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Hi listeners. It's Carter Roy, Happy America 250. If you want to binge all four parts of our limited series about the crimes that built America, ad free, subscribe to Crime House Plus. With Crime House plus, you'll get all four episodes right now instead of waiting. You'll also get every episode of Murder, True Crime Stories and the rest of the Crime House shows ad free and released early. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap. Try free at the top of this show's page. This is crime house. In the early 1980s, Los Angeles was changing. A new generation of filmmakers was taking over over Hollywood and reinventing the blockbuster. Punk music was edging out the mellow folk rock that had once ruled the radio. And the popular drug of choice had shifted from the lazy haze of Quaaludes to the jittery rush of cocaine. But it wasn't just the culture that was moving on. The city was, too. And nowhere captured that better than a wooded stretch of the Hollywood Hills called Laurel Canyon. For years, having an address there had been a status symbol. You had Joni Mitchell living next door to Graham Nash, Jim Morrison up the road. The neighborhood had been a kind of bohemian dream. But by 1981, something darker had moved in. A few blocks down from Steven Spielberg, a group of drug dealers was renting a place at 8763 Wonderland Avenue. On July 1, their townhouse would become infamous, the site of one of the most brutal quadruple homicides in the city's history. And the man behind it would get away with murder for almost 20 years. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show and for early ad free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crime House plus. You'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Story show page on Apple Podcasts. This is the first of two episodes on the Wonderland murders in Los Angeles. 45 years ago, on July 1, 1981, four people were bludgeoned to death and a fifth was left for dead. Today we'll get to know the so called Wonderland Gang, a crew of cocaine dealers and thieves who'd made themselves at home in Laurel Canyon. In the summer of 1981. They robbed a man they had no business robbing, Eddie Nash, a nightclub owner with deep ties to LA's criminal underworld. Two days later, a group of men showed up at the gang's townhouse for revenge. Next time, we'll cover the investigation that followed and how it ran into wall after wall. Investigators were almost certain Eddie was the mastermind, but it would take two decades to get anywhere close to answers. And to this day, no one has ever been convicted of the killings themselves. All that and more coming up. Look, we all hit points in life where anxiety, depression or ADHD feel like a lot more than just a rough patch. I have been there. And honestly, sometimes standard self help tools or talk therapy aren't the total answer. We need a little more. If you need a deeper level of care, Talk Iatry connects you with real virtual psychiatry. This isn't a therapy app. It's a 100% online psychiatry practice providing comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses and ongoing medication management for conditions like adhd, anxiety and more. You're actually seeing a medical provider who takes the time to understand what you're going through and build a personalized treatment plan. Plus, they accept major insurers, meaning you can use your existing insurance instead of paying massive out of network costs. Getting started is incredibly simple. You just complete a short online assessment, get matched with clinicians who fit your specific needs, and schedule your first virtual visit in days rather than months. Head to tokyatry.commtcs to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkietry.com MTCs to get matched in minutes. In the summer of 1981, the people living next door to 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles were at their wit's end. They'd moved to the prestigious neighborhood for peace and quiet. Lately they were getting anything but. The problem was their neighbors. The crew running the place next door paid $750 a month for the split level two bedroom townhouse. And they didn't try to hide what they were up to. Almost every night they blasted music. They tossed bags of cocaine and heroin off the balcony to people waiting on the sidewalk. Anywhere else, the neighbors might have called the cops. But if they wanted to stay out of trouble, they knew that wasn't an option. The people living there called themselves the Wonderland gang, after the street. And they weren't the kind of folks you wanted to cross. The scariest of the bunch was their leader, ron Lonius, a 37 year old Vietnam era veteran with an ice cold attitude. Years earlier, Ron had been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force after being convicted of smuggling heroin back to the states in the coffins of dead American servicemen. Ron's right hand man was 44 year old Billy Deverell, a longtime heroin addict who'd been arrested over a dozen times for drug possession. By day he worked as an overhead crane operator. By night, he was the more level headed of the two. The one who'd sometimes pumped the brakes on Ron's worst ideas. But Billy also had moments where he hated himself for what he'd become. Friend said he sometimes talked about getting clean. He never did. Billy lived in the Wonderland house with his girlfriend, 46 year old Joy Miller. On paper, Joy was the most respectable of the group. She was the ex wife of a Beverly Hills attorney. She had two grown daughters. There were years of her life before the drugs, when she was normal person going to dinner parties. That was a long time ago. By the summer of 1981, Joy