Dark,Side,Of,The,Ring,S6E07,Live,Premier,Season,6,Episode,07,5/7/25,May7th,2025
DarkSide,OfTheRing,S6E07LivePremier Season6,Episode,07 5/7/25May7th,2025
DarkSideOfTheRingS6E07LivePremier Season6Episode075/7/25May7th2025
DarkSide,OfTheRing,S6E07LivePremier Season6,Episode,07 5/7/25May7th,2025
DarkSideOfTheRingS6E07LivePremier Season6Episode075/7/25May7th2025
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00:00The standoff took place this morning in front of this house after police say they responded
00:09to reports. 85-year-old Jeanette McCraft was killed yesterday morning. You want to say that
00:15nothing in wrestling surprises you? A former professional wrestler is now accused of shooting
00:21and killing his wife. That's surprising. And then all of a sudden the news broke. It's Billy Jack.
00:29He just electrified the crowd and they love him. What? Billy Jack did what? I could have believed it but I
00:36didn't. I didn't want to believe it. Billy Jack Haynes. Years before this shocking crime Billy Jack
00:43Haynes had lived the dream rising from Oregon's regional circuit to stardom in wrestling's golden
00:48age of the 1980s. Portland, Oregon. Billy Jack Haynes. Billy Jack had everything all the tools to be a top
00:57professional wrestler. His career was in reverse. He started as a star and he finished as a nobody.
01:08But Billy Jack's dealings outside the ring hinted at a mysterious life. One almost too extraordinary
01:15to believe. Billy said he had been involved in the drug business as a collector and enforcer.
01:21When I was in Portland I was about a kilo a day cocaine dealer. Billy has made many many claims. I was
01:27contracted to go down there to kill two Arkansas State Police officers. You don't know fact from
01:32fiction with Billy Jack Haynes. I kept that secret from everybody. Now as the former star faces murder
01:40charges those who knew Billy Jack Haynes look back on the road that led him here. So Billy Jack was his
01:46own worst enemy. I didn't even know it. He was a loaded gun brother. You never know what he's thinking.
01:52You know a lot of guys fall hard in wrestling but he fell harder than most without a doubt.
01:57In the wrestling industry I guess a lot of people may have forgotten about him.
02:15Even the most diehard WWF fan today would say well yeah Billy Jack he was there.
02:23What did he do? People now in the present day are trying to go back because of what's happened
02:33with Billy and trying to figure out where did this start. We knew one day Billy Jack would do something
02:39crazy but we never thought it would be that crazy. It shot me and then again it didn't.
02:46I don't know if you can understand that. That's one thing where when Billy messed up he messed up.
02:53Final mess up. I guess if you took everything and laid it on the table you could see it coming up.
03:02Before his recent murder charge Billy Jack's past reveals other crimes including two assault charges
03:09before he's 30. But the same mean streak that gets him into trouble also creates new opportunities
03:15in the wrestling business.
03:17Billy Jack James was a thug. He was a street fighter. He was boxer, a wrestler. Tough guy don't get me wrong.
03:25My dad found him as a gym rat and he's below that now. All his bios say he was trained by Stu Hart.
03:35Stu Hart threw him out of Canada because he was too rough and beat all his boys up. So he was back to being a gym rat in Portland, Oregon when my dad and the assassin Dave Sierra found him.
03:47Well, he came to the Portland Sports Arena looking for work and we got him hooked up. He looked unreal. He was like, you know, jacked to the max.
04:00Me and Rip the Crippler Oliver talked the promoter Don Owens into using him. We knew with that size body and his home being the Pacific Northwest that we can draw money with him.
04:13Billy Jack Haynes. I mean, he just, he fit the part and everybody was giving him a chance.
04:19In 1982, Billy rockets to the top with a persona tailor-made for fans in the Pacific Northwest.
04:28Billy Jack's gimmick and look came from the movie Billy Jack, starring Tom Laughlin, about the ex-serviceman who was a karate expert and a loner.
04:38He was a dangerous man, but soft-spoken, but don't cross him.
04:43Billy Jack, whose look, physique, the aura and the presence he had, the fans went crazy for him, like he was their very own hometown movie star.
04:52The Portland, Oregon boy is coming out victorious!
04:56So Billy Jack was a very effective babyface promo guy for Portland, Oregon.
05:00Thank you everybody in Portland for supporting me. I love you. Thank you.
05:04Nice guy, loved his father, loved Oregon, loved Portland. You know what I mean? And he was Billy Jack from the movie, trying to get revenge on these different heels.
05:15Make a little bit more noise and I'll get it for you. Let's go! Come on!
