Jake "The Snake" Roberts is one of the most authentic personalities
the wrestling world has ever seen.
I'll drop you so fast with that DDT, your whole family'll fall down.
He's done it!
Behind his raw intensity lies a depth of personal trauma,
which has shaped his iconic in-ring persona.
How could anything that looks so hot be so cold?
Well, it's easy, you see, time has done that to me.
Unknown to fans for years, wrestlers Sam Houston and Rockin' Robin
are Jake "The Snake"s' real life brother and sister.
Each followed in the footsteps of their father,
wrestling giant, Grizzly Smith.
The control that Grizz had over his kids, he could pit 'em
all against each other because he was a master of everything.
He was a puppeteer.
Scarred by traumatic childhoods, the Smith children followed
self-destructive paths, and each battled addictions that
nearly destroyed their lives.
You know how hard it is to put a smile on your face when you know
what a piece of shit you really are?
I'd been to prison two days and I tried to hang myself.
It's the very, very young girls, that seems to be the trigger.
And, I was scared of him, just totally scared of him.
This is Jo Lynn here.
Without a body, they can't file murder.
Decades later, the Smith family finally face their haunted past
in order to survive beyond the ring.
Lies have consequences.
If you want to feel pain, then you have to go from the top
and get knocked to the bottom.
That's when you feel real pain.
None of us wants to talk about what happened.
It's too painful.
There's just too damn much...
That gets drug out.
There was just no relationship.
There was no pat each other on the back shit.
There was no, "I'm happy for you."
You would've never thought we were brothers and sisters,
that's for sure.
'Cause we were always that way.
We had just been kind of raised at a distance.
Since the formulation of professional wrestling
as an organised sport, it's been a family business to a lot
of the participants.
There's been a lot of well-known wrestling families,
like the Hart family from Calgary, the Von Erich's from Texas.
You could trust family members with the business secrets
and the secrets in the ring because they were your blood.
And also, they had a vested interest in the success of the industry
because it was their livelihood as well.
I'm Jim Cornette.
For over 40 years, I've been a part of professional wrestler
as an announcer, manager, promoter.
But also, I've been a student of professional wrestling history
for over 50 years.
Even though the Smith family was all related,
the people inside the industry knew that, but to the fans,
Jake Roberts, Sam Houston, Rockin' Robin, Grizzly Smith,
were all different people.
There was no knowledge, publicly, that they were related.
You know, in all honesty, Sam Houston was the best in-ring
performer of the entire family.
My name's Michael Smith, aka, Sam Houston.
How I fit into the Smith family, I'm one of 'em.
Depending on who you look at, I mean, I'm somebody's father,
I'm somebody's son, I'm somebody's brother.
Through our family, first, Jake's the oldest, then Richard,
then myself, and then Robin.
Robin's one of the best women's world champions,
you know, ever to come down the line.
And, she's my sister.
It's an honour for me to say that.
Wah!
- Oh! The bulldog!
Many years ago, Rockin' Robin.
Rockin' Robin!
Actually, it was just kind of a lazy thing.
One of my first matches,
they said, "What do you want to be announced as?"
And I just said, "OK, Rockin' Robin."
I think I would have liked to have tried out Rotten Robin.
I think that would have been fun.
I'm Robin Smith.
And, for the Smith family,
I am the sister of Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Sam Houston,
and then I have another brother
that a lot of people don't know about, Richard.
My name's Richard Nabors, and Aurelian Smith is my father.
And Jake Roberts is my brother.
Sam Houston is my brother.
Robin Smith is my sister.
It's Jake.
This is Jake and myself.
Jake "The Snake" Roberts is his wrestling name.
When he was growing up in high school,
my grandmother called him Buster.
That was his nickname.
That kind of stuck with him for years,
but Jake's what he wrestles by and what he goes by.
I didn't want to travel like that.
It's not a lifestyle.
But Jake likes attention.
He likes all the stardom being on him.
Please welcome Jake "The Snake" Roberts.
