Billy Jack Haynes looked every bit the ’80s musclebound WWE (then WWF) hero until the brutal secrets of his past emerged. From childhood trauma to explosive conspiracy claims and the alleged murders of two young boys and, decades later, his own wife, his story spiraled from golden-era glory into a nightmarish downfall outside the ring.
The dramatic transformation of Billy Jack Haynes: from ’80s musclebound wrestling star to a man now facing the most serious accusations of his life. Photo Credits: Vice TV, WWE, KPTV. Artwork by Pro Wrestling Stories.
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How Childhood Trauma Forged Billy Jack Haynes’s Dark Past
By his own account, Haynes had an incredibly traumatic childhood.
From the age of four, he has said he was subject to sexual and physical assaults by the mayor of Oregon. In his own words, during an interview with Hannibal TV, he described the acts as causing "a lot of damage to me mentally growing up."
When he was 16, Haynes would claim that both his mother and uncle were murdered. In 1981, he nearly killed both his father and himself when his blind, wheelchair-bound father demanded that he do so after crying every night. In the end, Haynes couldn’t go through with it.
A boxer in his youth, he entered the wrestling business after working at the Stone Pony Club, a popular hotspot for wrestlers. One night, Dutch Savage, who Haynes has cited as an early influence, persuaded him to enter the squared circle.
At the relatively old age of 28, he started training under Stu Hart. Larry Oliver, son of Haynes’s close friend Rip Oliver, claims Stu dismissed Haynes for being "too rough and beating all of his boys up."
In Bret Hart’s autobiography, Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling, Hart hinted that Haynes may not have been the most with-it, noting how he would use pliers to try to replicate the cauliflower ears of fellow tough men.
One rumor, perpetuated by Jim Cornette, is that by the time Haynes had first laced up his boots, he had already been in prison for manslaughter after killing a man in a bar.
Inside Billy Jack Haynes’s Rise to Wrestling Stardom
Billy Jack Haynes (William Albert Haynes III) in a promotional photo during his peak WWF years in the mid-1980s, sporting the signature cowboy hat. Photo Credit: WWE.
Billy Jack Haynes began his professional wrestling career with a brief stint in Stampede Wrestling before achieving success in NWA territories, winning both the Pacific Northwest and Florida Heavyweight titles.
He took the name Billy Jack after the popular 1971 film, but a legal threat forced him to alter his name, adding his real surname Haynes.
In a move that would define his mysterious character, he would leave Florida abruptly after a pay dispute turned physical. This was triggered when Haynes discovered he was paid less than his co-workers, Wahoo McDaniel, Arn Anderson, and Ole Anderson, for their Starrcade 1985 tag team match. He was also allegedly paid less than half of what manager Baby Doll made.
Billy Jack Haynes would have a short stint in World Class Championship Wrestling from late 1984 to early 1985. One notable squash match saw Haynes defeat a 19-year-old rookie named Sean Michaels, as it was then spelled, at the Sportatorium.
Haynes would also win the WCCW Television title from Gino Hernandez, who substituted for champion Chris Adams, but left while still champion, forcing the belt to be vacated.
Establishing a pattern of Jack’s problems with promoters, he too locked horns with owner Fritz Von Erich, calling him a liar and accusing him of blocking a Billy Jack Haynes’ NWA title run in favor of son Kerry.
Despite this claim, many would argue that it is seriously doubtful the NWA board would ever make Haynes the World Champion, especially considering Kerry won it in the aftermath of the untimely death of his brother David. Alluding to Fritz’s sons, Haynes would say, "If I had a Dad like that, I’d be [messed] up on drugs too."
In 1986, Jack had his biggest national run when he signed up with the World Wrestling Federation. The WWF first obtained Billy Jack in 1984, where he fronted programs and had promotional vignettes aired; however, for whatever reason, no agreement was reached, and future appearances fell through.
Always an unreliable man behind the scenes, the reason for his sudden departure was due to an overdose of GHB on a plane. During a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Oakland, California, the plane had to be grounded after it was suspected Haynes had had a heart attack or a similar serious medical condition.
When Vince McMahon caught wind of this and understood the risk such drug use posed to the younger fan base of the WWF, he fired Haynes.
