The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop

Earlier this year, the U.S. Army launched an internal review of records related to the recovery of remains in Grenada in 1983, and efforts to locate Maurice Bishop’s body.“This is the first serious effort by the Pentagon in decades to address the role the United States played in the disappearance of Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop’s remains,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who pushed for the Army to investigate.In this new update to the series, The Washington Post’s Martine Powers unpacks the findings of the Army’s investigation, the facts and events that it outlines, and the questions it stops short of answering.Read the June letter sent by the secretary of the Army on the Maurice Bishop internal investigation in our special episode guide here.

When Martine Powers began looking into the mystery of the missing remains of Maurice Bishop, his cabinet members and supporters, one of the most noted explorations of the case turned out to be done by a group of high school boys in Grenada more than two decades ago. She was able to locate some of the now-adult investigators and the old principal of the school to learn what compelled them to do this as a class project, and how they found their sources. One of the people they interviewed, a former Jamaican soldier, witnessed the exhumation at Calivigny. What he told them more than 20 years ago is central to why many Grenadians think the U.S. government has not told the entire story of what happened to the remains after they were discovered. But he eventually stopped responding to students. Martine and her colleagues searched for the witness for more than a year. They also amassed hours of other tape from interviews with other people who were at the exhumation. What they were left with were incomplete memories of exactly what transpired the day the remains at Calivigny were recovered. Then, there was a breakthrough – with new questions about where all of this leads.You can find photos and documents from the investigation in our special episode guide here. Subscribers to The Washington Post can get early access to the rest of the series on Mondays on Apple Podcasts, as well as ad-free listening. Link your Post subscription now or sign up to become a new Post subscriber here. 

Professor Robert Jordan was among the few people still on the campus of St. George’s University in November of 1983, in the days after the U.S. invasion of Grenada. One day a strange request came in: The U.S. military wanted to use his anatomy lab at the university for a forensic exam.Martine Powers visits what is left of the old lab and hears the professor’s story about what he saw that day. What transpired in that examination 40 years ago has raised serious questions about the identity and condition of the remains recovered from the pit at Calivigny.Later in the episode, Martine puts some of those questions to the “Grenada 17,” the individuals held responsible for the murder of Maurice Bishop and the others killed with him. She asks: What did they do with the bodies? And could they be omitting information that could explain the mystery?You can find photos and documents from the investigation in our special episode guide here. Subscribers to The Washington Post can get early access to the rest of the series on Mondays on Apple Podcasts, as well as ad-free listening. Link your Post subscription now or sign up to become a new Post subscriber here.

Maurice Bishop was a charismatic leader who captured the imagination of many Grenadians. But the revolution he helped spark began to buckle under pressure within his own party. Martine Powers tries to understand the life of Bishop and what propelled him into the position of prime minister, the promise of the beginning of the revolution and the events that led to his brutal death. That history reveals why the mystery of the missing remains haunts Grenada to this day. Martine speaks with Bishop’s sister, his fellow revolutionaries and the family members of some of the other victims killed on Oct. 19, 1983. They tell harrowing stories of having their own lives endangered, the last moments they saw their loved ones alive and what it’s been like to not be able to give them a proper funeral. You can find photos and documents from the investigation in our special episode guide here [http://washingtonpost.com/emptygrave?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=the-empty-grave-of-comrade-bishop].Subscribers to The Washington Post can get early access to the rest of the series, on Mondays, on Apple Podcasts, as well as ad-free listening. Link your Post subscription now or sign up to become a new Post subscriber here.

Grenada’s Black revolutionary leader, Maurice Bishop, was executed in a coup in 1983, along with seven others. The whereabouts of their remains are unknown. Now, The Washington Post’s Martine Powers uncovers new answers about how the U.S. fits into this 40-year-old Caribbean mystery.“The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop” is an investigative podcast that delves into the revolutionary history of Grenada, why the missing remains still matter and the role the U.S. government played in shaping the fate of the island nation.