05:19Everyone knew he was a rising star. You know, the 80s was all about the look. He had the look.
05:24And I'm sure all the fans here are gonna like this man, Billy Jack Haynes. What a fantastic build on this young man, Johnny.
05:31They loved him, you know. Every time Billy Jack was on the card, sold out.
05:35From the time he first stepped foot in the ring, he was featured. He was pushed by the promoters.
05:40Small territory? Pushed him. Went to a bigger territory? Pushed him.
05:44I know Billy Jack Haynes from the territory days. When he came to Florida Temperature Wrestling, he was pretty laid back.
05:51Kind of a low-key guy and a loner.
05:56My name's Bill Fonze Alfonso and I've been in the wrestling business for 45 years.
06:04I don't want to use the word oddball, but he was kind of different from all the wrestlers.
06:09We'd go out to the after party, have cocktails and drink and smoke a joint and so on.
06:15Billy Jack would go with the fans and their kids to pizza and have pizza with them.
06:21The fans loved him. He loved the fans. He was committed.
06:26After just four years of working in smaller promotions, Billy Jack Haynes gets the call in 1986 from Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation.
06:39If you wanted to go deep into Vince McMahon's mind and create a professional wrestler based on what he thought they should look like, Billy Jack was the guy.
06:50Now I'm here in the WWF. It's a World Wrestling Federation. And believe me, I know full well this is where the stiffest and the toughest competition is.
06:59He wrestled in that Detroit WrestleMania. They had over 100,000 people showed up.
07:04Billy Jack Haynes.
07:07For a wrestler, that's the top of the mountain.
07:10Look at the builds on these two guys.
07:13Billy Jack Haynes.
07:19Billy needed a tag team partner to elevate his persona. So it worked out good. It worked out real good.
07:28This is Ken Patera coming straight at you.
07:31And I used to wrestle with Billy Jack Haynes.
07:35His appearance was, don't with me. How's that?
07:40Well, we weren't told anything about the gimmick.
07:46Pat Patterson came in the locker room and said, well, we got chainsaws and you guys are the Oregon Lumberjacks now.
07:57And they wanted us to crank those chainsaws up so they were actually running.
08:03I said, are you nuts? I'm not going to turn this chainsaw on.
08:09You know, so somebody could get an arm cut off.
08:12Just do this.
08:15There it is!
08:17Billy had a super nice personality and everything. Soft spoken and whatnot.
08:22The nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.
08:25But the gloss wears off after a while.
08:32All respects, Billy Jack had a fantastic body, stayed in shape.
08:38But upstairs, brother, that's a different story.
08:40Everyone knows me in pro wrestling as a grappler.
08:43I wrestled Billy Jack Haynes many times.
08:46He's one of those guys you never know what he's going to try.
08:50I never could trust him.
08:52He's all excited. You know, he's mad about something and all of a sudden knocked the hell out of you.
08:56He was an off-the-hinge type character.
09:06His finishing maneuver would be the full Nelson.
09:09And once he locked that full Nelson in you, you felt like he was going to break your neck.
09:14Nobody has ever gotten out of the full Nelson.
09:16Once Billy Jack Haynes has got it locked in, and he had it locked in.
09:19Once you gave up, he would just sling you. I mean, like a piece of trash to the side.
09:24In the locker room, he had a reputation for boom.
09:31I could see in his eyes he was like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
09:34I've seen him snap several times.
09:36One night we're in Florida. The match is over, and Percy Pringle was Rude's manager.
09:43And Billy Jack came in, and he didn't like the way the finish went.
09:46He walks in and slaps the piss out of Percy Pringle.
09:49He goes, this guy screwed up the finish, you idiot.
09:52That was his mentality. That's the way he handled things.
09:55We did a show, and Smirnoff pulled a fire alarm, got us in trouble.
10:01Next thing I know, Billy done face-locked, Smirnoff went to the bathroom himself.
10:07It was so bad.
10:09In Tampa, some smart-ass guy was checking Billy Jack out.
10:14He said, oh, that fake bullshit. I could kick ass.
10:18I remember him snatching him into the headlock and punching him in the face about 20 times really quick.
10:24Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
10:26He'd beat the hell out of the person and then kick right out of it like nothing happened.
10:30He did it because he could.
10:32I mean, right there, I've noticed this guy's a bully.
10:35He takes on who he knows he can handle.
10:37You know, so I didn't respect that.
10:39He went to jail on two or three occasions, I believe, for beating people up.
10:46But he always said, they deserved it.
10:51Oregon men don't back down to nobody.
10:54You know, he's got a heart.
10:56But then he's got the other side.
