Sonny Liston

Shaun It was the evening of January five, nineteen seventy one, and Geraldine Liston headed home to the house she shared with her husband, former heavyweight champion of the world Sonny Liston. They lived in the Paradise Palms neighborhood at twenty fifty eight Ottawa Drive. Paradise Palms was absolutely full of Las Vegas celebrity royalty at the time, including Johnny Carson, Dean Martin, Dionne Warwick and Buddy Hackett, among so many others.

John When Geraldine entered the house, she knew something was wrong. There was a horrible smell. She thought Sonny might have burned his dinner, but nothing was on the stove. She'd been worried about Sonny while she was gone for a week over New Year's, and when she entered their bedroom, she discovered Sonny. He was dead, and he had been gone a while, probably close to a week. How could this have happened to Sonny had his past finally caught up with him? The rumor mill hasn't stopped even today, fifty four years later.

Shaun Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we cover missing persons, unsolved cases and the leading cause of homicide in the Las Vegas area, domestic violence. I'm your host, Sean.

John And I'm your co-host, John.

Shaun We've covered cases in the past where boxing has come up, specifically with regard to the nineteen eighty one murder of Jamie Walker, a teenager from a prominent family who lived in the historic west Side of Las Vegas who died in just a horrific manner. In that case, heavyweight boxer Willie Lee Shannon was identified as her killer via DNA analysis, thirty five years after the crime. And in twenty fifteen, he was convicted on this evidence.

John He was allowed to live for thirty five years on borrowed time, hiding out in Florida, escaping justice until Las Vegas Metro had crime scene DNA analyzed and finally caught him. It's a heartbreaking story involving a family's long wait for justice. If you want to hear the rest of it, head over to PA dot co slash A888. Today, though, we have a much different story. You may not even know the name Sonny Liston unless you're a boxing buff or a historian. People refer to Sonny at the time as the champ. Nobody wanted. There are reasons for that having to do with the violent and complicated reputation he had long before he became champion, and even into his later years. But even if you have heard his name, what you may not know is that Sonny is thought of as one of the greatest boxers who ever lived, right alongside names like Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis. So many books and documentaries have been written about Liston, despite the official story, how he died and who was responsible remains a mystery. Sonny's life is a complex and tragic story. Author Harold Conrad wrote of him. He died the day he was born, and in a way that perfectly describes how his early life followed him all the way up until his death.

Shaun Charles Sonny Liston was born in rural eastern Arkansas to a family of sharecroppers, which means they farmed land owned by white landowners in the sharecropping system, which was common in the Jim Crow South. They worked the land for a portion of the crops, but didn't own anything themselves. The family farmed cotton, molasses, sorghum, corn, peanuts, sweet potato and pecans, and they worked on the plantation in rural Saint Francis County, Arkansas, near the small community of Mallaig, known as Sand Slough. It was a dusty, isolated area in the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas, filled with poverty, overcrowded small homes, tin roofs and families struggling to survive. Sonny's father was Toby Liston. Toby's parents were formerly enslaved people, and Toby has been called a miserable miscreant of a man by one of Sonny's biographers. His mother was Helen Baskin, and she was Toby's second wife, and she was almost thirty years younger than her husband. So she was just a teenager when they got married. Sonny was the twenty fourth of twenty five kids fathered by Toby and Helen's ninth child. Sonny has said that he thinks the only reason Toby had him was that he needed more hands to help with the farming. We weren't able to find out much about his other twenty four siblings, but with that many children, Sonny said he felt lost in the crowd. And given what we've learned about him, he was definitely a victim of neglect and absolutely a victim of physical abuse. Toby used his kids as free labor, and he used to say, if you're old enough to sit at the table, you're old enough to work in the fields. And Sonny has said that his father beat him every day and often told people that his father never gave him anything except a beating. As far as when Sonny was born, his date of birth is unclear. Birth certificates weren't mandatory in that area of Arkansas until nineteen sixty five. There was no official record of his birth. Even Sonny himself wasn't really sure when he was born, and later, for purposes of his boxing career, he used the birthday of May eight, nineteen thirty two, which would have made him only thirty nine years old when he passed away.