How Billy Jack Haynes Tried (and Failed) to Reinvent Wrestling in Oregon
Former WWF wrestler Billy Jack Haynes appears on KATU’s ‘Two At Four’ television program in September 1985, joined by off-camera WWE Hall of Famer Sgt. Slaughter. This Portland, Oregon television appearance occurred during Haynes’s rise to national prominence and his transition from regional Pacific Northwest Wrestling to the World Wrestling Federation. Photo Credit: KATU.
After his departure from the WWF, Billy Jack Haynes would start his own independent promotion, the Oregon Wrestling Federation.
He wanted to pay his wrestlers properly, not like the ‘greedy’ promoters he had fallen out with before.
While the first show drew 1,800 attendees to the Oregon City Civic Center, the promotion proved to have little momentum. The crowd had dwindled to just 550 the next week. It got so bad that the wrestlers had to stand on street corners, practically begging passers-by to buy tickets.
They did not make any friends with the other major Oregon territory promotion, run by Don Owen. Owen, who gave Jack his first break, was, in return, publicly lambasted as having "fat, out-of-shape, and poor performers."
Pay fell by more than half for some performers. For example, independent wrestler Coco Samoa’s $400 pay was cut to $150 in a matter of weeks, leaving the father of five in tears, unable to pay the rent.
The promotion was ranked the second-worst promotion of 1988 by readers of the Wrestling Observer, winning 116 votes, just one behind the AWA.
Sadly, the OWF closed within three months. An edition of the wrestling magazine Mat Watch, blamed the collapse on Haynes’s bad business acumen, noting delays and technical faults during the first show. Self-admittedly addicted to drugs at the time, Haynes lost his promoter’s license thereafter.
Billy Jack Haynes’s Final Matches and WCW Comeback
This undated photo showcases Billy Jack Haynes at the time of his WCW appearances, still looking in peak physical condition. Photo Credit: WWE.
In 1991, Billy Jack Haynes jumped to WCW, swallowing his pride to work again with a man he despised, Dusty Rhodes.
At the time, "The American Dream" was the promotion’s booker, and fitting in with Rhodes’s creative vision (which included Johnny B. Badd, Oz, and Big Josh created under his tutelage), Haynes became Black Blood. Billed as being from "a little town in France," he played an executioner, wielding an axe in the ring.
After one pay-per-view outing at the much-maligned Great American Bash event, he departed after suffering a serious knee injury.
Billy Jack Haynes’s final major run in professional wrestling came a few years later in Jerry Lawler’s Memphis territory.
Then called the United States Wrestling Association (USWA), he quickly won the promotion’s world title, defeating Brian Christopher (Lawler’s son). Occurring at a time when the WWF was willing to work with smaller promotions, during his time as champion, he would face WWF stars Lex Luger and British Bulldog in a tag bout when teaming with Brian Lee.
Billy Jack Haynes would lose his world belt to Brad Armstrong at Smoky Mountain Wrestling’s SuperBowl of Wrestling event but would win it back, quickly losing it to Christopher.
He departed shortly after, claiming that for the same match, opponent Sid Vicious got twenty times his pay. As has become his modus operandi, he worked for a short while and left, with no love lost between him and Lawler.
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Revealing Stories of Billy Jack Haynes’s Locker-Room Feuds
Portland native Billy Jack Haynes, pictured here in 1984, brought intensity and charisma to the world of professional wrestling. But behind the bravado, his life would take a dark turn that few could have predicted. Photo Credit: State Archive of Florida.
Billy Jack Haynes’s career, to a degree, reflects the volatile character of the man.
From his problems with promotors to his mysterious and sudden departures from promotions, Haynes made few friends in the business.
Billy Jack was undoubtedly a hard man and one who was all too willing to use this strength. There are stories of him slapping Percy Pringle (Paul Bearer) over a botched match finish, pulverizing journeyman "Iron" Mike Sharpe backstage after feeling he was too stiff, and after one rib went awry, he beat up Barry Windham, bashing his head repeatedly into a sink vanity.
Bill Alfonso, who met Haynes as a young referee prior to his ECW days, described him as a Jekyll and Hyde figure, with his short fuse and aggression the antithesis to his often soft-spoken, mild-mannered attitude. As such, he was an utter loner in the locker room.
During his time as a pro wrestler, Billy Jack Haynes claimed to be on 25 pain pills a day, which understandably may have played a role in causing these mood swings.
Needless to say, he rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way.
Greg Valentine was more blunt in his summation of Billy Jack Haynes, in an interview with Title Match Wrestling, calling him "kind of a pr*ck".
