Twisted Listers Presents: TCC #2 The Wonderland Murders

This will be the last True Crime California Podcast we post here, so please be sure to follow the new podcast anywhere you listen!

This week, we take a look at the very well known and horrifying case of the Wonderland Murders. This case involves a slew of then-well-known names, including one John Holmes, otherwise known as Johnny Wadd, a famous (or infamous) adult film star and all around trash bag human being. From humble beginnings to incredible fame to a drug induced fall from grace, this man single handedly caused so much chaos and death for those around him, the story is almost unbelievable. However, anything is possible in Hollywood, especially in the drug fueled 1980's. Even, as you will see, a crime so bold and out in the open, it's absolutely wild that this quadruple murder, known also as the 'four on the floor' murders, is still unsolved. 

True Crime California Instagram: @truecrimecalifornia


Sources:
Malice In Wonderland: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of The Laurel Canyon Murders, Tom Lange and Robert Souza
The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes, Dawn Schiller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holmes_(actor)
https://www.michaelconnelly.com/wonderland-murders/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-prison-interview-with-scott-thorson-wonderland-murders-witness-and-liberaces-pet/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here. Welcome back, everybody. This is

(00:21):
episode two of True Crime California. Almost forgot the name
of my own podcast. I almost I was twisted listeners.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Not anymore.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Very sadly, but happy to be doing this, and I'm
really excited for my second case. It's a really big case.
I decided to take on a hell of a case,
a really iconic case in California true crime history. And weirdly,
it also takes place only about a year after my
first case, So the murder of Dorothy Stratton that happened

(00:50):
in nineteen eighty and then this case, the murders take
place in nineteen eighty one, and then the actual story
takes place over a number of years after that, up
until I believe, like the two thousands, like new information
was still coming out, things were still coming to light.
But anyway, all of that is to say that it's

(01:11):
a really interesting case and I'm going to talk about
the Wonderland murders now before I do that. Thanks to
everybody who is tuning in. I know a lot of
people are still listening on the Twisted Listers podcast. I'm
not going to be posting most of my episodes there,
so you're going to have to find me on Spotify
or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I should be

(01:31):
on all the major distribution podcast distributors or whatever the
hell they're called. Anyway, I will post this one as
well on Twisted Listeners, but after that it's all just
going to be on True Crime California. I am getting
downloads on that channel, so thank you everybody who's come over.
I will do my best to link it in Twisted Listers,
to link it on my Instagram, which is just True

(01:53):
Crime California. But just come find me and come listen.
And thanks everybody who has already listened. There's quite a
few of you, and super stoked, super excited for the support.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Think you think you? Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
All right, let's get in to this crazy, crazy ass
fucking case. So, as I mentioned, this is the case
of the Wonderland murders. There's so much to this story.
I'm going to try to cover a lot and keep
it interesting, but also condense it down. I read quite
a few books about this, articles had to go into

(02:26):
the archives. It was super fun, actually, to kind of
do this research, so hopefully it results in a pretty
great second and possibly third episode. We'll see how long
this one goes. So this is a really iconic murder.
It took place in Los Angeles in nineteen eighty one
in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood, which is a really cool

(02:46):
neighborhood in Los Angeles. I actually work at a venue there.
For people who don't know, I do like event catering
in a lot of weddings, and there's a venue there
called the Houdini Estate. And now the Houdini Estate is
obviously named after Harry Houdini because for a time, I
think in the forties something like that. I'm not a
Houdini expert. I apologize. He stayed at this estate that's

(03:08):
like up on a hill in this area, and it's super,
super beautiful from there, this whole it's just a magical area.
The name of the street is actually Wonderland. That's where
Wonderland Murders comes from. And it's a perfect name for
this street and this neighborhood and sort of the vibe.
It's definitely like artists and hipsters, and at this point
it's rich people, which it kind of was back then,

(03:31):
But in any case, it's a really magical and really
interesting area and just a really iconic area. Now this
is definitely a really nice area, but considering the time
that we're in, like the year, we have to think
about Los Angeles as a whole. And during this time,
this was sort of the heyday of like cocaine sex,

(03:52):
a very hard partying Hollywood lifestyle. So everybody was just
doing blow everybody who was high on cocaine all the time.
You know, it was everything from people in the street
to the Hollywood elite. Everybody ooh that rhymed. Everybody was
just doing this. And it's also right in the middle
of a very big change regarding pornography and adult films.

(04:16):
And the reason I'm saying that is because, as anybody
who knows anything about this case knows, pornography and a
particular porn star plays into this story quite a bit.
So to talk a little bit more about pornography in America,
it wasn't actually until nineteen seventy three that became legal
in America, but you could or before then, sorry, you
could get up to ten years in prison for being

(04:38):
in producing, or selling adult films and in California. I
think it took even a little bit longer for those
restrictions to sort of be lifted. But I saw to you,
like the moment they were there were like hundreds of films.
It became a huge industry basically same day and has
not slowed down to this day. And you know, my
personal feelings aside. You know, the different between can and

(05:00):
showed is very different. Do I believe there should be
regulations against people starring in adult films? No?

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Do I watch them or support the industry? No.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
So it's you know, it's a complicated issue. But all
of that said, nineteen seventy three was where everything sort
of started to turn around. And within the next you know,
five ten years, the way people thought about, you know,
nude models, pornography started to kind of change as well.
The eighties were a hell of a time, that's all
I'm gonna say. So all that said, let's go back

(05:32):
in time to nineteen forty four in Columbus, Ohio. This
is when the main player in our story, John Holmes,
was born. Now, John was actually fathered by a man
whose last name was Estes, but as the man was
out of the picture very very early on if he
was ever in the picture at all. John's mother decided
to give John the last name of her on again,

(05:52):
off again husband, Edgar Holmes, even though he wasn't John's
biological father. Now, these two had a really relationship. They'd
been married three times between nineteen thirty six and nineteen
forty seven, and Edgar was seventeen years Mary's senior. So
the dynamic here is not great. And I think we
should keep in mind this dynamic of the older man

(06:15):
and the younger woman because it absolutely comes into play
later on. Edgar was also a hardcore alcoholic, and he
was abusive to the children, And in basically every retelling
of John Holmes's young life, you will read or hear
about this story, which is that one night Edgar came
home so drunk that he vomited on to the children

(06:35):
before passing out. So I imagine they were probably all on
the couch and he just puked on them and passed
the fuck out. Now, finally, when John was seven years old,
his mother remarried another man who wasn't much better and
basically just ignored the children. So, you know, just going
from bad to worse to just kind of whatever, like
he does not have a good family life, he does

(06:57):
not have good models for behavior. Things were just kind
of bleak. He's in Ohio. It's just not great. So
from there, when John Holmes was fifteen, supposedly, I don't
know if is totally accurate, but apparently you could do
this back then, he enlisted in the army. He got
his mother's permission and he signed up. From there, he

(07:18):
lived in Germany and he was in for about four years,
and when he was nineteen he was honorably discharged and
then went to live in New York. Now, his time
in New York is pretty difficult to track. He himself
later wrote an autobiography and in it he told a
lot of tales of his time in New York working
as a jiggalow and you know, talking about all this
money he made. In truth, it's anybody's guest what he

(07:40):
did for money or how he spent his time Above
all else, John Holmes is a fucking liar. And because
at that time he wasn't famous at all, nobody really
paid attention to him or knew what he was up to.
Before he became the infamous Johnny Wadd which is his
most famous stage name. He got it as a porn actor.
I'll talk a little bit more about it later. Anyway,

(08:01):
after a while, he moved to la for no known reason,
but likely because he ran into trouble in New York.
And he worked a bunch of odd jobs, including as
an ambulance driver. And this is where he met Sharon Jebanini,
who's about a year older than John and worked as
a nurse. The two married within five months of meeting,
when John was just twenty one years old, so I
guess she would have been twenty two. And I want

