DISGRACELAND - Peter Tosh (Pt. 2): A Home Invasion, an Assassination, and No Compromise

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

As a reggae revolutionary who rejected peace in the name of truth and justice, and an outspoken critic of the Jamaican government, Peter Tosh's refusal to compromise nearly cost him his life many times over. He tried to amplify his message by purchasing Jamaica's Radio One. He tried to protect himself by way of African bush doctors and medicine men. He spent years knowing there was a bullet out there with his name on it. And in 1987, when Peter Tosh was 42, that bullet found him. Murdered in his own home by someone he knew. But why? Revenge? Wounded pride? Or was it murder for hire? Who really silenced the great Peter Tosh? To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on March 12, 2024. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The Peter Tosh story, his role as a reggae revolutionary, who rejected peace in the name of truth and justice. An outspoken critic of the Jamaican government whose refusal to compromise nearly cost him his life many times over is so complex that we needed two episodes to properly tell it. If you're just getting hip to this now, I see.

suggest you hit pause and go back to the last episode of Disgraceland, part one of the Peter Tosh story. In this episode, we get into Peter Tosh's attempt to take his revolutionary message to the airwaves by buying out Jamaica's Radio One, his need to protect himself by way of African bush doctors and medicine men, and his shocking and brutal murder, which happened inside his own home, carried out by someone he knew. This is a story about the costs that Peter Tosh paid for getting up, standing up, and speaking his mind through his actions and his music. Great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Incessant Chacha, MK2.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to La Bamba by Los Lobos. And why would I play you that specific slice of Yono soy marinero cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 11, 1987. And that was the day that three armed men made their way into Peter Tosh's house, ordered everyone inside down on their bellies, and did not leave until three people were dead. On this episode, Revolutionary Messages, Radio One, Medicine Men, Armed Men, and the assassination of Peter Tosh. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

In Jamaica, music was like food or water, an essential for human life. Reggae music in particular was built around the heartbeat, and it quickly became the heartbeat of the country. It beat everywhere in homes, in corner stores, restaurants and bars, on front steps and street corners. But no heartbeat was as powerful as a Jamaican sound system. A generator, some turntables, and huge speakers. The bigger, the better. Stacked on top of each other in a truck bed to form a wall of sound. Steel horn speakers strung up in the trees or propped up on rooftops,

dance hall parties and spinning dub plates, the heartbeat thumping loud and clear from one neighborhood to the next, the sound of life in the face of great adversity, stretching on for miles in any direction. Tonight, however, was different than most. Tonight, there was no music in the Kingston air, only the sound of crickets and tree frogs serenating the sun as it sank slowly below the horizon.

In the sun's place, the sky was streaked, blood-red. Within minutes, all leftover color faded away. And then there was just darkness. Out of that darkness rumbled three motorcycles. They came up Kingston's Plymouth Avenue before stopping outside a house. The three drivers killed their engines. The man leading the trio, Dennis Lepo-Lobin, knew that his buddy, Peter Tosh, was home, along with his common law wife, Marlene Brown. And by the sound of it, they had company.

Lepo had crashed parties before. He was a regular at Peter's place. He wasn't a musician, or revolutionary, or anyone of great importance for that matter. He was a common criminal, but also a friend. Some called him a leach, a moacher. Leppo knew it wasn't that simple. There was a reason he did the things he did, even the thing he was about to do tonight. Peter knew why. Marlene, too. It was no longer the 1960s or the 1970s, but even now in 1987, times were tough. Some days, your reputation was all you had, and it could be a struggle to maintain even that. Leppo thought about the stacks of fresh green cash Peter had stashed inside, American cash. Cash he'd just made on a lucrative tour. The kind of cash was a kind of

The person who stepped into Bob Marley's shoes made. Thinking about money made Lepo impatient. He rattled the gate that surrounded Peter's house to signal his arrival. The dogs began to bark. Inside the house, Peter Tosh asked his friend Michael Robinson to go let in the remaining guests waiting at the gate. Peter and Marlene were expecting local DJ Jeff Dixon, aka Free Eye and his wife to join them for dinner along with Michael,

who was already here with Urban, Wilton Doc Brown, and drummer Carlton Santa Davis. The dogs were still barking when Michael stepped outside. Seconds later, the dog stopped. Then, the door opened, and Michael came back inside, followed not by a DJ Free Eye, but by Dennis Lepo Lovin and the two men with him. These men weren't here for a dinner party. They all had guns in their hands, zero fucks looks on their faces.

