{"id":1244,"date":"2014-11-25T17:51:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T17:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2014\/11\/25\/annotation-tuesday-the-porn-star-and-mike-sager\/"},"modified":"2024-10-19T19:51:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-19T19:51:48","slug":"annotation-tuesday-the-porn-star-and-mike-sager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2014\/11\/25\/annotation-tuesday-the-porn-star-and-mike-sager\/","title":{"rendered":"Annotation Tuesday: the Porn Star and Mike Sager"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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I\u2019ve been thinking about Mike Sager\u2019s story, \u201cThe Devil and John Holmes<\/a>,\u201d for a long time. I first read his chronicle of the famous porn star and the Wonderland murders when it came out in 1989; I was 10 years old. It is a testament to the story\u2019s vividness that, when I picked it up years later, so much of it\u2013entire scenes and lines of dialogue\u2013had stuck with me. (It\u2019s not surprising that parts of the story ended up in Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s Boogie Nights<\/em>. \u201cThere was this great Rolling Stone <\/em>article,\u201d Anderson said<\/a> on his DVD commentary, \u201cand I remember the description of this guy Eddie Nash in Speedos and the sheen of sweat on his body.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Some of the remarkable detail in the Rolling Stone<\/em> piece comes from extensive interviews Sager did with two women in Holmes\u2019s life: his first wife, Sharon, and Dawn Schiller<\/a>, a teenager he had a relationship with and prostituted to support his drug habit. Schiller, who is now 53 and a graduate student at Eastern Oregon University, says the piece still holds up.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cThe story is in alignment with what I lived,\u201d she said in a recent telephone interview. \u201cI think [Sager] did a really sensitive job. It could\u2019ve been salacious. It could\u2019ve been crude. He didn\u2019t lean in any specific direction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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For more than 25 years, Sager has continued to produce exceptional work, including the definitive portraits of Janet Cooke, Veronica Guerin and Todd Marinovich<\/a>\u2013for which he won the 2010 National Magazine Award for profile writing.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Mike Sager<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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Sager<\/a>, a writer-at-large for Esquire<\/em>, invited me out to his home in San Diego. I reflexively said yes. We talked and talked and talked. In his office, in his car, at a restaurant. All told, we burned for about seven hours.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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My comments are in red ; his responses in blue . (You can read the story without the annotations by clicking the \u201chide all annotations\u201d button to the right.) First, some questions:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Storyboard: How did Rolling Stone<\/em> approach you to do this story?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Mike Sager: I was in the office, and Bob Love pulled out a recent newsclip about the AIDS death of Holmes. \u201cThe Devil and John Holmes\u201d was my eighth story for the magazine and my second as a contract writer.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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If you could do the story now, would you do it any differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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No, it was a great piece. It was delightful. I was very proud of it. I was a little hurt, as writers are, that no one noticed it, or said anything about it. So it\u2019s gratifying to have you want to break it down\u2013to see it as a work of art, not just a work of penis.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The story was cool because it was the culmination of the training I\u2019d had. I\u2019ve never been a genius. I\u2019ve always been crawl, walk, run. But it took all the skills that I had to get this done. I\u2019m proud of it. It\u2019s cool.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I guess I like that I\u2019m associated with porn and the underworld and drugs. In a certain way, I sometimes feel I\u2019m a little tarnished or dirty for specializing in these things.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Is it frustrating to have an early story be so beloved?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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No, because I never knew it was beloved. I feel like I\u2019m garnering attention now that I didn\u2019t get forever.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The Devil and John Holmes<\/a><\/h2>\nBy Mike Sager
\nRolling Stone<\/em>
\nMay 1989
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\nDeep in Laurel Canyon, the Wonderland Gang was planning its last heist. It was Sunday evening and the drugs were gone, the money was gone, the situation was desperate. They\u2019d sold a pound of baking soda for a quarter of a million dollars: There were contracts out on their lives. Now they had another idea. They sat around a glass table in the breakfast nook. Before them were two pairs of handcuffs, a stolen police badge, several automatic pistols and a dogeared sheet of paper, a floor plan. They needed a score. This was it.<\/a>We enter the story with the action already in full swing, sort of like beginning a movie in the middle of a sentence. Why did you choose to begin it this way?<\/span>\u00a0I have a very distinctive feeling that the story should not begin with the climax. As reporters, we\u2019re trained to give our best stuff in the lede. As we move forward to becoming feature writers, a lot of people stick with that format; so many true crime stories start with what is, essentially, the orgasm. To me, it\u2019s like, if I know the ending of the story, why should I read anymore? The psychology of storytelling is: foreshadowing, teasing, elongating, and making it dramatic. That\u2019s what we\u2019re supposed to be doing here. According to the sacred tenets of the New Journalism, we are using the techniques of the novel in order to tell truth. We\u2019re trying to use scenes, setting, character development, but the very basis of that thing is storytelling. So I like to start before the climax, and get you sort of worked up, then drop you for a while and go back. Then, all the while, keep you wanting to read until the end. I feel as though this kind of stuff is entertainment, and we\u2019re competing with everything else out there. So I\u2019m writing to keep the reader involved and moving, hand over hand, reeling the reader in as I go. Sometimes I push him out a little bit, sometimes I pull him in. It\u2019s the presentation of facts that helps you do that.<\/span>\u00a0You mention New Journalism. Do you generally subscribe to those ideas?<\/span> Not just generally. I subscribe to them, and I think what I have done, as each generation of artists should do, is take the work before you, make it your own, and take it to a new place. The tenets of New Journalism were made popular by Tom Wolfe<\/a>, but I\u2019m more of a Gay Talese<\/a> guy, in the sense that I don\u2019t exaggerate, and I treat my subjects with amazing respect. I don\u2019t arrive with a white suit; I arrive all in black, stay small, and try to let the action happen around me. That is the basic thing about all of my writing. The crime writing is just a thing that I got into because it was a period of time when that\u2019s what people wanted, and because I had the skillset. But what I really loved was the anthropological approach, where you hung out with people and you let the story come to you. Then you find the drama from within that. My background is an amalgamation of all the writers in this room–from Truman Capote, with his either remembered or made-up stuff, to John McPhee. But mostly, I\u2019m in the sweet spot of Tom Wolfe for his anthropology, Gay Talese for his simplicity of language and humanity, and Hunter Thompson for his little bit of craziness.<\/span>\u00a0That being said, did you have a model in mind, a certain story that served as a template?<\/span>\u00a0I\u2019ve never been that guy. I always have been weirdly self-taught. Around 1980, I\u2019d been working at the [Washington] Post<\/em> for two years, and Walt Harrington came to work there. He\u2019d come from Allentown. He was not a professor at the time. He was just going to be my editor. He read my work, and he said, \u201cHave you ever read Tom Wolfe?\u201d I said, \u201cWho?\u201d I was a history major in college, I was 21 years old, and I\u2019d barely read a newspaper before. I just wanted to write. So I started doing this reporting at the Washington Post<\/em>, which was great because I had an ear for it. I could learn a police short in a minute. That give me the underpinnings. But then Harrington came along, and showed me this book, The New Journalism<\/em>, and the first thing I read was about the \u2018scoop slobs\u2019 and the \u2018feature writers\u2019 and I said, \u201cOh my God, this is what\u2019s been going on.\u201d Because as a young person, you go through the storm thinking you\u2019re the only one who\u2019s ever gone through it.<\/span>\u00a0Did you have a cinematic view of the story\u2019s opening? Did you think about it as a movie?<\/span>\u00a0Yes. When I do these stories, I think about everything in terms of a movie. I\u2019d already had the idea of writing in scenes, but I used to write in one take, with transitions. Bob Love at Rolling Stone<\/em> taught me to stop and go to black. I mean, this story is very raw. It was one of the first ones I\u2019d done like this. Doing these stories is like paint by numbers, but you have to draw the stencil. The stencil is a film, 24 frames per second. First, I found all the shit I could find. Then I structured together what actually happened. I\u2019m visual. I grew up with television. I see the focus of scenes. And when I sit down to write each individual scenes; that\u2019s when I imagine it from the facts I have–which paint by numbers cells I can color in–and don\u2019t have. So there\u2019s two things: First of all, if you\u2019re in contact with your sources and you\u2019re a good reporter, you never burn your sources. So you can call them back and you can say, \u201cTell me more about this scene,\u201d which is a huge, huge part of what I do. I never unfriend sources. The other thing is, you can judiciously pick what scenes you have, based on what information you have. Tracy McCourt, the driver in the first scene, I was in touch with him. He was in jail. He would call me collect. So between him, and all of the transcripts of the trial–all of this shit was in the transcripts. Like, What did you say then? What did you do then? What were you carrying? Where were you? When you go to trial, they ask all these questions. As we go through this, I can\u2019t honestly say that I\u2019ll remember where everything came from, but I can honestly say that I remember spending a week in a room with the lawyers and the fact-checkers. It was all paper back then. It cost hundreds of dollars to buy copies of the transcripts that I found, four stories underground, at this building next door to the courthouse. Some clerk told me to look down there, and I found a friendly guy who ended up helping me.<\/span><\/span>
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There were seven of them meeting in the house on Wonderland Avenue, a jaundiced stucco box on a steep, winding road in the hills above Hollywood. Joy Audrey Miller, 46, held the lease. She was thin, blond, foul-mouthed, a heroin addict with seven arrests. She had two daughters, had once been married to a Beverly Hills attorney. A year ago, she\u2019d been busted for dealing drugs out of the Wonderland house. Six months ago she\u2019d had a double mastectomy. <\/a>Where did you get this information on Miller?<\/span>\u00a0There had been some reporting done about her by a guy at the L.A. Times<\/em> named Robert Stewart. The Times<\/em> wrote a huge story about her when she was killed. So that\u2019s where these details come from. I don\u2019t remember being able to contact anyone from her family. But she was well written about at the time. Garry Wills said something like, \u201cLet history happen and let the dust settle. Then go in afterwards.\u201d The thing I talk about a lot in my writing is the bowl of details. What I do, after the dust settles, is I go in and try to fill my bowl with everything that was written, every person I can speak to, everything I can possibly collect.<\/span>\u00a0Did Rolling Stone<\/em> cover your expenses?<\/span>\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em> paid every penny.<\/span><\/span>Her lover was Billy DeVerell. DeVerell, 42, was also a heroin addict. He had a slight build, a pockmarked face, a record of thirteen arrests. \u201cHe looked like a guy in a dive bar in El Paso,\u201d according to a neighbor.\n
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Sharing the house with Miller and DeVerell was Ronald Launius, 37. Blond and bearded, Launius had served federal time for drug smuggling. A California cop called him \u201cone of the coldest people I ever met.\u201d\n
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Story Proposal<\/a>\n <\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\nThe house at 8763 Wonderland rented for $750 a month. There was a garage on the first floor; the second and third floors had balconies facing the street. A stairway, leading from the garage to the front door, was caged in iron. There was a telephone at the entrance, an electronic deadbolt on the gate, two pit bulls sleeping on the steps.\u00a0<\/a>Did you spend time in the house?<\/span>\u00a0I don\u2019t think I could get in, but I went door to fucking door on that street. Every fucking house. Some people who were still there would tell me things. I remember that day, the dejected feeling. The thing is, in the bowl of details, each is hard-won. I got enough details to give you a sense of things. I think it\u2019s important to point out that magazine journalism, to some degree, is blue smoke and mirrors. Because if you get the sense of the plot, then you can find little snippets of things that, through digression, you don\u2019t need a whole lot of action. If you can find three or four lines of dialogue, and then sprinkle in the characters and motion and attitude and setting, then you\u2019re able to advance a point without having a whole lot. You find little moments of time, little scenes. Omission is a very important part of journalism and also the friend of the writer. You have some things and you don\u2019t have other things. You go to your strengths to see what you have. But before you do that, you get everything you can possibly get. I should say that, around this time, I looked like I look, which was very unusual. I had a shaved head and a very dark complexion. When I left the Post<\/em> in \u201884, I went to Don Graham to say goodbye. He\u2019d helped me work up the line. The first thing he said was, \u201cYou did get an earring!\u201d It was a rampant rumor [at the Post<\/em>] that a guy who wasn\u2019t gay had gotten an earring. I\u2019d always get busted in every country I\u2019d go into. I went to Israel, and the Shin Bet made a circle around me on the tarmac. I was wearing a purple shirt. So going door-to-door was an effort, too. But I always had a good smile, so I had you. Because I knew you were afraid and then I could say something silly and get you. But still, there\u2019s nothing worse than the day-to-day slog of being a journalist and just collecting one little thing, one little thing, one little thing. Meanwhile, there are bigger things going on that are taking months and months to do, so you go out and do it.<\/span>\u00a0Right.<\/span> Early on, I had heard that John Holmes had a wife, and I was trying to get hold of her. So all through the time of doing this little stuff–talking to the cops, going door-to-door, talking to lawyers–I was also working my way through to this guy, Page Buckey<\/a>, who was supposedly the agent for John Holmes\u2019s wife, Sharon. He lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. His claim to fame was that he\u2019d lived as the lover of Bette Davis during the glory years of Hollywood. He strung me out for, like, six or eight months. Anyway, I\u2019d heard that he\u2019d had this woman and that\u2019s the story I wanted.<\/span>Sharon had never been interviewed at that point?<\/span> No, and nobody knew about Dawn<\/a> [\u201cJeana\u201d]. I didn\u2019t know any of this shit then, but to me, finding the creamy center of your character–finding the heart–is the most important thing. My ex-wife used to joke that I\u2019d write about Hitler and find something good about him. And I would gladly say, \u201cYes, because someone loved him.\u201d Eva Braun loved him! And to me, John Holmes was always going to be painted as a guy who died of AIDS, who was a drug addict, all this bad stuff. Now that John\u2019s drug use has been brought up: my ability to portray it had a lot to do with my job as a drugs correspondent and also as a seeker of drugs over the years. I was an excellent cook of freebase, back in the day. I freebased a lot. When Len Bias died, my friend Henry Schuster from CNN brought over pictures to try to identify this as crack or freebase. I mean, I was smoking it. That was my drug of choice.<\/span>\u00a0While you were working on this story?<\/span>\u00a0No, but for years before that.<\/span>\u00a0So when you sat down with the lawyers, and they\u2019d say, “How do you know this?,” did you say, “Because I\u2019ve done it?”<\/span>\u00a0Well, sometimes.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Though elaborately secure, the house was paint-cracked and rust-stained, an eyesore in a trendy neighborhood. Laurel Canyon had long been a prestige address, an earthy, woodsy setting just minutes from the glitter and rush of Tinseltown. Tom Mix and Harry Houdini once lived there among the quail and scrub pine and coyotes. <\/a>Every sentence is packed with information, maybe even more than necessary. (It\u2019s wonderful.) Most writers would have ended the sentence after \u201clived there.\u201d What made you include the bit about quail and coyotes?<\/span>\u00a0Albert Murray<\/a>, you ever heard of him? He was the first real writer I ever met. When I was at Emory, before Emory got big, we used to have English out in the temporary classrooms. He was the writer-in-residence. I\u2019d been a guitar player, a photographer, and then I found writing. That was my expression of creativity. So we were in the classroom one day, off the quad, and he\u2019d written a sentence all the way around the room. He went through it and put slash marks. Then I remember him scat singing it. Ba! Boo! Doo! Da! That\u2019s wild. I always wrote out loud, but I had to stop eventually because my voice was getting too fucked up. But if you listen to, say, Oscar Peterson playing, he\u2019s always humming over his work. That\u2019s how I write. That shit\u2019s made to be read. There\u2019s poetry in commission. I look at sentences that way. Also, I kind of like long sentences that, by pace and rhythm, give you time to breathe but take you on a different journey. I refer to it as the J-stroke. If you ever went to camp and took canoeing, you know what it is–a stroke with a turn. That\u2019s what I like to do to my readers: fuck with their heads. Everybody thinks they always know where you\u2019re going, and I never want to go there.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Later, in the Sixties, the canyon attracted writers and artists, rock stars and gurus. Number 8763 Wonderland Avenue had some history of its own: Paul Revere and the Raiders once lived there.\n