(08:22):
to call a few things out at this point, starting
with the fact that the two of them hadn't ever
had sex with each other until after they were married. Now,
obviously John is talking about all these exploits. He's a
jiggalo in New York and blah blah blah, blah blah.
He goes on about having this wealthy benefactor who gave
him a bunch of money. So you know, he's not
a virgin, but Sharon was. And this is really crazy

(08:42):
for a number of reasons. I mean, I guess back
then it was more common to not have sex before
you're married. Now it's like a free for all all
the time. But the main thing about this that was
so crazy to me is the reason that John Holmes
ever had anybody look at him twice was because he
has an absolutely massive penis. Now there's no official measurement

(09:02):
on record, but I mean you can watch his movies
and see for yourself. The thing is huge, and it's
rumored to have been anywhere between ten and sixteen inches long. Now,
he had a couple of friends who were in the
industry with him who claimed that he measured it in
front of them a few times, which super weird but
maybe not for you know, that type of lifestyle. And
one of his friends said, oh, he measured in front
of me.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
All the time. It was thirteen and a half inches. Now.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
On top of the length, this thing was girthy as
fuck as well. So it's just like a crazy it's
like a I don't know, it's like two beer cans
end to end. Maybe even more so as a former
virgin myself, I can't think about taking that on without
shivers going down my spine.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Like it's fucked up.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
In any case, So they got together and you know John,
I wanted to also kind of talk about John's early life.
In his autobiography, he talks about losing his virginity when
he's eight years old, but in reality, it was more
likely that he was sexually assaulted, I mean, basically raped
by a thirty six year old neighbor woman when he

(10:03):
was twelve. Now in his book, he's kind of playing
these things up. It's like a brag for him. But
I mean, that's that's child abuse, that's sexual abuse of
a child.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Like it's fucked up.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
And so, you know, a big part of me feels
really bad for John the child. But John Holmes the
adult is just an absolute fucking piece of shit. But
it is interesting to think about all of the things
that happened to him that sort of led to that,
and how his giant penis was as much a curse
as it was, you know, a blessing in his eyes.

(10:35):
So John and Sharon are seemingly happily married. Sharon never
knew about John's alleged past as a jigglow. John had
a steady job.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
She was a nurse.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
He was no longer working as an ambulance driver, but
he was working. You know, things were fine. But while
some men have a taste for the finer, things in life.
John had a taste for the less fine things in life.
He enjoyed gambling and partying, and he would go out
to the casinos by himself quite often. Now, one night,
while he was at a casino, he had to go

(11:06):
to the bathroom, so he went and used a urinal
and he was approached by a photographer who decided to
sneak a peek over the urinal divider and look at
John's junk and was like, my friend, you have a
gift from there. John began making porno films, but remember
this is the sixties, so they were still illegal at
this time. He had to work in the shadows, but

(11:26):
was making good money, anywhere from twenty to one hundred
dollars per film, and he was making hundreds in just
a few years. He eventually told Sharon, and she wasn't happy,
but she didn't divorce or even leave him.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
She just sort of started.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Cohabitating with him. So they uncoupled sexually because she was
just like, this is not fucking cool with me. But
she loved him, and she was like a very you know,
she's a very old fashioned woman obviously, so she never
left him. In nineteen sixty nine, while John was doing
all of these you know, illicit videos and the shadows

(12:01):
and trying to not get caught. A court ruling made
it legal to have pornographic movies in your own home,
thereby opening up the country to such classic films as
Deep Throat from nineteen seventy two and a little bit
later Debbie Does Dallas in nineteen seventy eight, among hundreds
and hundreds of other films. So pornography still wasn't fully legal,

(12:23):
and John ended up getting arrested for prostitution and I
forget what it was like pandering something, but he decided
to become an informant for the LAPD to avoid jail time.
This was the start of a long and storied relationship
between John and the LAPD. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Suff I said to say, this guy would do anything
to get out of trouble, and we'll kind of see

(12:45):
that as the story unfolds. Now, John in his career
became the character Johnny wadd This is starting in nineteen
seventy one, and he was like it was like supposed
to be kind of noir film. He was a detective
trying to hunt certain things down and of course, he
just had to have sex with multiple women in order

(13:07):
to do it. So these movies were a fucking smash hit.
I think there's like six of them that have to
do with him. There's one just called like Johnny wadd
And from there he just became like a fucking star.
Everybody knew him, everybody wanted to know him. He was like,

(13:27):
despite being a pornographic, you know, triple X star, he
was known really well in the mainstream world. And as
his fame grew, so did his love of partying. Now
he was making as much as three thousand dollars a
day shooting these films, and he was, you know, had
good money for a while, but the party life will

(13:48):
drain you pretty quick. And even though you know, he
started to associate with people in Hollywood, a lot of
those people were the wrong people. Now, like I said,
we're entering into sort of the heyday of cocaine, freebasing,
freebasing cocaine. It's like basically kind of like crack. I
don't know, it's not crack, but basically you use baking
soda and you bake the cocaine down and then you

(14:10):
smoke it, and it's like the purest form of it,
but it also takes like a ton of cocaine and
reduces it down to a tiny little bit. So it's
the most expensive way to do this. And in any case,
Johnny wadd here got really fucking into this. He started
just snorting cocaine, and before you know it, he's freebasing, which,
on top of being way more expensive, is also far

(14:31):
more addictive than just snorting cocaine. And on top of that,
using this, you know, using drugs, using cocaine freebasing, it
affected his ability to stay erect.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
And therefore to have sex and therefore to work.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
So he's using the money he has to buy these drugs.
He's getting addicted to these drugs and is making it
difficult for him to work, which makes it difficult.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
For him to get money.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
So John starts to turn to crime. Like I said,
he he's meeting all the wrong people in Hollywood. He
starts to meet some fences that can sell you know,
his stolen property offenses, like somebody who sells your stolen property.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
I basically kind of just said it.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
And he starts, you know, thieving, he starts robbing. He's
just doing anything he can, you know, he's running up
Sharon's credit cards, he's stealing people's jewelry. He's just doing
anything that he can to make money, and the situation
is just getting, you know, more and more dire, more
and more kind of pathetic. He's running out of money,

(15:30):
and his addiction got up to being more than he
was making in a day, even at the top of
his game, before.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
All of this went super sideways.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Though, I did want to go back a little bit
and to say that John did have a very lucrative career,
but he also worked as an apartment manager with his
wife Sharon in Glendale, California. It's here, in nineteen seventy
six that he meets then fifteen year old Don Schiller.
When he met Don, he said something about how it's

(15:59):
too bad she was so young, But it quickly became
clear that he didn't care at all about her age,
and within a very short time, John was able to
befriend Don and then seduce her. They became sexually active
pretty quickly, and before John, before John. Before long, John
was controlling down entirely. She never even finished the tenth grade. Now,

(16:23):
I want to take a minute to talk a little
bit about Don, because she plays into this story. And
also I think her story, which isn't exactly the Wonderland story,
is still a story worth telling on its own. And
in fact, she has a really great book I read
called The Road through Wonderland Surviving John Holmes. It's a
really interesting, raw kind of take on her experience, and

(16:46):
it gives you a really in depth, sort of detailed,
you know, telling of this side of John Holmes that
I think a lot of Hollywood movies and a lot
of you know, stories don't really really drive home in
a way that they should, because this guy was a
fucking evil piece of shit, and even you know, watching
the movie Wonderland, they make him sympathetic and it's really

(17:09):
problematic to me. So reading her book was really great
for giving me a lot of perspective about this case
and who he was that I think was missing in
a lot of mainstream media that discussed this case. Even
when they sort of went in on him, she was
kind of just glossed over, and I think that's really unfortunate.
Don Schiller was born in nineteen sixty to an American

(17:29):
gi father and a German immigrant mother. She had a
younger sister and also a younger brother, Wayne, who was
four years younger than she was. Her parents were happy
for a time, but her father unfortunately went away to
Vietnam and when he came back he was a completely
different man. He moved the family from New Jersey to
Florida and then left the family there for years while

(17:50):
he went overseas. He convinced his grandmother to sell her
home in New Jersey and move to Florida, and then
basically just fucking abandoned the family. Turned There was a
lot of abuse, and her parents divorced when she was
fifteen because her father brought another woman back with him
from overseas. So her father then moved out to California

