Eddie Nash - Wonderland Murders

Wonderland Murders

Nash is most notorious for his alleged involvement in the quadruple Wonderland Murders in 1981, the possible retaliation from a robbery of Nash's home perpetrated two days earlier by three to five men. A key player in the incident was porn performer John C. Holmes, who was later acquitted of the murders. Nash and Holmes were close friends; Nash enjoyed introducing his countless houseguests to Holmes, who was infamous for playing the X-rated movie character "Johnny Wadd."

However, by 1981, Holmes' career had declined due to chronic impotence and he became desperately addicted to freebasing cocaine. In order to settle a substantial debt to drug kingpin Ron Launius, leader of the widely feared Wonderland Gang which dominated the LA cocaine trade in 1981, he conspired to invade Nash's home and commit a robbery in which Nash and his bodyguard were brutalised and humiliated. Two days later Launius and three other people were found bludgeoned to death at their home at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon. Though Nash had planned to have Holmes killed alongside his Wonderland associates, he later decided to spare Holmes' life and use the Wonderland murders to "teach Holmes a lesson" by having him forcibly witness and allegedly partake, albeit against his will, in the quadruple murder.

Lanius, Billy Deverell, Joy Audrey Gold Miller, and Barbara Richardson were murdered and Susan Launius, Ron's wife, was critically injured. Officials from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) remarked that the scene was bloodier than the Tate/LaBianca murders.

A police search of Nash's home days after the murders revealed a large amount of cocaine. Nash was sentenced to eight years in prison, but a judge released him after just two, purportedly for health reasons. An associate of Nash's later admitted that they had bribed the judge with about $100,000 (Goldsmith 2001).

In 1990, Nash was tried in state court for having planned the murders; the trial resulted in an 11-1 hung jury; Nash would later admit that he had bribed the lone holdout, a young woman, with $50,000. The retrial ended in an acquittal.

According to John C. Holmes' second wife Laurie (aka Misty Dawn) in a Playboy magazine interview : "He was an awful man... John told me he used to leave the bathrooms without toilet paper, then offer the young women cocaine if they'd lick his ass clean." He required his dancers at the Kit Kat Club to fellate him, to screen for undercover police officers.

Throughout the 1990s, law enforcement figures continued to hound Nash, who had been referred to in various print media as "the one who got away." In 1995, in a broad series of raids targeting alleged organized crime figures, federal agents armed with search warrants raided his house and confiscated what was thought to be a cache of methamphetamine. To the chagrin of law enforcement, the "meth" turned out to be a cache of mothballs and no charges were filed against Nash.

In 2000, after a four-year joint investigation involving local and federal authorities, Nash was arrested and indicted on federal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for running a drug trafficking and money laundering operation, conspiring to carry out the Wonderland Murders, and bribing one of the jurors of his first trial. Nash, already in his seventies and suffering from emphysema and several other ailments, agreed to a plea bargain agreement in September 2001, pleading guilty to RICO charges and to money laundering. He also admitted to jury tampering (for which the statute of limitations had run out) and to having ordered his associates to retrieve stolen property from the Wonderland house, which might have resulted in violence including murder, but he denied having planned the murders that took place. He also agreed to cooperate with law enforcement authorities. He received a four-and-a-half year prison sentence (including the time already served) and a $250,000 fine. (LAPD 2002)

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