Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
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Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid.
We're here. We're here and we're here. And we're here, here, here And you know what?
Hear ye, hear ye I have an announcement to make If you haven't heard yet because you haven't listened to the last episode or follow our social media.
Or you live under a rock. i wrote a book guys she did i wrote a book and it's coming out september 13th of this year only a few months away oh i didn't know that there was an actual date is an actual date september 13th is it a friday It's a Tuesday.
It's still a 13, which is fun. That's a good luck number.
Yeah, it's called The Butcher and the Wren.
And it is a really cool tale set in the Louisiana, New Orleans area. and it's about a serial killer.
There's a cool female medical examiner in there.
It is a twisty, turny ride. Nightmare. It's spooky.
Spooky. Lots of autopsy stuff in there. Why?
I think you guys are going to dig it. I know.
I pulled it out of nowhere. Do you know anything about it?
I don't, but I did a lot of research. I think you guys agree. gonna dig it a lot um and if you would want to do me a solid and pre-order that book it would be awesome You can preorder it at tinyurl.com slash thebutcherandtheren.
We're going to put the link in the show notes again this week.
And yeah, it's going to be out September 13th.
It'll be out in hardcover. We are talking about all other, like up until September 13th, there's going to be a few. fun things to happen with it.
So stay tuned and I'm probably going to keep shoving it down everyone's throats because I'm very excited.
This is like six years in the making. Please do so.
And everybody who has already pre-ordered it, I literally can't tell you what you have done for me this week.
I've been floating on a cloud. I was gonna say I
I feel like I haven't seen you this way since you found out you were pregnant with the girls.
Truly. Actually. it's like having another baby it really is it's my second it's like the second baby before my third baby So this is the middle child and I'm very proud of it.
And I hope you love it. And you guys have been amazing.
The reception has been like out of this world and it hasn't even come out yet.
So. I just love you guys. And I want to let you know how much I appreciate you and how like humbled I am constantly by how much you will like, you know, how, because a lot of people were like, I feel like you're like my friend.
So I feel proud. We are all friends. Oh my God.
I love that we're all friends. It's just like a really cool thing to have millions of friends everywhere.
You can sit with us. You can. hand and we all sit together elena wrote it here you go Take a big whiff.
So definitely preorder it if you feel so inclined.
And I can't wait. to tell you guys more and to like have more fun stuff come with it.
But I just want to tell you, I love you all.
And I can't explain how much I appreciate you.
Yay. Yay. Books and love. Books and love.
The Butcher and the Wren. The Butcher and the Wren.
Buy it. And that's not our only announcement this week.
We also, because we just don't stop, can't stop, won't stop.
No way. We've got a show coming up on Thursday.
It's going to be a virtual live event because we're not ready to be in public yet.
But it is going to be super duper fun. Moment House is helping us with this one again.
We already did a live event with them. And it was so much fun.
It came out so cool. It was the coolest thing ever.
I'm so glad that I know what we're walking into this time because it was like a. a legit setup.
Yeah. We were used to just like flicking our laptop on in front of us and being like, hey guys.
Hitting start. And then we just that was it.
This was like a whole big thing. And it was fun.
They did a whole like, you know, when you see people there that are about to go on live and it's like three and then they point at you and you're like, fuck, I'm live.
I never thought I would experience that, but I did.
It's a lot of fun. And now we get to experience it all over again.
Thursday night, we're coming to you from a super secret location to put on the show The Dapper.
And the flapper. That's right. It's going to be a roaring 20s kind of night. someone's gonna be a dapper someone's gonna be a flapper I'm sure you have no idea who it's gonna be.
None. But if you would like to find out, you can go to momenthouse.com forward slash morbid and get your ticket. tickets okay do it it's gonna be so much fun i can't wait it's gonna be a lot of fun I'm very very excited to dress in my costume.
I'm so excited for my costume. costume.
It's handmade, I think. I got it off of Etsy.
Look at that. I'm gonna have to write down the person's name who made it.
Yeah, because it's gorgeous. Oh my gosh.
And once again, we're really hiding who's going to be the dapper and the flapper.
Yeah, I mean, who knows? I think you guys figured it out.
So crazy. You probably do already. You definitely knew.
It's going to be a lot of fun, though. So yeah, I think that's all we have for announcements.
Yeah, so if you want to see the virtual live show, do that.
And if you want to pre-order my book, please do that.
Where's the link to your book again? tinyurl.com slash the butcher and the wren and if you would like tickets to the virtual live event momentary momenthouse.com slash morbid.
Do it. Now back to the show. No, I'm just kidding.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
David, I slipped on it. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Oh, there you go. Regularly is hard to say.
I tripped. OK, so I have been working on a case that I
And just I just got like really into this case.
I had heard of this before, but I don't really think I knew any of like the meat to it.
And once you dive into it, there's just so many, it's like, this is a dirty case.
Like it's, it's filthy. dirty, it's grungy, it's 70s, it's like Hollywood, but it is not Hollywood.
But it's not like Hollywood. It kind of is like.
It's like a little like that Hollywood. Like, I'm going to steal your shoes.
It's kind of like that. Actually, it's a lot like that.
So this is... the Wonderland murders or the four on the floor case.
I am ready for this because this is actually...
Like in the early days of getting into true crime, this was one of those cases that I stumbled on and was like, Oh boy, okay.
It's a wild case and it's got like a lot of...
I don't want to say it has a lot of twists and turns because it's very clear like what happened here and who did it, but it weirdly also does have twists and turns and kind in kind of a different way.
Yeah, that makes sense. I feel you. just so everybody knows this is actually going to be two parts.
So I will tell you right now, you're probably going to be pretty mad at me at the end because I'm definitely leaving you on a cliffhanger. but that's just fun for us.
And you know what? The next part is coming out in about 48 hours.
It'll be fine. It's coming out on Monday.
Don't worry. So we'll be good. Okay. The man at the center of the Wonderland murders or if you know it as the four on the floor case is a man named John Holmes.
John Holmes. Boy was he something. But before he became a famous porn star, which he was, before he developed a serious addiction to freebase cocaine, which we'll get into later.
