Eddie Nash (born 1929) is a former nightclub and restaurant manager in Los Angeles, as well as a convicted gangster and drug dealer; he is best known for his involvement in the quadruple Wonderland Murders.
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Born Adel Gharib Nasrallah in Palestine, Nash said he left the country after Israeli soldiers gunned down his brother-in-law in the street for unknown reasons and narrowly missed him. His family are Orthodox Christian Palestinians from the city of Ramallah, just outside Jerusalem.
In the nonfiction book by John Gilmore, "L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes & Bad Times," Gilmore states that Nash told his lawyer that he had dreams filled with muzzle flashes and bullets soaring over his head. Nash said he owned several hotels until 1948 at age 19. He immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s and developed a limp. Nash acted in the television series The Cisco Kid, in 1952 in "The Quarter Horse" episode as the character "Nash." He went on to own several nightclubs in Los Angeles, such as the Starwood Club and Soul'd Out in West Hollywood, the Odyssey disco in Beverly Hills, Paradise Ballroom, the Seven Seas, Ali Baba’s and The Kit Kat strip club. Nash's clubs attracted many groups, as he operated clubs marketed towards gays, straights, blacks, whites and others.
For several decades, Adel Nasrallah was the wealthiest and most dangerous drug dealer/gangster operating on the West Coast (MacDonell 2003).
Nash is most notorious for his alleged involvement in the quadruple Wonderland Murders in 1981, which might have resulted from a robbery of Nash's home perpetrated two days earlier by three to five men. A key player in the incident was porn performer John C. Holmes, who was later acquitted of the murders. Nash and Holmes were close friends, with the former enjoying introducing his associates to the latter, who was notorious for his recurring cinematic role of "Johnny Wadd."
However, by 1981, Holmes' career had declined and he became desperately addicted to freebasing cocaine. In order to settle a drug debt he owed to one of his drug connections, Ron Launius, leader of the widely feared Wonderland Gang which dominated the LA cocaine trade in 1981, he conspired to invade Nash's home and commit a robbery in which Nash and his bodyguard were brutalized and humiliated. Two days later Launius and three other people were found bludgeoned to death at their home at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon. Holmes was spared.
Murdered in the incident were Lanius, Billy Deverell, Joy Audrey Gold Miller, and Barbara Richardson. Critically injured was Susan Lanius, Ron's wife. Officials from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) remarked that the scene was bloodier than the Tate/LaBianca murders.[1]
A police search of Nash's home days after the murders revealed a large amount of cocaine. Nash was sentenced to eight years in prison, but a judge released him after just two, purportedly for health reasons. An associate of Nash's later admitted that they had bribed the judge with about $100,000 (Goldsmith 2001).
In 1990, Nash was tried in state court for having planned the murders; the trial resulted in an 11-1 hung jury; Nash would later admit that he had bribed the lone holdout, a young woman, with $50,000. The retrial ended in an acquittal.
According to John C. Holmes' second wife Laurie (aka Misty Dawn) in a Playboy magazine interview : "He (Eddie Nash) was an awful man... John told me he used to leave the bathrooms without toilet paper, then offer the young women cocaine if they'd lick his ass clean." [2] He required his dancers at the Kit Kat Club to fellate him, to screen for undercover police officers.
Throughout the 1990s, law enforcement figures continued to hound Nash, who had been referred to in various print media as "the one who got away". In 1995, in a broad series of raids targeting alleged organized crime figures, federal agents armed with search warrants raided his house and confiscated what was thought to be a cache of methamphetamine. To the chagrin of law enforcement the "meth" turned out to be a cache of mothballs and no charges were filed against Nash.
In 2000, after a four-year joint investigation involving local and federal authorities, Nash was arrested and indicted on federal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for running a drug trafficking and money laundering operation, conspiring to carry out the Wonderland Murders, and bribing one of the jurors of his first trial. Nash, already in his seventies and suffering from emphysema and several other ailments, agreed to a plea bargain agreement in September 2001, pleading guilty to RICO charges and to money laundering. He also admitted to jury tampering (for which the statute of limitations had run out) and to having ordered his associates to retrieve stolen property from the Wonderland house, which might have resulted in violence including murder, but he denied having planned the murders that took place. He also agreed to cooperate with law enforcement authorities. He received a four and a half year prison sentence (including the time already served) and a $250,000 fine. (LAPD 2002)
Released in 2002 (MacDonell 2003) as of 2009 Nash lives in Los Angeles.
On September 6 or 7, 1984, a personal tragedy struck Nash. A former friend of his, Maureen Bautista (and her son Telesforo) were stabbed to death. Hells Angels biker Robert Frederick Garceau was convicted of these murders and sentenced to death. Newspaper accounts of the crime mentioned that Telesforo was actually a son of Nash.
Garceau was turned in to the police after he murdered Greg Rambo, who had helped him dispose of the bodies of the Bautistas. Rambo's wife had knowledge of the Bautista murders and talked to the police (under an agreement of immunity). Garceau was convicted of all three murders.
At trial, evidence was presented that Garceau murdered Ms. Bautista because she threatened to expose Garceau's drug operations to Mr. Nash. Her son was murdered because he was a witness to her murder. A lengthy court appeal was launched to vacate Garceau's death penalty, but in 1993 the California Supreme Court upheld the legality of what became known as "The Nash testimony". Garceau died in prison of natural causes in 2005.
   | California Supreme Court Decision - People v. Garceau (1993) 6 C4th 140 |
| | Press release - - official website of THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT |
| | Wonderland crime scene photos - WONDERLAND CRIME SCENE PHOTOS |
| | Press release - - official website of THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT |
| | Long Time Money and Lots of Cocaine: The People of the State of California vs. John Curtis Holmes - Long Time Money and Lots of Cocaine by Rodger Jacobs (Book) in Mystery & Crime |
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