Author/Interviewer/Former Los Angeles Times crime reporter Michael Connelly talks to The Inside Reel about approach, character structure, intention and mystery regarding his new docuseries “The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History Of Hollywood” on MGM+.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00How much does it bother you that people got away with murder?
00:16I slept with one eye open.
00:21I've interacted with a lot of crime reporters as an editor over the years and it's interesting
00:25to see how things that you think would be so far beyond what is actually possible in
00:32real life is actually possible from human beings and Thorson is no exception.
00:39Could you talk about sort of diving back into sort of that mindset to do this?
00:44Obviously you did with the podcast but doing it on camera is a completely different thing
00:48I would think.
00:49Yeah, you really hit on it.
00:52That is the first time I've been kind of not front and center but I'm the guy doing the
00:56interviews on the video on the show and you know you got to talk to Alison about that
01:03but from the beginning she said yeah I want you to be on camera and I said are you sure
01:08and so I did it.
01:09So yeah as a print journalist which I was you know you're not part of the story and
01:15then I kind of became part of the story but I think a lot of that was because of you know
01:20this started as a podcast a while back so I've had a three or four year relationship
01:27where I had I should say with Scott Thorson and so we kind of had each other's shorthand
01:32and so I think it was a prudent move to have me do the questioning not just of him but
01:38I also knew many of the detectives involved in this case I've known for years before we
01:44you know sat down to do something like this.
01:47So I think I kind of ended up being the right person for the right job in doing it but it
01:52was a it was a new twist on all the different things I've done as a writer and as a as a
01:58journalist this was new for me for sure.
02:03Hollywood nightclubs, porn stars, drugs, money and Liberace everything we know of Hollywood
02:09this mystery has.
02:12Four murder victims were found today in a posh Hollywood Hills home.
02:16The Wonderland Massacre it plays out beneath the bright lights of Hollywood.
02:20Who did this?
02:22Eddie Nash.
02:23The drug kingpin was robbed of a million dollars worth of drugs.
02:26Wanted revenge.
02:27John Holmes.
02:28Porn actor.
02:29Right to the middle of everything.
02:30Scott Thorson.
02:31Liberace's lover.
02:32Knew about the murders.
02:33He does in fact talk out of both sides of his mouth.
02:35I know there's other killers.
02:37Well I mean because the geography of LA having lived there for 20 years myself you know it
02:41becomes these back these back alleys these these different alleyways these roads up into
02:48like if you're talking about Skyline or if you're talking about obviously up in Laurel
02:52Canyon you know it's interesting because it's a puzzle.
02:55That whole area is a puzzle in many ways.
02:58Can you talk about you know looking at something like Wonderland understanding the geography
03:03but then once you started seeing all the people involved down on Sunset stuff like that what
03:11was your thought at the time and then as it's expanded has it sort of become more complicated
03:17or has it become sort of simpler in the fact of understanding how they were connected?
03:22Well hopefully it comes through in the documentary but you're getting at something that is very
03:28LA and you know I came to LA as a journalist in 1987 so this crime had already occurred
03:36but then it heated up again about a year later and I paid attention to it and I also
03:41have lived in Laurel Canyon on and off for many many of my years out here and so it was
03:47just a case that had always intrigued me and part of it is the geography which I think
03:52is what you're getting at.
03:53Laurel Canyon is a canyon through the mountains.
03:57It's kind of a misnomer when you think of canyons you think about going down but you
04:00go up into Laurel Canyon from the Sunset Strip and then you go down into the vast valley
04:07you know where three million people live and so it's right in the middle of these two very
04:14distinct parts of Los Angeles and so that's also what made it interesting and of course
04:20you know the history of the music and so forth was just a very big grabber for me that's
04:26kind of the music I grew up with.
04:29I might be associated more now with jazz because of the detective I write about in my novels
04:34but that's not how I grew up.
04:36I grew up with you know Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young going into the Eagles and many of
04:41the people that lived in the in the Laurel Canyon area so it was a you know pretty big
04:47draw for me and I did see where there's some kind of social strata thing going on in this
04:56story that you know I wanted to capture so that it was more than a basic who did it and
05:03who got away with it type of story.
05:06We also want to tell the story you know the subhead the secret history of Hollywood this
05:10this case had its tentacles going down both sides of Laurel Canyon that I found to be
05:16very interesting.
05:18To infiltrate these gangs police officers would go undercover.
05:23Narcotics detective Bobby Egger, A and C mark.
05:28So about 18 years of working narcotics during a pretty amazing evolution of drugs.
05:35What was that like?
05:36We saw a lot.
05:37We went from pills were the big issue to marijuana into a lot of cocaine.
05:45Back in the day cocaine was very powerful.
05:49Everybody that had money had cocaine and it was your way of showing people that you
05:55were powerful and you had money.
05:57Well it was interesting to come back you know I was journalist for about 15 years and I
06:02went into writing novels and this was one of the stories that drew me back into journalism
06:08but it's set up like a novel.
