Zac Easter’s teenage years revolved around football. In an extract from his latest book, Reid Forgrave looks at how the sport has impacted one family
Reid Forgrave
Zac Easter was 24 years old when, in December 2015, he took his father’s shotgun and turned it on his own chest. For years, Zac had been in a downward spiral that he blamed on the many concussions he’d suffered while playing football from youth through high school in small-town Iowa. He came to believe – correctly – that he was suffering from the same degenerative brain disease that had pushed many longtime NFL players to suicide.
After he died, his parents found Zac’s journal as well as an autobiography he had written that detailed his demise. The story of Zac Easter is a deeply painful tragedy of a young man’s descent, but it’s also a story about vital topics in today’s America: About parenting, about violence, about mental health, about toxic versus traditional masculinity - about what it means to be a man in 21st-century America.
With his memory failing him, Zac figured writing things down in a journal could only help. At times, the journal seemed like his best friend – the only one other than his girlfriend Ali he could open up to. One night in the spring of 2015, he pulled out a pen and at 9.40pm started scrawling on the lined pages of a black spiral-bound Five Star Mead notebook.
For hours at a time, starting that senior year of college and going into the summer after graduation, Zac would go online and research the post-concussion symptoms that he thought were wrecking his life. He wondered whether this nightmare was the price of playing football, the sport he’d loved his entire life – the sport that, let’s be honest, he still loved, even if it contributed to his ruin. He kept reading about this scary-sounding degenerative disease of the brain that presented like Alzheimer’s but appeared in ex- athletes from contact sports decades before Alzheimer’s would typically set in. It sounded like a scientific word salad: chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He couldn’t even spell it correctly, but the symptoms all sounded familiar: Memory problems. Personality changes. Mood swings between depression and aggression. He read about former NFL stars who’d been diagnosed with this terrifying disease, but only after they died, often by suicide. Zac watched a PBS documentary about NFL Hall of Famer Mike Webster, who was essentially Patient Zero in the developing public health crisis surrounding this brain disease among former football players.
From there, he laid it all out: He was quitting his job because he needed to focus on his health. He was often tired and dizzy and nauseated. He got headaches all the time. Sometimes while driving, he’d go into these trances; he’d snap out of it when he drove his car into a curb. Panic attacks came without warning. He had started writing down a long list of questions for his doctor; one of them was “Do you think I’m showing signs of CTE or dementia?” In fact, he already knew the answer to that one. He had just visited a doctor who specialized in concussions and who told him that, yes, he very well might have CTE.
His parents were stunned. They knew some things were off. Sometimes on the phone it sounded like Zac was talking with marbles in his mouth. And they’d noticed that his bank account, which they still had access to, was suddenly hemorrhaging money. But mostly, they just assumed their son was a young man grappling with the growing pains of adulthood and independence.
Now, though, he was telling them that he might have a mysterious brain disease that afflicted NFL players, haunting them for decades after their careers had ended. One psychologist even told Zac that he would end up penniless, homeless, and in a mental institution. Not could. Would. Zac had walked out of that guy’s office terrified.
Now, though, he was telling them that he might have a mysterious brain disease that afflicted NFL players, haunting them for decades after their careers had ended. One psychologist even told Zac that he would end up penniless, homeless, and in a mental institution. Not could. Would. Zac had walked out of that guy’s office terrified.
Time is finite. Tony Schwarz debunks the myth that "We are meant to run like computers; at high speeds for long periods of time". He eloquently outlines how the reality of renewing our personal energy is just as important as expending it. This discipline grants value to rest which ultimately allows us to manage more skillful lives. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
“Prizefighting ain’t the noblest of arts and I ain’t the noblest artist.” - Harry Greb •
Harry Greb
American professional boxer
Description
Edward Henry "Harry" Greb was an American professional boxer. Nicknamed "The Pittsburgh Windmill", he was the American light heavyweight champion from 1922 to 1923 and world middleweight champion from 1923 to 1926. He fought a recorded 298 times in his 13 year-career, which began at around 140 pounds. Wikipedia
The Brixton cruiserweight was close to hitting it big as the coronavirus crisis stopped boxing for the foreseeable future, but he is no stranger to isolation and is taking the blow in his stride @donaldgmcrae
Fri 27 Mar 2020
Isaac Chamberlain: ‘I honestly can’t stand the quiet whistling sound that I hear, when it’s silent in my room and it’s pitch black, as I’m writing this at 5:18am.’ Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardian
I know I can go through hell,” Isaac Chamberlain says calmly as, rather than making his comeback on Saturday night in a fight that had offered him so much hope, the most interesting boxer in Britain settles back into another testing period of isolation. “I’ve sacrificed so much it’s got to the point that it’s become normal to me to go through these trials and tribulations. The world is in a very tough place right now but I just think: ‘I’ve been here before, in a very dark place. This is how my life has been for a long time.”
