Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're stepping
away from, uh... maybe the usual laughs you associate
with stand -up comedy. We're looking at a really
devastating story. Yeah, it's pretty heavy stuff.
It weaves together comedy, that kind of rock
and roll intensity, shocking tragedy, and this
secret betrayal that lasted for decades. We're
talking about Sam Kinison, you know, the screaming
comic who just burned so bright and so fast.
And his best friend, Carl Above. Exactly. His
opening act, fiercely loyal friend, but as we'll
see, maybe Kinison's... greatest victim in a
way it's a complex relationship to say the least
so our sources they really lay out kinnison's
like meteoric rise you know how he went from
this small town preacher's kid to this this confrontational
high voltage comedy force right we have the biography
the career milestones all of that but the real
mission here for this deep dive is digging into
the human cost yeah that's the core of it we've
got the details on his explosive career sure
the fatal car crash that killed him but then
there's the staggering story Almost unbelievable,
really. The paternity scandal. Yeah, that came
out years later and just consumed Carl LeBov's
life. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the challenge,
isn't it? Connecting those dots. You've got their
shared rise in comedy. Then the shared trauma
of the crash, which LeBov physically survived,
he was in the car. Right there. Witnessed it
all. And then almost two decades later, this
devastating personal fallout hits LeBov. Financially,
emotionally, just... Ruinous. It's easy to just
remember the stage persona with someone like
Kinison, you know? The scream. Totally. That's
the icon. But this forces you to look past that
to the real wreckage left behind. Wreckage that
LaBeouf had to carry for so long. Yeah, for Dexter.
And that persona. Wow, it was powerful. Kinison,
the EX RV, he even had it on his license plate,
right? On that Corvette. Yeah, the 86 Corvette.
It was a statement. A total lightning rod. His
comedy was just... raw uncomfortable and always
punctuated by that scream it felt like pure confrontation
it really did and labov was right there through
it all born in fort worth he wasn't just some
hanger on either no definitely not he was successful
in his own right one of the original outlaws
of comedy yep credits on seinfeld rosanne leno
he had a real career but yeah in people's minds
he's forever linked to sam The constant presence,
just offstage. The loyal friend. Okay, so to
really get Kinison's whole explosive thing, you
kind of have to look at where he came from. Absolutely,
that's key. Samuel Burrell Kinison, born 53 in
Yakima, Washington, but he grew up mostly in
East Peoria, Illinois. And the defining thing
there was the church, right? Pentecostal background.
Deeply. His father was a preacher, and Sam himself,
he preached too, from age 17 to 24, something
like that. Wow, and that's not just... Like a
fun fact, it seems like it's the blueprint for
his whole comedy style. It really is. People
found recordings of his old sermons later, and
the resemblance is, well, it's kind of eerie.
The whole fire and brimstone delivery, the shouting.
Exactly. That style meant to, you know, stir
up the congregation. He basically just swapped
the pulpit for a microphone and aimed that same
energy at, well, everything else. Marriage, religion,
daily life. He learned how to command a room,
maybe even terrify it a bit. In church first.
Pretty much. Though his brother Bill apparently
said that early on in the ministry, Sam actually
lacked stage presence, focused only on the words.
Oh, interesting. So the performance aspect developed.
Seems like it. But the source of that famous
rage that might go back even further, there was
physical trauma. Yeah, I read about that. He
was hit by a truck when he was really young,
like three years old. Yeah. And it wasn't minor.
It apparently left him with documented brain
damage and epilepsy. Okay, see, that changes
things. That suggests the volatility maybe wasn't
entirely a choice or an act. It could have been
neurologically rooted. Could be. And then add
the emotional stuff. His parents divorced when
he was 11. According to his brother, Sam took
that really hard. Huge protests, feelings of
betrayal. That childhood anger apparently festered
and grew into the adult rage we saw on stage.
So the stage anger was maybe just unprocessed
childhood trauma exploding outwards. It's a compelling
theory. So he leaves the ministry. When does
he actually make the jump to comedy? Looks like
around 1980, it was after his first marriage
to Patricia Adkins fell apart. And he lands in
Houston, Texas, which was a hotbed for a certain
kind of comedy back then. Right, the Texas Outlaw
Comics. That scene. Yeah, let's talk about that
for a second, because it wasn't just a random
group. They had a philosophy almost. Definitely.
