The Other Hollywood

by Legs McNeil

Then he proceeded to tell me about the robbery the day before—that he had set up—and how it was carried out in a manner demeaning to Eddie Nash.

  Then he told me that these people—who had cut him in for drugs and money—had been killed.

  I said, “What do you mean they were killed?”

  John said, “Well, Greg Diles picked me up on Santa Monica Boulevard in the late morning/early afternoon and took me to Eddie’s house.”

  When they got there, Eddie started flipping through the pages of John’s black address book and telling him that he was going to hunt his family down if John didn’t tell him who had done it and where they were.

  Eddie said, “We need to know how to get to them.”

  So John explained to Eddie Nash that they had dogs at the Wonderland Avenue house. They also had a gated stairway and that they had to know you or they wouldn’t let you in.

  John also told Nash that they had a hidden part by the garage, leading to the gate. So if someone looked out the door and saw it was John, they would open the gate—it had a buzzer—and go back into the house.

  So that’s what they did—they went to the house on Wonderland Avenue and buzzed John in. The three men went in, and Gregory Diles went with John—he had his arm in a grip—and took John through the doorway and slammed him up against the wall and held a gun to him and said, “Keep your mouth shut, and don’t you dare close your eyes.”

  Gregory Diles held him in the doorway with a big grin on his face. John said something that always stuck in my mind—he said, “Diles would look at me, and he’d roll his eyes, and it was like looking at the shark in Jaws when it was ready to eat someone. You know, those cold dead eyes?”

  SUSAN LAUNIUS (SURVIVOR OF THE WONDERLAND AVENUE GANG MURDERS): I was laying down on the bed beside Ronnie Launius, watching TV. And it seemed like there was a bunch of people coming in and out.

  Then it seemed like people were moving faster.

  I don’t remember nothing after that.

  SHARON HOLMES: John told me that the men had beaten these people to death and ransacked the place—and I’d heard enough. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can tell you more appalling than that they participated in a murder or were responsible for it.

  I asked, “You stood there and watched this?”

  John said, “Yes.”

  I said, “These people were your friends.”

  And he said, “They were dirt. They were filth. It was them or me.”

  I didn’t really want to know a whole lot more at that point because I felt if he were told that he had to hit someone or beat someone—under threat—he would do it.

  It’s my understanding that there was blood everywhere and that everybody must have been splattered with it. So I said, “And they let you go because you did this?”

  John said, “Yes, but they drove me there and left me there. I had to find my way back to my car looking like I looked.”

  He ran, and he walked. He said he would’ve tried to hitchhike—he’d done it before—but not the way he looked, all bloody. He walked back to Santa Monica Boulevard to pick up his car and then drove over to my house.

  I don’t think I said a whole lot after that.

  Then, John went back to the Valley, where Dawn was.

  DAWN SCHILLER: When John finally got back—he was gone overnight and came back about midday—I didn’t say anything about the murders, of course.

  John just looked exhausted. I never saw his eyes so red. They were bloodshot red, as if he’d been crying. I mean, we had been up for days, but his eyes were just brilliant red. And he was in the weirdest mood—just very low. It was different from being mad. I mean, this was something he wouldn’t even take out on me, you know?

  So he took a couple of Valium and laid down and went to sleep. I was still up. And I watched him toss and turn and then he screamed, “BLOOD! BLOOD! THERE IS SO MUCH BLOOD!”

  That was the final gut stabber for me.

  The day before, things had been hopeful—we had money and a big pile of coke—there was hope. And then he comes back a day later, and the money’s gone, the big pile of coke is gone, and he’s screaming about blood.

  No, this wasn’t good.

  CHRIS COX: I don’t know why Eddie Nash didn’t whack John Holmes; I have no idea. Holmes was the Judas that set Eddie up to be robbed for twelve hundred dollars or whatever it was—and two-and-a-half ounces of dope. I mean, Holmes did it, red-handed, acknowledged and admitted, you know? So, I don’t know.

  I guess Eddie liked celebrity.

  “Think This Will Fuck Up My Fourth of July Weekend?”

  LOS ANGELES

  1981

  BOB SOUZA: It was the start of the Fourth of July weekend and I was in the Robbery/Homicide office until about noon. I wanted to get a jump on the holiday weekend, so I left early. And as I was walking out, somebody said, “Hey Souza, you guys are up for Hollywood this weekend.” Meaning me and my partner—Tom Lange—were on call if anyone got murdered in Hollywood.

  So I said, “Yeah, there’ll probably be a triple ax murder in the Hollywood Hills just to fuck up my Fourth of July weekend.”

  LINDA MITCHELL: I’m a paramedic with the Los Angeles City Fire Department. On July 1, 1981, just shortly before 4:00 P.M., our dispatcher called and said we had a possible dead body at 8763 Wonderland Avenue.

  When we arrived, in bedroom number one, I saw a female. Susan Launius was lying on the floor. She had an obvious head injury. And she had an amputated finger.

  It was a fresh amputation.

  And there was blood. It was mainly on the wall right behind her head. We couldn’t determine what the damage was caused by—but she had a lot of deep wounds on the top of her head.

