On August 8, 1972, some 52 years ago, former contender for the WBA world heavyweight title, Eddie Machen, still in his pajamas, was found dead in a San Francisco parking lot, after apparently falling from his second story apartment window. He was only 40 years of age. He died from a ruptured liver and loss of blood. He had, according to the coroner, a gaping one-inch wide gash at the corner of his right eye, which was black and blue and numerous body contusions. Machen was found lying on his side between a car and a post. There was a long, thick trail of blood oozing from his body to the car.
Doomed heavyweight Eddie Machen
A friend of Machen’s was interviewed by the police, the morning his body was found, and told them that Machen had been in good spirits the night before. This is an odd description because Machen was rarely if ever known to be in a good mood. However, as you will find, his upbeat mood may fit the narrative of his ultimate demise.
Most people who commit suicide are oddly serene and happy several days or more before they take their lives. This is because they have already made up their mind to die. Machen was never serene or happy. He was always complaining about something that annoyed him or how the Mob stole all of his ring money.
His girlfriend, Sheery Tomasini, who was away that night, received a phone call from Machen at midnight. He complained to her that he had insomnia again. Insomnia plagued Machen most of his life. Ultimately, it turned out to be the least of his many problems. Frustratingly, to this very day, authorities have never unequivocally determined whether Machen’s death was an accident, a suicide or a cold-blooded murder. This did not stop the press from speculating wildly about his death. The coroner found no gunshot wounds or residue on his body. Nor did they find any knife marks or any evidence of strangulation or even a struggle. Was Machen drugged and then thrown off the balcony by the Mob? Perhaps but that has never even been suggested. This would almost certainly seem to rule out homicide as a means of his death.
Machen was a mercurial character at the best of times. He was known to have been clinically depressed for most of his adult life, for which he was often hospitalized. He had been hospitalized for threatening to commit suicide on a number of occasions. He was also clinically diagnosed in 1962 as a paranoid schizophrenic. Did his severe, chronic depression and paranoid schizophrenia get the better of him that night, impelling him to jump out that second story window to his death? There is no medical evidence today that paranoid schizophrenia coupled with chronic depression and insomnia leads to suicide.
Machen was also known for his love of alcohol. We have seen all throughout boxing history that alcohol and chronic depression are quite often a lethal mix. This mixture has led boxers to commit violence against others. Carlos Monzon, Kid McCoy and Edwin Valero all committed murder against their spouses when drunk. McCoy and Valero ended up taking his own lives as well. There are many other examples of athletes harming others when inebriated, that fit this profile. So, was alcohol a factor in Machen’s demise? Maybe but, as of this writing, no toxicology report on Machen has ever surfaced to confirm he was drunk when he died. We simply do not know how much if any alcohol was in his system when he died. Possibly, it has been suggested that Machen’s death was a straight ahead Mob hit to avenge past or perceived transgressions.
Machen had accused the Mob in 1960 of loading Liston’s mitts in their fight. He repeated the accusation after the young Cassius Clay made the same accusations in 1964. Those in boxing and in the media knew full well that Liston’s mitts had been loaded on many occasions. They were wise enough never to mention it publicly. Machen made a point of mentioning it publicly at least twice. However, it’s unlikely that the Mob would wait 6 to 10 years to whack a guy for any indiscretion, although it has happened.
Sonny Liston, who also died under mysterious circumstances
And yet, there is another possible option to consider. This option has gained significantly more credence throughout the years. Machen was known to frequently sleepwalk throughout his neighborhood. The police had picked him up many times while sleepwalking, only to return him safely to his apartment. Could he have taken his own life while he was asleep, by jumping off his balcony? That is a possibility that bears examination. Remember, he was found fully clothed in his pajamas. Regardless of how his death occurred, one thing is certain. Machen did not enjoy many “best of times” during his short but eventful life.
Machen was prone to paralyzing bouts of depression throughout his life and was not treated for it until well into his boxing career. The first time he received professional help for depression was in 1962 after he was found at the side of a road with a gun in his hand and a suicide letter beside him. A police officer intervened and saved his life. He ended up going to NAPA State Mental Hospital where he received counselling and electro-shock therapy. It would be hard to accept that his paranoid schizophrenia and chronic depression did not have a huge negative impact on his mental state and actions for the rest of his life. How could they not? Then again, Machen had virtually no memory of his stay at NAPA hospital.