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By the Eighties, former California governor Jerry Brown was living on Wonderland Avenue, and Steven Spielberg was building on a lot not far away. <\/a>Interesting to see the house now<\/a>. It looks so harmless! Is it still green?<\/span>\u00a0My mother called it \u201ccat-shit green.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a0The house at 8763 had passed from a raucous group of women\u2014neighbors recall naked women being tossed from the first-floor balcony\u2014to the members of the Wonderland Gang. Things at the house were always hopping, someone was always showing up with a scam. Miller, DeVerell and Launius needed drugs every day. They were always looking for an opportunity. Jewelry stores, convenience stores, private homes\u2014they would try anything, as long as it meant money or drugs.\n
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\u201cThere was a lot of traffic, all day, all night,\u201d says a neighbor. <\/a>How many neighbors did you talk to? Were they hesitant?<\/span>\u00a0Yeah, most people didn\u2019t answer the door. But then I gave them a card from Rolling Stone<\/em>. I left my card at every door. Maybe a person or two called back. I was in L.A., watching John Holmes videos, trying to keep myself busy to make justifiable the car–a Metro Geo. I don\u2019t know if this is for Harvard consumption, but I have a personal story to tell that involves the months and months of research on John Holmes.<\/span>\u00a0Go ahead.<\/span>\u00a0When I was in this small hotel, they were able to rent me a VCR and I started collecting John Holmes videos. I felt like, as a good journalist, I should go through all the John Holmes films. And I remember distinctly, after months and months of doing this research, stopping the thing and going into the bathroom in my hotel room to take a pee, and looking down at my penis and thinking, What happened to it? I thought I was pretty well endowed, for a small guy–more of a grower than a shower–but after watching…The thing about John Holmes\u2019s penis was, it was really symmetrical and anatomically correct, even in its gargantuan size. When you get gigantism in nature, you get often grotesqueries. By the way, I talked to doctors and they said it would take a pint of blood to fill that thing. So it was never completely rock hard.<\/span>\u00a0So…the neighbors.\u00a0Weren\u2019t they frightened to talk to you because of the subject matter? Wasn\u2019t Eddie Nash still at large?<\/span>\u00a0Nobody was afraid of his reprisals. He might have been in jail, at that point. Actually, the hardest people to deal with in the whole story were those in the sex industry. Because they\u2019re all damaged people, to some extent. But the great thing was, once I earned my way in, they were very kind and gave me a lot of access. I mean, I went to porn sets, I talked to people who knew John–enough so that, years later, when I did a story where I had to find these old porn starlets, my contacts from the John Holmes story invited me to the funeral of a director who had just died. And everybody was like, \u201cMike! How you doin\u2019?\u201d Everybody helped me.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0\u201cEverything from Volkswagens to a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. They threw brown bags of dope off the balcony. There was shouting, laughing, rock & roll twenty-four hours a day.\u201d\n
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Letter from Mike Sager to Tracy McCourt<\/a>\n \n <\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\nAt the moment, on this evening of June 28th, 1981, Wonderland Avenue was quiet. Five men and two women were meeting in the breakfast nook, sitting in swivel chairs, leaning against walls. The floor plan before them showed a three-bedroom, high-end tract house on a cul-de-sac in the San Fernando Valley. It had a pool and a sunken living room, a white stone facade. Inside was a painting by Rembrandt, a jade and ivory collection, sterling silver, jewelry and, most appealing of all, large quantities of money and drugs.<\/a>Perhaps more than any other story I\u2019ve ever read, I\u2019m insanely curious about the sourcing. I\u2019m generally pretty good at figuring it out. But here, I mean, you tell us the women were leaning against the wall during the planning of a heist. It\u2019s a beautiful detail! How did you know?<\/span>\u00a0Tracy McCourt. He just told me what the meeting was like. Where they were standing, where they were sitting, talking on the phone. Close your eyes and assemble in your mind the scene. Those are my questions. The first thing I do when I interview someone is ask the you-were-born-in-a-log-cabin shit. Then I start getting to the thing, and if there\u2019s something I\u2019m after, I ask for the scene to be painted. Who was where, what was here. Also, in the court documents, there\u2019s a list of everything that was in the room. Because they\u2019re so fucking, you know, thorough in court. There were pictures and all that shit to go along with it. That was a no-brainer. I had Tracy McCourt and they\u2019d established the timeline of the crime very clearly in court. It was very clear, the part where John Holmes went from Wonderland Avenue to Dona Lola Place and back was very, very well documented in the court records. All the victims of the crime were also well documented in the court records and in the L.A. Times<\/em>.<\/span> For you, what were the biggest gaps in the story, in terms of what hadn\u2019t already been written about?<\/span>\u00a0Whatever I didn\u2019t write about! I\u2019m not sure I can answer that.<\/span>\u00a0What did you consider to be the motherlode source for this story? Something that made you say, holy shit, now I\u2019ve got it\u2026 Was it finding Dawn?<\/span>\u00a0First, when Sharon said she\u2019d do it, and set up the appointment to come. And then, when I opened the door, and there was another girl there. \u201cThis is Dawn.\u201d \u201cCall me Jeana.\u201d I didn\u2019t know who she was. And then I was like, \u201cWait a minute, you\u2019re saying you were fucking John Holmes?\u201d Like, of course I couldn\u2019t say it like that. That was in my mind. I just went, Hmmm. They were just telling me this crazy story. And, as has happened before, my job is just to shut the fuck and to make sure that I rivet them in their eyes and don\u2019t look away. I would go for a cigarette to look at my tape recorder. But a big part of everything is me being in there.<\/span>So you didn\u2019t know that Dawn was going to be there?<\/span>\u00a0No.<\/span>\u00a0In general, I think, sourcing has gotten tighter and tougher–you really have to document how you know a piece of information–compared to when this was written. Do you feel compelled to say, \u201cAccording to\u2026\u201d? It\u2019s the sort of necessity that really bothers guys like Talese and Wolfe.<\/span>\u00a0No. The end of my life at the Washington Post<\/em> came when I had a big fight with Bob Woodward\u2019s second-in-command, with Walt Harrington at my side. I was trying to run dialogue. And he said, \u201cHow do you know this dialogue?\u201d So I told him. He wanted me to say, \u201cHe recalls he said\u2026\u201d and \u201cShe recalls she said\u2026\u201d and we both thought that was stupid, me and Harrington. And we argued against it because we got the notes, it\u2019s here. Well, the newspapers wouldn\u2019t do that but Rolling Stone<\/em> would. The other thing Rolling Stone<\/em> would let you do was shorten a quote without ellipses, as long as you kept the sense of what they were saying. Everything was really well-checked. We had a whole fact-checking department at Rolling Stone<\/em> and we had the lawyer on set. They had a conference room and me and my boxes of shit were in it for a week. What rankles me is, \u201cHe told me\u2026\u201d That\u2019s like so much bullshit. Shut the fuck up! You know what? Shut the fuck up. That\u2019s this whole New York affectation of I\u2019m there, even in a third-person piece. Clearly everything there is from me or from some source that I\u2019ve checked out, because this is the real world. See, the problem is, the lack of fact-checking in the new world–and the whole repeating of shit without anyone checking anything–that\u2019s what\u2019s caused this generation to question the process of a lot of people who get paid a lot of money to make sure the facts are straight. When we call it journalism, we mean it\u2019s journalism.<\/span><\/span>\n
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The man who owned the house was named Adel Nasrallah. He was known as Eddie Nash. A naturalized American, Nash came to California from Palestine in the early Fifties. In 1960 he opened a hot-dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard. By the mid-Seventies, Nash held thirty-six liquor licenses, owned real estate and other assets worth over $30 million.\n
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Nash had clubs of all kinds; he catered to all predilections. The Kit Kat was a strip club. The Seven Seas was a bus-stop joint across Hollywood Boulevard from Mann\u2019s Chinese Theaters. It had a tropical motif, a menu of special drinks, a Polynesian revue, sometimes belly dancers. His gay clubs were the first in L.A. to allow same-sex dancing. His black club was like a Hollywood Harlem, jazz and pinkie rings and wide-brimmed straw hats. The Starwood, on Santa Monica Boulevard, featured cutting-edge rock & roll. In the late Seventies, Los Angeles police averaged twenty-five drug busts a month at the Starwood. One search of the premises yielded a cardboard box containing 4000 counterfeit Quaaludes. A sign on the box, written in blue Magic Marker, said, FOR DISTRIBUTION AT BOX OFFICE.\n
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Nash was a drug dealer and a heavy user. His drug of choice was freebase, home-cooked crack cocaine, and he was smoking it at the rate of two to three ounces a day. He always had large quantities of coke, heroin, Quaaludes and other drugs at the house. His bodyguard, Gregory DeWitt Diles, was a karate expert and convicted felon who weighed a blubbery 300 pounds.\u00a0<\/a>How do you juggle all these characters? You\u2019re able to quickly describe them so they\u2019re memorable to readers.<\/span>\u00a0Well, I have a bad memory, if you\u2019ve noticed. I\u2019m bad with names and numbers. I think in pictures. When I was a coach, I\u2019d say, \u201cGet the long-haired boy.\u201d In fact, I did\u00a0this story recently<\/a>\u00a0where they took an EEG. I smoked pot, then they took another EEG. I was in San Francisco and there were lots of sounds–cars, trains, all that shit. Whenever there was a loud sound, they could see the lobe that shows visual was reacting. So characterization is bigger to me than what the fuck is this guy\u2019s name. Also, I lean on the nouns and verbs.<\/span>\u00a0How did you choose to introduce the characters?<\/span>\u00a0Everything is driven by what pieces of scene you have to work with. You set up your timeline and then you destroy your timeline. The way I see it, scene drives my digression. That\u2019s what makes the blue smoke and mirrors of scene in writing possible. You\u2019ve got three or four lines of quote, but you\u2019ve got reams and reams of information about all the people who are being quoted. Where they are, what they\u2019re doing, and what the attitude of the scene is. All the bowl of details things go in here.<\/span><\/span>\n
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According to one eyewitness, Diles once chased a man out of the Kit Kat and emptied his .38 revolver into the man\u2019s car. The car was on the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard, across six lanes of traffic. The time was 2:30 in the afternoon. No one was injured.\u00a0<\/a>Was this from a police report or your own reporting?<\/span>\u00a0Yeah, and an L.A. Times<\/em> story, too. It was pretty well known.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Nash and Diles were well known on Sunset Strip. \u201cEddie Nash assumed he deserved a certain amount of respect,\u201d says one denizen. \u201cIf somebody fucked with him . . .\u201d\u00a0<\/a>How did you decide when to grant anonymity?<\/span>\u00a0Well, people\u2019s names don\u2019t matter. Like, it was too many names. And who cares? Who cares what his name is? It\u2019s like when you go up in the elevator, and there\u2019s a piece of paper that says the license for this elevator is in the manager\u2019s office. That\u2019s a contract. Well, this is the contract between the reader and the\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em> journalist. That\u2019s why the Million Little Pieces<\/em> guy got so fucked by the masses when he broke the confidence. Because you don\u2019t know what\u2019s true or not. That\u2019s why Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair and [Stephen] Glass are considered such high criminals. You have to be able to read this shit and know. I think some of that is eroding now because it\u2019s such a free-for-all. Anyway, what we looked for with fact-checkers and lawyers is, is there malice in this characterization of Eddie Nash? Clearly, he was on trial and well-known for doing this, so the judgment was it was not.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Now, in the breakfast nook, a tall, gaunt man with curly hair and a sparse beard pointed to the floor plan he had sketched.\n
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\u201cHere, this back bedroom, that\u2019s Diles\u2019s room,\u201d he said. \u201cHe keeps a sawed-off shotgun under the blanket. . . . Here, this is Nash\u2019s room. There\u2019s a floor safe in the closet, right . . . over . . . here.\u201d\n
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\u201cYou sure about this, donkey dick?\u201d asked Tracy McCourt, the gang\u2019s wheelman.\n
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\u201cHey, it\u2019s cool,\u201d said John Holmes, 36, the man with the plan. \u201cI know Eddie. Nash loves me. He thinks I\u2019m famous.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Where did you get \u2018donkey dick\u2019?<\/span>\u00a0I\u2019m guessing Tracy McCourt. Yeah, that was his thing. He loved telling me that.<\/span><\/span>\n
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John Holmes was famous, at least in some circles. What he was famous for was his penis.\n
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In a career that would span twenty years, Holmes made 2274 hardcore pornographic films, had sex with 14,000 women. At the height of his popularity, he earned $3000 a day on films and almost as much turning tricks, servicing wealthy men and women on both coasts and in Europe.\n
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Since the late Sixties, Holmes had traded on his natural endowment. His penis, when erect, according to legend, measured between eleven and fifteen inches in length. <\/a>Maybe this is a stupid question, but there\u2019s a big difference between eleven and fifteen. How is that possible? And, given the renown of his penis, shouldn\u2019t there be a definitive measurement?<\/span>Well, there are two sections of history on Holmes. They\u2019re back-to-back. I tell the story over again. The first history of Holmes is all the mythology about him, that he has degrees in this and that, and he went here and there. But that was a bunch of bullshit, some it true, some of it not. Who knows? But then there\u2019s this whole other thing about how he was just this little guy, skinny, with bad parents. So the first history of Holmes is the history as he\u2019s understood, Johnny Wadd almost. Then there\u2019s a J-stroke moment. Look, the penis is the most interesting thing in this whole story. And for 25 years I\u2019ve really wondered if I did a good job on this story, or whether it\u2019s just because it\u2019s about a guy with a big dick, and therefore very popular. The dick is the thing. The dick is the dick. As a storyteller, that\u2019s what you really have to work for. So I\u2019m not going to tell you how big the dick is yet, right? The hardest thing as a journalist is not only starting your piece, but holding off on your shit. Like, I often have the very best scenes in my story at the end. Don\u2019t know if anyone\u2019s ever going to read \u2018em, but…<\/span><\/span>Recently, however, Holmes\u2019s biggest commodity had been trouble. He was freebasing one hit of coke every ten or fifteen minutes, swallowing forty to fifty Valium a day to cut the edge. The drugs affected his penis; he couldn\u2019t get it up, he couldn\u2019t work in porn. Now he was a drug delivery boy for the Wonderland Gang. His mistress, Jeana, who\u2019d been with him since she was fifteen, was turning tricks to support his habit. They were living out of the trunk of his estranged wife\u2019s Chevy Malibu. Holmes was stealing luggage off conveyers at L.A. International, buying appliances with his wife\u2019s credit cards, fencing them for cash.\n
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Holmes was into Nash for a small fortune. Now Holmes owed the Wonderland Gang, too. He\u2019d messed up a delivery, had a big argument with DeVerell and Launius. They took back his key to Wonderland, and Launius punched him out, then hit Holmes with his own blackthorn walking stick. They told him to make good. He tried to think. Addled synapses played him a picture: Eddie Nash.\n
