PETER TOSH KILLER DENNIS LEPPO LOBBAN

Dennis “Leppo” Lobban – A Chapter from Nightmare in Jamaica
This photograph shows me with Dennis “Leppo” Lobban behind the bars of the General Penitentiary. It shouldn’t exist—we paid a guard to take it in secret—but we knew we had to capture that moment.

Lobban wasn’t just another prisoner. He was a dub poet, a voice of rhythm and resistance. Together, we were in the prison band called The Bloom of Light. There were five of us—Dennis with his words, me on the bongos, and others filling in with what scraps of instruments we could gather. In that harsh place, music became our escape, a flicker of freedom in the shadows of confinement.

But Lobban’s name was already tied to one of reggae’s darkest chapters. Born in Kingston on 16 January 1955, he began life as a street vendor, hustling to survive. In September 1987, he led a home invasion at the home of reggae legend Peter Tosh. By morning, Tosh and two others were dead. Whispers said the motive was jealousy and a bitter dispute involving Lobban’s former partner.

The courts moved swiftly. Arrested and convicted of three murders, Lobban was sentenced to death by hanging in June 1988. He insisted he was innocent, but in 1990, the Court of Appeal upheld the verdict. In 1995, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was sent to the notorious General Penitentiary—now Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre.

Even behind bars, Lobban continued his fight. He petitioned the United Nations, exposing the brutal reality of Jamaica’s prison system: overcrowding, lack of medical care, and denial of fundamental legal rights.

To the world, Dennis “Leppo” Lobban remains the man forever linked to the murder of Peter Tosh. He was also a fellow prisoner, a musician, and a reminder that even in the darkest places, fragments of humanity and light still survive.

His story became a chapter in mine, told in Nightmare in Jamaica.

👉 Read more in Nightmare in Jamaica.