(18:11):
and she and her younger sister, Terry went with him,
and that's where she met John Holmes. Don's dad was
not great. He got her into smoking weed. He was
very I mean, I feel for the guy. He probably
had a lot of PTSD, but you know, he's taking
it out on his kids and they're just not being

(18:32):
set up for success. You know, Don said that she
would roll him joints before leaving for school in the morning,
So clearly he's a very damaged man and he's damaging
his children. Then leaving them, you know, open to being
taken you know in by a disgusting creep like John Holmes.
So John Holmes meets Don and he just love bombs

(18:52):
her and they end up being together for about six
years now. During their time together, John became more and
more addicted to freebasing, and on top of his own
porn career, he would also not only get Dawn addicted
to the drugs, but he would force her to sell
her body for drug money. Their time together is detailed

(19:14):
in her book in such a fucked up way, like
the things that she says that he did to her,
and obviously.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
They're all true.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
He would beat her, he would rape her, He would
force her to you know, do sex work to fund
his addictions. He would leave her for days at a time,
not only in cheap hotels where she was kicked out
numerous times because of his drug issues and the fights
they would get into, which were really just him beating her,

(19:41):
but he also when they finally took off out of Glendale,
he took Sharon's car and he would leave Don in
it for days at a time while he was gone
running drugs for people to make money. And that is
what John Holmes did eventually, is he became a drug
runner so that he could keep his addiction going. And

(20:01):
you know, Don would talk about if he came back
and couldn't score or things didn't go well, he would
take it out on her. She talks about one time
he beat her so badly that he broke multiple of
her ribs and almost killed her, and she said he
had not treated her well in ages, and he was
so scared that he had gone too far and probably

(20:22):
just that he would get in trouble that he went
back to like love bombing her. But he started with
the love bombing. He took a fifteen year old, you know,
when he's in his fucking thirties, he's like twenty years
older than her, and he love bombs her until she
just gives him whatever he wants, and then he gets
her under his spell. He gets her addicted to drugs

(20:43):
and he abuses her in unimaginable fucking ways. And I'll
get into more detail on that a little bit farther
into the story, but I just kind of wanted to
set the scene there because I think it's really important
to kind of look at all of the people in
the story and how this disgusting man harmed them and
their lives up because this guy's just the worst. Now,
we sort of set the scene and introduced you to

(21:05):
a lot of the people and really talked about John Holmes.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Introduce a few more people to the story now. As
I had mentioned, John was getting into crime to support
his drug habit. He'd met a ton of really shitty
people around Hollywood. You know, Hollywood was in the throes
of drug addictions and party culture, and you know a
lot of people knew people who were into some bad shit.
And nobody was into more bad shit than the infamous

(21:30):
Eddie Nash, a nightclub owner and cocaine dealer with his
hands in many pots, who allegedly owned the police.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
And I think it's kind of true.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Eddie owned celebrity hangout clubs like The Odyssey, the Seven
C's Nightclub. He owned a bunch of strip clubs, gay clubs.
He had a club for every type of person. He
didn't care. He just wanted your money, and he sold
drugs a lot of them. He lived in what is
still one of the nicer areas of Studio City, which

(22:00):
is just over the hill from Hollywood in the valley,
and it's weird because I swear I've driven by his
house and like didn't even know it. There's the streets
called like the Donahs, it's de Na. I always thought
it was Donia, like you know, Spanish, but apparently everybody
just calls them the Donahs. But anyway, he lived there
in this really nice house because he was selling a
fuck ton of drugs. He had all these night clubs,

(22:21):
and he had a full time living bodyguard named Gregory Dials.
Gregory Dowles was a three hundred pound karate master who
carried a gun at all times and lived with Eddie,
like I said, and sort of almost took care of.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Him in like a weird way.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Gregory had a crazy sort of reputation. There were stories
of him chasing a man out of one of Eddie's
clubs with a loaded gun and unloading it into his
car across Hollywood Boulevard at two thirty in the afternoon.
So just in broad fucking daylight, this guy is shooting
out of man into his vehicle. He could have hit anybody,

(22:59):
He could have hit a.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Bunch of cars.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
So the guy is pretty pretty fucking gnarly. Let's just
say that so Eddie and John became friends. Eddie really
liked John, despite the fact that most other.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
People did not. I think he liked that.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
He was a porn star, probably the most famous one
around in the at the time. And Eddie was a
weird fucking dude who liked to do crazy shit, like
he would have people come over and play Russian Roulette
in front of them just to freak them the fuck out.
He would also have people come over and sit in
his living room and he would leave them there for
like hours, and he would leave drugs out and there

(23:34):
were two way mirrors there, and if people fucked up
and used any of his drugs, he'd kick them out,
and they were fucking like out of the club, like
they couldn't ever deal with him again. So this guy
was really weird and he was freebasing like eight thousand
dollars a day, like ounces and ounces every single day.
So he's a radic. His brain's all fucked up. He's
just a weird, bad fucking man. Eddie Nash was a

(23:58):
Palestinian immigrant. His birth name was Adele Nosrala, who came
to America when he was twenty two years old with
only seven.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Dollars in his pocket. He built his.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Fortune in the beginning through hard work and started small
with a hot dog stand he called Chuck's Beef. He
sold hot dogs in Hollywood, but also did some unknown
and likely unsavory things and was able to save money
until he could buy more and more clubs and build
his empire. And he had like a punk rock club,
and he would sell most of his drugs out of there.

(24:31):
So he would sell kludes, which don't even exist anymore,
but he would do you know, all sorts of his
illegal activities out of that club. Eddie was a ruthless
businessman and everybody knew who knew him was terrified of him.
You know, Everybody called him evil. Like John Holmes said
he was the most evil man he'd ever met, and
I'm like, I think you're the most evil man you've

(24:51):
ever met. But regardless, Eddie was fucking crazy, super scary.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
John once told Don like the there's hundreds of bodies
buried in the desert and nobody will ever find them.
And that's all Eddie Nash And to be to be
totally honest, I don't doubt that. Like, he's a scary ass,
fucking guy. He's also a really trippy guy in that
he would always kind of be there for his friends,
Like if one of his friends got in trouble, he
would help them out, but then he would always kind

(25:19):
of want something in return, which is probably not surprising.
And one of these instances in particular that is outlined
in Don's book is one time when John Holmes got
arrested for drugs. Don anonymously called.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Eddie Nash and Eddie bailed him out.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
In return, Eddie basically told John, if you don't tell
me who that woman was who called, I'm gonna fucking
cut you off from drugs and you're gonna be in deep.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Shit with me.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
So he introduced Don to Eddie as his niece Gabrielle,
and then forced Don to have sex with Eddie. Now
Eddie drugged her, likely with heroin, and basically raped her
while she was unconscious, and John had no problem with this,
like he just wanted to save his own ass. So
in any case, really bad fucking people here. He was

(26:05):
extremely rich, He sold copious amount of drugs, he had
popular nightclubs, and he liked to party really hard. By
the time this whole situation takes place, Eddie Nash had
already had one lung removed and one of his nasal
cavities was like gone because of all the drugs he did,
Like I said, upwards of eight thousand dollars in free
based cocaine every single day. So there's a couple movies

(26:27):
that are inspired by the John Holmes case. We're talking
Boogie Nights. They also did Wonderland and Alfred Molina plays
a character inspired by Eddie Holmes in Boogie Nights. You
should watch it. It's fucking crazy and it's so spot on.
I've already seen the movie, but after I realized that's
what it was like who he was playing, I went
back and watched the scenes with him, and it's fucking crazy.

