Original subtitles

♪♪

[siren wails]

[Connelly] Los Angeles--

a city infamous for its music and movies...

[man] Action!

♪♪

[Connelly] ...is also defined by its murders.

[gunshot]

[scream]

It seems to set the City of Angels apart,

capturing the world's attention.

The randomness of murder plays out

beneath the bright lights of Hollywood,

the boulevard of broken dreams,

and seeps into the veins of the American zeitgeist.

I'm Michael Connelly, and I came here nearly 40 years ago,

drawn by the movies, the music, and, yes, the murders.

This dark pantheon includes the Black Dahlia,

the Hillside Strangler, the Manson case,

the O.J. Simpson case, the slaying of Biggie Smalls,

just to name a few.

But perhaps no other case symbolizes an era in Los Angeles

more than the Wonderland massacre.

[man] Okay, cameras rolling.

[newscaster] Four murder victims were found today

in a posh Hollywood Hills home.

Police said all four had been beaten to death in a struggle

that splattered the interior of the house with blood.

[newscaster #2] A Manson-like mass murder.

[Connelly] The tentacles of the case would ensnare a porn star,

a corrupt judge, and drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Multiple celebrities would be swept into the story

by Liberace's boy toy, enigma Scott Thorson.

♪♪

To this day, no one has been held directly accountable.

For many, including me,

it has been a decades-long obsession.

♪♪

[birds calling]

[rustling]

I used to walk by this house

when I lived in Laurel Canyon,

and so it was always kind of a place of fascination.

This story ostensibly is about a massacre in a house in 1981,

but it's one of those rings that keeps going out into society.

By day, my job was working as a crime reporter in L.A.,

and I was writing about murders all the time.

And then I moved into this world where I'm writing novels,

and there's aspects of this story

that I don't think would work in fiction

because you actually have to be more believable in fiction.

When you're a newspaper reporter,

you can build sources.

You build sources through trust.

You build trust through accuracy in your stories.

I did that for a long time as a journalist,

but then when I was out of it, you know, writing fiction

and trying to make my fiction as real as possible,

doors opened open for me, and one of the people

who opened one of those doors was Rick Jackson.

[crew] Detective Rick Jackson. Marker.

You've worked a lot of cases.

Was there any case that had this kind of longevity in your life?

There are cases like that that continue

to rear their heads because of bizarre reasons,

but this has kind of set the bar, really,

as far as things in my career.

To me, it feels like a story

that could only be told

through the lens of Los Angeles.

Yeah, it's a Hollywood story.

♪♪

It's glitzy, yet it's really dark, too.

Laurel Canyon-- that was my old patrol area.

Laurel Canyon and the hills

on both the east and the west side of Hollywood.

So, I was up there a lot.

It's a beautiful, natural setting.

Rustic.

The aftermath of the hippie era goes on up there.

It's always been connected to creativity,

obviously music.

[Connelly] The music that really was important to me growing up

seemed to all come out of Laurel Canyon.

I think there's a real connection

between music and writing.

Yeah, it was a great setting for all that.

And then along comes

this brutal, brutal, brutal murder.

[man] There's quite a lot of blood spattered

upon the--the records.

[Connelly] This was the end of a generation

of inspiration and innocence.

[man] Apparent narcotics paraphernalia

is evident on the coffee table.

And it was all kind of fueled by these drugs

that were designed to addict.

People still know about this case 40 years later.

How much does it bother you

that people got away with murder?

You're retired from the LAPD, but you're a volunteer,

still closing cases.

Do you think it's worth opening it again?

[Jackson] It's not too old to look at it again.

Almost like Harry Bosch in the show,

where you spread everything out.

We do this kind of stuff all the time

40, even 50 years later.

It's the heat of a cold case.

You get that rush.

Right away, you're into it, and you treat it

just like a case that happened the day before.

♪♪

[Connelly] So, what happened about 4:00

when you came to work on July 1, 1981?

[Jackson] It was right close to the 4th of July weekend.

There were no detectives around at all,

but there was word in the station that

a multiple murder had taken place up in Laurel Canyon.

So, I thought, well,

I'm now officially working detective, so I should

go up there and protect the crime scene,

you know, not letting captains or other people

that shouldn't go in there just to

be a lookie-loo.

The first officer at the scene

made entry through a door in the back.

They could hear moaning.

[faint moaning]

They weren't sure it was an animal inside

or something that was wounded.

It was kind of a haunting description he provided of...

you know, making entry into that place.

But I never went inside 'cause I knew this case

was gonna go to downtown-- robbery homicide.

So, once the other detectives got there,

I left.

[crew] Detectives Tom Lange and Bob Souza. Marker.

[Lange] We were on call-out that weekend.

It was gonna be the 4th of July.

But murders don't occur between 9 and 5, Monday through Friday.

Tom got there about a half-hour before I did, I think.

I was still fighting holiday traffic.

I usually greeted Tom with a joke.

