From NFL Player to Drug Dealer: The Rise and Fall of James Harris | Full Documentary

I played with Chris Dolman, John Randall, two of the best defensive linemen ever to play in the NFL. But the difference between me and them, they didn't have a second life. You can't live in two lives, man, because them two lives are going to come together and it's going to blow up in your damn face like it blew up in my face. Please don't go down my path because my path is full of ---- and bull. I'm Joe Fryer. We are coming on the air with breaking news. Just moments ago, NBC News confirmed that O.J. Simpson has died at the age of 76 following a battle with cancer. The former football great rose to infamy following the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. He was accused of the murders, but ultimately acquitted following a lengthy trial. We do move on tonight and to new reporting here this evening after a former Patriot star was discovered dead in his cell. Authorities say it was a suicide. Tonight, what was discovered written on Aaron Hernandez's head when he was found in that cell. ABC's Eva Pilgrim, outside the prison in Shirley, Massachusetts tonight. Tonight, questions surrounding the death of former NFL star Aaron Hernandez, his body now with the state medical examiner. ABC News learning he was found in his cell with John 3:16 across his forehead, a Bible verse referencing death and eternal life. God didn't want to hurt me. He didn't want to hurt me. but he had to find a way to slow me down and prison I think was the way of slowing me down because after that I was a totally different person. In 1997 it was estimated that 23 percent of NFL players had been arrested or indicted at some point in their lives. James Harris was one of these players. This story is going to be told from a different perspective other than NFL player gone bad. When James was just 29 years old he had just signed a 2.9 million dollar deal with his hometown team the St. Louis Rams less than a month later it all came crashing down the question is why to answer that we started where it began for James East St. Louis Illinois the other St. Louis on the other side of the Mississippi there's no economy no grocery stores no shopping malls it feels like a ghost town james is back in his hometown with his old crew reflecting on what went wrong, because a life unexamined is a life not worth living. In inner cities, always set up to fail. School funding formula kills cities like ours. Number one, because schools get money off of housing. There are no homes in this community. Also, when you look culturally, our kids show with a lot of PTSD, which we don't even trip off of, because we're in the midst of it. It's like, ----, I'm swimming in this ******* shark bowl. Ain't no big deal. That's no, bud. He outside the shark bowl like, oh my god, damn, that's a shark bowl. What we don't understand is we're trying to get these kids to see something they can't see because they're part of it. Until you can get away, you don't know what the **** is going on, where you're at. And that's the problem. Our kids never get away. Or when they decide to get away, it's too late. We were watching the Dallas Cowboys play the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl in New Orleans. I watched Butch Johnson make a one-hand catch. He flipped over, jumped up in the end zone, touchdown Dallas Cowboys. And I looked up at my mom and said that's what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life And she started laughing. I'm like what you laughing at? She said yeah, you too skinny pat me on the head I say I'll show you watch. I'm playing professional football She was like yeah, whatever my mom got up every morning and went to work as a school teacher And she wasn't making any money. She was basically raising someone else's kids Out of the love of teaching them you know and she wasn't bringing anything home and I saw that it was tough on her taking care of home and I didn't want to be a burden on her so I went found me a way to make money the culture does a darn good job YouTube and everything else does a darn good job to make us mock these bad behaviors there's nowhere out there that you make you mark good behavior like we was coming up these young kids in the 60s and 70s church exists a pair of church shoes church clothes you make a reference to church outfit but that church outfit need to give us what you sat down you listen and you was totally respectful at church if you go to the door first you open the door and let the ladies come in it's church environment that's that church clothes on now is when you throw a bunch of words in there in this pool he said in this shark tank that now it's cool for me to harm you it's cool for me to harm you yeah the language and everything go with where he has some He did this, this, this, that, and that. That's why I killed him. Somebody else would be like, yeah, you probably should have did that. You would have been like, so you agree with the language, the act, and the separation between togetherness? That's where we got