(26:49):
So Eddie would always wear a Maroon's silk robe and
a speedo and that's just like how he lived his
fucking life. So now we've set the scene with Eddie.
So after they become friends, John would spend hours at
Eddie's house. He would also spend thousands of dollars there
as well, and he would also do Eddie's drugs for free.
But as many drug addicts do, he would get too

(27:09):
deep into debt with Eddie and have to find his
drugs elsewhere for a while until he could do some
drug running to pay off his debt. And when this happened,
he would hit up Ron Lnnius and the Wonderland Gang. Now,
the people in this so called gang included Ron Lonnius,
who was the leader of the gang. He was a
drug dealer and drug user and had done murder for
hire and was just a ruthless piece of shit. And

(27:32):
on top of doing murder for hire, he just killed
people like He was the kind of guy that if
you pissed him off, if you crossed him, he would
fucking kill you dead. And he was a suspect in
multiple murder cases over the years, including when this story happens.
It was suspected and he was probably going to be
arrested for a murder. He was thirty seven years old
at the time of this story. Ron's wife, Susan Lannias,

(27:55):
was not super involved in like the gang, but she
was around. She was on again, off again with Ron.
She was a drug user. She was twenty nine. We
also have Billy Deverell, who is Ron's right hand man
sort of a co leader of the Wonderland Gang. He
apparently was something of a decent person who would go
into deep depressions over his actions, but ultimately he was

(28:18):
a violent drug addict. He was forty four. Then we
have Joy Miller. This is Billy Deverell's girlfriend and the
lease holder for the house. She was formerly married to
a Beverly Hill's attorney and had two daughters. But she
became a drug addict. I believe after taking Hills for pain.
She had actually had breast cancer and had sort of
just gotten over it. And I believe that the use

(28:41):
of the pain meds that she took during that time
had led to her use of heroin. Now she was
forty six. The next person is David Lynde. He was
a biker from NorCal. He was in the Arian Brotherhood,
spent most of his adult life in prison. He was
forty at the time that this goes down, and he
had come to Los Angeles to hang out with Ron
and get some drugs and also out of Sacramento where
he'd run into a lot of trouble. And with him

(29:03):
he brought Barbara Butterfly Richardson, who was his twenty two
year old girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
So again we've got a forty year old with a
twenty two year old. These people are all trash.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
So they were called the Wonderland Gang because they lived
in that house on Wonderland Avenue. It was eighty seven
sixty three. Wonderland There was and still is a very or.
It was and still is a very nice area. And additionally,
before the gang lived in that house, the band Paul
Revere and the Raiders stayed in that exact house as well,
so it was a well known house. It was a

(29:33):
very nice but chill area and it was weird that
they lived there and had the lifestyle they did because
they would throw wild parties and have people at the
house all hours of the day and night. They would
do cocaine, they drank, they had loud parties, they did heroin.
Most of the Wonderland Gang was like you know, horribly
addicted to heroin. So they were addicts, criminals, and they

(29:54):
were just a lot of trouble. And while John was
a regular at their house, he was never a part
of their gang, most because ron Lonnius fucking hated him
and in return, John Holmes feared and likely hated ron Lannius.
But because of the drugs, John always played nice. If
it hasn't been well established yet. John Holmes has no morals.
He has no problem using anybody and everybody to get

(30:16):
what he wants. And he's just a scummy, wormy piece
of shit. And what he wanted was copious amounts of drugs.
So now we're in nineteen eighty one. John has been
hanging out with this group for a while. He's in
them for a lot of money, and he was drug
mule for them, but would smoke up the drugs and
his profits intended to end up in debt. There was

(30:36):
also a point the Wonderland Gang never met Eddie Nash,
but they did a deal with him through John where
he bought some antique rifles from them, but they knew
that they were worth a lot of money, like seventy
five thousand dollars back in nineteen eighty one. Eddie knew
that if he ever displayed them, or if anybody ever
saw them, they would immediately know they were stolen and
he would get into.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
A lot of trouble.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
So he ended up giving the Underland Gang two thousand
dollars for these rifles, saying that he would figure out
a way to give them more money later. But it
was kind of like his hands were tired because he
couldn't really do anything with them, even though he thought
they were cool. At least, that's kind of my understanding
of what happened with these guns. So the Wonderland gangs
kind of like fuck Eddie Nash. But what it really

(31:20):
came down to was that at the time that the
story takes place, they were low on cash and desperately
in need of drugs. John, seeing an opportunity, suggests to
them that he has a big score in mind, and
he does this, you know, to get in their good graces,
to get out of debt, and to get some money
and drugs in return. He tells them, Hey, that guy
Eddie Nash, the one you know guys don't really like

(31:40):
that much. He has a ton of drugs and money
in his house and he has a safe under his
bed in his bedroom that's.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Full of drugs and money, and we can go get it.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
The safe was hidden in the floor, so very few
people knew about it, but John did. He told the
gang they could rob Nash and they'd never.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Know who did it.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
His plan was that he go into the house earlier
in the evening and buy some drugs. He would then
unlock the sliding glass door that led to the backyard.
Rawn and his crew could then sneak in in the
middle of the night and hold Nash hostage, make him
open up the safe, and make off with all of
his money and drugs. Now, John also drew a map
for them, so he was really into this and thinking about,

(32:23):
you know, what's.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
He going to get out of this.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
So despite both the Wonderland Gang and Nash having done
business and both knowing John, they had never met. Now
this was advantageous to the Wonderland Crew because they could
go in without masks or fear of being recognized. It
was also a bit of a disadvantage because they didn't
seem to know who the fuck they were dealing with
the fact that Eddie Nash had killed tons of people,

(32:45):
had cops on his bank roll. I mean, it's fucking
nuts how connected and how crazy.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
This guy is.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Beyond all of this, he's just very fucking evil, And
it was dumb as fuck to think he'd never figure
out who robbed him since barely anybody knew about the safe. However,
drug out brains aren't typically the smartest brains out there,
so the gang went through with the plan. It's now Sunday,
June twenty seventh, nineteen eighty one, and John goes to
Nash's house and buys about.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Four hundred dollars worth of drugs.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
This is all the gang could come up with, but
it was enough. He of course spent the hours after
buying it there doing all of the drugs instead of
taking them back to the Wonderland crew. But whatever, he
went ahead and unlocked the door. He eventually got back
to the house on Wonderland, but then got nervous that
he hadn't actually unlocked the sliding door, so went back

(33:34):
to Nash's place to check. I have read that he
went back twice, and I've read that he went back
three times. Either way, it's suspicious as fuck, but he
seemed to think he was smooth and that Nash wouldn't
question it. By the time Holmes got back to Wonderland, Ron,
David Lynde, Billy Deverell, and a friend of theirs named
Tracy McCourt had taken too many drugs. Tracy's a man

(33:55):
by the way, including heroin, and they were nodding off
and not at all ready to rob anyone or even
move so they slept until about eight am on Monday morning,
which is when they all got into a car driven
by Tracy, who was an idiot but not super involved,
and drove the less than two miles to Nash's house
at thirty three point fifteen Dona Lola Place. The car

(34:18):
was empty on gas, which is just another piece to
let you know how fucking out of it these guys were.
But somehow, m m they made it to Nash's home
right around eight thirty am on a Monday, June twenty eighth,
when everyone is on their way to work, school, whatever.
I wanted to take a moment to discuss how crazy
Hollywood and Los Angeles in general was at this time.