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<\/a>Holmes was dead when you wrote this. Whom do you talk to for this speculation on his mental state?<\/span>\u00a0I smoked freebase for, like, three days several times. And I know that my synapses were addled and I\u2019m sure everyone else\u2019s were, too. I also discussed a lot of stuff with Scott Thorson. He was a great source of shit, including the shit that they…put in “Boogie Nights.” Like, \u201cDo you guys wanna play baseball?<\/a>\u201d Also, the thing about Nash dancing around in his underwear in a \u201cthin sheen of sweat.\u201d<\/span><\/span> \u201cSo you go in,\u201d Launius was saying to Holmes, reviewing the plan. \u201cYou talk to Nash, whatever, you tell him you got to take a piss. Then what?\u201d\n
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\u201cI leave the sliding door unlocked\u2014this one,\u201d said Holmes, pointing to the floor plan, \u201chere, in the back. The guest bedroom. Then I leave. I come back to Wonderland. Tell you it\u2019s all clear. Then you guys take him down.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>How was the story fact-checked?<\/span>\u00a0Well, there was one main fact-checker assigned to the story.<\/span>\u00a0Do you remember any times when the fact-checker strengthened it?<\/span>\u00a0I\u2019m sure I had a lot of little things wrong. The dates of things I always get wrong. But, you know, I\u2019m known for getting it pretty straight. The fact-checking took a long time, because there was a lot of stuff, but this wasn\u2019t any different than most stories.<\/span><\/span>\n
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And so the plan was fixed. At midnight, the Wonderland people scraped together $400, and Holmes, whose pretense for entrance would be buying drugs, drove off to Nash\u2019s house.\n
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It was 1.6 miles from Wonderland Avenue to Dona Lola Place, which was fortuitous, because the stolen Ford Granada driven by the Wonderland Gang was running on empty. <\/a>Such a wonderful detail, foreshadowing how wrong things are going to turn.<\/span>\u00a0I got that from Tracy McCourt, the driver. He had a really good memory. This was the biggest thing in his life. Of course, I had the documents, so I could jog his memory.<\/span><\/span>In the car were DeVerell, Launius, McCourt and a man named David Lind, a friend of Launius\u2019s. Lind and his girlfriend had come down three weeks earlier from Sacramento to stay at Wonderland. An ex-convict who\u2019d served time for burglary, forgery and assault to commit rape, Lind had been invited to town, he would later tell a court, to practice his \u201cprofession,\u201d committing crimes.\n
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McCourt drove up the hill on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, across Mulholland Drive, over the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, down into the Valley. The sun was warm and diffuse. Sprinklers were ticking water across lawns. Rush hour was on. It was 8:30 Monday morning.\n
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Though Holmes had left Wonderland at midnight, he had stayed at Eddie Nash\u2019s for six hours, smoking up the $400 he\u2019d taken to spend, helping himself to a little more of Nash\u2019s largess. Nash was extremely hospitable. He always called Holmes \u201cmy brother.\u201d They\u2019d known each other for three years.\u00a0<\/a>I checked. Eddie Nash is somehow still alive. Did you talk to him?<\/span>No. He was always being prosecuted while I was doing the story. His lawyer wouldn\u2019t let him.<\/span><\/span>\n
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As night stretched into morning, Holmes had an attack of conscience, a glimmer of an understanding that knocking over Eddie Nash might lead to a lot of trouble. <\/a>Is this supposition on your part? What\u2019s it based on?<\/span>\u00a0As I recall it, the only other person to whom Holmes told the story of what happened that night was Sharon. And Sharon told me quite a bit of it.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Nash knew the Wonderland people. He\u2019d never met them, but he had, through Holmes, given them a $1000 loan. Holmes muttered something to Nash about the gang. He wasn\u2019t specific, but it really didn\u2019t matter anyway. Nash hadn\u2019t slept in ten days. He hardly knew what Holmes was saying. And, as Holmes\u2019s supply of coke dwindled, his conscience was overruled by his jones. He excused himself, left the room and unlocked the sliding door.\n
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Arriving back at Wonderland just after dawn, Holmes announced the coast was clear. The time was right, he told Lind.\u00a0<\/a>How did you establish a timeline for this scene? It\u2019s amazing.<\/span>\u00a0There was a lot of testimony about this in the court documents.<\/span><\/span>\n
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There was one hitch. DeVerell, Launius and McCourt, all heroin addicts, were out cold.\n
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Three hours later, everyone was finally awake. Holmes drove to Nash\u2019s again to make sure the sliding door was still open. This time, the gang decided not to wait for his return.\n
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Now, as McCourt turned right, off Laurel Canyon Boulevard onto Dona Pegita, he saw Holmes driving back toward them. Both cars slowed, pulled even in the middle of the street. Holmes rolled down his window, McCourt rolled down his.\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s time,\u201d Holmes said, and then he smiled and raised his fist \u201cGet \u2019em, boys!\u201d\u00a0<\/a>The whole story is extraordinarily cinematic.<\/span>\u00a0That was directly from Tracy McCourt, I swear.<\/span>\u00a0It\u2019s one of the many moments in the story that you can really visualize.<\/span>\u00a0Luckily, McCourt was something of a Southern grit who was very expressive in the way he spoke. And he was bored. And he had 45 minutes at a time on the phone with only me. Nobody else was talking about him.<\/span>I meant to ask you this earlier: Was anyone else chasing this story?<\/span>\u00a0There was a guy who just died,\u00a0Tony Lovett<\/a>, who wrote about it for Hustler<\/em><\/a>. We became very good friends. He was the only other one. His story was rather sexy.<\/span><\/span>\n
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John Curtis Holmes had the longest, most prolific career in the history of pornography. He had sex onscreen with two generations of leading ladies, from Seka and Marilyn Chambers to Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn and Italian member of Parliament Ciccolina. The first man to win the X-Rated Critics Organization Best Actor Award, Holmes was an idol and an icon, the most visible male porn star of his time.\n
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Holmes started in the business around 1968, a time when porn was just beginning to surface from the underground of peep shows and frat houses into mainstream acceptance. The Sixties, the pill, \u201cfree love,\u201d communes, wife swapping, the perverse creativity of mixed-media artists who were pushing the limit, trying to shock\u2014all of these things created an atmosphere in which porn could blossom. The pivotal event in porn history was the release of Deep Throat, starring Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems, in 1972. Though the movie, when it began to appear at theaters around the country, was branded as obscene and closed down almost everywhere it played, its producers contested the charges in the courts and eventually won. In the end, Deep Throat was massively consumed by an enthusiastic public. With the release the same year of The Devil in Miss Jones and Behind the Green Door, porn became part of popular culture. Suddenly, Johnny Carson was telling Deep Throat jokes on The Tonight Show.\u00a0<\/a>Did you watch porn while working on this? How much?<\/span>\u00a0A shit-ton. I read and watch everything I can find, always.<\/span><\/span>\n
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One day in 1970, Holmes met Hawaiian producer Bob Chinn. Up to this time, Holmes had been doing mostly photo layouts, stag films and 8-mm bookstore loops. He showed Chinn his portfolio of stills, then stripped. That evening, Chinn wrote a three-page screenplay; a partnership was born. This would lead, in the mid-Seventies, to Holmes\u2019s most successful role, as Johnny Wadd, the hard-boiled detective, porn\u2019s parody of Sam Spade. Holmes\u2019s character, said Al Goldstein in Screw magazine, was \u201ca thin, bony, trench-coated shamus, outrageously horny, bedding down with client and quarry alike.\u201d In Goldstein\u2019s opinion, \u201cit was a goofy, crudely made series,\u201d but it was wildly successful. In a way, Holmes was everyman\u2019s gigolo, a polyester smoothy with a sparse mustache, a flying collar and lots of buttons undone. He wasn\u2019t threatening. He chewed gum and overacted. He took a lounge singer\u2019s approach to sex, deliberately gentle, ostentatiously artful, a homely guy with a pinkie ring and a big dick who was convinced he was every woman\u2019s dream.<\/a>I love this sentence. How long do you spend on writing?<\/span>I spend a lot of time writing. I write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.<\/span> Is writing a labor?<\/span>\u00a0No, I love it. Reporting is a labor. Talking to people is a labor. Going places is really a labor. I have travel anxiety. When I was little, 10 years old, my parents put me on the wrong bus to go visit my grandparents. I ended up in a Richmond, Virginia bus station instead of Fredericksburg. I don\u2019t remember being scared, but to this day if I don\u2019t have four different ways of navigating I\u2019m, like, freaking out. I don\u2019t know if I told you this, but at the beginning of this story I almost quit writing. I sat there and sat there and there were too many names. Laurel Canyon, the Wonderland Gang, too many details, too many everything. I couldn\u2019t write the thing and I just fucking got up from my desk. I was working on the first sentence. And I said, \u201cI can always just be an editor.\u201d So I walked around the house and I ate something and I guess the horror of that was too great. I went back up and I came up with the word \u2018last.\u2019 ‘Deep in Laurel Canyon, the Wonderland Gang was planning its last heist.’ I don\u2019t know why, but that transported me into a different place as a writer.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Holmes went on to make more than 2000 movies. Teenage Cowgirls, Liquid Lips, China Cat and Tapestry of Passion. Eruption, a porn remake of Double Indemnity. Dickman and Throbbin, a lampoon of Batman and Robin. Hard Candy, a 3-D thriller. A porn \u201cdocumentary\u201d of his life, made in 1981, was called Exhausted.\n
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In time, Holmes became known as the Errol Flynn of porn. And like the leading men of yesteryear, what was known of him was mostly myth.\u00a0<\/a>How much did you know about Holmes when you went into this story?<\/span>Zero. Nothing. I really wasn\u2019t a porn guy. I was too mature for porn, since I was the son of a gynecologist. I\u2019d run around once in Times Square while on Quaaludes, and we ended up looking at those quarter things. I\u2019d seen a stag film at my fraternity. But other than that, not much. I mean, porn didn\u2019t really figure into my life. It wasn\u2019t available, and only weirdos went and bought it out of the fucking store.<\/span><\/span>\n
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According to legend\u2014largely of his own making\u2014Holmes was born in New York and lived with a rich aunt who\u2019d been married fifteen times. The aunt sent him to fencing school, dancing school, a school of etiquette. They lived in London, Paris, Michigan, Florida. He lost his virginity at the Florida house, when he was six, to his Swiss nursemaid, Frieda.\n
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In high school, Holmes said, he slept with all but three girls in his class. He graduated from UCLA with majors, variously, in physical therapy, pediatric physical therapy, medicine and political sciences. His first porn film was made while he was working his way through college. A girl from the dorm recommended him. Also while in college, he said, he danced \u201cnude modern jazz ballet\u201d and drove an ambulance.\n
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When he became established as a porn star, Holmes said, he had a half dozen agents pulling in work for him. He made films nonstop, and he took eighty to ninety telephone calls a day. He had twenty-seven fan clubs; people wrote for locks of his pubic hair. Men asked him to autograph their wives\u2019 breasts. Women asked him to deflower their daughters. One regular trick had him barge into her bedroom while she was watching TV, then tie her up and rape her. Her husband watched from the closet. Holmes said he\u2019d had sex in airplanes, helicopters, trains, elevators, kitchens, bathrooms, on rooftops, in caves, storm cellars, bomb shelters in Europe, under a table in a restaurant filled with people, fifty feet underwater while wearing scuba gear. He\u2019d been with three governors, two of their wives and one senator, who was \u201creally a freak.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>What sources did you use for the background on Holmes\u2019s life?<\/span>\u00a0A lot of that is from a movie called “Exhausted<\/a>.” But I read everything I could find about him and talked to everyone who knew him. Different sources took me through different periods of this story.<\/span>\u00a0To what extent did you lean on secondary sources, and how many did you use?<\/span>I\u2019m sure I interviewed at least 50 or 60 people and I had thousands and thousands of pages of everything that could be found anywhere.<\/span>\u00a0Did Rolling Stone<\/em> assign you a researcher?<\/span>\u00a0[laughter] No. And I had to transcribe everything myself, too. I have really bad tendonitis now.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Holmes said he owned ten different businesses, that he was a gourmet cook, that he had written twenty-nine books, including a how-to manual combining cooking and sex. His penis, he said, was \u201cbigger than a pay phone, smaller than a Cadillac.\u201d\n
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Holmes\u2019s voice was sly and ingratiating. He sounded a lot like Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver and bore some resemblance to the actor who played him. Above all, he said, he loved his work: \u201cA happy gardener is one with dirty fingernails, and a happy cook is a fat cook. I never get tired of what I do because I\u2019m a sex fiend. I\u2019m very lusty.\u201d\n
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John Curtis Holmes was born to Mary and Edward Holmes on August 8th, 1944, in Pickaway County, Ohio, the youngest of three boys and a girl. Edward, a carpenter, was an alcoholic. Mary was a Bible-thumping Baptist. John remembered screaming, yelling, his father puking all over the kids.\n
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Holmes\u2019s parents separated when he was three, and Mary moved the family into a housing project in Columbus. They shared an apartment with another divorced woman and her two children. When Holmes was eight, his mother married Harold, a manic-depressive who worked for the telephone company. They moved to a house on five acres in wooded, rural Pataskala, Ohio. Harold drank a lot. Once, he rammed his own hand into a harvesting machine. He lost his thumb and three fingers. At the hospital, as he came out of anesthesia, he said to Mary, \u201cI\u2019ll never have to work again.\u201d He didn\u2019t. Mary went to work on an assembly line at a Western Electric plant.<\/a>Where did this story come from?<\/span>\u00a0That\u2019s from Sharon. Sharon knew the in-laws quite well.<\/span>\u00a0Did you think Sharon was a reliable source?<\/span>\u00a0Yeah. She was a caretaker type–she treated John more like a child than a husband–who was interested in having her point of view out there. I saw no reason not to believe her.<\/span><\/span>\n
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John was a shy and lonely kid who kept to himself and had perfect attendance at Sunday school. He lost his virginity at age twelve to a thirty-six-year-old woman who was a friend of his mother\u2019s. At home, Harold picked on John. There were backhands, lectures, drunken rages. By the time John\u2019s half brother was born, John was spending most of his time in the woods, hunting, trapping, fishing, staying away from Harold. Then one day Harold threw John down the stairs and came after him. John swung and knocked his stepfather out. On his sixteenth birthday, Holmes joined the army. He served in the signal corps, spending three years in Nuremberg, Germany. He never went home again.\n
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After mustering out of the army, at age nineteen, Holmes went to work as an ambulance driver, and soon thereafter he met Sharon Gebenini. Sharon was a nurse at USC County General, working on a team that was pioneering open-heart surgery. She was twenty, an army brat. They were married in August 1965 at Fort Ord, California.\n