And so when I finally pulled up and I saw Tom on the sidewalk,

sleeves rolled up, clipboard out,

his game face on, I said, "Tom,

this isn't gonna fuck up my holiday weekend, is it?"

And he didn't even smile.

[crew] Okay, camera is rolling.

I remember the first thing Tom said to me.

"You got your galoshes ready?

I'm gonna give you a walkthrough."

[Lange] We are at 8763 Wonderland Drive.

[Souza] Tom had this great idea to videotape it.

[Lange] We are now in the residence.

The first level, the living-room area,

wherein victim number one was found.

There is evidence of ransacking in this room.

The first thing that struck me when I went in

is that this place is a mess. It's been turned.

Apparent narcotics paraphernalia is evident on the coffee table.

[Souza] It just smacked of a drug rip-off.

[Lange] Directly above victim one.

Barbara Richardson was in the front.

She was lying on her side below the sofa.

There was blood pooling where she probably was first struck,

struck so hard that she was knocked to the floor.

You could see blood on the wall,

that tailed up the wall,

which indicates that the, uh, the blood

was probably flung from a murder weapon.

The throw pillow on the south end of the couch

has a large bloodstain.

Not a spatter.

Definitely a soaking.

[Souza] There was more blood in that scene

that I'd ever seen at a crime scene.

[Lange] In front of you, we have a west wall.

Blood splattered.

This was the location that victim number two

was removed by a rescue unit.

Susie Launius--

she had been removed already and taken to Cedars-Sinai.

So, she was at the hospital,

but I was told she was not expected to live.

As we move to the south in a southerly direction,

we have victim number three.

Ron Launius is lying in bed.

He'd been attacked probably sleeping.

Apparent wounds to the head.

His skull was just in pieces.

Two hypodermic needles are observed on the nightstand--

one in the drawer, one on the nightstand.

On the east wall,

there's an apparent pellet gun hanging, barrel up.

Blood splatterings are evident on the south wall

above the victim's head

and the curtains to the west and northwest of the victim.

Now entering the room

where we find victims four and five.

Joy Miller was the person who was renting the house.

Victim number four.

She was lying on the bed,

half out of the bed and half in the bed.

Somebody took some kind of a striking object to her head,

to the point where it was just flattened from the eyes back.

There is extensive trauma to the head of victim number four.

Once again, extensive evidence of ransacking.

Panning towards the south, we have victim number five,

located in a partial sitting position.

Billy Deverell was on the ground

leaning up against a, uh, TV tray.

The TV was on.

He had defensive wounds on his hands.

It was clear that he got out of bed and probably fought back.

Again, extensive head wounds are apparent.

A hammer is noted in the corner of the bed.

Drawers have been...emptied.

The floors are extremely blood-stained around the bodies.

We've got five bodies in three different places.

So, the whole house is a crime scene.

You're gonna have evidence throughout the entire house.

These victims had been struck by some kind of a bat or a pipe,

which means they probably knew the people that did this.

-This is personal. -Did you have a sense

that this wasn't one maniac?

We never thought that it was one person.

Three, four, maybe even as many as five,

to be able to control that whole house the way they did.

We agreed right away that it was a get-back murder

just because of the-- the violence.

Four murder victims were found today

in a posh Hollywood Hills home.

Los Angeles police say the murder scene was so bloody

that the--and that the bodies had been in there

for 12 to 15 hours,

found by neighbors in the house

located just blocks from Governor Brown's home.

A fifth person survived the attack.

She is now in critical condition from severe cuts and bruises

on her head and neck.

The identities of the victims have not been released,

but police say they were not celebrities.

[Lange] We had probably a hundred people

in the press and the trucks and cameras.

And just about two and a half miles

as the crow flies to the west

was the Manson killings

and Sharon Tate right over the hill,

uh, which was, of course, in '69, 12 years earlier.

♪♪

[Connelly] Okay, so, murder marches on in Los Angeles.

But how soon did you arrive at who these people were?

First thing you wanna do

is run their records locally, federally,

to see what they are, what they've been arrested for.

Turned out one of our officers

knew Ron Launius as a murder suspect

on a well-known case-- the Vic Weiss case.

Weiss was a sports promoter who was murdered,

found in a Universal City parking lot

in the trunk of his car.

And Ron Launius was one of the suspects.

[Connelly] At the time of his death,

Ron Launius was associated with several open murder cases.

He had already served prison time

for trafficking heroin and cocaine.

So, right out of the gate,

did law enforcement think this was drug-related?

It was the cocaine salad days. Let's face it.

We had Hollywood on one side,

San Fernando Valley on the other.

♪♪

[Connelly] The male victims were part

of what became known as the Wonderland Gang.

It was a loose affiliation of thieves and drug dealers.

They sold drugs, but they also stole drugs from other dealers.

It was a common practice,

given that no one involved would actually call the police.

To infiltrate these gangs,

police officers would go undercover.

♪♪

[crew] Narcotics detective Bobbie Eggar. A and C. Mark.