Chamberlain’s latest spell of solitude has been enforced by coronavirus, which led to the inevitable cancellation of Saturday’s bill in Coventry. His return was meant to be screened live on Channel 5. A second fight, on 25 April in London, has also been abandoned and so the Brixton cruiserweight has been consigned again to the wilderness.
Seventeen months have passed sinc Chamberlain’s last bout, a victory over Luke Watkins that helped ease the pain of his only defeat in the ring, on points to his bitter rival Lawrence Okolie in February 2018. His comeback has been derailed by a series of disasters. A family member stole £10,000 from his O2-headlining purse for fighting Okolie while subsequent fights in America were cancelled and Chamberlain was let down by jailed promoters and wayward trainers.
The boxer has spent much of the past four months in a brutal Miami training camp, from where he has written regularly to me about his struggle to cope. When we first met in person, in November, Chamberlain emerged as a vibrant and engaging character who is also capable of deep introspection. He writes long and riveting insights into his psychology that sometimes left me worrying about his mental health. But he reassured me that writing is a way of controlling his torment.
“It just makes me feel better, bro,” he told me, “and I like to write.”
I still found it striking that a boxer, who had once been an 11-year-old coerced into carrying drugs in south London while boys just a little older than him were stabbed to death, wrote with such sensitivity and eloquence.
“Hell is a perception,” Chamberlain wrote last November. “Or perhaps it’s a nightmare. What’s hell to you could be mediocre to someone else. For some people fighting is hell to them. For me, inactivity has caused me more depression and made me drown in my own perception of hell … I’m not talking about the physical and what you can see. I’m talking about something much more detrimental and lingering. The hell in your mind. It makes you feel crazy to be you. I honestly can’t stand the quiet whistling sound that I hear, when it’s silent in my room and it’s pitch black, as I’m writing this at 5:18am.”
On 11 December he sent me a photo of a single bed in a stark room. “We go again,” Chamberlain wrote. “I’m in Miami now. 5,000 miles from home. Away from friends, family and loved ones. Alone. Rottweilers are barking outside. The dawn quickly turns to darkness. And reality sets in … ”
FacebookTwitterPinterest Isaac Chamberlain lands a punch on Luke Watkins on his way to victory in October 2018. Photograph: James Chance/Getty Images Advertisement
A few weeks later, Chamberlain messaged me: “This wasn’t the 2019 I wanted, but it was character building. I’m in the ground now, buried. Sitting in my room on Christmas Day. But I will rise. Deep down an undeniable force is driving my actions. I must embrace it.”
On 4 January, after moving into a hostel in Miami, Chamberlain sent me a photograph of him in a white vest standing against a grimy bunk bed. “In prison,” he wrote.
His messages over the next eight weeks were much more cheerful. Chamberlain confirmed that he had signed a five-year deal with the British promoter Mick Hennessy, who steered Carl Froch and Tyson Fury to their first world titles. His upbeat mood continued as he spoke enthusiastically about how much it would mean to be back in the ring again. When I texted him news of my plan to write about him for the Guardian he replied: ‘Amazing my brooooooo … ”
But then, on 17 March, he attached the official news that both his fights were off and that there would be no boxing for many months. Chamberlain is back in Britain but, as the lockdown intensifies, we have to do this interview remotely. I can hear the breath catch in his throat when I ask how he felt after he received the crushing, if hardly surprising, news. “I was fighting back tears on the train, trying not to show anyone I was so upset. I was thinking, ‘What more do I need to do? Why, just when I have my big break, does this happen?’ But almost straightaway I told myself, ‘Let’s not be selfish here. The coronavirus is affecting everyone. It’s bigger than me. Other people are suffering more than me.’”