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One summer day in 1968, Sharon came home a little early from work. Her new boss, a pediatrician, had shut down the office for the afternoon, and she\u2019d gone to the market, planned a special dinner for her husband.\u00a0<\/a>This is a rather audacious structural move. We leave Sharon just about to walk in on something–we don\u2019t know what–and then rewind through his Holmes\u2019s work history for three paragraphs to build up to what we\u2019re about to see.<\/span>\u00a0Every single scene is built exactly like that. I write my novels the same way. I find the punchline and then use the formula of suspense and digression to create even more suspense. It\u2019s similar to the way I talk. At least with writing I can always remember where I started. I remember going to the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, DC, with a sockful of dimes to check their microfiche. It was great because the sock could also be used as a weapon, because it wasn\u2019t really in a nice area. I was doing a story on Manute Bol, who played for the Washington Bullets. I read all about Dinkas. I knew that his sister, Abouk, six-foot-eight, was back home in Sudan, tending the flock of goats or sheep. And I read that they warm their hands by dung fires and use the ashes for toothpaste. So I asked him, \u201cEver hear of this?\u201d \u201cYeah, we do that.\u201d So I got to write this paragraph, \u201cWhile Manute is making $2.4 million a year, Abouk is tending to the cattle back in Sudan, warming her hands by dung fire\u2026\u201d Oh my fucking God! That\u2019s one of my favorite things I\u2019ve ever written. And it\u2019s not about me being so great. It\u2019s just the juxtaposition of information that blows your fucking mind. And it\u2019s true. And he never would\u2019ve told me that. You have to do a lot of background research in order to know which questions to ask.<\/span>\u00a0Always?<\/span> Sometimes it\u2019s better when you don\u2019t know shit and you\u2019re just drilling wells and you find a gusher that you didn\u2019t know was going to be there. But you can\u2019t be so structured that you can\u2019t let the person digress, too.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Holmes, in those days, was a string bean, six feet tall, 150 pounds, hair still cut in a military buzz. When Sharon and John were first married, she says, he was very naive, looking for the perfect relationship. \u201cHe was very possessive. He wouldn\u2019t even let me meet the people he worked with.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>How much time did you spend talking to Sharon? Was she eager\/reluctant to talk to you?<\/span> Well, on the first day we spent twelve hours at least. That started the relationship. Then I got letters from her, talked to her on the phone. As I\u2019d go along with the writing, I\u2019d ask Sharon and Dawn, \u201cWhat about this? What about that?\u201d<\/span> They were very much a pair.<\/span>\u00a0Yeah, they were living together. They were each other\u2019s support group. They were brought together by John. They also shared in common that John was their first. Can you imagine John Holmes being your first penis?<\/span><\/span>\n
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Recently, Holmes had been drifting from job to job, trying to find a niche. He quit the ambulance service and got work stirring vats of chocolate at a Coffee Nips factory in Glendale. Then he sold shoes, furniture, Fuller brushes door-to-door. He drove a forklift at a meatpacking plant in Cudahy until his lung collapsed from working in the freezer. Just recently, he had begun training to be a uniformed security guard.\u00a0<\/a>Where did this information come from? The detail (\u201cvats of chocolate\u201d) is wonderful and precise.<\/span>\u00a0All from Sharon.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Unbeknownst to Sharon, Holmes had also recently started in porn, following an encounter with a professional photographer named Joel in the bathroom of the poker parlor in Gardina. Holmes was doing sex pictorials, dancing in clubs.\n
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Now, home early from her office, Sharon left her purse in the foyer, squeaked down the hall on white rubber soles to the bathroom of their one-bedroom apartment in Glendale. The door was open. Inside was her husband, John. He had a tape measure in one hand, his penis in the other.\n
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\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d she asked.\n
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\u201cWhat does it look like I\u2019m doing?\u201d\n
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\u201cIs there something wrong? Are you afraid it\u2019s withering and dying?\u201d she said, laughing.\n
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\u201cNo, I\u2019m just curious,\u201d said Holmes.\n
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Sharon went to the bedroom, lay down, read a magazine. Twenty minutes later, Holmes walked into the room. He had a full erection.\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s incredible,\u201d said John.\n
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\u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cIt goes from five inches all the way to ten. Ten inches long! Four inches around!\u201d\n
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\u201cThat\u2019s great,\u201d said Sharon, turning a page of her magazine. \u201cYou want me to call the press?\u201d\n
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Her husband fixed her with a long stare. Finally he said, \u201cI\u2019ve got to tell you I\u2019ve been doing something else, and I think I want to make it my life\u2019s work.\u201d<\/a>This is one of the great scenes in the story. When you envision a story, is there a minimum number of scenes you\u2019d like to have?<\/span>\u00a0No, I write until the story\u2019s done. Then I go back and tighten it, and lose writing, art and facts. I do that with every piece. The \u00a0Todd Marinovich piece<\/a> was 30,000 words. That was supposed to be a book proposal.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Holmes went on to say that he wanted to be best in the world at something, and that he thought pornography was it. Sharon had been a virgin when they\u2019d met. She wasn\u2019t happy.\n
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\u201cYou can\u2019t be uptight about this,\u201d John said, a refrain she would hear for the next fifteen years. \u201cThis means absolutely nothing to me. It\u2019s like being a carpenter. These are my tools, I use them to make a living. When I come home at night, the tools stay on the job.\u201d\n
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\u201cYou are having sex with other women,\u201d said Sharon. \u201cIt\u2019s like being married to a hooker.\u201d\n
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Holmes said nothing.\n
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\"Outline<\/a>\n
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Outline from Sharon Holmes<\/a>\n \n <\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\nAnd so began the loops and the stags, and then Johnny Wadd was born. Holmes let his hair grow, started wearing three-piece suits. He and Sharon settled into a strange hybrid of domesticity. She paid for food and household expenses, did his laundry, cooked for him when he was home. John kept his porn money and spent it on himself. <\/a>Man, this is a crazy arrangement.<\/span>\u00a0Well, first of all, people were more the \u2018Fifties wife\u2019 than today in the idea of partnerships. I was married to someone for 20 years who didn\u2019t work. I\u2019m 58.\u00a0But they both worked. The point is, they were irregular to begin with and she was self-sufficient and a nurse-caretaker. She was also the resident manager of the joint they lived in. In the Wadd documentary<\/a>–she\u2019s in the dark but you hear her scolding voice–she wanted all this to be known so the truth would be out and her long suffering would be revealed. She was one of those people who would gladly suffer a little more, you know, in her own mind. <\/span>Wasn\u2019t telling you this story self-serving?<\/span>\u00a0Anyone telling you their story is self-serving. Every time you do journalism you could get several people tell you different stories from several angles. It\u2019s your job as a journalist to figure out who\u2019s got what axe to grind. The stuff is all laid out there to make sense, or not. I think the witnesses are pretty reliable, though I think everyone embellishes. But both Sharon and Dawn consistently told the same story about John.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0By 1973, John and Sharon were sharing the same house, even the same bed, but they were no longer having sex. Sharon had gone so far as to stop physical relations, but she couldn\u2019t bring herself to kick him out. \u201cLet\u2019s face it,\u201d she says. \u201cI loved the schmuck. I just didn\u2019t like what he was doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>The dialogue in this story is so good. What\u2019s your strategy: note-taking, recorder…?<\/span>\u00a0I\u2019m pretty much against taking notes, or typing. I think it breaks the eye-to-eye contact, which is the most important part of journalism. I rely on my tape recorder. I never heard three quarters of that shit when they said it the first time. I never heard the nuance. I never heard the way they used words. The only things I take notes for are writing people\u2019s names and numbers, or if I need some proper noun that isn\u2019t in the tape.<\/span><\/span>\n
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John bought himself an El Camino pickup and a large diamond solitaire that became his trademark in films. Then he designed a massive gold and diamond ring in the shape of a dragonfly, and a gold belt buckle, measuring eight by five inches. The buckle depicted a mother whale swimming in the ocean, her baby nursing beneath. John was into Save the Whales. He wore the buckle when he and Sharon sold bumper stickers door-to-door.\n
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In 1974, Sharon became the resident manager of a ten-unit apartment court in Glendale. It was owned by the pediatrician she worked for; she and Holmes lived rent-free in an adjacent house. Sometimes he worked around the apartments as the handyman and gardener. He also renovated the house, outdoing himself in the master bathroom, recreating a backwoods outhouse, complete with a quarter-moon cutout, a shingled roof over the bathtub and a rough-hewn box around the commode.\n
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Holmes was an inveterate collector of junk. He picked wire out of dumpsters and sold the copper. He went to garage sales and bought old furniture. He could repair anything, liked sketching and working in clay. He also collected animal skulls. Once, Sharon says, he got a human head from UCLA. He boiled it clean in a pot on Sharon\u2019s stove. They called it Louise. At Christmas, they decorated it with colored lights.<\/a>Did you, personally, see the head?<\/span>\u00a0No. The story I love about the skull is the copy editing. I was there with the copy chief, Alice Gabriel, at three in the morning, killing these widows, trying to get some extra space four words at a time. And one of the things we put back in was the skull and the name of the skull. I was really proud of that. All that stuff didn\u2019t exist anymore at the time I was reporting it, too. All of John\u2019s stuff didn\u2019t exist anymore. What happened to it, who knows? It\u2019s in a box somewhere.<\/span><\/span>\n
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About this time, Sharon says, Holmes began working as a courier for the Mob. \u201cHe\u2019d come home from one of his movie premieres, take off his boots, peel down his socks and take out a wad of large bills. He\u2019d say, \u2018Count this.\u2019 We\u2019re talking $56,000 in two boots.\u201d\n
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Jeana Sellers (not her real name) arrived in Holmes\u2019s life in 1976. <\/a>Why did you give Dawn a pseudonym? Was it her idea, your idea, your editor\u2019s idea, or Rolling Stone\u2019s<\/em> lawyer\u2019s idea?<\/span>\u00a0That was Dawn\u2019s idea. She decided she was to be anonymous. For years I just called her Jeana-Dawn. I couldn\u2019t remember what her name was.<\/span><\/span>She was a teenager, and her parents had just divorced. She\u2019d driven out from Miami with her father and younger sister. Along the way, in Colorado, Mr. Sellers picked up a hitchhiker who was going to Glendale to see his girlfriend. Mr. Sellers had no particular plan; Glendale sounded just fine. By the time they pulled into the apartment complex managed by Sharon Holmes, it had been decided. The Sellers would stay there.<\/a>Did you interview Dawn\u2019s parents?<\/span>\u00a0No, she was estranged from her dad for a long time. There was no mother in the picture. Just a brother, who I didn\u2019t talk to.<\/span><\/span>\n
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The complex had ten free-standing cabana apartments, built around a courtyard. Holmes\u2019s half brother and his wife lived there; this little community was the personal fiefdom of John Holmes. One day, Jeana was visiting a neighbor when Holmes came by to deliver a bag of pot. Holmes talked a while, looked Jeana up and down. \u201cToo bad you\u2019re so young,\u201d he said finally, then left.\n
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Soon after, the courtship of Jeana began. Whenever he returned from days or weeks away, Holmes would bring gifts: stuffed animals, roses, a ring. For her sister Terry, who was fourteen and overweight, he brought what he called \u201cTerry food,\u201d pounds and pounds of candy. Holmes hired the sisters to do gardening around the complex. When they\u2019d finish work, he\u2019d make sandwiches. John had a van by then, and soon he began organizing camping trips with Jeana, Terry and Terry\u2019s boyfriend, Jose. \u201cI was really charmed,\u201d says Jeana. \u201cI was just taken off my feet. He treated me very special.\u201d John was thirty-one, she was fifteen.\n
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One night Holmes told Jeana to meet him at the van. They went to the beach. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was going to happen, but I knew what might,\u201d she says. \u201cWe sat on the rocks, the moon was just right. We sat for a long time, and he was very, very quiet. He just stared. I played in the water. When I got out, he said, \u2018Let\u2019s go,\u2019 and we drove toward home. And then, just as we got to this intersection, he slammed on the brakes. It was dark, and there wasn\u2019t any traffic. He said, \u2018Would you make love to me?\u2019 I literally shook to death. I said yes. I loved him. We did it in the van. After that I was his.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>You do not explicitly say how old Dawn was at the time of this incident. (I mean, I think you hint she was fifteen.) How come?<\/span>\u00a0She was fifteen. And she was pretty forthcoming about that.<\/span>\u00a0Would that, at that time, in that state, have been statutory rape?<\/span>\u00a0Probably.<\/span><\/span>\n
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In time, Jeana\u2019s father went back to Miami and took Terry with him, and Jeana moved in with John\u2019s half brother and his wife, David and Karen. Jeana dropped out of Glendale High School. During the day, she worked in a nursing home. At night, she baby-sat for David and Karen.\n
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By 1978, Holmes was freebasing cocaine all the time. He\u2019d been turned on to the drug on a movie set in Las Vegas and had been smoking ever since. Now he never went anywhere without his brown Samsonite briefcase. Inside were his drugs, his glass pipe, baking soda and a petri dish for cooking cocaine powder into rock base, a bottle of 151 rum and cotton swabs for lighting the pipe.\u00a0<\/a>The level of detail in this sentence is quite something. Where did you get it?<\/span> I think that was a combination of people telling me about that. Dawn was very good about giving me stuff from this time period, particularly when they were on the road. Also, Bill Amerson and other people who did drugs with him, like porn people. Again, if you\u2019re straight, you\u2019re going to say, \u201cOh, did he get high?\u201d And they\u2019ll say yes, and that\u2019s all you\u2019ll get. But me, I asked if he had a pipe, if he used 151 rum\u2026<\/span>So you knew what questions to ask.<\/span>\u00a0Right. And I understood why he took so much Valium–you get the high but not the edge. I understood all that stuff.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Jeana was doing freebase too, almost every night.\n
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\u201cWhen he did coke,\u201d says Jeana, \u201che\u2019d do it until it was all gone, and then he\u2019d scrape the pipe and smoke all the resin he could find, and then he\u2019d take a bunch of Valium. He\u2019d have me make these peanut-butter chocolate-chip brown-sugar butter cookies. All the sugar helped him come down. He\u2019d have a big glass of milk, and we\u2019d turn on the cartoons, and then he\u2019d go to bed in Sharon\u2019s room. I\u2019d usually fall asleep on the couch.\u201d\n
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By this time, Sharon had befriended Jeana. \u201cThe poor girl was emaciated,\u201d Sharon says. Sharon\u2019s first act was to move Jeana out of Karen and David\u2019s and into a garage apartment in the complex. A few months later, Jeana moved into the guest room of the house. \u201cI knew the whole picture,\u201d says Sharon. \u201cHe was picking on a kid that didn\u2019t know any better. I had to let her know there was another world out there, that John was not God Almighty.\n
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\u201cJohn was terrified that I was going to confront her. But I had no reason to confront her. Why? Why would I confront her? He meant nothing to me in that way.\u201d\n
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Holmes was gone now more and more, making films in Europe, San Francisco and Hawaii, doing private tricks, traveling to film openings across the country. At the same time, Holmes was acting as an informant on matters of porn and prostitution for Sergeant Tom Blake, an L.A. vice detective. He began spilling to Blake in 1973, after he was arrested on a movie set. It is debatable whether or not Holmes ever told Blake anything he could use.\u00a0<\/a>I assume you tried to talk to Blake.<\/span>\u00a0Yes, I talked to him. He\u2019s also in “Wadd.” He was a good source.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Also during this period Holmes spent much of his time with his best and only friend, Bill Amerson, in Sherman Oaks. Amerson, a menacing six feet four, 250 pounds, tells tales of his own involvement in drug dealing and organized crime. He says he played pro football and worked as a stunt man, specializing in motorcycle crashes. He was now in porn\u2014writing, directing, producing.\n
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Amerson and Holmes had met on a shoot in San Francisco in 1970; they were kindred egos ever after. \u201cJohn was like a little brother to me,\u201d says Amerson.\n