And before he became associated with one of Hollywood's most notorious mass murders, he was just a poor kid from Ohio.
He was just John. He was just John from Ohio.
He was born August 8th, 1944 in Asheville.
And he was born as John Curtis Estes. Now, Estes was the last name of his biological father, Carl. who he never actually really knew.
He was just a baby when his mom changed his last name legally to match it to that of her on and off again husband, Edgar Holmes.
Okay. So that's how he became John Holmes.
Oh. Now, John actually didn't find out that his biological father was Carl Estes until he was 42 years old and applying for a passport.
Wow. His mom had to show him his original birth certificate in order to get it, so moderately traumatizing I'm sure.
But that definitely was not the first or last instance of trauma in John Holmes' life.
His life was riddled with trauma. His childhood was very much less than ideal.
His mom, Mary was devoutly religious. in the kind of way that can really mess with a person.
And his stepfather was totally on the other side of that.
He was an alcoholic piece of literal garbage who would come home from the bar shit-faced in the middle of the day. and either beat the children or vomit on top of them.
John remembers being vomited on as a child.
Oh God. Like just as stepdad stumbles in from the bar and just pukes all over the family.
Like that is horrific. Oh, OK. Yeah. So we're really off to a great start here.
Now, luckily, Mary left Edgar at some point while John was still young, and she remarried to a man named Harold Bowman.
Now Harold was like, all right for a little bit, but he kind of just lost interest in being a father. and he became completely removed from John, who was his stepson, and John's younger brother David, who was actually actually Harold's full biological son.
Awesome. Like literally just couldn't be bothered with them.
Yeah, you know, usually people just like lose interest in being a parent.
Yeah. whole ass children it's one of those things that you're just like yeah you know I gave it a shot it's like Maybe just like don't bring a life into the world unless you're ready.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Because if you're going to lose interest, that's a problem.
You're not ready. Yeah. Ding ding ding.
So since his life was so horrific at home, John looked into joining the army as an escape from it all.
And with his mother's permission, he enlisted in the US Army, when he was only 15 years old.
That will change a person. He served four years in the Army, and in 1963, he was honorably discharged.
He was 19 years old. So he literally had spent like his formative years.
I was just going to say had an entire military career.
Right. Like, had a traumatic childhood and then saw so much violence, I'm sure, in the military.
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Take two. So yeah, he's 19 years old, but he knows that he needs to get his own life going because there's really just next to nothing waiting for him back home.
So like a lot of young people during that time, he felt like moving out to California would just solve all his problems and, you know...
Maybe he would make something of himself out there.
Spoiler alert, he kind of did, but like not in the way that you would expect.
Yeah, no, definitely not. When he got out to California, he had to work a lot to be able to live on his own and pay all his bills.
So he had a lot of random different jobs. but the one that would lead him to find his wife was when he worked as an ambulance driver and he met her, a nurse.
Oh, that's really cute. Which would have been the most beautiful story if it ended here.
Yeah. That would be adorable. Yeah. So his future wife was named Sharon and they were super cute together.
We'll post a picture of when they like first got together.
They met in the winter of 1964 and they were married less than a year later in August of 65.
Personally, I would describe Sharon as a ride or die literal saint for all that John Holmes would eventually put her through.
Oh. She is a ride or die kind of gal. Now, the first years of their marriage, they were pretty normal.
John started operating a forklift for work and she continued on with nursing.
John worked operating the forklift for a meatpacking warehouse, so he would be in the warm desert air. and then would have to go into this frigid walk-in freezer.
And his body just couldn't handle the drastic changes in temperature. it started leading to health problems.
He actually had his lung collapse on three separate occasions.
Oh, wow. Yeah. it was clear that he was not going to be able to continue working there much longer.
I don't know how you do. That's like a huge shock to your system.
Yeah, even if your lung doesn't collapse, obviously there's so many other things that can go wrong.
That would just make me sick. Yeah, so this is where we're going to get a little crazy with it.
Because lucky for John, he had sort of a natural talent that hadn't been quite discovered yet.
But it would turn out to be a very big, pun intended, change in his career.
But I'm... So there's a couple of different stories about how John got involved in the porn industry.
But the main one that I've seen reported is that He was using the bathroom.
He was at a men's card playing club. And the man who was going to the bathroom next to him... noticed that he had a rather large downstairs mix-up.
Downstairs mix up. Yeah, downstairs mix up if you grasp what I'm hinting at.
Now the man who noticed the mix-up worked as a photographer in the porn industry.
And he told John that he would make bank with another region that looked like that.
Yeah, he's like, that's a downstairs mix up that we could use.
Apparently, it was 12 to 13 inches of a downstairs mix-up.
That's... Yeah. Outrageous. Yeah, that's not for me.
That's otherworldly. I don't know what to say about that.
I really don't. So as the two of them finished up their urinal chat, I can only hope that they both wash their hands before the photographer.
Handed John his business card and they both went on their way.
I really hope they wash their hands. P Brothers.
So that was it. P Brothers. John started posing for magazines, but he hadn't told his wife, Sharon, quite yet.
Now, she found out what he was up to one day when she came home from work early and she found him in the bathroom with a measuring tape.
He told her the wonderful news about his appendage and informed her that this would be his life's work.
Oh, man. And she was less than thrilled.
And for her, honestly, that was like the beginning of the end.
But John didn't really seem to care too much because she was still there to cook for him, still did his laundry, still had a roof over his head.
Basically, the main thing that changed in their relationship is that they weren't sleeping together intimately anymore because.
She just couldn't bring herself to be with him knowing that his entire workday consisted of him being with other women.
Yeah, I couldn't do it. Like... And she was like, I didn't want to judge him, but I just wasn't comfortable.
But you have every right to have. Your own boundaries.
Right. And you're married. That's her boundary.
That's for you to figure out in your marriage.
That would for sure be my boundary. Yeah, my boundary would be definitely more than that.
I'd be like, you can leave. Eat him out of the house with a push of a button that just expelled him into the air.
Yeah. Because there's nothing wrong with it, but you need to have a partner that is okay with that.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So... John dove into his new life pretty much headfirst.