When he walks in the room, I mean, it's like, you know,
he wants it all to be there.
And that's from being in the ring so many years.
That's from being in that business.
It's just a rat race.
It wasn't me.
Jake Roberts, as a wrestler, had strengths and had weaknesses.
Jake Roberts was never a high level amateur athlete.
He didn't have a ridiculous physique.
But what Jake knew and understood
was the, the mental aspect of pro wrestling, the psychology of it.
By growing up with a father in a wrestling and by learning how
to think of it, and he had the verbal ability.
Don't come calling me a sicko because, brother,
if you look at yourself in the mirror
I think you'll find out one thing...
You're no different than me, if you tell yourself the truth.
Jake "The Snake" Roberts, once he fully developed that persona,
was able to make you believe that he really was a snake in the grass.
And there was probably some truth to it.
He was kind of dad's shadow, in a way, I think.
He, he spent as much time as he could with dad and,
maybe, I guess, learning the ropes, you know.
That's...
Dad and Jake.
Jake "The Snake" Roberts here.
Real name is Aurelian Smith Jr.
Now you know why we went Jake "The Snake".
He didn't want me in wrestling, period.
In fact, he got me fired a couple of places,
asked the promoters to fire me.
To get me out.
I got humiliated, I got stretched, I got tore up.
Basically, crawled back to the locker room and,
my father looked at me and said, "I'm ashamed of you.
You're gutless and you'll never amount to anything."
Exactly what I wanted to hear.
That was my whole drive.
I got into wrestling because I hated my father.
And that was gonna break it off in his ass.
I wanted to hear my father say, "I'm proud of you, son.
I'm really proud of you."
You know, he never told me that.
He'd tell other wrestlers he was proud of 'em,
but he wouldn't tell me.
Never.
And that was my drive.
He had worked in the oil fields.
He had met someone that had...
Knew about wrestling or was involved in wrestling and,
you know, saw this big, humongous dude, you know...
And said, "You'd probably be good."
He would line up on Friday afternoon
where they all got paid outside the railroad yard.
And he would stand up against the wall.
And the guys would pay him 25 to 50 cents.
They would pay him if they could just draw back and hit him
in the stomach as hard as they could
because it was a bet to try to make him double over.
He would make more money that afternoon, in an hour's time,
than he would the whole week.
So, then he got the wild hair and he wanted to get into wrestling.
He was 7-foot tall.
About 350 pounds.
Long red hair, big beard.
He looked like he just walked right out of the woods.
He wore a pair of blue jeans and had a rope.
This sash cord, that's what he called-- that was his belt.
If he could ever get a hold of somebody
and wrap his arms around 'em, then that was it.
Wow, how'd it make me feel?
Well, I was honoured. I mean, Superman was my dad.
He's the main event.
He, you know, he's the biggest thing on the card, and he really
was the biggest thing on the card.
I used to get really freaked out when we'd go to the matches.
And I'd be inside the matches, watching him.
He'd get his head busted open or, you know, scratched.
And he'd go to bleeding and stuff.
I'm six, seven, eight years old and I'm totally flipped.
So, then he'd get out of the ring and I'd go back to the back with him
and I'd be crying my eyes out,
and he'd go back there and he'd sit down.
And the doctor looked at him and said, "Grizzly,
I told you I can't do anything else with your head," because the skin,
the tissue was tore up so bad.
They'd take it, clean him up, and put a butterfly Band-Aid on it.
"OK, see you tomorrow night."
You know, and then he would travel to the next town,
and it was just an ongoing thing.
You know, I used to think when I was a kid, I said,
why does he want to do that?
And he'd tell me, "Son, I gotta make a living."
I think one of the things that has helped me to understand life
and to enjoy life as much as I do...
Is my father.
He would give you a whipping for lying to him.
He'd give you a whipping whenever he thought you needed it.
He'd give you a whipping for making a mistake.
My father was a mean man.
Mean in the way that he tortured us, psychologically.
He would play the angle out at home.
