'I'm going to kill you': Boris Becker shares horrible experience of receiving death threats in prison

Former world number one Boris Becker has explained in detail how difficult it was for him to spend time in prison. The 57-year-old has had a hard time off the field, especially after he was found guilty of hiding assets to avoid paying debt.

Becker spent eight months in prison after being found guilty of hiding a whopping sum of £2.5 million in assets. He was initially handed 30 months' jail time but was released after just eight months. He returned to Germany but was not allowed to come back to the United Kingdom until 2025. Becker has recently written a book about his time in prison, where he explained how challenging the conditions were.

In an article that was published in the Daily Mail, Becker shared a story where an inmate gave him death threats. "One day, I was coming back from lunch with my tray of food," wrote Becker in his book. As I passed Ike's cell, Zac was in there. 'Hey. What are you doing in Ike's cell?' I said. He came straight at me. 'Who are you? I'm going to break your head. I'm going to slit your throat. I'm going to kill you'." Fortunately for him, though, he was saved by fellow inmates. "He started kissing my hand and saying sorry," said Becker. "He wasn't just apologising to me but to Ike, who was the boss on our wing."

That was not the only chilling experience the former world number one had during his time in jail. Becker further explained that there was another scenario where a gangster told him that he owed him £500. Becker revealed that he was shocked to hear that, since that amount of money is a huge sum for someone inside the prison

Difficult experiences

"I was told that I owed them £500," revealed Becker. "It was a shock. That would have been nothing to me on the outside. But inside it was a lot of money, your weekly allowance for about eight months. When I didn't pay up, I could feel them staring at me, circling around me. Then, one afternoon, two of them came to my cell. A simple message: when are you going to pay?" Becker stated that he ended up bank transferring it to avoid any harm to him as he was told that the gangster was a ‘little crazy’.

Becker, who finished his career with six Grand Slam titles and also won an Olympic gold medal in 1992 in Barcelona, in an earlier article, explained how challenging it was to spend the first night in prison. Becker stated that the very first night he heard people screaming, which made him ‘helpless’. Becker stated that throughout the nights, he heard more shouts coming from other cells.

“On your first night in prison, it’s the screaming that cuts you deepest. Screaming like someone is hurt,” wrote Becker. “Like they need help. Like someone is dying. You don’t know where it’s coming from, it’s just out there in the gaps between the bright fluorescent lights of the halls and the darkness of the cells. Perhaps worse than the screaming itself, as it echoes round this cold cell, with its mould and dirty toilet bowl, is the not knowing why it’s happening. Are these men asleep with nightmares, or awake and raging? Sometimes you get ten minutes of quiet and you go back to your bunk and thin blanket and try to fit your body into the strange contours and confines of a mattress shaped by a hundred strangers. But it always begins again, triggering more shouts from other cells, an endless rally between opponents who can’t see each other but want to destroy each other just the same.