He started working under the name Johnny Wadd.
That's a lot. Yeah, it's the most. And he was making a reported $3,000 a day.
Damn. And he was making that money in cash because on his first job, he had been fucked over and the check that he got didn't clear. so he would not work unless he got cash damn so he's getting johnny wad large amounts of cash Precisely.
Wads and wads. Ew. Ew. So it wasn't all roses and sunshine, though, because at the time, making porn was actually still considered a felony.
Yeah. I forgot that that was even a thing.
Isn't that crazy? When you say it's like.
Like not only distributing it, but making it in general was a felony.
So John actually got arrested in the early 70s on set.
Like, the police just... barged onto set.
And he got arrested for pimping and pandering.
So he called Sharon. He's like begging her to bail him out.
She's like, I don't have the fucking money for that because your money is with you, wad boy.
So to get himself out of jail, John became an informant for the LAPD.
Damn. So Sharon said of this time, That's a choice.
She said, John was giving regular information, particularly on anybody that had done him dirty so he would still work on like his whole porn set but if he knew of other people like For instance, probably that person whose check didn't clear when he tried to cash it, he sent the police that way.
And they were like, we're going to look the other way when it comes to you, as long as you keep feeding us the information.
Precisely. numbers over or it's like quantity over quality, I suppose.
Yeah, I guess. So John started changing a lot, though, and this was going to his head.
Yeah. When he first started out, he was really just the kind of guy who actually didn't even drink. but before long he was packing whiskey in the briefcase that he was known to carry around.
He was very famous for carrying around a briefcase.
What a thing to be known for. It did not have any important papers in it, per se.
No. Just whiskey? Just whiskey for a little bit and then more after that.
Oh. So it started out with that. But then he'd dabble in pot from time to time.
Then he started doing some lines of coke with his buddies, and eventually he became fully addicted to freebase cocaine.
Oh, no. Now, I actually hadn't heard of that before.
Had you? I've heard of the term. I honestly don't know what it entails.
Well, I'm going to tell you because I looked it up for the both of us.
Appreciate that. According to Healthline.
Regular cocaine, like in its actual form of like sniffing, in its sniffing form, like powder.
I don't know. That makes sense. Yeah. It can't be heated or smoked.
Oh, okay. Like when it's in that form. Okay.
So that makes sense. In the seventies, people started using, is it ether?
Yeah. Yeah. to free the base of the coke, making it possible to smoke.
So basically you're just making like it's purest form.
Holy shit. You're breaking down the chemicals.
So it's. just pure. And using ether? Holy shite.
So when more and more explosive accidents started happening with the ether, which is highly flammable.
People started now, at that point, using what's known as crack cocaine.
Now, the process used to make crack includes using baking soda to free the base.
It removes the hydrochloride from cocaine. which then leads to those little rocks that people will smoke out of a pipe being formed.
Oh, OK. But basically from what I gathered, because I've never done this before, Freebasing is doing the purest form of coke that you can possibly do unless you have a direct connection to like Pablo Escobar.
Wow. Yeah. That's so... This is so nuts, because I know literally nothing about drugs.
Like, I'm... I'm that person that's just like, huh?
I know like a little bit of, I just, never thought about it and then like when you started breaking it down like that like i'm really thank you for breaking it down like that well it was interesting It is.
It's interesting because also like the little pieces of it, you're like, how does that make sense?
If you have a little bit of a basic knowledge of chemistry or organic chemistry, when you started saying that, I was like...
Oh my God, this makes sense now. Like now I understand like the little rocks and I understand like freeing the bait.
Like it makes so much sense. Right. Thank Healthline. because they really broke it down for us.
I started getting it. I started seeing the process in my head, which was also a little jarring.
It is. like oh i was like well shit like and then you just realize how intense it is because Oh, yeah.
You hear those names of those drugs and you're like, oh, yeah, that's intense, I imagine.
Right. Because you hear stories. Of course.
But when you hear it broken down at like a molecular level like that, you're like, oh.
That's so much. That's real intense. It is.
Eek. So before long, John was not only packing whiskey in that briefcase, but cocaine, baking soda, a pipe, and a torch.
So as is usually the case, the more and more drugs John did, the worse he was at his job. not only because he was late all the time and difficult to work with due to like the sudden mood changes and everything, but he would also disappear from set for long periods of time to sneak into the bathroom and use. ah now things eventually came to a point where he really couldn't work anymore because since he was so messed up on the drugs he actually couldn't hold an erection anymore.
I was gonna say, that's eventually gonna be a problem.
Exactly. Now, by that time, he had become a totally different person than the man who Sharon had met and fell in love with yeah so he's fucking over everybody at work he's fucking over Sharon like he's And he's fucking himself over.
He's fucking himself. It's sad. Their relationship, though, the one with Sharon, it completely collapsed.
But... she still felt this sense that she needed to take care of him.
In her words, she said, And he really didn't have anybody else.
Well, and it's true. It's like, it's not like you just immediately fall out and out of love with someone just because they're are fucking their own lives up, you know, like it must suck.
It's like you want them to. be yeah you know they were and you're just trying to help like i feel bad for yeah it was a lot this is a heavy case yeah In 1974 though, Sharon, through her boss at work, became the manager of an apartment complex.
And since John needed work, he became her co-manager.
She took him along for the ride. So they were like... living together, but they were not really like... Like platonically.
Platonically, exactly. So she was like, you know what, I know you need a job.
Come on, let's go. Wow, she's a good person.
She's a really good person. She's a ride or die bet.
She really is. So he became the co-manager to like some degree.
Really, he would work on repairs along around the complex because he was pretty handy.
And the gig got them a house where they could live rent free.
And John actually took a lot of pride in making the place their own.
That's nice. He was really good at renovating.
He renovated pretty much the entire place.
So I think Sharon also probably got to this point and she's like, you know, maybe things are going to change.
Like we've got this place. He's kind of diving himself into that.
Little glimmer of hope. Things were only about to get much worse.
