The Devil and Sonny Liston

by Nick Tosches

  The New York grand jury investigation led to the formal indictment of Frank Carbo on July 24. With the kind of headlines he had been pulling down, or Hogan's press lackeys had been pulling down for him - "The Mystery of Frankie Carbo -Will New Hogan Probe Solve It?" - it was inevitable.

  In the indictment against him, Carbo was charged with conspiracy, multiple counts of undercover management of prize fighters, and unlicensed matchmaking in fights whose official matchmaker was the International Boxing Club of New York.

  Ever the fugitive, Carbo went south. This shit had been going on for over ten years. That's how long Hogan had been after him. The New York Sun, June 3,1947:

  District Attorney Frank S. Hogan announced today that Frankie Carbo, former fight promoter, sought for questioning in the investigation here of alleged gangster influence in the boxing world, has been located in New Haven, Conn., and will be brought here for a Grand Jury examination set for June 10.

  According to the District Attorney, Carbo, who is said to be a secret power in the prizefight world and the undercover manager of several well-known fighters, was located after a two week search in which detectives traced him from Maine to Maryland.

  Hogan said that Carbo disappeared around the end of January when the Grand Jury heard middleweight Rocky Graziano state that he had been offered a bribe of $100,000 to throw his championship fight with Tony Zale.

  That was Hogan's first investigation into boxing, back in '47. Charged with no offense, but sought only as a witness, Carbo was brought to the Criminal Courts Building on November 20, the second day of the investigation. Six days earlier, twenty-six year old Jacob LaMotta, going down in the fourth, had thrown a fight to Billy Fox at Madison Square Garden in exchange for a shot at the middleweight title. Jake's performance was such that reporters had voiced suspicions of a fix. This, Hogan figured, was a godsend, a blessing: an instance of corruption, a controversy, fresh in the public eye and mind, upon which to center the inquiry anew. LaMotta was called by the grand jury to testify on the same day that Carbo testified. What Hogan failed to consider was the importance to LaMotta of that promise of a chance to win the title. If LaMotta was willing to go down in ignominy for that chance, why should he not be willing to prevaricate to protect that chance?

  Speaking from Philadelphia on November 18, Blinky Palermo had said that he welcomed an investigation because Fox had won an honest fight on his own merits. Now, two days later, Jake said that he had fought his best, and that was that. Carbo said he could not comment because he had not seen the fight, and that was that.

  The boxing shit came up again six days before Christmas 1952, during the New York State Crime Commission investigation into waterfront racketeering. The ltalian born overlord of the waterfront, deadly Umberto Anastasio, better known as Albert Anastasia, "the man generally considered the most feared figure in the underworld"(the New York Times of December 20, 1952), was a defiant and angry witness who refused to answer ninety seven of the questions put to him in the hour of his time that he gave: "The witness' sinister reputation as the man who reputedly had given the orders for possibly sixty three murders kept the hearingroom audience in New York County Courthouse spellbound. His demeanor on the stand had the deceptive languor of a jungle cat." The hearing veered into an examination of Anastasia's ties to boxing and of the influence he was said to have in so called Jacobs Beach, the area around Broadway and Forty Ninth Street, which was the gathering place of fight managers both known and covert. In this context, Frank Carbo was called to the stand. Described by the commission as an associate of Anastasia, Carbo sat mute in a fine blue suit and tie through most of the questioning. His response to the opening request to state his name was, "I refuse to answer the question. I rely on my constitutional rights." Later he refused to answer one question as to whether he refused to answer.

  The hearing was recessed until the new year. At two o'clock on the morning of January 17, 1953, two detectives of District Attorney Frank S. Hogan's squad arrested Carbo in the Jacobs Beach area above Times Square. After questioning at the district attorney's office, he was brought downtown to the Elizabeth Street station and booked on charges of violating the Executive Law, an obscure, thirty year old statute that rendered it a misdemeanor offense to refuse without reasonable cause to answer questions in a public inquiry.

  He smiled once again his beautiful smile for the photographers - che faccia, serena e molto vivace, come quella dello zio gentile e amato."His record," noted the New York Times of next day, "shows a facility in beating murder charges."