  The patient was semiconscious. Her vital signs were within stable limits. But she was completely incoherent. She was moaning more than anything, and she was mumbling a word occasionally, but it didn’t make any sense to me.

  We couldn’t even get her name out of her. We just had her as Jane Doe.

  We examined all the other four victims at the residence and pronounced all of them deceased. I pronounced two of the people; my partner pronounced the other two. We are not the coroner. We couldn’t determine the time of death. They were, very obviously, dead, though.

  I then transported the victim, Susan Launius, to Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

  TOM LANGE: I was out at a friend’s home in Agua Dulce, out in Antelope Valley. He had a few acres out there, and several horses, right on the edge of the Angeles Crest Forest. So I was just relaxing, fooling around, when I got called to the phone. It was Lieutenant Ron Lewis from Detective Headquarters who said that we had what appeared to be four victims down in the Laurel Canyon area. Lewis did not give a lot of information on the phone, but he did tell me roughly how to get there.

  I knew where Bob was—out by his pool, napping. So I called him and told him to meet me there.

  BOB SOUZA: I went home and got in my flotation device—was cruising around the pool and having a couple beers—when the phone started ringing off the hook. It just rang and rang. So I finally got up to answer it, and it was Detective Headquarters, and the voice said, “Where the fuck have you been? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you since four o’clock!”

  I said, “Well, I’ve been here. I didn’t hear the phone.”

  I forget who it was, but he said, “Well, goddamn, man, we got a big one up in Laurel Canyon. Looks like it could be a quadruple murder.”

  I figured they were screwing with me, so I said, “Yeah, right,” and hung up. But he called right back and said, “Bob, I’m not shittin’ you. Lewis is upset, and he wants your ass out there.” Ron Lewis was our lieutenant.

  I said, “Are you kidding me?”

  He says, “Shit no, we got four down in the house and another one in the hospital. It might turn out to be five.”

  I said, “Oh, shit,” got the address, and headed out.

  TOM LANGE: Oh boy, it was a madhouse. I’d never
been to this area before—it was kinda secluded, up narrow winding mountain roads, right off of Laurel Canyon.

  The first thing I saw when I arrived was just a mass of media—trucks and antennas. It was difficult getting into the location, and once I did it was later in the afternoon.

  I was met by several of our people—various lab people, print people, photo people, criminalists—a lot of people, mostly milling around.

  BOB SOUZA: I mean, this was absolutely incredible. From the bottom of the hill all the way up to this house, all you could see was a string of red lights. I had to get somebody to move their black-and-white so I could get in. I drove on the sidewalk half the way up and parked in a driveway behind somebody’s car.

  I mean, it was just incredible. The press were already there, and there was a helicopter circling.

  Just the typical mess.

  TOM LANGE: I was given an initial walk-through by the Robbery-Homicide detectives before Bob Souza got there. They showed me what they had—four victims throughout the house, and blood everywhere. Someone described it as “walking in with a bucket of blood and just throwing it against the walls and over the carpets.”

  BOB SOUZA: I got out of the car, and Tom Lange’s standing there with his sleeves rolled up—it’s hot out—and he’s walking around out front with his clipboard. I go up to him and ask, “Think this will fuck up my Fourth of July weekend?”

  He’s trying not to laugh because he’s got all these cameras around him.

  TOM LANGE [TESTIMONY]: I am a police detective for the City of Los Angeles assigned to the Robbery/Homicide Division. On July 1, 1981 at 6:20 P.M., I arrived at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles. The purpose was to investigate a reported quadruple homicide.

  I entered the two-story residence on Wonderland Avenue, went up the stairs—into the front—and observed the first victim, Barbara Richardson, lying facedown in the living room, just off the balcony.

  I proceeded to the rear of the house and went up one level—three stairs—to a rear bedroom where I saw the second victim, Ronald Launius, lying in bed. There were extensive wounds on him as well as on Richardson.

  They were both apparently dead.

  I then went through the kitchen—upstairs to the second level—and entered a bedroom. I observed the third victim, Joy Miller, with severe head trauma. She was apparently dead and on the floor, again near the second-story balcony. I observed the fourth victim, William Deverell, with extensive head injuries, also apparently dead.

  Then I was informed that a fifth victim, Susan Launius, had been transported to the hospital and was in surgery.

  DAWN SCHILLER: I got this horrible feeling. The bodies are being pulled out of the house on TV, and John’s screaming this stuff behind me, and I know we’ve been there before, you know?

  It’s bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. It’s so bad that you don’t want to make the air move because you’ll find out more, you know? You know that feeling? If you don’t move, nothing else will happen?

  SHARON HOLMES: My thought was always that if John could stand there and watch it, if they’d said “hit them,” he’d do it—because John was going to try to save number one. John could always manipulate his way out of any situation and turn it to his advantage.

  I was devastated. I just couldn’t believe—no matter what John had become—that he could be involved in this. I just had to learn to find a way to live with it.

  DAWN SCHILLER: At the end of every show—or in the middle—they’d say, “Four killed on Wonderland Avenue. Film at eleven,” or “Police find fifth victim alive. Watch the news at eleven o’clock.” Teasers, right?

