Revisiting Wonderland Crime Scene

LOS ANGELES, CA (June 4, 2005) On the evening of July 1, 1981, two obscure drug dealers and two innocent women, Joy Audrey Miller and Barbara Richardson, were relegated to an ignominious footnote in the history of Los Angeles crime when they were viciously bludgeoned to death in their Laurel Canyon home, revenge for a drug robbery gone awry.

A fifth victim, Susan Launius, survived the attack with massive head injuries and the amputation of a finger from the force of the blows. It is believed that the murderers used threaded lead pipes.

The case became known alternately as The Four on the Floor Murders and the Wonderland Killings. And at the very vortex of the unsolved mystery was an iconic porn star whose own life was unraveling at the seams, John Curtis Holmes.

The newly-published “Long Time Money and Lots of Cocaine” offers the verbatim transcript of the February 2, 1982, Preliminary Hearing for John C. Holmes in the Wonderland murders, fully annotated and featuring Jacobs' original feature article, “Exhausted: The Dark Secrets of Johnny Wadd.”

The porn star died of complications from AIDS in 1988. He was acquitted of all charges relating to the murders six years prior. His ex-wife, Sharon Holmes, told the Los Angeles Times after his death that he had been forced at gunpoint to the home at 8763 Wonderland Avenue on a July evening in 1981 to gain entrance for two or more thugs in order to exact lethal revenge for the robbery of reputed L.A. mobster Eddie Nash.

“A large segment of the population continues to be fascinated by the Wonderland murders,” says Jacobs. “It’s not only an unsolved mystery, it’s a quintessential L.A. story of the 80s: drugs, sex, excess, night clubs, gangsters, and porn stars. It’s like Raymond Chandler on crack.”

The book can be purchased through Lulu Press:

http://www.lulu.com/content/130126

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FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Rodger Jacobs
8763 Wonderland, Ltd.
(818) 956-0202, Ext. 585