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
Born: February 4, 1962 (age 58 years), New York, New York, United States
Education: New York University
Books
The Murder of Sonny Li...
2016
Steroid Nation: Juiced H...
2007
Sex, Lies, and Headloc...
2002
Wide Open: Days an...
1998
SPORTS
Was legendary boxer Sonny Liston murdered?
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.’ ”
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.”
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.
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