10:58You know, when you screw him over, he'll come in your house, pull you out, beat you to death.
11:03I would never think that the Billy Jack that I knew in the 80s would have ended up doing what he did.
11:15Police have now confirmed a woman was found dead and a man was taken into custody after an hours long police standoff.
11:22There's a whole lot that people don't know about me.
11:44And the law isn't always right.
11:48The law isn't always wrong.
11:52Believe half of what you hear and nothing of what you see.
11:56I'm Billy Jack Haynes from the World Wrestling Federation and a 14-year pro.
12:06Good to talk to you.
12:12Right now, I'm in Noma County Justice Center jail.
12:15I've been incarcerated six months.
12:17What I'm talking to you guys today about is one small percentage of my life.
12:21And there's a whole big part of my life I'm leaving out here.
12:24The position I'm in right now, it's hard for me to bring up anything and talk about it.
12:28And I have my attorney out there.
12:30I'm glad that he's here today.
12:32It's a second degree murder.
12:36And it's just way overcharged.
12:39It didn't happen.
12:42There's only really two human beings I really love.
12:45That was my father who was blind and in a wheelchair.
12:48And then the other was my wife who allegedly I murdered, which you're going to find I didn't.
12:54And I loved her more than life.
13:00Weighing 247 pounds.
13:02Co-wrestling is a work.
13:04We all know that.
13:05But we took it real serious back when we were at it.
13:09Oh, look at the blood just spewing out of the forehead.
13:12I don't want to be negative towards anybody in this industry, you know.
13:16I don't.
13:17I respect the wrestlers so much.
13:18But you know, they don't know me.
13:21Throughout his wrestling career, Billy Jack Haynes remains distant, private to the point of secrecy.
13:28He was not the life of the party, the life of the locker room.
13:31He wasn't making friends hand over fist.
13:34He was just that big guy over there.
13:36It's like something's going on.
13:38Billy Jack was a true loner.
13:41Then I realized he was very manipulative.
13:44He always had an agenda.
13:47And you never knew what he was up to.
13:50We'd go check in at the hotel there.
13:55Five minutes later, Billy would be gone.
13:57And he did that every f***ing night.
13:59I didn't know what he was doing.
14:04At that time, I was really heavy into the narcotics, into the painkillers.
14:10Uppers, lowers, I mean, you name it, you couldn't survive without it.
14:14I was five days a week in and out of airports.
14:17It's all over!
14:19Different cities.
14:20Billy Jack going to work now!
14:22340 nights a year.
14:23Heavyweight champion, Billy!
14:25I took 20, sometimes 25 pills a day.
14:28Vicodin, Percocet, you got in the way of wrestling and my life.
14:32All you beautiful children, drugs are negative.
14:36You are a positive influence for the world.
14:38I love you very much.
14:39Say no to drugs.
14:40Drugs are no good.
14:41You know, they're not good.
14:43Well, we're at the Oakland Coliseum in a tag team.
14:49It's time for the match.
14:51Billy's nowhere to be found.
14:53About an hour later, all the matches were over.
14:57And here comes Billy.
14:59Oh, he looked like hell.
15:01I said, Billy, you missed the match.
15:03Ah, completely out of it.
15:06McMahon said that he was going to give us a big push.
15:11And I think we can throw that out the window.
15:17How did it come to an end at WWF in your run?
15:20Oh, yeah, yeah.
15:22I probably...
15:24What do you think about that?
15:26On the plane?
15:28You guys should talk about that?
15:31Well, it happened.
15:34Now, what I heard is that he overdosed on some codeine, I think.
15:42He was falling at the mouth.
15:43He was jerking.
15:44We had that murky landing.
15:46They thought he was dying.
15:48I was this close away from death.
15:50And they had to jumpstart me twice.
15:53I'd be gone.
15:55You know, and with WWF, I mean, it's like,
15:57they don't want that bad, but who's he getting out?
15:59You know what I mean?
16:00And that was the final straw.
16:01He was never in the top spot in WrestleMania.
16:05He was never a major singles champion.
16:08And after about a year and a half, he was fired by the WWF.
16:14Returning to Portland,
16:15Billy Jack shocks his former colleagues
16:17by turning on the promoter who made him.
16:20But everybody knows that the state of Oregon
16:23has the number one wrestling fan in the world.
16:26The Oregon Wrestling Federation,
16:29was what Billy Jack wanted to open,
16:31so he could be Vince McMahon of the Pacific Northwest.
16:34That was his words.
16:36OWF was gonna be his baby.
16:39We said, Billy, Don Owens made you,
16:41and now you're opening a company against him?
16:44And I couldn't believe it.