  Three Special Sessions justices acquitted him of all charges, agreeing that he did indeed have grounds for silence, as he "could have reasonably sensed the peril of prosecution" had he answered.

  He seemed above the law, jurisprudence proof as well as bullet proof. His image, power, and sovereignty - and his mystery - were the stuff of headlines. "Boxing and the Mobs: Who Is Frankie Carbo?" asked the New York Post in bold white display set from black. "Paul John Carbo had a constant companion as a youth," the article began. "It was a gun." The second paragraph blossoms into dire metaphor in true Post fashion: "Today, some 30 years later, Carbo is still the man behind the firearms in the shotgun marriage of underworld mobs and prize ring."

  Winds changed and things turned bad for his friends from the good old days. Frank Costello got his retirement notice, a close range scalp grazing bullet, on May 2, 1957. Less than six months later, on the morning of October 25, Anastasia was assassinated while relaxing in a barber's chair. But Carbo continued to flourish. The bullets served on Costello and Anastasia were Genovese bullets: Carbo's old partner in the management of Babe Risko was Gabe Genovese, a cousin of Vito Genovese and now, according to Assistant District Attorney John G. Bonomi, "a chief lieutenant of Frankie Carbo."

  After Anastasia's murder, while the police, to no avail, sought him for questioning, newspapers reported front page warnings that "Frankie C." was next. The World Telegram described him as "known far and wide as the underworld's commissioner of boxing"; the Times as "a man with wide but shadowy associations in the prizefight field."

  After Carbo's flight from indictment in the summer of 1958, District Attorney Hogan sent out a nationwide alarm for his arrest. "Warrant issued. Will extradite,'' declared the wanted notices that were broadcast to every police agency in America.

  Despite all attempts to track him down, Carbo remained at large until late the following spring, when he was finally captured, living in a house in a quiet suburban township near Camden, New Jersey, directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and from his good man Blinky. Upon his seizure, a few minutes past midnight on May 30, 1959, he casually told his captors that he had been planning to surrender "in a couple of days" anyway. On June 5, he was sent to Camden County Jail, where he awaited the outcome of an application filed by his attorneys for a writ of habeas corpus to test the validity of extradition proceedings. In voicing opposition to any possibility of bail, Alfred J. Scotti, chief assistant district attorney for New York County and head of the Rackets Bureau, called Carbo "the most corrupt, corrosive and degrading influence in the sport of boxing."

  Carbo's trial opened, in New York, before General Sessions Judge John A. Mullen, on October 5, 1959. Several weeks later, on October 30, after a conference among defense and prosecution attorneys, Carbo brought the trial to an unexpected close by withdrawing his plea of not guilty and entering a plea of guilty to three representative counts of the ten count indictment: one each of conspiracy, undercover managing, and undercover matchmaking. These counts were taken to "cover the indictment," meaning that he could not be prosecuted for the other seven counts.

  Carbo was sentenced on the last day of November. Chief Assistant District Attorney Alfred J. Scotti read from an eighteen-page prepared statement: "The evil influence of this man has for many years permeated virtually the entire professional sport of boxing," Scotti declaimed. "I believe it is fair to say that the name of Frank Carbo today symbolizes the degene
ration of professional boxing into a racket.

  "This man is beyond redemption."

  Judge Mullen spoke at less length and with less melodrama, addressing his words directly to Carbo: "In boxing, your wish was tantamount to a command performance. You had terrific, improper, and illegal influence in the fight game. You enriched yourself to a degree I can't contemplate."

  Mullen observed that the medical reports he had seen on Carbo were not "happy." (The Gray was diabetic, had liver and kidney trouble, and also allegedly suffered from racket syndrome, the all but-inevitable heart ailment of those prone to prosecution and sentencing.) It was only because of Carbo's poor health, said Mullen, that the maximum sentence of three years was being reduced to a term of two.

  "Thank you, Judge," Carbo whispered to Mullen as he was led past the bench.

  Carbo, gentleman and killer, had reason to be grateful. From the Prohibition days of bullets and teenage redheads to his present breath, he had led a chosen and charmed existence, getting away with murder, in every sense of that phrase, for more than thirty years.

