by Ioan Grillo
It is striking how quickly Jim Brown fell from grace after Seaga lost power. The next year, in 1990, a U.S. court in Florida indicted Jim Brown for the 1984 crack house killings and Jamaican police arrested and held him while he fought extradition. As the legal resources dried up, Jim Brown was due to be extradited to the United States in 1992. But he never made it. A mysterious fire killed him in his cell.
Officially, Jim Brown’s death by fire was an accident. But his lawyer (and Jamaican Labor Party politician) Tom Tavares-Finson described what most people thought of that.
If you believe Jim Brown just burned to death by accident in his jail cell you’ll believe in the tooth fairy. The only thing I can tell you for sure is I saw the body, and Jim Brown is dead.5
Conspiracy theories raged as usual. It was said that police killed Jim Brown as they were scared of what he would tell Americans about political corruption. Whatever the motives, Jim Brown’s death would be a harsh lesson for young Dudus, who was determined not to end up in a Jamaican jail.
Adding to the pressure on Dudus, his half brother Mark Anthony, known as Jah T, was killed at almost exactly the same time. Jah T was leading the Shower Posse while his father was in prison. A mysterious gunman shot him as he rode on his motorcycle. When he died in intensive care, dozens of his henchmen stormed the hospital threatening the doctors for failing to save him.
Dudus, now aged twenty-two, had to step up. He became the new don, while the posse was on the ropes and his family was being slaughtered.
CHAPTER 21
Dudus was crowned king of Tivoli when the Shower Posse was at an all-time low. It was flailing from the U.S. crackdown, the loss of its allies in the Jamaican government, and vicious infighting. Dudus was a college boy and illegitimate son who many West Kingston gangsters thought didn’t have the nerve to turn this around.
But defying expectations, Dudus built himself up as the President and took the Shower’s garrison gangster rule to new heights. He outlived fifteen more years of PNP government before being strengthened by the Labor Party returning to power under Bruce Golding. It took American agents almost two decades to assemble their evidence against Dudus and they had to fight their diplomatic battle with Golding to bring him in.
However, the U.S. prosecutors eventually built an enormous case against the Prezi through arrests across the United States, extensive DEA probes in the Caribbean, and help from some officers in the Jamaican narcotics division. The case files sit in a New York federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, where I spend days devouring them. Filling a series of boxes, they contain a broad array of evidence and testimony, running from the early nineties to Dudus’s sentencing in 2012 and subsequent appeals.
Key to the federal case are several witnesses including hit men and traffickers from inside the Shower Posse, who took the stand in New York in 2011 and 2012. The prosecution also used its taped conversations of Dudus talking by telephone in Jamaica, sometimes to his cohorts in New York. This evidence paints a detailed picture of the President’s empire.
During the hearings, the hit men not only described how Dudus trafficked cocaine, marijuana, and guns. They also gave graphic accounts of how he ran his fiefdom in West Kingston, including his extortion and vote rigging. The prosecutors didn’t need to go into such detail to prove the conspiracy charges. But perhaps they did it to hammer the nail in the coffin; or maybe they wanted to send a message to Jamaica that they were watching. As a result, the New York trial presided by Judge Robert Patterson is probably the most detailed description of the new type of criminal power in the Americas ever heard in a U.S. courtroom.
The witnesses were themselves drug traffickers and killers, and they made plea bargains in return for their testimony. This is an age-old problem in racketeering cases; lawyers say the witnesses are lying criminal rats trying to save their own skin. But despite stabs by Dudus’s defense, their statements were devastating for the President. Especially strong was the testimony of hit man Jermaine Cohen, alias Cowboy, who said he had seen Dudus personally take a chain saw to a hostage. In a recess after he described that, a woman in the New York courtroom went up to Cohen and said he and his family would die.
Jamaican journalists have also made important discoveries about Dudus’s path to glory, adding telling details. One account is written in the locally published Jamaica’s First President, by K. C. Samuels, which narrates the passage to power in vivid color.
