John Holmes And The Princely Prick

John Holmes won instant porno fame as the man with the enormous dick. Estimates of the length of his member range from ten inches to a credibility-defying sixteen. According to the Wikipedia, "Veteran porn actress Seka has claimed Holmes' penis was the biggest in the industry" but the article adds that, "not all who slept with him agree."

However, there is no disputing that his sexual organ was larger than that of the vast majority of men and led to an extraordinary career in hardcore films.

Holmes was born John Curtis Estes in Pickaway, Ohio in 1944. His biological father was a railroad worker he never met. When John was only a few years old, his mother married Ed Holmes who gave her son the surname that he would eventually make famous.

The marriage was the union of a fanatically religious woman and a hard-drinking, sometimes violent man. Young John endured many beatings.

At 16, perhaps fed up with his raucous home life, John decided to join the US Army. He needed the permission of a parent and his mother granted it. He served in West Germany for three years. Discharged, he moved to Los Angeles, California in the mid-1960s and worked a variety of jobs. He was driving an ambulance when he met nurse Sharon Gebenini. A romance blossomed and the couple wed in 1965.

The Wikipedia notes that Holmes suffered some frightening ailments in the early years of his marriage: "Holmes found work as a forklift driver at a warehouse, but the rigors of driving in and out of a frozen warehouse caused severe health problems, leading to a pneumothorax (lung collapse) on three separate occasions."

During this period, he started porn work. There are two version of how his porn career began. In one, a porn photographer happened to notice Holmes' large endowment while he was urinating in a poker club restroom. In another, a female neighbor who was making 8 mm sex movie loops advised him that his huge penis could lead to wealth and introduced him to people in the business.

However it began, Holmes was soon posing for magazines and making 8 mm loops. By all accounts, he at first kept his new career secret from his wife. That was considerably easier to do in those days than it would be today as the business was still fairly clandestine.

Tall and thin with wavy brown hair and a long face, Holmes did not have the overall appearance of a classic male sex symbol.

The exact nature of Holmes' sex life both on and off camera is a matter of some confusion. During most of his porn career, he publicly maintained that he was completely heterosexual. However, people who have studied his life believe he was bisexually active throughout adulthood.

Porn seemed to go mainstream with the extraordinary 1972 success of Deep Throat, followed by The Devil in Miss Jones the same year and Behind the Green Door in 1973.

Holmes' career took off in 1973 with a series of films in which he played a private detective appropriately named Johnny Wadd. The Wikipedia states, "most film critics and fans agreed that Holmes did demonstrate enough acting ability to keep the character of 'Johnny Wadd' from being merely a banal, one-dimensional parody of Raymond Chandler's creation, the tough and uncompromising private detective Philip Marlowe."

The porn actor evidently had a creative streak as he usually sported a gold ring decorated by diamonds set in the shape of a dragonfly, a decoration he had designed.

Greater attention to Holmes' porn activities landed him in trouble. In 1973, he was arrested and charged with pimping and pandering. He phoned Sharon, asking her to bail him out but she did not have the money. Understandably desperate for his freedom, he made a deal with the Los Angeles Police Department under which the porn actor took on a new real-life role: informer. He promised to tell the police about illegal doings on the porn sets and they promised keep him out of jail.

Holmes made over 2,000 porn films. At the height of his career he earned $3,000 per day. Crime Library quotes an interview with Hustler in which Holmes boasted, "I can keep an erection almost indefinitely. In a porno movie, a four-minute sex scene on the screen means that I have maintained an erection for the five hours it took to shoot it, dripping sweat under the klieg lights hot enough to drive the temperature on a set up to 104 degrees. . . . I can come on cue."

Others have claimed his cock was often not completely hard but functioning in a kind of erectile half-mast. Porn actress Annette Haven commented in the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes, "his cock was never hard. It [having onscreen sex] was like doing it with a big, soft kind of loofah."

Holmes claimed he was delighted by his porn career, saying, "A happy gardener is one with dirty fingernails and a happy cook is a fat cook. I never get tired of what I do because I'm a sex fiend. I'm very lusty."

While depicting himself as 100% straight in public, privately Holmes prostituted himself to both men and women. He spread the story that he had enjoyed sex with 14,000 women. Most observers believe that was an exaggeration. Porn historian Luke Ford puts the true figure at a more plausible 3,000.

