Houses of Death (True Crime)

by Gordon Kerr

  Meanwhile, he would lecture his followers that the outside world was deeply suspicious of their success as a community and would try to destroy them. Defectors and dissidents were hated and any dissent from within was severely punished. If a member expressed doubts to anyone, even members of their own family, he or she was reported and punished. Children would report on parents, husbands on wives and parents on their own children.

  As tax officials closed in on Jones’s activities, and the media became increasingly interested in his activities, his own paranoia became more extreme. Consequently, he concocted a plan to move the People’s Temple to Guyana, in Central America. Proposing to create an agricultural utopia in the Guyanese jungle, far from racism and run on socialist principals, he bought 121 hectares (300 acres) of jungle from the Guyanese government. He built a township 225km (140 miles) from Georgetown which became home to around 900 Temple members. He called it Jonestown.

  Jonestown, however, was no Shangri-la. The isolation was extreme, and armed guards patrolled its perimeters and the roads leading to the nearest town. Dissidents were unable to leave because they had no money and Jones held on to their passports. They had to work six days a week, from 7am until 6pm, in temperatures reaching more than 38°C (100°F). Meals were sparse, consisting mostly of rice and beans, while Jones, himself, enjoyed eggs, meat, fruit and salads. There was also a great deal of sickness.

  Punishments were often harsh. Jones ordered beatings and imprisoned wrongdoers in a tiny plywood box. There was also a well at the bottom of which children were occasionally forced to spend the night, sometimes hanging upside down.

  Jones was universally addressed as ‘Father’ or ‘Dad’, and was bringing in up to $65,000 (£32,500.00) a month in social-security payments. It was estimated that he was worth at least $26 million (£13 million).

  Congressman Leo Ryan had long been interested in Jones’s church and, on 14 November 1978, he flew, with a party of government officials, media representatives and concerned relatives of Temple members, to Guyana to investigate what was happening. They were at first refused entry to the compound, but Jones relented and they spent an evening there being entertained by Temple members. Jones worked hard to persuade the visitors that all was well and everyone was happy at Jonestown.

  At some point in the evening, however, Ryan was slipped a note written by a couple of Temple members, Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. The note read, ‘Dear Congressman … Please help us get out of Jonestown.’

  More announced they wanted to defect and by the time the party was due to leave, on 18 November, 15 had volunteered. Jones reluctantly gave them permission – worrying that they would spread poisonous stories about Jonestown – and issued them with passports and some money. Ryan, wishing to remain behind to see what else was to be done, was finally dissuaded when a Temple member attacked him with a knife, probably under orders from Jones. The party nervously set off for the Port Kaituma airstrip, where two planes would be readied to take them home.

  The first of them boarded the Cessna and, at around 5.10pm, as it was preparing for take-off, a passenger, Larry Layton, a Jones loyalist who had surprised everyone with his desire to leave Jonestown, pulled a gun and opened fire on the other passengers. He wounded Monica Bagby and Vernon Gosney and tried to kill another man, who succeeded in disarming him.

  At the same time, however, a wagon pulled by a tractor pulled up at the airport. It was filled with Jones’s armed guards who opened fire on the other plane, a Twin Otter, and its passengers who were on the tarmac preparing to board. Congressman Ryan; NBC cameraman, Bob Brown; reporters Greg Robinson and Don Harris and, defector, Patricia Parks, all died in a hail of bullets. Nine others were injured. The majority of the survivors clambered aboard the Cessna and flew out, while a few remained behind to tend to the injured.

  Meanwhile, back at Jonestown, another ‘White Night’ was staged, but this time the soft drink was laced with diazepam, chloral hydrate, and, probably, cyanide.

  Jones had called everyone to a meeting around the time the shooting was breaking out at the airfield. ‘One of the people on that plane, is gonna shoot the pilot, I know that, he told them. ‘I didn’t plan it but I know it’s going to happen. They’re gonna shoot that pilot and down comes the plane into the jungle and we had better not have any of our children left when it’s over, because they’ll parachute in here on us...They’ll torture our children,’ he continued. They’ll torture some of our people here, they’ll torture our seniors. We cannot have this.’ As for dying, he said, ‘All it is, is taking a drink to take... to go to sleep. That’s what death is, sleep.’

