Was boxer Freddie Mills murdered by a Mafia hit man?
TRUTH ABOUT CHAMP’S DEATH IN SIXTIES SOHO
IT was past midnight when they found the body of Freddie Mills, slumped in the back of his car in seedy Soho. The former world light heavyweight boxing champion turned TV star had been shot through the eye with a fairground rifle.
The official verdict was suicide, brought on by depression and debt. But Freddie’s family have maintained for more than 50 years that he was murdered.
Now a BBC investigation has uncovered compelling evidence that they might be right.
A witness has come forward to confess that his father was involved in the gangland killing ordered by notorious American Mafia boss, Meyer Lansky.
Far fetched? Possibly, but new testimony has convinced forensic experts that murder is much more likely than suicide – and crime syndicate involvement cannot be ruled out.
Freddie Mills was born in Bournemouth in 1919, and had a poor childhood. He worshipped his boxing-mad elder brother and followed him into the ring, turning professional at the tender age of 16, and touring the West Country as a prize fighter.
In the Second World War, he served as a sergeant instructor in the RAF and returned to the fight game after being demobbed. He took the world light heavyweight title from American Gus Lesnevich in 1948, in front of 46,000 spectators at the White City Stadium in London. It made him Britain’s first real sporting celebrity and he moved into TV, presenting pop show Six-Five Special.
But boxing had taken a terrible toll. Freddie complained of headaches and severe depression. It could have been brain damage.
After he was found dead on July 24, 1965, in his silver Citroen DS19, police assumed it was suicide, but speculation about his death mounted immediately.
This was the era of the vicious Kray brothers and the Richardson gang, who moved in boxing and showbiz circles. They were visitors to his club, Freddie’s Nitespot. Fred- die’s daughter Amanda Mills-Burke said suicide was totally out of character. She said: “He loved life and he loved his family. He loved everything to do with life. He wasn’t a quitter. You don’t get to be champion of the world and quit, do you?”
So, if not suicide, who did kill him and why? Police got anonymous tips that he had been killed for failing to pay protection money.
In BBC4’s Murder In Soho, Who Killed Freddie Mills?, forensic scientist Professor Brian Ford says: “We know he was close to the underworld. He knew a lot of criminals. We know he was heavily in has debt.” also come The coroner’s under fresh suicide scrutiny. verdict
Prof Ford believes the fact that Fred die’s gunshot wound was through the right eye is a vital piece of evidence.
He says: “When people commit suicide there are two ways they shoot themselves – either through the fore head or up through the mouth.
“Somebody threatening will often actually aim at the eye because the eye is what they are looking at. So some body who is going to shoot somebody will shoot them in the eye, but no person will shoot themselves in the eye.
“It seems to me murder was a rather more obvious conclusion than suicide.”
But the key could be Freddie’s relationship with friend and promoter Benny Huntman.
When BBC investigators spoke to Huntman’s son Roger, he had an incredible story.
He tells them: “I don’t know how long I have got to live. I’ve got diabetes, I’m 75. But let’s get the story out. At least it’s helping the Mills family.” He claims that in the days before Freddie’s death, the ex-boxer tried to blackmail his father over his mafia connections. Roger says: “He said, ‘Benny, my Nitespot is going skint.’ He needed two-and-a-half grand otherwise it would go under. He said, ‘I know these people you are associating with. If you don’t give me the money, I’m going to Fleet Street’.”
Roger says his father was the pointman for the mafia, who had plans to turn London into a mini Las Vegas.
“Everything was going wonderfully and all of a sudden Freddie Mills put himself in it with those two words ‘Fleet Street’. He could have destroyed the whole deal. And he wasn’t going to be allowed to get away with it.”
A meeting was arranged to give Freddie the money, but it was a set-up.
Roger says: “My father told me to take a message to Freddie, ‘I will be there on July 25 and I will give him the money.’ Freddie was over the moon.”
On the night of Freddie’s death, Roger was working in the “Big L” club. In the early hours, his father came in with “this old guy, Italian-American”. Roger says: “This massive guy came over and whispered in my father’s ear, who’s turned to the table and said ‘Mills is dead. Gone. Finished’. This old guy had like a smirk on his face. Later I found out it was Meyer Lansky. Coincidence? I don’t think so.” Lansky was a US Mafia godfather, pal of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Three months after these events, Benny Huntman had a heart attack and died. Roger says: “I believe he was heartbroken about what he had to do.” Roger told his story to Freddie’s stepson Don McCorkindale, who says: “Knowing the power, money and influence the Mafia has, very possibly it is true.” Freddie’s wife Chrissie and their two daughters were left to mourn a “very special daddy”. But perhaps the best epitaph is Freddie’s own, expressed in family footage shown in the film: “I would not have missed it for anything in the world. I wish I could do it all over again. It was such a great thrill to me.” Not the words of a man set on suicide. And this film may not be the last word on his death. Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills?. Wednesday, 9pm, BBC4, and BBC iPlayer.