So, about 18 years of working narcotics

during a pretty amazing evolution of drugs.

What was that like?

We saw a lot. We went from pills were the big issue

to marijuana into a lot of cocaine.

Back in the day, cocaine was very powerful.

Everybody that had money had cocaine.

And it was your way of showing people

that you were powerful and you had money.

Tell us a little bit about your undercover work.

What was your assignment and how did you carry it out?

When I first went to narcotics,

we tried to see if we could infiltrate

the entertainment industry.

I mean, just playing a role

kind of enticed me.

Can I convince you that I'm a drug dealer?

[Connelly] What was your undercover name?

-Angela. -And so was that when you were

doing the kind of personal buys in the clubs and stuff?

Yes.

We were going to bars, restaurants,

places that we knew a lot

of drug trafficking was going on

kind of out in the open,

so we can become friendly with them and

eventually make a buy from them.

It was pretty cutthroat.

There was no loyalty except to the drug.

The people involved in those crimes,

which Wonderland was-- they were all users--

their only loyalty was to that drug

because they needed it.

They'd do anything to get that drug.

We're here on the 8700 block in Wonderland,

just off of Laurel Canyon.

What we have -- four dead and one injured.

A neighbor heard what he thought were screams

very early this morning.

My girlfriend woke me up and said,

"Hey, there's something going on."

And I was half-asleep and just kind of said,

"Well, we've heard it before, you know."

-[reporter] Screams? Uh... -Yeah, really torturous screams.

So, the murders occurred probably just after 4 a.m.

It was almost 4 p.m.

before anybody did anything about it.

But in the meantime, they had all these visitors

who just helped themselves to whatever was left.

♪♪

In one instance, the guy told us he went in there

and he stepped right over Susie Launius,

and he heard her moan,

and somebody said, "Hey, I think she's still alive."

And he said, "Ah, she's gonna be dead anyway.

Let's just get outta here."

♪♪

[Jackson] I never worked narcotics,

but in murder investigations, quite a number, percentage-wise,

involve drugs somehow.

[Souza] So, a couple of days later,

we're sitting around the station,

and we got a call from a guy named Fat Howard.

-[telephone rings] -Tom took the call.

[Lange] He says, "Well, I got a guy with me,

and, uh, he says he knows

some of the victims up there, and--

and he's worried about his girlfriend.

Maybe she was hurt and in the hospital.

I think maybe you ought to talk to him."

I said, "Okay, Howard. Fine. Where are you calling from?"

He said, "Well, I'm at the house."

I said, "Okay. What are you talking about? Your house?"

"No. I'm at the-- at the Wonderland house."

I said, "You're at the murder house where it just happened?

Well, where's your friend?" He said, "Well, he's inside."

I said, "Oh, shit."

So, I grabbed Bob, and we beat it back up to the house.

♪♪

The tape has been ripped down. The door is wide open.

So, we went in the front

with weapons out because we don't know

what we're dealing with in here.

Not everybody cracks into a crime scene

where four people had been murdered

and just walks right in.

It just takes a set of nuts to do something like that.

[man] It smelled like death. I saw a lot of blood.

I saw where everybody was murdered.

I saw the place my girlfriend was.

There was this huge blood spot there.

That didn't make me feel too good.

It just, you know, it just was bad.

[Lange] So, we walked in, and we hear some movement in the back,

and there's some guy back there on all fours

picking up pills and stuffing them in his pocket.

We had to yell at him two or three times.

He was--He was so engrossed in what he was doing.

-[Lange] Yeah. -Finally I yelled,

"Police officers! Freeze!"

[Lange] Come to find out, it's David Lind.

[Connelly] David Clay Lind was a biker, heroin addict,

and a member of the Aryan Nation

who had befriended the leader of the Wonderland Gang,

Ron Launius, when they were in prison together.

[reporter] One of the victims was bailed out of jail

on car-stealing charges

by this man, Howard Harry Cook, a local underworld figure.

This man, David Lind, a bounty hunter from Sacramento,

was away at the time when the murders occurred,

but his 22-year-old companion was killed.

[Connelly] Lind's girlfriend was one of the victims--

Barbara Richardson.

For some reason, he felt that she was still alive

because the media-- it had been reported

that one of the women was still alive at Cedars-Sinai,

so he assumed it was her, and it wasn't.

♪♪

But this was the first break we had in this whole case,

so we ended up taking him down to the station.

He knows the people. He's been there before.

So, we're gonna be straight with him.

We're not gonna lie to him.

We're not gonna play games with him.

We're gonna be very honest. I said, uh,

"Dave, Barbara's dead." He went berserk.

Just yelling and screaming.

-[Souza] Absolutely. -He throws a chair.

He starts taking all these pills out of his pocket.

He's slapping them on the table in front of us.

"This is a rainbow," and he puts it in his mouth.

Finally, he gets calmed down, and we said,

"Do you want to tell us who did it?

Who did this, David? You know. Tell us."