  From the New York State Crime Commission of 1952-1953 to Hogan's grand jury investigation of 1958; from his fugitive months underground in 1958-1959 to this magic moment before Judge Mullen in General Session Court, Carbo had operated with impunity and his dominion had been inviolable. He and his man Blinky had taken control of Sonny Liston beneath the approaching storm of Hogan's investigation; and neither that investigation nor Carbo's flight from it, neither law nor so called justice itself shook that control, which was absolute and which Carbo exercised freely, in and beneath the light of day, in hiding or in the open.

  Throughout 1958 and 1959, Sonny fought a dozen fights under that control. Eight of them were in 1958: Billy Hunter in January; Ben Wise in March; Bert Whitehurst in April; Julio Mederos in May; Wayne Bethea in August; Frankie Daniels and again Whitehurst in October; Ernie Cab in November. All but the first two of these were fought while Carbo was in hiding.

  Carbo was still at large for the first two fights of 1959, with Mike De John in February and with Cleveland Williams in April. Carbo was awaiting trial for the third, with Nino Valdez in August, and he was in Riker's Island Prison for the last, with Willi Besmanoff in December.

  The Daniels fight in October and the Cab fight in November took place in Miami Beach, where Sonny had never before fought. The first fights of 1959, with De John in February and Williams in April, were also fought in Miami Beach, as was Sonny's first fight of 1960, an eight round knockout of the Reno, Nevada, heavyweight Howard King.

  Carbo, who kept a Manhattan residence at 400 East Fifty Ninth Street, also kept a home in Hollywood, Florida, at 2637 Taft Street, less than twenty miles north of Miami Beach. His associate and "chief lieutenant" Gabriel Genovese lived at 1668 Alton Road in Miami Beach. James Norris, the former head of the IBC, had moved from Chicago to Coral Gables, which lay just south of Miami.

  While the nationwide alarm for his arrest intensified, Carbo continued with business as usual, summoning Blinky and others to several secret meetings in Florida, at the Coral Gables home of James Norris and elsewhere. Later, in early 1959, after Carbo had moved in stealth from Florida to the quiet New Jersey community that lay just a few miles across the river from where Blinky and Liston lived, Blinky would deliver those summoned by Carbo to his new hideout at 357 Crystal Lake Terrace, Hayden Township.

  One of the Miami meetings, on January 5, 1959, involved a forty three year old Los Angeles promoter known as Jackie Leonard, an whose real name was Leonard Blakely but who retained the ring name under which he had fought. Leonard was an associate of Donald Paul Nesseth, a thirty two year old used car dealer who managed a promising Los Angeles welterweight named Don Jordan. Nesseth was unable to arrange nationally televised matches for Jordan; and Leonard, interceding, had called upon Truman Gibson. Three nationally televised bouts suddenly followed, and Don Jordan just as suddenly was a contender for the world welterweight title that Virgil Akins had held since the night before the grand jury indictments were announced.

  Gibson met with Leonard and Nesseth in Los Angeles to discuss the upcoming title fight between Jordan and Akins. During that meeting, Gibson was called to the telephone. After exchanging a few words with the caller, Gibson passed the telephone to Leonard. The caller was Blinky Palermo.

  "Do you know we're in for half?" he demanded of Leonard.

  "Half of what? I don't know what you're talking about."

  "We're in for half of the fighter, or there won't be any fight."

  Nesseth absolutely refused to go along with any such arrangement, but Leonard was intent on the fight.

  The fight was held in Los Angeles on December 5,1958. It was a long and close fight, which Jordan won by a decision in fifteen rounds.

  Exactly a month later, on the morning of January 5, 1959, Leonard was brought to Miami, where he was met at the airport by Blinky and his cohort Abe Sands, the guy everybody knew only by the name of Mike. At one point, Sands left Blinky and Leonard to have breakfast together in the coffee shop of the Chateau Resort Motel, where Blinky was registered under a false name and address. When Sands returned to the coffee shop, Carbo was with him. The men adjourned to Blinky's room, where Carbo confronted Leonard, demanding to know whether or not Leonard could set his partner straight:

  "Can you or can't you?"

  Blinky told Leonard that he was going to force Jordan to fight Garnet "Sugar" Hart, a formidable young Philadelphia fighter whose management Blinky now controlled, and who was now the foremost contender for the welterweight championship.