  They poisoned the children first, spraying the liquid into their mouths using syringes, and then moved on to the adults. It was very effective and death followed after only around five minutes.

  Finally, Jones and his immediate supporters came together, gave a final cheer and shot each other with handguns. Jim Jones was found seated in a deckchair with a gunshot wound to the head.

  Around him, dead, lay 913 members of the People’s Temple.

  The Curse Of Pearl Bryan

  44 Licking Pike, Wilder, Kentucky, USA

  Locals and psychic investigators have often referred to Bobby Mackey's Music World in Wilder, Kentucky, as 'Hell's Gate', due to the sheer strength of the malevolent paranormal forces at work there. Its fascinating history began with the vicious murder of Pearl Bryan. The curse her murderers placed on the building is still going strong over a century later.

  Bobby Mackey purchased the club that bears his name – Bobby Mackey’s Music World – in 1978. Located in Wilder, Kentucky, it occupies the site of a former slaughterhouse. The music at Bobby Mackey’s is country, and it even boasts a mechanical bull for those brave enough. It has become more famous as home of numerous ghosts, the most famous of which is that of Pearl Bryan, victim of one of the most infamous crimes in Kentucky’s history.

  Pearl, a pretty, auburn-haired 22-year-old Greencastle, Indiana woman, who was the daughter of a wealthy farmer, travelled to Cincinnati, in 1896, with a secret. She was pregnant. The father was a young dental student, 28-year-old Scott Jackson, who had met Pearl while paying a visit to his mother in Greencastle. He liked the sociable, unspoilt country girl and they became friends. When she realized she was pregnant, she confided in a cousin, who wrote to Jackson. He told Pearl to come to Cincinnati and her train pulled into the city’s station on the night of 28 January.

  Waiting for her was Jackson – 1m 68cm (5ft 6 ins) tall, with blond hair and cold, grey eyes, and his friend, dark-haired fellow dental student, Alonzo Walling. The three headed downtown and were overheard engaged in an argument. They then went to Legner’s Tavern, where the two men apparently put cocaine into the sarsaparilla Pearl was drinking.

  The group were picked up by a coachman, who took them through Newport and into Wilder, then to Alexandria Pike and into Fort Thomas. The coachman dropped them off on a side road and returned to Cincinnati.

  A couple of days later, a man called John Hewing was taking a shortcut across a field on his way to work, when he saw a woman lying on the ground. It was not that unusual a sight as soldiers from a nearby army post were in the habit of bringing women out to this area. Sometimes the women were very drunk and, at first, that is what Hewison presumed.

  Arriving at work, he mentioned her to his employer and the deputy sheriff was summoned. When he arrived, accompanied by the coroner, he noticed signs of a struggle. Her dress was pulled up over her head and there was a pool of blood at her feet. The coroner pulled the dress down and was horrified to find that she had no head. She had been decapitated.

  Thinking the head must be nearby, they searched the surrounding area, bringing in bloodhounds. However, there was still no sign of it. They even had a nearby reservoir drained, but were still unable to find it.

  The autopsy concluded that the woman had been pregnant and traces of cocaine were found in her stomach. Eventually, they identified her by tracing back a manufacturer�
�s number in her shoes.

  When Pearl’s family were informed, her cousin volunteered the information that he had written to Scott Jackson, explaining her predicament, and that Jackson had suggested she come to Cincinnati. Jackson was picked up that same evening and Alonzo Walling was arrested the following day, after Jackson accused him of carrying out the murder. Needless to say, Walling accused his friend, saying that he had been asked to perform an abortion on Pearl, but then Jackson had suggested that they poison her and make it look like she had committed suicide.

  The two were charged with murder, and the police pursued the matter of what had become of Pearl’s head. They brought in her sister to try to persuade them to tell them of the head’s location, but Jackson and Walling were unwavering in their desire to keep it secret.

  When Jackson was tried, his case was not helped when it emerged that Pearl may have been alive when they began to decapitate her and, after 23 days in court, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Walling received the same sentence.

  Meanwhile, the public had become incensed by the case, and the two men had to be heavily guarded in case there was an attempt to lynch them. Even when there was a prison break the two remained in their cells, because it was safer for them there than on the outside.

