What could one of the most famous adult industry stars of the 1970s have in common
with one of the most infamous murder scenes in the history of Los Angeles? More than you think,
it turns out. Let's take a closer look at the gruesome history of the Wonderland Murders.
To fully understand what events led to the Wonderland murders, you need to look into
the life and times of the notorious John Holmes. As The New York Times puts it, Holmes was a very
popular and prolific adult movie performer, who became famous for his many escapades in
the nascent industry in the 1970s. Though he died in 1988, at just 43-years-old, his IMDb
page reveals that he had no less than 231 credits as an actor, the vast majority of which were porn.
As Salon tells us, however, Holmes' life wasn't all roses and disrobement.
Over his years of increasing fame, he developed a massive cocaine addiction,
which took a toll on his professional life. His habit — which allegedly cost
him as much as $1,500 per day — also started costing him job opportunities,
and the producers who had been lining up to cast him eventually turned their back on him.
Holmes knew why this was, too.
"In the middle of a scene, I would disappear for long stretches,
but my co-workers knew where to find me: in the bathroom doing freebase.
I became the butt of jokes, which traveled around like wildfire. 'To get Holmes to work,' they said,
'you have to leave a trail of freebase from the bathroom to the bedroom.'"
This behavior led to a huge decrease in his income, which caused him to turn to small-time
crime – and some very questionable company. A key person when it comes to the Wonderland
murders is nightclub owner Eddie Nash. According to Salon, Nash was the kind of guy who had $1
million in cocaine stashed in his house, which he eventually went to prison for. However, that's far
from the only thing authorities have suspected him of over the years. As the Los Angeles Times tells
us, Nash was a fearsome nightlife magnate, and John Holmes once called him, quote,
"the most evil man I've ever known." However, it's worth noting that there was a time when
the men's relationship was — at least on surface — far warmer than that chilly comment implies.
Per LA Weekly, Nash turned a measly hot dog stand into a massive night club empire
that included as many as 36 locations, including hot clubs like the Paradise Ballroom.
Nash was also said to be heavily involved in the drug trade that flourished in these
establishments. All in all, the stories make Nash seem like the kind of guy you definitely
didn't want to cross, especially if you were far more small-time than him. Unfortunately,
that's exactly what the Wonderland Gang did. As a surviving member of the group, David Lind, put it:
"The certain type of dope dealer you didn't rob was Mr. [Nash]. It was
obvious from the time we got in the house that we were over our heads."
The exact circumstances of the first meeting between John Holmes and Eddie Nash are unclear,
but as LA Weekly tells us, the two soon became close enough that Nash
was known to refer to Holmes as his brother. According to Salon,
the pair may simply have been impressed with each others' respective lines of work,
and the similar reputation they shared. Bill Margold, who knew them both, said:
"There was an interest on Holmes' part toward Nash for the drug culture,
and an interest from Nash toward Holmes for the adult-entertainment, fast-lane lifestyle. Nash
was about as mysterious as [Holmes], and I think that mutual mystery attracted them to each other."
Regardless of how the pair originally became close, Holmes was clearly aware of
how dangerous Nash was, and even warned a female acquaintance, Dawn Schiller,
that the nightclub owner could make people disappear. The relationship
between the magnate and the porn star was also pretty clearly skewed in the former's favor,
thanks to Nash's power and access to drugs and Holmes' relative destitution and drug addiction.
As a result, Holmes did some pretty unsavory things to keep in Nash's good graces.
The Wonderland murders have many names, but arguably the catchiest one is based on the victims
of the crime — the so-called Wonderland Gang. According to Salon, they were a loose collective
of drug dealers, evidently named after their base of operations on 8763 Wonderland Avenue.
John Holmes reportedly fell in with the Wonderland Gang because of his own drug habit.
They were almost certainly not his first choice of company,
seeing as The Globe and Mail tells us that the gang was extremely small-time. However,
beggars can't be choosers. Holmes was in serious debt, and pretty much no one would
sell him drugs anymore, so he had to work in whatever circles he still had access to.
As the Los Angeles Times tells us, at least one witness in the court proceedings around
the Wonderland murders later said that the gang was affiliated with Eddie Nash through Holmes.
As the waning adult industry superstar was on good terms with Nash, he became a courier of
sorts between the parties. The Wonderland Gang stole stuff, and Holmes took it to Nash's place
and traded the haul for drugs. If things would have stayed that way, the story might have
ended very differently. Unfortunately, on June 29, 1981, things took a turn for the worse.
According to UPI, the road to the Wonderland murders was paved with bad intentions. John Holmes
was involved with both the small-time Wonderland Gang and the considerably wealthier Eddie Nash,
and as prosecutor Ron Coen put it, the adult entertainment star eventually noted, quote,
"Eddie Nash was ripe for robbery." Though Holmes presumably didn't take
part in the actual robbery, he was allegedly instrumental in the plot,
and purposefully left a door at Nash's house open in order to allow the Wonderland Gang to enter.
The gang's haul consisted of drugs, jewelry, and cash, and its value ranges from Coen's estimate of
$10,000 to the $1 million reported by LA Weekly. However, possibly the thing that sealed the gang's
fate was the sheer humiliation they caused Nash. The robbers surprised the nightclub owner and his
bodyguard, who received a minor gunshot wound in the process.
