Coke, Cock & Carnage: Johnny Wadd and the Bloodbath at Wonderland

You want true crime? Here’s true crime so raw, it still bleeds. The 1981 Wonderland murders weren’t just a massacre — they were a dirty film noir with a cast of sleazeballs, junkies, pushers, porn stars, and one coked-up Frankenstein named Eddie Nash. This wasn’t a murder mystery. It was a murder inevitability. And at the center of it all was John Holmes — aka Johnny Wadd — porn’s first male superstar and maybe its biggest scumbag.

Let’s not be coy. By July 1, 1981, John Holmes was already falling apart. Once the golden dick of the industry, famous for a weaponized schlong and a slack-jawed charisma, Holmes had slid into the drug gutter like so many of his peers. He wasn’t doing films anymore. He was doing blow. And freebasing. And favors for criminals. Sometimes sexual. Sometimes other things…

The Wonderland Gang was a bunch of low-rent hoods holed up in a dumpy little lair on Wonderland Avenue in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. Think small-time thugs with big-time egos: Ron Launius, a Vietnam vet turned psycho; Billy DeVerell, his right-hand man; Joy Miller, the house mom-slash-burnout; Barbara Richardson, an unlucky visitor; and David Lind, the snitch who would live to tell the tale. They were peddling coke, doing heroin, and playing gangster while the city simmered under the weight of its own vices.