"Wanted Dread or Alive" Bullets and Blood Part 2
In further unraveling the mythos surrounding Bob Marley's death, Host Henry K critically analyzes the proliferation of conspiracy theories, particularly the infamous 'poison boot' narrative that posits nefarious intent behind his rare form of melanoma. Through expert testimonies and thorough investigation, the episode dismantles these urban legends, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing fact from fiction. The discussion unveils the complexities of Marley's health struggles, drawing attention to the scientific underpinnings of melanoma and the multifaceted factors contributing to its progression. The speakers advocate for a nuanced understanding of Marley's demise, urging listeners to confront the uncomfortable truths about mortality and the often invisible forces at play in the lives of those who dare to challenge the status quo. Ultimately, Henry K joined by Malrey Biographer Roger Steffens not only seek to clarify Marley's story but also create a broader commentary on the nature of truth and the societal impulses that seek to obscure it.
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Produced by Henry K in association with Voice Boxx Studios Kingston, Jamaica
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Transcript
The CIA does not care about human life.
Speaker A:It doesn't care about peace at all.
Speaker A:It cares about winning and perpetuating and expanding itself.
Speaker A:And that's not an exaggeration.
Speaker A:They have an entire procedure they've developed over the last 40 years since Gary Webb.
Speaker A:He destroyed his career, lost his marriage, his finances, and then wound up in a hotel room with two bullets in his head because he reported on CIA drug running and he wrote the book Dark Alliance.
Speaker A:Their most favorite form of assassination is pushing someone to suicide.
Speaker A:And then that gives them the doctrine of plausible deniab.
Speaker A: in: Speaker A:Sabotage, subversion, economic warfare, assassination can do anything it wants.
Speaker A:As long as there's plausible denial for the US Government.
Speaker A:It can deny any involvement.
Speaker A:The CIA can do anything it wants.
Speaker A:Now imagine that with their 39 billion plus budget and the power of secrecy they have, the things that they have done and are doing are unconscionable.
Speaker B:Entertainer and reggae star Bob Marley, Rita Marley and the manager of the Whalers, Don Taylor, are now patients in the University Hospital after his receiving gunshot wounds during a shooting incident which took place at Marley's home at 56 Hope Road tonight.
Speaker C:How long shall they kill our prophets While we stand aside and look?
Speaker B:The passing of another Jamaican superstar.
Speaker D:Reggae dynamo Peter Tott, one of the original winners, had passed away by the gun.
Speaker C:By the gun.
Speaker C:Glory to John.
Speaker C:Let him be.
Speaker C:Praise his righteousness.
Speaker E:Govern the world.
Speaker C:There's a frequency that most people never hear, a vibration beyond human perception where power distills its most intimate violence.
Speaker C:Bob Marley understood this frequency.
Speaker C:And that the most dangerous weapons are those you cannot see.
Speaker C:Yes, Robert Nestor, Molly, that little yellow boy from 9 miles Jamaica, teased for his mixed heritage, who transformed his personal pain into a global symphony of resilience.
Speaker C:His life wasn't just a musical journey.
Speaker C:It was a living conspiracy theory, a story that challenged every system designed to silence him.
Speaker C:Imagine someone born in a rural village with no electricity, fathered by a man rarely seen and raised in the Kingston slums, becomes a global icon.
Speaker C:Isn't that itself a kind of miracle that defies conventional storytelling?
Speaker C:A conspiracy theory is never about this story.
Speaker C:It's about the wounded heart asking who is truly in control.
Speaker C:And for marginalized communities who've experienced historic oppression, these urban legends become a form of resistance, a way of turning helplessness into narrative power.
Speaker C: to a rare form of melanoma in: Speaker C:His body became a battlefield.
Speaker C:His cancer spread with the velocity that medical professionals found extraordinary.
Speaker C:A Sloan Kettering doctor noted there was more cancer in Marley than he had seen in any living human being.
Speaker C:The stories that persisted about a CIA plot surrounding Marley's death weren't just speculations.