John People who have written about him have said that based on census records and statements from his mother, he could have been born July twenty second, nineteen thirty one. Author Paul Gallagher wrote that he thought he was born in nineteen nineteen or earlier, which is obviously a huge discrepancy, but most sources accept that he was born between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen thirty two. I personally don't believe Paul Gallagher. It doesn't make sense to me, given the timeline we'll talk about in a minute. And even Geraldine referred to him as a fifty year old man in nineteen seventy one. So it seemed like even she had relatively no idea how old he was. Arrest records imply that he was born nineteen twenty seven or nineteen twenty eight, but those are not super reliable either. For the purposes of ages, when we talk about him here, we'll just note that his official birthday was May eight, nineteen thirty two. But knowing that it was probably more likely sometime in nineteen twenty nine or nineteen thirty.

Shaun Helen left Arkansas in nineteen forty six to get work in a factory in Saint Louis, Missouri, with some of her children. But she left Sonny behind with his abusive father. A year after she left, Sonny sold pecans to earn enough money to get to Saint Louis, partially by hitchhiking. At this point, he was most likely somewhere between fourteen and sixteen years old. Sonny had no idea where she might be in Saint Louis, but he headed there anyway, and the Saint Louis police helped him when he got there by letting him sleep in the police station until he finally located his mother. And that would be just about the last time the police would be helpful or nice to him, not only in Saint Louis, but everywhere Sonny went. When Sonny arrived in Saint Louis, he enrolled in school, but that didn't last long. He also couldn't find a steady job. His friend Ray Monson, said in an interview that he had to stop going to school early. Since Sonny was functionally illiterate, he was in classes with much younger, much smaller kids, and he really struggled. The younger kids teased him mercilessly, according to him, and he ended up leaving school to keep from hurting them. Sonny would later tell interviewers that he had left school because there were too many kids, but that was the end of Sonny's formal education. His skills in reading and writing were rudimentary, and he never felt confident in his writing ability, and he used cards preprinted with his autograph when folks would ask for it. Once Sonny was in Saint Louis as a young man and he needed money, he ended up joining up with a gang and he started committing crimes like robbery, stealing, and other kinds of street violence. This would have been between the years of nineteen forty six and nineteen forty nine. During that time, local Saint Louis newspapers started linking him to someone they called the Yellow Shirt Bandit. Because of the shirt Sonny wore. In nineteen forty nine, he was arrested and charged with felony armed robbery and sentenced to five years in prison. But this conviction turned out to be a huge turning point in his life. He was sent to the Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City. At this point, he tells the authorities he's twenty years old, which is probably close to true, putting his real birth year at nineteen twenty nine or nineteen thirty. The local papers said at the time that he was twenty two years old, but if we used his nineteen thirty two birthday, he'd only be seventeen. But prison offered the structure that Sonny lacked growing up, and it was so much more stable than his childhood, Sonny said. I didn't mind prison. I figured I had to pay for what I did. It was the first time in my life I got three square meals a day.

