - human mules - swallowed balloons of cocaine or hid small packages in luggage and boarded commercial flights. Lehder, working first with partner George Jung and later as part of the Medellin Cartel, realized that small aircraft could carry entire loads directly. Norman's Cay, a few hundred acres of scrub and sand in the Exuma chain south of Nassau, had an airstrip. Lehder extended it to 3,300 feet, long enough for his fleet of planes. He installed radar, posted armed guards with attack dogs along the beaches and runway, and turned the island into a refueling stop for cocaine flights headed north from Colombia. Any pilot who landed uninvited was met by men carrying automatic weapons. For roughly four years, from 1978 to 1982, Norman's Cay operated as a sovereign narco-state in all but name.

Carlos Toro, a Medellin Cartel associate, described Norman's Cay in a PBS interview with a candor that left little to imagination. "I have a vivid picture of being picked up in a Land Rover with the top down and naked women driving to come and welcome me from my airplane," he recalled. "And there we partied. And it was a Sodom and Gomorrah... drugs, sex, no police... you made the rules... and it was fun." Not everyone on the island was having fun. Marine biologist Richard E. Novak, the island's former dive master, waged what amounted to a one-man resistance against Lehder's operation - heroic but ultimately futile. Despite years of complaints and evidence, the Bahamian government turned a blind eye. Only in 1982, under mounting pressure from U.S. law enforcement, did authorities begin to crack down. By then, Lehder had moved billions of dollars' worth of cocaine through the island's airstrip.

Lehder was arrested in Colombia in 1987 and extradited to the United States, where he was convicted and sentenced to life plus 135 years. His Bahamian properties were confiscated. Norman's Cay began its slow reinvention as a legitimate tourist destination, reachable by charter flight through its small airport - the same airstrip Lehder had extended for his drug fleet. A consortium of local and foreign investors acquired portions of the island. Plans emerged for a luxury resort, with the high-end chain Aman Resorts mentioned as a potential partner. The government-owned portion of the island, valued at $40.5 million, was sold to encourage foreign investment, despite objections from the local member of parliament. The island was eventually reported sold to the Miami-based Fort Capital Group. Norman's Cay was trying to become respectable, but its past kept surfacing like that plane wreck in the shallows.

In 2017, promoter Billy McFarland leased Norman's Cay to stage the Fyre Festival, promising a luxury music experience on a private island. The island's owners imposed one strict condition: no references to Pablo Escobar. McFarland promptly released promotional footage advertising the island as "once owned by Pablo Escobar" - a claim that was not even accurate, since the island had belonged to Lehder, not Escobar, though both were Medellin Cartel members. The owners immediately cancelled the arrangement. McFarland relocated the event to Great Exuma on short notice, where it collapsed into the infamous disaster documented by both Netflix and Hulu. Norman's Cay had dodged the spectacle, but the episode demonstrated that the island's narco history remained its most marketable asset - and its heaviest burden. The Fyre Festival debacle also spawned a peculiar cultural footnote: the fictional island of Cayo Perico in Grand Theft Auto Online draws directly from Norman's Cay, both in geography and in its story of a drug lord's private Caribbean playground.