16:47You gotta have money to back that.
16:49Sponsors and all that.
16:51You know, somebody's got some deep pockets
16:53if you want to try to do that.
16:54I was there two weeks,
16:56and the shows that were running
16:58weren't drawing anything.
16:59There was a couple hundred people in the audience,
17:01so it kind of fizzed out pretty quick.
17:03And I got a check on Friday,
17:06and he said, Fonzie, can you please not cash it until Monday?
17:09So I knew I was in trouble.
17:11And I went right to the bank and cash it, and I left.
17:15Finally, one day, we come in.
17:17He said, I'm closing, guys.
17:19And that was it.
17:20The collapse of the Oregon Wrestling Federation
17:22was pretty spectacular.
17:24Billy Jack Haynes really left a lot of guys hanging,
17:27and there was a lot of bad blood.
17:29It hurt Billy's reputation with a lot of people.
17:32And that was my bad due to the fact that my head wasn't screwed on right,
17:37and probably a little bit to do with the pills, too.
17:42Struggling with addiction and running out of allies,
17:45in 1996, Haynes' once promising career crashes to a halt.
17:51Just shame and pity,
17:54because he had the world by the strand.
17:56He never became the star to the magnitude
17:59of what people had predicted.
18:01By the time his wrestling career was over,
18:04nobody trusted him,
18:06and all that potential just dribbled away with it.
18:10Though his wrestling days may be over,
18:12it doesn't take long for Billy Jack
18:14to find his way back into the spotlight.
18:17He was a little strange,
18:19a little standoffish,
18:20sometimes a little off-putting, whatever.
18:23He was kind of weird.
18:24And suddenly, you saw him a few years later,
18:28and there started to be this change.
18:30In retirement,
18:32Billy Jack hits the interview circuit,
18:34revealing a shocking detail.
18:36While in wrestling,
18:37he'd been living a secret double life of crime.
18:41Starting way back in the 70s,
18:44I was about a kilo a day cocaine dealer,
18:46and I kept that secret from everybody.
18:49I just wanted to go in and actually do something
18:51in the pro wrestling industry instead of a drug runner,
18:55leg breaker, and worse.
18:57I mean, making 30 grand a week,
18:59I lit a lot of guys up,
19:01and a lot of guys got addicted to the cocaine that I sold them.
19:04You know, very nefarious things went on back in the 80s.
19:09In 2017, Billy Jack makes an even more shocking claim,
19:14linking himself to a famous unsolved murder.
19:17It's been over 30 years since two teenage boys were found dead
19:21on these tracks in Saline County.
19:23The tracks are still here,
19:24and so is the mystery regarding what happened.
19:26What's new is the witnesses come forward.
19:28I helped put the kids on the tracks.
19:30They were already dead.
19:31They've been murdered.
19:33Surfshark.
19:35Well, over 30 years ago,
19:37a Union Pacific train ran over two Saline County teenagers.
19:40The deaths of Kevin Ives and Don Henry
19:42have become one of Arkansas's most notorious mystery.
19:45There was a famous murder case in Arkansas back in the 80s
19:50where these two teenage boys were run over by a train
19:55is what they thought originally happened.
19:58In the pre-dawn hours of August 23, 1987,
20:02a 75-car cargo train made its regular night run
20:05to Little Rock, Arkansas.
20:07With engineer Stephen Shorty grew closer,
20:09he made the horrifying discovery
20:11that two boys were lying motionless across the railroad tracks.
20:16Well, then somebody else investigated
20:18and found out they had been beaten.
20:20They had injuries.
20:21They weren't just run over by a train.
20:23And Billy Jack started claiming that he was there
20:28and saw the murder because these two teenagers
20:32wandered into a drug deal.
20:37His story, the drug people, wanted him to supervise
20:41the drug drop and payoff to make sure that everything goes okay.
20:45And he was going to videotape it also.
20:48And he said, I wore a wrestling mask.
20:52I've been around the dope game for a long time.
20:55I went down there by myself after I wrestled King Kong Bundy.
20:58We went to the tracks.
21:00The drop was made.
21:01Apparently, these kids wandered up on it.
21:04And as a result, the drug people killed them
21:07and put them on the railroad tracks.
21:09They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
21:12I helped put the kids on the tracks.
21:14No, I was there.
21:15I helped.
21:17They've been murdered.
21:18They were already dead.
21:20The judge is going to come out so this woman lives her eyes
21:23can have a light.
21:25Billy Jack's claims about the unsolved murders
21:28are taken seriously by the mother of one of the victims
21:31as well as by the family's private investigator.
