Christopher Coke

Background

Christopher Michael Coke, known as Dudus, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the youngest child of Patricia Halliburton and Lester Lloyd Coke, also called Jim Brown. His father founded the Shower Posse, a violent drug gang that, alongside co-founder Vivian Blake, distributed enormous quantities of cocaine and marijuana across Jamaica and the United States, and was blamed for over a thousand murders in both countries during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Despite the extreme poverty of the Tivoli Gardens neighbourhood in West Kingston where the family lived, Coke’s father’s drug profits allowed the household to enjoy immense wealth and luxury.

Christopher and his siblings attended elite private schools alongside the children of Jamaica’s political elite; he specifically went to Ardenne High School. The family was deeply scarred by the violence of the drug trade: his sister was fatally shot in 1987, and his brother was killed in 2004. Coke was gradually brought into his father’s organisation, and after his father died in a mysterious prison fire in 1992 while awaiting extradition, Coke, at age 23, became the gang’s leader and the de facto authority over Tivoli Gardens.

He cultivated strong community support by distributing money to the poor, creating jobs, and establishing community centres, to the point that Jamaican police could not enter the neighbourhood without the organisation’s consent. Coke had earlier run-ins with the law: as a teenager in the United States, he was convicted of possession of stolen property and of transporting a firearm as an illegal alien, leading to deportation. In Jamaica, he was charged in 1994 over a triple murder of two children and an elderly man, alongside counts of illegal firearm and drug possession, though those cases proceeded through the courts. He was also charged with kidnapping in 1997 after three people vanished while trying to collect money using his name.

In 2009, the United States formally requested his extradition on drug trafficking charges. After a period of violent unrest by his supporters, Coke was captured while trying to reach the US Embassy disguised as a woman. He later pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges involving drug trafficking and assault, and was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison in 2012.

Did You Know?

• Coke attempted to disguise himself as a woman when captured, wearing a woman's wig and possessing a second wig and women's sunglasses.