Former WWE Intercontinental Champion Marty Jannetty spoke with the Boston Wrestling YouTube channel today to discuss the now-deleted Facebook post he made yesterday, where he claimed he murdered a man when he was 13 years old. Jannetty is still trending on social media for the claim, and has received national mainstream media attention.
For those who missed it, Jannetty posted about how he allegedly murdered a gay man who tried to sexually assault him behind a Victory Lanes bowling alley where they both worked, when Jannetty was just 13. He said he had been buying marijuana from the man. Jannetty also indicated that he got rid of the body by dumping it in the Chattahoochee River.
Jannetty told Boston Wrestling, in the interview seen above, that the man was a front desk clerk at the bowling alley. Jannetty alleged that the man, who was known to sell marijuana, tried to rape him, according to PWInsider. Jannetty was not aware that the man also “lured” children for assaults. Jannetty said the man fondled him while they were in his car, and when Jannetty tried to get out of the car, the man got angry. Jannetty said he was pulled out of the car into an alley, where the man pulled his pants down. Jannetty said he was able to grab a brick and hit the man before he could be anally sexually assaulted.
Jannetty told Boston Wrestling that he doesn’t think the man deserved to die, but he did deserve “to get his ass beaten.” He also said he didn’t mean for the man to die. It was also said that Jannetty was badly affected by the trauma of nearly being raped, killing someone, throwing their body in a river, and then “finding out on the news the dude’s missing.”
As noted on Wednesday, the Columbus, Georgia Police Department told TMZ that they are going to look into the claim made by Jannetty on Facebook. However, the investigation won’t receive priority and won’t be any kind of “all hands on deck” situation as police noted that they have “several current active homicide investigations underway and they will have to remain the priority.”
“We are going to look into this,” a spokesperson for the CPD homicide & cold case division said. “The first step will be seeing if we have any missing persons or unidentified remains cases that match the limited information in the post.”
For what it’s worth, Jannetty noted in his original post that his brother Geno had just returned from the Vietnam War when the attempted rape happened. Jannetty was born in February 1960, and would have turned 13 in 1973. The Vietnam War officially ended in April 1975, but troops were returning home at various times before then. Also, the Chattahoochee River does run through Columbus, and there are records of a Victory Lanes Family Bowling Center in Columbus. The facility was located on Fort Benning Road, which is right next to the Chattahoochee.
It’s interesting to note that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ website does not currently list any unsolved murders before 1980.
Stay tuned for updates on Jannetty. You can see screenshots from the now-deleted post below:
@WONF4W @PWTorch #prowrestling did Marty Jannetty just talk about killing someone, on FB? Is this a "known story" in wrestling? #prowrestling #wwe pic.twitter.com/lVS57idhYS
— Sgt. Schultz the Ewok (@ewok_schultz) August 5, 2020
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