He starts talking right away.

"This got to be the robbery."

He tells us that he and Launius and Deverell

went up and robbed this dope dealer,

Eddie Nash, two days earlier.

And he's continually taking pills.

"This is a dragonfly.

This is a Christmas tree. This is a raindrop."

He's getting higher than hell,

and he starts to talk about John Holmes, porn actor.

We knew the name.

♪♪

He says, "Holmes kind of set this robbery up.

He left the back door open for us to get in."

[Lind] We entered a bedroom,

a guest bedroom, by a sliding glass door

that had been left open by John Holmes

the previous evening for the purpose of the robbery.

I looked through the door of the bedroom down the hallway,

and I could see Diles.

It was Nash's bodyguard.

[Lange] They got in some kind of a struggle.

Lind had an accidental discharge on his weapon

that grazed Greg Diles,

who was a big bodyguard that Nash had.

I asked Nash for the combination and/or keys.

He was rather reluctant to give me that information,

so therefore I took the pistol I had in my hand,

stuck it into his groin,

and then removed it and stuck it in his mouth and cocked it.

Talked about putting his gun in Nash's mouth.

Yeah, "One of them, it had the son of a bitch down,

and I put my gun in his mouth and he was crying and screaming.

And we got into his safe."

[Lind] And I told him I wanted the information,

or I was gonna blow his head off.

♪♪

[Lange] They removed dope from the safe.

They said they got about 100,000 bucks.

And they took all that loot back to Wonderland,

where Holmes was waiting for them.

So, that's the link-up.

That's where Holmes became kind of a link between Nash--

But--But Lind's telling you about this?

So, like, Lind appears to be a gold mine.

-Oh, yeah. -But it's all stuff

you have to follow up on, but he laid out who robbed Nash.

-[Lange] Yeah. -And who was it?

He told us what happened.

[Connelly] It was Launius, Deverell, Lind, and...

[Lange] Lind, and Tracy McCourt

was the driver, the getaway driver,

was in a car, stolen car, out in front of Nash's house,

waiting for the three to come out.

And Nash wanted these people that did this, who robbed him--

he wanted them killed.

Every one of them, he wanted dead.

He wanted revenge.

He wanted to get back at these people.

[Connelly] You had not heard the name Nash?

[Lange] No. First time we heard any of this.

John Holmes, same. We hadn't heard any of this.

This was a Scooby-Doo moment. Believe me.

Scooby-Doo moment. Yeah.

This is how we got the first break.

We found out how this was probably motivated.

Now we know that he's connected to Ed Nash.

And I knew Nash from Hollywood.

He started at a hot dog stand,

and that grew into, uh,

he became quite a nightclub owner.

And it wasn't just entertainment he was into.

He got into drugs as well.

[Connelly] Eddie Nash's real name was Adel Nasrallah.

Born in Palestine,

Nash came to Los Angeles in the early '50s

with dreams of becoming an actor.

Here's my boy. Nash, meet Mr. Butler.

-[man] Go! -[gunshot]

[Connelly] Other than a single episode of The Cisco Kid,

Nash's acting career went nowhere.

♪♪

[Eggar] Eddie Nash wanted to be an actor.

People come to L.A.

with that big dream.

So he's just another story on the boulevard of broken dreams?

He was, uh, just another story.

[Connelly] Can you talk about when

Eddie Nash got on your radar?

When I was working

that original undercover assignment back in '75, '76,

it was the first time I had ever met Eddie Nash.

He had many clubs in the Hollywood area.

It was all about, "Look at me. I own this place."

You know, "You want to be somebody,

you need to align yourself with me."

He was claiming Mafia ties.

He was claiming Israeli Mafia ties.

Drugs were everywhere.

Eddie Nash was always around in the clubs selling drugs.

He was arrogant. Um, I thought he was dirty.

He had a bad smell.

I didn't like being around him.

Did he ever get suspicious of you?

Yeah, I was asked once to do a smaller buy,

and he had his bodyguard,

Greg Diles, put his hand on my back

like he was checking for a wire or something.

You know, you got power people,

you got celebrities.

Liberace was invested,

and John Holmes, the porno king, was there.

Quite often, we would see him out and about in Hollywood.

[horn honks, siren wailing]

[crew] Speed. Mark. Marker.

[Holmes] Keeping track of the films and averaging out

how many girls you go to bed with in each film helped a lot.

Just slightly over 14,000.

He was doing longer feature films at that time.

This is when he was being paid his most,

and it's at the same time he started into drugs.

[crew] Deputy D.A. Robert Schirn.

I knew John Holmes

because we had something in the office

called the Pornography Task Force.

♪♪

We'd meet every couple of months

and discuss the current trends

of the types of movies they were making,

whether the movies were, in fact, pornographic

and should be prosecuted.

♪♪

These meetings were some of the best-attended meetings

because we'd show clips from some of the new

pornographic movies as part of our presentation.

♪♪

Oh, yeah, Johnny Wadd.