Chamberlain sighs. “But you’re fighting with your mind because you think how different it should have been. In my last week of sparring I was knocking guys out. I was that ready I was knocking guys out with 20oz gloves. I was destroying them.”
He had been meant to spar in Miami against Yuniel Dorticos, the Cuban IBF world champion. “I didn’t in the end,” he says. “I sparred one of his guys and lit him up. That put them off. They want to have spars that build the fighter’s confidence. I respect that. I get that. They’re not going to want this crazy, hungry, young kid from London destroying Dorticos’s confidence. I would have lit him up, 100%. So they would say to me, ‘No sparring today’ or ‘He’s not feeling so well.’”
Russian boxers post videos that appear to flout self-isolation rules
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The 26-year-old seems much more philosophical than I had expected him to be after another big setback. “How can I stop when I’ve got this far? It’s also been better because Mick Hennessy and his team are such great guys. I can talk to them and I never had that sort of relationship with [Eddie Hearn’s] Matchroom. They really appreciate me and I have a lot of love for them because of the way they’ve treated me. Advertisement
“Before, I was going through so much shit on my own. Now I have these people around me, consoling me, saying, ‘Don’t worry, Isaac. We’ve got you. It’s going to be OK.’ It feels good for someone else to pick you up. It’s not me picking myself up all the time.
“I also still feel really excited about the Hennessy deal. All their shows are free-to-air TV. There’s a gap in the market because you can utilise that free audience of about three million viewers on average. Imagine if I turn it into four or five million viewers? That would be massive. I’m charismatic. I can talk. I can fight. People were coming to see me because I was starting to sell both venues out.”
When does Hennessy expect boxing to resume? “He said: ‘I’ve spoken to some very important people. I think the next show will probably be in September.’ I thought, ‘Fucking hell …. six months.’ But then I calmed down. I just need to keep in good shape. It was so hard in Miami, so it’s time for a little rest.”
Chamberlain seems better equipped than many people to adjust to the lockdown. “Everyone is talking about isolation and how they’re struggling. Well, I’ve been isolated in Miami for months. I was isolated from hope or any guarantee. It was hard but I got through it. I remember when I came back from Miami the time before this one I was so weak. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for so long. I was really isolated. When people recognised me and friends spoke to me I thought, ‘Oh, crap.’ Now it’s different.”
Chamberlain is cushioned by his Hennessy contract and also by the sponsorship he receives from the TCA clothing line. Another company, Vonder Europe, have provided an apartment for him in north London during the lockdown. But he will not be immune to the uncertainty of the coming months. “100%,” Chamberlain says. “But I’ve been very poor before. Even when it was tough in Miami I dealt with those conditions. If all my money went, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’d find a way.” FacebookTwitterPinterest Isaac Chamberlain, at age twelve, escaped Brixton’s gangs and drugs and was saved by boxing. Advertisement
Boxing has already been his salvation. “I got into boxing when I was about 11,” he remembers. “Around then I was still dabbling inside that street life where I was being manipulated [into delivering drugs] by older guys.
“We grew up in Brixton and my cousin, Alex Mulumba, got stabbed in the heart after he’d passed his GCSEs. It was a very sad time for the family. My mum brought me to the boxing gym because she didn’t want me going down that road. I had started to become a product of the environment, hanging around those types of people. A lot of my friends from that time are dead or in prison on life sentences.
“As soon as I got into the gym, it was euphoria. I was like, ‘What is this? People hitting each other. This stuff is normal?’ It was crazy, the sweaty gym walls and the stinky gloves. I loved it. I would be in there all day, every day. I’m the type of person, especially as a kid, that if I liked something I would be obsessed with it. I’m still like that. I’ll just keep training hard even though I wouldn’t know where my career was going.