06:09I mean you've got this you know you got to have in a novel a very formidable and interesting
06:16villain.
06:17We got that.
06:18We got that in a black box with Eddie Nash.
06:20You know there's probably hasn't been a mobster for lack of a better word like Eddie Nash
06:25in this city since him.
06:28And so that was really intriguing.
06:29Then you have Scott Thornton who's an ultimate character who has tentacles that reached into
06:34celebrity from here to Las Vegas and yet can you believe anything he says.
06:39I mean he's a guy who pretty much serves himself when he's when and if he's willing to talk
06:46at all.
06:47And so that I knew could be intriguing and then you know the big pitch over the plate
06:51for me is that over the course of 20 at least two decades this case had multiple detectives
06:59carry the case and they all had different temperaments and outlooks and some are cynical
07:05about Los Angeles some of them love in Los Angeles.
07:08But the one trait they all shared was this relentlessness to find to get to the hidden
07:16truth.
07:17You know that's the key part of any crime novel find.
07:20You know it's someone searching for a hidden truth and then you have this in this real
07:25life story.
07:26So it all spoke to me and it was the reason I did as a podcast and certainly the reason
07:33that we said this thing could go the distance beyond podcast and it could be a documentary
07:39that is entertaining that checks all those boxes of who did it and and mystery and so
07:44forth.
07:45And so we had a hopefully a higher resonance about like this is the history behind you
07:51know things that really tore society apart and we should I think as a society we should
07:56know about them.
07:58And so hopefully we tapped into that and got a little bit of that knowledge out in in this
08:04documentary.
08:05Tell us a little bit about your undercover work.
08:07What was your assignment and how did you carry it out?
08:10When I first went to narcotics we tried to see if we could infiltrate the entertainment
08:15industry.
08:16I mean just playing a role kind of enticed me.
08:21Can I convince you that I'm a drug dealer?
08:25What was your undercover name?
08:26Angela.
08:27And so is that when you were doing the kind of personal buys in the clubs?
08:32Yes.
08:33We were going to bars, restaurants, places that we knew a lot of drug trafficking was
08:39going on kind of out in the open so we can become friendly with them and eventually make
08:45a buy from them.
08:47It was pretty cutthroat.
08:50There was no loyalty except to the drug.
08:52If the people involved in those crimes, which Wonderland was, they were all users, their
08:58only loyalty was to that drug because they needed it.
09:02They'd do anything to get that drug.
09:04The way the documentary works, I watched all the episodes, the juxtaposition.
09:09You with the detectives, the main detectives in that sort of diner, it'd be interesting
09:13to know where that diner was.
09:15But it's also the aspect of sitting there with Scott and then juxtaposing that with
09:20the footage that was taken at Wonderland.
09:22It really sort of brings it home.
09:25Because I could see you sort of asking Scott, and Scott was like, well I feared for my life
09:29and yet you still did these things.
09:32It was interesting to see you sort of interact with him in that way.
09:36Yeah, by the way, that place was in North Hollywood where we talked to the original
09:41detectives and you can probably tell we talked to Scott at Moose Hill and Frank's.
09:46But yeah, I mean Scott was, I'm sorry that he did not get to see this come out, but he
09:55was an endless source of interest to me because he is such a character.
09:59But he's the kind of character where I never told him where I lived.
10:03He wasn't the kind of guy that you want to bring home to meet the family.
10:07But he's had a sordid and interesting life.
10:11And so he has something to say about how celebrity, the downside to celebrity, because he was
10:16a semi-celebrity when he was with Liberace.
10:23So there's a story just in terms of him and his slide and his efforts, I would say meager
10:30efforts at redemption.
10:31As we say in The Thing, you almost talk proudly about being part of the reason crack destroyed
10:38the city for a while.
10:41And then it's only when you hit him with like, do you feel any guilt about that?
10:45Then he kind of speaks to that.
10:48But how much of that he really felt, I don't really know.
10:50I just think he's the ultimate survivor in the underworld of Hollywood.
10:56Ripples is the right word.
10:58And that's what we were hoping that we could capture in this.
11:03As one of the prosecutors now judge says in this, when you have a crime in hell, you don't
11:09get angels for witnesses and so forth.
11:11So there's a question of like, why are we doing a whole four part documentary on a killing
11:19of a bunch of people in a drug house?
11:21But I mean, the ripples from that crime went way beyond that.
11:27And I think it was, in a way, what we say is it kind of was a capstone or a headstone
11:32on the end of this idyllic time in Laurel Canyon that had its own ripples, massive ripples
11:40in terms of culture that went out across the world.
11:44So I think it's a valid story to go back into and to document what happened then and what
11:51it meant on a more societal level.
11:54There have been so many TV shows.
11:57We want to tell the real story.
11:59There's a little truth in every lie.
12:00There may still be some outstanding suspects.
12:04People still know about this case.