“The road that led to The Presidency,” Samuels writes, “was one littered with violence and intimidation; disputes, disagreements, shouting matches, stabbings, choppings/hackings, shootings, fire-bombed houses, rapes, tortures, robberies, extortions, murders and overall mayhem.”1
Dudus cultured a different image from his father, the bulky, brash Jim Brown. While Jim Brown would fly into a rage and hit first, ask questions later, Dudus had a reputation for being controlled and calculated. Kami, who returned to Jamaica following his stint in the Kentucky prison and worked for Dudus, describes him as being reserved, often in deep thought.
“He would speak slowly and clearly, not shouting or swearing. But he has a real charisma. People hang onto his words. He just has something special.”
Dudus also contrasts physically with his father. While Jim Brown was built like a quarterback, Dudus is just five feet four. His nickname, Dudus—pronounced with a u like bud—is said to come from his penchant to wear African-style shirts like a Jamaican politician called Dudley Thomson. A Pan Africanist, Thomson strengthened links with the mother continent and was an advocate of slave reparations.
But despite his quiet intellectual demeanor and African shirts, Dudus quickly gained a reputation for brutality. He had to. The Shower was under imminent threat, its last two leaders murdered. He had to regain control, and that was cemented in blood.
But there is a notable twist to the President’s violence. The court witnesses described murders they say Dudus ordered in Jamaica and times when he was personally involved. But U.S. prosecutors did not charge the President with any homicides on American soil, instead nailing him on conspiracy to traffic drugs and guns. It appears that Dudus had learned from his father’s mistakes and realized it was best to taker a lower profile in the United States. He didn’t go to Miami to shoot pregnant women in crack houses like his dad did. He stayed on the island and ordered his U.S. affiliates to move their narcotics without mayhem.
In Jamaica, it was a different story. One of his gunmen describes in a written testimony how when Dudus took power, he assembled his most loyal soldiers to go on the warpath. First, Dudus went round the homes of various Shower veterans, older men who had served with his father, pointing guns at them and firing bullets over their heads until they swore loyalty to him. The college boy was showing he was no weakling.
Next, Dudus avenged the death of his half brother Jah T. According to the witness, a traitor from inside the posse was behind the murder. As he testified:
Dudus told me that he believed that Ludlow Wilson aka “Blood,” another member of the Shower Posse, was responsible for Jah-T’s death …
In my presence, Dudus instructed a member of the Organization to locate Blood, who was at a dance that evening in close proximity to Tivoli Gardens. After learning that Blood was leaving the dance, Dudus sent at least two people to Blood’s residence, which was close to the Lizard Town area of Tivoli Gardens …
Shortly thereafter, I heard gunshots. A short while later, the individuals Dudus had sent to Blood’s residence returned to the Top Ten area, holding handguns, and one of them reported that he had “dealt with the boy,” referring to Blood.
Then, also in my presence, Dudus directed a boy of about sixteen years of age to obtain a cart (a flatbed on wheels) from nearby Coronation Market, to put Blood’s body on the cart and leave the body near the railway line that runs past Tivoli Gardens high school, in an area called “Industrial Terrace.” This was an area that was often used by the Organization to dispose of bodies.2
The witness th
en describes how Dudus ordered a multiple homicide on the site where his brother had been shot. This was particularly cold-blooded, as the President ordered the gunmen to murder anyone they could find to make a point.
Dudus gathered approximately four Shottas and sent a high-level Shower Posse member to obtain a number of rifles from the Lizard Town and Java areas. Dudus then directed the Shottas to go to Maxfield Avenue and “shoot up the Avenue,” which means to kill as many people as they could.
Dudus said that the Shottas must do that in retaliation for Jah-T’s death. The Shottas left thereafter and returned within an hour. They reported that they had “dealt with it.” I later learned that four or five people were shot on Maxfield Avenue by the Shottas that evening, including two females.