Leppo raised his pistol in the air. This is a hold-up, he said. He looked over to Marlene, and it's you why this is happening. Leppo then turned to Santa Davis. Dread, lay down. Santa did as he was told. He dropped to the floor and got on his belly. Leppo, waving his gun around, told the rest of them to do the same.

Peter, Marlene, Michael, Doc. Peter thought of the pain he'd endured at the hands of seven police officers some nine years prior. He also thought of the ghosts he'd found living there in his house on Plymouth Avenue when he first moved in, 49 of them. He had to persuade them to vacate the premises, one by one. He was the Dupy Conqueror. He was ready to do that again now, ready to usher evil back out the front door, ready to fight. He thought of Bob Marley, attacked just like this, in his own home, forced to think quick to save his own life. Think on his feet.

Marlene shot Peter a look, a look that said, Remember, our other friends will be here soon. And we don't want them involved in this. Let's get this over with Quick. Peter told himself he wasn't doing this for Lepo. He was doing it for Marlene. He got down on his belly.

Leppo wanted to know where the money was. Peter shook his head. There was no money. Not the kind of money Lepo was talking about. Not in the house, that is. Peter wasn't some street dealer who kept his bills stuffed under his mattress. He was a major recording artist on EMI records now. He had international bank accounts.

He had accountants. He never even touched the money he made on his recent tour. All of that was handled for. Lepo was pissed. He didn't believe his old friend. All those shows, those stadiums and clubs and big-time American cities, while Lepo was left behind here. In Jamaica, barely scraping by.

When Peter had nothing to show for it? Bullshit. Leppel told the two other gunmen to go find the real money. They pulled out drawers and overturned cushions, ransacked the place, determined to find the cash that Lebo promised them was there. Eventually, they returned, empty-handed to the room where Peter, Marlene, and the others remained on the floor. Their heads arranged in a semicircle.

One of the gunmen pulled out a machete. If Peter Tosh wanted to fuck around, then he'd get his fucking head cut off right here, right now. Marlene couldn't take it anymore. She told Lepo he was in no good, ingray, a devil. Out to everything Peter had done for him, all the money, all the favors. Had me any compassion? Leppo wasn't hearing it. Marlene was always getting between him and Peter.

And what kind of man was Peter, letting his wife boss him around and tell him, Tell him what to do. Leppo told the other two gunmen to frisk everyone. They took whatever they could find. Chump change. Leppo jammed his gun into the back of Marlene's head, forcing her into the carpet. One of the other gunmen began to pistol with Peter in the head. You're dying tonight, the man said.

Another crack to the face with the butt with a gun and another. And then everyone froze. Leppo motioned for one of the gunmen to go see who was outside. The gumman left and the room was silent. Lepo paced quietly. Peter hoped it wasn't who he thought it was. More innocent people just meant more mess. The door to the house finally reopened, and the gunman walked back in.

His pistol trained on two new arrivals. Free-Ey Dixon and his wife. Shit. Peter wished he could stand up and embrace them both. Apologize for this. Somehow make it right. But there was nothing right about this. Lepo's men working over Freyai,

taking an envelope of cash and a watch from his pocket. But one of the men suddenly hit Freyai's wife in the face with the butt of his gun, and she collapsed to the floor. Leppo told Freyai to follow her down. Beli it. Freehye refused. He stood his ground. Leppo told him again,

Beli it. Freyai remained where he was. Leppo and his men became agitated. They grabbed Free Eye and run. roughly forced him down onto his belly next to the others. And then, for a moment, there was silence. It didn't last long. Within a few seconds, Peter Tosh's house was a wash and sound. Not crickets, not tree frogs, and not a makeshift sound system pulsing with Jamaica's heartbeat. These sounds didn't aim to replicate a heartbeat. They aimed to take the heartbeat away. The first

pistol cocked. It was time for Peter Tosh to step into someone's shoes. Not Bob Marley's. The ones left empty by the ghost Peter once ushered out of his own house. There was a void in the shadow world, a void that was hungry to be filled. And as soon as Lepo and his men pulled their triggers and the guns began to fire, and that void got what it wanted. 1984.

Three years before Dennis Lepo Lobin and two other armed men entered Peter Tosh's house with the intent to rob and kill. Years Peter spent knowing there was a bullet out there with his name on it, and it was only a matter of time. The world didn't allow revolutionaries like him to walk around for too long, looking for truth, demanding justice, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Lennon. The assassin's gun found each and every one of them before long, and they almost got to Bob, too, though Peter wasn't ruling out the possibility that they actually did get to his former bandmate.

