The Wonderland Murders of 1981 are, in my opinion, one of THE classic American crime sagas. Ron Launius was dishonorably discharged in 1972 from the USAF for smuggling heroin back to the States in the coffins of dead soldiers.
After this, Launius embarked on a life of crime, including being involved in the murder of drug informant Gary James Moore in 1973, and a suspect in the murder of sports promoter Vic Weiss in 1979, who was found dead in the trunk of his car. Launius was more or less the leader of the Wonderland Gang, a band of thieves operating out of L.A.'s Laurel Canyon. In 1981, the Wonderland Gang, with the assistance of porn star John Holmes, robbed notorious businessman/criminal overlord Eddie Nash (born Adel Nasrallah in Palestine). On July 1, 1981, four members of the Wonderland Gang, including Ron Launius, were found bludgeoned to death in their home on Wonderland Avenue. Ron's wife was badly injured but survived. Another participant in the Nash robbery, biker David Lind, narrowly escaped death as he had spent the night in a hotel with a male prostitute, snorting cocaine.
Eddie Nash and his bodyguard Greg Diles (who was shot during the Wonderland Gang's robbery of Nash's home) were tried for the murders but acquitted in 1991.
A sequence in the movie Boogie Nights is loosely based on the Wonderland Murders, and the story itself was dramatized in another movie, 2003's Wonderland, in which Josh Lucas plays the role of Launius.