was a heroin user with seven arrests on her record. She'd also been quietly fighting breast cancer. Just six months earlier, she'd had a double mastectomy. By all accounts, none of that slowed her down. When the gang needed someone to sign the lease for the townhouse, it was Joy. Her name was the one on the door. She was the one collecting on debts. People who knew her remembered her as thin, blonde and with a mouth like a sailor. And the kind of person other addicts didn't want to owe money to. Then there were the two career criminals who filled out the core crew. The first was 32 year old Tracy McCourt, a wheelman who handled the gang's getaway driving. The second was 42 year old David Lind. Besides Ron, David was probably the most intimidating one in the house. He was a biker, a heavy heroin user and a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, the white supremacist prison gang. He and Ron had met behind bars earlier that summer. Ron asked him to come down from Sacramento and help run the operation. David rode in on his motorcycle. Five people was already a lot to squeeze into a two bedroom townhouse, but the place was usually fuller than that. The gang had a couple of regular hangers on who weren't technically members. The first was Ron's wife, 30 year old Susan Launius. Susan and Ron had been married for a decade. She used drugs too, but stayed mostly out of his business. And lately, she'd been spending a lot of time with David Lynn's girlfriend. That girlfriend was 22 year old Barbara Lee Richardson, who everyone called Butterfly. Barbara had graduated from Cordova High School outside Sacramento in 1976, and by the summer of 1981, she was dating David. She'd ridden down to LA on the back of his motorcycle. She'd been sleeping on the living room couch of the Wonderland house ever since. Of everyone there, Barbara was the newest arrival. She was also the youngest, by a stretch. For a while, the Wonderland gang did well for themselves. They threw parties that pulled in a wealthy, connected crowd willing to pay top dollar for a steady supply of cocaine and heroin. Musicians showed up, actors showed up. People from across LA's entertainment world found their way to that townhouse looking to score. Money came in, drugs went out. The gang ran the most influential cocaine operation in town. And then the wheels came off. The same addicts who were supposed to be the dealers started using more drugs than they were selling. And by the summer of 1981, the math wasn't working anymore. Simply put, they were broke. Not just out of money, out of drugs, too. To keep things going, they started robbing convenience stores, businesses and houses across Los Angeles. When easy targets dried up, they got more desperate. At one point, they pulled the kind of stunt only a panicked addict would try. They passed off a pound of baking soda as cocaine and sold it for $250,000. Unsurprisingly, that didn't end well. When the buyers figured out what had happened, they put a contract on the entire crew. A standing offer to whoever wanted to come collect. And that kind of contract didn't get filed away and forgotten. It made the Wonderland gang a moving target. Anyone with a gun and a grudge had a financial reason to come after them. So by Late June of 1981, the Wonderland Gang was up against a wall. They needed cash, and they needed it fast. Either to pay off what they owed, or to grab whatever they could and run. On June 29, they started calling in their debts, hoping to scrape together whatever they could from people who owed them money. Near the top of that list was a man named John holmes. He was 36 years old, and at one point, he'd been one of the most famous adult film stars in the world. John was born on August 8, 1944, in a small town in southern Ohio. His childhood was rough. His mother was deeply religious, his stepfather was an alcoholic. And the household was the kind you spend your teenage years trying to get out of. By the time John was 16, he'd had enough. He pushed his stepfather down a flight of stairs after one too many fights, then walked out and joined the army. He shipped off to West Germany, served three years with the signal Corps, and was honorably discharged in 1963. When he got back, John made his way to Los Angeles. He worked all kinds of odd jobs. Ambulance driver, door to door salesman, forklift operator at a meatpacking warehouse. And in 1965, John, he married a young nurse named Sharon. At some point during all of that, John decided he was done with dead end jobs. He told Sharon he wanted to be the best in the world at something. As it turned out, by something, he meant porn. One afternoon, Sharon came home and found John in the bedroom with a measuring tape, sizing himself up to see if he had what it took. When she pushed back, he told her the sex meant nothing, that he still loved her. He compared himself to a carpenter. His body was just his tool. Sharon didn't buy it, but she stayed with him anyway. And over the next decade, John blew up. He appeared in hundreds of adult films. At his peak, he was making $3,000 a day, more than $15,000 a day in today's money. His mustache, his flashy belt buckle and his diamond pinky ring became the visual shorthand for a 1970s porn star. The look people still picture today. But by the late 1970s, the run was over. John had blown through most of the money and his marriage had gone hollow. He and Sharon were still legally together, but basically roommates. But his biggest problem was drugs. By the start of the 1980s, he was freebasing cocaine every 10 to 15 minutes and downing 40 or 50 volume a day to take the edge off. By 1980, John couldn't reliably perform on a film set anymore. And in the adult film industry, that's the only