Speaker C:These were desperate attempts to understand power, the very forces that shape human destinies.
Speaker C:The most pervasive urban legend, as we'll learn, involved a poison boot given to Bob that delivered a deadly toxin to the very same toe where his cancer was first diagnosed.
Speaker C:And the mysterious documentarian with connections to intelligence agencies that gave him the gift.
Speaker C:Bob Marley's voice grew even louder after his death, while simultaneously being commodified.
Speaker C:The Marley estate generates tens of millions of dollars a year on everything from coffee mugs to cannabis products, a transformation that would bemuse, if not trouble.
Speaker C:The man whose famous last words were money can't buy life.
Speaker C:But as we've learned, money can buy death.
Speaker C:Which is why so many people continue to ask if his illness was engineered.
Speaker C:They say that truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker C:Yet in a world of misinformation, where the official narrative crumbles under the weight of coincidence, it becomes impossible to tell one from the other.
Speaker C:But at least let's start with the truth.
Speaker C: An article dated September: Speaker C:The article is titled CIA Toxin T O X I n Toxin T O C S I n the boot with its tiny steel tongue flashed out.
Speaker C:Bond felt a sharp pain in his right calf.
Speaker C:Numbness was creeping up Bond's body.
Speaker C:There was no feelings in his fingers.
Speaker C:Breathing became difficult.
Speaker C:Bond pivoted slowly on his heel and crashed headlong onto the wine red floor.
Speaker C:So ends Ian Fleming's delightful spy novel from Rusher With Love.
Speaker C:With James Bond's fate Left hanging, Agent 007, of course, survives to brave new dangers in Dr.
Speaker C:No, in which it is revealed that he has been dealt a near fatal dose of fugu poison.
Speaker C:It comes from the sex organs of a Japanese globefish.
Speaker C:An eminent neurologist tells Bond's boss, it's terrible stuff and very quick.
Speaker C:Last week, Fleming's words sprang eerily into the real world.
Speaker C:Idaho Democrat Frank Church, chairman of the special Senate committee investigating the CIA and other intelligence agencies, revealed that the US's James Bonds have their own secret supply of quick and terrible poisons.
Speaker C:In direct violation of a Presidential order, in keeping with the draft convention of the UN Disarmament Conference, Richard Nixon five years ago ordered the destruction of toxins made with cobra venom.
Speaker C:That miniscule stockpile is enough, said Church, to kill many thousands of people.
Speaker C:Dart guns, six tenths of a milligram of saxitoxin can kill an adult, often within an hour, by blocking transmission of impulses in the nervous system.
Speaker A:System.
Speaker C: in Fleming's account, in the: Speaker C:The Agency reportedly developed dart guns and other clever means of delivering the poison.
Speaker C:Two months ago, CIA Director William Colby told the White House he had learned that someone had hidden away, presumably for future use, small amounts of the cobra and shellfish toxins at an Agency lab in downtown Washington.
Speaker C:The White House informed the Church Committee, which this week will hold public hearings on the matter.
Speaker C:Church hopes to discover whether the toxins were ever used in CIA assassination plots.
Speaker C:He is even more concerned with the fact that the Agency violated Nixon's command.
Speaker C:The episode, he said, points up a looseness of command and control within the CIA.
Speaker C:According to a source close to Church's panel, some low ranking CIA official unknown to the Agency's chiefs had made the decision to retain small quantities of the toxin.
Speaker C:Congress has requested that the CIA hold onto all evidence that could be useful to the Church Committee investigation.
Speaker C:Parts of this story arrive like encrypted messages, their true meaning hidden between the lines of official records.
Speaker C:Yes, that's the same CIA Director William Colby that was named in the Reuters news report as heading Dr.
Speaker C:Kissinger's covert operation to destabilize Jamaica.
Speaker C:And while he was testifying before the Church Committee about deadly toxins illegally stored by the CIA, that of course himself and the upper heads at the Agency were conveniently left in the dark about.
Speaker C:He was simultaneously waging war on the good people of Jamaica, attempting to overthrow the island's elected government.