(34:40):
Like I said, this was about a year after Dorothy
Stratton was murdered, which was huge news, but it was
literally like almost exactly a year later that this takes place,
and the amount of murders, serial killers, drug lords, and
general chaos in the area at the time was just
something that I don't know that we could really imagine.
The detective, one of the detectives anyway that worked on
the Wonderland case was also involved in catching will and

(35:02):
William Boonen, otherwise known as the Freeway Killer and also
worked on the Hillside Strangler's case, which back then was
the hill Hillside Strangler. Because they didn't know those two people.
So shit is just nuts, And maybe an eight thirty
am robbery wasn't super weird back then, but I think
with all the information we know, it was just because
these guys were drug addicts and fuck ups in general. Anyway,

(35:23):
when they get to the house without John Holmes, who
of course you know, waited back at the at Wonderland,
they get inside, so we have David Lynde, Billy Deverell,
and ron Lonnias Tracy waits in the car. They break in.
They pretend to be cops by flashing a badge for
the San Francisco Police Department, which is actually what they'd
been doing recently to rob other.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Homes in the area.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
And that's the only way they were making money is
by doing like open fucking robbery of people when they
were home, like robbing them pretending to be cops. They
would break in, say they were cops, tie them up,
and steal all their shit. So they find Dials walking
down the hallway hold a tray that possibly had Eddie
Nash's breakfast on it. Eddie Nash is in his you know,

(36:06):
trademark speedo, no robe, just the speedo, sitting on his couch.
They make Gregory Dials lay on the ground. They attempt
to handcuff him, but he's too big, but they finally
you know, end up tying him up. They then pull
out their guns and they begin, you know, demanding money
and drugs. Nash has said to have begged for his life,
which I'm sure pissed him off, maybe more than anything

(36:26):
else in his life ever had, because he's a you know,
a tough guy, and he's like wants to be the
big boss. So that's an ultimate you know, insult to him.
They begin ransacking the place and then they move Eddie
into his bedroom and they force him to open the
safe nobody knows about. He at first refuses to give
them the combination, but Ron Lannius or David Lynde I

(36:48):
can't remember who put the gun into his mouth and
was like, I will fucking kill you, and he opens
the safe and they steal over one million dollars in
drugs and cash. And that's a million in nineteen eighty
one dollars, so way more today. At one point David
Lynde accidentally discharged his gun and grazed Gregory Dials like

(37:10):
on the either the leg or like the chest. It
was more of like a like a powder burn than
like an actual shot, which only further terrifies the captives
and lets them know that these men will fucking kill them,
possibly by accident. It's later found out that Ron Lannius,
who was at the time, you know, like I said,
a very serious suspect in multiple you know, murder cases,

(37:31):
including a murder for higher case you know, wanted to
kill Eddie and Gregory Dials, but was talked out of
it by Billy, who, like I said, was kind of
like the level headed guy of the group. So eventually
they make their way of the house after cutting the
phone lines, they make their babe way back to Wonderland
and they split up the score. Now, Ron, David, and
Billy get their share, which is a fuck ton of money.

(37:54):
John Holmes and Tracy McCourt get much smaller shares. For Tracy,
he was just the driver, so it's like fuck you.
For John, it's because they fucking didn't like him and
he owed the money and just fuck him. As you
can imagine, John wasn't super happy about this, but he
was kind of.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
A little bitch.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
So when he complained, the Wonderland Gang beat him up
and then sent him on his way, like go fuck yourself.
They gave him three thousand dollars and a pinky ring
that belonged to Eddie Nash. Now, Eddie Nash gets untied,
gets his phone lines back up, definitely doesn't call the cops,
but he is thinking who might have ripped him off,
who had the information, who could.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Have done it? Who knew about the safe? You know,
who's gonna unlock the door? Who was there?

Speaker 1 (38:35):
And very quickly, all signs point to one man, John Holmes.
Now I want to point out that you know, Eddie
Nash loved John Holmes. He referred to him as his brother,
to the point where when John got arrested and had
had Dawn call anonymously, he told her just say your
brother is in jail. Don't say anything else, don't say

(38:59):
my name, just say your brother is in jail. And
Eddie knew exactly who he was talking about. So that's
the kind of relationship that Eddie thought he had with
John Holmes. So when he figures out John's the one
to fucking, you know, double cross him.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
He is super pissed now.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
He sends Gregory Diles out to get John and when
he finds him, and I read somewhere that like John
decided to come over because he's just that cavalier, but
that's not what happened. So Gregory Diles goes out and
he finds John. And when he finds him, John is
wearing Eddie Nash's fucking pinky ring because he's a fucking idiot.

(39:36):
So he brings John into Nash's office by the scruff
of his neck and it gets crazy from there, you know,
according to John Holmes. But there is somebody to kind
of back it up, which we'll talk about later. And
mind you, at this time, Don is just living with
her tiny little dog. They had a dog named Thor,
and they were just living in Sharon's fucking car. Like

(39:57):
he gave her cans to piss in. He never let
her leave, and also he never let anybody know about her.
When he drove around with her, he would make her
lay in the back with a blanket over her head.
Nobody knew about her. The Wonderland Gang didn't know about her.
Eddie Nash didn't know about her. I mean, when he
raped her, he thought it was John's niece, Gabrielle from Oregon,
So I mean, he was really, really careful and he

(40:19):
just basically held her captive for years. So she's sitting
in a car somewhere having no fucking clue where John is. Meanwhile,
he's at Eddie Nash's house getting the shit beat out
of him. Now, when this happened, there was another man
at the house named Scott Thorson. Scott will plan into
the story more later, but just remember his name and
that he was the lover and also adopted son of Liberaci.

(40:42):
And I'm just gonna leave that mess right there and
we'll get into that more later. So he's asked to
wait in the other room while Nash and Dials do
their thing with Holmes. He said later, you know, they
beat him, and John says, you know, according to him,
they're threatening to kill his wife, his mother, his siblings,
everyone in his family. He said, they found his address
book and they're running through the names being like they're

(41:02):
fucking dead. They're fucking dead. You don't tell us who
you had rob us. Everybody you've ever known is fucking dead.
So you know, I I may I think maybe he
was embellishing the story a little bit to make himself
more of a victim.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
And you'll see why. But who knows.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
In the end, John tells them this is who ripped
you off. Yes, I facilitated it. They were mad about
these fucking antique guns.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
They needed money.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Whatever, Eddie Nash decides it. Rather than kill Holmes, he
will make him help Nash exact his revenge. So now
it's Wednesday, July first, so like two days after the robbery,
and Holmes never leaves Nash's house until we're at the
part where the murders go down. So Nash tells Holmes
he's gonna go to the Wonderland House and let Gregory

(41:46):
Dials and another man into the house through the locked gate.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
He's supposed to do this by.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Calling up to the residents who know him and will
let him in because there was like a metal security
gate that was always locked. It is also said that
at one point Joy Miller, Billy Deverell's girlfriend gave John
Holmes a key, which Ron was not fucking stoked about,
so maybe he used that to get in and kind
of when you read about the crime scene and where

(42:12):
the bodies were It almost makes sense that he let
himself in, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
I've heard both ways.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
So anyway, they go to the house that same night
and Holmes gets in one way or another, and what
happens next is the definition of a massacre. The next day,
the neighbors who were moving out because they were tired
of dealing with living next to this fucking drug house,
said that they saw several people going in, out and
out of the residence, which was normal. This happened between

(42:39):
four am and four pm that same day, so about
twelve hours of people coming and going. Finally, one of
the visitors to the.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
House told one of the movers who was.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Moving the people out, there are dead people inside that house.
The mover took a look for himself and immediately called
the cops, as he had seen the most fucked up scene.
Police and detective detectives arrived shortly thereafter to find five
people inside. There was Barbara Butterfly Richardson again, twenty two

(43:09):
years old. She was found in the living room with
her head caved in. There was a pillow on the
couch completely soaked in blood, and she had fallen to
the ground and led out some more. You can watch
a video of this on YouTube. We'll talk more about it.
She was very much dead, she had been for hours.
They then found in Ron and Susan's room the body

(43:32):
of Ron Lannius and the barely alive Susan Lnnius. She
was still clinging to life after twelve hours of being
you know, after being beaten, and that means all the
people who went in and out of the house over
the past twelve hours did nothing to help her despite
hearing her moaning. Neighbors also said they heard moaning, but

(43:54):
they didn't really think anything of it because the house
is fucking crazy. Susan was taken to the hostel, where
she wasn't expected to survive, and the police continued their
search of the space. In the upstairs room, they found
the bodies of Joy.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Miller and Billy Deverell.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Joy had been killed in bed, much like Ron, but
Billy had put up a fight and was found crumbled
on the ground with this head against a TV stand.
Now the TV was on, but just playing like fuzz
on the screen, which I don't even know if you
can get a TV to do that anymore, but it's
a very creepy thing to think about in a murder scene.
Billy was shirtless and covered in blood and had clearly