thing you have. So he started doing whatever he could to keep the drugs flowing. He ran errands for local mobsters. He stole luggage from lax. He maxed out Sharon's credit cards. He started boosting cars. And in 1976, when he was 32 years old, he started sexually abusing a 15 year old girl named Dawn Schiller. He would go on to traffic and force her into prostitution to pay for his cocaine habit. But it still wasn't enough. So John started trying to cash in on what little Fame he had left. In late 1980, a mutual friend introduced him to a Palestinian American nightclub owner named Adel Nasrallah. Though almost nobody called him that. Most people knew him as Eddie Nash. Eddie was rich. He was connected. He owned a whole stable of nightclubs and bars across la. He was also a heavy drug user himself and a fan of the adult film industry. So when John came into his orbit, Eddie welcomed him in. He started calling John my brother. But things only got worse from there. Soon John was buying drugs from the Wonderland gang, then doing odd jobs for them. By the summer of 1981, he owed them more than 1,000 bucks. And on top of that, he'd recently screwed up a drug run for them. Right when the gang was at their lowest, the screw up was the last straw. Ron Launius saw red. Even Billy, who usually kept a lid on things, was furious. They took John's key to the Wonderland house and kicked him out. Then they beat the crap out of him with the heavy Blackthorn walking stick he always carried. All John could do was curl up and take it. When they were done, he could barely stand. Ron and Billy stood over him and demanded the money he owed. John knew what would happen if he didn't pay. So he told the gang the truth. He didn't have the cash, but he knew someone who did. A man with safes full of it. A man who called him brother. A man who'd let him into his house anytime he wanted. And a man who would kill them all if he ever figured out what they'd done. Done. But for John, on the floor in Laurel Canyon with a fresh set of bruises, that was a problem. For later, he told the gang that all they had to do was rob the richest man he knew. Eddie Nash. Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started.
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Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.
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So there's no. No, no.
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Buyer's remorse. More like Buyers rejoice.
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I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.
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Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy@carvana.com.
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hi, listeners. It's Carter Roy, host of True Crime Stories. I wanted to let you know that Crime House plus and True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, where you can binge all of them right now ad free with Crime House Plus. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap Try free at the top of this show's page. Introducing Taco Bell's new Jalapeno Citrus Salsa with Bright citrus Real red Jalapenos Guajillo chiles Usually you add sauce to the food, but when the sauce is this good, the food is just there to get the sauce to your mouth. That rolled Quesadilla. Not a rolled quesadilla anymore. Now it's a sauce shovel. Taco Bell's Jalapeno Citrus Salsa. Get it with any item on the Cantina Chicken menu while it's here at participating US Taco Bell locations for a limited time only while supplies last contact store for availability by late June 1981, the Wonderland gang had a target and a plan. Just after midnight on June 29, they gathered in the breakfast nook of the townhouse to go over the details one last time. Ron Launius spread a hand drawn floor plan across the dining room table. A map of Eddie Nash's home in Studio City. By the mid-1970s, Eddy was reportedly worth more than $30 million and held 36 separate liquor licenses across Los Angeles. He owned the Starwood. He owned the Kit Kat Club. He owned the Odyssey. He lived in a mansion in Studio City where he ran his life out of a silk robe and a haze of cocaine. Despite all that hospitality, Eddie wasn't the trusting type. He allegedly outfitted his bedrooms with two way mirrors. According to Eddie's associates, he liked to leave new acquaintances alone in a room full of cash, jewelry and drugs, then watch from behind the glass to see what they'd take. That was what he considered a first impression. According to John Holmes, Eddie also had a fortune sitting inside that Studio City house. Cash, jewelry, drugs, antique guns. All of it locked away in a hidden floor safe in his bedroom closet. Some of those antique guns were actually Ron's pieces the Wonderland Gang had stolen from another dealer and asked John to sell to Eddie. Eddy had decided to keep them for himself. Ron wanted them back on top of anything else they could get their hands on. The Wonderlanders knew their plan was risky. Eddie allegedly had connections to organized crime. He had ties across the LA underworld and he was never seen without his bodyguard, a 300 pound man named Gregory Deals, who'd trained in karate. But the crew was out of options. A contract was already out on their heads. They were broke. They had to do something, anything, to make it through the next week. John, for his part, had one job. He was supposed to leave Eddie's sliding glass patio door unlocked so the gang could slip in. It didn't go smoothly. John went to Eddie's that morning to lay the groundwork. He let himself in. Eddie was drifting between rooms in his silk robe, smoking a pipe. A couple of half naked women lounged by the