Miller and her live-in boyfriend, Billy DeVerell, were the usual residents; Ron Launius and his wife, Susan, were house guests.
[citation needed] David Lind, ordinarily a resident of the Sacramento area, came to Los Angeles in the summer of 1981 at Launius' behest, to aid in their growing drug-distribution business.
[citation needed] Adult-entertainment legend John Holmes, famous at the time for his portrayal of the detective character Johnny Wadd in a series of pornographic films, was a frequent visitor who would purchase or scrounge cocaine from the gang.
[3][4] Members of the gang included: Their associates included: Ronald Lee Launius [5] was a United States Air Force veteran of the Vietnam era, who had been dishonorably discharged and convicted of smuggling heroin from Vietnam back to the United States in the coffins of American service members.
[6] Reportedly, at the time of his death,[5] police investigators in California, largely in the Sacramento area, had 27 open homicide cases they believed were perpetrated by Launius.
[citation needed] Launius' brazen and fearless nature led both to his dominance in the drug trade as well as his demise, stemming from the events leading up to his death in the Wonderland Murders.
[citation needed] DeVerell was an overhead crane operator – and heroin user – who had been arrested 13 times in relation to his addiction, which is part of the reason why he stayed in the gang.
The autopsy performed after his murder identified numerous injection scars on his forearms, in addition to hyperplasia of the lymph nodes – a common sign of narcotics abuse.
[9] David Clay Lind was a biker, heroin addict, and member of the Aryan Brotherhood who befriended Launius when the two men served time in prison together.
Specifically at the time of the murder, Lind testified in court that he was at a motel in the San Fernando Valley, consuming drugs with a male prostitute.
[citation needed] Tracy Raymond McCourt was the driver of the stolen 1975 Ford Granada that carried the Wonderland Gang to Eddie Nash's home on the night of the robbery.
In 2001, he reportedly had been wanted by the Colorado Springs Police Department for "assault with a deadly weapon and failure to comply on the original charge of distribution of a Schedule II controlled substance".
[12] On June 29, 1981, the Wonderland Gang, comprising Ron Launius, Billy DeVerell, David Lind, Tracy McCourt,[13] and their associate, John Holmes, conspired to launch a home invasion and robbery upon Eddie Nash, a reputedly powerful organized crime figure who usually referred to himself in the third person as "The Nash".
Early in the morning of the robbery, Holmes visited Nash's mansion ostensibly to party and to buy drugs, but on his way out, left the patio door to the kitchen unlatched.
[citation needed] Launius, DeVerell, and Lind performed the invasion and robbery, while McCourt waited outside in a stolen Ford Granada and served as lookout.
[3] The men entered the property through the sliding glass door Holmes had left unlocked, and confronted Nash and his bodyguard, Gregory Diles, pretending to be police officers.