  On the day of their hanging, a huge crowd gathered. Three minutes before the time of the hanging, Scott Jackson asked to speak to the chaplain and then let it be known that he wanted to make a statement about Walling. ‘I know that Alonzo M Walling is not guilty of murder,’ he said to a stunned audience.

  The prison authorities telegraphed the state governor, William Bradley. He asked for more information from Jackson, but ,when Jackson was questioned once more, he said he had nothing to add to what he had already said. More than 2.5 hours after they had originally been due to hang, they walked out to the gallows.

  They were a contrasting pair: Jackson erect and confident, Walling agitated and downcast. When asked if he had anything further to say, Jackson thought long and hard. Walling turned towards him expectantly, hoping that his friend would say something that would save him. He was devastated, however, when Jackson merely said, ‘I have only this to say, that I am not guilty of the crime for which I am now compelled to pay the penalty of my life.’

  Walling, asked if he had anything to say, replied, ‘Nothing, only that you are taking the life of an innocent man and I will call upon God to witness the truth of what I say.’

  At 11.40am the trapdoor opened and the two men were dispatched.

  Legend has it that the murderers cursed Pearl’s head and the area in which she was killed. It is thought that the head may have been used in a satanic ritual and thrown down an old well situated in the basement of a slaughterhouse that was in use until the early 1890s. Some say that the well is a portal for demons and locals dubbed it ‘Hell’s Gate’.

  The basement is said to have been a venue for the activities of local occultists practicing satanic rites and that Jackson and Walling were afraid of upsetting the Satanists and bringing the wrath of Satan down upon themselves if they revealed the whereabouts of the head. As the noose was being slipped over his head, Walling stated that he would come back and haunt the area, and it is also suggested that many of the people involved in the case later met with bad luck and tragic deaths.

  Now Bobby Mackey’s is said to be filled, nightly, with ghostly mutterings, lights switching on and off, a dark, very angry young man and a headless woman wearing 19th century clothing.

  Wonderland Murders

  8673 Wonderland, Los Angeles, USA

  8673 Wonderland was well-known to the LAPD during the early 1980s. It was a busy drug den, where people from all walks-of-life came to buy cocaine, heroin, or whatever they needed to get through the day. On 1 July 1981 the Wonderland party came to an abrupt end, when four people were savagely bludgeoned to death as they slept.

  Laurel Canyon, in Los Angeles, consists of one main thoroughfare, Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which stretches up to Mulholland Drive with side streets, mainly cul-de-sacs, leading off it. It has been the home to countless celebrities over the years, from silent film star, Tom Mix, to Harry Houdini, Frank Zappa, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Joni Mitchell, whose third album, Ladies of the Canyon, was inspired by the area.

  But Laurel Canyon was also the setting for one of America’s most gruesome killings, the incident known as the Wonderland Murders, aka the Four on the Floor or Laurel Canyon Murders.

  8673 Wonderland Avenue is a white, stucco, two-storey building. These days, it is quiet and unremarkable, but, in the early 1980s, passers by would have remarked upon the metal cage that encased the stairway leading to the front door. The two vicious-looking pit bull terriers that patrolled the cage’s interior would have made anyone take a cautious step back. Inside, the inhabitants of 8673 Wonderland Avenue were a no-less vicious bunch.

  Ron Launius was the Wonderland Gang’s leader. He had served in Vietnam but, by the time of his death, he was being investigated for 27 murders, many of them witnesses who would testify against him on previous murders. He was a ruthless, violent killer who took drugs to excess, as well as dealing in them.

  Billy Deverell was Launius’s lieutenant and a heroin user who often expressed a desire to make a fresh start. He was often the voice of reason in the face of Launius’s irrationality.

  David Lind was a member of the white suprematist group, the Aryan Brotherhood, a member of a biker gang and a junkie. When Launius got to know Lind in prison, he persuaded him to become his partner in a drug-running operation. His criminal record included burglary, forgery, assault and attempted rape.

  Billy Deverell’s girlfriend, Joy Audrey Gold Miller, was a divorced mother whose children were grown up. She was a junkie and her habit saw her introduced to the Wonderland Gang. She was the actual tenant of the Wonderland house.

