In November 1989 Frank Warren stepped out of his chauffeur-driven Bentley to attend one of his own boxing shows in Barking, East London. Before he reached the doors, a masked man in a woollen hat came out of the crowd and fired twice into his chest at close range. Warren survived. The man charged with trying to kill him was his own former world champion, Terry Marsh, and a jury cleared him. The shooting remains officially unsolved.
Islington
Warren grew up on the fourth floor of the Priory Green council flats on the Pentonville Road, the eldest of four children of a bookmaker. One of the defining figures in his early life was his uncle, Bobby Warren, who in 1956 was jailed for seven years for a razor attack on the gangster Jack Spot.
His uncle gave him his entry into unlicensed boxing, popular in 1970s London, where his second cousin Lenny McLean's three fights with the armed robber Roy Shaw went down in British history.
Breaking ranks
Warren wanted more than the unlicensed game. The British Boxing Board of Control effectively held a monopoly over professional boxing, and when he and other promoters were blocked they formed a rival council. Venues were block-booked to starve it. Warren negotiated his own licence and stepped into the mainstream. Other promoters felt betrayed; from Warren's side, he had simply won.
By the late 1980s he was an emerging force, and increasingly willing to use the courts to protect his position. He sued the Daily Mirror and won £10,000 over a description of him as having risen from the gutter, objecting to his mother's council flat being characterised that way. That instinct would bring him into conflict with one of his own fighters.
Terry Marsh
Marsh was raised in Stepney and later said he never felt deprived. He became a multiple national amateur champion, served with 41 Commando in the Royal Marines, including deployments in Cyprus and South Armagh, and trained and worked as a firefighter.
As a professional he beat the British champion Clinton McKenzie in 1984 and, under Warren's promotion, won the IBF world title by stoppage against an American opponent. The plan was one major defence, then retirement. Instead, after dizzy spells, Marsh was diagnosed with epilepsy and told to retire at once. His boxing and fire service careers ended, and his income stopped. He spoke publicly about his condition, suggesting that people around him in boxing may have known more than they had acknowledged. Warren responded with libel proceedings, and a successful partnership became a bitter public dispute.
The Old Bailey, 1990
Marsh was arrested at Gatwick on his return from the United States, and when the case came to trial the prosecution rested mostly on witness statements rather than forensics. Detective Inspector Peter Wiggins told the court Marsh had asked whether it was his wife who had given him up to the police. Marsh disputed the account; he said that after a row his wife had been screaming in the street that he had shot Frank Warren. Asked about a luggage key, he had replied sarcastically that it was where police would find the gun. No weapons were found.
A witness who first told police the gunman resembled the footballer Rodney Marsh later changed his statement, and it emerged he had been given free boxing tickets by a police officer after doing so. A former friend told the court the witness had encouraged him to make a similar statement, suggesting there was money in it. A second witness, Peter Harris, a petty criminal who claimed Marsh had confessed to him, lacked credibility; even the prosecution told the jury to take care over whether he was truthful.
Then the defence offered another explanation. Marsh's legal team alleged in court that Warren had been having an affair with a woman who had a partner and a child. Pressed by the defence barrister Richard Ferguson QC, Warren told the court he had come because someone had tried to kill him and now faced what he called character assassination. The defence replied that the questions went to motive. When Warren accused them of throwing mud, the judge reminded him it was for the court to decide what was relevant.
Marsh did not give evidence. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty, and there were cheers in the public gallery. Warren said afterwards that he did not know who the gunman was and was only the victim.
After
There was no clean resolution. Warren's injuries were serious, and the attack coincided with the collapse of a major business deal.
Marsh never boxed again. He moved into politics and, in his fifties, became a world champion in chess boxing. Warren rebuilt and became one of the most powerful promoters in world boxing. Years later he said publicly that he now knew who had shot him and that it had nothing to do with boxing. He also said that even had he known at the time, he would not have told the police: a matter of upbringing, of not grassing. He hinted that his father and uncle could have sought retribution, and said he chose not to live that way. The shooting of Frank Warren remains officially unsolved.