Oh, no. Because in 1976, a 15 year old girl named Dawn came to live at the apartment complex with her father and her younger sister.
Oh no. Her parents had just divorced, and before they made their way out to California, The three of them really had no plan or any idea where they were going to end up.
The dad, Don, and the sister. So while they drove around trying to figure things out, they picked up a hitchhiker who said that they could all come and stay with him at his girlfriend's for a little bit.
His girlfriend, as you guessed it, lived at the complex run by Sharon and John.
So when her boyfriend and his new guests arrived, the woman who lived in the complex wanted to make sure it was okay with the managers that everybody stay in her room for a while. in her little apartment for a while.
So Sharon came down. She okayed the guest.
She was like, of course, it's two little girls and their father.
I'm not worried about it. And before long, John would make the acquaintance of 15-year-old Dawn.
The day he met her, he looked her up and down and muttered something about how it sucked that she was so young.
Oh, that's disgusting. That's fucking disgusting.
And apparently it wasn't enough to keep him, a grown ass man in his 30s, I believe he was 32 at the time, away from her.
Dawn would come home from school to John waiting for her, ready to hand her some flowers or a stuffed animal.
That's fucked up. Oh, it gets worse. He would show her and her sister how to do different jobs and how to build furniture and other things like he did.
He was love bombing. her yeah he would literally just be there at all times before long the hangouts after school led to camping trips movie dates beach trips and most of the time dawn's younger sister would tag along with her own boyfriend like some kind of incredibly toxic double date oh my god this is horrific but one night John asked Dawn to come to the beach with him and said, don't invite your little sister, like just the two of us.
Now, she was excited because she's young and she does not realize what she's getting herself into here.
Yeah. This is classic grooming. Mm-hmm. And the two of them hopped in his van and they headed out to the beach.
She was. way too young to fully grasp the depth of this new relationship, and the responsibility should have fallen on the one adult in the situation.
Yep. But he did not seem to know right from wrong, or he had just forgotten the difference at this point.
And that was the night that John and Dawn slept together for the first time.
And almost immediately after that, John became incredibly incredibly possessive over Don.
Oh, I hate this. He would question her if she was gone longer than he thought she should have been.
He would want to know exactly where she'd been and with whom.
He'd give her the silent treatment or worse if she had done something that pissed him off. and it was not long before his silent treatments and shitty moods turned into him physically putting his hands on Dawn.
Wow, that's monstrous behavior. Yup, he had become physically abusive.
He had become an actual monster. And by this point, her father had left.
Oh my god, are you kidding me? He was leaving with her sister and Don didn't want to go and he didn't make her. what the yeah where are the adults here like where are the good adults we're the good men i'll tell you we're the good anybody like hell i'm gonna tell you we're one good adult thank you The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor. as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic.
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So once her father left, Don lived actually with John's brother and his wife for a little bit, but it didn't really work out for very long.
So at that point, Sharon knew what was going on with John and Dawn.
And still took Dawn in to live with her.
Wow. She said she felt the need to protect Dawn and that if Dawn was living under her roof, it would be easier.
Now, obviously a lot of people have questioned her on this over the years, and she offered this as an explanation.
It baffles everybody, but I hate to see injured people or dogs, and I just adopted her.
I couldn't see her staying outside with just a shift on.
She became a daughter to me. I needed to tell her that she had a brain.
She didn't need to accept what was going on.
So... Sharon literally took in her husband's like, I don't want to say mistress because this is a little girl.
Yeah, this is a child. Took in somebody that her husband is grooming.
And is like treating her like a daughter and trying to show her.
And assaulting. This is not what you need.
Like, you got to get out of here. Oh man.
That's what I mean. This is bleak as hell.
Oh yeah. And it only gets bleaker. Unreal, but just so crazy to me that she was like, I want to help you so badly to get out of this relationship with the man that I actually married.
That's an amazing person. Now try as Sharon might to help Dawn get away from John, Dawn was young and she was in a really intense situation that was unfortunately only going to escalate.
Oh, I feel so bad for Dawn. I do too. That's just...
I will tell you she gets through this and she makes it her life's work to like make sure that this doesn't happen to other people.
Good for her. She's a bad. I'm glad that she got through that because that makes me really sad for her.
Yeah, and she had to go through a lot before she could get to the point in her life where she could help others because this is only the beginning of the story.
By 1980, John's addiction had completely taken over his body and his mind.
He was smoking freebase everything. 15 minutes or so every single day.
Doing a hit of freebase every 15 minutes.
How did his brain not explode out of his head?
I have no idea. And his heart not explode out of his chest.
You could go into cardiac. rest at any second.
Oh, yeah. One regular cocaine, one snort of it can put you into cardiac rest.
Exactly. Never mind what he's doing. Holy.
Now by then, and I don't know if this had something to do with how he didn't go into cardiac arrest, because he also developed an addiction to Valium to take off the edge from all the coke he was doing.
So I can only assume that his heart rate was crazy when he was doing freebase yeah and then would kind of level out from the valium because it takes you down crazy.
I always want to believe that, like, if we just taught like proper anatomy and physiology in school early in life. life that people might like think twice at least about like ingesting all this stuff.
I don't know if it would make a difference, but we don't do it, and I feel like it would be necessary to do.
Because when you have a basic understanding of anything going on inside the human body and how complex... and how fragile, but also how amazing and astounding your body is.
Definitely. I feel like it should at least make you think twice about like doing something that fucks it up so hard.
Yeah. I think too, I think if we did that and then paired it with getting people therapy at a trauma therapy hand in hand.
Yes, because he went through so much trauma that I think he probably didn't care what was happening to his body.
Like he had been taught that it didn't matter what was happening to his body.
There's so many things that you're just like, why can't we need to make this a thing and it's like trauma therapy and like You know, back then, especially men... Oh, yeah.
Any... You know... masculine people, it was not looked at as like, you know, any, you could not go looking for therapy because what aren't you a man right and it's even i'm sure even women it's like are you weak right you know like anybody and it's like it was just not talked about It's just now become a thing where everyone's like, yeah, guys, nothing about.
In fact, it is like the bravest thing you can do.