In 1983, he married English wrestling valet Jeanie Clarke as part of a green card marriage. It would be short-lived. One story goes that when he arrived in Texas, Haynes was booked against top star Chris Adams, the ex-partner of Clarke. The bad blood still fresh and fearing in-ring repercussions, the Englishman instead skipped town and missed out on a week’s pay to avoid Haynes.
Perhaps the career of Haynes can be best summarized, in an RF Video interview, by wrestler and promoter Mike Graham: “His mind was thinking different and he seemed to be mad at the world, thought the wrestling business owned him a living. He was mad at promoters, he said they forced him to take steroids and, you know, he wanted to blame all the issues of life on someone else.”
Billy Jack Haynes’s Wild Conspiracy Claims Against Vince McMahon
Billy Jack Haynes during a recent appearance on The Hannibal TV YouTube channel, where the former WWF wrestler has become notorious for making explosive conspiracy theory claims about the wrestling industry, politicians, and unsolved murders. These controversial shoot interviews have defined Haynes’s post-retirement reputation and sparked widespread debate among wrestling fans. Photo Credit: Hannibal TV.
In his retirement, Billy Jack Haynes has become a notable name for his controversial shoot interviews.
While Jim Cornette and the Honky Tonk Man made early names for themselves on the shoot interview circuit for their abrasive tongue, Billy Jack did so for his madcap, out-there conspiracy theories.
His first major shoot interview took place in 2006, and he has since been a recurring interviewee on the shoot interview series, The Hannibal TV.
One of the most concentrated targets of Billy Jack’s ire was Vince McMahon, whom Haynes referred to, in an RF Video shoot interview, as the "Adolf Hitler of professional wrestling."
It got so bad that Haynes claimed he nearly shot and killed McMahon backstage at a WWF event in the early 1990s.
He has called out McMahon for working the wrestlers so hard for so little pay, stating: "he’s a pimp and we were his flying prostitutes."
In 2014, in the wake of Devon "Hannibal" Nicholson’s successful case against Abdullah the Butcher after "The Madman from Sudan" gave him hepatitis C, Billy Jack sued WWE for $5 million for the same reason. He would later join the mass concussion lawsuit against the WWE.
Additionally, Billy Jack Haynes has long railed against Stone Cold Steve Austin. He has claimed Steve Austin beat his wife, Jeanie Clarke, also Haynes’s ex-wife, even though she herself has denied this. Haynes claimed they came face-to-face in 1991 in WCW, where Austin "p*****d out" of a fight. Plus, according to Haynes, Austin played a role in the death of Roddy Piper.
Naturally, these claims are entirely unfounded and lack credible evidence.
As co-worker John Nord (The Berzerker) proclaimed on Hannibal TV, Haynes is "colossally full of ****."
Billy Jack Haynes and the Chilling ‘Boys on the Tracks’ Murder Allegation
William Albert Haynes III, known professionally as Billy Jack Haynes, has claimed involvement in the unsolved 1987 murders of teenagers Don Henry and Kevin Ives in Alexander, Arkansas – a case known as ‘The Boys on the Tracks.’ Haynes alleges he witnessed the killings during a drug operation involving high-ranking politicians, including future President Bill Clinton. Photo Credit: KATV.
Among a cacophony of ludicrous conspiracies, the most notable is Billy Jack Haynes’s claim to be involved in a 1987 unsolved murder that involved drugs, corruption, and a future president.
Haynes has claimed to have been a major cocaine dealer, starting in Oregon in 1977, pre-dating his wrestling career. His work in the cocaine trade meant he got several wrestlers hooked, such as Curt Hennig, Adrian Adonis, and the Junkyard Dog. He also claims to have sold a kilo of drugs to Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.
While working for the WWF, he worked with major drug smuggler Barry Seal, who worked for Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel and was later killed after serving as an informant for the DEA.
In 1987, Haynes claimed, while presiding over a drug drop in Alexander, Arkansas, he witnessed the murder of 16-year-old Don Henry and 17-year-old Kevin Ives after they stumbled upon the scene. Corrupt cops and politicians involved in the drop then killed the young men.
Notably, one of those Haynes named as playing a major part in the operation was the Governor of Arkansas, a young, little-known politician called Bill Clinton.
Initially, the deaths were ruled accidental after the marijuana-intoxicated boys fell asleep on the tracks, though an exhumation the next year found a different conclusion.