  So when John woke up, I said, “Did you see this?”

  He didn’t say anything; he just sat up. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed. I said, “You were dreaming….”

  John asked, “What?”

  I said, “You were screaming about blood….”

  He said, “Oh, I opened the trunk and hit myself on the nose, and I got a nosebleed.” Which was total bullshit; even I didn’t believe it—and I believed a lot of his bullshit—because it was not what I had asked. It wasn’t what I had meant. I just thought he’d had a nightmare—you know, “Was, like, a monster after you or something?”

  But he gave me some lie—which made me feel even worse.

  TOM BLAKE: I knew that John Holmes was running around with Eddie Nash and those people even before the murders went down. I heard that John was using dope because the people who were working the porno section of Administrative Vice kept telling me, “Hey, we got word from other snitches that John is really strung out.”

  I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. When I worked with John, he didn’t use that stuff.”

  And they said, “Nope. The guy is strung out. He’s trafficking for a guy named Eddie Nash up there in North Hollywood. He’s a mule.”

  I said, “Boy, he really changed since I knew him.”

  DAWN SCHILLER: There was just a quietness about John. He got real introverted. There was a definite change in him. Dope wasn’t on his mind—it had shifted.

  We were still at the motel for a couple of days. John was at the window a lot—and he put the dresser in front of the door. He was very paranoid, but he was always paranoid—he was always, always, always making sure he wasn’t being followed. But when he put the dresser in front of the door, that was a little bit extra.

  TOM LANGE: We needed to find Holmes—and Detective Tom Blake was being cagey because ultimately we find out that Blake had Holmes on the string as an informant for many years. Blake is not being obstreperous or anything else; this is his job—he’s doing what he’s supposed to.

  So we say, “Look, you got your porn stuff here, and we got four murders—maybe soon to be five—and we think maybe there’s some organized crime involved. This is nasty stuff, and you’re gonna have to come around and give him up.”

  Blake said, “Well, I haven’t seen him for a long time, but maybe I can find him.”

  Well, maybe? Hell, do it.

  Ultimately Blake makes attempts to find Holmes, and of course, in the end, cooperates with us.

  DAWN SCHILLER: I was doing John’s fingernails and they kicked the door straight flat down. They did a like 1–2–3 silent—I don’t know how many of them—but it went, “BOOM!”

  It sounded like a bomb. I had my back to it. I just saw John’s eyes go like this, and I jumped into his lap and turned around, and there were guns—three or four at least—and they said, “FREEZE!”

  I didn’t think it was the police. I thought it was thugs—you know, other dealers or something—because guns were pointed at our heads.

  I thought, “This is it. This is the end.”

  The room was just full of people—plainclothes detectives and uniformed cops—and everybody had weapons, and they were all drawn. I just looked at the guns, and I thought we were dead. Our number’s up.

  It wasn’t until they took us that I realized they were the police. So I thought, “Oh, good. We’re not going to die.”

  SHARON HOLMES: I think, in all honesty, John’s soul was no longer his own at that point. He realized that himself—that he had no control of his life—because he had allowed this to happen.

  I said to him, “These were your friends.” He said, “These people were dirt.” The look on my face must have implied what I wanted to say to him—that you can’t live with yourself or be normal when you’re involved with something like this.

  I think John understood what I meant.

  DAWN SCHILLER: They got us out of the motel pretty quickly, and immediately separated us. I mean, we didn’t speak to each other. John looked over, and all I said was, “I have my dog.”

  So they brought a little kennel carrier out for Thor, my Chihuahua, and brought him to the station with us. I was put into a room with no windows—just a door—and the window of the door was covered. I sat there for a long time by myself without my dog, and then they came in, asked me what I knew,
where I’d been, and I told them I was in a motel.

  “Where was John?”

  “I don’t know. He was out.”

  “Do you know these people?”

  “No, I don’t know any names.”

  SHARON HOLMES: For me, John died that night. All of the good—what little remained—was gone from him. His life had no meaning to him after that; he just did what he had to, to survive.

  John had given up his soul.

  DAWN SCHILLER: When the cops released me, I told them, “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  They said, “Well, we’ll take you wherever.”

  I was still in my pajamas. They gave me my dog back. They liked him because Thor had pissed on somebody’s locker that they didn’t like.

  So I said, “Sharon is the only person I know.” I was really scared. I didn’t want to go to Sharon’s; I was ashamed and afraid of her disappointment in me. But I had nobody else to turn to.

  SHARON HOLMES: Dawn came to my house because she had nowhere else to go. She said, “John’s been taken in for questioning.”

  DAWN SCHILLER: When Sharon opened the door, I said, “John’s been arrested.”

  She said, “I know.”

  Then she just looked at me and said, “There’s food in the fridge, and the couch is ready.”

  But Sharon didn’t want to talk about it. I think she went back to bed, then got up and went to work. But she came home early, and we got a phone call from John, and he was freaking out. He said there was a threat in jail, and if he stayed any longer, he would be dead. We had to get him out; we had to scrape up money somehow, or he was going to be killed.

  So Sharon tells me this, and I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, what do we do?”

  Sharon says, “Well, I don’t have any money.”