Such ferocity can appear irrational, a senseless attack on people on a street. But there is a method to the massacres. Dudus’s violence sent different messages to different people. Businessmen saw that they had to deal with the President or face the consequences. West Kingston’s veteran gangsters saw that Dudus could handle power. And a new generation of thugs wanted to follow him.
Among the recruits was Jermaine Cohen, the son of a pot maker in Denham Town, a garrison bordering Tivoli. Known as Cowboy, Cohen would later become the U.S. prosecution’s star witness against Dudus.
Cowboy testifies that Dudus ran his own “jail” in Tivoli, a cell made of cement slabs where he held his “prisoners.” Many residents knew about this jail, so it was a public reminder to stay in line. People who had the misfortune of being taken there would later be seen bruised or mutilated. Cowboy describes using a baseball bat to beat up prisoners in the cell.
Other inmates were never seen again. Cowboy says he would use a hose and bucket to wash guts from the concrete slabs.
One time, Dudus’s thugs dragged a crack dealer known as Tall Man to the jail. Dudus was punishing him over missing money. In the highlight of the New York case, Cowboy told the prosecutor how Dudus took a chain saw to his prisoner.
A.(Cowboy) They go in the jail, tie him up in the jail, tie up Tall Man in the jail.
Q.(Prosecutor) After that what happened?
A.Dudus get the saw, the power saw.
…
Q.Where did Dudus go with the power saw?
A.In the jail, sir.
Q.What did you hear after he went in the jail?
A.Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Q.Did you hear anything else?
A.I hear one screaming, one scream, I don’t hear anything more, sir.
Q.After that occurred, did you go into the jail?
A.Yes, sir, go in the jail, sir.
Q.What did you see in the jail?
A.I see human remains.
Q.Describe what it was like in the jail at that time?
A.Lot of blood, lot of feces, human feces, and hands and foots cut off and head cut off.
Q.What was the smell like?
A.Smell really awful, sir.
Q.What did Dudus look like?
A.Dudus got blood on his hands and on his sneakers.
Cowboy goes on to describe several more savage murders by Dudus and his henchmen. In one case, he tells how a mentally ill Tivoli resident called Andrew made the fatal mistake of stealing a motorcycle belonging to Dudus. Police arrested Andrew and took him into regular prison. But Dudus’s men bailed him out and took him to the Tivoli concrete slab jail.
When Andrew’s mother and aunt found out, they rushed to Dudus to beg forgiveness. They said that Andrew was mentally ill and they would pay for any damages. Dudus said he would take care of it and they left.
In the evening, Dudus went into the jail with a hatchet to a crying Andrew. When Cowboy went in half an hour later, he found Andrew’s severed corpse.
“His body looked like a cow beef chopped up,” Cowboy said.
In one sense, Dudus’s bloodshed was typical of gangsters around the world: gaining power through fear. But the President’s violence was unusually public. The concrete slab jail was in a place that many would pass. Another witness who testified, a student, described going into Tivoli and seeing thugs place a corpse in the market in full view. Shoppers and stallholders were afraid to move it or call the police, she says. She concludes that Dudus had ordered the corpse to be put there as a form of intimidation.
What’s more, Dudus not only punished people who crossed him, but also those who broke rules that he imposed. He banned rape, a serious problem in Jamaica’s garrisons. He also banned stealing from residents, whom he considered under his protection.
While some people who broke these rules could be taken to the “jail” and beaten or killed, Dudus’s soldiers also held minor offenders inside a chicken coop. The wires forced them to crouch in painful positions for several hours. It was next to a street in public view, so it humiliated its victims. Those in the chicken coop were often women who had robbed or fought with neighbors.
Dudus also disciplined his own thugs. Kami described to me how Dudus made him the commander of a squad of soldiers. Residents accused some of these men of committing rape, so Dudus ordered Kami to punish them. Kami says he took the accused soldiers into a yard and tied them up. Then he got residents to beat up the offenders with bats.
