The Dark Tale of the Porn Star, the Dead Millionaire and the Tortured Beauty Queen

Snavely was "gay for pay," Baileey says, but only to a point. "He wouldn't do oral, and he wouldn't bottom." Adopting the screen name of Joshua Logan, Snavely was featured in gay skin flicks such as American Gangbang, Ass and Ladders, Big Dick Mechanics, Pizza Boy Gangbang and, in perhaps his most famous role, as Ronnie in the porn parody The Jersey Score.

On set, Snavely was every bit the stud. Off set, however, he stayed away from his male co-stars. "John kind of kept to himself when it came to the gay porn," Baileey says. "I think it's awkward for anybody who identifies himself as straight and does gay porn for the money. It does take a toll or weird people out."

So it was no surprise when Snavely left Jet Set after just a year to join Bang Productions, Florida's biggest porn studio. Under his new contract, Snavely would shoot straight porn for popular reality-themed Web sites such as Bang Bros and The Dancing Bear.

Joseph Laney

A jealous Champ heated a knife and pressed it to his girlfriend's face, arms and legs trying to force a confession from her.

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Snavely moved to South Beach and began living large. With years of stripping experience and the physique of an NFL tight end, he was the undisputed star at Dancing Bear, a series of fake reality shows in which a male stripper in a bear outfit has sex with whichever women — bridesmaids, birthday girls, bachelorette partygoers — are lucky enough to have hired him.

"Champ was a porn star," says another friend who worked at Dancing Bear. "He was a good-looking white guy with a big dick. Girls flocked to him. You know? He was the only guy, to this day, where girls would line up like ten or 12 deep for him. Now, mind you, the girls are getting paid to suck dick, but still. None of the rest of us had that."

At Bang Bros, Snavely made slightly less than he had shooting gay porn. But he made up for it by stripping at clubs in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Between the two jobs, he could make $4,000 a week. He sent $500 a month to his mom back in San Antonio, but spent the rest almost as soon as he earned it.

"He loved to spend money, man," says the friend from Dancing Bear. "Watches, shoes, clothes, name-brand shit. He felt like a nobody if he didn't have a BMW or some kind of ridiculous car. That was his feeling about himself: He needed it; he deserved it."

Snavely also loved nightclubs like Space or LIV, and adored the drugs that went with them. "He would say, 'I popped ten pills last night!'" the friend recalls. "I was like, 'What? Ten pills? How are you even alive?' And he would snort $100 to $150 of coke every night like it was nothing."

When he wasn't popping pills or performing sex acts on command, Snavely was pumping iron. He worked out at David Barton Gym on the Beach and, later, at Gold's Gym in Hialeah, ingesting copious amounts of HGH to fuel his workouts.

"He was a perfectionist," says the friend, who, like others in the porn industry, spoke to the Houston Press's sister paper Miami New Times on condition of anonymity. "He always wanted to be better, bigger, stronger."

Snavely also chased women, whether it was dating porn stars off set — defying industry rules — or girls he met around Miami. "This guy got more sexual attention from females and males than anyone I've ever known," says the friend, noting that Snavely sometimes slept with a different woman every day of the week — and that was on top of shooting porn. "How can you develop as a person when you are getting that much attention?

"Champ had a compulsive personality, whether it was sex, drugs or money," the friend continues. "He wanted all the trappings of success, and he didn't feel good if he didn't have them."

When things were going well, Snavely bragged to strangers about having sex for a living and bought friends drugs, drinks and concert tickets to deadmau5 — his favorite musician. "He was a wild man when he went out," says a porn cameraman who often filmed Snavely. "If you've watched Jersey Shore and seen those kids go crazy, you know what I mean."

When Snavely later moved to an apartment in Edgewater, he would get so drunk and high that he'd break furniture or jump off his fourth-floor balcony into the swimming pool 30 feet below.

But when things didn't go his way, he could flash a frightening side. When one female co-star complained to the director that Snavely was rude and self-centered, Snavely snapped, unleashing a string of expletives. His mood could change from cheery to overcast in an instant. When asked about his childhood, for example, he would suddenly clam up.

"Champ was a great person," says one friend. "But he had a dark side."
_____________________

With every scene, every money shot and every fade to black, Snavely felt a little surer that he'd escaped the streets of San Antonio. But the ghosts of his childhood would follow him to Florida, haunting him until the night he met Samuel Del Brocco.