21:35I mean, there is no good reason to insert yourself into a murder case.
21:39He has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
21:42He's put himself in jeopardy not only as freedom
21:45but also his life.
21:47They're hopeful that law enforcement will now take a look.
21:58As Billy Jack continues sharing his story,
22:05other details sound increasingly unbelievable.
22:08There was drops that were being stolen, cocaine drops.
22:11I was sent down there to take care of two state police officers
22:16from Arkansas.
22:17But it was an inside job.
22:19He told me that he was running with one of the biggest drug dealers
22:24in the country.
22:25I've dealt drugs at the highest level you can.
22:28That's uncut coke.
22:30Well, in the beginning when I first started hearing the stories,
22:32I thought, come on, Billy, really?
22:34But when it gets right down to it, he can prove it.
22:37He brought it all out in an interview on several occasions,
22:41as a matter of fact.
22:42The things that he said about it and all this stuff,
22:45it's all verifiable.
22:46But that's about all I can say about it.
22:48I can't talk about it.
22:50I'd love to, but I can't.
22:53But haven't you told that story so many times?
22:56I wish I could talk to you guys.
22:57I can't.
22:58Well, can you tell me without getting into details?
23:01Is it true?
23:06Did you hear that?
23:08That is probably a subject you should ignore.
23:12Leave it alone.
23:14As Billy Jack's interview appearances become more frequent,
23:28his claims extend far beyond drug dealing and the boys on the tracks,
23:32and many begin to wonder what's behind it.
23:35Prime show tonight, Angie Grace would say.
23:40Everything you're going to hear is true.
23:42He looked completely ridiculous.
23:44And then he had this white hair, but it was like a mop top cut,
23:49like he was Pete Best, the fifth Beatle.
23:52My mother and my uncle, when I was 15, were both murdered.
23:56There was two politicians that were involved.
23:59And he started concocting these stories where he was in the middle of a variety of newsworthy events.
24:07Andy Gibb had a Gibb in San Francisco,
24:11and one of my first big deliveries was there to the concert.
24:15I delivered one kilo to him July 31st, 1978.
24:20Some say, well, he knows stuff that nobody else knows.
24:24Well, the dude studies shit, I can tell you that.
24:26And that's how nutty he was.
24:28He don't have nothing better to do but to try to find his way to make himself back in the scene.
24:33I had cocaine from the median cartel in Columbia.
24:37So I started making more money.
24:39The Clintons are involved too.
24:42Well, now, was he a drug enforcer for the Clintons?
24:45Why the **** would Bill Clinton call Billy Jack Haynes?
24:50Yeah, that's stupid.
24:52I took it for a grain of salt.
24:55He had to be on some good drugs to think that.
24:59But then the question becomes, where was the bizarre behavior originating?
25:04Conspiracy theories and being the Forrest Gump of crime,
25:08it not only sounds so preposterous, but there was no upside to him.
25:12It was just interviews being done with this kooky old man that people would put up on the internet.
25:18I wanted to know who my real dad is for a long time, whether it's Lenny Montana,
25:23whether it's Vince McMahon Sr., which it could have been,
25:26because he supposedly had sex with my mother.
25:29Vince Sr. could be my father.
25:30There's a long history to that.
25:31I don't know if we can get into it today or not.
25:33Claiming to be the son of Vince McMahon Sr., you know, aside from being ridiculous,
25:37that's unbelievable that someone even tried to pass that off.
25:42When I heard stuff like that, I would say,
25:45man, Billy's really losing it.
25:46What's causing Billy Jack to make up stuff that's obviously not true?
25:529-11 was an inside job, no question about it.
25:56All you have to do in this world is follow the money.
25:59So this isn't going to make the Bush family too happy, but they're involved too.
26:04He did look like someone that would say anything just to be on a podcast and get more money out of that podcast.
26:14I'm not afraid to come in front of this camera and tell you the truth,
26:18and either you're going to believe it or you're not going to believe it.
26:21The idea was, if you tell crazy stories, there will be an appetite for more, even though it's all bullshit.
26:28You're probably going to be looking at a dead man. Maybe by the time this video gets out.
26:33Everything I've said can get me killed. Everything I've said with Vince can get me killed.
26:38One preposterous thing in wrestling can be true.
26:42With some people, a couple of preposterous things can be true.
26:45But when you're just pulling shit out of your ass over and over,
26:50then even if one or two of those things is true, nobody's going to believe them.
26:54Amid all of the astonishing claims Billy Jack makes, at least one truth stands out.
27:02January 10th, 2006, there was attempted murder on me.
27:07Once again, I'm speaking for the people under the ground right now.