It was a rejection of this sort of clean, jokey,
set -up punchline stuff that was dominant. More
confrontational. More real. Even if it was ugly.
Bill Hicks came out of that. Ron Schock. Riley
Barber. Steve Epstein. Yeah. A really influential
group focused on just hitting the audience with
reality. And Kinison was like their point man.
You could say that. Bill Hicks, who became this
huge icon himself, said Kinison deeply influenced
him. What did he say specifically? Hicks said
Sam was the first comic he ever saw who did not.
in any way asked the audience to like him. That's
huge for the early 80s. Most comics needed that
approval. Right. They were looking for validation.
Kedison was basically demanding you deal with
his reality, like it or not. Aggressively unfiltered.
So he takes this new style, this energy, to L
.A. in 1980. Yep. Ends up working as a doorman
at the comedy store. Which sounds kind of cliche,
but... It was a notoriously wild time for him
personally. Extremely wild. Deep into drugs,
alcohol, the sources mentioned cocaine, freebasing.
It was bad. Personal chaos mirroring the stage
chaos. Pretty much. And apparently took his brother,
Bill, stepping in again. To manage him. Yeah,
kind of impose some structure, get him focused.
And that intervention seems to have paved the
way for his big break. Which came in 85. Right.
HBO. Rodney Dangerfield's ninth annual Young
Comedian special. Dangerfield knew talent, especially
volatile talent. That must have put him on the
map instantly. Oh, absolutely. Catapulted him.
The critics noticed immediately. The New York
Times' Stephen Holden called him savagely funny.
And he nailed the core theme, didn't he? Calling
it the primal scream of the married man. Perfect
description. Relationships were his bread and
butter or maybe his raw meat. And that leads
straight to network TV. Letterman, 85. Yeah,
and that famous warning from Dave. Brace yourselves.
I'm not kidding. Just telling you up front, this
isn't going to be comfortable. Exactly. It cemented
that dangerous edge. Yeah. And he leaned into
the whole EXRV thing, using his past to take
shots at religion, the Bible. It was the ultimate
rebellion against his upbringing, played out
on national TV. With that license plate reinforcing
it every day. Yep. And right there, riding shotgun
through all this, figuratively and sometimes
literally, was Carl Above. The stable force,
five years younger, had his own career going,
but mostly known as Sam's opener, his guy. The
anchor, maybe? Mm -hmm. Tied to this hurricane
of a personality. Yeah, that's a good way to
put it. And, you know, the more famous Kinnison
got, the wilder his personal life seemed to become.
Or maybe it just became more public. Right, and
it all fed back into the act. His divorces from
Patricia Adkins and then Terry Marzi, that was
prime material. Dark, but prime. Absolutely.
But then things got genuinely tragic offstage.
In May 88, his youngest brother, Kevin, died
by suicide. He was only 28. Oh, man. That had
to have just shattered him. Reports say it devastated
him. And think about that context. You've got
the childhood physical trauma, the epilepsy,
the addiction issues, the pressure of fame. And
then your younger brother takes his own life.
The amount of personal darkness Kennison was
wading through. It's hard to fathom. No wonder
the comedy was so dark. It wasn't just an act.
It was coming from a place of, like, genuine
deep -seated misery. It seems that way. And that
misery, or maybe chaos, just continued right
up until the end. He married Malika Swery just
six days before he died. April 4th, 1992, Las
Vegas. Right after his second divorce was finalized.
Yeah. But even that relationship wasn't simple.
It had its own major public scandal just before
the wedding. Okay, yeah, we should touch on that.
The 1990 incident, Swery accused a bodyguard
Kinison hired. She alleged rape, said it happened
while Kinison was asleep in the house. The bodyguard
claimed it was consensual. And the legal outcome
was murky, right? Jury deadlocked. Yeah, charges
were eventually dropped. But people in Kinison's
circle pointed to that whole ordeal as a real
wake -up call for him. A moment of crisis. Did
it lead to any changes? Apparently it did. It
reportedly pushed him to try and get clean. He
joined AA. started telling audiences around March
1990 that he'd quit getting high. So a genuine
attempt to clean up his act, to escape the wreckage.
