A Bob Marley biopic is coming in January. It may resurrect an old conspiracy theory

Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981 the age of 36. Will a long-in-the-planning biopic revive interest in the conspiracy theory he was killed by the CIA?

If you were part the minuscule audience who watched the MTV Music Video Awards last week (according to Nielsen overnights, only 865,000 people tuned in to a show that featured Taylor Swift, Shakira, Selena Gomez, Nicki Minaj, and a reunited NSYNC), you would have seen a new teaser for One Love, the upcoming Bob Marley biopic.

The movie stars Kingsley Ben-Adir (who is British and not Jamaican to the consternation of some) and not only focuses on his music but also on his social and political impact. That includes the politically motivated assassination attempt on Bob and his wife by seven gunmen on Dec. 3, 1975.

Bob would live on for a few more years before dying of cancer on May 11, 1981, at the age of 36. His battle with the disease began with an exceedingly rare form of fast-growing and hard-to-diagnose melanoma (acral lentiginous melanoma) under the nail of the big toe on his right foot. Had Bob agreed to an amputation when he was diagnosed in 1977, he might still be alive. But because of his Rastafarian beliefs about the sanctity of the body, he chose other treatments which obviously did not work.

However, there are those who believe that this cancer was induced and implanted in his body by the CIA. According to this conspiracy theory, the CIA was concerned about Marley’s power-to-the-people influence and declared him a threat to U.S. interests in the Caribbean. This story has been thoroughly discredited but it just refuses to go away. It goes something like this.

The 1975 assassination attempt came as political tensions in Jamaica were running very hot. The two main political parties were the Peoples National Party (PNP) and the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP). Both parties recognized the popularity and power of Marley and aggressively courted his favour. Marley, however, recognizing the volatility of the situation, did his best to remain politically neutral during that election cycle.

But because of the peace-and-love-and unity, there was a suspicion that he was on the side of Prime Minister Michael Manley and the PNP, which was backed by the USSR and Cuba. Meanwhile, the CIA had allegedly backed the JLP. Manley was viewed as a communist (or at the very least, socialist) sympathizer, and continued his rule risked increasing the Soviet contagion of the Caribbean. Marley was starting a revolution and needed to be stopped.

One of the gunmen, Carly Byah Mitchell, was aligned with the JLP, and rumoured to have been contracted by the CIA for the job in exchange for cocaine and other drugs, something that he confessed after he and his fellow assassins were arrested and tried. They were eventually executed. Marley’s popularity and the power of his music only increased.

When the assassination attempt failed, CIA operatives were dispatched to Jamaica to fix the situation and finish the hit. Those methods were to be much more subtle and untraceable. According to the conspiracy story, an agent named Bill Oxley became the clean-up man, a veteran of 17 other assassinations sanctioned by the U.S. Government.