“Some of the people who came to carry out the beating were the brothers of the girls who had been raped. They were angry so they smacked the soldiers really hard. The soldiers were beaten up bad. But they were not killed. It was a way to keep the men in line.”
Such punishments did reduce certain “anti-social” crime, by all accounts. Residents I speak to say that in Tivoli under Dudus you had less fear of anyone breaking into your house or mugging you. This all built up Dudus’s status as ruler. He clearly took away the government’s monopoly on administering justice. The fact that residents referred to the concrete hell as a “jail” made it appear more official. Adding to the government comparison, Dudus’s right-hand man and accountant was known as the Minister of Finance. And witnesses described the posse shaking down businesses as collecting “tax.” To top it all, the Shower Posse’s structure in its entirety is often referred to as “the system”—part of the island’s don system.
Cowboy uses the term system throughout his testimony. When he was first given a gun by Dudus, he says it made him “bond to the system.” He talks about “rules of the system,” how the enemies are “outside the system” and how the system extends to the United States, England, and Canada.
Cowboy was eventually cast out of the system. One day he got into an argument with Dudus’s aunt Twinny. Reading Cowboy’s statement, I realize that this is the same Twinny that I met in Dudus’s family home. Twinny spat at Cowboy, he says, and he responded by punching her in the face. When Dudus found out, he tried to have Cowboy murdered, provoking a shoot-out. After more fighting and running, Cowboy fled to the United States, where he would sell crack and marijuana, get caught, and turn witness.
Jamaican criminologist Anthony Harriott is one of the foremost academics on the island’s organized crime. I ask him to explain the Shower Posse under Dudus to me. He takes my notebook and draws a small circle, surrounded by a medium-sized circle, surrounded by a big circle. In the inner circle, he writes PC, short for Presidential Click. This is the core of Dudus’s empire in Tivoli Gardens itself. In the middle circle, he writes the names of the other ghettos that pledge allegiance to Dudus, including Denham Town, Southside, Rose Town, and others. This is the President’s broader empire in Jamaica. In the third circle, he writes the names of cities around the world where the Shower operates: London, New York, Toronto. “This is the larger international network,” Harriot says. “The Shower encompasses all three circles.”
To survive in the United States, Dudus adapted the Shower’s modus operandi. The stateside dealers no longer announced themselves as Shower and they avoided outrageous incidents such as spraying gunfire into nightclubs. Instead, they operated as semi-autonomous cells with little knowledge of what other cells might be doing.
But as the prosecution’s case shows, they had a clear line of contact back to Jamaica, including direct phone calls with Dudus.
In many aspects, cells became like franchises. They would buy drugs supplied by the Shower and pay regular tributes back to Jamaica. The payments were not just in cash, but Shower operatives abroad were also expected to send other goods, including clothes, sneakers, TVs, and game consoles. The stateside dealers then had much independence as to how they could run their own business, serving up marijuana and crack on American streets. This cell-like structure is also used by other traffickers into the twenty-first century, particularly Mexican cartels.
The cells continued to buy guns through U.S. straw buyers and send them home. In a tapped phone call, Dudus discussed a shipment of eight firearms. The posse hid the guns and bullets in commercial goods including refrigerators, deep freezes, and soap boxes. A witness describes Dudus testing the weapons. He says that the President particularly liked a carbine M-16, a Heckler & Koch assault rifle that fires 7.62 caliber rounds, and a Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol.
Dudus also adapted his smuggling techniques. To get through tighter airport security, he recruited an army of female mules who took cocaine packages inside their vaginas. The New York court heard from a witness how the smugglers stuffed the cocaine into condoms and gave them to the girls in an apartment.
Once we escorted the females up to the Apartment, each female would be given a package of the wrapped cocaine and instructed to insert it in her vagina to make sure that it fit. The exterior of the cylinder would be lubricated with jelly or Vaseline for that purpose. If the cocaine did not fit, it would be hammered or beaten at the Apartment and the female was instructed to try to insert it again. Dudus, myself, and other senior members of the Organization were present at various times during this process.