Yeah. is go get therapy and admit that you are having issues dealing with certain things.
And 10 out of 10 times, I swear, It leads back to something in your childhood that was like moderately or incredibly traumatic and you were able to work through it. and like heal your nervous system because people don't realize even if you're not thinking about what actively traumatized you whatever it did it lives in your nervous system.
Yeah, exactly. Like riddles your body with just anxiety and stuff like that and you don't even know why and then you go to therapy and you're like oh shit yeah that's why that guy Did that.
I get it. Oh, I see now. And it's like, and we're just starting this whole cycle of abuse that happens.
That's just... You create monsters who monster out on other people and then they create more people.
It's like... It's got to stop somewhere, man.
I know. It's so crazy to me that we haven't figured it out as a human species yet.
I think that... Unfortunately, people don't care enough about other people.
Yeah. And it's a lack of empathy, I think.
I think you have to care enough about yourself.
And I think that can be really hard when you've grown up the way that somebody like John Holmes grew up.
Yeah. You know, I think it's just like knowing that we even need DCF that like we even need like people to intervene and save children from their own parents.
It's like... When are we ever going to get there?
Like the human species has a lot of fucking work to do.
The fact that we have to actively have. systems in place to save children from their own fucking parents.
Who brought them into this world. Wild. And then it's like and then we just those those kids who have been traumatized and changed for their entire life just get yeeted out into the world. thrown out into the world and then they do horrible shit and then they get thrown back out into nowhere with no help and it's like When do we learn?
I hope we start to learn. It feels like we're at least opening our eyes a little bit to it.
I definitely think process. Luckily, mental health is more of a topic of conversation. at least.
So I think we're on a good road. Yeah, it just needs to be talked about.
That's all. Because, I mean, this story is a very telling story of what can happen when you go down the wrong path. systems and cycles of abuse.
Yeah. Oy. So yeah, so he, John is like fully, fully addicted at this point.
He's essentially living out of Sharon's car at this point because she was like, get away from me.
Yeah, she just wants to help Dawn. and he was stealing anything he could to sell and then buy more drugs.
We're talking about a man who was once making $3,000 a day at one point in time now going to airports to steal luggage off of conveyor belts to pay for drugs.
The rise and fall here is legendary. the darkness that we are going to get into because right now, When he couldn't rake in money stealing, he would send Dawn out to do sex work and she didn't want to, but she was young.
This man had groomed her and she had nowhere else to go.
Oh my God. That's horrific. He forced her into sex work so that he could, she could basically pay for his drugs.
My God. Unreal. And then there were times where he felt like she didn't come home with enough money so he would beat her.
Oh my god. Things were beyond bleak. Oh, poor Don.
Poor Dawn. I'm just like, my whole heart aches for Dawn here.
I know. It's so, reading through this story, it's just like, it's traumatic even to reading through it.
Because what an actual piece of shit he was.
Oh, 150%. Damn. So right around this time, John became more connected to and started hanging out with a group of people called the Wonderland Gang.
Now, sure, that sounds magical as fuck. Yeah, don't.
And if you touch our cats, you know. Yeah.
Yeah. If you don't know this story, maybe you're like, oh, cool.
Maybe they're going to get him some help, those Wonderland people.
Maybe they're going to have a tea party.
They're not. No. The Wonderland gang was made up of a group of people you would not want to fuck with. you would see these people walking down a street and you would go the other way.
Oh, man. They were called the Wonderland Gang because they lived at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon.
Oh, what a lame reason. I know, right? That sucks.
No, it really does. It's literally just the name of the street.
Now, Laurel Canyon was a pretty exclusive place to live at at one point in time.
I'm pretty sure it still is. And over the years, a lot of famous rock stars and movie stars have lived in the area.
8763 Wonderland Avenue, was actually once home to a pretty famous set of musicians, Paul Revere and the Raiders.
Oh, lived in the home. Wow. But these days it was looking a little different.
You don't say. During the time that the Wonderland gang lived on the street, the house was a well-known spot in the area because they were not a famous band.
They were not famous movie stars. They were among the top distributors of cocaine during the 70s.
Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Some would argue that they were the most successful in their business at the time.
I mean, Alice in Wonderland was trippy. It was about drugs.
So the house was three levels. There was a garage on the ground floor and two floors above that.
Inside there was two bedrooms and two bathrooms and outside there was a gate that had a deadbolt lock. a phone at the entrance, which meant that you would have to okay somebody to come up.
And just for extra precautions, there were two pitbulls that usually hung out around the front steps, which I'm like, I love pitbulls.
Oh my goodness. Kiss your little head. Oh, I just want to smush him.
Can I just interject really quick? Of course.
And I'll just do it really quick. Absolutely.
I cried about Bailey the other night out of nowhere. aware.
Oh, no. And I'm sure people listening have had the same.
I just want to tell you, like, I feel you if you've lost a and you randomly just cried about it, don't feel bad.
I was sitting watching TV with John the other night and there was a dog on TV.
Somebody's pet. And I literally started crying.
And I was like, oh, my God. I was like, I feel emotions right now.
I know for you to feel emotions. And it was like, I miss Bailey.
And I've had friends who like, I've had a couple of friends who also had to lose their, like lost their dogs recently.
And they actually texted us recently and was like, I just wanted to ask, like, does it get better?
Like, do you know if it gets... And I was like, hey...
I'm sorry to tell you, but it gets a little easier to deal with, but you're going to cry about it for a long time.
I mean, she was a part of our family. Yeah.
She is a part of our family, but was for like 12 years if you guys lost pets and like many of you said it when like I posted about Bailey like you were amazing I just want to tell you like I feel you.
Oh my God. We are one solidarity. I can't even imagine because luckily cats live for like 45 years.
I love that. But I was gone for two days.
I had to go to Chicago. And thank you for taking care of the cats.
Alina took care of them. But when I came home, they were like meowing.
They were like going through our legs. I was like, oh my God, I love you.
And I'm so sorry I have to leave. you. It's true.
Pets are just the best. I just had to say that because I know people have lost pets and some of our listeners have recently also lost pets and told me they were feeling it.