Speaker C: ey just Prior to his December: Speaker C:You see, that Smile Jamaica concert was more than a music event.
Speaker C:It was a moment of potential reconciliation in a country torn apart by tribal warfare.
Speaker C:Marley had agreed to perform despite the attempt on his life, in order to cool down the volcanic tensions between the two rival political factions, Chris Blackwell, founder of Marley's record label, Island Records, never one to let a good marketing opportunity pass by, hired a film crew from the United States to fly down and record the event, hoping to forever preserve the historic performance.
Speaker C:Among the production team that arrived in Jamaica was a talented young cameraman who'd later become an award winning filmmaker named Carl Colby.
Speaker C:An interesting piece of trivia.
Speaker C:He was the 25 year old son of the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Colby.
Speaker C:And while his father was funding a turf war wreaking havoc on the streets of Kingston that had bodies piling up faster than they could be buried, his son Carl Colby, by all accounts was granted unprecedented access to Marley not just as a filmmaker, but as a documentarian, capturing every moment of vulnerability.
Speaker C:After the assassination attempt left Marley wounded, Colby followed Marley up to Chris Blackwell's Strawberry Hill retreat, a mound sanctuary that was more than just a safe house.
Speaker C:Mysteriously, all those reels of footage prior to the show disappeared without a trace.
Speaker C:And the only film that survived was that of the concert itself.
Speaker C:And let's discuss music mogul Chris Blackwell for a minute, whose reputation is divided between two camps.
Speaker C:Those who see him as the genius that introduced Bob Marley's untapped talent to the world, and those who see him as the man who broke up the original Wailers in order to commercially exploit Bob's untapped talent for himself.
Speaker C:Either way, Blackwell was no ordinary producer.
Speaker C:His roots ran deep into Jamaican colonial history.
Speaker C:A descendant of one of the island's most powerful white families, he was a man who understood the delicate choreography of cultural export and political influence.
Speaker C:The connections were intricate.
Speaker C:Blackwell began his career working on the set of the James Bond film Dr.
Speaker C:No, thanks to the help of close family friend and Bond author Ian Fleming.
Speaker C:Fleming, a former British military intelligence officer, moved to Jamaica after World War II and wrote the James Bond series from his picturesque home in Port Antonio Goldeneye, named after one of his secret missions in the war.
Speaker C:In one of his spy thrillers, From Russia to Love, Bond is almost killed by a toxin so precisely it mimics natural disease, life imitating art, or art revealing hidden mechanisms of power, we see how conspiracy begins to take shape.
Speaker C:Like a melody, this song begins with an innocuous gift, unremarkable in every way except for the one who delivered it.
Speaker C:Carl Colby, son of CIA director William Colby, a man with access to corridors that most never glimpse.
Speaker C:Carl Colby, whose father, CIA, had just been caught red Handed, holding onto the biological toxins saxitoxin and cobra venom, microscopic weapons capable of silencing a human body with less than a milligram.
Speaker C:The widely believed and popular poison boot theory centers around the young Carl Colby and a brand new pair of soccer cleats, or boots, as they're called in Jamaica, he gifted to Bob in the days following the shooting at Hope Road, while Marley was seeking refuge at Strawberry Hill.
Speaker C:And let me first unequivocally state, there is absolutely no evidence at all other than sketchy second and third hand accounts from supposed witnesses on the scene who say Marley grimaced in pain and said ow.
Speaker C:After trying on one of those new shoes given to him by Colby, only to reveal that his big toe had been punctured by a thin copper wire hidden within the boot.
Speaker C:Bob, thinking nothing of it at the time, moved on.
Speaker C:But this was in fact, a poison boot, the copper wire laced with a toxin that had transferred the deadly melanoma cells into his body.
Speaker C:And at that point, it was just a matter of time.
Speaker C:Sure enough, within five years, Bob Marley, a physically fit 36 year old picture of health, would be dead, his unrecognizable body ravaged by the rare cancer.
Speaker C: tack on Marley at his home in: Speaker C:It turns out the more sophisticated elimination would later come disguised as illness.
