by Steve Lehto
There is no other reason to pay special attention to the nondescript house at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles. At the time of the murders, the home was being rented by Joy Audrey Miller but was occupied by a host of unsavory characters, most associated with the drug business. Miller had been arrested seven times. A frequent tenant at the house named Billy DeVerell had been arrested on thirteen occasions. Ronald Launius had done hard time for smuggling drugs; David Lind had been convicted of dealing illegal drugs. The most famous frequent houseguest, however, was John Holmes, a porn star in the twilight of his career. Holmes was thirty-six at the time of the killings and had starred in several thousand adult films.
One of the reasons the Wonderland murders made the headlines was the connection to John Holmes. In Hollywood, where fame and infamy both go a long way, Holmes’s work was not exactly respected but he was well known. And when his connection to the Wonderland house was publicized, it caused the case to become a major topic of conversation in Los Angeles.
In his heyday, Holmes had made several thousand dollars a day appearing in hard-core pornographic adult films, but he was well past his prime when the Wonderland murders happened. In later years he had developed an expensive drug habit, freebasing cocaine among other things. As his career had waned, his habit grew and the once physically fit Holmes became scrawny and haggard. Soon, adult film producers were casting him less often, putting him into a financial spiral.
The Wonderland house was an epicenter of drug activity in Los Angeles. The occupants of the house bought, used, and sold drugs, and all were well known to local authorities. Built in 1961, the three-story white stucco house contained a caged metal stairway to the second-floor front door at the time of the murders. The ground floor was the garage. Visitors had to buzz an intercom to get access to the stairs to the upper-floor door. When Holmes and company stayed in the house, the staircase was often guarded by pit bulls. Although Holmes had a wife and a home elsewhere, he spent much of his time at the Wonderland location. To finance his drug habit he often resorted to petty crime, such as stealing luggage from Los Angeles International airport. One of the people he met during his petty-crime career was a drug dealer named Eddie Nash who sometimes helped Holmes unload stolen property.
Drug addicts are not known for making wise decisions. Sometime in 1981, Holmes and some of his friends from the Wonderland address decided to rob Nash. Holmes was scared of Nash, so he devised a plan in which he would get other people to take most of the risk. He would go to Nash’s house and buy drugs. When he was there, he would unlock a door at the back of the house and then his friends would come by later and commit the robbery. Holmes figured he would be safe if anything went wrong, since he wouldn’t be there when the robbery went down. He was wrong. He bought the drugs from Nash on June 28, 1981. He confirmed to his cohorts that they could get into the home through the unlocked door he had left behind. The next day, four of Holmes’s acquaintances from Wonderland stormed into Nash’s home and robbed him at gunpoint. They managed to steal quite a bit of cash, jewelry, and drugs. After they left, Nash quickly deduced that the robbers had been helped by a mutual acquaintance, most likely Holmes.
Nash sent some of his henchmen out to find Holmes, and they located him very quickly. He was walking in Hollywood wearing jewelry stolen from Nash. The men dragged Holmes to Nash’s house, where he was beaten until he confessed to his role in the robbery, and he soon ratted out the others. The police would later theorize that once Holmes turned on his friends, he had struck a deal with Nash. He would help Nash get revenge on the four men who robbed him and, in exchange, Nash would let Holmes live.
Holmes knew he was lucky to be spared and was willing to agree to anything. Around four A.M., on July 1, 1981, intruders carrying metal pipes invaded the Wonderland home and beat the occupants. Holmes was most likely in the group of attackers, but it is unclear if he participated beyond helping the others get into the house. Five people were staying in the house at the time of the attack, and four of them died. The survivor’s injuries were so severe she could not remember anything about the attack and she could not identify the attackers. The four victims were killed savagely, and there was blood everywhere. Neighbors reported later that they had heard loud noises and screaming coming from the house but had not bothered to call the police; the home was the site of so many late-night parties that this night had sounded just like many other nights at the house.
