(cont'd)

Tracy McCourt: When we got back to the house, I just started getting very nervous. I looked out the balcony and saw a car that looked like the Lincoln Continental that had been parked at Eddie Nash's house.

I told everybody about it, but they were so high and screwed up on drugs that they paid no attention. That's when I got really nervous and decided to leave on my own.

David Lind: There were five of us involved in the robbery. Ronnie Launius, Billy Deverell, and myself were to [each] receive 25 percent of what we took. And John Holmes and Tracy McCourt were to split the remaining 25 percent of the drugs and the money. Everybody was in a pretty good mood after the success of the robbery, and we just got high.

I don't remember when John left. I do remember when I left. I left approximately nine or ten o'clock the next morning.

And that was the last time I saw any of them alive.

Dawn Schiller: I called John's answering service and left messages, and when we hooked up again John pulled out his briefcase, and there was the largest pile of cocaine I'd ever seen in my life.

It was the pile they ripped off from Eddie Nash.

I didn't question the pile, but John said, "This is how we are getting out of here. This is our bank."

He said we needed to sell it, and that's what we'd use to get away. But then we checked into this motel and just got high. We just got way high. We just got high for about a week.

Then John went out again.

Tom Lange (L.A.P.D. homicide detective): On July 1, 1981, at 6:20 p.m., I arrived at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles. The purpose was to investigate a reported quadruple homicide.

I entered the two-story residence on Wonderland Avenue, went up the stairs, into the front, and observed the first victim, Barbara Richardson, lying face-down in the living room, just off the balcony.

I proceeded to the rear of the house and went up one level, three stairs, to a rear bedroom, where I saw the second victim, Ronald Launius, lying in bed. There were extensive wounds on him as well as on Richardson. They were both apparently dead.

I then went in back, through the kitchen, upstairs to the second level, and entered a bedroom. I observed the third victim, Joy Miller.... She was apparently dead and on the floor, again near the balcony. I observed the fourth victim, William Deverell, with extensive head injuries, also apparently dead.

Then I was informed that a fifth victim, Susan Launius, had been transported to the hospital and was in surgery.

Sharon Holmes: It was the early-morning hours, nothing was moving in the streets, and John came knocking at the door. I left the latch on the door and said, "Why are you here?" This was the first time I had seen him, literally, since March, and he asked if he could come in. That's when I realized -- from the night-light in the entryway -- that he was covered in blood. On his head, it was in his hair, around his ears, his clothes. He wasn't dripping, but you could tell that something had happened.

He mumbled about how he'd had a car accident, then said, "Could you help clean me up?" Dope that I am, I let him in the house.

He said, "I have to get in the shower."

I said, "There wasn't an accident. What happened?" He looked me straight in the eye and said, "I was involved with" or "I witnessed" -- I honestly don't remember which -- "murders."

And, of course, nothing was in the news yet. So I had no idea what he was talking about.

He was almost incoherent, and he said, "Four people were killed in front of me."

And then he proceeded to tell me about the robbery that had occurred the day before, that he set up and was carried out in a demeaning manner to Eddie Nash. And then he told me that these people, who had cut him in for drugs and money that were stolen from Eddie Nash, had been killed.

I said, "What do you mean they were killed?"

He said, "Well, I had to take them to the house, because Eddie had my address book and he told me he'd go back to Ohio and take care of my family if I didn't square it away with him."

So John took the people to Wonderland Avenue, and got them through the security door, and 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 don't think there's anything anyone can tell you more appalling than they participated in a murder, or were responsible for it.

"You stood there and watched this?" I asked.

And he said, "Yes."

I said, "These people were your friends."

And he said, "They were dirt. They were filth. It was them or me."

I don't think I said a lot after that.

I was devastated. I just couldn't believe, no matter what he had become, that he could be involved in this. I just had to learn to find a way to live with this. In the meantime, John went back to Hollywood, where Dawn was.

Dawn Schiller: Before John came back to the motel, the news was on and they were pulling the bodies out of the Wonderland Avenue house.

Now, I'd sat in the car in front of that house many times. I knew that house. I'd seen those people go in and out. And my heart just went into my gut, because I just knew. I mean, it was all bad and John wasn't there and the big pile -- it was adding up.

When John finally got back -- he was gone overnight and came back about midday -- I didn't say anything about the murders, of course. And he just looked exhausted. I never saw his eyes so red. They were bloodshot red, as if he had been crying. I knew that we had been up for days, but his eyes were just brilliant red.

And he was in the weirdest mood. He was very low. It was different than him being mad. I mean, this was something that he wouldn't even take out on me, you know?

So he took a couple of Valiums and laid down and went to sleep. I was still up. And I watched him toss and turn, and then he screamed, "Blood! Blood! There is so much blood!" That was the final gut-stabber for me.

It wasn't good. The day before, things had been hopeful, we had money, a big pile of coke, there was hope -- and then he comes back a day later, and the money's gone, the big pile of coke is gone, and he's screaming about blood.

No, this wasn't good.

This wasn't like how he said it would be when he called me in Oregon.

Al Goldstein: In the end I don't think there was a John Holmes. I think it was all smoke and mirrors. I think John was like a visit to a circus. With those convex mirrors. Nothing was real. It was, not to get too literary, because it's only pornography with pretensions of being real, but I think of the allegory of the cavemen who are in a cave, and they never see the real world, they see only flickering shadows projected by the light. They don't know what reality is.

And John didn't know what reality is. And we don't know what reality is -- but we should try to discern what those shadows mean.

POSTSCRIPT

Dawn Schiller and John Holmes went into hiding for a year after the Wonderland Avenue murders, until Holmes was arrested in Florida and extradited to California, where he stood trial for the murders. He was acquitted, released from jail, and resumed his career in pornography. John and Sharon were divorced in 1982. In 1987, Holmes married his second wife, Laurie, a former porn star.

Eddie Nash and Gregory Diles were tried twice for the Wonderland Avenue murders. The first trial ended in a hung jury. The second trial ended in an acquittal. After serving time on drug charges, Eddie Nash was released from prison and went into retirement.

John Holmes died of AIDS in the Sepulveda Veterans Hospital in Los Angeles on March 13, 1988, at the age of 43. On his deathbed he was questioned by Detective Tom Lange one last time about the Wonderland Avenue murders, but refused to give any information.

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