His injuries, his feeling of the upcoming match.
How dangerous this match was gonna be with those guys.
And, you know, I look back now
and I say, why didn't I figure it out?
You know, they kept showing up in the same territory
my dad would go to, every damn time.
What the hell?
These guys are chasing my father down and they're gonna kill him!
I remember crying myself to sleep many a night,
thinking my dad was gonna die.
And that bastard never told us anything.
By the end of the 70s, Grizzly Smith retires from wrestling
in the ring and transitions to a management position
behind the scenes,
but he would use his power and influence for something
much more sinister.
You know, I had been around the business for a little while
at that point,
and when I first got there and was in the locker room
hearing all the other people who had known Grizzly longer,
been around him, talk about him,
the wrestlers always had a way of, of knocking or talking behind
the back of the authority figure or the "office" personnel.
But I'd never heard it like this.
Every joke wherever Grizzly wasn't,
every single little statement had something to do with,
"I wonder if Grizzly's mentoring the young girls,"
or, "he's probably got one of them on his lap reading her Bible verses."
And they would laugh and they thought that was funny.
I'm like, that... Kind of strange.
And I had no idea of the back story that the family had
that would come out in years and decades later on.
Everybody knew Grizz. Everybody had good things to say about him.
You wanted to do road trips with him because you wanted to pick his brain
about, like, how could I make myself better?
How do I make more money?
My name is Nickla Roberts.
I worked in the wrestling profession.
Look where Baby Doll is!
My dad promoted in Lubbock, Texas.
Both of my parents were wrestlers.
But how I actually met and got into the Smith family,
I think this was like April of '85.
I kind of started talking to Sam a little bit then.
And, July 30th was the very first day that we kissed.
And we got married a year to the day from there.
Baby Doll is the mother of my children. I love her immensely.
I always will.
What was your experience with Grizzly Smith?
The craziest thing to go along with the whole Grizzly Smith and,
and the weirdness of it was, to do a road trip with him,
we would like all of a sudden be like 50 miles off the road,
picking up some 14, 15-year-old girl.
Then she was gonna ride with us for three to four days.
And it was just like...
You're gonna put...
OK.
And then her parents were like waving on the front yard,
like, "Bye, see you on Tuesday."
It was really weird because it wasn't until after his death that...
You kind of start finding out, you know, the whole whirlwind
of the stories and the whole just horrible stuff that was going on.
And, I was there and, and I...
you kind of get that feeling of like, OK,
something, something's not quite right.
And you look for it.
I was right there and I never saw it.
Before embarking on a career in the ring as Jake "The Snake" Roberts,
Aurelian Smith Jr. endures a traumatic childhood,
which would be a source of torment for the rest of his life.
Jake was a, a mean son of a bitch that didn't care about nothing.
And there's nothing that's out of bounds with Jake.
Aurelian, completely different cat.
Aurelian hasn't grown...
Since he was 12, 13 years old.
I put him away a long time ago.
I had to, 'cause it hurt too much.
I don't think I've been Aurelian in 30 or 40 years.
And I don't know that I ever will be again.
Aurelian feels it and Aurelian remembers.
And Aurelian's crippled and can't do nothing about it.
But I am more comfortable with Jake now. I respect Jake.
I know how dangerous Jake can be.
Jake's OK as long as you've got him handcuffed, you know.
You know, really, seriously.
Aurelian though, very scared kid.
And again, I don't think I've grown since I was maybe 13.
When most of that stuff started happening.
She was 13 when I was born.
My father was a paedophile.
Disgusting paedophile.
Which would haunt me the rest of my life.
By the age of 17, then he divorced my mother,
and he left and went on the road, leaving us all behind.
Kids got passed out.
My little brother, Richard,
he was passed out to my dad's sister and her husband.
They couldn't have children.
My sister Jo Lynn was...
She was tossed everywhere.
She spent too much time with my dad, if you know what I mean.
My mother was blind to a lot of this.
I had a great mother, wonderful mother. Loving mother.
