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Newell was a quiet type, withdrawn, but serious about boxing.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, to boxing. 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 star 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 became an acclaimed amateur boxer with 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, once he was done answering questions, 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 later say that 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.
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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 prime 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.
The public was advised to stay calm. Willie Pep, the great featherweight who was now a state boxing inspector, joined the other officials 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 wasn’t 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 was in good shape and ready to fight.
Yet there was mystery surrounding Newell, particularly in 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. The fight was a drab four-rounder. 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. 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.
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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