pool. Eddie welcomed John in like family. And they got high. John was so zooted that he forgot to unlatch the door, so he had to go back. After going back to open it, he drove back to the Wonderland house and found the gang too high on heroin to actually do anything. Of course, John was also high and paranoid. So he drove back to Eddie's a third time, bought some more cocaine, double checked the door, and finally got word to the crew that they were good to go. With that kind of operation, you'd think the whole thing would have fallen apart before anyone even got to Studio City. Somehow it didn't. Around dawn, the Wonderland gang dipped their fingers in liquid band aid so they wouldn't leave Prince. Then they piled into a stolen 1975 Ford Granada and drove to Studio City with Tracy McCourt at the wheel. Ron, Billy, and David were the ones going in. A few minutes later, they pulled up to Eddie's gleaming white stone home. They moved up the driveway, around the back and slid through the unlocked door, pretending to be police officers. Inside, the house was quiet. Whatever party Eddie had been hosting had wound down hours ago. By then, only he and Greg were still awake, and it didn't take much to catch them off guard. Ron and David had them at gunpoint within seconds. Ron handled Eddie, while David handled Greg. They demanded the combination to the safe. At first, Eddy tried to talk his way out of it. He warned the gang who he was and what he could do to them. He told them, in essence, that they had no idea who they were dealing with. For most of his life, that approach had worked. Eddie had watched grown men back down at the sound of his name. But these three didn't. If anything, it only made Ron angrier. He jammed his revolver into Eddie's mouth. And now he wanted more than the combination. He wanted Eddie to beg. Eddie did the best he could with the barrel of a gun in his mouth. At one point, he Even asked for permission to pray. But while he was begging for his life, a shot went off. David Lind had been trying to handcuff Greg Deals, and as he moved, his gun discharged. The bullet grazed Greg and dropped him to his knees. On the way down, he grabbed at David's pants and tore the seat clean off them, leaving the biker's underwear exposed and spattered with blood. There was a flash of slapstick in the middle of a robbery, but Greg's wound wasn't deep, and the gang didn't have time to dwell on it. Ron dragged Eddie by the ear to the bedroom closet where the safe was. And in that moment, Eddie knew somebody close to him had set this up. Begrudgingly, he opened the safe. Before heading out, the crew cut the phone lines. They ransacked the rest of the house, knocking things over, pulling drawers open, looking for whatever else they could find. They also taped Eddie and Greg's wrists together. On the way out, Ron paused. He wanted to kill both men. David and Billy talked him out of it. The argument was practical, not moral. Two dead bodies meant a murder investigation. Ron agreed, and they walked out the back door with somewhere around $1.2 million in cash, jewelry, drugs and antique guns. The first few seconds back outside were electric. The crew patted each other on the back, peeked into the duffel bag and counted the cash. They were so amped up, it took them almost a minute to realize the car wasn't moving. They turned and looked at Tracy. He looked back, red faced. They were out of gas. He'd forgotten to fill up. The other three lost it. They piled out and started pushing the car down the hill. They eventually coasted back to the Wonderland house on fumes. John Holmes was waiting for them. When they got there, he was already coming apart, terrified Eddie would figure out who'd set him up. And he didn't get any happier when the gang divided up the take and gave him and Tracy half shares. But neither of them was about to argue with Ron Launius. With Eddie Nash on one side and Ron Launius on the other, the smart move for John would have been to disappear. Get on a plane, get on a bus, get out of la and stay out of la. But almost nothing about John's life at that point ran on logic. He stayed. He kept moving around Hollywood the way he always did, stopping into the same places, seeing the same people. And at some point in the next few days, he decided it would be a good idea to wear some of the jewelry the Wonderland gang had stolen from Eddie's safe. Greg saw him Greg, who'd been on the floor a few nights earlier with a bullet wound, watching strangers walk out with everything Eddie owned. He recognized the rings on John's fingers. According to John, Greg picked him up off the street and brought him back to Eddie's house. They threw him into a chair and tied his wrists and ankles. And from the start, Eddie's intentions were clear. He wanted his stuff back. But more than that, he wanted revenge. He wanted to hurt the people who'd robbed him. He wanted them to know it was him. By the time he was done with Jon, the Wonderland gang would wish they'd killed him when they had the chance. Hot summer days deserve cool, comfortable nights. The Tempur Breeze mattress pulls heat away from your body to help you sleep cool. Shop our July 4th sale and save up to $500 on Breeze mattresses at
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Tempur pedic.com the fastest self care clean hair K18 air wash dry Shampoo is the first biotech powered dry shampoo. It instantly eliminates odor and reduces oil and sweat for fresh hair and scalp for up to three days and no white cast, starchy buildup or heavy fragrances. K18 studied the science of fresh hair so you never have to worry about wash day again. Shop at Sephora or get 10% off your first purchase at k18hair.com with code podcast that's CodePodcastKom.