After his parents split up, Jake lives an idyllic life
with his grandmother until she passes away
when he is 11 years old,
forcing him to move back in with his father and his new wife, Marsha.
I thought it was gonna be the greatest thing ever, man.
This is gonna be so cool.
Well...
It wasn't cool.
He was forced to take me home with him.
Shortly after I moved in with him, his wife started playing games.
Sometimes games that weren't so funny. Sexual games.
I went... To my dad and told on her one time.
And...
She stopped me right in the middle of it,
said, "I'll tend to you later."
And she went in, talked to my dad,
next thing I know, she beat me with a damn clothes hanger
and fly swatter.
It's one thing to have sex,
but it's another thing to get beaten for doing it.
Freaked me out.
Little did I know, my father was aware of all that
'cause he was doing the same thing to my sisters.
First, I want to say this,
is that my intention is not to destroy a legacy
that was, you know, my dad was great at what he did.
He could be a hero.
But, to me, he was my monster.
I guess, just going back to when it all started,
I was probably eight or nine years old.
And, the, the wild thing about it was, was that I remember
about a month before the first thing ever happened, he...
He, basically, was working me.
And this is part of the manipulation that, that I think people...
People do to kind of groom you and,
you know, get you where they want you, basically.
So, for about a month or so before the first thing ever happened,
he was walking around, completely ignoring me.
He couldn't stand to be in the same room.
You know, as an 8-year-old kid,
I mean, you think, what in the world have I done?
All you want is the love of your parents, right?
Then one day, my, my mother was gone, and he, he worked during the day.
He was home working in the office in the back
and, so he called me in the back,
and just said, just to say, "Well, you know,
you know daddy loves you," and...
And, I mean, I was so relieved that, oh...
He does love me.
He doesn't hate me and that turned into the first time
he put his hands on me.
So...
(Clears throat) Ah, you come out of that real confused and real...
You know, had no idea how to process that.
I mean, you just don't.
I think that very day it strips you of your security.
It strips you of your self-worth, self-respect, innocence.
It strips you of all the things that, that make you a child.
It really does.
I think from when I was about eight until about 14.
I told my mother about it and she gathered up everything and we left.
At about 15, I actually remember telling him
that if he ever did anything again
that I would shoot him with his own gun.
'Cause I knew where they were.
All I can tell you is that my mother
was not the kind of person that
would have tried to be inappropriate.
If something happened with my mother,
I tend to think that my dad probably asked her to do some things
that she never would have never done, just for his own whatever pleasure.
She was what, 16, if, whenever they got married.
So, I mean, she was very, very young.
When Robin is 15 years old, her half-sister, Jo Lynn,
Grizzly's other daughter, pays her an unexpected visit.
She came, she picked me up and, we went out, we went shopping.
And it, to me, it seemed like there was just,
there was something that she was wanting to tell me
or talk to me about, or ask me, or...
She was just asking quite a few questions.
Her main thing was, do I feel safe?
Do I feel comfortable?
I think she wanted to know if, if I had gone through the same thing
because there was no doubt in my mind
that the same thing happened to her.
I don't doubt it, to this day.
It just seemed like there was an awful lot on her mind.
And then, it was about two weeks later when she was kidnapped.
Richard and Mike and I were at a roller-skating rink.
We had gone over there, gone skating.
And, they came over the intercom and said,
"Robin, Mike, Richard, the Smith family."
We got a phone call.
It was dad, and he told me, he said, "You need to get home.
Get home immediately."
So, we got home.
Dad left a note in the house that said Jo Lynn had been kidnapped.
I thought it was kind of crazy at first because I was like,
how does he know she's been kidnapped?
Was there a ransom or...
What was going on?
Richard put his hand through the wall.
I busted. And I totally lost it.
They were very close, Richard and Jo Lynn.
Closer than any of us.
Somebody has hurt my sister.
I need to find out what my next step is.
I couldn't understand why somebody'd want to kidnap somebody
that was so sweet.