His movies weren't the type that we would want to prosecute,

but he was still probably the biggest star at that time

in the porno movie industry.

He has a weapon.

[Schirn] So, Tom Lange

came to me and said, "We have a witness

that we think can really help solve our case."

They told me that Holmes was

right in the middle of everything,

that he could connect the Eddie Nash group

with the Wonderland group.

So, from the moment Eddie Nash's name comes up,

what's-- what's the next move?

We wanted to talk to Nash right from the beginning.

So, we approached our lieutenant,

who went in and talked to our captain.

Our lieutenant came right back out, said, "No,

we don't want you to talk to Ed Nash."

So, you're told don't approach

Eddie Nash yet or ever?

No, just, it was, "Don't talk to him."

How did you get around that?

Well, the sheriff's narcotics had contacted us,

and they had an undercover officer

that had bought dope at Nash's house.

And once they had that information,

they got a search warrant for the house.

And once they had the warrant, they contacted Tom and I

and invited us along because

they knew we were handling that Laurel Canyon murder.

We had information that, uh, Eddie Nash

was in possession of a quantity of cocaine.

And, uh, as a result of that information,

we obtained a search warrant.

[Schirn] I helped write the search warrant,

and there was not mention at all that there was

a murder being investigated in the background.

So, I was sitting in a car

while the sheriff's bureau was conducting a tactical entry.

They wanted to secure the premises.

[Lange] Their tactic was to surround the house,

knock out all the windows, flash bang the front door.

This was a so-called no-knock warrant.

It's about as no-knock as you could get, I guess.

[Schirn] Suddenly, we heard some gunshots

coming from the residence.

Diles opened up on the team,

fired on them with a nine-millimeter.

So, they returned fire with a shotgun.

Finally, they realized it was the police and surrendered.

We found a quantity of cocaine in the safe,

along with a number of Quaaludes,

in addition to approximately $6,000 in cash.

[Lange] So they called us in,

and we found a bunch of, uh, affidavits and warrants

and other intelligence reports beneath his bed.

So, it's pretty obvious to us, then,

that he had somebody inside.

When does he know you guys are on

to what happened at Wonderland?

-Right then. No, he knew then. -At that point.

He says, "What the fuck are you guys doing here?"

"What are homicide guys doing?" He knew then.

♪♪

[Schirn] When I was finally allowed to go to the location,

the one suspect that I saw was Greg Diles,

who was the 350-pound bodyguard of Eddie Nash.

He was laying on a pool table without any clothes on

and handcuffed behind his back.

-[camera shutter clicking] -[man] Hi, Greg!

♪♪

[Schirn] The case was assigned to a deputy in my unit

named Ron Coen,

and he did file charges against both Nash and Diles

as a result of the evidence recovered.

[crew] Deputy District Attorney Ron Coen, marker.

So, this massacre happens in the, uh,

you know, on Wonderland Avenue.

At what point did that become your case?

It became my case right after the first raid

on Eddie Nash's house.

Bob Schirn, my boss,

came in and gave me the case.

The next day, Eddie Nash was arrested for dope.

Diles, not only for the drugs,

but he fired at a deputy sheriff,

so it was assault on a peace officer.

And later, I basically had all cases

that dealt with Eddie Nash

and anybody that was connected to Eddie Nash.

[Connelly] So you became the Eddie Nash guy.

How big was Eddie Nash that he would get a prosecutor

assigned to all things...

Well, he was suspected to be a major crime figure.

And I was aware that he was a suspect in the murders,

along with Greg Diles and others.

And the issue was to try and eventually get to that.

Okay, so where does John Holmes come into this?

John Holmes was suspected from the very beginning

of being involved.

Um, and the first I hear about John Holmes,

uh, was from Tom Lange and Bob Souza.

[Lange] Holmes was a linchpin, number one on our list.

And so we put out a warrant on him, did we?

Yeah, and he was hanging out at these little dingy motels

all along Ventura Boulevard. -Ventura Boulevard.

[Lange] Yeah, running around with his girlfriend.

He was on the run, basically.

He was on the run, basically, 'cause he knew what happened,

and he knew sooner or later we'd be looking for him.

[Connelly] John Holmes' mistress, Dawn Schiller,

learned of the massacre at Wonderland

while hiding with John in a motel.

[reporter] We have just received tape from Los Angeles

on today's developments in those gruesome murders in the...

[Schiller] I knew the house,

and my heart just went into my gut

because I just knew there was something wrong.

He got back, and I didn't say anything.

He just looked exhausted. He took, like,

a couple of Valiums and laid down and went to sleep.

He tossed and turned and he screamed, "Blood, blood!

There was so much blood."

That's when the door was kicked in,

and we were arrested by the police.

[siren wails, police radio chatter]

[Connelly] On July 11, 1981,

one day after the raid on Nash's home,

and ten days after the murders,

Lange and Souza were told

that John Holmes was being held in protective custody

at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown L.A.

[crew] Detective Mac McClain. Marker.