When the police investigated, one of the things they found at the crime scene was a bloody palm print, which they later matched to John Holmes. Of course, Holmes was known as a frequent visitor to the house, but there was no good reason for his palm print to be in the house in the blood of one of the victims. If he was there, why had he been spared? While the police were wondering about Holmes and what role he might have played in the bloody slaughter, one of the men who had robbed Nash’s house and was not present at Wonderland that night called the police and told them of the connection between Nash, Holmes, and Wonderland.
The police searched Nash’s house and found, among other things like drugs and money, items stolen from Wonderland. Nash was arrested. Holmes was also arrested, largely because of the bloody palm print he had left at the scene. At this point, the case was becoming quite convoluted. Nash’s home had been robbed by the people from Wonderland, and Wonderland had been robbed by Nash’s people. Four people were dead. Several trials followed, but the story of the Wonderland murders would never be fully explained.
Prosecutors started with Holmes and tried him for murder. How hard could it be with his bloody handprint at the crime scene? His attorneys admitted that Holmes had been present at the time of the killings but said he was not one of the killers. They said that Nash had forced him to cooperate and if he hadn’t cooperated, Nash would have killed him. They said that he was simply brought along as a form of insurance; by placing him at the scene, he would have needed to keep his mouth shut even if he didn’t kill anyone. It seemed a risky argument, but the jury found him not guilty.
Once he was acquitted, the prosecutor tried to get Holmes to tell a grand jury what he knew about the murders. After all, if he was there he should be able to tell the police who else was there. And since he had been tried and acquitted, his testimony couldn’t hurt him. It didn’t matter; he refused to testify anyway. As a result, Holmes was found in contempt and the judge ordered him to be jailed until he was willing to testify. He sat in jail for 110 days. He later claimed that while he was in jail, policemen kept coming by to get his autograph, some bringing in VHS tapes so he could sign the box covers. He eventually agreed to testify but gave the grand jury vague answers. He later said the sketchy testimony was because he was still scared of Nash. In 1985, Holmes was diagnosed with AIDS; he died in 1988, never telling the police what he knew of the Wonderland killings.
Meanwhile, Nash had spent time in prison for drug dealing. After Holmes died, prosecutors announced that they would put Nash and his bodyguard on trial for the Wonderland murders. In a twist possible only in Los Angeles, one of the key witnesses in the Nash trial was Scott Thorson, a former boyfriend of Liberace. Thorson had gotten drugs from Nash shortly before the murders and claimed to have witnessed Nash threatening Holmes over the breakin at Nash’s house. The jury in the Nash trial could not reach a verdict because of a lone holdout. They had voted eleven to one to convict Nash. The prosecutor retried Nash, but he was acquitted in the second go-round.
Prosecutors, both state and federal, continued chasing Nash and in 2001, he finally pleaded guilty to sending the men to Wonderland who had committed the murders. He also admitted he had bribed the juror who had held out in his first murder trial, allowing him to be tried the second time, where he had managed an acquittal. And that acquittal meant that he could not be retried for the murders themselves—double jeopardy would prevent that—so he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. For good measure, one of Nash’s friends also later claimed they had bribed a judge who had agreed to let Nash out o
f prison after serving only two years of an eight-year sentence for drug dealing. For his role in the Wonderland events, Nash was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Much of the story of the Wonderland murders was included in the films Wonderland, starring Val Kilmer and Kate Bosworth, and Boogie Nights, with Mark Wahlberg and Heather Graham.
The Wonderland house is three stories tall, white stucco, with two levels of living quarters above a garage. It has two bedrooms and two baths and is a little more than a thousand square feet. The lot is 2,500 square feet according to real estate listings. It was built in 1961.
