Original subtitles

Jake the Snake Roberts is one of the most authentic personalities the

world has ever seen.

I'll drop you so fast that DDT, your whole family will fall down.

Behind his raw intensity lies the depth of personal trauma, which has shaped his

iconic in -ring persona.

How can 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 them all against each

other because he was the master of everything.

He was the puppeteer.

Scarred by traumatic childhood, the Smith children followed self

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 in prison two days and I tried to hang my... It's the very, very young

girl that seemed to be the trigger. And I was scared of him, just totally scared

of him.

This is JoLynn here.

Without a body, I'll murder.

Decades later, the Smith family finally faced 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 painful.

There's just too damn much that gets drug out.

There's no relationship.

There was no pat each other on the back shit. There was no I'm happy for you.

You would have never thought we were brothers and sisters, that's for sure.

Why were you guys not close?

Because we were always that way. We had just been kind of raised at a distance.

Since the formulation of professional wrestling as an organized sport, it's

a family business to a lot of the participants.

There's been a lot of well -known wrestling families like the Hart family

Calgary, the Von Eriks 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

as an announcer, manager, promoter, but also I've been a student of professional

wrestling history for over 50 years.

So can you give us an introduction to the Smith family?

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,

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 is Michael Smith, a .k .a. Sam Houston.

How I fit into the Smith family, I'm one of them. 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

Robin. Robin's one of the best women world champions, you know, ever come

the line.

And she's my sister.

It's an honor for me to say that.

Tell us the name that you wrestle under.

Many years ago, Rockin' Robin.

Rockin' Robin!

Do you know how that name came about?

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, okay, 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 from the Smith family, I am the sister of Jake the

Robert, Sam Houston, and then I have another brother that a lot of people

know about, Richard.

My name is Richard Neighbors, and Arian Smith is my father, and Jake Roberts is

my brother, Sam Houston is my brother, and Robin Smith is my sister.

So can you tell us who Arian Smith Jr.

is? That's Jake.

This is Jake and myself.

Jake is Stank Roberts' wrestling name. When he was growing up in high school,

grandmother and stuff called him Buster.

That was his nickname.

I kind of stuck with him for years.

Jake's what he wrestles by.

So why wasn't getting involved in wrestling anything that was interesting

you? I didn't want to travel like that.

It's not a lifestyle.

But Jake likes the tension.

He likes all the stardom being on him.

Please welcome Jake the Tank Robert. When he walks in a room, I mean, it's

you know, he wants it all to be there. And that's from being in the ring,

Smithy, being in that business.

It's just a rat race.

It wasn't me.

Jake Roberts is 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 mental aspect of pro wrestling, the

psychology of it. By growing up with a father in 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 a dad's shadow in a way. I think he spent as much time as he

could with dad. And I mean, I got to learn in the ropes, you know.

That's dad and Jake.

Jake the Snake. Robert Shearer.

Real name is Aurelian Smith Jr.

Now you know why I went with Jake's name.

So your career in wrestling, what was your dad's reaction to your interest in

wanting to do that?

He didn't want me in wrestling, period.

In fact, he got me fired a couple places, asked the promoters to fire me

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

anything.

That was my whole drive.

I got into wrestling because I hated my father.

And I was going to 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 him, but he wouldn't tell me.

Never.

And that was my drive.

So do you know how your dad got involved in wrestling?

He had worked in the oil fields. He met someone that 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 he 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 went to get into wrestling.

He was 7 foot tall, about 350 pounds, long red hair, big beard.

Looked like he just walked right out of the woods.

He wore a pair of blue jeans and had a rope, a piece of sash cord.

That's what it's called.

That was his belt.

If he could ever get a hold of somebody and wrap his arms around him, then that

was it.

For you, as a young kid, to watch your dad wrestle, how did it make you feel?

Wow, how did it make me feel?

Yeah. I was honored. I mean, Superman was my dad.

He's the main event.

He's the biggest thing on the card. He really was the biggest thing on the

I used to get really freaked out when I'd go to the matches and stuff, 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 I'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 doc

look at him. He'd say, Chris, I told you I can't do anything else with your head

because of the skin. The tissue was tore up so bad.

They'd take it and clean him up, put a butterfly band -aid on it. Okay, see you

tomorrow night.

And then he would travel to the next town. It's just an ongoing thing.

I used to think when I was a kid, why does he want to do that?

He'd come and say, I've got to make a living.

I think one of the things that has helped me to understand life and to

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 going to be with those guys.

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. They're going to kill him.

I remember crying myself to sleep many a night thinking my dad was going to die.

And that bastard never told us anything.

By the end of the 70s, Grizzly Smith retired from wrestling in the ring and

transitioned to a management position behind the scenes.

But he would use his power and influence for something much more sinister.

You know, I've 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 knocking or talking behind the back of

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

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 backstory 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,

could I make myself better? How do I make more money?