As the very well-respected boxing historian Don Majeski pointed out recently, even after his schizophrenia diagnosis, Machen went on to fight Sonny Liston, Ernie Terrell, Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Joe Frazier and many other fights. As Majeski correctly points out, this was a mistake. He should never have been allowed to step into the prize ring again.
The medical examiner and the police who gathered at the scene of his death were never able to irrefutably determine if Machen’s paranoid schizophrenia and chronic depression were contributing factors in his death. There exists no autopsy report for his brain. In other words, it was never examined. However, it would be surprising if these severe mental disabilities didn’t factor into his death in some manner. Some police detectives posited that perhaps during a period of extreme inebriation, he accidentally fell through an open window in his second story apartment to the cold, hard pavement below. That is also a distinct possibility, although absent a toxicology report, it’s not possible to declare that his death was or wasn’t caused by a state of alcohol intoxication. The police speculated that he may have fallen out the window, onto the balcony and then, carried by his momentum, over the railing onto the parking lot below. Such a theory defies the laws of physics and can be readily ruled out.
Could Machen have scaled his balcony then accidentally have fallen to his death while sleepwalking? It’s certainly plausible. Such a scenario would not require any alcohol to accomplish. It would have been difficult but not impossible. Mind you, to scale his railing may have required a ladder or stepladder and the police found Machen’s balcony empty. Machen was still physically in good health so he could have managed to scale the railing without any additional help.
Some boxing historians believe that the most plausible explanation regarding the violent and profoundly sad undoing of Machen involves murder by the Mob. Machen was a Mob fighter (obviously not by his own choice) and if history has taught us anything about boxing’s sordid past, it’s that Mob boxers seldom if ever, die accidentally. Especially fighters like Machen, who refuse to keep their mouths shut when ordered to do so by the Mob. Does Machen’s death fit a Mob hit? Maybe. Maybe not.
When it comes to boxing, just like all of their rackets, the Mob has a long memory and a short fuse which, is a deadly combination. If the Mob felt that Machen had pissed off or slighted them by mouthing off about Sonny Liston loading his gloves against him, Cleveland Williams, Ali, Terrell and other fighters, they would have been more than willing to wait until the conditions were ideal to knock him off. Then again, given his depression and paranoid schizophrenia, was there really any need to kill him? It isn’t as if the press took his rants to heart.
How then, could Machen’s comments to the press infuriate the Mob to the extent that they decided Machen had to be clipped?
The answer to the above question of course involves the time period we are discussing. During the late 1950’s and all through the 1960’s, the Mob controlled boxing with a deadly grip. More significantly, however, is the fact that the mid-fifties was when the Permanent Senate Sub-Committee Investing Organized Crime’s Influence in Boxing began. It is a permanent Senate sub-committee so it still exists today, by the way.
Machen’s public claims about Liston blinding him and other fighters, brought unwanted attention from the committee and the FBI on organized crime’s control of Sonny Liston and the sport itself. Such time in the national spotlight prevented the Mob from doing regular business. The Mob likely viewed Machen as a loose cannon because of paranoid schizophrenia and refusal to keep quiet about Liston’s loaded gloves. The one thing the Mob will simply not tolerate is a loose cannon. Loose lips sink ships. Machen was advised numerous times by many people in boxing to keep his mouth shut but, he refused to listen to such advice. Was this because of moral outrage or mental illness? We’ll never know.
Whenever a boxer from a certain era dies under suspicious circumstances, we know that more often than not, the fighter’s death was a Mob hit. We also know from FBI and California state records that Machen’s longtime manager Sid Flaherty was mobbed up throughout his career, and directly under the thumb of Frankie Carbo, the evil underworld czar of prizefighting. Otherwise Flaherty would not have had the necessary connections to operate in professional boxing circles.
There is an unfounded yet persistent myth that Mob control of boxing was primarily an East Coast thing. That is false in the extreme. The Mob’s control of boxing was an absolute, iron-fisted, very well organized, nation-wide racket. This is why it was so successful. You couldn’t be in prizefighting from the 1920’s to the 1970’s without doing business with the Mob, in some form or another. If a fighter or manager refused Mob overtures, they were simply ostracized from the business, or murdered.
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