Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills?

Shooting yourself through the eye is not the commonest form of suicide. And when you fail to pay protection for years on end, you take a risk that tends to make suicide unnecessary. Especially in 60's Soho, where every cop was in the pay of the gangs, and gambling had just become legal, as personally supervised by Meyer Lansky who was there to make sure the mafia machine was running smoothly. It was no place for an honest club owner.

So when Britain's favourite boxer Freddie Mills was found dead in the back of his car with a converted fairground rifle beside him, it suited a lot of people when his death was hastily ruled a suicide, in a case that appears more scandalously full of holes every time you look at it. "The police didn't want any fuss" someone remarked - a smooth, oily comment that just reeks of cover-up.

Freddie is sometimes called the first celebrity boxer, welcomed into grand showbiz parties and on to various TV shows, largely because of his cheerful personality and that wide spontaneous smile. "Happiest man I ever met", "Fun guy", "Not a quitter". These are the responses you get from his family and friends, who rejected the suicide theory with derision. (His stepson actually said it looked "stage managed").

But that famous smile was not the whole man. There are plenty of clips of his triumphs in the ring, like the 1948 re-match against Lesnevich, which made him the first British light-heavyweight champion of the world for half a century. Yet we don't get a glimpse of the famous close-up of Freddie facing an opponent with his head down like a charging bull, the Frankenstein forehead accentuated, eyes full of death. People said that Ronnie Kray had the most frightening face in London. I would place him second to Freddie any day.