In 1976 Holmes made friends with 15-year-old Dawn Schiller, who lived in the same apartment complex as Holmes and Sharon. The teen radiated a freshness that the jaded 32-year-old porn actor found enchanting. At first, he treated her as a younger sister but eventually he seduced her.

Then he invited her to move into the Holmes apartment. Sharon tolerated the bizarre arrangement and even acted in a motherly fashion toward the naïve teenager.

At the same time Holmes was cultivating this odd living arrangement he was losing his porn career because he was having trouble performing sexually due to a cocaine problem. Directors stopped calling and Holmes was without a livelihood.

The man who once commanded $3,000 a day had not saved a cent of it. He was flat broke and stuck with a powerful addiction. He once said, "I don't take drugs. Drugs take me." He was reduced to stealing to feed his craving.

Then he fell in with the motley crew who resided at 8763 Wonderland Ave. in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles. Crime Library reports, "The house was leased by Joy Audrey Miller ... [who] had seven arrests to her name. Among the other tenants were her boyfriend, Billy DeVereil, 42, who'd been arrested thirteen times, Ronald Laurius, 37, who had done federal time for drug smuggling, and David Lind, 39, a convicted dealer and freelance bounty hunter." It was a hard partying group of drug dealers and thieves and Holmes fit right in.

The ex-porn star began acting as liaison between the Wonderland bunch and gangster Eddie Nash. Born Adel Gharib Nasrallah in 1929, Nash was a Palestinian who immigrated to the US in the 1950s and soon lived out a perverse version of the American Dream, owning several nightclubs and restaurants and dealing in illegal drugs.

Ever alert for a possible cocaine source, Holmes was soon making regular runs to the Nash house. Dawn Schiller sometimes accompanied him and would wait in the car cuddling her pet Chihuahua.

To finance his habit, Holmes insisted Schiller prostitute herself. According to Crime Library, "After she came back from a trick, he'd make her take a scalding bath and scrub her clean, all the while berating her for losing the innocence that first caught his eye."

On December 25, 1980, Holmes ordered Schiller to have sex with Nash as a Christmas present. When she returned, Holmes beat her so brutally a tooth pierced her lip.

Fed up, the young woman left Holmes. She went to her mother's home in Oregon. Holmes phoned her incessantly, begging her to return and promising to change his ways. She returned to L.A. and her unstable lover.

The Wonderland crew wanted to make a big score. Holmes had told them of the large caches of both cash and drugs Nash kept at his mansion so they decided to hit it. Holmes drew them a map of Nash's home. In his memoir, he says he unlocked a sliding-glass door at Nash's place so the group could sneak in.

On June 29, 1981, David Lind, Ronald Launius and Roy DeVerell invaded the Nash mansion. Using a tried and true criminal ruse, Lind pretended to be a police officer. Seeing Nash's 300-pound bodyguard Gregory DeWitt Diles, Lind flashed a stolen badge and cried, "Freeze! Police! You're under arrest!" Diles allowed Lind to handcuff him. Nash came into the room and fearing murder, fell to his knees to beg for his life.

The invaders told him to get back on his feet and made him take them to his safe. The trio made off with loads of illegal drugs and about $185,000 cash. Back at the Wonderland address, they divided up the loot among themselves and with Holmes who had not been present at the robbery.

The next day, a thug associated with Nash spotted Holmes on the street, wearing a ring stolen from the Nash mansion. At Holmes' car, two armed men met him and ordered him to drive to Nash.

The infuriated gangster threatened to kill Holmes' family if he didn't take Nash's thugs to those who had broken into his home. Holmes led Nash's group to the Wonderland house where he buzzed the intercom, then went up the stairs with them following right behind.

What happened next is a matter of dispute, particularly as to the role Holmes played. However, what is known is ghastly. Five people had their heads brutally bashed in with blunt instruments, four of them fatally. According to Crime Library, "The bloodbath was so profuse that the walls, floors and ceilings were dripping red and the victims' faces were caved in." Those killed were William R. DeVerell, Ronald Launius (both of whom had participated in the Nash robbery), Joy Audrey Miller, and Barbara Richardson, the girlfriend of robber David Lind (who had been part of the team that robbed Nash was not present at Wonderland that night because he spent it in a hotel with a hooker). The surviving victim was Launius' wife Susan who was severely injured and could not remember anything about the incident that would assist authorities in solving the crime.