A "definite homicide" verdict was given by a grand jury after a pathologist noted stab marks in the back of Henry’s shirt while Ives had had his skull crushed with his own rifle.
Haynes served as muscle and was also tasked with filming the drug drop. In addition, during his sensational claim, he added: "I’m standing here putting my life on the line, telling you that I could very well be killed."
This confession gave resolve to Kevin’s mother, Linda, who hired a private investigator and worked with Haynes to raise awareness of the murders.
Billy Jack Haynes Arrested: The Tragic Murder Charge Explained
Billy Jack Haynes, pictured in a recent interview, alongside an image of his wife, Janette Becraft. In early 2024, the former WWF wrestler was arrested for the second-degree murder of Becraft following a February 8 shooting and a two-hour police standoff at their Portland, Oregon, home. Photo Credit: Hannibal TV, Portland Police Bureau.
Almost fifty years after the murders of “The Boys on the Tracks,” on the morning of February 8th, 2024, shots rang out of the home of then-70-year-old Billy Jack Haynes and his 85-year-old wife, Janette Becraft.
The two met many decades ago as Janette had been the mother of Haynes’s best friend, Todd Ruhl. Ruhl, who passed in 2021 at 59, first met Haynes when the former was nine, though Haynes was many years older.
After a two-hour standoff with the SWAT team, Haynes gave himself up and was subsequently charged with the murder of his wife as well as the unlawful use of a weapon.
Considering the 85-year-old had dementia, Haynes, in a bewildering appearance on Dark Side of the Ring, recording from his prison cell, has framed the events as a mercy killing.
It should say something about Haynes’s character that Jake Roberts, who was in the WWF at the same time as Billy Jack Haynes, said on an episode of The Snake Pit podcast, that the news "really doesn’t surprise me."
Reflecting on the murder, on his Story Time podcast, Dutch Mantell called him “legitimately mentally ill” and has had mental issues “ever since I’ve known him.” He added that Haynes would likely be classed as insane and thus be institutionalized rather than imprisoned.
As Jim Cornette added on Billy Jack Haynes’ Dark Side of the Ring episode, "The only person alive that was in the room with them was Billy Jack, and you can’t believe a thing he says."
In addition to the charge, Janette’s daughter has accused Haynes of “repeated mental, physical, and financial abuse” in a $750,000 lawsuit.
In May 2025, Multnomah County judge Angela Lucero ruled that Haynes was mentally unfit to stand trial, which was set to start in December 2025.
Who Really IS Billy Jack Haynes?
On February 28, 2024, Portland Police booked Billy Jack Haynes (William Albert Haynes III) after his arrest for second-degree murder. The former WWF wrestler was charged following a February 8, 2024 shooting and two-hour police standoff at his Portland, Oregon home. Photo Credit: New York Times.
Billy Jack Haynes’ career is a story of two starkly different halves.
He had a memorable, albeit scattered, professional wrestling career, never experiencing success in any major promotion for a prolonged period. During this, his backstage reputation was that of a quiet, cold, and short-tempered raging bull.
Then, in the 21st century, he regained notoriety for his wacky, unhinged shoot interviews in which he spouted his unfounded theories.
Mental health issues are likely a contributing factor, as many within the pro wrestling circle who knew Haynes would argue. Billy Jack Haynes himself has admitted that he suffers from CTE and has had other traumatic brain injuries (TBI). He was a meth addict from 2002 until 2008 and has been subject to trauma such as a two-on-one assault in 2006.
Haynes has been notably unpredictable in recent years, even disappearing in the early 2020s, with his agent, Eric Simms, being unaware of his whereabouts for extended periods.
Clearly, Haynes has faced numerous challenges in his life. Unfortunately, this culminated in the death of an innocent woman, with Haynes sitting in prison awaiting his fate.
It is a sad end for a man whose signs of deterioration were public and, in the end, tragic.
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Griffin Kaye is a life-long pro wrestling fan and historian with a love for '80s and '90s WWF, the NWA, WCW, ECW, and AEW. His favorite wrestlers include Ricky Steamboat, Bret Hart, Ric Flair, William Regal, Tito Santana, Stan Hansen, and Mr Perfect. He also writes for websites like Ring The Damn Bell!, BritWrestling.co.uk, and Lace 'Em Up among others. He can be reached on Instagram at @TheGriffinKaye.
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