(44:32):
put up a fight.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Joy's head had been so.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Badly beaten in that her forehead, like above her eyebrows,
was pushed all the way back against the back of
her skull. So fucking crazy. The scene was brutal. There
was blood all over the walls, all over the house.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
It's insane.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
So at this point I wanted to just quickly introduce
the two main detectives who were on this case for years,
for better or worse, because officially this case is not solved,
even we all know who did it. So these detectives
are Tom Lang and Robert Bob SUSA.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Now they arrive on the scene, and.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
I believe it was Tom who took a two and
a half hour video of the crime scene, and that's
you know. Those of you with strong stomachs can find
some of it on YouTube. You can hear him narrating
while filming the victims up close, as well as the
horribly you know, blood spattered house. The video shows the
lifeless bodies of the victims, including Joy Miller, who is
purple and unrecognizable while lying in bed, and That shit

(45:28):
haunted me for days after I watched it, and I've
seen some shit, so it's really disturbing. Be careful if
you do choose to watch it. But also really interestingly,
it would later be the first video used as evidence
in a murder trial in California, So we'll get there,
but it's pretty cool to know that. Once the video
is done, police begin their interviews. Now, at first not

(45:50):
a lot comes up, but pretty quickly they get a
call from a man named Fat Howard or Howard Cook,
who said he had a witness who wanted to talk
about the murders. He asks that they meet him at
the wonder Land address, and when they do, he's in
his car outside and he points to the house and
says there's someone inside and that's definitely a crime scene.
So it's been a couple of days, like the bodies

(46:10):
are with the medical examiner, but still you know he
should not be in there, So they go inside to
find David Lynde, who was one of the only people
not in the house when the murders took place, as
he had had to go up to Sacramento for a
court date and then when he came back he was
in a motel with a male sex worker doing drugs,

(46:30):
and he left Butterfly behind in the in the house
in the care of his friends. Now, when they got
into the house, David just ransacking the place, grabbing pills
off the floor, shoving them into his mouth frantically. And
when the detectives were like, hey, Bud, what are you doing,
he asked them where a butterfly. Was convinced she was
the sole survivor he had heard about on the news.

(46:50):
Now we all know that she was not the sole survivor,
but the police did not tell him that right away. Instead,
they took him to the station to interview him. And
once they hold Butterfly had died, he was ready to
talk as long as he was able to openly do
the pocket full of drugs that he had brought with him,
which they led him. He wasn't being aggressive towards them,
and they felt it would help keep him cooperative. So

(47:13):
David Lynd recounted the entire burglary and nashes, which gave
them their first solid lead as well as a motive.
It also brought John Holmes into the fold, as his
name hadn't yet been mentioned. Granted, this was in the
first week of the murders, but still it took a
few days to figure out who was involved. Anyway, Lynn
tells him about the score, how it was split, just
kind of lays it all out for them. But obviously

(47:35):
he wasn't at the house the night of the murders,
so he's not really able to place anyone at the
scene or give them anything super concrete. He could just
sort of suggest who might have done this and why.
So from there, police interview a ton of other people
about the murders, including Chuck Nigron, the lead singer of
the band Three Dog Knight, who was a known drug
user who frequented the Wonder Lamb House. In fact, he

(47:59):
and his then wife had been invited to go party
there the night of the murders, but declined as they
were quote too sick meaning dope sick from withdrawals, which
was fucking lucky for them because they probably would have
ended up passed out somewhere in that house and then
getting murdered. They basically told a similar story. John Holmes
did in fact hang around there, and in fact Julia,

(48:21):
Chuck's wife, who was also the former wife of the
doors drummer John Densmore said she had gone to the
house the morning of the murders, after the murders took place,
and told a neighbor what she saw, but the neighbor
didn't call the cops, and neither did she, So everything's
kind of coming together. They're starting to figure out a timeline.
Was crazy as that people who were like coming into

(48:43):
the house to buy drugs were walking into the open
house seeing the dead people, seeing the moaning woman on
the floor, stealing drugs and money and fucking leaving, so
so fucking insane. So anyway, it takes nearly two weeks,
but on July twelfth, the detectives Lang and SUSA got
word that John Holmes had been picked up and was
at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown LA with another set

(49:06):
of cops outside their jurisdiction, which they were not happy about.
That being said, they were able to meet with Holmes,
who ended up telling a different detective some of the
details of the murders. Now, as a reminder, he was
an informant, so he had a bunch of cop contacts,
so it makes sense that he would be with like
Vice or somebody instead of the homicide detectives. Because you know,
John Holmes is trying to control the narrative of this

(49:29):
scene and kind of get ahead of it, right, So
he wants to reach out to his buddies and give
them his version of the story before shit gets too real.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Now.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Interestingly, John Holmes actually admitted not only to a part
in the robbery of Nash, but also to being a
part of the murders. He said he was convinced to
leave the front door unlocked at Wonderland, though when they
asked who made him do it, he refused to say.
He clammed up entirely. He said, yeah, I robbed Nash,
and yeah I was there when Wonderland was murdered, but
I'm not going to tell you there was a connection,

(49:59):
and I'm not going to tell you that Eddie Nash
ordered it or that Gregory Dowlls was there. He never
even mentioned their names. He straight up fucking refused. He did, however,
take advantage of now being housed at the Biltmore, another
swanky hotel where he had no problem ordering a copious
amounts of room service while refusing basically to cooperate at all.
He had also brought not only Sharon to this hotel,

(50:21):
but Don as well, And to be clear, Sharon and
Don had a very interesting relationship where I think Sharon
really wanted and felt they need to take care of
Don and loved Don and wanted to sort of save Don.
So the two women mostly got along because I think
Sharon thought of Don as like a daughter, which is
probably how John Holme should have seen her. But he's

(50:43):
a piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
In any case, all of them are there, and he's
basically saying, I can cooperate if you put me in
witness protection and if you take Don and Sharon and
we can all go. And Sharon's like, get fucked, dude,
I'm not leaving my house.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
I'm not doing this.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
You're a drug addict. There's something fucking wrong with you.
I don't want anything to do with this, right so,
you know, I mean, the cops have some stuff and
they can sort of place John at the crime scene,
but he already admitted to being there. It doesn't mean
he actually murdered anybody. He could have just been a witness.
He could have been held hostage, which is essentially what
he told the cops.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Was the situation.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
The one thing that they had that was really suspicious
and I think kind of led to him being arrested
later on was they found a palm print in blood
on the bedframe over Ron Lannius's bed, like where his
body was, So it was positioned as though whoever grabbed
the bed frame was steadying themselves while they were beating

(51:40):
Ron to death. Now this pomp print was John's, so
you know, not only does it put him in the house,
but it makes it seem like maybe he had actually
beat Ron. Now he could have said, you know, it
was under duress, Greg Dials made.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Him do it.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
And he could have also said that he didn't actually
hit anybody, he just grabbed the railing. So there was
a lot of kind of like there wasn't anything solid.
So cops were ready to press any charges, and in truth,
a few of them believed John Holmes that he didn't
actually participate in the murders and was just in the
rooms being forced to watch while being held at gunpoint
is what he said, which didn't bode well for any

(52:18):
case they might want to bring against him. Now, around
this time, the medical examiner came back with the cause
of death for the victims and it was found they
were all beaten to death with a lead pipe. Not
only a lead pipe, but a pipe with threads on
the end. They knew this because the threads had embedded
in the skin and bone of the victims, because they
were beaten that hard, like they were hit that hard

(52:40):
with the pipe. It was around this time that detectives
received a letter from a patrol cop out of West
Hollywood telling them that Gregory Dials had had many complaints
lodged against him while working at the star Wood Club,
which is one of the clubs that's actually the punk
rock club where Eddie did a lot of his drug dealing.
But these complaints were for brutality and for using some

