well as a stack of unread Las Vegas Sun newspapers, which investigators would later use to determine the exact day Liston had died. Several windows had been left open, but this did little to ease the stench of rotting flesh.

Sergeant Dennis Caputo, now 69, was one of the first officers to arrive. "The call came over despatch and we were aware that it was the Liston residence," he tells the BBC from his home in the city. "But in Las Vegas it wasn't unusual to get high-profile calls like that. For me, it wasn't a big deal."

He quickly began a thorough search. "It was a very nice house," he says. "Well-kept and orderly. I got the feeling it hadn't been lived in too much." There was nothing tosuggest - at least on first sight - that something sinister may have happened. "There were no apparent signs of forced entry, no visible weapons, and no signs of a struggle," he recalls.

Sgt Caputo was escorted to the master bedroom where he found a small bag of marijuana and a glass of vodka alongside Liston's prone corpse. "He was wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts and was in a state of decomposition," he says. While some accounts of Liston's death say a revolver was discovered in the bedroom, Sgt Caputo remembers things differently: "There were no visible wounds and no weapons were found."

Shortly after, he discovered a small amount of heroin in the kitchen but no syringe. "The kitchen was spotless except for a penny balloon on the