She never hurt nobody. She had no intentions of hurting nobody.
She just wanted to live a happy, free life.
And she was finally happy.
She had a kid, that mission was accomplished.
It was a quiet, peaceful trailer park she was living in.
She finally had it going on, and then this.
When you talk about murder, kidnapping, armed robbery,
something like that, no, we, we just didn't have that.
That just wasn't in Tatum, Texas.
My name's Carl gauge. My nickname's Buzz.
I've been Buzz all my life.
I'm 69 years old and in 1979, I was 28 and I was Chief of Police
at Tatum, Texas.
As I remember, just on routine patrol one particular morning and,
the manager from the Cherry Hill mobile home park flagged me down.
I knew him, and he said, "I had a kidnapping out
here at the trailer park."
Jo Lynn was there with Little Ted, her baby.
They grabbed her and pulled her out and threw her in this car,
and took off.
Jo Lynn was 5'10, probably weighed 200.
You ain't gonna take her down by yourself.
Me and her used to wrestle, and she's tough.
So, there ain't no way one person loaded her in that car.
Went right to it pretty quick and got out there and, the door's open.
Of course, we hear something in the house. "What's that?"
He said, "Well, her baby's in there."
The baby's fine, wasn't no problem. Then the husband got there.
We got in and I noticed some letters on the little table
there by the door and I said, "What are these?
They're addressed to your wife." He said, "That's my ex-wife.
She would send threatening letters to her."
With the menacing letters as evidence,
authority's number one suspect becomes Faelyn Rogers,
the ex-wife of Jo Lynn's husband.
Investigators discover incriminating evidence in Faelyn's car,
and she eventually confesses to the kidnapping, but she claims
Jo Lynn escaped shortly after the abduction.
Searching, oh, lord have mercy, we had search parties out.
We had helicopters, we had horses,
we had motorcycles, we had people on foot.
I had a psychic call me.
She came down.
"I think I can help you out. I think I'm getting messages from Jo Lynn."
She was given a personal possession of Jo Lynn's.
She was saying, "It's just, it's dark.
Maybe like a well or something."
Let's starts looking for abandoned wells.
And we got information on a couple of 'em that had been covered
or filled in so, we went out, we checked them.
We never found a body.
Jo Lynn's body is never recovered, making a murder charge impossible.
Faelyn is brought to court indicted on the lesser charge of kidnapping
and the Smith family is devastated.
I think that's probably the first time
my father ever missed a wrestling match,
was when my sister was kidnapped.
He went to the trial. I didn't go to the trial.
I was medicating myself, trying to pass out every day.
The only information we got was through dad
because we weren't allowed to go to court, and he just said, "No,
you're not going to court."
And that was that.
It's amazing that the evidence was overwhelming, but without the body
and without somebody to say, "I saw her kill her"...
She got convicted of aggravated kidnapping, got 33 years.
I think she served seven.
Dad used to carry a piano string in his hand.
You'd take a piano string and two pieces of wood
and hold it in your hand.
He was hoping to get close enough to her,
supposedly, is what I been told,
he was wanting to get close enough to her
to where he could be able to do that, and it would kill her.
I was told that it was four sheriffs in front, in back,
and on the sides because dad was so large.
And they knew with a man that large,
once he was mad, it was gonna be hell to pay.
Well, they say murder's hard to prove. How can you prove murder?
Go back to the story.
She works at a place that has an incinerator.
I believe that that's where they took her.
Whether she was conscious, unconscious, or even dead.
I think she found her way to the incinerator.
And there's no evidence, it's all gone.
I just started thinking that, who would have the most to lose here?
What's the reason to get rid of her?
I thought, well, I mean, somebody who's got a lot to lose would be dad.
If she was gonna expose him, you know, with the young girls and,
you know, it would cost him his, his career and, so yeah,
I kind of question that.
Richard really wanted to go to Unsolved Mysteries
and dad actually told him he didn't want him to.
We're going, "Why in the world wouldn't you want that?