a problem at. Think about this. My brother was probably 11 years old, and I've seen it too. Walk by on the tracks, we see a dead body just sitting on the tracks. You dig what I'm saying? But that was just another day to us. But this is weird because we lived this, And then we looking at a movie called Boys in the Hood and they, what they do, what you see in Boys in the Hood? We see the same thing in Boys in the Hood and what's so crazy, we ain't never been to Compton. We from East St. Louis and we see the same thing. So what is it? Is it a United States thing or what is it? Is it an inner city thing? What is it? Uncle Jumbo was the patriot of our family, man. He was the man that had things that nobody else in East St. Louis that we knew, as my family knew, they had. He's the first man I ever seen with a microwave. He's the first man I ever seen with a VCR. You understand? He's the first man I seen with a popcorn machine. Why wouldn't I want to be like that? And in the beginning, I thought he was getting it from his job. You know, because my Uncle Jumbo was one of the hardest working men in the world. And his real name is James Harris, and I love him because I have the same name that he has. He was a good, kind, big old, gentle giant. Something kind of like me. You know, we come across as good people because that's what we really are. Good people, man. And my Uncle Jumbo was just like that and I wanted to be just like him because he worked his behind off. He had his family. He took care of his family. He came home. Now, he had a second job and he was selling cocaine. And that's okay at that time. And this might sound crazy to you. I've never blamed my father. I never was the type of man or child, I never looked for a father. I had my mother. She was everything in the world to me. Now, is it a way that I was missing my dad and I didn't know it? Probably was, but at this particular time, at nine, 10, or 15, I wasn't missing no father because my mom was giving me enough love that I didn't have to miss something that I didn't know anything about. How can you miss something that you don't know anything about? I didn't know anything about him. I met my dad when I was 15 years old. And by that time, I had already formed who I am gonna be. Cause one time I came home and told my mom, when I seen a dead body on the path on my way to school, you know, she told me, instead of saying, call the police, she said, find another way around. Because you know why? That's not none of our business. Stay out of that. I don't want the police coming to my house asking me nothing. So what we do, we ignore the damn dead body and just found another way to get to school. Age of 12, I seen guys get stabbed to death just over a pinball machine game, you know? But that's weird, it becomes normal. You normalize stuff that shouldn't be normal, you know? Getting stabbed, watching somebody get stabbed, and you just walk away like nothing happened. That never happened. Or you just tuck it away in the back of your psyche. And our children are being exposed to things that they shouldn't be exposed to. It was so bad in East St. Louis during this time, and this is at the height when we young, we, you know, 17, 18, 19 years old, they were talking about calling the National Guard into the project, because murders and people were dying on a daily basis, you know, and you in the middle of it. We on one end of the projects, but we don't get along with the guys on the other end, and we talking about less than a city block away. Guys will come out, they got every kind of weapon you can imagine, and they just start shooting down there on the other end, you know, random, you know, simply because we don't like them guys. They don't like us. This was probably when I was about 13 or so. So I already had them with guns on me and everything. Some older guys from Jamaica and stuff, we robbed them, but we didn't do it, but I knew who did it. We was going through a playground. They pulled up on them. I told everybody to stop, hold on, wait. And I pulled out one gun and they just started shooting. Everybody took off running back up the block. I was walking, I didn't run. I just hear bullets flying. I see them windows being shot out, house windows, car windows. I'm like, I don't care if I live or die. I ain't scared. That was my first introduction into that world of shooting. Inner City, which is all East End, Little Woods, or anywhere else, man, you don't be disrespectful unless, you know, you can back it up. We teenagers, man. You know, we in high school, playing basketball in the projects like we always do. You know, we got a bunch of guys out there shooting, talking ----, you know, that's just what we do. You know, one guy's getting the better of the other guy, and they getting into it and stuff, and you know, everybody ratting on him when, you know, we used to be like, man, well, stop joning that fool, man, before that fool get mad. Like, man, I ain't gonna get mad, but he getting his ass bust on the basketball court. My friends, he hit a jump shot. Boom, oh man, you have to