27:14They can't speak for themselves. So let me do it, please.
27:17From 2006 to 2023, Billy Jack Haines makes a series of shocking statements and explosive accusations.
27:26Vincent Cain McMahon, I call it Vincent Killer McMahon.
27:31Yeah, that's right. You're a killer.
27:33Though many of Billy Jack's stories are dismissed as conspiracy theories,
27:38a violent incident in 2006 suggests that Billy Jack's ties to organized crime may be legitimate.
27:47This is the file from the work I did 16 years ago.
27:50Police reports, letters from Billy Jack, and a couple photos of Billy in the hospital.
27:57At the time, I was writing a column for the Portland Tribune.
28:02And so next thing I knew, Billy Jack is knocking on my door.
28:07He looked like Frankenstein's monster. He'd just gotten out of the hospital.
28:10He'd had several bones in his face broken, and he had stitches, as I recall.
28:14We sat down, and he started telling me his story.
28:18Basically, that he'd been called over to Jimmy Longoria's car line.
28:24The Longoria family was certainly one of the more prominent Portland crime families.
28:30Billy had been a bill collector, and he said he delivered drugs for the Longorias.
28:37What have you got? What is all this stuff?
28:39Yeah, these are letters from Billy Jack from months after it came to my place.
28:44On January 10, 2006, I was set up for a hit, or to be killed by two hitmen hired by Jimmy Longoria.
28:53I drove through the open gate at the time scheduled 9 a.m., and I parked about 30 feet inside the lot,
28:59where I met a man and asked where I could find Jimmy Longoria.
29:03The man motioned over his left, and Jimmy Longoria was sitting at a desk with his hands behind his head,
29:08with a very cocky look on his face.
29:10I said, you're going to kill me, aren't you?
29:13It was then, I believe, that Jimmy told me that paybacks are a bitch, Billy Jack.
29:19I remember looking at the office windows and seeing four men, and I thought I was a dead man.
29:25It was very clear that two guys attacked him.
29:28They beat him so badly that he had to play dead.
29:32He knew they wanted to kill him.
29:35They said, I would have been dead.
29:37The instinct reaction saved me.
29:39Probably one of the little instincts I have will have to save me.
29:41Jimmy Longoria had a pretty airtight alibi.
29:48He said two tweakers came onto his lot and provoked Billy into a fight.
29:56He said he'd never seen him before and couldn't identify him.
29:59I think they probably worked for Longoria.
30:01The surveillance cameras somehow had not been working, which was, of course, very suspicious.
30:08I cannot see out of my right eye.
30:13You can focus in here in my eye.
30:16Billy said it was retribution for 15 or 16 years before when he had ripped off $200,000.
30:24He'd been a courier back and forth from Portland to Los Angeles, taking coke one way and money the other.
30:30Let's just say in the 80s, I transported drugs.
30:34I had a 1986 Toyota 4x4.
30:36They put the built-in cabinet in a toolbox.
30:40On the way back, he broke into the toolbox, saw $1,200,000, figured that $200,000 should belong to him.
30:48I gave the million bucks. I took my $200,000.
30:51Billy said this beating was retribution for that.
30:55I think he ripped off the Longoria's. I think that much is true.
31:02But the idea that they would have waited 16 years didn't make any sense to me at all.
31:14There are also rumors that Billy Jack's organized crime connections might have been involved in his short-lived promotion in the late 1980s.
31:22Oh, it's off! It is off!
31:26I've heard rumors. I don't know something about the Mafia, but I don't know anything about that.
31:31What I understood, he had crooked sponsors.
31:34And they've seen a bunch of money getting lost fast.
31:38And they just all, one by one, pulled out.
31:41And that's why I think his promotion folded even faster.
31:44A lot of people that open wrestling promotions get into that, because that's the easiest way to clean money.
31:51As far as, like, the money coming from nefarious characters, it's very possible.
31:56He had a very dark life, and he probably had some very dark friends.
31:59I'm generally sympathetic to oddball characters, like Billy Jack, but he was a puzzling character.
32:11When we were having lunch one day, I mentioned the 30-year-old murder of a corrections official, Michael Franke.
32:18I explained the case to him. We went on to something else.
32:23And about two months later, Billy Jack sends me something, all of a sudden claiming to have been involved and a witness to the Michael Franke killer.
32:33He didn't know anything about Michael Franke before I told him.
32:37In 1991, in May 1st, on my dad's birthday, the murder of Michael Franke, I was forced out of Oregon, or my dad would be killed, I was told.
32:47I think maybe he convinced himself that he was involved, that he had actually seen the assassination.