John One of the reasons prison was such a turning point in his life is that it was here that he discovered boxing, and this is where he became Sonny Liston, the boxer. At this point, Sonny was about six foot one and Twenty pounds and he had an eighty four inch reach, which is disproportionately large for someone of his height. Just for comparison purposes, Muhammad Ali has a reach of seventy eight inches and he's six foot three. Floyd Patterson, who was a former heavyweight champ, is six feet tall and had a seventy two inch reach. Lennox Lewis also had a reach of eighty four inches, but he was six foot five, so this was an incredible advantage in the boxing ring. Also, his fists were gigantic. They were fifteen inches around. It's commonly said that his hands were so big that they looked like hams. And one author said that when he hit you in the face, he hit you in the whole face. And they had to have special gloves made for him to fit those enormous hands. The boxing and athletic director in the prison, named Reverend Aloy Stephens, quickly identified Sonny and wanted him in his prison boxing program. Reverend Stephens taught him boxing and realized he had unbelievable raw strength, power and potential. The other inmates did not like sparring with him, and they were understandably afraid. And this is where he started developing his jab. Usually the jab is in a power punch. It just keeps an opponent away. But with his, it had absolute knockout power. It's been called the strongest jab in boxing history. It worked very well with his natural talent and long reach. He ended up winning the prison boxing championship, and Stephens advocated for him and helped him get paroled early because of his boxing. He was paroled October thirty first, nineteen fifty two, after only three years served. After that, Father Stephens helped hook him up with boxing contacts, and that started his amateur boxing career. He wasn't really ready for the big show yet, but it wouldn't be long. So back he went to Saint Louis with a new focus amateur boxing. Father Stephens stayed involved with Sonny after prison, and he helped him arrange fights, connected him with trainers and local fight promoters, and at the time, he was training with a person named Marvin Bartel in Saint Louis. His amateur time is really characterized by him developing his raw technical skills and his overwhelming physical stature. Accounts of frightening sparring sessions and amateurs refusing to fight him, and extremely short amateur fights. He started winning local championships right away. He fought in local Saint Louis fight clubs, and he won the Saint Louis Golden Gloves heavyweight title. Record keeping from that era is pretty spotty, but he was winning everything there was to win. Less than a year after leaving prison, though, on September two, nineteen fifty three, he turned pro and that's when he got his birth certificate and they picked May eight, nineteen thirty two, as his birthday. In his first fight, he knocked out Don Smith in thirty three seconds in the first round, and that pretty much set the tone for his career. He was late to the game with his age. He needed money. Amateurs couldn't handle him, so the only thing to do was for him to go pro at that point, between nineteen fifty three and nineteen fifty five. Of course, the mob started taking notice of him. And that's not unusual because at the time, boxing was heavily controlled by organized crime, and that's mostly because of betting and fight fixing. John Vitale, alleged union racketeer handled him, and there are allegations that Sonny was acting in some capacity as a mob enforcer, a loan shark collector and a strikebreaker. There's little actual definitive proof of this, but the claims are quite common. So this continued until about nineteen fifty six, when he had a turning point in an incident with a local Saint Louis police officer named Thomas Mello. It was May seventh, nineteen fifty six, and it was reported in the Saint Louis Globe that Sonny Liston had been arrested for allegedly beating and robbing a Saint Louis police officer. This officer, named Thomas Mello, apparently approached a cab parked in an alley and threatened to right the cab a ticket. Sonny and his friend Willie Patterson, who was driving the cab, got into an argument with the officer and allegedly dragged the officer into the alley and brutally beat him. They broke his leg, he had a head injury and they took his gun, which was later recovered at a relative's house. Sonny's wife, Geraldine, said in an interview afterwards that the officer had used a racial slur on him. A police officer in Saint Louis at the time named James Reddick, found him a few nights later and had a conversation with him and told him that he was going to get his head caved in if he didn't stop what he was doing. This resulted in a nine month prison sentence, and at the time he had a professional record of fifteen and one, and he was quickly climbing the rankings. So that incident followed him for the rest of his career. Every police officer in America heard about this, and had strengthened the perception that Sonny was a dangerous, mob controlled criminal, and it made him hard to market for fights. So that's why there's a gap in his fighting record between nineteen fifty six and nineteen fifty eight, because he was in prison after he got out. There is an interesting anecdote that's hard to verify, but it comes from a book called The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches. He allegedly got into another altercation with a police officer, and in that case, picked up the police officer, turned him upside down and put him into a trash can. That one's really hard to verify, but his reputation with police and promoters was already really bad at the time, and this didn't help. It's one of those stories that you hear about Sonny Liston that seems like a little bit of boxing legend, but I also wouldn't put it past Sonny Liston to turn a cop upside down and put him in a trash can. By nineteen fifty seven, Sonny's relationship with the Saint Louis police was at an all time low, and he was encouraged to leave the city. Several sources indicate that this was a leave or else situation, and the sentiment definitely comes across in that interview with James Reddick, that same former Saint Louis police officer who basically told him he was going to get his head caved in if he didn't leave town.