You can give someone cancer just like you can give them a bullet in the head. One love didn't protect Bob Marley in the end. Peter had love too, the love of his common law wife Marlene, the love of a reggae community looking to him for leadership. But in the end, love wasn't going to protect him from some asshole with a pistol and no moral compass. Peter grew tired of love and of love songs. He'd been over those for years now, since way back when he was still a whaler, still living under Bob's long shadow. Bob at the time was being groomed for superstardom in a manner that Peter simply didn't understand.

To Peter, music wasn't about being famous. It was about delivering a message, and not a message to shake your ass, a message that if things didn't change, you'd no longer have an ass to shake. This was the ideology behind Peter's greatest songs. 400 years. Get up, stand up, legalize it, equal rights. He was passionate about the truth, about uplifting black people in Jamaica

and uplifting black consciousness all over the world. But he was not compassionate in his delivery. He was prickly, arrogant, and unreasonable, completely unwilling to negotiate when it came, to his beliefs. And this made him difficult to work with, difficult to talk to. But luckily for Peter, he had no trouble finding like-minded souls willing to put in the work. His friend, DJ Free Eye Dixon, fellow Rastafarian, fellow revolutionary, shared Peter's passion. Sometime in the early 1980s, together they conspired to take over the airways from which Freyrieu routinely broadcast, legally, of course,

The pair submitted an application to buy out the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation's Radio One and focuses transmissions entirely on black culture, on Rasta culture, a culture whose voice, Peter and Freyye thought could use some amplification. But Jamaica, specifically the Jamaican government, wasn't ready for that. To give two civilians that kind of control over the airwaves, to tell the truth as they saw it, that was dangerous, that would upset the balance of power. or perhaps more accurately the imbalance of power.

The government was, after all, in the oppression business, downpressing, as the Rastas would call it. Peter knew the concept of the radio takeover increased the target on his back. He was under regular surveillance by the police, eager to deliver another beating and this time finished the job. The fact that he had enough money to purchase a radio station did not go unnoticed by people like Lepo,

who still resorted to criminal activity to scrape by. All of these things loaded that inevitable bullet in the chamber. All of it marked Peter Tosh as dangerous, and a dangerous man needs protection. But circa 1984, Peter Tosh didn't just need protection. He needed healing. He had developed ulcers which were affecting his ability to sing. So we went to Africa to seek out the advice of bush doctors

and medicine men. He communed with the natural world, with the spirits of his ancestors, with his roots. And I'm not talking about genealogy here. I'm talking about actual roots. The kind used by African healers to fight disease, cure ailments. One healer in particular explained how the process was extremely intentional. The right medicinal plant used on the right day at the right hour with the sun facing the right direction, that made all the difference. You could change your life, you could change your form, no longer a man, but a beast. First, a tiger, 600 pounds, four-inch-long teeth, apex predator, all muscle, sovereign, supreme. Then, from a tiger to a snake, cunning, cutthroat, cold-blooded, and from a snake back into a man. The transformers,

experience now with you forever. Transforming, shape-shifting was protection. But although he felt a little better when he returned to Kingston, Peter Tosh did not change. He did not become a tiger or a snake. He became more like Peter Tosh. Stubborn, arrogant, dangerous. Now, however, three years later, September 11, 1987,

lying on his belly inside his own house on Plymouth Avenue, the carpet in his mouth. Peter Tosh felt that the danger had left his body. It stood above him, manifested in Dennis Lepo Loven in his two henchmen. There was no ritual here, no roots, no herbs, no healing. Just the thing Peter Tosh had been waiting for all along. The punishment for becoming more like Peter Tosh, the bullet in the way. inside Lebo's gun. The gun that was now emptying the contents of its clip into the bodies on the floor, it fired alongside the guns of Leppo's associates, and the sound was deafening. Peter's common

law wife Marlene was shot first, but she was lucky. The bullet grazed her skull, injuring her severely, but she lived. Peter wasn't so lucky. Two bullets in the back of his head killed him instantly. Doc Brown and Free-Eye Dixon, both lying next to him, were also killed. Lepo and his henchmen quickly made their way out into the night. They ditched their bikes and hopped into a taxi which they found idling at a meeting place that Lepo had previously arranged. They settled into the cab, guns, and hand and told the driver to floor it. The taxi shot off toward downtown Kingston, a little too fast perhaps. Local police behind them now, Suspicious, gaining.