Let's start at the beginning.

John Holmes is taken into protective custody.

Just kind of talk me through what happened.

I had heard about the murders on the news,

but that was about the extent of it.

And the next thing I know, they call me and they goes,

"You're gonna be in charge of the night watch

guarding John Holmes."

They said, "We're concerned that Ed Nash and his people

might try to kill him, so we want to protect him."

I had heard of him even before the murders,

you know, being this big porno star,

and he did this detective series called Johnny Wadd.

But then I had heard from some of the other policemen that,

you know, he was hooked on drugs,

and he went downhill from being a famous porn star

to just a drug addict.

I guess at that point,

they weren't looking at him as a suspect.

They were looking at him as a witness if he'd open up.

At that time, yeah.

I first reached him at the Biltmore,

and they said that he's up there

with his girlfriend and his wife,

which I thought was unusual.

Yeah, I mean, did you say, like, "What?"

That's exactly what I said. "What?"

John was trying to work out a deal with the police,

and, you know, he called and said, "Will you come?

Because I'll need you."

My private understanding of our relationship

was that I was his mistress, and we all lived together,

and that was that.

And I accepted that that was good

because I loved Sharon at that point.

I wouldn't want to be without her.

[McClain] And they're ordering lobster and steak,

and I go, "What?"

I goes, "And you let them do that?"

He goes, "Yeah," and I goes, "Well, that stops on my watch.

He's not gonna be getting any steak and lobster."

For some reason, I didn't trust him.

[Connelly] While Mac McClain stood guard

at the Biltmore Hotel, seven detectives,

including Tom Lange, Bob Souza,

and prosecutor Bob Schirn, questioned John Holmes.

[Schirn] What Holmes told us in the interview at the Biltmore

clearly establishes who was involved in the robbery.

He was useful in the interview to at least identify

David Lind, Ron, and Billy

as the persons who had gone through Nash's residence,

robbed him,

and then in retaliation, they got killed themselves.

So, he started off strong, gave you stuff you needed.

You must have been pretty hopeful.

[Schirn] Well, he started off very well.

You know, John told us he was buying dope from

both the Wonderland people and from Eddie Nash,

and he bought more than he could afford,

and that's what started the, uh, bad blood.

But then he gave a story that was just so unbelievable.

He was kidnapped by two people

that coerced him into going into the house

and leaving the door unlocked.

But he never looked at their face, could not identify anyone.

You could sort of tell that he was just afraid to name names.

The one detective who immediately

started asking questions was Tom Lange.

He sort of challenged Holmes through some of the answers

he had given us, but Holmes kept saying,

"No, no, I'm being square with your guys.

I'm telling the truth."

And so the officers asked

if Holmes would take a lie detector.

And Holmes, with the advice of his attorney,

said, "I will not take a polygraph."

So, Holmes-- did he cooperate?

It seemed like there was a long dance

where he was just taking advantage of getting to stay

at the Biltmore or something.

You just--You just said it. He's taking advantage.

He's got the suite at the Biltmore,

the vice president's suite.

He's--He's ordering this expensive scotch.

The way you treat a dope addict under these conditions,

is you don't put him up in the vice presidential suite

and feed him steak and scotch

with his girlfriend and his wife.

[Schirn] After the interview was over,

you know, we all got together, and one of the detectives

sort of said, "What bullshit."

So, he ultimately refused to cooperate, and he was cut loose?

-He was allowed to leave? -Yes, yes.

And when he was cut loose from the Biltmore,

where do you suppose the first place he went?

We found him one hour later at Ed Nash's house.

♪♪

[Souza] After he just told us he was terrified of Ed.

Yeah, he's like, "This guy is terrible.

He's a terrible guy, and I don't want anything to do with him."

[Connelly] After the raid, Eddie Nash's house

was under constant police surveillance.

In addition to John Holmes,

there was another frequent visitor--Scott Thorson.

At the time, little was known about Scott Thorson,

other than that he was Liberace's young lover

and a frequent visitor to Nash's clubs and home.

[Lange] We'd heard of Scott Thorson.

We knew that he was at Nash's place early on.

He was somebody that we wanted to talk to,

but we never got that shot, never got that chance.

We didn't hear from him for, like, eight years,

nine years later.

[Connelly] It would be nearly a decade

before anyone discovered what Scott Thorson knew

about the murders.

Back in 1981, all law enforcement could do

was keep the pressure on John Holmes and Eddie Nash.

So, someone overdosed in the house and died.

♪♪

When someone overdoses with drugs,

there's a good chance, a great likelihood

that there's still drugs in the house.

That's probable cause. Let's make another raid.

We did another search at the house.

Same routine, this time with our own SWAT.

No shots fired this time.

They went in, got more dope, got more money.

So, we had three of these things now, and, uh...

[Connelly] But you weren't allowed to talk to him?

You were just allowed to search him, search his property?

Yes. "Don't talk to Ed Nash."

