How Hollywood porn king became suspect in twisted ‘Wonderland Murders’ slaughter even more brutal than Manson killings
FROM high-flying adult movie star to accused murderer, this is how porn king John C Holmes became embroiled in one of the bloodiest killings to rock Hollywood.
John was the closest thing to a rockstar in adult entertainment industry when he shot to fame in the 1970s.
He starred in more than 1,000 pornos and is rumoured to have slept with over 14,000 women during his two-decade-long career.
But despite his fame and fortune, John would end up a washed-up actor with a gnawing drug habit – surrendering his life to petty crime.
And it saw him become involved in the vicious and bloody “Wonderland Murders” of four people in a West Hollywood home on July 1, 1981.
Horrifying pictures from the crime scene show the extent of the violence – with blood smeared across the walls in a scene described as even worse than the brutal crimes of the Manson Family.
MORE ON CRIME
In the 1970s, John had it all: the fame, the cash – he was rumoured to have been paid $1000 a scene – and the women.
His porn character “Johnny Wadd” became a household name among gossiping adults at house parties – with many wowed by his unusually large genitals.
But as the decade drew to a close, the Ohio-born porn star became embroiled in heavy narcotics.
He preferred freebasing home-cooked crack cocaine, which made him impotent and unable to work – and before long, John turn to petty robbery to feed his addiction.
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Tom Blake, a retired officer from the LAPD’s Vice department, who ran John as a mole years before the murders, said: “He got involved in dope, arson… everything that goes with narcotics and once he got involved in that, John became a lost cause.”
He mingled with the infamous Wonderland Gang, a group of LA drug dealers that controlled the cocaine in the megacity.
By 1981, John’s addiction had gotten so bad, his wife, Sharon Holmes, who was a straight shooter, said he began selling stolen goods from the family home.
“In one month’s period of time, he took out family credit card and charged $48,000. Jewellery, furniture, television… and he was selling them,” she told documentary makers years later.
He then moved to running drugs for the mob where he bumped into Eddie Nash, a Palestinian night club owner and LA drug lord.
Nash was drawn to John’s stardom and the two often hung out at his plush Hollywood apartment where they did drugs and had wild orgies.
John’s addiction was spiralling out of control and he was becoming more violent and desperate.
At the beginning, the people accepted him because he was a celebrity but after a while they realised he was just a junkie too
Mike Sager
At one stage, he pimped his underage girlfriend to Nash in exchange for dope – and when Dawn Schiller returned home at night, he’d beat her.
“He had outbursts that had become rough. Shoving, pushing, above just plain cruelty. You know, emotional cruelty that was not there before,” Dawn said in the documentary Johnny Wadd: The Life & Times of John C Holmes.
When his porn career floundered in 1981, John became close to the Wonderland Gang and snorted coke at their Hollywood Hills home.
Within months, four gang members would be dead and John charged with being an accomplice to their murders.
Mike Sager, who wrote extensively about John and the Wonderland Murders, told The Sun Online: “He was part of the gang and not part of the gang.
“At the beginning, the people accepted him because he was a celebrity but after a while they realised he was just a junkie too.
“They probably told him ‘you’re doing our drugs but not contributing anything so what are you going to contribute?’ So, he had to come up with a caper and the best person he knew was Eddie Nash.”
John also had a hefty debt that he owed to Ron Launius, who was the clan’s leader.
He and the drug-fueled group hatched a plan to raid Nash’s house clean of any drugs and money.
John was tasked with going over and leaving the back sliding door open, so the thieves could sneak in at night.
On June 29, 1981, they entered Nash’s home via the unlocked door, held his bodyguard at gunpoint and stole a loot of drugs, jewellery and money.
They robbed a floor safe that Nash kept under his bed, that very few knew about, made Nash suspect John.
The drug lord was held hostage and made to beg for his life, something he later recalled as “humiliating”.
John took his cut of cocaine and rushed home to Dawn, who by then he had hooked onto drugs.
Dawn said: “He came in with his suitcase and opened it. It was the largest pile of cocaine I had ever seen in my life. I didn’t question the pile. I knew it was his loot, his cut from the robbery.
“We just got way high.”
‘THERE’S SO MUCH BLOOD’
The next day one of Nash’s friends spotted John wearing some of the looted jewellery and told the kingpin, according to the LA Weekly.
On July 1, as John slipped into his car, he felt a cold, steely metal object press against his neck. It was a gun and the man holding it, believed to be one of Nash’s henchmen, told John to drive.
He quickly confessed to his involvement in the robbery and is claimed to have driven the thugs to the Wonderland gang home.
Ron Launius, Billy Deverell, Joy Audrey Gold Miller, and Barbara Richardson would later be found bludgeoned to death, while Susan Launius, Ron’s wife, was critically injured but survived.