It seemed like it. Yeah. But the underlying volatility,
it was maybe too deep. Because then you have
incidents like the one with Guns N' Roses. Oh,
yeah. May 1991. Slash Duff McKagan. What happened
there? He got physical. Apparently, Kinison was
furious because Slash missed showing up for something
at one of his gigs, found him at a hotel, and
allegedly attacked him. The quote is, he nearly
choked Slash to death. Wow. Just wow. A comedian
almost killing a rock star over a missed appearance.
It's nuts. But it really highlights that tension,
right? The attempt at sobriety versus this just...
Uncontrollable rage simmering underneath. Yeah.
And that brings us to the whole controversy around
his material itself, the legacy. It's thorny
for sure. Looking back, people definitely point
to misogyny, homophobia in his routines. And
it wasn't just later reflection. There was backlash
at the time. For sure. Like that queer nation
protest in Nebraska, February 91. Right. In Lincoln.
They were protesting his show, chanting anti
-woman, anti -gay, Sam Kinison, go away. This
was organized opposition. Not just bad reviews,
but people actively protesting his message. And
even his own record label seemed uncomfortable.
Warner Bros. Records. What did they do? On his
88 album, Have You Seen Me Lately, they put this
really unusual disclaimer sticker on it. Apparently,
employees requested it. A disclaimer. Saying
what? It said, Whoa. That's basically the label
saying, we'll sell this, but we don't stand by
it. Unheard of, almost. Tells you how divisive
he was, even internally. Which sparks that debate,
you know? Was he genuinely hateful? Or was it
all an act, an intentionally shocking character,
like that New York Magazine article suggested
in 2016? Pushing boundaries, playing a role.
It's a possible interpretation. It is. But hear
the tragic irony. Despite those claims of getting
sober around 1990, the toxicology report after
his death found tranquilizers and cocaine in
his system. Oh. So the sobriety didn't last.
Or wasn't complete. Seems not. The character
and the chaos, they were just too intertwined.
The attempt at reform might have been real for
a bit, but the underlying reality, the fury,
the substances, the confrontation that was him.
And through all of this, LaBeouf is there, witnessing
it day in, day out, getting him on stage, off
stage, dealing with the fallout. Yeah, absorbing
all that collateral damage. So inevitably, all
that chaos, it just, it culminates in tragedy.
April 10th, 1992. Yeah. He and Malika Sawiri,
they had just gotten back from Hawaii. Yeah.
A short honeymoon. And they were driving. Just
a routine work trip, right? To Laughlin, Nevada.
Exactly. Had a sold -out show book at the Riverside
Resort Hotel and Casino. Driving across the desert.
Needles Highway. Northwest of Needles, California.
In his Pontiac Trans Am. Yeah, that iconic car.
Yeah. And the setting, dark desert road. Sets
the scene, doesn't it? It does. And the crash.
It wasn't minor. Head -on collision. Right. A
pickup truck. driven by a 17 -year -old kid who,
reports said, had been drinking alcohol. Tried
to pass another car across the center line. And
just plowed right into Kinison's Trans Am. Catastrophic.
And the crucial detail, the one that connects
everything for the story, Carl Bove was in the
car. Yes, his best friend, his opener, riding
with him. And somehow, miraculously, LeBove survived.
Sawir survived too, but with injuries. A concussion
needed hospitalization. Right. But Kinison, he
was driving. Yeah. And he didn't make it. And
a key factor, tragically, was the seatbelt. He
wasn't wearing one. No. And that meant his head
hit the windshield hard. But the really bizarre
part is what happened immediately after. Yeah,
the witnesses said he seemed okay at first. Shockingly,
yes. Minor facial wounds, apparently. He actually
got out of the car, sat down on the roadside,
seemed lucid. But inside... The damage was done.
Totally. The autopsy later showed massive internal
injuries. Corn aorta, ruptured blood vessels
in his abdomen, cervical spine dislocation. It
was unsurvivable. Fatal within minutes. But before
he passed, those last words, they're incredibly
haunting. Yeah. The accounts from witnesses,
including LeBeau, are just cinematic almost and
deeply strange. He was talking, but not to anyone
there. Apparently not. He reportedly asked out
loud, why now? Then a pause. Then, but why? Like
he was arguing with someone or something? And
then after another pause, and friends later interpreted
this pause as him maybe receiving some kind of
answer. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Wow. From rage
and questioning to acceptance. In seconds. Yeah.
