“The Devil and John Holmes,” Mike Sager’s May 1989 Rolling Stone feature, tells the story of the Wonderland murders through a case whose central question remains disputed: what role, if any, did Holmes play? Four people were killed at a Laurel Canyon house in 1981; Holmes was acquitted in 1982, and the verdict did not settle the conflicting accounts of his involvement.
What happened in the Wonderland murders?
On July 1, 1981, four people were found dead at a house on Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon: Ronald Launius, William DeVerell, Barbara Richardson, and Joy Miller. Susan Launius survived with severe injuries. The killings came two days after an armed robbery at nightclub owner Eddie Nash’s home.
Prosecutors argued that the murders were retaliation for the robbery and characterized Holmes as a go-between who helped arrange it and later led attackers to the Wonderland house. Those were prosecution claims, not a jury finding that Holmes committed the killings. The Los Angeles Times’ account of the case and its legal history is available in its 1988 report.
What was John Holmes’s role?
Holmes was tried in 1982 and acquitted. The Los Angeles Times reported that jurors found the alleged admission to police insufficiently corroborated by other substantial evidence. Acquittal means the jury did not find him guilty; it does not establish which of the competing accounts of his actions was historically accurate.
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Accounts attributed to Holmes differed. Sources who had seen his biographer’s manuscript described an account in which Holmes was held at gunpoint elsewhere and did not know the killers. Sharon Holmes later told the Los Angeles Times that he had described setting up the robbery and being taken to Nash’s home. Investigators and prosecutors put forward other versions. These accounts should be treated according to their source and context, not combined into a single proven reconstruction. A 1988 statement by lead investigator Tom Lange—“There is no mystery, because we know who is involved and why”—was his assertion, not a court finding.
Holmes later spent 110 days in jail for refusing to testify before a Los Angeles County grand jury, then testified. Contemporary reporting said the testimony was sealed, leaving it unavailable to resolve the conflicting public accounts.
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What is Mike Sager’s 1989 feature?
“The Devil and John Holmes,” published in Rolling Stone in May 1989, is the feature identified by this title. The web-hosted version reproduces the story, but it is not the original magazine issue. Sager’s author page lists the piece in a later nonfiction collection, The Devil and John Holmes: And Other True Stories of Drugs, Porn and Murder, available in paperback and ebook formats. The collection contains the feature; it is not a standalone book-length account of the Wonderland case.
The collection can be a useful way to read Sager’s piece, but it is not necessary to understand the basic case facts or the legal outcome.
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How does the feature differ from the film Wonderland?
The 2003 film Wonderland is a separate crime docudrama, not an adaptation that resolves the case. Contemporary coverage described its storytelling as moving among conflicting versions. Treat its scenes as dramatization, especially where the historical accounts disagree, rather than as a transcript of established events.
Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes is another related documentary identified in a distributor press kit. Its current availability is not established here.
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How to assess the competing accounts
- Start with the legal record and contemporary reporting. Distinguish what the jury decided from what prosecutors alleged.
- Identify who is speaking. A prosecutor’s theory, an investigator’s public statement, a witness’s account, and a later recollection are not interchangeable.
- Keep the dates in view. The 1989 feature followed the events by eight years; later accounts may reflect hindsight and differing sources.
- Separate dramatization from evidence. A film can present competing versions for dramatic effect without proving which version occurred.
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