Lepo told the driver to lose the heat, and the cabby put years of tricks up his sleeves into action. He banged the left, then a right, trying to shake the cops, but the patrol car lingered like a bad smell. And then Lepo had another idea. Stop here. The cabby slammed on the brakes. Lepo and the others were out of the taxi in a flash,

dashing down side streets, swallowed by the shadows before the cops could catch on. The next day the cabby heard the news, along with the rest of the world. Peter Tosh murdered in his home. His conscience was heavy. He went to his local constable and told his story about the night before,

about how a man had made a plan with him to pick him and two others up after they did what they did at Peters, so he'd essentially acted as their getaway driver. The constable told the cabby not to worry about it, to just keep quiet. Soon, cops were at the cabby's front door, arrested for his part in the murder of Peter Tosh,

and two others. But the cops didn't care about the taxi driver. Not really. They just needed him to get to the one person they were really after. The only person who would be punished for what happened that night. The cabby flipped, gave the cops what they were looking for. Dennis Lepo-Lobin, arrested by the same people who, some would say, put them up to the murder in the first place. We'll be right back after this.

Word, word, word. Why did Dennis Lepo Loban and two other men force their way into Peter Tosh's house? Order Peter Tosh, his wife, and his friends down on the ground, and then murder Peter, Doc Brown, and Free Eye Dixon? For money? Money that Lepo thought existed? The same money that Lepo routinely received as a handout from his friend Peter Tosh and had received as recently as that very weak.

Or was it something else? There were many rumors. many theories about what really happened. Three theories in particular, declares the truth. The very thing that Peter Tosh had been able to see so clearly since he was a kid.

What was the truth when it came to Peter Tosh's assassination? It was out there, hiding in plain sight. But first, theory number one, revenge. Lepo had been in and out of prison for years, mostly because he knew no other way to live, always on the wrong side of the law in order to survive.

He also had Peter, a friend from Wayback, who had managed to pull himself out of the Trenchtown ghetto. Peter remained a man of the people and as such he helped the people, not only with his music and his message, but with his money. Lepo benefited from this just as many others did, but Lepo considered himself special. So special that when Peter faced jail time for a gun possession charge, Leppo jumped at the chance to take the rap. He was familiar with the inside. He was well-versed in that convict life. So he offered Peter a deal. He, Leppo, would do the time for the gun charge if Peter promised to take care of his family while he was away. Food, rent, money, a whole nine. And Peter agreed. Peter Tosh then spent the middle of the 1980s becoming more famous and more rich,

while Dennis Lepo Lobin spent the middle of the 1980s in a prison cell. Inside that cell, Lepo became resentful. With every line he notched on the wall to indicate the passing of another day, he wondered if he would always be the one to get the raw deal. He thought about Peter, doing whatever he pleased on the outside, thanks entirely to Lepo's selflessness, and then wondered if Peter was actually holding up his end of the world. the bargain. If the amount of money Peter was giving Lepo's family was directly proportional

to the amount of money Peter was now making us the international face of reggae music. When his sentence was up, Lepo altered the terms of their deal. Shit had changed. Peter was on TV talking about millions of dollars owed to him by EMI, his current record label. Leppo felt he was owed some of that windfall. It was the least Peter could do. Leppo got a couple guys who he knew were discreet, who would keep their mouths shut, and they had pistols, they had motorcycles, and they cut a straight line through the early Kingston night to Peter Tosh's house, where they would take what rightly belonged to Lepo, unless, that is, there was another way. Theory number two, Wounded Pride

Peter's common law wife, Marlene Brown, wasn't about to win a popularity contest. She was what some might call overly protective. She put up a wall around Peter. She screened his calls. She called his shots. She steered his career, which included the release of No Nuclear War, his seventh studio album in 1987. She kept Peter's family and Peter's friends at bay. She wasn't a fan of most people, especially Lepo.

Lepo made her nervous. Once a con, always a con. A plague in Peter's world, a pestilence. so entitled, so pitiful, reaching out to Peter with an empty hand, his pockets empty, belly empty, expecting Peter to fill it, to make everything better. Well, fuck that. And fuck Lepo. Lepo and Lepo alone was responsible for Lepo's own problems, not Peter Tosh.

Marlene told Lepo as much when he was released from prison for his role in the shooting of a police officer. She told Lepo he was weak, that prison had made him even weaker, that prison had turned him into, well, she called him a name, and let's just say it was a terribly offensive name that called into question Lepo's sexuality. An insult that in 1987 in Jamaica, a hard man from the streets like Dennis Lepo Lohben simply could not accept that he wouldn't accept.

Which would explain why, when Lepo and his goons burst into Peter, Tosh's house, before shooting off his gun, he shot a look at Marlene's direction and said, it's you why this is happening. You, her, Marlene Brown. Marlene's words, her cavalier attitude, her careless behavior, she was the reason that her common law husband was murdered, because Lepo felt demeaned and threatened by a name, unless of course, it happened the third way. Theory number three, murder for hire. It was no secret that Peter Tosh aggravated the powers that be in Jamaica.

