There were no injuries when
the Hartford Civic Center’s roof collapsed in 1978, though the incident mirrored
the breakdown of a city that had been crumbling since the 1950s. The state
capital that had once been home to Mark Twain and Wallace Stevens had become
one of the most dangerous spots in the country. Groups were formed to study the
ongoing squalor and propose solutions. Federal grants were sought to help
battle the escalating crime problems. Meanwhile, Hartford youths snatched
purses and burglarized the city’s housing projects.
Charlie Newell had been one
of those kids. He was one of six siblings raised by a single mother in
Hartford’s North End, a slow-motion riot of drugs, prostitution, and violent
street crime. By age
15 Newell had a police record. In 1977 he robbed a couple at gunpoint, getting
away with $239. This earned him a six-to-12-year sentence at Somers State
Prison. Newell immediately joined the prison’s boxing program.
The Somers
boxing coach, Dave Musco, had created a furlough program where fighters on the
prison team could compete on professional boxing shows. “A man has to know he’s
something more than a number,” Musco told the Hartford Courant. “I’m not trying to make champion boxers. I’m
trying to make better human beings.”
Newell was
a quiet type, withdrawn, but serious about boxing. In 1979 he transferred to
the minimum-security Enfield Correctional Institute. A strongly built
welterweight, Newell was one of only two ECI fighters allowed to fight outside
the prison. He probably thought his time had come. Crime and poverty may have
brought Hartford to its knees, but it was fine fertilizer in which to grow
fighters.
Newell’s
pro debut was in June of 1979 against Miguel Sanchez of Bridgeport. They fought
at the Civic Center Assembly Hall, a 2,000-seat extension of the rickety main
arena. The hall had been busy since the Civic Center’s roof fell in, hosting
anything from “Italian nights” to Steve Martin lookalike contests. No
doubt thinking this was the beginning of a better life, Newell danced out of
his corner. Sanchez KO’d him at 1:22 of the first. The Courant ran a photo of Sanchez hitting Newell in the face.
Meanwhile,
another North End boxer was establishing himself. Marlon Starling was 22 years
old and seemed special. He was mature, businesslike – by day he managed a
Hartford gas station – and appeared destined for great things. As the Civic
Center readied for its reopening, Hartford promoters saw Starling as a
potential champion who could make them all rich.
Starling had
grown up in a North End housing project called Bellevue Square. He’d known
Newell. Starling would say Newell had been a bully on the street, but they’d
always gotten along. Like a storyline dreamed up by a Warner Bros. screenwriter
in the 1930s, Starling won a championship
from the Junior Olympics, while Newell ended up in prison.
Starling
was 5-0 when he was matched against Newell. Set for January 9, 1980, Starling-Newell
was an eight-round semi-final of an assembly hall show. Newell was set to make
a cool $350 bucks, a shade more than he’d made for the robbery that landed him
at Somers.
At the press
conference announcing the event, Newell wandered off to the buffet table.
Starling joined him. The Courant noted how Starling and Newell
“exchanged an intricate and prolonged handshake,” like a couple of buddies having
fun on the street. Starling recalled later that they hadn’t discussed boxing. “We
knew we had to fight, but we didn’t talk about it,” Starling said. “We just talked about old friends.”
Once they
were in the ring, the two North Enders put on a boring fight. The sparse
Wednesday night crowd started booing early. Starling would say Newell acted strangely during the contest. He kept smiling and wouldn’t cover up.
In the
seventh round, Starling landed a punch to the side of Newell’s head. Newell
fell. He didn’t get up.
Newell died
nine days later. He was 26.
***
No one
could agree on what had happened. The truth may have been that no one on press
row was paying attention.
They
couldn’t agree on what sort of punch knocked Newell down, or whether he fell
face first or was counted out on his back. There were even disputes over whether
Newel’s head struck the canvas. One official told the Meridan Record-Journal that Newell got to his
feet but fell again, a circus stunt no one else seemed to see. Courant reporter George Smith hadn’t
been there but sought details from his colleagues. “People who were there have
tried to tell me what they saw,” Smith wrote, “but I still don’t understand.” A
state boxing inspector admitted that the fight had been so dull that he left
ringside to do some paperwork.