Shaun This was around the time that he married Geraldine Clark in nineteen fifty seven, who he stayed married to for the rest of his life but wasn't at all faithful to their only child, Daniel, Dan or Danny was, according to one account we read presented to him by a waitress that Sonny had slept with as being his son. But Geraldine adopted him and raised him as her own. A man named William Bill Wingate, who was also a boxer, according to reports. Is another one of Sonny's children. But Geraldine is not his mother. There's a lot of controversy around this, and we could not confirm that he was his son. He asserted that he was. He's since passed away, but his birth date and birth location are also in question. Given where Sonny was living at the time. Geraldine herself had children from a previous relationship, at least two daughters that we read about who were in their teens when she met Sonny. So he had two stepdaughters as well. And the family records, as with everything in Sonny's early life, are spotty and incomplete.

John At that point, Sonny took the hint and left Saint Louis for Philadelphia, and at that point he was handed over to a new mob manager in Philadelphia named Frank Carbo and Frank Blinky Palermo, and he was managed by Joseph Barone, who was a friend of carbon's. At this point in his career, he was absolutely crushing opponents, really earning a legitimate claim to a shot at Floyd Patterson's heavyweight belt. He was thought of as the best heavyweight alive at that time, and quotes about him included people saying he probably had the best left jab in heavyweight history. It was the kind of jab that went through you. According to boxing historian Hank Kaplan, he would hit the speed bag so hard that it broke. He would hit the headgear on his sparring partner so hard that it would knock the stuffing out of them. He was known as the toughest guy on the planet, and that kind of became his identity. There was one journalist who said, Guy started bleeding during the national anthem. There was one interesting interview when he was talking to Howard Cosell after one of his fights, and he asked, Sonny, it seems like you plan a vastly increased use of your right hand. And Sonny replies, I'm planning on using both of them. He was thought of as being bad with the press, but it didn't seem like that to me. that exchange is an example of how it seemed like he just had a dry sense of humor that no one really knew what to do with. But the white media did not like him, and he didn't like them, and he didn't trust them. Stories at the time referred to him with really blatant, offensive, racist language, and his brushes with the law really slowed down his bid to get a shot at the heavyweight championship. Also, it's pretty obvious that Floyd Patterson and his manager knew full well what was going to happen when that match finally happened, that Floyd Patterson wouldn't have much of a chance against Liston. So they made up excuses and leaned on his criminal record and his ties to organized crime to dodge the fight. President Kennedy even chimed in and said he didn't want Liston to get a shot at the heavyweight title. The NAACP also didn't like Sonny, but for a different reason. They loved Floyd, but they thought Liston was bad for the civil rights movement because of his criminal past, so they didn't want him getting the fight either. Of course, police around the country knew about the incident where he broke Officer Mello's leg. They all conspired to harass him blatantly wherever they could. Off camera, though, people who knew him called him funny, shy, generous and excellent with children. And there's evidence of that. There's video of him being great with kids and exhibiting his dry humor, like in his interview with Howard Cosell. He was also very insecure about his upbringing and education, and he hated being asked about it. And of course, the white press loved asking him about it. But finally, though, Floyd Patterson couldn't duck Sonny Liston any more and he agreed to fight him. And strangely, it seemed like he thought that he was doing Sonny a favor, when in fact, Sonny more than earned a shot at the title. And there's evidence that Floyd was rightly terrified that first fight with Floyd took place September twenty fifth, nineteen sixty two, at Comiskey Park in Chicago while he lived in Philly. It did not go well for Floyd Patterson. Sonny beat the crap out of him in the first round, and it was over in two minutes and five seconds. It was the first time a heavyweight championship had ended in the first round. He also offered Floyd a rematch immediately. And there's an anecdote and a lot of stories. You read about Liston flying back to Philadelphia after the fight and planning his speech to the public, and how he would be a good champion and a good role model. The story goes that they landed in Philadelphia and there was no one to greet him, no press, no nothing, and it really had an effect on him. The story comes from his friend Roy Munson and a former boxer named Jack McKinney. He said that you just see him deflate and be like, screw this. That story is another example of boxing legend and the mythology of Sonny Liston, and there's potentially some truth to the story, but also it's not quite as advertised. It sounded like perhaps the deputy mayor was there, but they were at the wrong place to greet him. But the perception was that he was not greeted and wasn't treated like the champ he was. And then even after he was the champ, the police continue to harass him, and they even arrested him for something as minor as driving too slow. After that, he and Geraldine made the decision to leave Philly and he said famously, I'd rather be a lamppost in Denver than the mayor of Philadelphia. So he felt really rejected in Philadelphia and decided Denver would be a better option.