“The thing I loved most about boxing was that it lifted me up. I’d never had those words of encouragement. People were saying, ‘You could be a champion.’ I was like, ‘Shit, these people think I can be something.’ I’d never had that from teachers, not from my mum, not from anyone. I kept coming back so I could hear those words again because it felt so good. So boxing saved my life, bigwant is the WBC one. It’s beautiful and it’s my phone wallpaper. I look at it when I wake up and before I go to sleep. The current champion is Ilunga Makabu, from the Congo, and if we fight I’ll destroy him. The cruiserweights out there are getting old and I don’t think they’re that good.”
On Chamberlain’s Twitter masthead it says “The Path To Paradise Is Through Hell”.
He laughs softly and then, as is his way, Chamberlain offers fresh hope all over again. “It’s true. Whatever you’re going through, you can get past it. If you feel you’re in hell right now, why would you stay there? That’s why it’s very important to keep going and keep pushing, no matter what life throws at you. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Keep working, keep believing, and you will come through it. I’m a living testament to that. We can all get through this time.”
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"I fixed a lot of fights over the years," Charles Farrell says.
He can say he fixed a lot of fights over the years without worrying about the consequences, because …
"I covered my tracks very well," he says. "And the statute of limitations, of course, has long since run."
Charles Farrell (left) stands with boxer Floyd Patterson (right). (Courtesy Charles Farrell)
The Art Of The Fix
Farrell says the art of fixing a fight is often more subtle than 'Kid, this ain’t your night,' a wink, and a paper sack full of cash.
"I mean, after all, what we’re talking about is illegal," he says. "So you don’t need to get into specific language. What you’ll do is you’ll talk about a fighter that you’ll have who needs to 'stay busy.'"
“Stay busy” means “win." Everybody knows that.
"So the other guy knows that you need someone to lose to your fighter, and he’ll say, 'I’ve got somebody who’s in the gym, but not much, lately. He’s not in great shape,"' Farrell explains. "OK, so now we’re talking about somebody who’s probably not going to go the distance. The response to that is, 'That’s OK. I only need three or four rounds of work.' And the other guy will say, 'OK, well, my guy’s only good for three rounds.' And you can fine tune without ever saying, 'I want this fight to be fixed.' But the fight is as fixed as it can be, and you will get exactly what you want."
If you’re surprised to hear that’s the way the business of prize fighting gets done, Charles Farrell says you’ve got company.
"I don’t think it’s widely known," he says. "People don’t want to believe this. Of course not. And they don’t want to feel they’ve been fooled and cheated. But they have been."
So now you know how a result gets arranged before the alleged contest begins. Maybe it’s time for a story about how that can happen even after the contest ends. The cast of this little drama, which transpired 20-odd years ago, includes Farrell, of course, and a former heavyweight champion.
Managing Leon Spinks
"Well, Leon Spinks was a man who was, at that point, about 40 years old," Farrell says. "And he had never taken care of himself. And I understood that his value as a fighter, if in fact there was any value to him at this stage as a fighter, was as an opponent for other fighters."
Against his better judgement, Farrell took on the task of managing Spinks. After all, Leon had once beaten Muhammad Ali. Maybe his name could still draw a crowd. And if Farrell could get him a couple of wins and create the illusion of a comeback, maybe it could draw a big crowd. He arranged a match with a guy named Eddie Curry, whom Farrell describes as a fellow who could fight a little, if nobody told him not to.
"He would fight anyone," Farrell says. "And he would generally be knocked out in the first round. And I assumed that Leon could beat him."
Unhappily for Farrell and Spinks, Eddie Curry assumed otherwise. In fact, he lasted eight rounds, and out-boxed Spinks in most of them.Leon Spinks. (AP Photo)
And since Eddie’s understanding was that he’d signed up for an eight-round fight, when the bell rang to end the eighth, he returned to his corner and held out his hands so the corner man could remove his gloves.
"Eddie Curry won a unanimous decision. It was announced in the center of the ring," Farrell says.
And that would have been the end of Leon Spinks as a draw — if Charles Farrell hadn’t remembered that the poster advertising the fight didn’t say "eight rounds."
"And I caught this typo which advertised the fight as being a 10-round fight," Farrell says. "And I said to Eddie Curry’s manager, who was also a commissioner, and also a guy with whom I had done business – 'business' in italics – before, 'Well, we have two more rounds.' And Eddie Curry refused."