They solve, they actually solve murders."
Dad was against it.
So, you know, that throws in more suspicion there.
Yeah, there's a wild thought. Did dad have something to do with it?
Was he involved? I don't know.
You could bring up a thousand questions on the whole ordeal.
I wish I could say, "Man, I walked in there, I seen my dad,
he was just bawling his eyes out. It tore him to shreds."
I never saw it.
Although a conviction is made for the kidnapping of Jo Lynn Smith,
Jake "The Snake" Roberts and his siblings struggle to cope
with the tragic loss of their sister.
Oh, yeah, the hate.
I, I use the hate a lot, man.
Thank you, dad. (Spits)
The whole Snake character was made
because I didn't want people looking at me.
Look at the snake bag, don't look at me.
Don't ask me questions, look at the snake bag.
And everybody fears that, everybody knows that.
Kids loved it because mom and dad went, "Oh, my god, a snake!"
And they loved seeing mom and dad do that,
you know, so, therefore, they loved Jake "The Snake".
Crazy people.
As Jake's stardom continues to reach new heights,
Robin seizes the opportunity to pursue a career in wrestling.
I went to North Carolina and trained with Nelson Royal who...
Was a fabulous wrestler and...
A legend.
And Nelson trained her like one of the guys.
Wow, OK.
I wanted to change things.
I wanted the girls' matches to be just as exciting,
you know, if they could, as the guys'.
I mean, why not?
When Robin completes her training, she uses her father's connections
to show off her skills at a WWF TV taping,
and she catches the attention of top promoter, Vince McMahon.
So, they put me on a dark match with Sherri.
I couldn't tell you how long it lasted.
I mean, it was, it's a complete, total blur, to this day.
I have no idea what happened.
All I know is that when I got out, Mr McMahon had said,
"Oh, my, my god, she throws a punch like a guy."
And, I was like, cool, alright.
And then, the next thing I know, I get the package in the mail
at my house that is airline tickets and schedule and all that,
and I was like, wow.
You know, it was a, it was a total surprise.
...Don't count your chickens before they--
There's a bull dog off the top rope!
A bulldog!
Turns her over!
She got her!
No, I don't believe!
(Cheering) History has been made, here in Paris, France!
At the time, they had Grizz, Sam, Robin, and Jake were all working
for the WWE at the time.
In wrestling, the best compliment that you can be given
is that somebody would say, "You're a hell of a hand."
You're a good worker.
That means that you can not only perform pro wrestling
at a high level, but you can do it without hurting your opponent.
And, Sam Houston was the best worker in the family.
He was the lightest.
He was actually too light, he was painfully thin.
And that was what held him back from being used
in a more prominent position.
Especially in the bigger territories, Crocket Promotions,
the NWA...
Poor Sam Houston.
Unfortunately, Mike was like a lot of the other wrestlers.
He got to make good money and stuff, was doing good, and then...
Went to drinking.
Um...
Listen-- whenever he told my dad that we were getting married,
he had 32 Crown and Cokes.
32.
It was amazing how much he could drink and still be able to walk.
At the time, I thought I would love him enough that it
would get better and it wouldn't matter and that my love
could conquer all, and...
It didn't.
I just realised that it wasn't me.
There was nothing I could have done.
Addictive personality must run through our entire family.
I mean, seriously.
Because they're very strong addictions.
You have to find ways to put that self-respect back into yourself.
After years of living on her own,
Robin gets a surprise visit from her father, Grizzly.
The bell rings and, I got to open it up and I see him standing there.
And, right by his side, this little girl, about nine years old.
I could tell you, the colour, everything just drained from my body
and I knew for sure this girl was in trouble.
So, he comes in and the first thing he says,
"Can you make her a daiquiri?
Do you have the stuff to make her a daiquiri?
She wants to try daiquiris."
It took everything just not to absolutely come apart
and come unglued.
And, I said, "No, I don't."
Shortly after, he went to the back and he went to bed.