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On the morning of June 29, 1981, John Holmes helped four members of the Wonderland gang steal $1.2 million from Los Angeles nightclub owner Eddie Nash. Within a day or two, Eddie's bodyguard, Greg Deals, had tracked John down on the street, dragged him back to Eddie's house, and tied him to a chair. They didn't ease into it. According to John, Greg punched him several times before any questions even started. Then Eddie went through John's pockets and pulled out a little black address book. In an era before cell phones, that book was how John kept track of his contacts, including his family in Ohio. John said Eddie started flipping through it, reading names and addresses out loud, promising to kill them one by one if John didn't tell him who was behind the robbery. By some accounts, there was a witness, a man named Scott Thorson, former boyfriend of the entertainer Liberace. He'd stopped by Eddie's house that day to buy drugs. He'd later testify that he'd seen Greg bring John in, tie him up, and beat him while Eddie threatened his family. Whether Scott was being entirely truthful is another question. He had his own reasons to tweet talk by then, but his version of events lined up with what John himself eventually told his wife, Sharon. Eddie may not have known for sure that John was the inside man, but it was a pretty safe bet. John had been at the house three times the morning of the break in. The patio door he'd left unlocked was the door the gang came through. And then he'd been spotted in Hollywood wearing the stolen jewelry. After Eddie threatened his family, John cracked. He told Eddie everything, every name, every member of the Wonderland gang. And he agreed to help Eddie make them pay. Whether Greg and Eddie really had to beat it out of him is debatable. Eddie always denied it. There's also the possibility that John gave the gang up willingly just to save his own skin. Either way, the result was the same. They planned to hit the townhouse in the early hours of July 1, after midnight, when the gang would probably be high or passed out. John would help Eddie's men get inside and take back whatever was left of the stolen money and drugs. Meanwhile, back in Laurel Canyon, the rest of the gang was still enjoying their windfall. The one exception was David Lind. For reasons that have never been fully explained, he left the house in the hours before the attack and ended up in a motel in the San Fernando Valley. It would save his life. Just before 3am on July 1, 1981, the revenge party, a small group of men armed with hammers and striated lead pipes, arrived at 8763 Wonderland Avenue. John Holmes was with them. According to some accounts, John went up to the front door first. He rang the buzzer after a few minutes, Billy Deverell and answered through the intercom from inside. He was annoyed at being woken up, but once he realized it was John, he buzzed open the gate and unlocked the door. That was all it took. The men slipped past John and into the dark house. The TV was on somewhere upstairs. The kitchen was a mess. Needles, beer cans, ashtrays, still smoke smoldering. The first person they reached was 22 year old Barbara Richardson, asleep on the living room couch by the door. They didn't bother with threats or questions. They started swinging. John, by most accounts, stood there and watched. Some accounts say he was made to participate, held at gunpoint, taunted, told that all of this was his fault. He'd later tell his wife Sharon that he was forced to be there. After Barbara, they moved through the rest of the house. In the downstairs bedroom, Ron Lonius was asleep beside his wife, Susan. Ron never had a chance to defend himself. Susan was beaten almost as badly in the same bed upstairs, they reached Billy Deverell and Joy Miller. Joy was still in bed. Billy was awake. He had time to try to fight back. It didn't save him. It was over in a matter of minutes. There was blood on the walls and on the sheets. When the crew was finished, they tore the house apart, looking for Eddie's stolen goods. They took whatever they could find and left. Only John Holmes stayed behind for a beat, taking in the wreckage he'd helped set in motion. Then he turned and ran. Hours later, after the sun came up, three of the Wonderland gang's customers stopped by to score. The front gate, normally locked, was wide open. So was the door. The buyers could tell something was wrong, but they were curious and they were looking for free drugs. So they. They went inside. They found a bloodbath. A glance was enough to tell them everyone in the house was dead. So they did what people in that life did. They didn't call the police. They fanned out and searched the place for whatever they could carry. One of them wandered into the downstairs bedroom. Ron