Referee
Lou Bogash Jr. recalled counting over Newell, and how the downed fighter’s eyes
opened between the count of seven and eight. Then Newell’s eyes closed again. Within a
few minutes Newell was being carried out through the crowd. Starling made his
way back to the dressing room where he saw Newell lying on a stretcher,
unconscious. “I went over,” said Starling, “and touched him on the head.”
Newell
died on the fourth floor of St. Francis Hospital. According to neurosurgeon
John X.R. Basile, Newell died from injuries to his brain stem. Basile had been
hired by the state to attend bouts because there’d been two recent boxing
deaths, including a high-profile New York event where middleweight Willie
Classen died after a bout with Wilford Scypion. Basile had even given classes
to Connecticut referees where he explained the warning signs that might indicate
a fighter is injured. Basile’s first night on the job found him trying to
remove a blood clot from Newell’s brain.
Starling’s
manager, F. Mac Buckley, applied some spin control. He said Starling had broken
his right hand early in the bout, which was why there was such little action. That
Starling fought again in 50 days suggests Buckley was lying. He added that he
didn’t think a punch had killed Newell. He didn’t elaborate but announced that
neither he nor Starling would discuss what happened. Buckley also managed a
gym, the Nelson Memorial Club in Charter Oak Terrace. He encouraged the
fighters who trained there to keep their mouths shut about Newell.
Buckley,
who died in 2022, was one of the main players behind Hartford’s boxing rebirth,
credited with keeping many different fight venues going. Moreover, he oversaw
Starling. If Buckley wanted to keep things quiet, it was probably to protect a
suddenly thriving fight business, and a young man who looked like a future star.
A colorful
loudmouth with a cultish following in the city, Buckley wasn’t an especially
noble character. He was a Mafia lawyer who would eventually do prison time for
embezzling. He and Starling would fall out long before that. But in 1980,
Buckley’s objective was protecting the image of Starling. And he wasn’t
acting alone. There appeared to be a concerted effort among the city’s boxing
people to circle the wagons around Hartford’s potential rainmaker.
Connecticut’s
first ring death in nearly 30 years came at a bad time, and local officials stepped
carefully in its aftermath. They acknowledged the usual rituals that follow all
boxing fatalities: meaningless noise about a “full investigation,” and a possible
ban on boxing. There was even talk of an “indefinite suspension” of boxing in
Connecticut while the sport’s regulations were probed, which of course went
nowhere. Only the prison suffered - the boxing furlough program ended immediately,
and the boxing program at Somers was halted for three years. Meanwhile, the
Civic Center was already selling tickets for its next boxing show.
Officials advised the public
to stay calm. Willie Pep, the great featherweight who was now a
state boxing inspector, joined the other authorities to downplay the tragedy. It
was as if they’d all emerged from a secret huddle with the same rehearsed
speech about Newell’s death being no more than a freak accident. The Civic
Center’s Executive Director, Frank E. Russo, called Newell’s fatal injury,
“more or less fate.” The event was being depicted as a death without violence.
It was not one of those disastrous bouts where a hapless fighter is pummeled
until he collapses, while bloodthirsty fans screamed for a knockout. Indeed,
the public was assured that Newell’s death was a fluke. Nothing to see here, folks. Please move along…
As Newell
lay in a coma, rumors about him were rampant at ECI, everything from his having
drug problems to having a head injury. Musco played down the rumors, insisting
Newell had been in good shape and ready to fight.
Yet there
was mystery surrounding Newell in regards to the number of fights he’d had. His
record was alternately given as 2-2, 3-3 and 3-4. In the final month of his life,
he’d had four fights in 43 days. Just weeks before he fought Starling, the Courant wrote up Newell’s bout with a
New York kid named Joe Fryer at Ottavio’s, a Fairfield restaurant known for
hosting wedding receptions. Before a supper crowd of 500, Newell won a
four-round split decision. The bout didn’t make it into the 1981 Ring Record Book, which suggests not all of Newell’s fights
were being reported through the proper channels.
