Wonderland Gang - Members

Members

Members of the gang included:

  • Ronnie ("Ron") Lee Launius (b. May 18, 1944 d. July 1, 1981) (Leader)
  • William Ray ("Billy") DeVerell (b. February 14, 1937 d. July 1, 1981)
  • Joy Audrey Gold Miller (b. May 14, 1935 d. July 1, 1981) (DeVerell's girlfriend)
  • David Clay Lind (b. October 24, 1938, d. November 16, 1995)
  • Tracy Ray McCourt (b. February 20, 1949, d. October 18, 2006)

Their associates included:

  • Susan A. Launius (b. 1951; survived attack) (Ron Launius's wife)
  • Barbara Lee Richardson (b. October 17, 1958; d. July 1, 1981) (David Lind's girlfriend)

The Wonderland Gang mainly trafficked in the burgeoning cocaine trade of the era, but despite its role as being the most influential and feared cocaine distributorship of its time in Los Angeles, most of its members were heroin addicts. Drugs were regularly dealt from Miller and DeVerell's residence at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles. The two bedroom split-level house was leased in Miller's name. Miller and her live-in boyfriend DeVerell were the usual residents, with Ron Launius and his wife, Susan, as houseguests. Pornographic film actor John Holmes was a frequent visitor who would purchase cocaine from the Gang. Lind, ordinarily a resident of the Sacramento area, came to Los Angeles in the summer of 1981 at Launius' behest, to aid in their growing drug distribution business. Bringing with him his girlfriend Barbara "Butterfly" Richardson, the pair slept on the living room sofa during their stay at the Wonderland house.

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