(53:00):
sort of rod or pipe, and that once he was
pulled over and cops found a lead pipe with threading
on the end of it in his car. So again
more circumstantial evidence, no proof, but definitely very interesting and
lets them know to keep kind of digging.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
From here, I could get into a ton of details
about the interviews of various jailhouse snitches, but suffice it
to say there was a lot of talk but very
little concrete evidence. Also, around this time, police were able
to get a search warrant for Nash's residence because he
got caught selling drugs to a snitch. So they go
to his house and during the search, they're you know,
obviously looking for evidence to time to the murders, but

(53:39):
they didn't find any. What they did find was documents
that he could have only received from somebody in a
high ranking position in some sort of law enforcement so LAPD, FBI,
something like that.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
So that's bad.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
News and again shows the scope of his influence and connections.
And these papers basically let him know that were coming
to raid his house. That being said, he didn't seem
to give a shit because when they raided it, they
found a bunch of drugs, so he was, you know,
charged with various drug offenses. Now, after this thing sort
of calmed down for a bit, there was an insider
who tried to claim that Bob, that Langensusa, the two

(54:16):
detectives on the case were crooked and working for a
NASH and that the detectives you know, were basically throwing
the case. And during this time also the detectives ended
up taking on other cases because they weren't really able
to do anything with this case. They ended up getting investigated,
and then it turned out that the insider who said

(54:37):
that they were working for Nash was actually the one
working for Nash. So funny how that works. In any case,
things you know, kind of chill out for a while.
John is still around. He's still with Dawn, he's still
beating her, forcing her to sell herself, raping her, just
being a complete piece of shit. And he's also still
informing for the police. So now it's November nineteen eighty one,

(55:00):
same year. Just some months later, there's another rate at
Nasha's house, more cocaine found.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
More arrests.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Like I said, John Holmes just being a piece of shit.
And finally the detectives go to Vice, which is who
John Holmes informs for, and said, you know, we need
him and we need to bring him in. We're going
to try to like get something out of him. We
think we're gonna charge him with murder. So weis Wan
Is like pushing back because they're like, he's a really
good informant. But finally they agree. John finds out and
he takes the fuck off, so the cops go looking

(55:28):
for him. They go to South Florida, which is where
Don has some family.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
That's a dead end.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
They go up to Oregon, where Don also had family.
Sharon tells them, you know, he has her car. She
last heard from him in Oregon asking her for money.
So they go up there, and then he gave no
more information, just asking for money. She would never officially
turn on him anyway, you know, but she gave up
where she thought he was at this time. She also

(55:55):
told him that he came to her house the day
after the murders, but she meant them of covered in
blood and bruises, saying that he'd been at Wonderland. He
gave her no more information, and she, you know, wouldn't
have told them either way. But it was interesting that
she told them that, and I think that it was
on her mind and she felt like she needed to

(56:16):
get off her chest.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
And the other thing is like, you don't get covered
in blood if you're waiting downstairs, right. So they go
to Oreon, they don't find him.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
They find Don's family, who hated John and wanted to
help find him, and Dawn, and they go back down
to la because they heard he was last there. And
then her brother gets in touch and says, I think
he's she's in Florida. She called me from Florida, I
probably asking for money. So at this point, you know,

(56:44):
John's fully running from not only the cops but also
Eddie Nash, who obviously knows he's about to be arrested
for these murders and knows that the cops are doing
that so that he'll turn on Nash. And Eddie Nash
is not going to let that stand. So he's probably
looking for John to fucking kill him, right And because
obviously John Holmes is the type of person who would
turn on him, So it's a fair concern. So I'm

(57:07):
going to switch gears for a second here because Susan
Lannias is waking up now. Police interview Susan, all she
could really say at the time, beyond what they already knew,
was that she remembered getting hit and being in excruciating pain. Now,
as a reminder, this is, you know, four months after
the attacks and she's just finally well enough to talk

(57:28):
to the police.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
She said she.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Remembered seeing red everywhere and hearing someone say that they
didn't need to hit her more because she was going
to die anyway. She heard the commotion, she heard the beating,
She remembered the pain. She also remembered people coming in
and out of the house, but she could not, for
the life of her, identify a single one of them.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
She also talked about Ron and.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
What a badass he was and that she thought he'd
killed a lot of people, and she was like really
impressed by that, which is really fucking weird. Any case,
the interviews did do a lot, but she was still
a star witness when John's trial came around because he
was arrested. So anyway, they go down to South Florida
the cops. They take Wayne Don's brother because they're close

(58:13):
down with them, and he starts kind of talking to
their family friends from when they live down there, and
with his help, Don's location is found. She's living with
an exotic dancer who needed somebody to babysit her kids,
so she was living with this woman. She was still
with John but sort of living apart from him, which
I think is because she had been dealing with this

(58:34):
abuse for so long and she had run away from
him before. She'd gone up to Oregon for a few
months with her family, but he coaxed her back to him.
She'd physically run away from him and almost got murdered
by somebody that when she was hitchhiking, like, so she
wanted to get away from him, but she was in
so deep and she was so fucking terrified she couldn't
get away. So, you know, they're living apart, but they're

(58:57):
still together. And when the lease you know, approached down
at first she was really combative, but Wayne convinced her
to cooperate and to get away from John, and she
finally told the police where John was. So when they
arrest him, he says, what took you so long? You know,
like I've been expecting you, because he just has to
be like the cool guy, like he's in a movie,

(59:17):
you know, he's Johnny wadd like whatever the fuck. So anyway,
they take him in, they charge him, Like I said,
it's an attempt to get him to turn on Eddie Nash.
In reality, while they seemingly have a lot on him,
they don't really have anything on him. They can put
him in the house, they can't really do anything else.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
They can't put him as actually murdering anyone.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
And you know, for his part, John's gonna say that
he was a victim, that he was forced to go there,
that he was held at gunpoint. You know that he
didn't do anything besides witness a murder, and he's not
he's not gonna turn on who did it because he's
afraid for his life. While Down did get away from him,
she still wouldn't testify against him, which is really unfortunate
because it later comes out that he confessed to her

(01:00:00):
he was there, that he saw the murders and he knew.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Who did it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Likewise, Sharon wouldn't testify against him, and legally didn't have
to because she was his wife. The only people that
they had to testify against him really was were Susan
Lannias and David Lynde. And Susan doesn't remember anything, and
David wasn't there, so they can put him kind of
in the middle of it. They can circumstantially make it
seem very clear that he was involved, but there's no

(01:00:25):
hard evidence. They still go to trial, but as you
can guess, he is acquitted and things sort of peter
out from there. As far as Johnny wadd goes, he
just continues being a piece of shit. Like I said,
don thankfully got away from him, but she'd been subjected
to six years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse by

(01:00:45):
John Holmes and anybody he deemed necessary to get what
he wanted. He used her like she was just a
fucking worthless piece of trash. And he did this to
her all before she was like twenty one years old.
And every time she tried to get away from him,
he would convince her to come back. He would beg
her and then he would leave her alone with this

(01:01:08):
tiny little dog for days at a time. When he
came back, he'd abuse her. He almost killed her. He
almost got her killed multiple times, just you know, fucking horrible.
So finally she gets away from him and she becomes
like up speaker and an advocate for women and girls
trapped in abusive relationships and who have been groomed by

(01:01:29):
their partners.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
So really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Look her up. Her website's great. She has a lot
of really great, you know, information about herself, and kind
of what she does is honestly really inspiring. She's pretty
fucking amazing. John, however, went on as a total, complete
piece of shit, and eventually, in nineteen eighty four, Sharon
divorced him and moved on with her life. From there,

(01:01:53):
John continued to inform on people to feed his addiction
and keep himself out of prison, but mostly faded intubscurity,
like he was still working, but nobody really cared about him.
Everybody kind of knew he was a drug addict, and
again he couldn't really perform, so he couldn't really work.
So at the time before the murders happened, he had
done like a documentary about himself. I don't know if

(01:02:15):
it ever actually came out, But after that, around this time,
he wrote an autobiography, which wasn't actually published until after
his death. He met and married another adult film star
named Misty Dawn real name Laurie Rose in nineteen eighty seven.
It's unclear exactly when, but at some point in the
mid nineteen eighties he learned he had AIDS. He hid