So solidarity. You're all in this together.
I'm with you. Just know that. Feel free to DM me with your, like, I'm sad about my pet.
That makes me so sad. Um, there's no good transition.
Yeah, there isn't. We were just talking about pitbulls.
So I was like, I gotta say, no, I'm happy that you did.
Um, I'm just going to tell you about a Rolling Stone article.
Please do. let's go. So according to a 1989, 1989, Rolling Stones piece written by Mike Sager, I believe is how you say that last name.
I'm gonna link it in the show notes because it was such a good read.
Love it. The house cost $750 to rent back then, is what he said.
And the lease was in a woman named Joy Miller's name.
Okay. Now at one point in time, Joy Miller was living a completely different life.
She was actually married to a Beverly Hills attorney.
She was a mother to two daughters. Wow. But somehow, and from what I read, it seemed to be related to a lot of health issues.
She actually had breast cancer. But she did eventually become addicted to heroin.
Oh, no. Which is sad. Really sad. Now, her addiction was how she somehow became connected to a man named William Billy, Deverell, sorry, who would later become her boyfriend.
Now, while Joy had been arrested seven times in the past, Billy had her beat with 13 arrests under his belt. he was considered the second in charge of this gang.
First in charge, the known leader of the Wonderland gang, was a guy named Ron Lanius.
He was one scary mofo who, by the summer he was killed, was suspected to be involved in at least 24 other homicides.
Oh, yes. My goodness. Now back in the day, Ron actually served in the Vietnam War. but was dishonorably discharged for smuggling drugs, specifically heroin, back to the US.
Okay. Now, the way that he did that was somehow sneaking the heroin into the body bags that would carry his fellow soldiers back to America.
Wow. Unsure exactly who he set that deal up with, but I do know that it happened.
So the boundaries are non-existent with this fellow?
No. Cool. Oh, just wait. Now, the fact that that was really the beginning of his lawbreaking pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
In 1974, he was actually charged with murdering a police informant.
But he got away with it because the key witness involved in the case was actually killed in a shootout with the cops.
But if he had been convicted, he most likely would have gotten a life sentence.
Damn. But he would not avoid jail time forever, because only a matter of months went by before the cops were hot on Rong's case again.
This time he was smuggling heroin and cocaine to Mexico.
Okay. He ended up serving three years in federal prison for that, which I was like, only three?
Okay. Yeah, that doesn't seem like a lot, but okay.
But that's where he met another member of the Wonderland gang, David Lind.
Now, they were both sentenced to serve their time at McNeil Island in Washington State, which is actually where Charles Manson was housed in his earlier years.
Ah, look at that. Weirdly enough, this case has a couple of links to Manson.
Yeah, because I feel like it's like the time period, the place, the vibe.
The violentness of it all. Very like interconnected.
Exactly. But so yes, David Lind and Ron met at McNeil Island while they were both in prison.
Now, David Lind had been in and out of prison on charges of things like burglary and assault with intent to commit rape.
Cool. There are rumors that while he was in prison, he became part of the Aryan Brotherhood, that white supremacist group.
Yeah. So David and his girlfriend, Barbara Butterfly Richardson, they were staying at the Wonderland house around the time. that John started hanging around.
And then the final person who lived in the house was Ron's wife, Susan.
She did use drugs, but she really wasn't a part of any of the gang's activities.
She was just there for like... with Rom, you know?
But, and the reason I think she probably didn't want to have anything to do with these gang activities... probably had something to do with the fact that she was once kidnapped by some gang members in Mexico who Ron had pissed off.
Oh, was literally kidnapped by like drug lords.
Oh. Yeah. So that's why I think she separated herself a little bit.
And lived to tell the tale. That's what's most shocking.
Oh, she lived to tell a few tales. Oh, boy.
So John became... This is stressful. It's super stressful.
This is like very stressful. You keep saying like, oh, and I'm like, oh.
Yeah. And I'm going to say it one more time.
I don't want to. It's only going to get worse.
Okay. This is a stressful case. Yeah. So John became somewhat part of the gang.
He wasn't really like... a part of it, but he was there with them.
Kind of like an outskirt. Yeah, he was like a hanger on her.
Yeah. He was a mooch. No one really liked him that much, and he was really just more of a nuisance than anything else.
Ron, in particular, took a... disliking to John.
He would make fun of him. He'd belittle him.
He'd just smack him in the head and push him around.
He fucking hated him. You know. So the gang mostly used John for deliveries and they tried not to give him too much responsibility because they kind of just thought he was a big joke.
And they were like, we don't really trust you.
Wow. But, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a setup, you know?
Yeah. You know, so most of the time when John was with the Wonderland crew, it was so that he could get drugs for himself and Don.
That's what I figured. He'd have Don wait in the car and she recalled later that sometimes John would be in the house for hours. and she'd just have to sit and wait in the car for him to come out because he had told her on countless occasions that these were bad people that he did not want her around and he made it known she was not welcome to go inside.
And it's like she shouldn't even be in this situation.
No. She's a freaking child. She's a baby.
Ugh. And she doesn't want any of this. It's making me so angry.
But he was insistent that he didn't even want them to see her face or know that she existed at all.
Wow. And it's like, then why are you bringing her here?
Exactly. Like, what are you doing? had no idea, but eventually she would become connected to these people in a way that she never would have imagined.
Now, one of the times that John was hanging out at Wonderland, Ron mentioned these two antique guns that he had stolen from somebody.
And he knew that they were worth a good amount of money, but he was trying to sell them at different pawn shops and the store owners would not take them.
Ron was pretty well known in the area, so they probably were convinced that these guns were most likely used to kill a few people.
Yeah. So much to Ron's surprise, John said that he actually knew a guy who would probably buy them off of the gang, or do some kind of trade involving cocaine or heroin.
He said the guy he knew was Eddie Nash, a well-known name in the area.
Huh, I know that name. You do. Eddie Nash pretty much owned and operated all of the nightclubs and nightlife venues in the city.
He was born Adele Nasrallah. And although his background story sounds a little made up, So does pretty much his entire life.