He lobbied for the legalization of marijuana and defiantly smoked Ghanja in the face of the law. He spoke up for the injustices he saw in the world at a time when the world didn't want those injustices exposed. Peter Tosh in turn exposed at all. Lies, corruption, hypocrisy, and oppressive government throred. driving on political violence. He was nearly beaten to death for being such an irritant, a detective pressed a gun to his head and came close to pulling the trigger. And now, Peter's desire to purchase the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation's Radio One

was a risk that was too great for those who relied on maintaining the status quo. So they, the government, law enforcement, whoever, hired a violent ex-com, Dennis Lepo-Lobin, a man who'd known Pete. Peter for years, a man who had access to Peter's house and his wallet to do their dirty work and eliminate Peter Tosh for them, flanked by two men who were not criminals like Lepo, but actually cops. A detail in this version of events that was allegedly later confirmed by an anonymous Jamaican official. Leppo made it look like a robbery, which is what everyone would expect from him, given his criminal history. But Lepo didn't expect to find so many people at the

house. And then for more to show up while they were in the middle of the hit. It threw him on, and he bungled the job. And by bungled, I mean he left survivors, eyewitnesses. What was he going to do? Murder seven people? Perhaps the people who hired him planned for this. Perhaps they wanted Lepo to be fingered by the remaining victims, and they, the government, law enforcement, whoever, could wipe their hands of the whole thing. The job was done and the best part was, they didn't even have to pay for it. Lepo fancied himself a tough guy, but in the end, he was just a patsy.

Or so went the thinking. After all, Lepo was the only one arrested. He was found guilty by the jury in just 11 minutes, the fastest conviction in Jamaican history at the time, sentenced to hang. The case was closed immediately. All other leads went dead. There was no search for the other two gunmen,

No interest in finding out more about the shocking tragedy that it rippled through Jamaica and the reggae world. No interest in the truth, which was right there. It was in the ocean, in the clouds. It was carried on the wind. But no one could see it. Not really. Now that Peter Tosh was gone, so were the eyes that were able to identify the truth amongst all of the other noise. Eyes that the devil once tried to take for himself with an old barbed wire fence.

The world carried on as usual. Conflicts, divides, brother against brother. So much going on that no one at the time or the ability to see the truth for what it really was. Dennis Lepo-Lobin was adamant that only he knew the truth. Not about what happened on the night of September 11, 1987. about what didn't happen. He said it over and over again from the Jamaican jail cell he now called home. He said he was innocent.

He said he didn't murder Peter Tosh, Doc Brown, and Free Eye Dixon. He said he was somewhere else when the murders took place. Peter's common law wife, Marlene Brown, set him up. She pinned this whole thing on him because she didn't like him, because she was vengeful. Lepo appealed his sentence. The one that said he was to be hung by the next. until he was dead. He was now serving life in prison. That wasn't going to stop him from telling his truth. A story that ran in direct opposition to the story told by the four people who survived

the shooting. Marlene Brown, Santa Davis, Michael Robinson, and Free Eyes wife, Joy Dixon. They all knew who Lepo was and all identified him as the ringleader of the trio who had invaded Peter's house. Santa Davis, for one, could never forget. get the faces of the men who shot him. At first, one of those gunmen, perhaps Lepo himself, Santa couldn't be sure with his face to the floor, had the barrel of his gun to the back of Santa's head. At the moment the pistol fired, Santa moved, just enough so that the bullet didn't enter his skull but his left arm. The 9mm slug went in through his clavicle and immediately collapsed his lung. Santa felt like he had been pinched, and then it felt like he had no arm at all.

He had a look at his arm to confirm that it was still there. He didn't know that he was bleeding on the inside, drowning in his own blood. In the emergency room, doctors saved Santa's life. Meanwhile, paramedics wheeled Peter Tosh in on a gurney next to where Santa was being treated. The doctors then struggled to do the impossible to bring a dead man back to life. Futile task. One doctor stated the obvious. I'm afraid Mr. Tosh has left us.

Just weeks before his 43rd birthday. And just months before, he was honored with the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Recording for his seventh studio album No Nuclear War. His first Grammy and the first major award that acknowledged his greatness and impact, a greatness and impact so profound that it was believed he was killed for it. Peter Tosh, of course, was not present at the same. ceremony at Radio City Music Hall to accept his award. He was not present to see his revolutionary stance and his rebel music finally lifted up for

all the world to see. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you'll listening as a Disgraceland All-Axacist member. Thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details.

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