Speaker C: ovel From Russia with Love in: Speaker C:But like so much misinformation disseminated in both the Marley and Tosh cases, these distractions are designed to keep us from exploring more productive avenues of truth.
Speaker C:And I know there are conspiracy enthusiasts who are all in on the poison boot theory, but this show is about a quest for truth.
Speaker C:And when you methodically strip away the impossible, the implausible and the convenient, what you're left with is not just the truth, but a skeleton of reality itself.
Speaker C:How did Bob Marley actually die?
Speaker C:To really examine the bones of these urban legends under a microscope, I'm calling on two trusted voices, experts in their perspective fields, to help shine a light on what is fact and hopefully close the book on what is fiction.
Speaker C:First, excerpts of my conversation with Roger Steffen, author, Marley biographer, music historian, who was quite adamant and definitive that even though Carl Colby was indeed the cameraman for the Smile Jamaica concert and the son of William Colby, the CIA director at the time, there was nothing nefarious or underhanded about his presence in Jamaica.
Speaker C:He was merely a talented cameraman that was part of the crew hired to film the event.
Speaker C:It was only decades later, after Roger Steffens contacted him, that Colby even found out that he was at the center of a conspiracy theory surrounding Bob Marley's death.
Speaker C:Oh, by the way, another interesting piece of trivia.
Speaker C:Carl Colby was next door neighbor to O.J.
Speaker C:simpson's ex wife, Nicole, and he testified in Simpson's murder trial that he once observed O.J.
Speaker C:lurking outside Nicole's house and called 911.
Speaker C:So, Roger, now circling back to Marley, I just want to clear up and debunk some myths that are out there, you know, especially when it comes to Carl Colby, the poison boot.
Speaker C:You're the one who actually tracked down Carl Colby, right?
Speaker C:Correct.
Speaker D:They knew nothing about it.
Speaker C:Oh, he didn't.
Speaker D:I think they were on their way from the airport when they heard the bulletin on the radio that Bob had been shot.
Speaker D:You know, and then Marlon James book did nothing to help the situation because so many people, just as I feared, take that as a Romana clef, a fictionalized version of true events.
Speaker D:And I think he places the Carl Colby figure weeks in advance, going down and putting the posse together to come and kill Bob, which is utter nonsense and fiction.
Speaker C:Now, Roger, you were friends with Marley, close with everyone in his inner circle.
Speaker C:Did anyone ever see Bob try on a boot, a cleat, get poked with any needles, injections, anything like that?
Speaker D:You know, Neville Garrick told me it never happened.
Speaker D:Skill Cole, his best friend, said it never happened.
Speaker D:Plus, even, even if it were, you can't give someone cancer.
Speaker D:You can't inject someone with melanoma.
Speaker D:It's medically impossible.
Speaker D:So, you know, forget about that.
Speaker D:There was no poison boot.
Speaker D:Ever.
Speaker C:Roger Stephan stands as a custodian of Bob Marley's legacy.
Speaker C:Not just preserving the icon, but dismantling the urban myths and rumors that have calcified around his death.
Speaker C:With the precision of a scholarly detective, Steffens has spent years cutting through the sensationalism, fighting dangerous mythologies that rob a human being of their authentic story.
Speaker C:We'll circle back to Roger shortly to discuss another deeply disturbing conspiracy, this time revolving around Marley's cancer treatment in Switzerland during his final months of life under the care of the notorious Dr.
Speaker C:Joseph Issals, the so called Nazi doctor.
Speaker C:But for now, our journey turns from the archives of memory to the precise landscape of medical understanding.
Speaker C:Dr.
Speaker C:D, as we'll call him, longtime friend and maestro of melanoma, emerges, ready to decode the biological narrative of Marley's ultimate vulnerability.
Speaker C:This is not about perpetuating myths, but about understanding the Brutal, unforgiving biology of melanoma.
Speaker C:A disease that doesn't discriminate, that doesn't bow to political pressure or revolutionary spirits.