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Amerson named John the godfather of his children and gave Holmes his own room at his house. Holmes and Amerson went hunting, deep-sea fishing, camping. Mostly, says Amerson, he and Holmes excluded women. \u201cJohn didn\u2019t particularly care for women. At times, I think, he disliked women. <\/a>I like that you don\u2019t psychoanalyze Holmes. Was it tempting? Was there any pressure to do so?<\/span>\u00a0It is my flow to write what\u2019s in somebody\u2019s mind, but only when I have them…Psychoanalysis is when you turn the person\u2019s words on themselves in an interview. That\u2019s what I did with Todd Marinovich. I could turn his words and not make a judgment–just use them to answer the question. Whereas with John Holmes I couldn\u2019t, so I used other people to speak for him.<\/span>What was the editing process like?<\/span>\u00a0There was none. The editing process was more of a cutting process. I\u2019m not sure there was even a rewrite. I know I was in touch with Bob [Love] a lot because I was having problems with the characters. He helped me a lot there. When he told me to use full stops–not using editorial transitions–that was the biggest editing change he had to make. With Holmes, when you get a good story like that, it tells the story. You just need to collect it and get out of the way. So there wasn\u2019t much rewriting. Bob wasn\u2019t there, I\u2019m not sure why. Bob Wallace was in charge of me and my story. I was deputized to work directly with Alice Gabriel. We cut lines, we did the headlines, we did everything. It was great!<\/span>\u00a0Who came up with the title?<\/span>\u00a0I don\u2019t know! I\u2019m not gonna claim that I did. It sounds very much like a magazine title of the day.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0He would rather be out in the woods. He was really a simple kid. He liked going to Disneyland, he liked all the rides. He was really sensitive, but he didn\u2019t want anyone to know. A puppy getting hit by a car, a dead bird, strange things made him cry. We spent hours talking about reincarnation, about life, about God, or the lack of.\u201d\n
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Holmes started to become erratic around 1978. On sets, he was harder and harder to deal with. He\u2019d lock himself in bathrooms, in closets. People who worked with him joked that you had to leave a trail of freebase from the bathroom to the bedroom to get Holmes to work. Amerson would get calls from directors. He\u2019d go to the set, usually a rented house in the San Fernando Valley. He\u2019d find Holmes \u201cgoing through drawers, looking for something to steal. He\u2019d turned into a fucking burglar.\n
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\u201cJohn got strange,\u201d says Amerson. \u201cHe got wild eyed. He didn\u2019t make a lot of sense when he talked.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>How many of Holmes\u2019s film colleagues did you talk to?<\/span> Quite a few. A lot of the people who were in his movies, like this one guy from “Dickman and Throbbin.” And I talked to a couple of big directors, I talked to Al Goldstein, I talked to Larry Flynt…<\/span><\/span>\n
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Soon the man who once claimed to be making almost $500,000 a year selling his sexual charms was working as a drug delivery boy for the gang of outlaws and junkies who lived on Wonderland Avenue. He stole luggage, broke into cars, visited old girlfriends and tricks and ripped them off, charged $30,000 worth of appliances to Sharon\u2019s credit cards. For a while, he and his half-brother David tried to make a go of a combination antique store and locksmith service. <\/a>Did you talk to David?<\/span>\u00a0By phone. He wasn\u2019t that cooperative. I would\u2019ve loved to have more stuff about the family. You have to catch and release if they won\u2019t talk to you.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Jeana ran the store, the Just Looking Emporium. It didn\u2019t last long.\n
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The night the store closed its doors for good, says Jeana, John was strung out and paranoid. \u201cThat was the first night he punched the shit out of me,\u201d she says, and thereafter, the beatings were regular. \u201cOne time he beat me so I\u2019d sleep with these two black guys from his answering service. I think he couldn\u2019t pay the bill. Then he beat me \u2019cause I slept with them.\u201d\n
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By early 1980, Holmes and Jeana had moved out of the complex for good. They stayed in motels sometimes, but mostly they lived in Sharon\u2019s Chevy Malibu. Or at least Jeana did. \u201cI was famous for waiting in the car,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019d drive somewhere to do a drug deal. He\u2019d get out. I\u2019d wait. Sometimes it would be two days. I\u2019d have a six-pack of Pepsi and a coffee can to pee in. And my dog, Thor. He was a little Chihuahua. John and Sharon gave him to me.\u201d\n
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So it went, until they were busted in January of 1981. At that point, Holmes had Jeana, now twenty, turning tricks. She was living in an apartment in the Valley with a porn actress and high-priced hooker named Michelle. In the early hours of January 14th, Jeana and Michelle were visiting an apartment in Marina Del Ray. While John was waiting for them in the parking lot, he stole a computer out of a car. Thus far, Holmes had been pretty lucky. His connection as an informant for the L.A. police had kept him clear of being busted. <\/a>How did you verify Holmes\u2019s arrangement with the LAPD?<\/span> All that stuff came from Blake. But also, there was a lot written about this case. I mean, it was the \u201cFour on the Floor Murders.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a0But now Holmes was committing felonies almost every day. His luck had run out. The cops got them in the parking lot.\n
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The next day, Eddie Nash bailed them out. Jeana didn\u2019t want to go back to Michelle\u2019s. John insisted. She refused. He punched her in the stomach, dragged her through the door. \u201cGet some sleep,\u201d he told her. \u201cYou gotta work tonight.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Was it depressing to work on this story?<\/span>\u00a0Only when I realized my penis had shrunk. Um, at the time, no. In aggregation, the decade and a half of doing these crime stories, most of whose subjects were dead at the time I wrote them, and having to meet their crying relatives and go to their funerals, I started to think of this Scottish legend, the Sin Eater. Where, if you died in the village, they\u2019d call the Sin Eater and lay out a feast upon the body. And the guy, who was poor, would come and eat the food and eat the sins away. I started to feel that way doing these stories. One of the very last ones was the Veronica Guerin story. At the end, after this woman died, her little son\u2019s toys were used to show how she was set up and ambushed and how Mommy died. I mean, after a while, enough\u2019s enough.<\/span><\/span>\n
\nJohn went to take a bath. Jeana heard the water shut off, heard John get into the tub. She wasn\u2019t going back to this. Enough was enough.
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\u201cHoney!\u201d called John from the bathtub. \u201cGet me a cup of coffee, will you?\u201d\n
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She was halfway out the door when she heard his voice. She froze for a moment, then took a step back inside. She took a deep breath. Then she was gone.\n
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Jeana ran, with Thor in her arms, to a Denny\u2019s restaurant. A little old man lent her a quarter. She called her mother in Oregon, asked for a bus ticket. Mom said okay, but it couldn\u2019t happen until tomorrow. Jeana sat down and cried. The man bought her a bowl of chili, then sneaked her into his nursing home. Jeana slept the night on the floor by his bed. The other residents thought it was the scandal of the age. In the morning, many of them brought her toast from the cafeteria.\u00a0<\/a>Dawn\u2019s recall is extraordinary. Did she keep a diary?<\/span>\u00a0I think just think, with certain events, you remember them. I mean, since that time, she\u2019s told all the same stuff again.<\/span>\u00a0But she was telling you this for the first time.<\/span>\u00a0She might have told the cops a bunch of this stuff when they were trying to round him up.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Jeana said goodbye, then called the Glendale bus station. She told the ticket agent that John Holmes, the porn star, was looking for her and wanted to kill her. Please, she said, don\u2019t tell him anything. The agent agreed to help. Then he asked how she was getting to the station. He and his son came and picked her up.\n
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As Jeana expected, Holmes showed up at the bus station. The ticket agent played dumb. Holmes followed the wrong bus all the way to San Francisco.\u00a0<\/a>Where did you get this story? From the ticket agent?<\/span>\u00a0I got that from Jeana-Dawn because John started writing her the letters afterwards that went to her parents. She stayed with him and he told her all this.<\/span><\/span>\n
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***\n
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Tracy McCourt turned right onto Dona Lola Place, drove 100 yards into the cul-de-sac, parked, cut the engine. DeVerell, Lind and Launius pushed aside the chain-link gate to Nash\u2019s driveway and filed around to the right, behind the house. The sliding glass door was still open, as Holmes had said.\u00a0<\/a>How did you settle on the structure of the story, toggling between the heist and Holmes\u2019s life story? Did you have that from the beginning?<\/span>\u00a0I didn\u2019t. I started at the planning of the heist and then stopped, and told you who the character was. Then I picked it up again. More than anything, the story is the crime and the other stuff is embellishment. Plus, I had to do a full stop in there to talk about the industry and his role in it, because in the World War Three of this story that was one of the AOs–areas of operation. So I talked to First Amendment lawyers, old players from the industry who could tell me stories, like how actors would leave their clothes by the side of the set so they could run from the cops, and how it was important not to forget the masters. All that went into constructing this story. The reason I settled on the structure is because that\u2019s how the story went.<\/span><\/span>\n
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They went inside, opened the door of the guest bedroom, peered out. Lind took the lead and charged down the hall, a short-barreled .357 Magnum in one hand, a stolen San Francisco police detective\u2019s badge in the other. Diles and Nash were in the living room. Diles was wearing sweat pants, carrying a breakfast tray. Nash was wearing blue bikini briefs.\n
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\u201cFreeze!\u201d yelled Lind. \u201cYou\u2019re under arrest! Police officers!\u201d\n
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DeVerell and Launius covered Nash. Lind made his way behind the shirtless, blubbery bodyguard. He shifted the badge to his gun hand, his left, then took out the handcuffs with his right. As he fumbled with his paraphernalia and Diles\u2019s thick wrists, Launius came over to help, tripped, bumped into Lind\u2019s arm. The gun discharged. Diles was burned with the muzzle flash. The right side of his back, over his kidney, began to bleed. Nash fell to his knees. He begged to say a prayer for his children.\n
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\u201cFuck your children!\u201d said Launius. \u201cTake us to the drugs.\u201d\n
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Lind rolled Diles onto his stomach, handcuffed him, threw a Persian rug over his head. Then he joined the others in Nash\u2019s bedroom. Everything was where Holmes had said. Lind put his .357 to Nash\u2019s head, asked for the combination to the floor safe. Nash refused. Then Launius forced the stainless-steel barrel of his gun into Nash\u2019s mouth.\n
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In the floor safe were two large Zip-lock bags full of cocaine.<\/a>It\u2019s a small thing, but I love that you don\u2019t include Nash acquiescing to Launius. You cut directly from gun-in-mouth to the interior of the floor safe.<\/span>\u00a0You don\u2019t need to say that. In my descriptive writing, I\u2019m constantly seeking to not beg the point, to not belabor it. If you edit less proficient writing, you see that people always add every detail.<\/span> Right.<\/span>\u00a0It\u2019s funny, my son\u2019s godfather is a sax player. And I all the people I was friends with in my twenties and thirties were jazz musicians. They don\u2019t talk a lot. There\u2019s that moment of syncopated pause where nothing is said, nothing is played. And that\u2019s when they\u2019d make the face that musicians make–oh, that\u2019s so sick, you know? I dunno. I think it goes back to Murray and playing guitar and trying to make this an artistic pursuit.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0In a gray attach\u00e9 case were cash and jewelry. In a petty-cash box were several thousand Quaaludes and more cocaine. On the dresser was a laboratory vial about three-quarters full of heroin.\u00a0<\/a>Did you have access to crime scene photos?<\/span>\u00a0At some point, I had access to a bunch of stuff that Tom Blake had. He showed me stuff and there was also stuff in the case files. The other thing is, when something was sealed by the court, that meant it was in the file but it was in a manila envelope.<\/span>That\u2019s all that meant?<\/span>And I\u2019m not saying I ever opened those things while working on stories, but there was a fuckload of stuff you could usually get out of that. There were always glimmers of things that you could get that you couldn\u2019t really nail down legally.<\/span><\/span>\n
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Lind taped Nash\u2019s hands behind his back, put a sheet over his head. He found a Browning 9-mm under Nash\u2019s bed, then went to Diles\u2019s room, where he found more weapons. Meanwhile, Launius asked Lind for his hunting knife. He went over to Diles, pulled the rug off his head, edged the knife against his neck.\n
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\u201cWhere\u2019s the rest of the fucking heroin?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d said Diles. Launius pulled the knife slowly across Diles\u2019s neck. Blood flowed. Suddenly, outside, Tracy McCourt began honking the horn of the getaway car.\n
\n
\u201cForget it!\u201d said Lind. \u201cLet\u2019s get out of here.\u201d\n
\n
At 10:00 a.m., Lind, McCourt, Launius and DeVerell walked through the door of the Wonderland house.\u00a0<\/a>How did you establish this timeline? You don\u2019t say \u201cat about 10:00\u201d–it\u2019s exact.\u00a0From the court transcript?<\/span>\u00a0Yeah. They spend a lot of time in court establishing all that shit.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Holmes jumped up from the couch. \u201cSo what happened? How did it go down?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cDon\u2019t tell him anything,\u201d snapped Lind.\n
\n
Launius, DeVerell and Lind went into Launius\u2019s bedroom. They\u2019d decided, before leaving Nash\u2019s, that they would short Holmes and McCourt in the division of the loot. Working quickly, Launius removed about $100,000 in cash from the briefcase and hid it in his room.\n
\n
Meanwhile, Joy Miller and Barbara Richardson, Lind\u2019s girlfriend, left the house and drove down the hill to the Laurel Canyon Country Store for gas and cartons of cigarettes.\u00a0<\/a>Did you interview Miller and Richardson?<\/span>\u00a0No, everything I know about them was from the L.A. Times<\/em>.<\/span>\u00a0To what extent did you get access to the criminals?<\/span> Only Tracy McCourt, as I recall. Four of them were dead, right? <\/span>I guess that winnowed down the source pool.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
When they returned, the men were at the glass table in the breakfast nook. Everyone was busy. Holmes and Lind weighed the cocaine. Launius counted the Quaaludes. DeVerell counted the money. On the table were eight pounds of cocaine, 5000 Quaaludes, a kilo of high-quality China White heroin and $10,000 in cash. The jewelry would later be fenced for $150,000. Lind, Launius and DeVerell, the three who\u2019d carried out the robbery, were to receive twenty-five percent each. Holmes and McCourt went halves on the last share.\n
\n
As soon as the weighing was done, Holmes went to the kitchen to cook some cocaine powder into rock, then went into the bathroom to smoke. The rest of the Wonderland people took turns injecting heroin and cocaine. After a while, Holmes came back into the living room. He complained about his share of the money. It was only about $3000. He knew that Nash had a lot more than that lying around the house.\n
\n
An argument ensued. Launius punched Holmes in the stomach.\n
\n
\u201cGet the fuck out of here!\u201d he screamed.<\/a>This is a queasy moment; I\u2019ve decided Holmes is a monster, but I also feel bad for him. I guess the challenge for the writer is to make sure the protagonist never actually becomes a monster, but is always human.<\/span>\u00a0Precisely. And that\u2019s what I meant earlier about finding the creamy center of a character. Finding the goodness, the part that people can identify with. I mean, the underdog syndrome in this country is so huge. People like the underdog because we\u2019re all schmoes. It\u2019s also about trying to get it right, as it really is. The cool guys aren\u2019t always cool. Everybody knows that. But yet, you can\u2019t predict what might happen. The stuff you find out is cooler than what you could make up. <\/span>Right. You\u2019re only jealous of Holmes for about thirty seconds.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
***\n
\n
For the first few months, while she was in Oregon with her mother, Jeana had refused to take Holmes\u2019s calls. She\u2019d gotten a job at a nursing home and was paying her mom rent, trying to rebuild her life. But Holmes kept calling. He sent flowers, presents, photos of them with the dog.\n
\n
By May, Jeana began taking his calls. By June, she was thinking, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not doing anything here.\u201d On June 27th, two days before the robbery at Nash\u2019s, she flew to Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/a>I\u2019m always amazed when, in a story like this, the reporter can pin down an exact date. Did Jeana keep her ticket stub?<\/span> Those were her timelines. She had to go through all this with the police. She had to get her story straight. Then she talked to me.<\/span><\/span>\n
\nJohn was carrying two suitcases when he met her. \u201cOh, shit,\u201d she thought, but she didn\u2019t say anything.