I stayed up with her all night. We never went to sleep.
And, I wanted to ask questions and I knew what questions to ask.
I said, you know, "Sometimes, does he pull off to the side
of the road and want to give you a kiss?"
And she said, "Yeah."
It didn't scare her, but, I mean, she was like,
"But yeah, it makes me uncomfortable."
He got up the next morning, got all his things together
and said, "Come on, we gotta go," and I said,
"You're gonna go, but she's not going anywhere.
She's staying right here."
I was not letting this girl go anywhere.
I think that told him everything he needed to know about how I felt.
Reeling from the traumas endured in their adolescence,
Jake, Robin, and Sam each battle addiction into adulthood.
But for Sam, the consequences become a matter of life or death.
Sam Houston had the all-time Texas state record for most DUI offences.
And, the reason why that he was not jailed for them
long before that he was,
was because Grizzly Smith had been such a big name
and such an important person,
and knew so many people in the state of Texas over all those years
and etcetera, that he was able to get him out of it.
He never spent more than a day or two in jail before.
Grizz was right there and got him out 'cause he knew somebody.
And Grizz just knew everybody,
and I think he knew something about everybody.
I really don't know 'cause, I mean, everything I was ever charged
with was only first, or first offence, or I think--
and I got a second offence.
It was basically always a fine that I'd have to pay and,
you know, community service.
Any time I was doing any, anything like that, any kind
of community service, I always gave it my all.
I washed seven fire trucks one day for the parade, you know.
After years of shocking repeat offences and lenient punishments,
Sam's luck has run out.
Grizzly is unable to come to his rescue,
and Sam is ultimately sent to prison.
If they caught you doing something 20-something times,
how many times have you really done it?
Right?
The Mothers Against Drunk Driving had gotten his record,
and had seen, like, all the judges
and all the magistrates that had gotten Sam off.
Finally, he did have to go to jail.
They're telling me 30 years.
I, I was at the end of my rope.
So, two days, January 12, two days, a Saturday night...
I knew I had to break my neck when I jumped.
I said, "God, only you can stop this."
And... And I jumped.
I'm gonna tell y'all, I hit the ground with such force.
The soles of my feet were bruised for weeks.
I know how to tie a knot. These knots broke.
Meanwhile, Jake spirals deeper into new depths of drug
and alcohol fuelled addictions.
I'm not gonna sugar coat this.
A lot of people in professional wrestling, just like a lot of people
in professional sports, a lot of people in rock 'n roll,
have had bad personal habits.
Having said that, Jake's were stunning.
The one guy that you would think, this guy's not gonna make it,
and somehow, he always did, and still has,
he was like the Keith Richards of pro wrestling.
The most important thing in my life for 20 years was cocaine.
Above all things.
Above sex, above money, above children, above wives,
above mama, above everything.
Cocaine had to be number one.
That is really messed up.
I will tell you this.
Being in the limelight gets you things that you think you want
or you need.
Because when you do drugs, your idea of a good time changes,
brother, and you get kind of freaky.
You know, at first it was one girl.
Then it was two girls, and then it was three girls doing
this with a rabbit and a dog and donkey and clown.
Having fun.
Sitting on the back of a chair with a lamp on my head.
Yeah, it gets stupid.
I guess one of the biggest lows in Jake's career
was the Heroes of Wrestling Pay Per View.
And, this is story number 747,000
of Jake Roberts showing up in no condition to perform
or actually to function as a human being.
A lot of the guys that night put in bad performances
just because they were out of shape our past their prime,
but with Jake, he was legitimately on planet Neptune.
Everybody knew that Jake was not right.
And, he had a snake, which became a phallic symbol.
And, it was a 10-year period or more there
where that more often than not,
if Jake Roberts made a public appearance,
you would hear about Jake Roberts
doing something he shouldn't do in public.
I'm a junkie.
I'm a liar, I'm a thief.
Do you know how much self-hate is involved in admitting that?
How I had to look at myself in the mirror?
