- June Hawkins is a Miami PD analyst in "Griselda," the Netflix series starring Sofia Vergara.
- The real Hawkins worked in homicide for the Miami PD and consulted on the show.
Netflix's "Griselda," the crime drama starring Sofia Vergara, turns several real people into on-screen characters in Griselda Blanco's dramatized life — and one of them, June Hawkins-Singleton (née Hawkins), actually consulted on the series.
In the show, Hawkins-Singleton is played by actor Juliana Aidén Martinez. She's a Miami Police Department analyst tracking Blanco, and the pair share one thing in common — they're both single mothers in male-dominated fields. Hawkins-Singleton is also bilingual, allowing her to interpret and speak with Spanish-speaking witness. In the series' final episode, years after Blanco's imprisonment, Hawkins-Singleton visits her to inform her of her sons' fates.
The real Hawkins-Singleton served as a consultant on "Griselda," working with her husband (and former colleague) Alan Singleton to recall the events of her investigation into Blanco, she told People.
"We have to collaborate because we can't remember everything. That was 40 years ago," Hawkins-Singleton told People. "He kept good notes, so he'll look at them when there's a question. There were so many cases and so many murders. It's hard to remember if that was the guy found stuffed in the TV box or the one found on the side of the road."
Here's what happened to Hawkins-Singleton in real life.
June Hawkins' police career lasted from 1975 to 2004
Initially, Hawkins-Singleton wasn't a part of "Griselda," cocreator Doug Miro told Vanity Fair. Eventually, however, he learned through his research that Hawkins-Singleton was deeply involved in Blanco's case.
As Vanity Fair reported, Hawkins-Singleton's began her career with the Miami PD as an intelligence analyst. Born in Miami and of Cuban descent, her Spanish-speaking skills were an asset. As a child, she would send coded messages to her family in Cuba to help them leave the country, Miro told Vanity Fair. She has one son, Eric Reynolds, who Hawkins-Singleton said in 2017 worked for the Boynton Beach Police Department in Florida.
Her career began in March 1975, and she retired in 2004, she said on the "Law Enforcement Talk" podcast. She worked in the homicide department from 1979 to 1981, and called it impactful work, pointing to a report she produced on 42 connected cases that was delivered to lawmakers in Washington D.C.
"I speak Spanish and in those days, there weren't that many Spanish speakers on the department and they used me as kind of like an intelligence analyst to filter through all the names and all the people and make out who they were," she said. "And then I'd talk to informants and I'd write all these memos."
Hawkins-Singleton also recounted several real-life incidents that were recreated in the show, including her male colleagues blasting the air conditioning so that they could see her nipples.
Hawkins-Singleton told Tudum that she only met Blanco once, and it was after she had stopped working on homicide.
"I came down the stairs, and there she was sitting at the desk looking like a grandmother," Hawkins-Singleton said. "I didn't interact with her personally then, and I just kind of observed her. I thought, 'Man, she looks so diminished.'"
"And in my view, she didn't look like the big badass that we had assumed that she would be," Hawkins-Singleton continued. "She was just diminished in every way. Old, tired-looking, resentful."
Hawkins later married one of her coworkers from the Miami PD
Hawkins-Singleton and her former coworker, Alan Singleton, told People that they got married in 2004, years after they first met. Today, they live together in Nashville.
Hawkins-Singleton told People that both she and Singleton were married when they first met in 1979 working in the Miami PD's homicide bureau. They didn't reconnect until years later, when the late Richard Smitten reached out to Singleton about his book on Blanco, "The Godmother," a decade later. Singleton then reached out to Hawkins to see if she would be interested in speaking with Smitten.
"Those lunches and those meetings with Smitten became the way we rekindled," Hawkins-Singleton told People. "It was comfortable for me because I knew Alan from when we were coworkers and I trusted him. He was a real gentleman."