re: Legendary Skateboarder Jay Adams dead at 53

He had some demons.

Adams has been in and out of prisons as he has struggled with drug addiction.[10] He was charged with murder and convicted of assault following a gay bashing that he instigated in Los Angeles in 1982.[2][10] In the late 1990s, after the murder of his brother, and the death of his mother, father, and grandmother all in the same year, he began doing heroin.[10] He was serving two and a half years on drug charges in Hawaii during the production of Dogtown and Z-Boys and was released in 2002. The movie brought Adams back into the limelight and won him endorsement deals. However at this time Adams failed to pay taxes for three years and then relapsed into his drug addiction.[10] In November 2005, he was arrested and sentenced to four years in the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon, after being caught on a wiretap acting as a go-between for a buyer and seller of crystal methamphetamine. He was released to a halfway house on July 8, 2008 for the remainder of his sentence.[10]