In 2008, various media outlets reported that the Wonderland home was available for a monthly rental of $3,000. According to an ad on Craigslist, it was charming and quaint. “YOU MUST SEE IT!!” The listing gave the address—8763 Wonderland Ave—but did not mention the home’s past as the site of a mass murder. If nothing else, the rent had gone up a bit from the $750 a month Joy Audrey Miller was said to have been paying in 1981.
It appears that 8763 Wonderland was often a rental. In 2012 it had an assessed value for tax purposes of $64,304. Zillow, the real estate website, estimated the value of the home at $567,733 in 2012. The home is privately owned but easily visible from the street.
*“New Charges in Nineteen-Year-Old Drug Killings in Hollywood,” New York Times, May 21, 2000.
The Death of John Belushi
CHATEAU MARMONT
1982
8221 Sunset Boulevard, Bungalow 3
Hollywood, California 90046
In March 1982, comedian John Belushi checked into the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, Bungalow 3. He was in California to party and celebrate his blossoming acting career. He spent his nights at various bars on Sunset Boulevard, drinking and doing drugs. Then he would return to his bungalow to sleep and be roused by a personal trainer who would try to undo the damage Belushi had inflicted on his body the night before. On March 4, he visited a club above the Roxy Theater on Sunset Strip called On the Rox. There, he spent time with a woman named Cathy Smith. Smith was a Canadian rock band groupie who had been linked to members of The Band, Hoyt Axton, and Gordon Lightfoot. Rumor had it that Lightfoot’s “Sundown” was written about her. She met Belushi when The Band had played on Saturday Night Live. One reason many rock stars liked her was that she had access to a good supply of drugs. Her nickname was Cathy Silverbag, so named because of the purse in which she was said to carry her stash.
After partying at On the Rox, Belushi was too wasted to drive, so Smith drove him back to his bungalow at Chateau Marmont. She helped him stagger inside. Although he was vomiting, he continued drinking and taking drugs. Around three o’clock in the morning, Robert De Niro and Robin Williams dropped by for a few minutes to visit. After they left, Belushi eventually showered. At 8:00 A.M. he climbed into his bed and went to sleep.
Sometime in those early morning hours of March 5, Smith shot Belushi up with a speedball, which is a mixture of cocaine and heroin. Belushi and Smith were the only people in the bungalow, so no one knows whether Belushi was awake or asleep when Smith gave him the drugs. Although Belushi had a reputation for abusing drugs, he was not known to be a regular user of heroin. Smith became hungry, so she left Belushi to go get breakfast. Rather than order food from the Chateau and have it delivered to the room, she took Belushi’s car and went for a drive. Several hours passed. A little after noon, Belushi’s personal trainer, Bill Wallace, dropped by looking for Belushi. Wallace, who was also known as “Superfoot” because of his martial arts skills, was a trainer to the stars. A kickboxing champion, he had also trained Elvis Presley. It was his job to try to get Belushi to exercise. He found Belushi lifeless in the bungalow and, after desperately trying to resuscitate him, called for help. Emergency personnel arrived quickly but were far too late. Belushi was pronounced dead at 12:45 P.M. Hollywood law enforcement surveyed the familiar scene and saw cocaine and drug paraphernalia. Meanwhile, Cathy Smith returned from breakfast and walked into the bungalow, now swarming with police and first responders. She played innocent. After all, she hadn’t been there when he died.
National news reports soon told of the death of John Belushi, who was only thirty-three years old. Most people immediately guessed how the story had ended: a drug overdose. Belushi’s hard-partying ways were well known, although few had expected him to die so young. It was a tragic loss, especially considering the promise his career held at the time.
John Belushi had been one of the most beloved comedians and actors in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A regular cast member on Saturday Night Live since its beginning, he had starred in the wildly popular National Lampoon’s Animal House. In 1978, he and Dan Aykroyd had appeared as the musical guests on SNL as the Blues Brothers. The act went over so well, the two recorded an album and even toured, selling out huge concert venues. The venture spawned a number one album and a hit movie of the same name based on the fictional characters they were playing. In 1979, Belushi left SNL to focus on his film and music careers. He quickly made a few more movies and although they weren’t all as successful as Animal House or The Blues Brothers, it was clear that he was a bankable star. Belushi’s career wasn’t just rising, it was rocketing.