  "Nesseth won't go for it," Leonard said. "He can make a lot more money fighting easier fights than Sugar Hart."

  "He's got to," Blinky told him. "The only reason I got control of Hart is by telling the manager I would get a title for him. What the hell is the difference? A fighter wins the title, and Nesseth gets fifteen percent of Hart. That's the way it works."

  Carbo said that he was little interested in money for himself. He gestured to Blinky, to the unseen that Blinky represented: "As long as these fellows are making money, I don't have to be doling out money to them."

  Two other men then joined them: Gabe Genovese and Chris Dundee.

  Dundee, an older brother of the trainer Angelo Dundee, was originally from Philadelphia, where he was born, as Cristofo Mirena, on February 25, 1907. His older brother Joe, a Philadelphia club fighter, had taken the name of Dundee from another, more celebrated fighter named Johnny Dundee. Chris had followed suit as a teenager, at the outset of his own career as a boxer: and he, like Leonard, kept his ring name after that career was finished. In the early years of the alliance between Carbo and the IBC, Chris Dundee operated as a boxing manager, with an office in the Capitol Hotel, close to Madison Square Garden. He had since moved to Miami, where he was now that city's most important boxing promoter, with an office at the Miami Beach Auditorium. Sonny Liston's four Miami fights in 1958-1959 were Dundee promotions, held while Carbo was a fugitive, whereabouts unknown except to a chosen few.

  When Carbo and Dundee left the room to confer, Genovese told Leonard that it was good to see that he had joined the "family." Carbo, he told Leonard, was "a great guy."

  Later that night, on the drive back to the airport, Blinky took Leonard to an apartment where Carbo was in the company of a woman. Blinky and Carbo stepped into the bedroom to talk, and when they came out, Carbo once again confronted Leonard: "Are you sure you can handle everything all right now?"

  "I’ll try," said Leonard.

  At that, Carbo bared his teeth: "God damn it, don't try. You are going to do it, aren't you? You are the man we are looking for, and you are the man responsible out there. This is your baby; you're the one that is going to handle the thing."

  The IBC was dissolved by law a week later, on January 12, by a Supreme Court affirmation of a judgment that found the IBC and its many tentacled subsidiary and sister companies to have violated the Sherman Act by conspiring to control the
promotion of boxing. But the broken bones of the IBC survived for a while as National Boxing Enterprises, administered by Truman Gibson as its director of record. It was Gibson who played the good cop role in convincing Leonard, as he was drawn in ever more deeply, that it was all just a matter of placating Blinky.

  Carbo reportedly threatened Leonard's life in a telephone call of January 27. "You son of a bitching double crosser," Carbo intoned. "You are no good. Your word is no good. Nothing is good about you. Just because you are two thousand miles away, that is no sign I can't have you taken care of. I have got plenty of friends out there to take care of punks like you. The money had better be in." Another, more ominous call came from Carbo on April 28, about a month before Carbo was captured. "We are going to meet at crossroads." he told Leonard. Gibson had tried to calm Leonard, to reassure him. "They wouldn't resort to violence or anything like that, so severe."

  Leonard still could not get Nesseth to go along with him; and on May 1, while Carbo was hiding out in Jersey. Blinky traveled to Los Angeles. After a dinner meeting with a local gangster Louis Dragna, he called and commanded Leonard to the lobby of the Beverly Hilton, where Blinky awaited him in the company of another local gangster, Jack Sica. The three men took the elevator to Blinky's room, where Palermo turned angrily on Leonard. After much yelling and threatening by Palermo, Sica told Leonard that he, Sica, had been a friend of The Gray for many years, and that Leonard was in grave trouble and liable to get hurt.

  "Look, Jackie, you made a choice. It is a question of either you or Don Nesseth is going to get hurt. Wouldn't you rather go grab him by the neck and straighten him out, than for me to go back and tell The Gray? You try it, you're all right, but it is Nesseth that's no good. The way it is now, you and Blinky have both got your necks in a sling. Something has to be straightened out. If you have to, go and beat hell out of Nesseth. If you need help, we will go with you and help you drag him out of bed."