As you’d perhaps have done, if you’d been Eddie Curry. He’d done was he was paid to do. But Farrell, seeing an opportunity for a W where there had been none, persisted.
"I said, 'No, this is a 10-round fight. You have to fight. Leon is ready to go. Round nine starts in one minute.' And I’m looking at an imaginary watch," Farrell says.
Eddie Curry’s manager tried to put his fighter’s gloves back on, but it was no go.
"He’s not gonna fight another second," Farrell says.
So Farrell suggested another route to the result that he and Spinks needed…a route where no one would get hurt.
"And so I said, 'Look. We get the win.' And his manager said, 'All right, but can we take care of this in the back? In the back room.' And I said, 'Yes.'"
The fight wasn’t televised. Who was gonna know?
"All we need to do is phone it in to the record book as a TKO win for Leon," Farrell explains. "As long as it’s reported as that, that’s what the record will say. And I don’t care what 300 people have seen. It’s not going anywhere. And so we made a deal, and Leon got the win, and I wound up with Leon."
"And at one point I was relatively sure that some harm was going to come to me. And I thought, 'I’m not a tough guy. Maybe it’s time.'" Charles Farrell
So rigging the record, that’s another way to fix a fight. Charles Farrell once invented an entire career for a guy named John Carlo, who had never fought at all.
The Fight That Wasn't Fixed
It may seem unlikely that one of Charles Farrell’s greatest regrets about his career in boxing involves a fight he didn’t fix, because he didn’t think he needed to. Farrell’s guy in that fight was a heavyweight named Mitch Green. He came with baggage.
"Well, there were actually a number of times that his career was sidelined by gunshot wounds," Farrell says. "But a very specific one was just after I signed him to a contract. He got into an argument on the street about Mike Tyson. They had fought in the ring. They had also fought on the street. And Mitch had lost a decision to Mike, which bothered him a lot. And someone talked to him about it, and he got upset. He slapped the guy, and the guy went back into his house, got a gun, and shot Mitch right behind the knee, right in the femur."
Eventually Mitch Green recovered, which turned out to be something of a mixed blessing for Farrell. He’d put Green up and supported him for 18 months. Then he arranged a fight that was supposed to launch Green’s comeback.
The fellow in the other corner was Bruce Johnson.
"Bruce Johnson is one of these guys, and you see them often in boxing, who is a naturally good athlete, but understands that the way he can make money in boxing is to lose to name fighters. And it means that he goes into each fight trying to figure out what the easiest route out — without taking an obvious dive — is. And that’s how he makes a living. So it doesn’t serve his interest to be too good a fighter," he says
The Bittersweet Science. (Photo Courtesy of Levi Stahl)
No wonder, then, that Farrell didn’t bother fixing the Green-Johnson bout. Johnson knew his job. But had Farrell felt it was necessary to do some pre-fight business with Johnson’s corner ...
"All I needed to add was one sentence: 'But the fight does not see the third round.' And he would have agreed to it," Farrell says. "As a matter of fact, he would have agreed to it happily. And I would have had a win for Mitch Green, which I desperately needed."
It didn’t work out that way. When the bell rang, the 6-foot-6, 250-pound Mitch Green stood idle in the center of the ring. Farrell thinks Green was upset that he wasn’t getting enough attention and alludes to paranoia and a history of erratic behavior. In any case, Green listlessly absorbed Johnson’s harmless punches. After two rounds and several warnings, the referee stopped the fight, because it wasn’t a fight at all.
"I was furious," Farrell says. "As a matter of fact, Mitch and I got into a shouting match at the hotel right after the fight. Because I’d spent what, for me at least, was a lot of money on him. More than that, I’d worked very hard to engineer his comeback."
Now there would be no comeback. And all because Charles Farrell hadn’t thought it necessary to establish with all concerned – before the fight – that there was a script so basic that even the distracted, apparently disgruntled Green would have followed it.
"Absolutely, I should have fixed that fight. It would have been one sentence. Yes," he says.
As Mitch Green’s impersonation of a mummy against Bruce Johnson suggests, managing boxers is not an entirely predictable way to make a living, even if you’re adept at arranging results. And it can be risky. Farrell figured that out some years ago.