32:54He was collecting newspaper articles, police reports, and marking them up. The whole page would be colored.
33:02He always had his binders and his shit. I don't know what was in it, but he had them. He always had them.
33:08It's just documentation, that's all I can say. It's not my place to go into those kinds of things, you know.
33:14Right now, as we speak, I'm writing an autobiography with one of the best writers in the world.
33:20It's something in there, when people read, you'll see it's documented, and it may or may not get me killed, I don't know.
33:27He had quite a bit of stuff in there, yeah.
33:30At that point, it was sort of hands-off for me, and I just sort of back away from the case and say,
33:35I don't know what parts of this are true and what parts aren't.
33:39The beating was certainly for real, the involvement in the coke business was almost certainly quite real.
33:47The rest, I don't know.
33:50He talked like he believed it. Even as nutty as Billy Jack Haines was, did I think that, you know, he would be 70 years old and the SWAT team would be outside of Billy Jack Haines' house.
34:01There's a reason you're in trouble. Why? Because you just gravitate towards trouble.
34:05This matter is going to be page 22, line 3, Mr. Haines.
34:10Start it now at smartasset.com.
34:13By 2019,
34:15Billy Jack Haines is living a nomadic lifestyle, making rare interview appearances.
34:20I wore Oregon here. There. Take that. You know, Oregon's sticking up your ass.
34:27He'd been a non-entity in the wrestling world for 25 years. By the time he started just being the weird person that we've seen in modern times, I think you'd almost have to say he was on some kind of substance.
34:43I heard that he was having financial difficulties.
34:47You think you're on top of the world and the next day you turn around and you've got two nickels to rub together.
34:52He was homeless, yeah.
34:54Homeless? Yeah, that's right. He might be sleeping.
34:58Rip Oliver opened his house for Billy Jack to live there.
35:03So Rip, I found out that he was dying in 2019 in December.
35:09So I left Portland and flew down to Florida and spent the last three months with him.
35:14I'm not looking for no pat on the back, nothing like that. He was a great guy.
35:18He never came here for my dad. He came here to have a free place to live.
35:22And if he was on pills before he got there, he damn sure was before he left.
35:26You said he stole your dad's pills?
35:28Yeah. My dad was, I don't know, months away from dying.
35:32My dad was on the real shit, the heist that go, the stuff that put people in comas.
35:37He started taking Rip's Percocets or Vicodin, which Rip really needed because he was very sick.
35:44I think he was more taking advantage of Rip. And Rip was playing for everything.
35:50Billy got this scheme and called Brian Blair up.
35:55Brian Blair ran the Cauliflower Alley. You know, they help wrestlers with problems.
36:00I don't know what happened, but Billy called Brian. Rip's dying. He needs help. He's going to lose his property.
36:07This is what my dad told me.
36:09Cauliflower Alley Club paid for his back taxes on his house. They paid for his rent. They paid everything for him.
36:15Well, my dad didn't owe taxes. When he died, he didn't owe taxes. And my dad told me that Billy took half and he gave him half.
36:26My dad was a junkie. I don't mean to say that bad, but he was hooked. He was done, you know.
36:33He wanted me to be there, and I was there all the way to hospice until he finally died. I didn't want him to be alone.
36:39I know he stole all my dad's shit before he died. Everybody's got stories that, you know, I've seen it.
36:45They finally came out after, you know, 30-something years. He took advantage of everybody.
36:51Back in Portland, Billy Jack begins a relationship with Jan Bacraft, the mother of his friend Todd.
37:10The Bacraft family disapproves of the relationship, but when Todd unexpectedly dies in 2021, Billy Jack and Jan get married.
37:20She was like 85, and he's like 70. And so when I saw the age of the woman, you know, you hear stuff from people.
37:27Was he like using her for money or a place to live or whatever?
37:33Come here. This is actually the main house. This is the main bedroom on this side, and then the living room.
37:41You can see through the kitchen. My name is Tom Matthew. I was actually living here before Billy Jack moved in.
37:48You talk to anybody in the neighborhood, they all loved him. He would walk around and talk to everybody.
37:53He really loved Jan a lot, and he was quite devoted to her. She was sick. You know, she was ill with dementia.
38:01Some days she'd have good days, and some days, most of the days were bad. And that wore on Billy pretty hard.
38:07She had some good days, but they were getting worse. And her family definitely did not like them being together. And I don't think they were going to separate.
38:16In my opinion, he took very good care of her and wanted to protect her and keep her from any kind of harm.
38:23The last time I spoke to him was two days before the incident. And I told Billy, I said, Billy, you look terrible. He hadn't slept. He hadn't hardly eaten anything.