\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to believe I\u2019d fallen for a line again,\u201d Jeana says. \u201cHe was sweet. He was great. There wasn\u2019t any trouble. We went to a motel, had a nice reunion. No drugs. It was really nice. He was like the old John. Then he left.\u201d\n
\n
On the day of the robbery Holmes still hadn\u2019t come back. Management asked Jeana to leave. Holmes hadn\u2019t paid for the room.\n
\n
Jeana packed her suitcase, gathered up her Chihuahua. She didn\u2019t have any money. She didn\u2019t know what to do. She couldn\u2019t call Sharon. They hadn\u2019t spoken in two years. Jeana was somewhere downtown. She didn\u2019t know where. She walked the streets, tried to think. A pimp tried to pick her up. Then another. Then she ran into a woman preaching fire and brimstone on a corner. The woman took her to her house, put her to work painting a wall. Meanwhile, Jeana called Holmes\u2019s answering service and left the number. Holmes finally called on the afternoon of the 29th, after the Wonderland Gang kicked him out. He showed up at the house in the early evening. \u201cHe had the biggest pile of coke I\u2019d ever seen in my entire life,\u201d says Jeana. \u201cHe took over the kitchen. He cooked coke all night long. He even had the Holy Roller\u2019s sister smoking.\u201d\n
\n
In the morning, they went out to get food. \u201cWhen we came back, the door was locked,\u201d says Jeana. \u201cThe Holy Roller was up in the balcony, waving a Christian flag, praying and hollering, singing \u2018We Shall Overcome.\u2019 She said John had cut some coke with an old tarot card and she believed it was a sign from the devil. I said, \u2018Please, just let me get my clothes and my dog and we\u2019ll leave.\u2019 \u201d\n
\n
***\n
\n
Gregory DeWitt Diles, six feet four, 300 pounds, barged through the front door of the house on Dona Lola\u00a0<\/a>There are so many moving parts to this story, I actually had to check back to see whose house this was. Was it tough to keep the story straight in your head, as you were writing it?<\/span>\u00a0The thing is, every detail was so hard-won, it wasn\u2019t like I had to master a huge bunch of shit. You\u2019re old enough now that there\u2019s some history you\u2019ve lived through and you don\u2019t have to look it up. You know what I mean? It\u2019s like that. If you\u2019re building a story, one little fucking piece at a time, each piece is a fucking war. It starts out, you just know about John Holmes. Then you learn about Eddie Nash and Diles, because those are the two people in the murders. You do more and more work and get more and more characters, and they all fit in. At one time, I\u2019d do modified outlines, but always in longhand. Anyway, it\u2019s just a story. It rolls at its own pace. It\u2019s chronological. The only reason it doesn\u2019t seem chronological is I don\u2019t date every section. I do try to put a time peg within the first few grafs of everything, so it\u2019s located in time. That\u2019s an important duty of the writer, to keep it running. It can\u2019t be so “Memento” that you lose yourself in the tale., dragging John Holmes by the scruff of his neck.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
\u201cIn here,\u201d said Nash.\n
\n
Diles shoved, Holmes skidded across the carpet. Nash shut the bedroom door.\n
\n
Wednesday afternoon, July 1st, two days after the robbery. Jeana was tucked into another hotel in the Valley. An hour before, Holmes had run into Diles. Holmes was wearing a ring that had been stolen from the boss.\n
\n
Eddie Nash was fifty-two years old, six feet tall, gray haired, strong and wiry. His family had owned several hotels before the creation of Israel in 1948. Nash told a friend <\/a>Who was the friend?<\/span>\u00a0That\u2019s June Schuyler. She was the greatest source of personal information on him. This was her great love affair.<\/span>\u00a0Her appearance in the story is really extraordinary. An elementary school teacher in the middle of–<\/span> It serves the same purpose as Sharon\u2019s appearance. She was a registered nurse!<\/span><\/span>\u00a0that he missed the moonlight and the olive trees of his homeland, that he\u2019d spent time in a refugee camp, that his brother-in-law was shot by Israeli soldiers.\n
\n
The youngest son in the family, Nash arrived in America with seven dollars in his pocket. He worked for others for a time, then opened Beef\u2019s Chuck, a hotdog stand on Hollywood Boulevard. Nash was on the job day and night, wearing a tall white chef \u2019s hat, waiting tables himself.\n
\n
June M. Schuyler, an elementary-school teacher from Santa Barbara, remembers meeting the \u201cnice-looking, very-light-skinned foreign man\u201d at Beef\u2019s Chuck. She was living in Hollywood while her autistic son attended the Belle Dubnoff School for Brain-Damaged Children. The school was a block away from Nash\u2019s place. She\u2019d often take her son there for lunch.\n
\n
From then, wrote Schuyler, in a letter to a judge many years later, \u201cEd Nasrallah began a courtship that was as old-fashioned as they come. For many months he took me out to dinner, introduced me to his mother and other relatives. There never was a sexual relationship between us. I said \u2018No\u2019 and I meant it.\u201d\n
\n
Over the next year, Nasrallah brought her grape leaves, hummus, pots of Turkish coffee. Schuyler said that Ed loved her son exceedingly and that he offered to \u201cfix it up for you to take him to a top brain surgeon. . . . No strings attached.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Schuyler is such a surprising source. How\u2019d you hear about her?<\/span>\u00a0I think I found her in the court papers, as a character witness. At the point where I got the papers, I redoubled my efforts to find people. I was getting all these dribs and drabs, but then I got the court papers. From that I got my scenes, more names, addresses and phone numbers. Back then, all we had was the Yellow Pages, 411, or a private investigator. So this was important. There\u2019s this thing Woodward would say, when one of his investigative reporters would come in, like Ben Weiser or John Feinstein. You\u2019d get this whole box full of documents. Woodward would call it a docugasm. He\u2019d say, \u201cIt\u2019s a docugasm!\u201d Woodward has that Midwestern, \u2018Aw, shucks\u2019 accent, even to this day. A docugasm!<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
By the mid-Seventies, Ed Nasrallah had become Eddie Nash and had amassed a fortune. He was also a drug dealer and a heavy user. His drug of choice was freebase; sometimes he mixed the crack with heroin. Nash was missing part of his sinus cavity, one of his lungs had been removed, and he had a steel plate in his head.\n
\n
For the last several years, Nash had rarely left his white-stone ranch house in Studio City. At home, Nash walked around in a maroon silk robe, or sometimes in bikini briefs, his body covered with a thin sheen of sweat. <\/a>Where did this information come from? Medical records?<\/span>\u00a0That was Scott Thorson. Freebasing makes you hot, so you undress. It\u2019s like meth. It raises your blood pressure.<\/span><\/span>His voice had a smooth Arabic lilt. \u201cYou want to play baseball?\u201d he\u2019d ask his ever-present guests, lighting his butane torch, offering a hit off his pipe.\n
\n
\u201cThe consumption of alcohol and drugs was an ongoing, everyday affair,\u201d says an attorney who is a longtime acquaintance of Nash\u2019s. \u201cThe cast of characters would go from two or three to ten or more. It was amazing, the haphazard way in which people would come and go. You\u2019d walk into the house, there were various girls walking around in various states of undress. Some were quite attractive. Others looked like they\u2019d been sucking on the pipe a little too long.\n
\n
\u201cWhen you met with Eddie, you met at his place, on his terms. I believe that cocaine paranoia created within him the desire to stay within that closed environment that he had control over. If anything, one of the themes in Eddie\u2019s life has always been control. He wanted to be in charge. He wanted to be the Arab man in his tent. The master, the giver of hospitality. All his lawyers\u2014I think he had maybe six or seven working on different things\u2014 all his managers, employees, customers, everyone, would come to him. He\u2019d have Jimmie, the cook, prepare these elaborate spreads. You could walk up, whisper something in his ear, and he\u2019d make it available. Whatever. You just had to ask, and he\u2019d give.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>This is one of the longest quotes in the piece. The guy seems to have more than a passing knowledge of Nash\u2019s life.<\/span>\u00a0Nash\u2019s attorney was a great source of information. He was kind of the consigliere in his world.<\/span>\u00a0Why did you choose to let this quote unwind at such length?<\/span>\u00a0I don\u2019t know. Maybe because he was an attorney. Maybe because I got it approved. That foreshadows my work later, where I let people talk a lot more. I can\u2019t say this for sure, but if I try remember the way I was thinking back then, if I was fucking with an attorney, and I knew everyone was really litigious, it could be that we crafted the statement of what he was going to say, even though he was a source. I think because I bring to my crime reporting the anthropological background, I approach people differently. I end up making friends more than making enemies. People want to help you because they really think that I get their point of view. That\u2019s the most important thing in all these interviews. And you\u2019ll play people for that, believe me. You know that that guy\u2019s in prison and he\u2019s got nothing to do, so you don\u2019t mind playing him a little bit. Be a little mean to him once in a while or whatever. Otherwise, they\u2019re going to play you. You\u2019re aware of this, but at the same time you\u2019re also ministering to them and you\u2019re listening; you\u2019re playing both sides. You\u2019re not a friend, but yet you can\u2019t be Janet Malcolm\u2019s confidence man, either. I don\u2019t agree with that. I think there\u2019s a better place where you can be. You can service all people for their needs. If you\u2019re aware of people, then you know what they need. You can give them that in day-to-day commerce. I say, \u201cThank you, sir\u201d to the guy at 7-Eleven and I don\u2019t give a fuck. Everybody\u2019s like that to me, and it gets me farther. People just like me and help me, because I act like I respect them. I am worshipful of my subjects, because this is what I want to know more than anything so it\u2019s real. I\u2019ll do anything for you, just help me figure this out.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
According to court testimony, Nash had a fancy for young girls,\u00a0<\/a>This is one of those sentences that could mean just about anything. Was he a pedophile?<\/span>\u00a0No. That just meant that he liked teens.<\/span><\/span>whips and a game with a revolver called Russian roulette. One woman who had sex with Nash remembers \u201ca lot of temptation. There were piles of cocaine in front of you. Jewelry, wads of money. You\u2019d be left in a room for hours, and then you\u2019d be called in. There were two-way mirrors in the bedroom, anything you wanted would be made available. In a way Eddie would assess you on what you took or didn\u2019t take.\u201d\n
\n
In early 1981, Nash\u2019s second wife\u2014the mother of his two sons, aged eight and five\u2014filed for a protection order against Nash. After she left him, according to a court affidavit, \u201cI took the children to Oklahoma to my aunt and uncle\u2019s farm, together with my parents. My husband hired a girl to follow us. She came to the farm to find out if a certain man was with me. After she left, my husband called on the telephone at the farm and said to come home immediately. When I refused, he said, \u2018Don\u2019t come back to California or I will have two men waiting at the airport to kill you, and I will have your parents killed.\u2019 \u201d<\/a>Do you have a favorite source for this story? It could be a person or a document.<\/span>\u00a0The guy in the basement of the courthouse, who helped me find the first boxful of stuff when I had the first docugasm. He helped me more than a person would usually help someone. When I got those court files, I was able to piece the story together. The single most important people were Sharon and Dawn, but the documents were second.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Nash is said to have had political, police and crime connections. According to one Los Angeles law-enforcement official, \u201cEd Nash was a very well-known figure in the Sixties around Hollywood with police, and it was never an antagonistic relationship.\u201d\n
\n
One of Nash\u2019s friends and overnight guests was, according to a law-enforcement official <\/a>Is this law-enforcement official the same as the one quoted in the previous paragraph?<\/span>\u00a0I honestly can\u2019t remember.<\/span><\/span>, an Israeli with a military background, \u201cthe so-called reputed godfather of the Israeli Mafia.\u201d A report by the California State Department of Justice revealed that the Israeli Mafia was active in California during the late Seventies and early Eighties and was involved in drugs, arson, extortion, gun-running and a number of murders, including the death and dismemberment of two Israeli nationals at the plush Bonaventure hotel in downtown L.A.\u00a0<\/a>This is wild. Were you tempted to report on this further?<\/span>\u00a0There was already a lot on this. To some degree, a lot of this story is aggregating the news. It\u2019s in the Garry Wills model of it\u2019s all fair game. I\u2019m sure I tried to find more. You were never done with this piece. By the end, we had the wife, the girlfriend and the last wife, so we had a pretty good profile.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
During his six or seven years of heavy drug use, said the attorney, \u201cNash lost over a million a year directly attributable to drugs. His business empire totally atrophied as a result of the coke. What really cracks me up is people believe he was a dope dealer. That\u2019s bullshit. He was consuming it. At an alarming rate.\u201d\n
\n
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 1st, 1981, Eddie Nash was again consuming drugs at an alarming rate. He\u2019d been ripped off for eight pounds of cocaine, but the Wonderland Gang hadn\u2019t found his private stash, and now he was bubbling his glass pipe furiously. He\u2019d sent two of his minions out to score more drugs, but they hadn\u2019t yet returned. Two customers waited. They did hits off Eddie\u2019s pipe, eyed the door.\n
\n
One of the customers was Scott Thorson. Thorson had driven from Lake Tahoe to score from Nash. Or perhaps he had flown from Las Vegas. In court testimony years later, he would say, in answer to this and many other questions, \u201cI don\u2019t recall. I really don\u2019t recall.\u201d Thorson was the live-in lover of the entertainer Liberace. He was also in Liberace\u2019s Las Vegas act. Wearing jewel-bedecked livery, he would chauffeur Liberace onto the stage in a glittering mini-Rolls-Royce, open the door, take his master\u2019s fur coat. Then Liberace would make a joke about having the only fur coat in the world that had its own limo. During one special engagement, Thorson danced with the Rockettes. Liberace called him Booper, treated him like a son, a lover, a pet.\n
\n
Thorson had been addicted to cocaine for several years. It began, according to Thorson\u2019s book, Behind the Candelabra, when Liberace ordered him to have cosmetic surgery. First, however, Thorson had to lose thirty pounds. A doctor of dubious practice prescribed a salad of different drugs to aid the weight loss. Pharmaceutical cocaine was one of the ingredients.\n
\n
In time, the surgery was completed, and Thorson was made into a young vision of Liberace. He remained addicted to coke. At the moment that Diles barged through the door with Holmes in tow, Thorson was with Eddie in his bedroom, doing hits. Nash was very upset.\n
\n
\u201cI\u2019ll have them on their knees!\u201d Nash ranted to Thorson.\n
\n
\u201cI\u2019ll teach them a lesson! They\u2019ll never steal from anyone again!\u201d\u00a0<\/a>How much, if any, of this is from Behind the Candelabra?<\/em><\/span>\u00a0I can\u2019t remember how much is from the book and how much is from interviewing Thorson, but I used both. Nobody cared about him, so he was one of those people who wanted to talk. He was a druggie. When I talk to druggies, I\u2019m like, Cool. Rick James<\/a> and I were friends for many years, and that\u2019s because we both liked to talk about smoking freebase and having sex. And we\u2019d just sit there and talk about it for hours at a time with our jaws going. I knew which questions to ask. So Thorson was a good interview. Also: I wasn\u2019t asking him any questions about Liberace or that part of his life. At this point, everybody wanted to be in a movie, so he was angling, too.<\/span> It really helped that you knew your shit.<\/span>\u00a0I read the early stories about [\u201cFreeway\u201d] Rick Ross in the L.A. Times<\/em> and the writer failed to realize the difference between coke and crack. That\u2019s what he give us: crack. Knowing that stuff is important in these stories. I guess you could say that this has been my beat over the years. We become expert at things. It helps me that I guess I\u2019m expert at this.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Thorson was excused, and Nash closed the door. Diles smacked Holmes, threw him across the room, shoved him against a wall. \u201cHow could you do this thing!\u201d Eddie Nash screamed. Diles hit him again. \u201cI trusted you! I gave you everything!\u201d\n
\n
Nash and Holmes had met three years earlier at the Seven Seas. Nash was a big fan of porn. He invested in movies, leased office space to several porn-related operations. Holmes was one of the greats in the business. Nash liked having him around. He introduced him to all his guests. \u201cI\u2019d like you to meet Mr. John Holmes,\u201d he\u2019d say.\n
\n