Speaker C:You see, every cell in our body tells a story more complex than any conspiracy could imagine.
Speaker C:Hey, Dr.
Speaker C:D.
Speaker C:Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker E:Hey, Henry K.
Speaker E:How can I help you out?
Speaker E:Let me know how you want to get started.
Speaker C:Well, yeah, let's start out at the beginning.
Speaker C:What kind of cancer did Bob Marley have?
Speaker E:He had a rare melanoma.
Speaker C:How rare was it in terms of melanoma?
Speaker E:It was the subungual below nail variant.
Speaker E:This accounts for only up to 3% of all melanomas.
Speaker C:3%.
Speaker C:So that's a very small percentage of melanomas that Bob had.
Speaker C:That's extremely rare.
Speaker E:Yes, I'm afraid it is.
Speaker C:So Dr.
Speaker C:Rita Marley famously said in an interview that Bob got his cancer from the white side of his family.
Speaker C:And I've also heard Roger Steffens say that there was a history of cancer on his father's side who was white.
Speaker C:So does race play a part in this type of cancer?
Speaker E:These melanomas can occur in anyone, regardless of race.
Speaker E:But actually his type of melanoma accounts for around 75% of all melanomas in dark skinned people.
Speaker C:Really?
Speaker E:If anything, this came from his non white side.
Speaker C:So that's probably fairly recent information because I don't think many people knew that at the time of his death or it certainly wasn't publicized.
Speaker C:So here's the big question.
Speaker C:There's a widely believed urban legend that somehow Bob Marley got the cancer from a poison boot that injected him with a needle that gave him the melanoma somehow.
Speaker C:Is this possible?
Speaker C:Can someone get melanoma?
Speaker C:Is it contagious?
Speaker E:Is this cancer transmissible by contact needle or syringe?
Speaker E:No, there's no science in favor of that.
Speaker E:There's no known virus, for instance.
Speaker C:So in your best medical opinion, a maestro of melanoma, someone who does this all the time, how did Bob get such a rare form of cancer?
Speaker E:The cause is unknown.
Speaker E:Not so much the sun, but genetic factors that weaken immune surveillance for this type of cancer plus some kind of trauma can contribute cause inflammation.
Speaker C:Well, that's also new because back in the day they didn't think that an injury could result in cancer.
Speaker C:So takes a little bit away from the conspiracy.
Speaker E:But in any specific case, Henry, it's really hard to know.
Speaker E:For example, did he have the melanoma and that weakened the skin vessels under this nail so that it bled more easily when he Kicked something?
Speaker E:Or did he injure his toe and the resulting inflammatory response somehow triggered the beginning of cancer?
Speaker E:We don't know.
Speaker C:Okay, fair enough.
Speaker C:What do we know?
Speaker E:He had an unfortunately rare, often overlooked skin cancer.
Speaker E:Even if the toe was amputated, that would not have guaranteed curing it.
Speaker E:But it's highly doubtful that this was given to him intentionally or accidentally from somebody else.
Speaker C:Could it be that Bob Marley didn't actually need a poison boot to kill him?
Speaker C:That his cancer spread with such velocity because of a change of lifestyle, change of routine, the exile to London?
Speaker C:All those things.
Speaker E:Any of these issues, and in any combination.
Speaker E:Can indirectly contribute by weakening one's immune system against diseases like cancer.
Speaker E:The reality is just very sad.
Speaker C:Yes, it is.
Speaker E:A rare talent dies of a very rare disease.
Speaker E:And there's no conspiracy there.
Speaker C:Well, thank you for your honest opinion, and thank you for your time.
Speaker C:And remember, we'll keep your real name under wraps.
Speaker C:Because we don't want the CIA coming after you.
Speaker C:In the twilight of his life, Bob Marley became more than a patient.
Speaker C:He was a pilgrim seeking salvation in the clinical coldness of Bavaria.
Speaker C:In the hands of Dr.
Speaker C:Joseph Issels, a physician whose reputation oscillated between miracle worker and medical pariah.