One friend said whatever voice was talking to
him gave him the right answer and he just relaxed
with it. It's quite an image. The ultimate rebel
preacher's son having this final personal reckoning
on the side of a highway. A truly unbelievable
end. And the legal side of it, the driver. It
feels disproportionate, maybe. The teen driver
pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter with
gross negligence. And the sentence. For causing
the death of a major star, injuring his wife.
One year of probation, 300 hours of community
service, and his driver's license suspended for
two years. That's remarkably light, considering...
It seems that way. So, Kinison's gone at 38.
Career cut short. But his legend instantly solidified.
Yeah, the posthumous honors started rolling in.
The Grammy in 94 for Live From Hell. George Carlin
dedicating his 94 special, Jammin' in New York,
just saying, this show is for Sam. Ozzy Osbourne
saying he believes Sam was upstairs. He's next
to God. The world mourned the public figure,
the icon. But meanwhile, you've got Carl LeBove,
the survivor, left holding this immense psychological
trauma of having seen it all happen right in
front of him. Yeah, the quiet guy left with the
loudest, most horrific memory. So for almost
20 years, that was kind of the narrative, right?
Yeah. Kinison, the loud, tragic, flawed genius.
LaBeouf. Yeah. The loyal friend who survived
the wreck. Yeah, the story seems settled. Horrific,
but settled. Until February 2011, nearly 19 years
after the crash, this bomb drops. A revelation
that just completely rewrites the story of their
friendship and LaBeouf's suffering. This is where
it goes from shared tragedy to just jaw -dropping
personal betrayal. It's incredibly painful to
even talk about. It really is. The news broke.
Places like the Toronto Sun reported it. Sam
Kinison had secretly fathered a child. Okay.
But with who? With Carl LeBeau's ex -wife. Oh,
my God. His best friend's ex -wife. Yes. And
the really brutal part. For almost 13 years,
Carl LeBeau had believed this child, a daughter,
was his. He'd been paying child support. He raised
her as his own, believing she was his. Yes. For
13 years. She was 21 years old when LeBeau finally
managed to file the legal papers challenging
the paternity. How do they even prove it with
Kinison dead for so long? DNA. They got samples
from Kinison's brother, Bill. And the result?
Unmistakable. A 99 .8 % likelihood that Sam Kinison
was the biological father. Wow. Just devastating.
So for nearly two decades, Kinison took this
secret to his grave. Labov's ex -wife knew. And
Labov was living this lie, unknowingly footing
the bill, emotionally and financially, for his
dead best friend's secret child. And the financial
cost. It wasn't just the past support, was it?
It got worse. Oh, way worse. It became this crushing
burden. He reported losing his driver's license,
his passport. Why? because he was deemed to owe
over $187 ,000 in back child support. Wait, back
support? Even after proving he wasn't the father?
How does that even work? It's a really harsh
aspect of the legal system in some places. Even
if you disprove biological paternity later, the
person who was legally recognized as a father
during those years can still be held liable for
the support that accrued before the paternity
was legally changed. So he was basically on the
hook for a massive debt generated while everyone
thought he was the father. A debt for Kinison's
child. Essentially, yes. He was trapped. Financially
obligated for money related to a child fathered
in secret by his supposed best friend. It's just
mind -boggling. Financial purgatory. And the
emotional toll. You can't even quantify that.
No. LeBeau himself said that learning the truth
on top of the trauma of witnessing the crash,
it just broke him for years. How did he cope?
Not... Well, initially. He turned to self -medication,
admitted abusing alcohol, saying it was the only
way he could even get on stage to do his comedy
act. Just trying to numb the pain of this...
this unbelievable betrayal. And it got darker.