For his part, Holmes did anything he could for Nash. Frequently he brought him girls. On Christmas Day 1980, he\u2019d even presented Jeana. Nash reciprocated with a quarter ounce of coke. Holmes thought Nash was the most evil man he\u2019d ever met, but he couldn\u2019t quite figure him out, so he respected him.\u00a0<\/a>This is such a morbidly funny line. Holmes pimped his girlfriend for a quarter-ounce of coke, and yet he judges Nash!<\/span>\u00a0That\u2019s what I love about the world.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Now things were not so friendly. Holmes was crumpled on the floor. Diles leveled a gun at his head. Nash was leafing through a little black book that Diles had taken from Holmes\u2019s pocket.\n
\n
\u201cWho\u2019s this in Ohio?\u201d Nash screamed. \u201cWho\u2019s Mary? Your mother? Who\u2019s this in Montana? . . . Is this your brother? . . . I will kill your whole family! All of them! Go back to that house! Get my property! Bring me their eyeballs! Bring me their eyeballs in a bag, and I will forget what you have done to me! Go!\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Where did you get this dialogue?<\/span>\u00a0I think it\u2019s court records and probably Thorson\u2019s testimony. I have Reagan-like memory. But how else would I have known about it? A lot of this stuff is also in Sharon\u2019s outline.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
***\n
\n
Thursday, July 2nd, 3:30 a.m. Sharon Holmes switched on the porch light, spied through the peephole. Christ, she thought, John. She hadn\u2019t seen him in three months. His clothes were ripped, he was bloody from head to toe. He stared straight ahead, unblinking. She opened the door, folded her arms against her chest.\n
\n
\u201cWell?\u201d \u201cAccident . . . car . . . um . . .\u201d he stammered. \u201cCan I . . . come in?\u201d They went to the bathroom. Sharon, a registered nurse, rummaged through a well-stocked medicine cabinet, brought out iodine and cotton swabs. She reached up and took John\u2019s chin in her hand, turned his head side to side. Funny, she thought, no cuts, no abrasions. Just blood. \u201cYou had an accident in the Malibu?\u201d\n
\n
John looked down at Sharon. His eyes blinked rapidly. They\u2019d been married sixteen years. Sharon always knew when he was lying. That\u2019s probably why he always came back. <\/a>I love that in the middle of this scene with a bloody Holmes you allow Sharon a (well-deserved) shot at him.<\/span>\u00a0It\u2019s so her point of view, that scolding way about her. It becomes characteristic of my stories–I like to quote people without quoting them. Instead of quoting somebody, I just use their language. I\u2019m using Sharon\u2019s language. She was just so hatefully passive-aggressive.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0\u201cRun me a bath, will you?\u201d he said.\n
\n
John eased into the tub. Sharon sat on the wood-covered commode. \u201cWhat now?\u201d she thought. He dunked his head, put a steaming washcloth over his face. Then he sat up. \u201cThe murders,\u201d he said. \u201cI was there.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWhat do you mean you were there?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cIt was my fault,\u201d John said, his eyes welling with tears.\n
\n
\u201cI stood there and watched them kill those people.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cI was involved in a robbery,\u201d John began, and he told the story. The setup, the robbery, Nash\u2019s threat to kill his whole family, Sharon included. \u201cSo I told him everything,\u201d John said. \u201cI told where the robbers lived and how to get there. I had to take them there.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWho?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cThree men and myself.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cOkay, you took them there.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cI took them there. There was a security system at the house. I called up and said I had some things for the people inside and to let me up. They opened the security gate, and the four of us went up the stairs, and when the door opened, they forced their way inside. Someone held a gun to my head. I stood there against the wall. I watched them beat them to death.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cYou stood there?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cThere was nothing I could do.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cJohn, how could you?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cIt was them or me. They were stupid. They made him beg for his life.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cThey deserved what they got.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Does Holmes\u2019s version of the event, by way of Sharon, match up with what is otherwise known about it?<\/span>\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/span>\n
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***\n
\n
\u201cBlood! Blood! So much blood!\u201d Holmes was having a nightmare. Tossing and moaning, punching and kicking. \u201cSo much blood!\u201d he groaned over and over.\n
\n
Jeana was scared to death. She didn\u2019t know what to do. Wake him? Let him scream? It was Thursday, July 2nd, 1981. After bathing at Sharon\u2019s, Holmes had come here, to this motel in the Valley. He walked through the door, flopped on the bed, passed out.\n
\n
Jeana sat very still on the edge of the bed, watching a TV that was mounted on the wall. After a while, the news. The top story was something about a mass murder. Four bodies. A bloody mess. A house on Wonderland Avenue. Jeana stood up, moved closer to the tube. \u201cThat house,\u201d she thought. Things started to click. \u201cI\u2019ve waited outside that house. Isn\u2019t that where John gets his drugs?\u201d\n
\n
Hours passed, John woke. Jeana said nothing. They made a run to McDonald\u2019s for hamburgers. They watched some more TV. Then came the late-night news. The cops were calling it the Four on the Floor Murders. Dead were Joy Miller, Billy DeVerell, Ron Launius, Barbara Richardson. The Wonderland Gang. The murder weapon was a steel pipe with threading at the ends. Thread marks found on walls, skulls, skin. House tossed by assailants. Blood and brains splattered everywhere, even on the ceilings. The bodies were discovered by workmen next door; they\u2019d heard faint cries from the back of the house: \u201cHelp me. Help me.\u201d A fifth victim was carried out alive. Susan Launius, 25, Ron Launius\u2019s wife. She was in intensive care with a severed finger and brain damage. The murders were so brutal that police were comparing the case to the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson Family.\n
\n
Holmes and Jeana watched from the bed. Jeana was afraid to look at John. She cut her eyes slowly, caught his profile. He was frozen. The color drained from his face. She actually saw it. First his forehead, then his cheeks, then his neck. He went white.\u00a0<\/a>I like this. You take a clich\u00e9–\u201cthe color drained from his face\u201d–and put it under a microscope.<\/span>\u00a0In this case, it was probably pointed out to me by my source, and I\u2019m using her language again. Almost in every story, I try to use a clich\u00e9 the right way, then do a bit more just prove that I wasn\u2019t clich\u00e9ing it up. I love that clich\u00e9s are often the best way of explaining things. That\u2019s me having fun, and trying to be effective as a storyteller.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Jeana said nothing. After a while, the weather report came on. She cleared her throat \u201cJohn?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cYou had this dream. You know, when you were sleeping? You said something about blood.\u201d\n
\n
Holmes\u2019s eyes bulged. He looked very scared. She\u2019d never seen him look scared before. \u201cYeah, well, uh,\u201d he said. \u201cUm, I lifted the trunk of the car, and I gave myself a nosebleed yesterday. Don\u2019t worry.\u201d\n
\n
On July 10th, police knocked down the door of their motel room and arrested Jeana and Holmes. For the next three days, Holmes, Jeana and Sharon were held in protective custody in a luxury hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Armed guards in the lobby, in the hallway. Room service. Holmes tried to make a deal with the cops. He wanted witness protection, a new name, money, a home. He wanted new names for Sharon and Jeana, too. He offered the police secrets. Names of mobsters, drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps. The police wanted to know who killed the Wonderland Gang. Holmes wouldn\u2019t tell.\n
\n
\u201cWith Holmes, it was like he was center stage and the lights and the camera were on,\u201d says a detective who was present.<\/a>Who was the detective?<\/span>\u00a0I can\u2019t remember. Unless Lange didn\u2019t want to be identified saying everything. But Lange had a partner, so I\u2019m sure he talked to me, too.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0\u201cIt was like he was doing a movie. Here he is, he has two women with him. All three of them are sleeping in the same bed. He stroked us, jacked us around. He told us certain things. That we were on the right track, that this is indeed what had happened, that this was the motivation, that this was how it came down. He played it for all it was worth, then he said he wouldn\u2019t testify. We cut him loose.\u201d\n
\n
The three went back to Sharon\u2019s house. Sharon cooked dinner. Holmes picked up Sharon\u2019s two dogs and Thor from the kennel. Later, the women dyed Holmes\u2019s hair black. Holmes and Jeana painted the Malibu gray with a red top. They used cans of spray paint. The finish was drippy and streaked, but it didn\u2019t matter. They were going underground.\n
\n
Now it was midnight in the parking lot at the Safeway in Glendale. The Malibu was idling. Jeana sat in the front seat, Thor in her arms. Holmes leaned up against the back bumper, smoking a cigarette. Sharon stood with arms crossed. \u201cChange your mind. Come with us, Sharon.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cNo way, John.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cIt can be the three of us, Sharon, like old times.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to be joking.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do this to me,\u201d he said.\n
\n
\u201cWhy? Why can\u2019t I?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cBecause I love you.\u201d\n
\n
Sharon looked at him. On their first date, he\u2019d brought a bottle of Mateus and a handful of flowers. Sharon had watched through the window as he picked them from the neighbor\u2019s front yard. Now she shook her head slowly, walked around the car to the passenger side.\n
\n
\n

\"Letter<\/a>\n
\n

Letter from Sharon Holmes<\/a>\n \n <\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\nJeana leaned out the window, and they hugged. Over the years, they\u2019d become like mother and daughter. \u201cTake care of him,\u201d Sharon said.\u00a0<\/a>Sharon seems like an incredibly forgiving, relatively decent person. But, because I am cynical, I note that people who talk to reporters always come off better than people who don\u2019t. Maybe call it the Woodward Syndrome. What did you make of her?<\/span>\u00a0Well, I got the point in there that she was in love with him but she hated him. She changed his life and they–she and Dawn–were like a club of two people that loved John. I thought that she was overly-precise in trying to tell the story accurately, but she was also totally in denial that she was still in love with him. She acted like John meant nothing to her, and he was just her friend. \u201cWe were long-time companions.\u201d I think I reflect that in the material, but I also don\u2019t bang her over the head with it because she was kind enough to give me the whole fucking thing.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
***\n
\n
\u201cHello, Jeana.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cChris? Is that you?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cHow are you, Sis?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cFine. Where are you calling from? You sound close.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cI\u2019m here.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cIn Miami?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWell, I, I, ah, came . . . with a friend. Listen. Tell me where you are. I\u2019ll pick you up.\u201d <\/a>Was this call recorded? It doesn\u2019t read like someone\u2019s recollection.<\/span>\u00a0l can\u2019t remember. I got that from Dawn.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Jeana hung up the phone. Her brother Chris, 16, lived in Oregon. She hadn\u2019t heard from him in, what, six months? Not since she was home. Now it was December 4th, 1981. After leaving California, Jeana and Holmes had gone to Vegas, then Montana, then headed south, visiting the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert. Holmes broke into cars along the way.\n
\n
The couple ended up in Miami, at a small run-down hotel on Collins Avenue. Everyone there was on some kind of slide. Big Rosie, the manager, let Jeana work the switchboard and clean rooms in exchange for rent. Holmes went to work for a construction company, painting a hotel down the strip. <\/a>This is amazing. At this point, did people recognize Holmes? Did people realize the guy working the construction job had been the world\u2019s most famous porn star?<\/span>\u00a0Apparently not. I don\u2019t think porn was that famous than. He got big when he was finished and dying. Porn got big in the Vivid era, with high production values. So people didn\u2019t really know him. He was not a household name. But so many people have read this story, maybe that has something to do with it? It was a front-page story when he died of AIDS.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0For extra money, Jeana solicited tricks on the beach.\n
\n
\u201cEverybody at the hotel got to know us,\u201d Jeana says. \u201cWe were real friendly. John was doing a lot of drawing. Drawings of the dog, of me. We\u2019d have dinner with other people at the hotel, go to movies. We were like a normal couple. After a while, I said I didn\u2019t want to go out on the beach anymore. We had a big fight. I ran out the door, down to the pool, and he ran after me, the fool. Everybody was down there. He beat the shit out of me, then walked back up to the room. Everybody was just shocked.\u201d\n
\n
The next day, while Holmes was at work, a delegation of residents came to see Jeana. A mother and daughter offered to help. The daughter had a kid and a job. She was moving to a house. Would Jeana want to be the live-in baby sitter? Jeana packed her bag, gathered up Thor, put Holmes\u2019 gun in her pocketbook.\n
\n
Now it was December 4th, and she hadn\u2019t seen Holmes in two weeks. <\/a>Do you have any idea of Holmes\u2019s movements during these two weeks?<\/span>\u00a0No, I have no idea. Presumably he kept painting. This is part of the blue smoke and mirrors of telling a story. I don\u2019t know what happened so we just skip over it and go to the next part<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0Her brother was in town; something weird was going on. Chris didn\u2019t have a driver\u2019s license. How could he rent a car?\n
\n
They picked up a six-pack, went to a park, sat by a pond.\n
\n
\u201cJeana, I\u2019ve got to tell you. See that car over there? It\u2019s the cops.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cYou little . . .\u201d Jeana stood, walked away. Chris caught up.\n
\n
\u201cListen,\u201d he said, grabbing her elbow. \u201cPeople are after John, and they think you\u2019re with him. You\u2019re going to get hurt. Tell the cops what they want to know, \u2019cause otherwise John\u2019s going to be dead in a few days. You\u2019re probably going to be saving him.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Was the conversation recorded? I imagine Chris was wearing a wire.<\/span>\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
When the cops got to his hotel, Holmes was there. \u201cI\u2019ve been expecting you,\u201d he said. He invited them in for coffee.\n
\n
\u201cHow you doing, John?\u201d said the man in the gray suit, leaning over the safety rail of the bed. \u201cJohn? Remember me?\u201d\n
\n
February 1988, seven years after the murders. <\/a>It\u2019s interesting that you jumped forward six and half years and then, to some extent, doubled back. Why did you do that?<\/span>\u00a0You just advance, digress, then advance again. That\u2019s my go-to. Sometimes I do it a little differently these days. I have noticed that in my earlier writing seems to roll in on itself too much, because each section kind of goes backwards. And even Todd Marinovich, the long form version, kind of does that, too. I mean, it\u2019s what I do.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0A sunny room in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, California. The man in the suit was Los Angeles Police Department detective Tom Lange. Behind him was his partner, Mac McClain. The Wonderland case was still open. They had a few questions for John Holmes.\n
\n
\u201cWe want to talk to you about Eddie Nash,\u201d said McClain. \u201cJohn? . . . Remember Eddie? . . . John? Are you awake?\u201d<\/a>Where does this dialogue come from?<\/span>Oh, McClain! That\u2019s the other detective! I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s the unnamed detective from earlier. That came from my interviews with Lange, McClain or Laurie Holmes.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Holmes\u2019s eyelids fluttered. He weighed ninety pounds, his fingernails were two inches long. He was dying.\n
\n
Following his arrest in Miami, Holmes was tried for the murder of the Wonderland Gang. His defense was simple: John Holmes was the \u201csixth victim\u201d of the Wonderland murders, and Eddie Nash was \u201cevil incarnate.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cLadies and gentlemen,\u201d his lawyer told the jury at the outset, \u201cunlike some mysteries, this is not going to be a question of \u2018Who done it? \u2019This is going to be a question of \u2018Why aren\u2019t the perpetrators here?\u2019 \u201d\n
\n