[Souza] I know we could have gotten

some information out of him, but we didn't know

what was really going on behind the scenes at that point.

No. [chuckles]

But it was pretty heavy, as we found out.

So, I mean, I'm the amateur sitting outside this.

Did it occur to you that he's got his hands

on somebody in the hierarchy... -Oh, yeah.

...that doesn't want that to come out.

-That's right. -So, you cannot talk to him?

Probably. You know, we haven't proven that.

We don't know for sure.

But it fits with some of your assumptions, right?

It certainly sounds pretty damn good to me.

[Connelly] The three raids on Nash's house

resulted in Eddie Nash and Greg Diles

being charged with possession of controlled substances

with intent to sell.

[judge] The defendant will be committed

to the custody of Sheriff of Los Angeles County,

uh, pending the posting of bail

in the sum of $10 million in this matter.

[Connelly] During the bail hearing,

detectives Bob Souza and Tom Lange were in the courtroom.

Lange testified as to why

he thought Eddie Nash was a flight risk.

Approximately one hour after Mr. Diles was booked,

Mr. Nash was observed

to leave his residence with two flight bags in a run.

Mr. Nasrallah is not going to flee.

[Connelly] In one of the many surprising moves in this case,

Judge Ricks cut the bail by half.

All right, I'll reduce it to $5 million, then.

That pissed us off. That was total bullshit.

It seemed that somebody else had an agenda.

Said, "Well, how are we gonna get to the bottom of this?

We need to know what's going on."

So, this is the type of crap that we were up with

and not used to.

[Connelly] Pending drug charges brought by Ron Coen,

both Greg Diles and Eddie Nash were released on bail.

Prohibited from questioning Eddie Nash,

Lange and Souza decided to question Susan Launius,

who had regained consciousness

and was being guarded by police at the hospital.

[reporter] A female victim

found bleeding to death for 12 hours in a bedroom

was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

The 25-year-old woman underwent four hours of surgery

to repair damage to her head, neck, and one finger.

[McClain] After the Biltmore,

I was responsible for guarding

the victim, Susan Launius.

We had a list of people that were allowed to come in there,

and we were checking ID.

[Lange] She was our only link initially to what was going on.

She was there. That makes her a witness.

Not just a victim, but a witness.

She may have seen something. She may have heard something.

We don't know.

I found this tape recently going through a box in my garage.

I didn't even realize I had it. It's a three-minute cassette,

and it's the first attempt to interview Susie Launius.

It's a couple of weeks later.

The doctor didn't want us around her for a while

because she wasn't expected to make it, and she did.

So, this is the first attempt at just to try to --

try to get some direction as to a suspect,

to see if she might have known who did this

or if she could give us anything at all.

[voice breaks]

She's getting stressed, and that's about it.

[recorder clicks off]

We sound a little stern.

You know, we're trying to get some information from her.

We wanted her to realize that this is all business.

And, "I'm sorry you feel bad,

but can you remember anything at all?" type of thing.

The last comment you heard, she's really getting stressed.

And we knew we weren't gonna get anything after that.

[Connelly] With no new breakthroughs

from Susan Launius, Lange and Souza reached out

to one of their last remaining leads,

John Holmes' wife, Sharon.

So, we wanted to talk to Sharon Holmes

because nobody had sat down with a formal interview

other than this thing at the hotel

where she wasn't talking about anything to anybody.

We went to see Sharon at her place.

We said, "Okay, when did you first see John

after this happened?"

She says, "Well, I think it was July 2nd

that he came to the house."

I said, "Are you sure it was the 2nd?"

And she wasn't sure. I think she was incorrect.

I think she meant he came to the house on the 1st

because he was all bloody,

and he said if I could draw him a hot bath, he'd take a bath.

So, he took all his bloody clothing off,

and he took a bath and everything else.

I'm thinking this is really good stuff.

But she said she would never testify,

she would never give us anything on John, period.

♪♪

[Connelly] Despite hitting roadblocks with witnesses,

Lange and Souza continued to comb through the evidence,

building their case with prosecutor Ron Coen.

So, what was your relationship like with Lange and Souza?

They were--they are the best investigators

I've ever worked with.

♪♪

And they knew the case backwards and forwards.

[Connelly] And so, as these guys are investigating

the quadruple murder, updating you on what they got,

you kind of focused on John Holmes.

From the start, was it,

how do we get John Holmes to flip?

Or was it John Holmes might be a murderer?

At that first interview in the hotel room

when he had room service, he was just playing the game,

but he was a witness.

And as the investigation went on,

it looked like, well, maybe he's a suspect.

So, did something happen that changed the view

of letting Holmes be running around out there loose?

[Lange] Once the palm print became evident,

the case changed.

With the palm print of John Holmes

on that bed railing, in the position that it was

above the shattered skull of Ron Launius,

who he hated and feared, it was a big question--

what the hell is he doing there?

That was the game changer, right?

That was the game changer right there.

No longer was he a witness.

He was a suspect. He was more than a suspect.