find somebody to guard, man, because you can't guard me. The other guys get mad, they walk off, but they say some things when they walk off. Like, man, I'm gone, I'll see y'all later. So we thinking he leaving. Other man, he's walking over, right? Coming back and be like, oh, this fool come back to play. Man, he walked straight up to our partner. He said, man, the worst happened. But, boom! Came back, shot him dead from a basketball game. Blowed his brains out right there in front of us on the basketball court. That's the world we live in, these unwritten rules about respect. It's also our morals. Now, somebody else on the outside looking in, they be like, man, that's horrible. But, I mean, we kids. Everybody in the hood got PTSD, man. Everybody. Before my dad gets out of jail, because my father went to prison, he was trying to create his own radio station, and no one wanted to give him a loan. So what did he do? He went and found a way to make the money himself, and it was by selling heroin. And he was doing well. He was only selling heroin, and I say only, and that was to build a life to get him a radio station. He didn't want to be a drug dealer, just like I really didn't want to be a drug dealer. So, you know, I'm 15, I meet my father. I don't treat him bad, I don't go crazy, and I just sit him down and said, okay, this is what we're going to do. We just got this new relationship. Now the relationship that you and my mom had, that's over. So the relationship that me and you have, this is what we're going to go off of. So from this day forward, I can only judge you from me and you. I can't judge you from that sex that you and my mom had, because we see how that turned out. So if you're going to be my father, I'm going to be your son. Let's start right now. So anything that you do wrong from this second forward, that's what I'll judge you from. Anything that I do wrong from this day forward, that's what you judge me from. Is that fair enough, sir? He said, yeah. Now, I could be a jerk and be like, he wasn't there for me when I was a kid. But that wasn't the reason that me and him came together. The reason me and him came together is because he wanted me at that time, and I wanted him at that time. And now he needs me, and I'm here for him. Exactly a year later, my Uncle Jim went to prison. Not even a year later, I didn't see my uncle again until I was in the NFL. So one day, man, you know, I'm moving my little work on the plane, and I said, man, I got to figure out a way to stop putting this dope in my bag. So I'm watching TV, and I got my football, and I'm flipping it, and I'm flipping it. and I got some work already bagged up on my table. I know it's easy, just throw it in the bag, pull it up, put all the smells and all that stuff. I could have did that, yeah, because back in them days, there wasn't nobody checking your bags. So you can go on and do what you're gonna do, as long as you don't bring nobody, no attention to yourself. So I'm flipping the ball, and the ball hit me, boom, right between my legs. I look at the dope, look at the ball. I got a scale sitting on the table. Football sitting on the scale. it weighs out to a certain amount and i say to myself what if i cut this football open take the inner tube out and put the dope inside here and wonder if i can make it weigh the same open it up took my packages that was already packaged up set them in there in a certain type of way weighed it until i put enough dope in there to weigh it weigh it weigh exactly as much as the football weigh Now I've got an easy way of transporting my dope, it's in the football. And then what I did, I signed the footballs to make it like they was autographed footballs that I was giving away. Now tell me how crazy I am. Tell me how crazy I am to think of some ---- like that, man. I came home twice from the time I went to college and went to the program. I came home twice. Both times I came home something bad happened. Second time I came home, it was around Super Bowl time. My uncle had just got out of prison, so I came home. I was on my way to the Super Bowl, and my uncle called me. He called me, Bonehead. Bonehead, what you doing? I said, man, I'm on my way to Miami to the Super Bowl. I'm out. Come home. I'm like, man, I'm not coming down. I'm going to the Super Bowl. Now, I got a ticket on my way to Miami to the Super Bowl, OK? That's how life is. I got a ticket. I'm standing in the middle of the airport with my bag and a ticket. What do I do? I ball up the ticket to Miami, go find a place where I can fly to St. Louis. I fly to St. Louis, and I have one of the greatest times of my life for three days. My mom had left with my aunt to go to the mall because the next day is my grandma's birthday, and also it's the Super Bowl. And my uncle Jimbo said, Bonehead, I'm hungry. I said, well, what do you want? He said, go down there and go get me some egg foo young from the Chinaman. I go in, I mess up, I say, I got your food. He says, where my food, Boney? Bring it to me. So I bring him the food. And my uncle start eating the Chinese