In the end, the most damaging evidence the prosecution could produce was a palm print on a headboard above one of the victims. Holmes refused to testify. The jury found him innocent.\n
\n
Holmes remained in jail, however, on his outstanding burglary case. While awaiting that trial, he was ordered by a judge to tell the grand jury what he knew about the Wonderland murders. Because he\u2019d already been tried, Holmes would not be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment. According to the law, he had to talk. He refused anyway. He\u2019d underestimated Nash once, but he\u2019d never do it again. Nash would kill him and his family if he talked, he was certain of it. He was held in the county jail for contempt.\n
\n
In jail, Holmes went on a hunger strike. Two weeks later, it was reported that he\u2019d lost only seven pounds. Jailers said other inmates were giving him candy bars. Later it was reported that Holmes interrupted his fast, ate a meal, then continued his fast.\n
\n
Finally, on the afternoon of November 22nd, 1982, Holmes relented and testified. He\u2019d been in jail eleven months in all, 110 days on the contempt charge. His attorney told reporters that he\u2019d changed his mind because of \u201ccertain arrangements\u201d that had been made and \u201ccertain circumstances\u201d that had arisen. What he may have been referring to was the imprisonment, that very same morning, of Eddie Nash, on charges of dealing drugs.\n
\n
Just after the murders, Nash and Diles had found themselves in a world of shit. Nash\u2019s house was raided three times. Each time, drugs, money and weapons were seized. Each time, Nash made bail. Then Nash was arrested with three others on federal charges of racketeering, arson and mail fraud, an insurance scam. Nash\u2019s three coconspirators were found guilty. Nash was acquitted.\n
\n
In the end, both Diles and Nash went to jail. Diles got seven years on charges stemming from the drug raids. Nash was found guilty of possessing two pounds of cocaine for sale. At trial, his lawyer argued that the $1 million worth of coke was not for dealing, that it was strictly for personal use. During recesses in the trial, Nash would go out to his car and smoke freebase. Then he\u2019d swallow a few Quaaludes and return. His lawyer hired a young associate to stick Nash with a pin whenever he nodded off in court.\n
\n
The judge in the case was Everett E. Ricks Jr. It was obvious from his comments that Ricks, a hard-liner, considered Eddie Nash a plague. Ricks even came in from his sickbed to sentence Nash. Coughing into the microphone, Ricks called Nash \u201ca danger to the public\u201d and maxed him out. Eight years in prison, a $120,350 fine.\u00a0<\/a>Did you attend the trial?<\/span>\u00a0No, that was years before. Oh. This reminds me of the time Bob Woodward interviewed me for two days about Janet Cooke. At the end, I would have told him anything.<\/span>Was that for an internal story?<\/span>\u00a0No, it was to find out what happened. He grilled me in his office and then he said, \u201cMeet me tomorrow at seven in the morning and I\u2019ll take you to breakfast.\u201d Then he started anew grilling me.<\/span>\u00a0Did he hold you responsible?<\/span> Well, I was on the edit trail because I rewrote the lede<\/a>. She was annoyingly flaunting our relationship in-house, even after we weren\u2019t having it anymore. I was still helping her with Jimmy and writing so I just said, \u201cSend it to me.\u201d So I fixed it and rewrote the lede, which I did all the time for her.<\/span>\u00a0Given your experience with drugs, how come your bullshit detector didn\u2019t go off with her story?<\/span> No, it did. As I write in the story<\/a>, I went to Pat Tyler and Joe Pichirallo–who were an investigative team on Metro–after Janet\u2019s story came out and predicted that it would win a Pulitzer and turn out to be fake. It was the perfect storm of stories and I told them that. I also said, \u201cI don\u2019t know, because maybe I\u2019m just jealous because she doesn\u2019t deserve it\u2026\u201d I had to rewrite all her stories and she always had writer\u2019s block. But I told people my reservations.<\/span>\u00a0But you never told her.<\/span>\u00a0No. The grownups were supposed to do their jobs.<\/span>\u00a0Do you still keep in touch with Janet?<\/span>I\u2019m still in touch with her.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
Two years later, Ricks reduced Nash\u2019s sentence to time served, and Nash was released. Ricks cited Nash\u2019s need for delicate surgery to remove a sinus tumor. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to be operated on in San Quentin Prison,\u201d Ricks said sympathetically.\n
\n
Two years later, Ricks, himself, was ordered held against his will for psychiatric observation. The fifty-two-year-old former jurist had been arrested after he allegedly punched his eighty-two-year-old mother and threatened to kill someone if she didn\u2019t give him keys to a car.\n
\n
After his release, Nash told a friend that jail had saved his life. He moved to a modest condo in Tarzana and set about rebuilding, taking college business courses at night. Drugs, inattention, back taxes and lawyers\u2019 fees had depleted his fortune.\n
\n
Holmes, meanwhile, had gone back to making films.\n
\n
When he got out of jail, Holmes was jubilant. He greeted reporters, had dinner with his lawyer, then called Sharon. She told him to \u201cget the fuck out of my life.\u201d He couldn\u2019t call Jeana. She was nowhere to be found.\n
\n
Holmes had nothing to do and nowhere to go. His lawyer lent him a Volkswagen Beetle and $100, and Holmes showed up at his friend Amerson\u2019s house. While Holmes was in jail, Amerson had started a company called John Holmes Productions. He was marketing Holmes\u2019s old films on video. Like all porn actors, John had been paid per day and had signed away the rights to his own films. His old friend was happy to pick them up. \u201cLet\u2019s face it,\u201d Amerson says, \u201cJohn was a product. I marketed him. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. It\u2019s business.\u201d\n
\n
With all the publicity from the murders, John Holmes had achieved almost mainstream celebrity. The video boom was just beginning, and Holmes became a kind of Marlon Brando of porn. No longer the leading man, he was now the featured oddity. In California Valley Girls, for instance, he had one scene. He came in, sat on a couch. A girl entered stage right. Then another girl, another. At the end, there were six working at once on his penis.\n
\n
Early in 1983, Holmes was shooting Fleshpond at a studio in San Francisco. One of the actresses in the cast was Laurie Rose. Laurie was nineteen; she came from a small town outside Vegas. In the business she was billed as Misty Dawn, the anal queen of porn.\n
\n
\u201cThat first time, we didn\u2019t get to work together,\u201d says Laurie, \u201cbut we were attracted. It sounds silly, but you know how you can meet someone for the first time and it\u2019s like you know them already?\u201d\u00a0<\/a>At what point in the reporting did you talk to Laurie? How did you find her?<\/span>\u00a0Through her lawyer. I had to make a deal with them.<\/span>\u00a0Backend points on a movie or something like that?<\/span>\u00a0Yeah. I actually only got a small amount of time because I didn\u2019t want to give them more. It was a phoner. You get as much as you can. She was good for telling me that John didn\u2019t want his penis cut off, the John Dillinger stuff. That was worth whatever I had to pay.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
After the film, John and Laurie, who looked like Jeana, began dating. Usually, they smoked freebase and had sex. Then, says Laurie, \u201cthe third time I went up there, he came up to me with the mirror and said, \u2018You want a hit?\u2019 and I turned to him and said no. He looked shocked. He said, \u2018Why not?\u2019 and I said, \u2018Because it makes me feel funny and I can\u2019t talk.\u2019 So he went in the bathroom, and he locked himself in. He stayed in there like three hours, and I\u2019m just sitting there, you know, twiddling my thumbs. Finally he came out and said, \u2018You know what? This stuff makes me feel funny too. I\u2019m going to quit.\u2019 \u201d\n
\n
In time, John and Laurie moved in together at Amerson\u2019s. When Amerson raised their rent to $400, they got their own place in Encino. John continued to make films, but he made Laurie stop. \u201cHe thought one porn person in the family was enough,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd the AIDS thing was just starting to come out. Nobody had gotten it yet; but it was still in the back of our minds. He thought, \u2018Well, if I\u2019m going to take a chance, that\u2019s enough.\u2019 \u201d\n
\n
Apparently, Holmes had made good his promise and stopped doing drugs. John and Laurie stayed home a lot and watched videos. On weekends they went to swap meets and yard sales.\n
\n
\u201cNobody ever came over,\u201d says Laurie. \u201cNobody knew where we lived. His words to me were \u2018Friends can get you killed.\u2019 We were very careful. Then, when Eddie Nash got out of jail, John was very, very worried. We went on twenty-four-hour watch. For like three weeks, one of us had to be awake at all times. It was like being in a movie or something.\u201d\n
\n
By late 1984, John was working as an executive at Amerson\u2019s VCX films. He was supposed to be doing sales and pre-production, writing and editing, in addition to acting. Amerson says Holmes spent most of his time playing cards and shooting darts. When VCX cut off Holmes\u2019s salary, Amerson put up money to start Penguin Productions. Holmes was to run it. Laurie worked as a secretary.\n
\n
\u201cJohn was tired of the whole industry,\u201d she says. \u201cHe wanted to make a million dollars so we could just leave and be done with it.\u201d\n
\n
Then, in the summer of 1985, John tested positive for AIDS.\u00a0<\/a>So interesting to read this now. AZT wouldn\u2019t be approved by the FDA for a couple of years and when your story came out it still hadn\u2019t been approved for infants and children. It\u2019s a time capsule, in a lot of ways.<\/span>\u00a0At my age, probably, anyone who knows gay people, we know people who could be alive right now. And I just want to cry, saying that. I was very close to some people who died. They were young and talented and beautiful. I know a bunch of people who all died from fucking the same guy, you know? That\u2019s just the way it goes. It\u2019s funny, there were these two partners–one was a real estate agent, one was a journalist, Tom Morgan<\/a>, who ended up going to the Times<\/em>. Morgan was one of my mentors at night police. In, like, 1978, he said to me, \u201cWhat would you say if I told you I was gay?\u201d His lover, whose picture is upstairs and whose rug is on my floor, he didn\u2019t get the same treatment as Tom. And he died 20 years ago. Tom Morgan lived until several years ago. It\u2019s unbelievable.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
\u201cHe went fucking crazy,\u201d says Amerson. \u201cHe panicked, walked in circles around the doctor\u2019s office, threw his briefcase down. He said, \u2018I\u2019m gonna die!\u2019 and drove off.\u201d\n
\n
\u201cWhen he came back,\u201d says Laurie, \u201che was laughing about it. We closed up the office and went to the beach. We played our favorite songs, walked, talked. John said he felt like he was chosen to get AIDS because of who he was, how he lived. He felt like he was an example.\u201d\n
\n
John continued making films for a while. His last film was The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress, starring Ilona \u201cCiccolina\u201d Staller, a member of the Italian Parliament. By the time it was released, in 1987, Holmes\u2019s health had already begun to slide. The word in the industry was that he had colon cancer. Holmes was telling people that doctors had removed sixteen feet of his large intestine. In truth, Holmes was operated on for hemorrhoids. Around that time, he also began developing complications related to AIDS. Amerson, meanwhile, accused his friend of embezzling $200,000 from the company. He cut Holmes off, canceled his insurance.\n
\n
\u201cJohn was really sick by this point,\u201d says Laurie. \u201cWe moved around a lot because the rent kept going up. I was working as a computer programmer. John would just stay home. He was in so much pain, you couldn\u2019t touch him. He couldn\u2019t walk. His legs and feet would swell up, his ears would bleed, he had infections in his lungs. His surgery wouldn\u2019t heal up, either. He was very upset about the business. He\u2019d made all these people millions and millions of dollars. We were really broke. He called some people, and they said, \u2018We\u2019ll help you out.\u2019 But we\u2019d never get the money they promised.\u201d\n
\n
On January 24th, 1988, John and Laurie were married in the Little Chapel of the Flowers, in Las Vegas. It was a simple ceremony. The bride wore white. \u201cIt was a big ordeal for him,\u201d says Laurie. \u201cHe knew he was dying. He knew we wouldn\u2019t have a life together.\u201d\n
\n
In February, Holmes was admitted to the VA hospital in Sepulveda. Soon after, Detectives Lange and McCain called the hospital. They wanted to see Holmes. After seven years, the district attorney was reopening the Wonderland case, based, in part, on testimony from Scott Thorson, Liberace\u2019s ex-lover. Thorson, who was waiting to be sentenced on a drug-related armed robbery, had sought a deal with police. He was prepared to testify that Eddie Nash had sent Holmes and Diles to Wonderland Avenue and that Nash felt responsible for the \u201cbloody mess\u201d that resulted. Now the police wanted Holmes\u2019s testimony.\n
\n
Laurie was standing at the door when Lange and McClain appeared down the corridor.\n
\n
\u201cJohn, they\u2019re coming,\u201d Laurie said in a stage whisper.\n
\n
Holmes nodded his head, put out his cigarette, closed his eyes. \u201cHe was incoherent,\u201d says Lange.\n
\n
John Holmes died on March 13th, 1988. \u201cHis eyes were open,\u201d says Laurie, \u201cand it looked like he had looked up to Death and said, \u2018Here I am.\u2019 It was the most peaceful look I ever saw in my life. I tried to shut his eyes like in the movies, but they wouldn\u2019t stay shut.\u201d\n
\n
Holmes didn\u2019t want a funeral, but he did have a last wish.\n
\n
\u201cHe wanted me to view his body and make sure that all the parts were there,\u201d says Laurie. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want part of him ending up in a jar somewhere. I viewed his body naked, you know, and then I watched them put the lid on the box and put it in the oven. We scattered his ashes over the ocean.\u201d\n
\n
Six months later, on September 8th, 1988, Diles and Nash were charged with the murders on Wonderland Avenue. After a preliminary hearing in January 1989, at which Thorson, among others, testified, Nash and Diles were bound over for trial this summer; they are currently being held without bail in the Los Angeles County Jail. Nash\u2019s and Diles\u2019s attorneys maintain their clients\u2019 innocence and question the credibility of witnesses for the prosecution.\u00a0<\/a>It\u2019s extraordinary that the reader gets through almost the entire story before finding out about the news peg. Most editors, I think, would force a mention of this closer to the top, in order to \u201cjustify\u201d the story.<\/span>I know, but that was the grand old days. Look, if you take whatever day it was that Ben Bradlee started the Styles section and marry that with the New Journalists of New York<\/em> and Esquire<\/em>, that\u2019s a golden era. This was right in the sweet spot of those stories. You were doing it for the art. You were trying to write stories that would last. You had to watch out because they couldn\u2019t be updated, so how you covered a story was also an important consideration. Usually you\u2019d cover it before or after a trial. So, in a sense, this is a pre-trial story for the Nash thing. I also did this for the monk story<\/a>.<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d says Detective Lange, \u201cthere\u2019s no mystery here. Every time you read something, they say it\u2019s a big mystery. Or the local TV says it\u2019s a big mystery. Or that show out of New York, you know, A Current Affair. Big mystery. Like aliens or something. There\u2019s no mystery. John Holmes didn\u2019t go to his grave with anything but a very bad case of AIDS. He told us everything initially, right after it happened.\u201d\n
\n\u201cBut it\u2019s one thing to tell someone something,\u201d says Lange. \u201cIt\u2019s another thing to testify to it in court.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Why did you end on this statement from Lange? You chose to finish with a guy who isn\u2019t much in the story.<\/span>\u00a0He\u2019d been as haunted by the story as much as anyone. And he and the police presence are in and out. Isn\u2019t the intuitive choice to end it with Sharon or Dawn? But they\u2019re not in the story anymore, so it\u2019s not intuitive to end it with them. I don\u2019t need to review the story with something they said. It\u2019s ending it now. The chronology has ended. It doesn\u2019t have to circle back. Saving his dick is really the end of the story. The detectives just put a little bow on it.<\/span><\/span>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking about Mike Sager\u2019s story, \u201cThe Devil and John Holmes,\u201d for a long time. I first read his chronicle of the famous porn star and the Wonderland murders when it came out in 1989; I was 10 years old. It is a testament to the story\u2019s vividness that, when I picked it up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[136],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotation-tuesday","authors-elon-green"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAnnotation Tuesday: the Porn Star and Mike Sager - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2014\/11\/25\/annotation-tuesday-the-porn-star-and-mike-sager\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Annotation Tuesday: the Porn Star and Mike Sager - Nieman Storyboard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019ve been thinking about Mike Sager\u2019s story, \u201cThe Devil and John Holmes,\u201d for a long time. 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