Assael, S: Murder of Sonny Liston

On 5 January 1971, at the age of thirty-eight, former heavyweight champion Sonny Liston was found dead in his Las Vegas home.

When police arrived, they discovered a one-ounce balloon on Sonny's nightstand. Even though there was no paraphernalia associated with shooting up, the coroner quickly labelled the cause of death an accidental overdose. Liston's death continues to hover over Las Vegas and the boxing world, leaving unanswered questions about his ties to powerful promoters, billionaire hoteliers, mob kingpins and shadowy drug lords.

Reviving boxing's most infamous cold case to work out what really happened on that night over forty years ago, Shaun Assael examines the mysterious last year of Liston's life against the backdrop of a pivotal era in the history of Las Vegas. The 1970s was the decade that the mob turned a sleepy desert oasis, famed for the Rat Pack, into a cathedral of corporate gambling. Glittering new towers were rising along the strip, while race riots were devastating the black community, creating two very different cities for Sonny Liston to disappear into.

Assael takes a fresh look at key aspects Liston's complicated life, previously ignored or glossed over, to get to the bottom of one of America's most enduring mysteries, while painting a stunning portrait of mob-run Las Vegas in the 1970s.