"I also got involved with some really, really bad people, for whom I was fixing fights," he says. "And some things didn’t go our way. There were some mistakes made, which I corrected, and I can’t really go into them. But these were dangerous people. And at one point I was relatively sure that some harm was going to come to me. And I thought, 'I’m not a tough guy. Maybe it’s time.'"
Charles Farrell is now a jazz pianist. Read his essay,“Why I Fixed Fights,” in a new collection,
Shaun Assael is an American author and award-winning investigative journalist. He is the author of four books that deal with sports, crime and culture. Wikipedia
Sonny Liston was a ferocious fighter, the heavyweight champion of the world and the man Cassius Clay beat to win the title for the first time, igniting his own legend. And yet, outside of boxing, Liston was a haunted man, initiated early into a life of crime and decimated by drugs when his boxing career faltered.
His untimely end was long thought to be accidental and self-inflicted, courtesy of a heroin-filled needle in his arm. Now the book “The Murder of Sonny Liston” by Shaun Assael wonders if another might have pushed the fatal plunger.
‘So, you’ve come to ask me if I killed Sonny Liston.’
Liston was born in Forrest City, Ark., possibly in the early 1930s — the day and year are unknown — the 24th child of a “miserable miscreant” sharecropper father. He wound up in St. Louis as a teen and began robbing restaurants and gas stations. He landed in prison, learned to box and rose through the sport quickly.
When Liston became the top challenger to champ Floyd Patterson by 1960, it was a national scandal, as Congress debated whether Liston — whose criminal record included breaking a cop’s leg in 1956 — was civilized enough to get into a boxing ring and beat another man to a pulp.
Testifying before a Senate committee on the matter, Liston said he had no education, was forced to work from a young age to help feed his father’s 25 children and could sign his name but not write his own address.
He also was asked about mob-connected promoters he dealt with, and said, “I wouldn’t pass judgment on no one. I haven’t been perfect myself.”
The controversy became a flashpoint. Baseball’s Jackie Robinson said he wished Liston’s record were better but that he deserved the title shot, while President John Kennedy “urged Patterson to find [an opponent] with a better ‘character.’ ”
Enlarge ImageListon hits a boxing bag in 1962.Getty Images
Liston got his title shot in 1962, winning the belt in the first heavyweight title fight ever decided in the first round. Patterson got a rematch a year later and lost again by first-round knockout.
While training for the rematch in Las Vegas, according to Assael, Liston met a well-connected bookie named Ash Resnick, who made himself Liston’s personal concierge, “offering Sonny everything from fine clothes to consorts,” and became part of his inner circle.
One of Resnick’s best friends was boxing legend Joe Louis, who would, in time, become close with Liston. According to the FBI, Resnick used Louis as a “bodyguard companion” — an enforcer — on collection calls.
Clay was Liston’s next challenger. A gambler associate of Resnick’s later told the FBI that Resnick advised him a few days before the fight that Liston would win in the second round but then called a few hours before the bout saying to forget the advice. Liston lost the title to Clay, and the associate told the FBI, “Resnick knew that Liston was going to lose.”
Enlarge ImageMuhammad Ali stands over Liston after a first round knock-out in 1965.Getty Images
Clay, now known as Muhammad Ali, won the 1965 rematch by knockout. But the winning punch looked to many like it barely made contact, and Joe Louis Jr., sitting ringside for the fight with his father, later said he and his dad were “perplexed” that Liston received no medical care after the punch. To many, the whole situation screamed “fix.”
According to Assael, a theory emerged that Resnick, on Liston’s behalf, made a deal with the Nation of Islam, which was connected to Ali, to have Liston take a dive in exchange for a percentage of Ali’s future earnings.
Nothing was ever proven, but Nevada state assemblyman Gene Collins told Assael that in 1970, as Ali prepared to fight Joe Frazier, Liston told him and others that “he had a portion of Ali’s contract,” and that Liston “got more and more animated as they talked about the size of Ali’s paycheck.” Another friend of Liston’s said something similar, claiming that Liston said “he’d have money for the rest of his life.”
As for his own career, while Liston went on to fight many scrappers and has-beens, he never returned to his former glory as a boxer.
By the late ’60s, according to Assael, Liston was using heroin and had become an enforcer for a drug dealer named Robert Chudnick, whose own celebrity made him as surprising a dealer as Liston was a collector.
