Hayden also has been accused by a Livingston Parish grand jury of raping the same girl in that he allegedly raped in East Baton Rouge in and Edit Close. Toggle navigation. Francisville St. That July, in Livingston Parish, La. Distractify is a registered trademark. All Rights Reserved. There were too many debts to repay, the most pressing being the man with cancer whose plight weighed heavily on Hayden's conscience.
Incredibly, while Hayden was living there, the Red Stick Firearms warehouse was almost robbed again. After first attempting to pry the door open, the would-be burglars rammed a car through the front of the building, the intruders only being thwarted by Hayden's presence and a middle-of-the-night gunfight in which Hayden fired back against the unknown intruders' MAC submachine gun fire with the closest firearm at hand.
I wasn't looking forward to the possibility of shooting anyone. By , there were still years to go before Hayden would be out from under his creditors, but things were finally starting to look up. When his daughter Stephanie turned 18, he brought her into the business—initially, against her will, since she was already working a number of different jobs that she didn't necessarily want to quit. But Hayden got his way, and Stephanie joined the business on a full-time basis.
The work continued. Before long, Scardina let the Haydens buy out essential tools and parts from the company, and when Scardina left the management of the business in the hands of his children, Hayden struck out on his own, renting a new property on Baton Rouge's Florida Boulevard which became the storefront for his own shop: Red Jacket Firearms.
The new store was the final evolution of what Hayden had set out to do when he built that first order of 20 AKs, putting an emphasis on manufacturing weapons rather than simply trading in them.
Adopting a motto of "If you can dream it, we can build it," they served clientele ranging from private collectors to members of the military and police departments, creating gear like internal gun silencers for police officers or shotgun-assault rifle hybrids with the ability to easily breach locked doors. They also restored historical weaponry, like flamethrowers and cannons—a specialty that would be emphasized on their upcoming TV show.
One lazy morning in , on a whim, Hayden uploaded a video of himself to YouTube having a noontime range session with one of his favorite guns. The video showed him dressed in a tank top and bunny slippers, firing a short-barreled Saiga fully-automatic shotgun with in-your-face defiant glee.
Hayden closed the video with a shoutout for his brand, turning to the camera after the crack of the final shot and drawling, "Red Jacket, mother—-er. Little did Hayden know that on the opposite side of the country, Hollywood was also clicking around on YouTube, looking for material.
The network was in the early stages of developing a reality television show that would steep itself in American gun culture by centering on a uniquely telegenic, character-packed mom-and-pop shop—and after the upload of Hayden's video, producers believed they'd found their man.
Once Hayden and Red Jacket were discovered, work progressed quickly on bringing the show's concept to life. The years of work paid off all at once—practically overnight, Red Jacket Firearms became one of the most famous firearms shops in the world.
By the time Sons of Guns debuted on January 26, , the staff around Red Jacket had grown to encompass a range of eccentric individuals, some of whom would sign on to form the show's core cast over its five seasons. While the set pieces of reality shows are obviously staged and produced as a matter of routine, the cast of Sons and Guns had real bonds that predated the arrival of lights and cameras—like Stephanie's husband Kris Ford, whom she met in and convinced to begin working as an apprentice at Red Jacket.
Two more key members of Red Jacket in the Sons of Guns era were Joe Meaux , the company's chief of operations, a marksman and mechanic who was often the deciding voice on the show when it came to determining the feasibility of a custom firearm job.
There was also Charlie Watson , a well-educated forensic scientist, and Glenn Fleming , a shop welder who left the regular cast after a year to start his own store, Acadiana Gunworks.
Together, the shop employees worked to commission custom gun jobs or restore historical oddities, sometimes bringing in an outside consultant depending on the project. But they always tested their work on TV, which is part of what made the show so watchable—whether they succeeded or failed, you had a pretty high chance of seeing something cool blow up.
From the very first episodes of Sons of Guns , the staff of Red Jacket made a big impression with their "shoot it and see what happens" approach, firing Civil War cannons and grenade launchers into the sky and otherwise confidently announcing their arrival on the reality TV scene. Over the three years and five seasons that followed, the show had a number of standout moments where the team was tasked to restore something rare, build something bizarre, or team up with a famous guest to develop weapons for a specific theme.
Hayden highlighted many of his favorite moments in a companion book to the series that was published in For the second season episode "Will's Floating Fortress," Red Jacket worked with the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department to attach a M machine gun and a MK19 grenade launcher to the department's gulf patrol boat, a job Hayden later described as "beyond cool"—especially when it came to testing the equipment. Another early guest was WWII veteran Hershel Woodrow "Woody" Williams, a survivor of the Battle of Iwo Jima who wanted to restore an old flamethrower from the war—a risky proposition, considering how fickle a weapon even a modern flamethrower can be.
As far as guests were concerned, an episode where World War Z writer Max Brooks visited the shop to help brainstorm potential weapons for a zombie attack was a standout for fans and the show's cast alike.
Sons of Guns wasn't on the air for long before it stirred up trouble in the news. Naturally, this being a show called Sons of Guns , the truck was loaded with firearms and explosives—an extremely bad thing to leave just sitting around an airport anytime, but especially on that particular date. Even worse, that spot of the airport was a known reception area, on a daily basis, for U.
You couldn't screw up more unless you tried to sneak a hand grenade through a body scanner. Federal officials shut down roads leading to the terminal for two hours as canine and bomb squad units staged a response area nearby. No one was harmed in the incident—it didn't even result in the delay of any flights—but a production company executive later apologized, calling it "a simple yet colossal error in judgement by a member of our staff.
The first year of Sons and Guns also saw Red Jacket Firearms come under increased scrutiny by the media, who soon uncovered another incident Hayden had had in the past with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. This one, which occurred in , cost both him and his daughter Stephanie, resulting in the surrender of their Federal Firearm Licenses. During a routine inspection operation by the bureau, it was discovered that 10 guns registered to Red Jacket Firearms were missing and unaccounted for—major violations for a gun business.
This time, there was no robbery to blame for the missing weaponry, so the agency came down hard on the company, revoking their licenses. The business was restructured, with a licensed gun dealer taking over the company and Will and Stephanie taking on employee roles—on paper, at least. On August 11, , Will Hayden was arrested by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department on charges of child molestation and an aggravated crime against nature.
Within weeks, an additional charge of aggravated rape of a child was added. Hayden's victim? His own daughter, whom he began raping, repeatedly, in when she was 11 years old.
The details of Hayden's crimes are devastating and terrifying, with Hayden's young daughter being threatened with violence should she report his abuse.
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