Gangster

was born on 13 March 1969 in Kingston, Jamaica, allegedly to Lester Coke, the leader of the violent drug gang known as the “Shower Posse,” and his wife, Patricia Halliburton. Some journalists believe that Christopher Michael Coke was an adopted child, though Patricia Halliburton denied this shortly before her death. He was referred to as “Michael” in school, but the fact that Christopher Michael had a brother with the same first name may also speak to the idea that the parent who christened him may not have been either Lester Coke or Patricia Halliburton. According to court transcripts, Christopher Michael Coke also had another sister, Pamela, who lived in Tivoli Gardens and stored drugs in her apartment for him. She is otherwise unacknowledged as a member of the family in any published form, and her parentage thus remains uncertain, too.

Michael Coke began his life in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood ...

has not had his birth details published. He grew up on Milk Lane in Denham Town, a poor part of West Kingston in Jamaica. To residents, he was known as “Ba-Bye,” a friendly youth who held apprenticeships at various times as a welder, a cabinetmaker and a locksmith. Sometime around the age of 20, he married Patricia Halliburton, with whom he would have at least five children.

In Lester Coke s teens the homes in the nearby slum of Back O Wall were torn down to make way for a concrete housing project called Tivoli Gardens providing a vast material improvement in the circumstances of the residents in the area The project was led by Edward Seaga the Jamaican government s minister of development and welfare and the member of Parliament for West Kingston Seaga represented the Jamaican Labour Party JLP and his government stocked the rebuilt neighborhood with JLP ...

was born in Denham Town in West Kingston, Jamaica, in 1949. His father worked a variety of handyman jobs in West Kingston, and his mother was a homemaker. Claudius attended All Saints Primary School, and among his friends outside of school was a young Bob Marley. In his teens, he engaged in criminal activities, and by the time he was 18, he had become the “don” of a West Kingston gang, the Phoenix, which dealt in marijuana and prostitution. Over the course of his criminal career, he would be charged at various times with murder, attempted murder, possession of illegal firearms, and perjury. Yet he was popular as a gang leader, known familiarly to locals as “Claudie” or “Jack” Massop.

Massop s home was in Tivoli Gardens an urban renewal project overseen by Edward Seaga the local member of Parliament for West Kingston and a member of the Jamaican ...