the house was in darkness. Geraldine felt uneasy. She hoped to find her husband in one of his usual spots - perhaps playing cards with a friend or watching TV. Instead, as she entered their large, split-level, home, she was struck by a sickening smell that hung heavy in the winter air.

"I thought he must have cooked and left something on the stove," she would say in a rare interview years later. "But I went in the kitchen and I didn't see anything there."

She followed the strange odour to an upstairs bedroom where she found her husband. Once the most feared fighter in America, he was sprawled at the foot of their bed wearing only his underwear. His body was bloated - he had been dead for atleast six days - and there was dried blood streaking from his nose. Geraldine led the couple's seven-year-old son, Daniel, downstairs and told him to wait there.

She did not ring the police for several hours. According to a Las Vegas police report, she first called her lawyer and then tried desperately to reach a doctor. When one finally arrived he could do little more than confirm what she already knew. Charles "Sonny" Liston was pronounced dead at the scene. Why he died remains one of sport's most enduring mysteries.

Geraldine married Sonny Liston in 1950

It was well after midnight when the police arrived at the Liston house, which sat in an affluent, largely white, suburb called Paradise Palms.

The doorstep was cluttered with days' worth of unopened milk bottles as