(01:02:38):
this from everyone in his life, including multiple women he
worked with on adult films. Now it's said that he
didn't know he had AIDS until just before the last
film that he made, but he knew then, and he
had unprotected sex with these women because he did not
give a shit. He just wanted the fucking money. So

(01:03:02):
he's a fucking scumbag, Like there's no words obviously, now
this asshole, Johnny wadd Johnny fucking idiot, fucking hate This
guy died in March nineteen eighty eight at forty three
years old from complications of AIDS.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Shortly thereafter, his.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Ex wife, Sharon came forward with the official version of
her story of what he told her. Just a few
nights after the murder. He'd gone to her house, he
got into the bathtub which you'll see in the Wonderland movie,
and he told her that he went to the house
that night he was basically being held hostage at gunpoint,
and that he was forced to not only let three

(01:03:40):
men into the house to murder everyone inside, but he
was forced to go in and to watch as they
murdered all of those people. Now, he never gave Sharon
the names of the people who did it, and he
never admitted to any further involvement, but he did tell
her that he was there and he knew who did it,
And he told Don the same thing. I personally believe

(01:04:01):
that he probably hit Ron, that he was forced maybe
to do it, but he also hated Ron, and he
seems like a little bitch, you know, John Holmes, So
I feel like he probably would have done it. The story, however,
is not over. There's a little bit more, because remember
Eddie Nash. So the year after John's death, prosecutors decided
to charge Eddie Nash and Gregory Dials for the Wonderland murders.

(01:04:25):
They made this decision after a witness came forward with
pretty damning evidence, and this witness was none other than
Liberaci's son turned lover, Scott Thorson. Now he and Liberaci
were not together anymore at this point, it was really
sad about Scott Thorson's life is really sad if you
read about it. He was like in foster care and

(01:04:48):
I think seventeen years old when he met Liberaci, and
Liberacci groomed him just like John Holmes groomed Dawn. But
it was even worse. He adopted Scott like as his son,
made him get plastic surgery to look more like Liberaci
to look more like him, created a sexual relationship with him,

(01:05:10):
and put him on a weight loss program that ultimately
got him addicted to drugs, all before he was like
twenty years old. So this is a really fucked up situation.
And the weirdest thing is that Liberaci was super against drugs,
but weirdly was in a business with Eddie Nash. At
one of the night clubs like Liberaci co owned part

(01:05:31):
of it and had Scott sort of managing that for him.
So Liberacci had no idea that Eddie Nash was so
into the drug scene, and for a time he didn't
know that Scott was into the drug scene. So he
would send Scott down to La they were living in
I think Lake Tahoe at the time, or Vegas, because
I think Liberacci was performing in Vegas like every night.
So he would send Scott down to pick up money
from the club, and Scott would just buy a bunch

(01:05:52):
of fucking drugs while he was there. And on the
night of the murders, Scott Thorson, like I had said,
was at A. D.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Nash's home. Now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
When he was there, he overheard everything that happened with
John Holmes, including him being beaten, the threats to his life,
the friends, the threats to his family's lives. You know,
he heard Nash say, you know you're gonna take Greg
Dials and these two other men to Wonderland and you're
going to quote kill everyone. He was also at the

(01:06:22):
house at Eddie Nash's house when they all came back
covered in blood. He later in an interview in the
two thousands said they had had in fact taken his
car to do the killings.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
But who really knows.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Apparently anybody and everybody who met Scott thought that he
was just like a pathological liar, But nobody could ever
fully catch him in a lie, and his testimony did
match what police thought happened pretty much entirely, So I
do tend to believe him, at least in this situation.
So Eddie Nash and Gregory Dials went on trial in
nineteen ninety one. They were on trial for a few weeks,

(01:06:54):
but in the end the jury ended up being hung
eleven to one. Now they had Susan, they had David Lynde,
they had Scott Thorson. It was a done fucking deal.
But one juror hung on would not change their mind.
They ended up going to trial again and then were acquitted.
I'm not really sure why. It probably has to do
with the legal system. Things you can't do twice. Who

(01:07:16):
fucking knows. However, it later came out that the first
trial ended the way it did because Nash bribed a
woman on the jury with fifty thousand dollars, so he
bought his freedom. Because everybody else knew he fucking did it,
and if that juror had not been bribed, he would
have gone to prison for the rest of his life,
and so would have Gregory Dials. Greg Dials died in
nineteen ninety five, and fuck him, who cares. Scott Thorson

(01:07:39):
after the trial, went into witness protection, but didn't stay
out of trouble and ended up getting shot five times
in a motel in South Florida over a bad drug deal.
He also did more time in prison before finding Jesus
and getting sober for about ten years before he died
of cancer in twenty twenty one. Eddie Nash eventually got
sent to prison on rico charges, including being charged for

(01:08:01):
bribing the juror in the first murder trial, which he
did plead guilty to, and arranging for the murders of
the Wonderland Gang. He did or was sentenced to a
whopping thirty seven months in prison for all of this,
probably got out early for good behavior, and eventually died
in twenty fourteen at the age of eighty five, which,
on top of it being frustrating that he didn't have

(01:08:23):
to go to prison he was eighty five years old,
he had fucking destroyed his body to the point where
he was missing along one of his nasal cavities was
fucking gone. And this motherfucker lived eighty five. Like, what
the fuck? What did you like pickle himself? I don't
understand anyway. That's pretty much the end of this story.
There's so much more if you really want to get

(01:08:44):
into the details, but for a podcast, you know, you
can't go too crazy. If you want to read more
about it, you can listen or listen, you can read
Dawn's book. It's available all over the place. There's a
book that the detectives wrote that I read was fucking
kind of shitty. I mean, I had a lot of information,
but it also had a lot of cop talk. And
anybody who knows me knows that I'm I'm not really

(01:09:06):
into cops. I'm not really down for cops, so like
having to read their like snarky comments just kind of
bummed me out. But it's really interesting to read about
the case and sort of like the behind the scenes details.
You know, it was a really fucked up situation. But
people like Ron Lanius, like, you can't really feel bad
for them because there's such like hardcore pieces as shit.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
You know, he was.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
Actually I forgot to mention this earlier. He was discharged
from the army. Some people argue that it was dishonorable.
Some people said he just you know, left, But he
was caught during his time smuggling cocaine back from I
think he was in like the Korean War. I want
to say, he was smuggling cocaine in the caskets of
dead soldiers, so he would stick the cocaine, like I

(01:09:48):
don't know, in their bodies, under their bodies, in their
fucking caskets, and then take it out when they got
back to America.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
So even before the war.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Ron Lanius was a complete disgusting piece of shit. All
of the people, you know, David Lynde dating a twenty
two year old when he's forty. He's a fucking white supremacist,
he's a biker. He's in and out of prison, like
fuck him too. You know, it's hard to mourn these people.
But the case is so fucked up. It's so violent,
it's so brutal, and it's so like Olpi and Noirrie

(01:10:16):
and like perfectly La that I really wanted to cover it,
even though the only thing I wouldn't really call it
is sad except for Don. Don's really the only person
in the story that brings humanity to it, and so
it's really good to know that she's outliving her best
life helping others. And I also think it's really great
that after John died, she and Sharon became really really

(01:10:38):
close until Sharon died in twenty twelve, like they were very,
very tight Susan Lannius. For all I know, she disappeared
and hopefully is having like a normal life out there.
And the case, and at least, you know, as the
legal system is concerned, remains unsolved to this day, which
is fucking crazy because everybody knows exactly who did it.
I mean, there's maybe one or two guys that we

(01:11:00):
don't know. We don't have their names, but Gregory Dials
and Eddie Nash were definitely you know, it was them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
So all this being.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
Said, I'm gonna leave you with one of the worst
quotes I've ever read from John Holmes. It's just so douchey,
who wrote in his autobiography, how big is it? My
fans would scream, bigger than a payphone, smaller than a
Cadillac was my reply, and that's gonna do it for
this episode of True Crime California. Thanks so much everybody

(01:11:30):
for listening in. I'll have a new case for you
next week, and until then, thanks for listening.