Outside of boxing, Liston was a haunted man, initiated early into a life of crime and decimated by drugs when his boxing career faltered.
The white, red-haired Chudnick was a masterful and famous jazz trumpet player known as Red Rodney. He had replaced Miles Davis in Charlie Parker’s band, sat in with Doc Severinsen’s band on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” when he was in LA and was regularly hired for sessions by the likes of Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra Streisand. Still, Chudnick, a “compulsive thief,” never hit the career heights of a Davis or Parker and distress over his life led him first to shoot heroin, then to sell it. Chudnick eventually enlisted his teenage son, Mark, to work with him, and Mark and Liston became a collections team.
In February 1969, Assael writes, Liston was present at the home of a beautician and drug dealer named Earl Cage when it was raided by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) — the precursor to the DEA — and the Las Vegas police. Everyone was arrested except for Liston, who was mysteriously released by the Vegas cops.
By 1970, Chudnick, paranoid about the arrests of colleagues, came to believe Liston was untrustworthy and told his son Mark to stop dealing with him. But while Chudnick was out of town for a gig, Liston came to his house looking for drugs. When Mark tried to turn him away, Liston barged in and searched the house, slamming the teen against the wall before leaving.
On Jan. 5, 1971, Liston’s wife, Geraldine, flew home from a New Year’s trip to find the boxer “lying bloody against the bed, blood covering an undershirt that barely covered his bloated body.” He had been dead for several days, the works he used to shoot heroin beside him.
An initial autopsy found the cause of death inconclusive, noting only that it may have been related to heroin.
In 1982, a police informant named Irwin Peters walked into a Las Vegas police station with a remarkable story to tell. He said that Larry Gandy, a retired Vegas cop revered by everyone in the department, had become a burglar and was about to pull off a heist. He also said that Gandy had killed Liston, suggesting that perhaps Resnick had hired Gandy to subject Liston to an overdose after he and the boxer battled over money.
The police sting that followed proved at least some of Peters’ information to be true — Gandy had become a thief and was caught in the act and arrested.
As it happened, the officer Peters spoke to, Gary Beckwith, had been one of the officers called to the scene after Liston died. Thinking back, he remembered seeing Gandy there as well.
But with no evidence for murder and a strong case for burglary, the police went with the case they had. Gandy got 10 years but had his sentence suspended.
Peters, meanwhile, received an anonymous postcard with a picture of a desert and the threat, “This is where you’ll be.” He lived in fear for several years, until he was found dead in 1987 in his garage with his car running, his death ruled a result of a “leaky exhaust system.” Three decades later, Peters’ nephew told Assael, “Everyone in our family feels the death was suspicious.”
In 2014, Assael found Gandy on Facebook and requested an interview. Arriving at Gandy’s home, Assael was greeted by Gandy “wrapp[ing] his thick arm around me,” and before Assael could ask any questions, Gandy said, “So, you’ve come to ask me if I killed Sonny Liston.”
Gandy talked about everything from his time as one of Vegas’ toughest undercover cops to how he began stealing from drug dealers with Peters and selling their wares to “clients in the biggest casinos, most of whom were either hooked or trying to hook high rollers.” But Gandy denied killing Peters and Liston and told Assael whom he considered the prime suspect in Liston’s murder — Earl Cage, the beautician/dealer.
Gandy said when everyone at Cage’s home was arrested except for Liston, Cage — who died in 2000 — would have believed Liston set him up. He added that the officer at the raid made a mistake in letting Liston go on the spot and should have taken him in with everyone else.
Assael interviewed many associated with Liston and found disparate beliefs about how he died. Bill Alden, the BNDD agent involved in the Cage raid, believes it was murder, saying, “Knowing Las Vegas like I did, and knowing Sonny’s history, I always felt he was murdered. There was just too much there.” Craig Lovato, the agent who found Liston’s drug works when he died, believes Liston most likely overdosed on his own.
Assael names several potential suspects, including Gandy, Resnick, Cage and Chudnick. All had possible motives, as did others. In the end, Assael reaches just one conclusion: Solving the death of Irwin Peters would solve Liston’s as well.