By the time John got home, the murders had made the national news and Dawn was beside herself with fear and shock.
Seeing live footage of the crime scene on TV, Dawn told documentary makers: “I sat in front of that house, many times in that car. I knew the house and my heart just went into my gut because I just knew there was something wrong.”
She recalled John looking ragged and run-down when he returned home.
“He got back. We didn’t say anything. He looked exhausted,” Dawn said.
“He took a couple of valiums and laid down and went to sleep. He tossed and turned, and he screamed and screamed ‘blood, blood, there’s so much blood’.
“That was the final gut-stabber for me.”
According to LA Weekly, investigators said the scene was particularly brutal, noting it was bloodier than the Tate-LaBianca murders committed by members of the Manson Family in 1969.
John was eventually arrested by police but managed to escape with Dawn and went on the run.
He first settled at his sister’s home in Montana before moving to Florida, where he forced Dawn back into prostitution. She eventually escaped and turned John into police. Nash would later also be arrested in connection to the killings.
John was charged with four counts of murder in 1982 and was acquitted three months later.
An initial theory of the murders centred on fugitive porn star after his left palm print was found at the scene above a headboard.
John’s defense attorney Mitchell Egers recalls when cops found his client’s prints at the scene.
“There was a fingerprint, or fingerprints. There was blood that was on the head board near one of the victims but there was no bloody fingerprints. I remember that quite clearly,” he recounted.
“That was the impression that perhaps some had in the courtroom that was clarified by the defence.”
LA Attorney Ron Cohen said there were “indications that Holmes was holding the bed frame with the victim just on the bed and he was beating the victim with his right hand”.
John’s lawyers successfully argued he was dragged to the Wonderland house as a victim and played no physical part in the deaths.
“He was an actor. He would act by sitting in the chair, crying at the appropriate times, the ‘poor pitiful me’ attitude. I wanted him on the stand so badly I could have tasted it then,” Cohen said.
WHO WAS JOHN C HOLMES?
John was best known for his role as PI Johnny Wadd whose raunchy crime-busting techniques proved a hit in the 1970s.
Born John Curtis Estes on August 8, 1944, John grew up in rural Ohio and left home at 15.
He joined the US Army before venturing into menial jobs, including one at a meat packing factory in California where he was noticed by Bob Chinn, a prolific porn director.
John would go on to star in hundreds of adult movies and sleep with thousands of women in a career that spanned from 1971 up until his death 1988.
John was dubbed the ‘Elvis Presley of Porn’ by adult cinematographer Bob Vosse and was recognised for his 13-and-a-half inch penis, which he described as “bigger than a payphone, smaller than a Cadillac”.
John reached the zenith of his fame playing serialised character Johnny Wadd in the 1970s.
Despite drawing in thousands per shoot, John lived a meagre life and spent his money feeding a ferocious drug habit that at one point saw him getting high “every fifteen minutes”.
John was acquitted of the Wonderland Murders in June 1982 and spent 111 days in prison for contempt of court. He returned to starring in porn movies after his release, despite being HIV positive.
John died from an AIDS-related illness on March 13, 1988.
That night, John called Sharon and begged her to follow him across the country and start a new life together.
“John called me that night and said he wanted to see me, but I said no,” Sharon said.
“He asked me if he could come back or if I would go with him. That he would try to make another life for himself somewhere else. It was the first time in my life I used the word ‘f***’ and said ‘get the f*** out of my life’.
“I said I’ve lived with enough upheaval and there will never be a life for us together, because you can’t change… I didn’t want to do this. I couldn’t provide support for him anymore and that was basically the last time we ever spoke.”
John returned to porn and continued acting up until his death from AIDS on March 13, 1988.
The Wonderland Murders remain a cold case to this day and though John didn’t cooperate with police, he did confess to one person: his wife Sharon.
He tossed and turned, and he screamed and screamed ‘blood, blood, there’s so much blood’.
Dawn Schiller
Before going to see Dawn that fateful day in July 1981, John stopped past Sharon’s home for a shower and some rest. He was “covered in blood” when he arrived, Sharon said.
“He looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘I was at a murder and four people got killed in front of me.’
“He then proceeded to tell me about the robbery that took place the day before that he set up and carried out in a demeaning manner to Eddie Nash and said that these people who had cut him for money and drugs from Eddie Nash were killed.”
She added: “He was, according to him, thrown up against the wall and held there while two of the three people he took there carried out the murders.
“I asked: ‘So you stood there and you watched this?’ And he said ‘yes’. I said ‘these people were your friends’ and he said they were dirt. They were filth and it was them or me’.”