Shaun In nineteen sixty two, Geraldine and Sonny arrive in Denver, and Sonny came with his bad reputation intact. He was thought of as an ex-con, a police assaulter and a mob fighter. But he quickly became friends with a Catholic priest named Father Louis Murphy, and Father Murphy became a mentor to him. Murphy reportedly encouraged Sonny to stay out of trouble, avoid drinking, and embrace his responsibilities as a heavyweight champion. But Sonny continued struggling with alcohol use, the unwanted and unjustified attention from the police and just general public and media hostility. The Denver police knew what kind of car he drove and they wanted to harass him. And a journalist named Larry Merchant said that they should throw him a ticker tape parade made out of his arrest warrants. Sonny worked hard to rehab and improved his image. He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and it was like they were trying to portray him as safe for Middle America, which is really coded language. There was a lot of racism towards him in the media, and the effort seemed like it was all done to make him more palatable to white America. But he appeared on American Bandstand. He appeared on Night Train, where he did things like skipping rope to music, which people loved because he was so athletic and it looked so cool when he would do it. But Sonny found all of this difficult. He wasn't comfortable giving interviews. He hated it. He didn't trust the reporters because they often went after him for things like his illiteracy.

John But shortly after that, Floyd Patterson got his rematch on July twenty four, nineteen sixty three. And unfortunately for Floyd, it didn't go very much better. He did last longer. It was still a round one knockout, but Floyd lasted four seconds longer than the first one. This one lasted two minutes and 10s, so that solidified Sonny Liston as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. And he was at his absolute peak at this time. And the boxing world thought that he was indestructible and unbeatable. Everyone, that is, except, of course, for a young twenty two year old Olympic boxing champion named Cassius Clay, who very much wanted a shot at the heavyweight title after the second Patterson fight, Liston was training in Las Vegas at Tacos Ringside Gym, and the focus shifted on a fight with Cassius Clay. Cassius Clay was young and on the rise. He was a popular Olympic gold medalist, and he desperately was trying to get Liston's attention, and he wanted to be the heavyweight champ. There's a fun anecdote where Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston were both at the Intercontinental and they saw each other. Cassius Clay was playing at a card table, and Liston walked up to him and smacked him in the head and told him he was too damn fresh. According to Jack McKinney, who claimed he was there, which is another wild bit of boxing history, the first fight he had with Cassius Clay took place on February twenty fifth, nineteen sixty four in Miami Beach, just seven months after his fight with Patterson. At the time, no one took Clay seriously. Clay spent the lead up to the fight taunting Sonny, calling him ugly, mocking him in public, trying to get in his head. There's even one anecdote where he drove to Paradise Palms and parked outside Sonny's house and honked the horn and pounded on his windows and tried to get him outside to come fight. Then at the weigh in, Clay appeared almost hysterical. He was yelling, shaking, screaming at Sonny. People thought it was a psyop, but doctors had to check Clay to make sure that he was all right. Experts expected Liston to destroy Clay. He was