food. I'm sitting on the other couch eating Chinese. And he just abruptly gets up, goes to the front door. I heard the front door open. I'm like, why is he at the front door? I say, man, shut the door. He shuts the door. He comes back in the TV room and falls dead on my lap. I'm thinking he's joking, but he's dead. So when he fall on me, he falls face first. Boom, right into my lap. And he's a big man. I'm saying he's probably 6'1", 330 pounds. And he falls on me. And I say, man, stop playing. And I roll him over, off me, stop playing. And when I looked, his eyes had rolled back in the back of his head. My uncle had a massive heart attack. I rolled my uncle over, I gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation, chest compressions. I did everything I could do to bring him back, but he died. The reason I tell this story is, it's weird how God brings you to where you should be. He brought me back to St. Louis to see my uncle, because my uncle was gonna die, no matter if I came or not. But he had to know how important was Junebug to you. And this is the crazy ----, man. If they'd have just waited, if they'd have just waited, and I'm glad they didn't, because I wouldn't be sitting here with you. The lady kept asking me questions. What you gonna do with this money, you know? Listen, so now they want me to, they've never asked me to sign any papers to take money out the bank. They asked me to sign papers. I'm like, you never asked me. I always come in and take this lump sum of, you know, big sums of money out. Well, today we need you to sign. So I signed these papers. I'm taking $60,000 out. I take the $60,000. I have a brown bag in the back of my car. They asked me all these questions. Where are you going? I made up some story. I'm going to the Bahamas. For some reason, my spidey senses went out. I'm like, this ain't right. Something ain't right. But, you know, when you're doing dirt, you're kind of always on alert. You know what I mean? My phone rings, and it's Fat. I'm like, what up, dude? He's like, where you at, man? I said, I'm on my way to the party because we having a barbecue. He's barbecuing. You got all the fellas over there. You know, all the guys. I'm on my way. He's like, we're going out tonight. I said, oh, man, I got to get my car washed. I call Yurk on the phone, and he picks me up at the car wash. I take the money out of my Range Rover and I puts it in Yurk's car under the passenger seat. We at my house and now we all sitting around barbecuing and just messing around. Then Fat gets a call. Now I don't know what the call is. Now he called me and tell me to come meet him over there. We gonna do something, I'm gonna put it together. I'm like, all right. The money is in my mom's house. I'm inside getting some food. I come out, I'm like, Yurk, where Fat? Cause I needed to talk to him about something. I said, where Fat? he took off. I said, he took off. He took off of what? He said, he took my car. He went, I think he said he was going over his mom's house. I said, okay. I said, he know my money in there? He was like, man, don't nobody know that money in there. The money's under the seat. When I'm going to my mom's house, the police pulled me over and said, I tagged the stop sign. The money in there. He don't know. He walks right into a trap. And back then, you know, the police, we knew him off. Man, I ain't tagged no stop sign. Get the hell out of here. So they, but it's all a ruse. The police and put it all up. Feds jump in too early. But the crazy thing about it is, it's money in the car. Now, if they'd have let his ass get in the house, they could have fried his ass. While I'm standing there, this is an East St. Louis cop that we've been knowing since we were kids. While we standing there, two white guys pull up in a truck. I had never seen them before. They were DEA agents. And so they acting like they cool with the black cop and they just want to know what's going on. They trying to play it off. And so they making a good show of it. And so they ultimately take the money. So I see Phat walk in with some handcuffs. Man, I'm like, what the **** is going on? He's like, man, these motherfuckers got me all jammed up. He's like, stand up, this cop, Mike Reed. Stand up. I'm like, man, I'm not standing no motherfucking where. And then James Mister, he's an East St. Louis police writer. He comes in, James, please just get up, man. I'm like, I'm not getting up to nothing. Y'all know what I do for a living. Y'all know damn well I ain't involved in nothing, whatever the **** going on here, all right? Y'all know that. And why do y'all got my homeboy in handcuffs? Well, that's why we're here. I'm like, tell me why. Nobody wanna tell me why. I'm in a full trial, man. The Rams just dropped me. I'm thinking I'm finna do 65 years in the federal penitentiary because you gotta understand, my case was huge, man. You know what I'm saying? I was being named as a money man in a criminal organization. What happened, I get a phone call the night before my verdict, and it says to me, 700,000, get it to me before in the morning, and