He reached a point during this period where he
attempted suicide. Oh, God. Kinison's actions,
years after his death, were literally destroying
LeBeau's life. Actively destroying it. Think
about the layers. The guy was his best friend,
his road dog, the man he was loyal to right up
to the horrific end. Surviving the crash with
him. And all along. Kinison had saddled him with
this secret, this ticking time bomb of a debt,
emotionally and financially, that lasted decades
and nearly killed him. It's almost impossible
to comprehend that level of betrayal. It really
is. Which makes LeBeau's eventual perspective
even more remarkable. What do you mean? How did
he handle it long -term? He somehow found a way
to forgive. He stated publicly he'd learned to
forgive Sam for what he did. Forgive that. That's
incredible strength. It really is. And even more
amazing, maybe. He said he managed to maintain
a good relationship with the young woman herself.
He mentioned she actually showed up at one of
his stand -up gigs years before the news broke
publicly. And he was able at that point to tell
her the truth about who her biological father
was. So he gave her that clarity despite everything
he'd been through. He still protected her, in
a way. It seems like it. That ability to move
past such a profound betrayal, to still have
a connection with the young woman he raised,
it says so much about his character. Yeah. The
loyal friend turned out to be the one with the
immense emotional strength to clean up Kinnison's
biggest, darkest mess. So Carl above, he kept
going, continued his comedy career, but always,
you know, shadowed by Kinnison. Yeah, you couldn't
escape that association, professionally but also
personally, carrying that huge weight. His life
really became about endurance, didn't it? Just
surviving this prolonged, unbelievable adversity.
And he passed away relatively recently, April
23, 2021. Yeah. Died from cancer. At home in
Las Vegas, he was 62. Still quite young, really.
Definitely. And the tributes that came out after
his death, they often hit on this contrast. His
gentle nature versus the chaos he lived through.
Like Carrot Top's post. Exactly. The fellow Vegas
comedian, Carrot Top, put something on Instagram
calling LeBeau one of the best today. Yeah. Not
only one of the funniest, talented people, but
one of the sweetest. One of the sweetest. Right.
A sweet guy who endured the absolute worst of
that intense rock and roll comedy world, largely
because of his best friend. Yeah. It's a stark
contrast. So if we try to tie their legacies
together, this whole deep dive kind of comes
down to that intense, maybe toxic duality of
their friendship. Right. Kinison. Yeah. Short,
brilliant, explosive career, but ultimately defined
by self -destruction and the wreckage he created.
And above. A longer life, seemingly stable on
the surface, but fundamentally reshaped, almost
destroyed by loyalty to someone who betrayed
him so deeply. Kinnison's legacy is often just
boiled down to the scream, the persona. But these
sources, they reveal something much more devastating.
A guy whose public anger maybe came from private
trauma, yeah, but whose private actions, his
irresponsibility, set off this chain reaction,
financial ruin, emotional crisis, all landing
on the person closest to him. And LaBeouf's quiet
suffering, his near ruin, his eventual forgiveness,
that becomes this incredibly sad, powerful footnote
to the whole Kinison myth. It really does. The
devastating cost of loyalty. Hashtag, hashtag
outro. So we've covered a lot. We've seen the
rise of this. This comedic titan, Sam Kinison,
and the truly astronomical price paid by his
closest friend, Carl Above. Yeah, it's a really
stark reminder of how tightly fame, chaos, and
betrayal can bind people together, even after
death. Absolutely. And thinking about the timeline,
it's chilling. Yeah. The sources show that Kinison's
family tragedy, his brother Kevin's suicide.
Yeah, that happened in 88. Right. And that seems
to have occurred shortly before the period when
he would have fathered this child with Lubav's
wife. That timing is... It leaves you wondering,
doesn't it? Did that immense personal loss, maybe
the ultimate feeling of betrayal by life or family,
send Kinison into such a dark, self -destructive
spiral? But he became capable of betraying his
closest friend in such a profound way. Exactly.
Was it lashing out? Was it just recklessness
amplified by grief and addiction? We can't know
for sure, obviously. No, but it raises that fundamental
question about artists, especially confrontational
ones like Kinison. What does it mean when their
life is defined both by this incredibly powerful
public art and by these secret private choices
that create decades of chaos and pain for someone
else, especially someone who trusted them completely?
Yeah, the hidden cost of that outlaw persona
carried not just by him, but by those around
him, particularly Lebeau, drowning in debt and
despair because of secrets kept by his friend.
It's definitely the kind of tangled, tragic complexity
that only a real deep dive into the sources can
start to unravel. A lot to think about there.