Reportedly, Nash was terrified and certain that he'd die. Prosecutor Coen later described the situation:
"Eddie Nash fell to his knees. He humiliated himself by asking permission to say his prayers."
From the robbery on to the actual murders, the law has never officially been able to make sense of
things. However, as the story goes, the Wonderland Gang's robbery went well, and Holmes had his share
of the haul, but as Salon tells us, the group's luck was about to turn. Nash soon figured out
who robbed him, and it didn't take long to find out that Holmes had been the thieves' inside man.
"You think I'm stupid? You didn't think I'd figure it out?"
As LA Weekly notes, Holmes had connections and debts to both
Nash and the Wonderland crew — and was the only individual connecting both parties.
Per UPI, the authorities certainly thought that Nash subsequently forced Holmes to
"set up" the murders as revenge — and there is some evidence that the porn star himself was
present at the scene when the crime took place. As the Los Angeles Times tells us, on July 1,
1981, the killer or killers stepped into the Wonderland Gang's den without any sign of breaking
and entering. The events that followed occurred just 40 hours after Nash was robbed, and they were
hardly muted. One neighbor woke to the screams of a man who was begging for his life. Four people
died in the attack: William Deverell, Ronald Launius, Joy Miller, and Barbara Richardson.
There was also one survivor, Susan Launius, whose moans alerted a passerby a few hours after the
incident. However, the injuries she suffered in the incident caused lasting brain damage.
The police were quick to connect John Holmes to the gruesome murder scene.
This was presumably aided by the fact that, according to UPI, they discovered his palm prints
near one of the victims, which was a pretty clear insinuation that he had been present at the scene.
According to LA Weekly, the police were just one of Holmes' problems at this point.
He had a history as a police informant during his days as a porn star,
happily snitching on industry people he didn't get along with to a Vice Squad connection.
It is possible that the combination of this reputation, and the mess he found himself in,
caused a surprising amount of people to go after his head. Holmes' girlfriend Dawn Schiller said:
"We were told that Eddie's was only one of the contracts out on John. There were all these
mysterious other people John was about to rat on. People were afraid he was going to inform."
The Wonderland murders remain unsolved to this day, though as Salon points out, it's not because
people don't know who did them — it's just because there's been no official conviction. In fact,
as the Los Angeles Times tells us, the police have considered the case essentially solved for quite a
while even though it never closed in court. Lead investigator Detective Tom Lange stated in 1988:
"There is no mystery, because we know who is involved and we know why. [But]
we have a certain set of rules to follow that the people who go out and perpetrate crimes don't."
Per LA Weekly, John Holmes was the first to stand trial in 1981, but he was acquitted in
1982. The only jail time he received for the case were the 111 days for contempt of court, because
he refused to answer the grand jury's questions until Eddie Nash was locked up for an unrelated
narcotics charge. As for Nash, he went to court for the murders in 1990, but a single dissenting
juror caused a hung jury and a mistrial. A second attempt in 1991 acquitted him entirely.
According to LAPD Online, he didn't get away entirely scot-free. In 2001,
Nash pled guilty to a number of racketeering charges that effectively proved that he was
involved in planning the murders, and threatened and bribed witnesses and a juror. For this,
he served a whopping one year in prison. Though John Holmes was acquitted of the Wonderland
murders himself, his connection to them has long been fairly clear. According to Los Angeles Times,
the authorities believe he was an active party, and the porn star himself told a biographer that
he was forced to witness the murders while one of the culprits was threatening him with a gun.
Arguably the most interesting version of the story comes from John Holmes' wife, Sharon,
who says that the broken man told her the real story a few weeks after the incident.
According to her, her crying husband revealed that the actual crime was committed by three thugs,
and he was forced to lead them to the site and stand by as the events transpired.
While John didn't actually reveal the names of the culprits, he said that he knew them.
Some have called Sharon Holmes' account into question, and noted that John was such a
notorious liar that he simply couldn't be trusted. However, if true, this alleged confession offers a
lot of insight into the terrifying events. As a high-profile, bloody murder case right
at the edge of Tinseltown, it's no surprise that the Wonderland murders
have made their mark on pop culture — especially because the case involved a celebrity of sorts.
A 2003 crime drama based on the events was even made, titled Wonderland — clips of which you have
seen scattered throughout this video. It has some considerable star power behind it, with Val Kilmer
as John Holmes, Kate Bosworth as Dawn Schiller, and Dylan McDermott as surviving Wonderland Gang
member David Lind. Character actor Eric Bogosian takes on the role of the ruthless Eddie Nash.
However, you might be more familiar with the fictionalized version of the story.
Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 drama Boogie Nights tells the story of a Holmes-esque character called
Dirk Diggler, whose downfall involves a creepy encounter with a shady drug dealer called Rahad
Jackson. Per Salon, Jackson's character was heavily influenced by Nash, even though the
story plays out slightly differently and the entire situation is resolved at the robbery stage.
Anderson has actually stated that a Rolling Stone article about Holmes and the Wonderland
murders was a major influence on this particular plot point. Anderson said:
"There was this great Rolling Stone article, and I remember
the description of this guy Eddie Nash in Speedos and the sheen of sweat on his body."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.