38:34People with dementia, they become combative. It's tough to watch a loved one, you know, go through that kind of mental decline.
38:44I've seen the cop cars and stuff on my security camera. So I went outside to see what was going on, and I looked down the street, and I saw them all down in front of Billy's place, and I thought, oh, shit.
38:53Detectives have been at the scene all day, and police say the investigation is just getting started.
38:58I hear a banging on the window, out the back window, like, and I looked down and there was swat. It was freaking overkill. I mean, they had this place locked down.
39:07Tactical teams, including the Special Emergency Reaction Team and the Crisis Negotiation Team, were called to the scene.
39:14Around two hours later, a man was detained.
39:17So what happened?
39:19Well, I mean, he took her life. I mean, it took them, like, maybe an hour to be in and out when they actually took her body out.
39:27When Billy was arrested, the whole neighborhood basically was in shock. You know, just like me, I didn't believe it either at first.
39:36He's just a big general giant, you know, and when you see it firsthand, it's, you know, it turns your heart out.
39:44Billy Jack was kind of a nut, you know, and people thought at this point he's that old, he's a harmless nut.
39:51Nobody thought he was going to go off and murder anybody. But then the question becomes, why in the world would you ever do something like that?
40:01The sheep was ultra-violent at a time when pro wrestling was still presented as a sport.
40:09The first one to use a fireball, the first one to bring a snake into the ring.
40:14Even though people thought they knew wrestling was , they knew he wasn't.
40:17He became a character, and he milked it for all it was worth.
40:21Unfortunately, all the money, glory, and fame, he couldn't keep it up. And it almost cost him his life.
40:30Dark Side of the Ring. New episode next Tuesday at 10 on Vice.
40:35Billy Jack Haynes is facing unlawful use of a weapon and murder charges today after the alleged shooting earlier this month.
40:43Although questions linger around Billy Jack's numerous claims and criminal activity, one fact remains undeniable.
40:51On February 8th, 2024, Billy Jack Haynes took the life of Jeanette Bacraft.
40:59Now, as he faces trial for second-degree murder, Billy Jack has a new story to tell.
41:05Billy claims that she had dementia so bad that it was unbearable. He couldn't live with it anymore.
41:13He called it a mercy killing because she didn't know who she was anymore.
41:19He supposedly shot his wife in the head, and that's a mercy killing? I don't know, brother.
41:26Maybe he thought that was justifiable to do that.
41:30It's a very sad situation, and I don't know what they're gonna do justice-wise, but that's up to, I guess, the court to decide.
41:40I don't care for him. It ain't because he killed his wife. I'm gonna let that play out in court.
41:47If I were his lawyer, I'd certainly make a diminished capacity case for him.
41:53I mean, he'd obviously been taking beatings throughout his career, and if nothing else, dating from the beating he got at the Longoria's car lab.
42:05You ask anybody, and they'll tell you. He loved Jan unconditionally. She was his world.
42:12Whatever happened, as unfortunate as it is, I think was a big mistake. That's what makes it all that much more difficult to deal with.
42:22Damn it, God bless her, and it hurts my heart.
42:27Mercy killing is the phrase that they used. Who's ever gonna know the only person that's alive that was in the room with him is Billy Jack, and you can't believe a thing he says.
42:38If I come across crazy, I must be the smartest, craziest guy there ever is.
42:43I'll never, ever forget the state of Oregon and the beautiful fans that supported me through pro wrestling.
42:48Fans in Oregon, old enough to remember, probably still have a fond spot for him.
42:53But now, more people in and out of wrestling are gonna remember the crazy stories he told, and the things that he invented that he was involved in, and finally the murder of his wife.
43:05They're gonna remember that more than anything he did in wrestling.
43:08Let me have your attention. I don't want any fan to ever come up to me and ask for an autograph again.
43:16He was the guy who had a couple good years, at a time when wrestling was pretty big, made something of a name, and had a very, very troubled existence after that fame ended.
43:25It's not a happy ending. There's no silver lining in this story, unfortunately.
43:29So how do you think Billy Jack's story's gonna end?
43:32Boy, that's a million dollar question.
43:46When that door shuts, it gets to reality real quick, that there's no getting out of here.
43:54Not till 12.
44:07Do you feel good about your chances?
44:09I do.
44:16even just a few of the ones who come back up to us today.
44:22It's amazing!
44:23Don't you feel good about that!!
44:27You should feel good about it!
44:29You should tickets tickets!!
44:31You are safe!
44:33You should be quite busy
44:35Not will.
44:37You should've arrived.
44:38You should really love it.
44:41einem.
44:42You have a big picture!