NewsTalkFM with Sean Moncrieff Interview & Highlights
Read the highlights at newstalk.com »
Read the highlights at newstalk.com »
Sonny Liston’s tale should be a compelling, ultimately uplifting, rags-to-riches one; the story of a man who rose from the depths of Depression America to become heavyweight champion of the world. All of the necessary ingredients are all there.
He was one of 25 (no, that’s not an error) children born around 1931 to an Arkansas nut farmer who left to seek a life of crime in St Louis at the age of 14. Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston was illiterate but developed into a powerfulman with huge hands; he would spend time in prison before taking up boxing, turning pro in 1953.
By 1962, Liston was world heavyweight champion, though he was dogged by his apparent association with organised crime and accusations that several of his fights were fixed.
The Murder of Sonny Liston is as far from a rags-to-riches tale as you could get, but it is absolutely compelling…
Keep reading at www.leaderlive.co.uk »
“Compelling…the most forensic investigation yet…Excellent book read[s] like an Elmore Leonard novel.” – Dave Hannigan, Irish Times
His final resting place is in Row 1 of the Garden of Peace section of Paradise Gardens Cemetery, hard by the Las Vegas Airport. Inscribed on a one foot by two foot bronze tablet are the words “Charles Sonny Liston, 1932 -1970, A Man”.
A suitably nondescript memorial. No date of birth because he was never exactly sure of that himself. No date of death because he was gone for days before his body was even discovered. Between those two landmark events, there’s plenty we know but so much more we don’t and probably never will about Liston. The enduring fascination of this particular former heavyweight champion.
Continue reading at www.irishtimes.com »
Check out my interview with VICE’s Seth Ferranti:
In his new book, The Murder of Sonny Liston: Las Vegas, Heroin, and Heavyweights, out October 18, ESPN journalist Shaun Assael treats the boxer’s death as a cold case and investigates the circumstances that led to Liston’s early exit from life. As the story unfolds, readers get a light into not just the seedy underworld of professional boxing, but also 1970s Las Vegas—a world of glitz and glamor, grit and crime. Assael found that Liston straddled the line between two worlds, walking in the limelight with celebrities like Elvis, but at the same time consorting with criminals, big players in the mob, and dirty cops. VICE chatted with Assael to find out what happened to Sonny Liston, a man who many wanted to silence.
Keep reading at VICE.com »
“Readers of James Ellroy’s Underworld USA Trilogy will feel very much at home.” – Dan Jones, Sunday Times
One night in the 1960s, a Las Vegas police officer was doing his rounds in the well-heeled neighbourhood of Paradise Palms when he was accosted by a female resident. She was a neighbour of the sometime world-champion boxer Sonny Liston, and she did not appreciate the loud parties the heavyweight threw whenever his wife, Geraldine, went away. “He’s a goddamn drunk,” she told the officer. “He’s going to die in the gutter.”
As it turned out, Liston was not merely a drunk but a heroin addict, and he died flat on his back in his bedroom at New Year in 1971, around the age of 40. Drugs were found in his kitchen. An autopsy cited natural causes, but its conclusions and the circumstances surrounding Liston’s…