  The house was a pharmacy where you could obtain almost any drug – cocaine, heroin, uppers and downers. All sorts of people, from rock stars to drop-outs, visited, day or night, to pick up their requirements, and rock music blasted the neighbourhood 24 hours a day.

  There was also a thriving trade in stolen property at 8673 Wonderland Avenue, much of it provided by John Holmes. Holmes was an extraordinary character, a porn star who had reached the heights of his profession because he was the proud owner of a 30cm (12 in) penis. He had made a series of films in which he starred as Johnny Wadd, a private detective whose escapades did not just involve solving crimes. He claimed to have made 2,000 porn films and to have earned $6,000 (£3,000) a day doing so. He also calculated that he had slept with around 14,000 women. Unfortunately, however, by the late 1970s, Holmes had developed a huge cocaine habit and producers had stopped calling as his body began to display the ravages caused by excess. He now fed his habit by stealing luggage at Los Angeles airport and breaking into cars.

  Holmes became the go-between for a powerful Los Angeles drug dealer, Eddie Nash and the Wonderland crew. Items stolen by Holmes and the others were paid for by Nash in drugs.

  The Wonderland Gang were aware that Nash kept large supplies of drugs and cash at his mansion and, in, 1981, they decided to break in and steal his stash.

  On 29 June, Launius, Lind and Deverell entered the house through a sliding glass door that had been surreptitiously unlocked by John Holmes on a recent visit. Encountering Nash’s 300lb (136kg) bodyguard, Lind pulled out a forged LAPD badge and told the man he was under arrest. As Lind handcuffed him, his gun accidentally discharged, grazing the bodyguard’s side. Hearing the sound, Nash came running in, wearing his customary brightly coloured bikini briefs, and threw himself on their mercy, pleading not to be killed.

  They forced him to open his safe, which contained almost $200,000 (£100,000) as well as substantial quantities of heroin, cocaine, methaqualone and jewellery, a haul estimated to be worth around $1 million (£500,000).

  The Wonderland boys grabbed the lot and drove back to their house, elated. Nash, on the other
hand, was furious at not only being robbed, but also being humiliated. He swore revenge.

  A little over a day later, at 4am on 1 July, three men crept towards 8673 Wonderland Avenue, carrying heavy-duty lead pipes. They entered the house and then crept from bedroom to bedroom, bludgeoning the occupants with the pipes, killing four and critically injuring one. It was a bloodbath. Blood dripped from the walls, and the victims, their faces caved in, were no longer recognizable.

  On hearing the uproar, neighbours thought it was just another night at the drug den. They drew their curtains and went back to bed or turned their televisions up loud to drown out the noise.

  The mayhem was discovered the next day. Twelve hours after the onslaught, a removal man working in the adjoining house, heard groans coming from 8673 and could hardly fail to hear the dogs’ continuous barking. The door was ajar and he went in to find a gruesome scene. Barbara Richardson, a friend of Lind, was lying on a sofa in the living room; Joy Miller was sprawled on a bed and Billy Deverell’s blood-soaked body lay in the same room. Ron Launius was in a bedroom on the first floor and, beside him lay his wife, Susan, so seriously injured that surgeons had to later remove part of her skull. The floors of the house were swimming in blood.

  David Lind had been lucky, having spent the night in a motel with a prostitute. When the police found him, he told them about the Nash robbery and about John Holmes. The police were anxious to locate Holmes to learn whether he had been involved especially as Lind told them that Holmes had been particularly unhappy about his share of the Nash robbery haul.

  Holmes had arrived at his wife’s house several hours after the Wonderland killings, his clothes soaked in blood. He had a shower and then took off with his young mistress, Diane Schiller. Nine days later, he was arrested in a motel in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley. Freed after questioning, but warned not to leave town, Holmes again went to his wife’s house where, she later claimed, he confessed to his involvement in the murders. He told her that he had been spotted by an associate of Nash, wearing a piece of jewellery that had been taken from the safe at Nash’s house. He was taken to Nash and threatened that if he did not take them to the men who had committed the robbery, his family would be harmed. He told her he took them to Wonderland Avenue and watched as they bashed in the skulls of the occupants. In his autobiography, however, Holmes discounts this version of events, claiming that he was actually held captive at Nash’s house while the killings were carried out.