I took all the mirrors down.
The ones I didn't, I broke.
Within years of the WWF phasing out their women's divisions,
Robin ends her career as a wrestler
and eventually hits her own rock bottom with alcohol abuse.
Drinking was never a problem.
I did it really, really well.
I was better than just about anybody at it.
It wasn't necessarily because of...
Of...
Not working as much.
I think that had more to do with from, from my childhood.
You know, unfortunately, the result of that is addiction and,
even with that, I realised that it wasn't getting me anywhere.
And, you know, my father ruined my childhood and so,
I'll be damned if he ruins the rest of my life.
On June 12, 2010, Grizzly Smith dies
from complications due to Alzheimer's disease.
He was 77 years old.
His biological son, Richard, who was given up for adoption,
would be Grizzly's sole caretaker until the end.
I, ah...
I got there as quick as I could.
Dad had passed.
He...
He had just passed.
He died while I was in prison.
I'm in the worst place in the world,
I just got the most devastating news in the world.
Well, he's got a... He's got a lot of good qualities.
And, he was born out of love and I still love him.
I thought that with him passing I wouldn't have to think
of some things anymore.
But memories don't go away that easily.
No, no. Hell, no.
I don't think he thought, no.
I don't think he thought he did anything wrong.
You know, there was never any kind of serious conversation,
apologies, anything like that.
I think he thought everything was just, just fine.
A few years ago, we finally did. I, I can't imagine.
I can't imagine how devastating that would, could be to somebody.
You know, and, and Robin, I guess, like my mom,
you know, they knew as a child growing up that my father
was Superman to me.
And, they wouldn't do anything to tarnish him
because they care for me so much.
Sam idolized his dad.
He probably would have forgiven his dad for it
rather than helped his sister.
He could make Sam believe that it was Robin's fault.
Or he could make Sam believe that it was Jake's fault.
It wasn't Grizz's fault, it was somebody else's fault.
I don't blame anybody at all for the lack of being together.
That was all done early on by dad.
So, I mean, it, it's-- nobody dropped the ball.
It's not anybody's fault.
It just, it was how it was.
OK, that's me and dad.
I was probably 10.
He never apologized for giving me up for adoption.
And I never asked for it.
I have no complaints. I mean, how can I complain?
I'm the lucky one out of the bunch, is the way I consider it.
With Grizzly's death, his children finally feel safe enough
to open up about their experiences from childhood,
but their estrangement still exists today.
I think there's a certain amount of hope that Robin
and I could be friends.
I respect her and I love her very much.
And it'd be nice to have a sister.
Yeah, I'd love to be close with everybody, you know.
I understand though that, you know, we've all got like different paths.
Do I wish I could have spent more time with my siblings?
Yeah, it sounds good, yeah. I'd like to try.
And after this, I mean, there's a lot of thoughts
going through my mind right now.
It's...
Maybe I gotta figure out how to do that.
Bridging out across.
You know, I think this is opening some communication.
It might have a little to do
with bringing us a little bit closer in.
I guess this is why I agreed to go ahead and talk about it was that,
I want people to really know, it's very, very tough
and I would never say it's easy to get past it.
I don't know that you ever do get past it.
But, you don't have to stay in it.
You can be successful, you can overcome it.
And for God sakes, if it's something you're going through now,
if anybody's going through it now, tell somebody.
You've got to tell somebody.
It will not stop.
You have to tell somebody.
And, and you will get help.
What I want to tell you is this:
you can't glorify what happened to me.
But I ain't the only one.
There's millions of other kids that are going through the same thing
as I speak.
If you're one of those kids...
Run!
Run like the wind.
Go to the police, go to your pastor, go to the...
Just go.
And if it's already happened to you, you gotta get help.
I'm 65 now, and I'm not ashamed anymore.
Still a little angry at times,
but not so angry that I have to medicate it.
I've been sober now for 10 years.
10 years, woo.
I did it.
I made it all the way back.
The bottom line is, never, ever...
Ever give up.