an eight to one favorite, but when it came to the fight, Clay was just too fast for Liston. He struggled to even hit Clay. Clay was twenty two years old and in peak physical condition, and many later believed that Sonny had really underestimated him and not trained as hard as he could have. By round three, it was clear that Clay wasn't like anyone else he'd faced previously. After round four, Clay said that there was something in his eyes and he couldn't see. He wanted to quit because his vision was blurry, but his trainer just thought he was scared and he sent him out anyway, into the fifth round. And somehow he survived by essentially running away from Liston for the whole round. There are unproven allegations that Sonny and his corner used something to blind Clay on purpose, possibly liniment, or that Clay's cutman got it in his eyes by mistake. But there's no proof of that. Like we said, Clay survived round five and then dominated the sixth round. When the seventh round was set to begin, Liston just refused to come out. He said his shoulder had been hurt, which isn't really clear if that happened, and a lot of people immediately thought the fight was fixed because it was eight to one for Liston to win. There's a lot of disagreement on that, but there's no actual evidence of it. So Cassius Clay won the fight and was the new heavyweight champion of the world. Of course, they had to have a rematch set up immediately. So Sonny started training again, this time for real. And he dropped a lot of weight and got back to where he was previously and really sharpened up for the rematch. The fight was initially planned for November sixteen, nineteen sixty four in Boston at the Boston Garden, but unfortunately, right before the fight, his opponent, who is no longer Cassius Clay, he's now Muhammad Ali, got a hernia and required surgery. So this is a problem because Sonny is absolutely ready to go and has an end date in mind. But now he has to wait. And during the time between when the fight was originally scheduled and when it took place, there were a congressional investigations of the first fight as to whether it was fixed. The FBI was investigating a possible fix and the second fight, and it was just continual distraction after distraction, the fight is finally rescheduled for May twenty five, nineteen sixty five, and it's been moved from Boston to Lewiston, Maine. Like we mentioned, he's no longer Cassius Clay. He's known as Muhammad Ali, reflecting his close affiliation with the Nation of Islam, which adds another layer of controversy to him. At the time, there were also allegations that the Nation of Islam threatened Sonny's family with death if he won the fight, although there's no conclusive proof of that. Early in the fight, Sonny went down after being punched in the face with what was eventually called the Phantom Punch. So he went down and there was a referee standing between Ali and Liston because Ali refused to go to a neutral corner like you're supposed to when there's a knock down. There were trainers screaming. The ref couldn't hear the count. Liston finally got up, but the ref was told that he had been down for more than 10s and the fight was called off. He did get hit but it's not clear how hard he really got hit. You may know the famous photo of Muhammad Ali that everyone knows. It's that fight with him standing over Sonny Liston yelling, get up soccer! Get up soccer when he should be standing in a neutral corner. Everyone thought that the fight was fixed. After the fight, I thought this was a nice story. Floyd Patterson was at the fight and he came into Liston's locker room and consoled him after the loss.