Speaker C:Someone who practiced experimental treatment during the dark chapters of medical history.
Speaker C:For Marley, this was perhaps his last hope.
Speaker C:The final act of resistance against a disease that was consuming him from within.
Speaker C:But his death soon after the treatment became fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Speaker C:Was this another assassination?
Speaker C:This time dressed in the sterile white of medical intervention?
Speaker C:The timing too perfect, the circumstances too convenient?
Speaker C:And once again, we turn to Roger Steffens for answers.
Speaker C:The Joseph, the Dr.
Speaker C:Issel, the SS doctor.
Speaker C:I love how you describe his true story.
Speaker D:Okay, Dr.
Speaker D:Issel's wife tells the story.
Speaker D:It's in so much things to say.
Speaker D:I think the dates are accurate.
Speaker D: Around: Speaker D:Issels became a licensed doctor in Germany.
Speaker D:Went to work in a Catholic hospital.
Speaker D:One of the priests there told him if he wanted to make advances in his career, he should immediately join the ss, which he did.
Speaker D:And five years later, as the Nazis consolidated their powers, they demanded that Dr.
Speaker D:Issels no longer treat any Jewish patients.
Speaker D:And he refused to do that.
Speaker D:So not only did he get kicked out of the Party, but he got taken into the army and sent to the front lines in Russia eventually, where he was captured.
Speaker D:And he was a prisoner of war for most of the Second World War.
Speaker D:And so the idea that some, quote, Nazi doctor took care of Bob and made sure that he wouldn't leave there Alive is, again, utter nonsense.
Speaker C:But he never was in any camp, served in camp, it was at the hospitals.
Speaker D:Oh, he was in jail, it was in prison.
Speaker C:And not to mention, by the time that Bob got to that stage in Switzerland, I think he was being.
Speaker C:He had been.
Speaker C:This cancer had spread so far, I don't know if, you know, had anything.
Speaker D:Given up by the doctors at Sloan Kettering who told him he had maybe three weeks left to live.
Speaker C: med Marley's home in December: Speaker C:But the emotional assault of being hunted in your home, in your own country, by the very people you trusted.
Speaker C:For Bob Marley, that wound was fatal.
Speaker C:Cancer, as we now understand all these years after Marley's passing, is not just a genetic lottery.
Speaker C:It's a complex interplay of environment, stress, nutrition, exercise and lived experiences.
Speaker C:Marley's forced exile from Jamaica to London, his separation from his roots and everything his heart, mind and body held sacred, created the invisible toxins that perhaps contributed more to his illness than any mythical poisoned boot.
Speaker C:In the end, the most sophisticated assassination is not a bullet or a toxin, but the systematic destruction of a human being's environment, community, family, sense of self.
Speaker C:Bob Marley and Peter Tosh's stories reveal a profound survival is an act of continual resistance.
Speaker C:And sometimes the most radical act of love is simply refusing to be silenced.
Speaker C:Tell me, who measures the toll of a revolutionary spirit interrupted?
Speaker C:Who counts the songs unsung, the healing uninitiated?
Speaker C:We'll never know how the world could have benefited with just a few more years of Bob Marley, just a couple of more songs.
Speaker C:But we do know what happened to Jamaica once he was gone.
Speaker C: By: Speaker C:Jamaica had a conservative leader to kowtow and pander to his newly elected Republican counterpart in the United States, President Ronald Reagan.
Speaker C:Siaga and the JLP would spend the next decade consolidating power from the upper houses of Parliament to the downtown gullies and garrisons, those hardened JLP gunmen and criminal gangs that tormented the Kingston streets until they turned blood red.
Speaker C:Well, under the new administration, they were war heroes, promoted to ministers and judges and police officers.
Speaker C:The gangsters were given badges and all the impunity that went with them.
Speaker C:1980s Jamaica was a decade of exacting revenge, settling old scores.
Speaker C:And with Bob Marley out of the way, there was another outspoken whaler still left in Babylon's crosshairs.
Speaker C:Peter Tosh.
Speaker E:It.
Speaker C:Sary K.