When Belushi checked into Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont, the Chateau was one of the most popular places in Hollywood for the rich and famous to stay. Built in 1927 to resemble a retreat for French royalty called the Chateau d’Ambroise in France, it was initially an apartment complex. The original owner had a hard time keeping tenants in the early years, so he sold the property for $750,000 to a man named Albert Smith, who turned it into a hotel named after the intersection where it sits, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Marmont.
Nine cottages were built on the property immediately surrounding the Chateau. In the 1940s, Smith bought them and added them to the hotel. Guests checking into the Chateau have the choice of staying in one of the antique-filled rooms in the seven-story main building or renting one of the bungalows. In all, there are sixty-three rooms, cottages, or bungalows to choose from. Hollywood stars, writers, artists, rock stars, and people who hoped to be famous often stayed at the Chateau, some for extended periods of time. Architectural Digest called the property “a real-life version of Rick’s café in Casablanca. Everyone who was anyone in Hollywood—or aspired to be—has stayed there, often for weeks or months at a time.”
When Smith returned from breakfast the day Belushi died, she was questioned by police and played it fairly cool. She told them she had been with Belushi earlier but made it sound like she had not seen anything important or out of the ordinary. The coroner ruled Belushi’s death an accidental drug overdose and Smith went back to Canada. A couple months later, Smith spoke to two reporters from the National Enquirer. Not realizing the firestorm the story would cause, she told them everything. The story resulting from that interview was headlined I Killed Belushi. Smith admitted to the reporters that she was the one who injected Belushi with the fatal speedball. The story caused an uproar, and authorities in California reversed their position on the death of Belushi. They deemed it a homicide.
Smith was charged with first-degree murder and extradited from Canada. After coming back to Los Angeles, she worked out a plea deal with prosecutors. She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served fifteen months in prison. After she was released, Smith was deported to Canada, where she often spoke to schoolchildren about the evils of drugs. Despite her expressions of remorse, she was arrested and convicted of heroin possession in Vancouver in 1991.
John Belushi’s death by speedball is just one of many in the celebrity world. The artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, comedians Chris Farley and Mitch Hedberg, and actor River Phoenix all died with some form of heroin and cocaine in their systems. Others barely survived the experience. Dave Gahan, lead singer of Depeche Mode, suffered a heart attack taking the mixture, and Steven Adler of Guns N’ Roses suffered a stroke from it.
In 1990, André Balazs bought
the Chateau Marmont property and gave it a much-needed restoration. Today, guests can rent the bungalow where Belushi died for around $2,000 nightly, ten times the amount the comedian paid. The Chateau offers amenities that justify the price tag. Private massage therapists and trainers are available, as are secretarial and translation services. Concierge and room service are available twenty-four hours a day.
In August 2012, another famous guest made headlines at the Chateau. Someone leaked a letter to the press that had purportedly been sent by Chateau Marmont management to Lindsay Lohan, the troubled actress whose career had been heading in the wrong direction for a few years. She was in town to shoot a movie for the Lifetime network called Liz & Dick. The letter claimed Lohan had checked into the hotel May 30, 2012, and by July 31, her unpaid hotel bill was a little over $46,000. Citing difficulty in getting her to even acknowledge the bill, the hotel told her she had to remove her belongings from her suite and was no longer welcome on their premises. To make matters worse, tabloids got hold of the itemized bill which came with the letter, totaling sixteen pages, detailing what Lohan had done at the hotel to create such a large bill in such a short time. She had accrued charges of over $3,000 in minibar items, $500 in cigarettes, almost $2,000 in restaurant bills, and even $100 for a “Chateau candle,” whatever that might be.