He was a defendant now.

As soon as that came out, I had enough to charge.

He's a killer. So, I filed the case.

As soon as it happens, Holmes takes off.

So, Holmes' girlfriend, Dawn, takes off with him.

We don't know where she is.

Within 24 hours of our release from the, the Biltmore,

John and I took off.

We got to his sister's house in Montana,

and she let us stay for a couple days.

A couple days later, we got a phone call

from his mother in Ohio, telling us

the FBI was just there, and they were looking for him.

So, where are we gonna go?

And I said, "Well, I was raised in Florida.

Let's go to Florida."

Dawn's brother is concerned

that Holmes has been beating up his sister.

He doesn't like Holmes.

He knows he's on drugs all the time.

[Souza] And we convinced him that her life was in danger.

So, we kind of won him over as a friend, which paid off later.

So, we're in the office one day, and he calls.

[telephone rings]

He says, "I heard from my sister Dawn.

They're in Florida."

♪♪

[Schiller] We made it down to Florida,

and we stopped at one of the cheapest hotels there,

the Fountainhead Hotel.

And it was a, you know, rundown kind of transition hotel.

♪♪

[Lange] So, it's decided that we would go down there

and see if we could find John.

So, we find the hotel,

we set up around the hotel,

and we think that it's gonna be a long night.

Well, it was only about five minutes,

and there he is.

There's a party going on next door.

We go in there. Oh, he's--

Now he's going into his Johnny Wadd routine.

Speaking of business, I'd like to get this over with

as soon as we can.

I have to get back to the hotel and get some rest.

He's cocky and all this other stuff.

We cuff him up, take him out. The next day, we get on a plane.

[engine roars]

On the plane, he's now gotten very quiet.

He's beginning to realize what's going on.

He says, "I gotta tell you, I had nothing to do

with any of this. It was Nash. Nash did it all."

But we get an admission, very important admission.

"Yes, I let him in."

So we land, and Bob books him

for the murders.

[reporter] Los Angeles police

said today they have arrested porno movie star John Holmes,

a suspect in a quadruple murder

in the Los Angeles area this summer.

He was arrested in Florida this weekend

by two Los Angeles homicide detectives.

Holmes now faces murder charges for the four bludgeoning deaths

that took place in the Hollywood Hills last July.

Authorities say Holmes was in the house the night

the four people were killed, but they would not say whether

Holmes took part in the murders.

[Gates] We are taking our facts

and our evidence to the district attorney tomorrow,

and hopeful that the district attorney will see fit

to file a complaint of murder on John Holmes

on--on that quadruple, quadruple murder.

[Connelly] So, Daryl Gates has a press conference

announcing the arrest, and, um, that's pretty good.

I mean, that's less than six months

from this very complicated murder.

You've--You've made a case, so you're feeling pretty good?

Oh, I'm feeling great.

Information came out through Holmes' statement

that, uh, shortly after the robbery,

Eddie Nash, uh,

forced Holmes to name the perpetrators of the robbery,

had Holmes led at gunpoint to the house

with unnamed killers.

[Connelly] Did you all ever say, like,

"This is never gonna go to trial.

This is an exercise in squeezing Holmes

so he cooperates, and then we take Nash to trial"?

Yeah. We call it the domino theory.

We're gonna get Holmes, we're gonna convict him,

and he's gonna make a deal.

We got the robbery laid out. They had a good case.

♪♪

[Connelly] But the Wonderland case,

shrouded in secrets,

was never going to be an easy win.

♪♪

This is the secret history of Hollywood,

that all these people move on this underground level

and know each other and connect, and to me,

it's always astounding 'cause this is such a big place.

[Jackson] The interconnections keep jumping out at you

much more than you'd ever think they would.

It's like coincidence after coincidence after coincidence.

At some point, it's no longer a coincidence.

There are people that just keep showing up.

I think we were talking about this one day,

and then you mentioned the name Scott Thorson.

You said something along the lines of,

"You got to talk to this guy."

And now here we are.

Yeah. [chuckles]

Just listening to him,

it's just-- you're gonna shake your head.

I mean, you can't help but shake your head

when you hear his story.

[Connelly] Though never implicated in the murders,

Scott Thorson, a.k.a. Jess Marlow,

held the key to unlocking the pieces of the puzzle.

[crew] Scott Thorson, a.k.a. Jess Marlow, marker.

So, you're at the center. You're the center of a wheel

of this story that's gone 40 years.

And I know it's 40 years ago,

but can you tell me what

Eddie said to Diles when he said,

"Take John, go up to-- go back to Wonderland?"

"Kill these people." He wanted...

He wanted them dead. Eddie Nash was evil.

He didn't have a heart.

You know, he wanted that revenge.

And he enjoyed everything that happened up there.

That's when I really got scared, you know,

uh, because I felt that I knew too much.

So, you lived under this threat or this fear?

Absolutely I did.

I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know?

And so it scared the hell out of me.

♪♪