all of this goes away. I called my brother. I told him to meet me at my mom's house. We went upstairs, and we got the count. We counted out $700,000 from up under the bed and out the closet. I wasn't taking no chance with my life and my family, and if it took $700,000 to get this ---- by, let them have it. So the judge comes out and he says, this is a disgrace. What was you guys thinking when you brought this man to court? So Judge Raleigh looks at me and says, Mr. Harris, I'd like to grant you acquittal on all charges. I was looking for somewhere to invest some of this money I had sitting in the closet. And this is the first time that I went outside of my comfort zone. And I ended up putting my money in the middle of an investigation and didn't know it. And so I ended up going to jail, inside trading, that I knew nothing about. And the only thing I had to do was give a name. If I give that name, I don't go to jail. That ain't how I'm raised. Tell you something, the days that I thought we would never see this day, with some of the things that have happened over the years and going through some of this stuff we went through, especially more so you than me. Yeah. I mean, you, you, you was my protector. Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you knew the things that I was doing that nobody else knew. You knew the secrets, you know what I'm saying? And, and you never blast me out. You never put me in a situation where I felt uncomfortable. I would just say I was grateful that he was my friend. I appreciate it man. I appreciate it. I always called you my little big brother or big little brother. And you know, God has a way of putting us in each other's lives and the things that you know that you didn't know you helped me with by just being there and being a friend. you know and it means a lot even to this day because when you think back to the things that we went through then and the fight through to get to now Minnesota was a tough time for me I mean I was I was young man I got all this money I got the street life I got the I got the football life man I mean to be around a guy like you to keep me grounded yeah I mean you did the best you could yeah you know what I'm saying yeah I know I was a knucklehead I was excuse me I'm crying because you know sometimes man finally be around somebody and you tell them exactly how you feel yeah and how I know you was protecting me now when people know the good of you and the bad of you and they still choose to love you for you yeah that in and of itself man you know that and that's always I think it's always been that for us is that you know what no matter what you do how you do it, when you've done it, it just is what it is. Because when I come to the point where I love you for being James, it doesn't matter about James the football player, James, and hope to expect from anybody, you know, be they friends, relatives, or whomever, you know, do you love me for me or only for what I can do for you? We spend all day and all of our lives putting people on pedestals and forgetting that they're human. Myself personally, I embrace those days and those times that we got to share and laugh a lot of laughter and then tears along the way with with life events and things that happened in our lives you know what you know what's so funny though H I remember I should try to hide from you that I was hustling right yeah and that day you told me you say boy don't you know I've been on this earth longer than you right I know what your ass doing right right I said what I'm doing yeah you say James yeah do you want me to spell it out I said no yeah and I remember you telling me be careful yeah because they're watching you I want kids to see my story yeah yeah and say that ain't the way I want to go right right right right and and say I can make it in spite of where I come from due to the fact that I just watched a man come from the same type of environment that I came from yes indeed he made some mistakes he fell into some pitfalls he he he fell over some hurdles yeah and he still got up yeah so what have we learned james had a gift he was a natural leader on and off the field but when we live in the gray it's easy to get pulled into the dark he did a lot of bad things with good intentions well the road to hell is paved with good intentions sometimes we don't know we're on that road because we're going too fast we don't see the signs james's nfl career ended after nine years and three teams. He played for the Minnesota Vikings, the St. Louis Rams, and the Oakland Raiders. It was a lifetime ago It's important to learn from others' mistakes so we don't have to make the same ones. James followed down the same path as the men he emulated with the same results. As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. We have to be the change we want to see. Otherwise, what have we really learned? As Socrates once said, I cannot teach I believe in my reality not the dream. I didn't really believe in myself. I guess I knew What I saw and what I saw was people survive it. I didn't know you can live