So just roll with me for a minute. A lot of this does.
The whole thing sounds made up. He said over the years that his family owned hotels in Palestine, but that at one point or another, he ended up in a refugee camp. and he had seen some really awful things.
He actually saw his own brother-in-law getting shot by Israeli soldiers.
So he had definitely experienced his own trauma.
That's really sad. Now one way or another, he decided he was going to get out of there and come over to America.
He came here with next to nothing, but he got to work building a full blown empire.
The empire all started out with a hot dog stand that he opened called Beef's Chuck. i don't know if i would eat there no beef's chuck doesn't really sound super appetizing Yeah, it was opened on Hollywood Boulevard.
Now, Eddie not only worked there, but in different restaurants in the area.
He waited tables. He would cook in restaurant kitchens.
He was just trying to make a glow up and he was going to have it.
Sometime in the 70s, he Americanized his name and changed it from Adele to Eddie Nash.
And by the mid-70s, that was a name you were hearing all around town in Hollywood. because Nash by this point had really made it.
He opened one club and found success, and then he just kept opening more and more and more, until he owned pretty much every club worth going to out there.
Damn. It's said that at one point in time, he owned 36 liquor licenses for his different clubs.
Oh my God. And all his real estate and assets together made him worth about $30 million back then. which today would have been hundreds of millions of dollars.
I was going to say. You know, I know I always love when you're like, do you know what that is today?
Yeah. I couldn't because 30 million, it said like in the 70s.
So I didn't know exactly what year. So I couldn't do like a full blown conversion, but it would be hundreds. it's a lot just know that now he had a club for everybody too which i thought was really cool He had dance clubs for teenagers.
He had gay clubs. There were strip clubs that he had, like the Starwood.
The Starwood had a lot more going on than just dancing ladies.
All right. The LAPD were frequent flyers at the Starwood, not for like the reasons you might think. you don't say I mean probably for those two but because they were constantly doing drug busts In the 70s, the LAPD would do about 25 drug busts a month.
Oh my god. That is literally a drug bust almost every single day.
Yeah, that's just like... That's just routine at that point.
You're like, oh, we got to go in. Yeah, I think they were just taking like holidays and Saturdays off.
Get our bi-weekly drug bust going. For real.
Now, Eddie worked hard to get where he was, but I've told these stories before, and with that success usually comes some kind of darkness as well. that was the case for eddie just like john holmes eddie's drug of choice was also free base cocaine And if John was doing free base every 15 minutes, Eddie was doing it every five.
According to the Rolling Stones piece that I mentioned earlier, it's called The Devil and John Holmes, Eddie was doing about two to three ounces of freebase a day.
For six years in a row, he spent about a million dollars of his earnings on drugs. a million dollars per year on drugs.
I don't even know how to comprehend that.
Nor do I. Yeah my brain just won't wrap around that fact.
No. Now, it wasn't like he was losing a lot though, because his clubs were a constant source of income.
And not to mention, he was one of the biggest dealers in the area.
If you weren't buying drugs at one of his clubs, you were getting... to do them at his house like they were either at his house everywhere it was all over the place The house was a party house and he would have parties going every day of the week from sunup to sundown.
He apparently would walk around in tight Speedos and a housecoat.
I think it was a purple housecoat, they said.
You know what's weird with the way you were talking about all this i was picturing people in like speedos and house coats yeah i think it's just like a 70s like a 70s party vibe I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.
Well, you got Eddie Nash on the head. Yeah, there he is.
The house was filled with expensive trinkets, jewelry. thousands or probably millions of dollars worth of drugs and guns were all stashed in little hiding places.
Very safe. Eddie Nash was a full-blown gangsta and he was a drug dealer.
So it's no wonder how he made the acquaintance of John Holmes.
Oy. It's not clear exactly how Eddie and John met.
There's a lot of different, like, meet cute stories.
But one could assume it was probably through a nightclub. or through one of his infamous parties, or through John's need to score.
Now, the thing about their relationship was that Eddie thought of John like a brother almost immediately.
He would introduce him to people and be like, this is my brother.
Oh, like he loved him. For some reason. I feel like this is going to go bad.
It is. Yeah. For some reason, he trusted him and he would just tell him around parties and show him off like a little show dog.
He loved that he had a connection to someone that he considered famous because he was famous in his own right.
Yeah. But I don't think like a lot of actually famous people were at these parties.
Yeah, that makes sense. Johnny Wad was.
A lot of the times at the parties, people would want to know if all the rumors were true about John's downstairs mix-up.
And apparently he was more than happy to just like whip it out.
Yeah. At parties. Okay. Yeah. And just to prove that all the rumors were true.
Wow. Like Lizzo. This is a real situation.
Yeah. You know, I had to tell you. So that is exactly how John had connections to two of the most interesting infamous drug dealing entities in Los Angeles, Hollywood, wherever you want to call it. and exactly why he thought of Eddie Nash when Ron needed a place to sell those antique guns for either a large amount of money or a large amount of drugs.
That would probably not only be used for the Wonderland and John's personal gain, but also sold for profit.
Yeah. So, Ron was taking a leap of faith if he thought this whole thing was going to go off without a hitch. but it would be on John if something went wrong as far as he was concerned.
So he was like, all right, go ahead. So John brings the guns over to show Nash and he explains the situation. now this is the point in the story where things do get a little blurry it's a little he said she said i think yeah there's always that point in the stories.
Yeah. I've seen it reported that Nash thought the guns were too rare to sell and he was reluctant because he thought it would get them all taken down if he tried. but that he wanted to keep the guns for himself anyway.
And then I've seen other sources where he did exchange drugs with John for the guns, But then when John went back to the Wonderland gang and Ron, they were pissed because they thought he should have come back with about $25,000 worth of drugs or money.
And instead he came back with only a thousand.
Ooh, so that's a big difference. Big difference right there.
Yeah. Either way. When John came back and he didn't have the guns anymore and what the Wonderland felt like was an insulting amount of drugs, he got the shit kicked out of him. out of him ron literally took a walking stick that john was using at the time and just beat him over the head senseless with it.
