Nipsey Hussle’s Trinidad connection: Conspiracy theory in rapper’s death

(Trinidad Guardian) When Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed rap­per Nipsey Hus­sle (Er­mias As­ghe­dom) was fa­tal­ly shot in Los An­ge­les two Sun­days ago, so­cial me­dia was flood­ed with users, in­clud­ing renowned mu­si­cians, ac­tors, and ath­letes ex­press­ing dis­tress over his death.

Even for­mer Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma was moved to write a trib­ute to the 33-year-old which was read at his fu­ner­al ser­vice at the Sta­ples Cen­tre on Thurs­day.

But as con­do­lences poured out across so­cial me­dia, one con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry about his death al­so gained mo­men­tum.

The the­o­ry was sim­ple, Hus­sle was ex­e­cut­ed as part of a plot to si­lence his up­com­ing doc­u­men­tary about herbal­ist Dr Se­bi who pur­port­ed­ly had ev­i­dence of cur­ing AIDS.

Videos of Hus­sle talk­ing about the doc­u­men­tary which he said would be fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on the 1988 New York Supreme Court tri­al of Dr Se­bi were al­so post­ed as ev­i­dence to sup­port the the­o­ry.

Hus­sle used Dr Se­bi’s prod­ucts and in an in­ter­view on The Break­fast Club ra­dio show ex­plained the rea­son he want­ed to do the doc­u­men­tary.

“I think the sto­ry is im­por­tant. I think it’s a pow­er­ful nar­ra­tive. Imag­ine this if I said some­body cured AIDS you all will be like ‘yeah right’ and I can show you an ex­am­ple of him go­ing to tri­al and prov­ing in a court, to a ju­ry that he cured AIDS,” Hus­sle said then.

“You all will be in­ter­est­ed in that and you all will look in­to the way he did it, so I feel like more so than cham­pi­oning his prod­ucts or ex­plain­ing his method­ol­o­gy put some light on that case,” he said then.

Ac­cord­ing to Google Trends, search­es for Dr Se­bi spiked fol­low­ing Hus­sle’s death.

But who is Dr Se­bi?

And why does all this mat­ter?

Well, Dr Se­bi was a Hon­duran herbal­ist whose re­al name was Al­fre­do Bow­man. He was not a li­censed physi­cian.

And his wife Pat­sy Bow­man, 62, was born right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I am Tri­ni to the bone,” Pat­sy said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view from her home in Grena­da. She is pop­u­lar­ly known as “Mrs Dr Se­bi”.

The cou­ple met in 1981 in St Croix, the largest of the US Vir­gin Is­lands. Pat­sy, who was liv­ing in that coun­try at the time, was on her way to a job in­ter­view when she met Se­bi. The cou­ple sat on the wa­ter­front and talked for hours as Pat­sy missed the in­ter­view.

She said her life changed pos­i­tive­ly when she met Se­bi.

“Even though I was a veg­e­tar­i­an be­fore I met him when I met him it kind of ad­vanced, mean­ing there were cer­tain things I was still con­sum­ing that were not re­al veg­eta­bles so the jour­ney start­ed since then,” she said.

Pat­sy said peo­ple felt she was “in­sane” for her lifestyle.

“Most folks thought I was in­sane just be­cause I did not eat dead things and I am talk­ing about 30 years ago. Peo­ple felt I was in­sane, they told my mom I was go­ing crazy but I knew it made sense to me,” she said.

Pat­sy said she re­mem­bers ap­proach­ing this coun­try’s Health Min­istry and pro­vid­ing pa­per­work about her herbal med­ica­tions some time back.

“I re­mem­ber go­ing to Trinidad one time with some pa­per­work to the Min­istry of Health and I think they just threw my pa­per­work in the garbage,” she said.

Pat­sy said it is a pity that it has tak­en a tragedy for peo­ple to once again fo­cus on Dr Se­bi’s work. She has re­ceived some 45,000 emails since Hus­sle’s death.

Was Se­bi a threat to med­ical in­dus­try?

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Hus­sle was not the first per­son to die while try­ing to pro­mote Dr Se­bi’s work, she said.

“He is not the first one”, Pat­sy said.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists be­lieve that Se­bi be­came a threat to the mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar med­ical in­dus­try that sup­pos­ed­ly re­lies on con­tin­ued sick­ness to thrive.

