79-year-old Bill Oxley, ex-agent of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is re-writing the history of the death of reggae legend Bob Marley, claiming he actually killed the legend. Marley tragically died aged only 36-years-old, leading music lovers world-wide to grieve as the Jamaican icon’s life and career were cut short following a four-year battle with cancer.
The story of cancer may seem untrue as startling claims have emerged from a deathbed confession made by an ex-CIA officer, where he admitted to the killing. Oxley is alleged to have claimed the murder of Marley among 17 other assassinations for the American government between 1974 and 1985, at a time when he said the CIA “was a law unto itself.” Oxley, who reportedly worked as an operative for the CIA for 29 years, is alleged to have said he was often used as a hitman on targets deemed to “represent a threat to the interests of the United States.”
In a purported interview shared widely online, he admitted having no problem with proceeding with the Bob Marley assassination because “I was a patriot, I believed in the CIA, and I didn’t question the motivation of the agency – I’ve always understood that sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.” According to the conspiracy theory, Oxley used faked press credentials to gain access to Bob Marley at his Blue Mountain retreat; introducing himself as a famous photographer working for the New York Times, and gave Bob Marley a gift. “I gave him a pair of Converse All Stars. Size 10.
When he tried on the right shoe, he screamed out ‘OUUUCH.‘ “That was it. His life was over right there and then. The nail in the shoe was tainted with cancer viruses and bacteria. If it pierced his skin, which it did, it was goodnight nurse.”
“There had been a series of high-profile assassinations of counter-culture figures in the United States in the late sixties, early seventies. By the time Bob Marley’s time came around, we thought subtlety was the order of the day. No more bullets and splattered brains.” Mr. Oxley says he kept close contact with Marley during the final years of his life, ensuring the medical advice he received in Paris, London and the United States “would hasten his demise rather than cure him.” “The last time I saw Bob before he died he had removed the dreadlocks, and his weight was dropping like a stone,” he says. “He was very withdrawn, unbelievably small. He was shrinking in front of us. The cancer had done it’s job.”
Although widely dismissed as fiction, the account does tally with findings by UK scientists in 2014, who discovered the mysterious acral melanomas – the rare type of skin cancer that caused reggae musician’s demise – was in fact not caused by the sun. Bob Marley’s soon Ziggy has previously implied his Father was killed, saying in a 2013 interview about the death: “I don’t know what to believe … there are a lot of theories.”
In the late 1970s, Jamaica was flooded with cheap guns, heroin, cocaine, right-wing propaganda, death squad rule and, as Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop described it three years later, the CIA’s “pernicious attempts [to] wreck the economy.” “Destabilization,” Bishop told the emergent New Jewel Party, “is the name given the most recently developed method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and violence.” In response to the fascistic machinations of the CIA, Marley wove his lyrics into a revolutionary crucifix to ward off the cloak-and-dagger “vampires” descending upon the island. The CIA, which has denied any involvement in Marley’s death, has been approached for a comment.
The story of cancer may seem untrue as startling claims have emerged from a deathbed confession made by an ex-CIA officer, where he admitted to the killing. Oxley is alleged to have claimed the murder of Marley among 17 other assassinations for the American government between 1974 and 1985, at a time when he said the CIA “was a law unto itself.” Oxley, who reportedly worked as an operative for the CIA for 29 years, is alleged to have said he was often used as a hitman on targets deemed to “represent a threat to the interests of the United States.”
In a purported interview shared widely online, he admitted having no problem with proceeding with the Bob Marley assassination because “I was a patriot, I believed in the CIA, and I didn’t question the motivation of the agency – I’ve always understood that sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.” According to the conspiracy theory, Oxley used faked press credentials to gain access to Bob Marley at his Blue Mountain retreat; introducing himself as a famous photographer working for the New York Times, and gave Bob Marley a gift. “I gave him a pair of Converse All Stars. Size 10.
When he tried on the right shoe, he screamed out ‘OUUUCH.‘ “That was it. His life was over right there and then. The nail in the shoe was tainted with cancer viruses and bacteria. If it pierced his skin, which it did, it was goodnight nurse.”
“There had been a series of high-profile assassinations of counter-culture figures in the United States in the late sixties, early seventies. By the time Bob Marley’s time came around, we thought subtlety was the order of the day. No more bullets and splattered brains.” Mr. Oxley says he kept close contact with Marley during the final years of his life, ensuring the medical advice he received in Paris, London and the United States “would hasten his demise rather than cure him.” “The last time I saw Bob before he died he had removed the dreadlocks, and his weight was dropping like a stone,” he says. “He was very withdrawn, unbelievably small. He was shrinking in front of us. The cancer had done it’s job.”
Although widely dismissed as fiction, the account does tally with findings by UK scientists in 2014, who discovered the mysterious acral melanomas – the rare type of skin cancer that caused reggae musician’s demise – was in fact not caused by the sun. Bob Marley’s soon Ziggy has previously implied his Father was killed, saying in a 2013 interview about the death: “I don’t know what to believe … there are a lot of theories.”
In the late 1970s, Jamaica was flooded with cheap guns, heroin, cocaine, right-wing propaganda, death squad rule and, as Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop described it three years later, the CIA’s “pernicious attempts [to] wreck the economy.” “Destabilization,” Bishop told the emergent New Jewel Party, “is the name given the most recently developed method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and violence.” In response to the fascistic machinations of the CIA, Marley wove his lyrics into a revolutionary crucifix to ward off the cloak-and-dagger “vampires” descending upon the island. The CIA, which has denied any involvement in Marley’s death, has been approached for a comment.