Oh my god. Now, if we've learned anything about the Wonderland gang so far, it's that you don't want to piss them off. no and john was constantly doing so oh no he was in deep shit And he knew this would not be the only beating that he would have to suffer if he didn't make things right with them or...
It potentially could have gotten even worse than that if you smell what I'm stepping in.
Yeah, I certainly do. Yeah. And it smells bad.
It smells so scary. So they also were one of his main sources for drugs other than Nash, and he couldn't just freeload off of Nash forever because that was just a dangerous game to play too oh man this is messy he owed wonderland now and And they were going to get that money one fucking way or another.
So it took John a couple days to come up with a plan and he was probably in hiding somewhere.
But then he realized... Which honestly, at this point, he should be.
Yeah, just leave. So many reasons. Go far.
So he realized, though, I can get those guns back and I can probably get even more and make things right with the gang.
So he headed on over to 8763 Wonderland Avenue and hatched a plan to get back in the Wonderland's gang's somewhat good graces.
With him, he had a map of Eddie Nash's house and plans to show the Wonderland gang where a whole bunch of shit was stashed.
We are talking cool. copious amounts of drugs, jewelry, guns, etc, etc, etc.
He sat down at the kitchen table and he showed them where every last thing was and then explained how he was gonna help them get into the house.
He said he would go to Nash's before they did and leave a sliding door open.
Nash wouldn't think anything of John being there because he was there all the time and he literally considered him a fucking brother.
Ugh. So he's just fucking Nash over at this point, which is really shitty.
He pointed at the map to show Ron and the guys where the door was. and then also made it a point to show them where Nash's room was and where Nash's bodyguard's room was.
Because the gang was going to have to incapacitate both men somehow so they could make their way around the home.
Yeah. Now John wanted them to know that the bodyguard, Gregory Diles, slept next to a sawed-off shotgun. my god now at that point you would think that they'd be a little nervous but this is the wonderland game we're talking about yeah it is they were not scared of anything They're not scared.
I'm scared, but they're not scared. You should be scared.
I am. Don't worry. So that night that they lay all these plans out, it's Sunday, June 28th, 1981.
Now, after he set the plan in motion with Wonderland, John was to go over to Nash's, hang out for a bit, probably do some drugs. and of course leave that screen door open hell yeah so he stayed with nash for a good while they did a ton of drugs together.
And then he went back to Wonderland to tell them that the coast was clear.
But at that point, it was like the early hours of the morning and they weren't ready to go yet because they were like sleeping and, you know.
Yeah, whatever. They were in various states, of course.
But a few hours later, they were ready to go.
So John headed out before them so that he could make sure that sliding door was still open.
So now he's going back. But it's also like you're being weird now.
For sure. You're going back to, like, Eddie might think something of that.
Yeah, I didn't see him being a criminal mastermind in all of this.
No, he saw himself that way. I didn't foresee that.
Nobody else did. No. So when he checked, the door was indeed still open.
Like I said, he and Nash had done a lot of coke the night before.
So by that point, Nash was probably somewhere in the house coming down from it all.
So he made his way out of the house and drove past the Wonderland gang on his way out.
It was now 8.30 in the morning on June 29th, 1981.
Like people are eating breakfast in their cute little homes.
The workday is starting. Yeah. People are literally driving to work and they're also driving to work.
The gang was driving a stolen Ford Granada, which if you fucking look it up, it is the of a 70s, early 80s car.
And it just makes sense. I'm going to look at it.
Now, the driver was one of the gang's members who I didn't really mention, Tracy McCourt.
This is really the only role that he plays in the story is driving them there.
That's exactly what I pictured in my head.
The car? Yeah. Now with him were Billy, Ron, and David.
The four men broke into the house and almost immediately took care of Nash and his bodyguard, Gregory Diles.
One of them held a gun in Nash's mouth as the others tied him up and the bodyguard as well.
And at one point or another, one of the guns actually went off and grazed Gregory Diles, the bodyguard.
But luckily, it was not a fatal shot. But it was enough for Nash to start crying and begging for his life.
Now, this was not a man who cried in front of people or begged for his life often.
No. So, as some of the men hit all the hiding spots that John Holmes had made them aware of, Nash, who considered John a brother, was sitting there thinking he was going to die.
Yeah. Now, for whatever reason, the Wonderland didn't kill Eddie Nash or Gregory Diles that morning.
They left them alive. Huh. But they did get away with about a million dollars in drugs, jewelry, and guns.
Wow. so they make their way out that's shocking and just leave them there now nash obviously is happy to be alive But now he is dead set on finding out who the fuck these men were and obsessed on getting revenge on them.
Yeah. And he had felt like he had been made a fool of.
Yeah. So he is going to get his revenge.
Oh, boy. And that is where we are going to wrap for part one.
Oh. The revenge is gonna be swift, huh?
It's gonna be swift. We're gonna open up with a truly harrowing scene in part two.
And then we're going to deal with the run-ins with the law after that, people running and hiding. and like going their separate ways for a while and then going to jail and then getting out of jail and dying and then dying.
It's going to be absolutely. Absolutely wild.
Just looking up the crime scene photos is really all you need to know about this case.
So I am... Scared. You should be. For part two.
Yup. You definitely should be. This is...
Bonkers. Every player in this is like a terrifying individual.
Every single person in this story would fuck you up.
Yeah, except John Holmes, to be honest. John Holmes would not fuck you up.
Yeah, he sucks. Yeah, he's the worst. Just, like, in a different way.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ew. So we will see you Monday morning for part two.
Yeah, we sure will. And we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. I don't have to tell you to get out.
Keep it so weird that you break into somebody's house and like steal other stuff and then leave them alive.
I mean, leave them alive for sure. But like, don't steal in the first place or break into somebody's house. because it's a really bad idea.
And buy my book too. Keep it so weird that you buy Elena's book.
It's called The Butcher and the Ren, and you can buy it at tinyurl.com slash thebutcherandtheren.
Yeah, tinyurl.com slash thebutcherandtheren.
You said the pitcher. The pitcher in the red.
Name change. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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