“One of the first peo­ple that said they were go­ing to make us fa­mous was Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and she end­ed up be­ing dead as well,” Pat­sy said.

In 2002, Lopes of the pop­u­lar group TLC died in a mo­tor ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dent while in Hon­duras on one of Se­bi’s heal­ing re­treats.

“The sec­ond one was Michael Jack­son, he died too and then my hus­band, and now (Hus­sle) who was do­ing the doc­u­men­tary on the court case,” she said.

Jack­son died from car­diac ar­rest in 2009.

Se­bi died at the age of 82 while he was bat­tling pneu­mo­nia and in po­lice cus­tody af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed for mon­ey laun­der­ing. He died on the way to the hos­pi­tal.

A 29-year-old man named Er­ic Hold­er has since been charged in con­nec­tion with Hus­sle’s mur­der.

“Some peo­ple would think that it is kind of fun­ny that every­body who tried to put this out there end­ed up dy­ing. I think if I was speak­ing with my hus­band at the time I would prob­a­bly be dead too,” Pat­sy said.

Pat­sy said she and Se­bi were deal­ing with is­sues of his in­fi­deli­ty when he died.

“It was just hor­ri­ble what hap­pened,” Pat­sy said.

She said while Se­bi was the spokesman for the prod­ucts she was the one in the kitchen ac­tu­al­ly cook­ing the herbs.

“He didn’t come in­to the kitchen and make the herbs. I was al­ways in the back­ground I was the one mak­ing the herbs,” she said.

Pat­sy now has a com­pa­ny called In­ter­na­tion­al Heal­ing.

“I was vis­it­ing my sis­ter (in Grena­da) when I was feel­ing re­al­ly down when my hus­band was mak­ing ba­bies with these oth­er girls I came here to cry, but when I came some­one saw me at the air­port and said they were so sick. I didn’t even have time to cry, I just con­tin­ued the work,” she said.

Pat­sy said she stopped cook­ing herbs for Se­bi which re­sult­ed in a loss of rev­enue and claims from him that she had stolen mon­ey from him. The web­site com­mon­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with Se­bi, Dr Se­bi’s Cell Food, is run by his “dis­ci­ple” Pablo Med­i­na.

Med­i­na was ar­rest­ed at the same time as Se­bi and was re­leased sev­er­al months af­ter Se­bi’s death.

Se­bi’s wife be­fore Pat­sy, Maa Bow­man, is cur­rent­ly with a com­pa­ny called Fig Tree Bio Elec­tric.

All the com­pa­nies claim to have the cor­rect for­mu­la for Se­bi’s herbs.

“I would have liked all of his fam­i­ly, even his pre­vi­ous wives that he had and their chil­dren, it would have been good if every­one came to­geth­er since I know that these com­pounds that I was mak­ing it are the most ad­vanced one,” Pat­sy said.

“And I would have liked for us to come to­geth­er so I could share with them but un­for­tu­nate­ly fam­i­ly things, and every­one wants what­ev­er but I am not con­cerned with that, my con­cern is to help folks which is what in have been do­ing over the years.”

Nkechi Phillips runs Pat­sy’s com­pa­ny in T&T. She is lo­cat­ed in Gas­par­il­lo.

“My mom was sick (with Can­di­da Al­bi­cans) and I guess di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, Mrs Se­bi knew a mu­tu­al friend of ours and when I told him mom­my was sick he told me has a friend who would be able to help,”

“And so said so done, she came in­to the coun­try to do some busi­ness and she re­al­ly helped mom­my,”

Phillips said af­ter see­ing how her moth­er re­cov­ered she said she need­ed to be­come a part of spread­ing the word.

Phillips said she suc­cess­ful­ly cured a per­son of her­pes in Feb­ru­ary us­ing Pasty’s prod­ucts.

“They are peo­ple who laugh at me but I don’t force it on peo­ple. A lot of peo­ple whom I have told they now re­alise what I have been say­ing,” she said.

Phillips said this was the same strug­gle that Se­bi him­self went through.

In 1988, the state of New York sued Se­bi for mak­ing “un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed ther­a­peu­tic claims” af­ter he paid for ads say­ing “Aids has been cured”.

Se­bi pro­vid­ed ex­am­ples of 77 pa­tients he claimed to have cured and won the case.