My name is Nicola Roberts.

I worked in the wrestling profession.

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

first day that we kissed, and we got married a year to the date from there.

Baby doll is 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 the weirdness of

it was to do a road trip with him. We would, like, all of a sudden be, like,

miles off the road picking up some 14-, 15 -year -old girl.

Then she was going to ride with us for three to four days.

And it was just like, you're going to...

Okay.

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 you kind of get that feeling like, okay, something's not quite right. And

you look for it.

I was right there and I never thought.

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

his life.

Jake was 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.

It hurt too much.

I don't think I've been Aurelian in 30 or 40 years. And I don't know that I

will be again.

Aurelian feels it.

Aurelian remembers it.

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 would be.

Jake's okay as long as you got him handcuffed, you know.

Really, seriously.

Really a very scared kid.

And again, I don't think I've grown since I was a puppy.

When most of that stuff started happening.

What can you tell us about your mother and where she came from and how she

up with your father?

She was 13 when I was born.

My father was a pedophile.

Disgusting. Pedophile.

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 was passed out to my dad's

and her husband. They couldn't have children.

My sister, JoLynn, she was tossed everywhere.

She spent too much time with my dad, 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

his father and his new wife, Marsha.

I thought it was going to be the greatest thing he ever meant. This is

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 him one time.

She stopped me right in the middle of it.

Said, I'll tend to you later.

And she went in and talked to my dad the next day. 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

Freaked me out.

Little did I know my father was aware of all that.

Because 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

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.

The wild thing about it was, was that I remember about a

month before the first thing ever happened, he basically was

working me. And this is part of the manipulation that I think that people

do to kind of groom you and get you

where they want you, basically.

So for about a month or so before the first thing ever happened, he was

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

done? All you want is the love of your parents, right?

Then one day, my mother was gone. And he worked during the day. He was home

working in the office in the back. And so he called me in the back just to say,

well, You know, you know Daddy loves you.

And, I mean, I was so relieved that, you know, oh, he does love me. He doesn't

hate me. And that turned into the first time he put his hands on me.

So, 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 make you a child.

It really does.

How long did that period last?

I think from when I was about 8 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 because I knew where they were.

Jake has spoken about some inappropriateness from being around your

What do you know about that?

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...

I tend to think that my dad probably asked her to do something that she never

would have 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, JoLynn, Grizzly's other

pays her an unexpected visit.

She came, she picked me up, and we went out, we went shopping.

To me, it seemed like there was something that she was wanting to tell

talk to me about or ask me.

She was just asking quite a few questions. Her main thing was, do I feel

Do I feel comfortable?

I think she wanted to know 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.

Got a phone call.

It was Dad, and I told him, I said, you need to get home. Get home immediately.

So we got home.

Dad left a note in the house that said JoLynn 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 it.

I totally lost it.

They were very close, Richard and JoLynn.

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 wanted to kidnap somebody who was so

She never hurt anybody.

She had no intentions on hurting anybody.

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 treader 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 just didn't have that. That just

wasn't in Tatum, Texas.

My name's Carl Gates.

My nickname's Buzz. I've been Buzz all my life.

I'm 69 years old. 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. He said, I

had a kidnapping out here at the trailer park.

JoLynn was there with little Ted, her baby.

They grabbed her and pulled her out and threw her in this car and took off.

JoLynn was 5 '10", probably weighed 200.

You ain't going to take her down by yourself.

Me and her, you'd razzle.

And she's tough.

So there ain't no way one person loaded her in that car.

Went right to it pretty quick, got out there, and the door was open.

Of course, we hear something in the house.

What's that? He said, well, her baby's in there.

The baby's fine. Well, no problem.

Then the husband got there. We got in, and I noticed some letters on the little

table there by the door. I said, one of these are addressed to your wife.

I said, that's my ex -wife. She would send threatening letters to her.

With the menacing letters as evidence, authorities' number one suspect becomes

Phelan Rogers, the ex -wife of JoLynn's husband.

Investigators discover incriminating evidence in Phelan's car, and she

eventually confesses to the kidnapping, but she claims JoLynn 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.

We had a psychic called.

She came down.

I think I can help you out. I think I'm getting messages from JoLynn.

She was given personal possession of Jolynn.

She was saying, it's just dark, maybe like a well or something.

Let's start looking for abandoned wells.

And we got information on a couple of them that had been covered or filled in.

So we went out, we checked them. We never found a body.

Jolynn's body is never recovered, making a murder charge impossible.

Phelan is brought to court, indicted on the lesser charge of kidnapping.

The Smith family is devastated.

I think that's probably the first time my father ever missed a wrestling match

with one of my sister's kids.

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. He just said, you're not going to court. 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

seven.