and Susan were both on the ground, both covered in blood. As he stepped around Susan's body, he thought he heard her moan she was still alive. He hesitated, then decided she was going to die either way. He kept looking for drugs. Other people may have come and gone over the next few hours, picking through the house. None of them called the police. None of them did anything to help Susan. And Launius, in a way, told you everything about the kind of world the gang had been operating in. There was a dying woman in the middle of a quadruple homicide, and the people who knew where to find her were too busy looking for cocaine to do anything about. Wasn't until the late afternoon that anybody finally did. On July 1st was moving day for the family next door. They'd had enough of living next to a drug house. All morning and into the afternoon, they were going up and down the shared stairway, hauling boxes out to a truck. As they worked, they saw groups of people coming in and out of the gang's place. Quick, jumpy, suspicious. Around 4pm Two or three men slipped out the front door and hustled down to the street. Right before they vanished, one of them turned back to the neighbors and shouted, there are dead bodies in there. After a few minutes of stunned conversation, a family friend worked up the nerve to look. It didn't take long to confirm what the men had said. When the LAPD arrived at 8763 Wonderland Avenue, they walked into one of the bloodiest Scenes the department had ever seen. Detectives would later compare it to the Tate LaBianca murders, the killings the Manson family had carried out just a few miles away, 12 years earlier. Right inside the front door. Barbara Richardson was slumped beside the floral couch in the living room, a shattered pot near her. She'd died where she'd been sleeping. She was 22. In the first floor bedroom. Ron Launius was on the bed, his face unrecognizable. He'd been hit so many times, his features were gone. But somehow, impossibly, Susan was still breathing on the floor beside him. She'd been clinging to life for more than 12 hours by the time the cops arrived. Her skull was fractured in multiple places. Part of one finger had been torn off in the attack. Paramedics got there fast and rushed her to the hospital. Surgeons would end up removing part of her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. Susan would come out of it eventually. She'd walk again. She'd talk again. But the night itself was gone. She had no memory of who'd been in the house or what they'd done. Permanent amnesia. The one person who'd been awake to see her attackers couldn't tell anyone what she'd seen. In the kitchen, the water was running in the sink, the basin streaked red. One of the attackers had tried to clean up before leaving. It hadn't worked. Upstairs, detectives found Billy Deverell propped against the TV stand at the foot of the bed, slumped over. Joy Miller was dead in the bed beside him. A claw hammer was tangled in the sheets. From the look of Billy's hands and forearms and the splintered TV stand, it was obvious he'd had a few seconds to fight back. He hadn't gone quietly. When they were done with the walkthrough, detectives Tom Lang and Robert Souza stepped outside. Four people were dead from blunt force trauma. A fifth was barely alive. The house was a wreck, torn apart by people who'd been searching for something specific. There was one piece of good news. The place was full of forensic evidence. Bloody palm prints on the walls, striated marks where the pipes had hit. Whatever the killers had been looking for, they'd left plenty behind to work with. For a few minutes, Lang and Souza traded theories. The needles all over the place told them this had something to do with drugs. But it was too vicious to be a simple robbery. The killers had searched every room. They'd taken the time to clean up after themselves. There was something personal at the center of this, something that went beyond money. Neither of them had any idea what they were stepping into. The investigation that started in that house would drag on for the next 20 years through a hung jury, an acquittal, and one witness after another dying before the case could close. And the man at the top would outlive almost everyone in this story. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the Wonderland murders and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, review and follow True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday completely ad free. No waiting for part two plus ad free and early access to every show across cross Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Thursday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertofsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Tara Wells, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.