Samuel Burl "Sam" Kinison (December 8, 1953 – April 10, 1992) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He was known for his intense, harsh and politically incorrect humor. A former Pentecostal preacher, he performed stand-up routines that were most often characterized by an intense style, similar to enthusiastic preachers, punctuated by his trademark scream.

Biography

Kinison acquired much of his material from his difficult first two marriages, to Patricia Adkins (1975–1980) and Terry Marze (1981–1989). He began a relationship with dancer Malika Souiri toward the end of his marriage with Marze. In 1990, Souiri alleged was raped by a man Kinison hired as a bodyguard that same day, while Kinison was asleep in the house. The bodyguard stated that the sex was consensual; the jury deadlocked in the subsequent trial and charges were later dropped.

On April 4, 1992, six days before he died, Kinison married Souiri at the Candlelight Chapel in Las Vegas. They then had a honeymoon in Hawaii for five days before returning home to LA on April 10 and preparing for a show that night at the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino.

Souiri sued Kinison's brother Bill in 1995 for allegedly defaming her in his book Brother Sam: The Short Spectacular Life of Sam Kinison, and then again in 2009 for allegedly forging Sam's will.

In February 2011, the Toronto Sun reported that Kinison had fathered a child with the wife of his best friend and opening act, Carl LaBove, who had been paying child support for the girl for nearly 13 years. LaBove filed legal papers claiming the girl was Kinison's, and DNA tests taken from Kinison's brother Bill show a 99.8% likelihood that Sam Kinison was the father of the unnamed woman, who was 21 at the time of the Toronto Sun story, and excluded LaBove as her father.