Strangest
of all, the January bout that resulted in Newell’s death wasn’t even the first
time he’d fought Starling. Connecticut newspapers had covered a previous
meeting in September 1979 at the Bristol Polish Center where Starling defeated Newell
on points. Hartford sportswriter Jim Shea
called it a “ho-hum decision.” Inexplicably, boxrec.com says Starling’s
opponent that September night was a man named “Jerry North,” who had no record
and is listed only as a male from Connecticut. (Was “North” a reference to the
North End?) Meanwhile, The Ring Record
Book of 1981 declares Starling fought “Jerry Worth.” This is curious
because several Courant articles
mention Starling beating Newell that night, and printings of Starling’s record
during his heyday mention it as well. Starling, too, claimed he fought Newell
more than once as a pro.
There is
the possibility that not all prison-furlough bout were recorded, and the
Connecticut commission was lax in keeping track of these bouts. It is also possible
that Newell sometimes fought under a different name.
A 1987 investigation
into fighters using aliases in several states turned up nearly 800 people. All used
fake names to either help fatten the records of up-and-coming boxers, or to
circumvent medical suspensions, most notably the recommended 30-day suspension
after being knocked out. Could Newell have sometimes fought under a false name,
explaining the “Jerry North/Jerry Worth” who appears in some records?
The rumor
that Newell had a head injury, and Starling’s claim that he had acted strangely
during the fight, makes one wonder if he was hurt going into the ring. And why was he fighting Starling a second time, anyway? Had desperate
promoters and matchmakers simply contacted the prison during the final weeks of
1979 and said, Send us a
welterweight, any welterweight, to fill out our next show? Is that why
Newell, rumored to be hurt, fought so often in the last weeks of his life? Is
it why a couple of his fights seemed to disappear and go unrecorded? Was that
why the furlough program was shut down?
The stories
piled up, including one where Newell was injured while sparring at ECI, and one
where he’d been smashed in the head during a prison yard scuffle. Had he done
some fighting under an assumed name to shield an injury?
There were
many rumors attached to Newell. One of them might be true.
*
Starling attended
the funeral and then left Hartford for 10 days, visiting relatives in Georgia.
He would tell the Courant that he
feared being called a “killer.” Starling insisted his final punch hadn’t been
hard and wouldn’t have caused a man’s death. “There wasn’t enough force,”
Starling said.
It was as
if he were trying to convince people, or himself, that he hadn’t been
responsible for Newell’s death.
Even
Newell’s mother seemed to feel that way. At the funeral she gave Starling a
rose from her son’s grave and encouraged him to keep fighting.
Starling
fought again soon and scored a KO over Frank Minnigan in the same venue where
he’d fought Newell. The customers cheered him. The Courant wrote that the tragedy had made Starling, “a sudden
celebrity.” Hartford fans may have been influenced by the portrayal of Newell’s
death as an accident, as if he’d slipped in a bathtub. Whether to help preserve
the image of a rising young star, or to keep Hartford hot as a boxing center,
the local officials had successfully convinced the customers that Newell’s end
had been caused by something other than Starling’s hands. The prevailing
attitude in Hartford was that Newell had loved boxing, and he’d died in his favorite
place: a boxing ring.
Over time,
Starling said less and less about the tragedy. “Charlie had heavy hands,” he
once said. “It’s a shame.”
Starling didn’t become a superstar, but he had a couple of
brief turns as a welterweight titlist and an eventual induction into the
Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame. He trains fighters now and works odd jobs. Newell’s
death still baffles him. “I
never got into this sport to kill nobody,” Starling told the Courant in 2020. “That scared me for a
long time. I mean, dying? And I’m still here? That’s not a good fit.”
The North
End still struggles with crime, but it has improved in recent years. The Civic
Center was demolished in 2004 and rebuilt as the XL Center.
Hardly
anyone in Hartford remembers Charlie Newell. His story is from another time, back
when the North End was a sweltering, dangerous place, back when teen hoodlums
robbed their neighbors for laughs, and the universe seemed so indifferent that
it might swat a man down even as he reached for redemption. That’s how it
must’ve seemed to Charlie Newell as his eyes fluttered between the count of
seven and eight, and the last thing he saw on this sad sweet earth was a
referee counting him out.
Did Newell
really open his eyes? Or was it just an involuntarily reflex of a man nearing
death?
Well, for the
romantics among us, of which boxing has no shortage, let’s say he really did
open his eyes. Let’s say he saw the referee counting. And let’s say Charlie
Newell’s final thought was that the count wasn’t over yet. He still had a
chance.
- Don Stradley