Shaun Following that, Sonny officially moved his residence to Las Vegas. On April five, nineteen sixty six, and as part of the move, he actually had to fill out a convicted persons questionnaire. But he and Geraldine bought a very nice home in Paradise Palms at twenty fifty eight Ottawa, in a neighborhood full of Las Vegas celebrities. And Sonny fit in well in Las Vegas. He wasn't harassed as much by the police, and gambling was accepted here. And over time, Sonny's image started to soften. He appeared on the cover of the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album. He appeared in an airline commercial with Andy Warhol. He was on Love American style. He was in a movie with the monkeys, but he kept fighting, and he ended up winning fourteen fights in a row. He was fighting internationally, and he was proving that he was still a serious contender. However, it's rumored that Sonny was using cocaine, weed, even heroin, and we have more to say about that. But there were also well documented allegations of Sonny selling drugs on the West Side and on a small scale inside the Intercontinental Hotel, which was his known hangout. That's the hotel that became the Las Vegas Hilton, and now it's currently the Westgate. Sonny had well known celebrity friendships with people like George Foreman, who was Olympic champion and sparring partner, and he called Liston gentle and kind. Sonny's last fight was June twenty ninth, nineteen seventy, in new Jersey against Charles Wepner, who was known as the Bayonne Bleeder, because, not surprisingly, he bled a lot during fights. Sonny won that fight by TKO, and there are unproven rumors that Sonny was supposed to throw that last fight, but he didn't. He earned thirteen thousand dollars for the fight, but once he paid off a debt and his trainers, he was left with nothing. The couple had no money, according to Geraldine. Geraldine said in an interview that people claimed Sonny was working for the mob, but they were broke. In February of nineteen sixty nine, an incident happened that really hurt Sonny's reputation. There was a drug bust at a place called Earl's Beauty Cage. Earl Cage was a beautician on the West Side, where he ran a very popular beauty salon, and it was allegedly very popular because Earl was selling drugs to women on the historic West Side. Sonny was there at the residence when the police raided the place. But listen, was the only person who was let go. There's little mention of the incident in the papers, just a headline like Sonny Liston posts bail, which was allegedly for DUI charge, not for drugs, and it never went to court. Police just walked Liston out to his car, according to Bill Alden. But when something like this happens, people are going to start asking questions. And it's no wonder that rumors started that Sonny was possibly a police informant. As nineteen seventy was coming to a close, Sonny's life was going in two directions. His relationship with Geraldine was strained at that point because of his alcohol use and his infidelity. He also was at the same time improving his image with his relationships and his appearances on TV shows and in movies. At the end of the year, Geraldine and Danny left town to visit her family for the holidays because her father was ill, leaving Sonny alone in Las Vegas. During these last few days of his life, Sonny reportedly was continuing to make plans for the future. He was going to meetings, he was planning future television appearances, and he was scheduling work for the New Year nineteen seventy one. He met with his close friend Davey Pearl to work on an appointment calendar for the coming year. He reportedly drove to Los Angeles for meetings with a booking agent about those television appearances, and in the early morning hours of December twenty ninth, Sonny called his old friend Barney Baker in Chicago and said, I got twenty big ones for you. Barney later said that Sonny sounded upbeat and had planned to visit him, but Sonny never arrived.

