Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 400th installment of the ‘Wrestling with Sin‘ series. A group of stories that delves into the darker, underbelly of pro wrestling. Many of the stories involve such subjects as sex, drugs, greed and in some cases even murder! As with every single story in the Sin series, I do not condone or condemn the alleged participants. We simply retell their stories by researching interviews, newspapers, magazines and various other sources of media.
Death Row Duchess
Evelita Juanita Spinelli, nicknamed ‘The Duchess’, was a former lady pro wrestler and nurse. Her wrestling career was very brief. Finding neither job very lucrative, Spinelli turned to a life of crime. She often recruited and trained young homeless men to assist in perpetrating various robberies which included muggings, car thefts and burglaries. As one lawman described her…“the coldest, hardest character, male or female, I have ever known. The Duchess is a hag, evil as a witch, horrible to look at and impossible to like.”
On April 8, 1940…a botched robbery of a small restaurant caused Spinelli’s crime syndicate to unravel. One of her underlings named Albert Ives shot the restaurant owner in the stomach when he mistakenly thought the 55 year old owner was reaching for a gun, when in fact he was partially deaf and was raising the volume on his hearing aide. The restaurant owner died a short while later at the hospital.
Spinelli became paranoid that her criminal associates would turn on her and reveal her to be the mastermind behind the crime ring….she decided to host a party for her gang. She poisoned the drink of 18 year old Robert Sherrard who was present when Ives shot and killed the restaurant owner. Spinelli saw Sherrard as dim witted and a weak link in her gang and figured he would be easy for the police to crack. So she poisoned the teen and then stripped him of his clothes and threw Sherrard off a bridge in Sacramento, California to make it look like a drowning accident.
Realizing that Spinelli was willing to murder one of her own, Albert Ives turned on Spinelli and the rest of the gang and testified that Spinelli was a crime boss and murderer. Juanita Spinelli was sentenced to death by the San Quentin gas chamber. She was executed on November 21, 1941 at the age of 55 years old. She was the first female to be executed in the state of California.
Hartless?
The patriarch of the Hart family…Stu Hart was accused of abusing several of his trainees in the infamous Hart Dungeon. It was alleged that Stu would take some of his recruits and wear them down physically by making them do long periods of calisthenics. After that, Stu would start to stretch the would be wrestlers. He would then perform something called “mugging” in where Stu would put all his body weight on the recruit and cover his mouth and nose with no way of breathing.
Several wrestlers passed out, vomited or defecated on themselves during this action by Hart. He would allegedly have his sons videotape the muggings on a regular basis. Stu Hart allegedly did this to students who he felt were weak or he felt had no real shot at becoming successful wrestlers.
A Very Bane-ful Past
Kayleigh Swenson is the daughter of exotic dancer Erin Hillsman and former pro wrestler/actor Jeep Swenson, who most notably portrayed ‘Bane’ in the movie Batman and Robin. Jeep Swenson died of heart failure in 1997 at the age of 40 years old. His daughter Kayleigh was just 10 years old at the time of his death.
Without her Dad in her life, Kayleigh would get involved with the wrong people and it eventually led to a long addiction to heroin and cocaine. She was arrested numerous times in her young life, with the last time being in 2011. Kayleigh would go to rehab and get clean and sober.
Kayleigh has appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine twice. She started her own Onlyfans fans site under the nickname of ‘Viking Barbie’ where she has posed nude and performed various sexual acts. Swenson also has a music career, where many of her songs reflect her troubled past.
Street Tough
After the Poffos ICW outlaw promotion closed down in 1984, Randy Savage went to work in Memphis, Tennessee. Savage quickly earned the reputation of working stiff and taking liberties on his opponents. Savage would often spit beat up and spit on many wrestlers he worked with in the territory. Getting fed up with Savage legitimately hurting the territory’s talent, Jerry Jarret booked ‘The Exotic’ Adrian Street to feud with Randy.
This was done because Street was legitimately tough and could handle Savage inside and outside the ring if need be. According to Street, he introduced himself to Savage before their first match against each other and immediately warned Savage that if he decided to do anything “funny” in their match…he would ‘rip out Savage’s throat and feed it to him.’ Adrian Street said that Savage never tried Street after the warning.