A few hours after the murders John Holmes showed up at the home he shared with his wife Sharon. He was covered in blood and told her he had been in a car accident. Sharon saw that there were no wounds on his body that could account for the gore. "This isn't your blood, John," she told him.

He clammed up and soon took off with Dawn Schiller. He was with Schiller in a motel nine days later when cops found them and took them to the station for questioning. Neither gave the police any information and both were soon released.

Holmes returned home to his wife, Sharon. She drew him a bath and he sat in it, then began sobbing. He told her his version of the Wonderland Murders, claiming he had taken Nash's goons to the home but had only watched as they bludgeoned the victims.

Horrified, Sharon gasped, "John, how could you? You knew those people."

"They were dirt," he replied.

Police found a single tell-tale print at the Wonderland house: Holmes' bloody palm print on the railing of Launius' bed.

Holmes was arrested and charged with the murders in December 1981.

The man who rocketed to fame by displaying his large penis became upset because jail guards frequently stared at him while he was showering.

Holmes' attorney, Earl Hanson, argued that his client was a victim of Nash's henchmen, forced to watch as his friends were bludgeoned. His argument, or at least some part of it, was apparently persuasive as Holmes was acquitted on June 16, 1982.

Of course, the acquittal does not necessarily mean that Holmes' story of just watching was accurate. Cass Paley, the director and producer of the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes, is quoted in Salon.com as saying he believes Holmes must have bashed someone's head: "My personal take on it is that he had to for his own survival. Otherwise, why let him live?"

Holmes was not free for long. A judge soon ordered the former porn star to testify about the Wonderland Murders before a grand jury. Holmes refused and was back in jail for contempt of court.

When Nash was arrested and sent to prison for drug dealing, Crime Library says, "Holmes decided to answer just enough of the grand jury's questions to be released."

Out of jail, he found himself free in two different ways since Sharon had divorced him while he was behind bars.

He tried to revive his porn career but was not very successful. Porn makers wanted new faces and new penises. Holmes continued to use cocaine and to perform intermittently on the set.

In 1983, Holmes starred in a gay male porn flick called The Private Pleasures of John C. Holmes in which he performs unprotected anal sex on Joey Yale, a star of many hardcore male homosexual movies who died of AIDS in 1986. That same year, Holmes learned that he was HIV-positive.

The exact source of his infection cannot be known with certainty. He could have been infected either homosexually or heterosexually and he could have contracted the virus from a needle. While his widow says he told her he never used needles, others who knew him say he did and some observers say he appears to have vein damage on his arms in some of his films.

After learning of his infection, Holmes continued to make porn films, engaging in unprotected sex without informing his partners of his HIV status. Porn partner Lisa DeLeeuw died of AIDS in 1993. However, as the Wikipedia notes, "The last time she performed with Holmes . . . was in 1981, which makes it unlikely that she contracted HIV from Holmes."

The disease caused the always-thin man to lose weight, eventually making him so emaciated it was impossible for him to continue porn work. In January 1998, he wed porn actress Misty Dawn (real name Laurie Rose).

Soon afterward, weighing only 90 pounds and suffering from AIDS-related encephalitis (a terribly painful swelling of the brain), he checked into a V.A. hospital in Sepulveda, California.

Two weeks before his death, police officers made a last visit to his sickbed, hoping he would shed more light the Wonderland Murders. He disappointed them.

As he lay dying, he made a last request of his wife. The focus of that request was his penis. It has been the source of overweening pride and the cause of humiliation. It had skyrocketed him to fame and tempted him to disaster. It had made him envied by men and desired by both men and women. But finally, ultimately, it was his. Holmes knew that people would like to cut off his famous sex organ, preserve it, and keep it as a novelty item. He did not want anyone to do that and asked Laurie to promise that she would check his body right before it was cremated to make certain it was intact. She assured him that she would.

John Holmes died on March 13, 1988 at the age of 43. His widow honored his last request, ensuring that his genitals were cremated along with the rest of his body.

Sources consulted

"John Holmes," Internet Movie Database.

"John Holmes," Wikipedia.

"The Wonderland Murders," Crimelibrary.com.

"Return to Wonderland," Salon.com.