Was Sonny Liston Murdered?

It’s been 45 years since the former heavyweight champ was found dead of an apparent OD, but the haunting question still remains.

- Shaun Assael

More than a decade after Sonny Liston’s 1970 death from what a coroner called natural causes—and police suspected was an accidental OD of heroin—bookies, mobsters and cops in Vegas still whispered about whether the former heavyweight champ had died at the hands of someone else. In this excerpt from his upcoming book, The Murder of Sonny Liston, ESPN senior writer Shaun Assael recounts the day in 1982 when a sergeant in the Las Vegas police force got a strange tip that set in motion a new round of questions.

FROM HIS GANG unit office on the seventh floor of police headquarters, Gary Beckwith could look out over the two dozen officers under his command. One of the unintended consequences of the corporatization of Las Vegas was that it had chased out the old-time mobsters and allowed in a more murderous generation. A pathological killer, Tony Spilotro, made the ’70's the bloodiest decade on record when he was dispatched by the Chicago outfit to keep an eye on its Vegas interests, and he quickly threatened to kill anyone who didn’t pay him protection money.

But the mob wasn’t Beckwith’s biggest concern anymore. The Hells Angels were selling meth to schoolkids, and the black gangs who sold dope on the Westside had struck an unholy alliance with Mexican dealers who were taking over the desert line. As far as Beckwith was concerned, it was all a symptom of an even larger cancer: Las Vegas was growing too damn fast for its own good. Every time he passed a new construction site, he wondered how much more his city could stand.

With all of that on his mind, he wasn’t prepared to get a call at home after midnight from his boss, asking him to come back into the office. “Gary, I got a guy I need you to talk with,” the head of intelligence said.

“Can’t it wait?” Beckwith asked.