John While Geraldine was out of town for New Year's, she wasn't able to reach Sonny by phone and she was worried about him. She came home five days later, on January fifth, nineteen seventy one. She walked in the house around nine p m and noted a horrible smell. She thought he was cooking something, but there was nothing in the kitchen. She went upstairs and found Sonny. He was dead, lying on the bed. She immediately left the house and went to a friend's and called Sonny's doctor. After a while, she got Ahold of the doctor who came to the house and confirmed what. She suspected that Sonny was dead and had been for a while. She called the police three and a half hours later at eleven fifty nine p m. There's some question about that timing, but there's never been any implication that she was involved in any way with Sonny's death. But it raises questions about whether or not she was tidying up the house in the meantime. It was clear from what the doctor said that he had been dead close to a week. There was no immediate evidence for how he died. He had apparently fallen over in the bedroom, breaking a small bench as he collapsed, and several of his friends were present at the house. As they were taking him out in the kitchen, police discovered a small balloon of heroin and some marijuana, but they didn't find any needles. The house wasn't in disarray. There was no sign of a break in and nothing is missing. The strange thing was that Geraldine was in the house for a while, and she didn't notice the bag of heroin in the kitchen, so that's really strange. And that strangeness and accusation of heroin in the kitchen might be why she never really fully cooperated with the police. Police assumed that this was an overdose and that family members tidied up the crime scene. On January fifth, the initial autopsy couldn't pinpoint a cause of death. They mentioned track marks on his arm as a possible cause. And of course, the local papers love that and ran with it. But Sonny didn't like needles. We know this from his Philadelphia dentist, the doctor that treated him when he was in a car accident just a few weeks earlier. And his trainers. In fact, at one point he had to cancel a fight in Africa because he refused to get the required vaccinations. And Joe Lewis reportedly said if there was heroin in his veins, someone other than Liston shot it in. Based on the description of the crime scene, it was a complete mess. His funeral was held January ninth, nineteen seventy one at the Palm Mortuary Chapel in Las Vegas, which holds about four hundred people, with about a thousand people in attendance. Joe Lewis was one of his pallbearers, and the celebrities in attendance included Ed Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, Nipsey Russell, Doris Day, and the ink spots who sang sunny. According to some reports, the final coroner's toxicology report came back ten days later, January nineteenth, two weeks after he died, with a ruling that he died of natural causes, specifically lung congestion and heart failure. So unfortunately, there was no further investigation and it was never treated as a homicide. The coroner said that the drugs weren't present in sufficient amounts to cause death. So according to him, it wasn't the heroin that killed him. There are other theories out there, and we will talk a little bit about each of them. His housekeeper's name was Mildred Stevenson, and she later claimed that she entered Sonny's house on December thirty first using her key and found him dead. And according to this version, she called sports handicapper Lem Banker and then locked the house and left. If that's true, that would mean that multiple people may have known Sonny was dead before Geraldine officially discovered the body days later. And there's no proof of this. Trainer Johnny Tocco later allegedly told friends that he became worried when Sonny failed to appear at his New Year's Eve party. According to Taco's account, allegedly, he went to Sonny's house with police and Sonny was already dead and there was a needle visible in Sonny's arm. Taco allegedly claimed that the house didn't smell strongly of decomposition at that point, and of course, that version conflicts with later official documents and adds another layer of mystery to the timeline. Almost immediately, theories began spreading through boxing circles in Las Vegas. Major theories included that it was an accidental overdose of heroin, that it was an intentional hotshot murder, that it was mob retaliation, that it was drug dealer retaliation, that it was a heart attack that was later staged as an overdose. Some people believe that Sonny had become involved with a dangerous drug dealers. Others believed that he knew too much about organized crime and boxing. Another rumor claimed that he had never been paid for, allegedly throwing the Ali rematch and had become angry about it. Another theory claimed that Sonny had refused to throw the Chuck Wepner fight months earlier and was killed for it. There are problems with all these theories, though. The overdose theory has a lot of inconsistencies. Sonny was very afraid of needles, so that doesn't make sense. There's very unclear toxicology and the timeline just doesn't work. The murder theories also really lack hard evidence, but the investigation itself was lackluster and limited and never pursued as a homicide. As we said earlier, Harold Conrad said, I think he died the day he was born, and that line really reflects how many people viewed Sonny's life. He was shaped by violence, poverty, fear, exploitation and public rejection long before his actual death. People have argued about Sonny Liston and his death for more than fifty years. But long before he was found dead in Las Vegas, people decided what they thought of him. They called him a criminal. They called him dangerous. They called him a thug, and even worse things. His friends knew him as someone who was funny, generous, and who loved children. He grew up in poverty and was abused as a child, but rose to the top of the boxing world. But he never really escaped his past. He was shaped by the times he grew up in, and his grave marker sums it up well. Simply saying A man. Thanks for listening. If you're enjoying the podcast, it always helps if you can leave a positive review on the podcast platform of your choice. And if you want to hear our episodes ad free and get access to bonus content, head over to podcast. Subscribe. As always, we remind you what happens here happens everywhere. Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.co/subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads at Sins and survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at Sins and survivors dot com.

Shaun If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website. Sins and survivors dot com. Sins and survivors. A Las Vegas True Crime podcast is researched, written, and produced by your host, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, Sins and survivors dot com.

John The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.

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