Dad used to carry a piano string in his hand. He'd take a piano string and two

pieces of wood, hold it in his hand. He was hoping to get close enough to her.

Supposedly, it's what I've been told, he was hoping to get close enough to her

so that he could be able to do that, and it would kill her.

I was told there was four sheriffs in front and back and on the sides because

Dad was so large.

And they knew with a man that large, once he was mad, it was going to be hell

pay.

Well, I 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. Now 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?

And I thought, well, I mean, really, somebody who's got a lot to lose would

Dad if she was going to expose him, you know, with the young girls and, you

know, cost him his career.

And so, yeah, I kind of questioned that.

Richard really wanted to go to Unsolved Mysteries, and Dad actually told him he

didn't want him to. Why in the world wouldn't you want that? They actually

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 wished I could say, man, I walked in there, I seen my dad, and 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 JoLynn Smith, Jake the

Roberts and his siblings struggle to cope with the tragic loss of their

Was there anything that you took from your experience growing up and put it

your character?

Oh, yeah, the hate.

I used to hate it a lot, man.

Thank you, Dad.

The whole snake character was me 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.

So therefore, they love 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 legend.

And Nelson trained her like one of the guys.

Wow, okay.

I wanted to change things. I wanted the girls' matches to be just as...

It's exciting, you know, if they could, as a guy.

I mean, why not?

When Robin completes her training, she uses her father's connections to show

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 Sherry. I couldn't tell you how long it

lasted. I mean, 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 God, she throws

a punch like a guy.

And I was like, cool, all right.

And then the next thing I know, I get a 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 total surprise.

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 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, Crockett Promotions, the NWA.

Poor Sam Houston.

Unfortunately, Mike was like a lot of other wrestlers.

He got to make good money and stuff, was doing good, and then went to drinking.

What was his drinking like at the time?

Whenever he told my dad that we were getting married, he had 32 crown and

32? 32.

It was amazing how much he could drink and still be able to walk.

So did you see that as a problem for him?

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.

It didn't.

I just realized that it wasn't me. There was nothing I could have done.

Addictive personality must run through our entire family. I mean, seriously.

Because there's 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. All rings, and I go 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 color, 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 daiquiri. It

everything just not to absolutely come apart and come unglued. And I said, no,

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 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

got to go. And I said, you're going to 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

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 offenses.

jailed for them long before that he was was because grizzly smith had been such

a big name and such an important person in and knew so many people in the state

of texas over all those years and etc 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

him out because he knew somebody and grizz just knew everybody and i think he

knew something about everybody you managed to avoid jail for a while Was

time when your dad was able to help you out with that?

I really don't know because, I mean, everything I was ever charged with was

always first offense or I think I got a second offense.

There's basically always a fine that I'd have to pay and, you know, community

service. Anytime I was doing anything like that, any kind of community

I always gave it my all.

I watched seven fire trucks one day for the parade, you know.

After years of shocking repeat offenses 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

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 was at the end of my rope.

So two days, January the 12th, two days, that Saturday night, I knew I had to

break my neck when I jumped.

I said, God, only you can stop this.

And I jumped.

I'm going to tell you, 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 -fueled

addiction.

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. A lot of people in professional wrestling,

like a lot of people in professional sports, a lot of people in rock and

have had bad personal habits.

Having said that, Jake's were stunning.

The one guy that you would think, this guy's not going to 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.

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 a donkey and a clown. Hey, having

fun, sitting in 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

-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 or 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 they'll hate?

is involved in admitting that.

Hell, I had to look at myself in the mirror. I took all the mirrors down. The

ones that didn't, I broke.

Within years of the WWF phasing out their women's division, 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 well.

I was better than just about anybody at it. It wasn't necessarily because of...

Not working as much.

I think that had more to do with from my childhood.

You know, unfortunately, the result of that is addiction. And even with that, I

realized that it wasn't getting me anywhere. And, you know, my father

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

adoption, would be Grizzly's sole caretaker until the end.

I got through as quick as I could.

And passed.

Yeah. It 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

world.

Well, 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.

Did he ever, at any point in his life, apologize or talk about what you guys

did? 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 fine.

A few years ago, we finally did.

I can't imagine. I can't imagine how devastating that could be to somebody.

You know, 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 cared for me so much.

Sam idolized his dad.

He probably would have forgiven his dad for it rather than help his sister.

Why do you think that is?

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, nobody dropped the ball. It's not anybody's fault.

It just was how it was.

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, the way I consider it.

With Grizzly's death, his children finally feel safe enough to open up

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 would be nice to have a sister.

Yeah, I'd love to be close with everybody, you know. I understand that

got, like, different paths.

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.

Maybe I've got to figure out how to do that.

bridging it 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's sake, if there's something you're going through

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 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.

Just go.

And if it's already happened to you, you've got to 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. I did it. I made it all the way back.

The bottom line is never, ever, ever give up.