John Holmes

John was not lacking for work, bringing not only a professional attitude but also his legendary endowment (12-5/8" long, according to a Screw Magazine interview, while other stories put it at 13-1/2" long). His enormously long penis got him starring roles in over 2,000 loops, stag films and adult features in a career that spanned nearly 20 years (with a peak of a $3,000-a-day salary). His lucrative off-screen penis-for-hire business took him around the world.

He would always sing Gordon Lightfoot's song "If You Could Read My Mind" to his girlfriend Dawn Schiller. The song is played in the movie Wonderland (2003) at the end of the film.

John Holmes died at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Sepulveda, California, on March 13, 1988, of AIDS-related complications at age 43, with his second wife at his side, former porn star Misty Dawn. Holmes once estimated he'd had sex with over 14,000 women (on and off screen), and was truly a porn legend.

He did not learn the name of his biological father until 1986.

He was diagnosed with AIDS late in 1985 but continued working--without telling producers or his co-stars--until 1986, when his increasingly gaunt and frail physical appearance sent up "red flags" in the industry and he could no longer find work.

After a three-week, public trial, Holmes was acquitted on June 26, 1982.

Although found not guilty of the murders, he remained in jail on previous burglary and contempt-of-court charges until his release in November 1982. The true nature and details of the Laurel Canyon murders remains unsolved to this day. After his release from prison, Holmes tried to clean up his act and continue his porno career with a new generation of porno stars. His drug addiction continued off-and-on, and although work in the porno business was still plentiful, it was no longer as lucrative as it had been, given the explosion in the use of cheaply made videotapes that saturated the market. In addition, Holmes was no longer the powerhouse star that he had once been.

The lowest point in his life was when he was implicated in four grisly, drug-related murders on July 1, 1981. He was allegedly present at the drug-related torture and murders at a house in the hills above Hollywood of William Deverell, Ronald Launius, Joy Miller and Barbara Richardson--a group suspected by many in the drug underworld of specializing in ripping off drug dealers--by a gang of killers sent by a powerful local gangster named Eddie Nash. A fifth victim, (Susan Launius, Ronald Launius' estranged wife), barely survived the attack and had no memory of the event. The bloody crime made lurid headlines throughout Southern California and became known as The Wonderland Murders, after the street in the wooded Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles where the killings took place. Holmes was implicated in the crime but refused to tell police what he knew and went on the run for nearly six months with his teenage mistress, Dawn Schiller, before he was arrested while hiding out in Florida and returned to Los Angeles. The L. A. authorities, angered by Holmes' refusal to cooperate with the investigation, charged him with committing all four murders.

By late 1980 he was broke, most of the huge amounts of money he made having gone to feed his drug addiction. He was reduced to making money by robbing people's houses and stealing cars, as well as delivering drugs for the local gangsters.

In 1979, Holmes with his younger half-brother, David Bowman, opened up a locksmith and used furniture store called The Just Looking Emporium in Los Angeles which both managed. But because of Holmes' escalating drug addiction and of the lack of money to operate the store since Holmes was squandering all of his and other people's money to buy cocaine for himself, the business failed by the end of that year.

His most famous character is probably Johnny Wadd, a lusty, always-on-the-make private detective he played in several crude porno films like Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here (1976), The Jade Pussycat (1977), China Cat (1978), Liquid Lips (1976) and Blonde Fire (1978), the last of which is considered the best of the so-called "Wadd films". Better still were the big-budgeted pictures that co-starred some of the adult film industry's top leading ladies, including Marilyn Chambers, Seka, Annette Haven and even a young--and underage--Traci Lords.

In the late 1970s Holmes developed a serious drug habit, which prevented him from performing in the on-screen sex he was famous for, resulting in his dropping out of the adult-film business.

By 1969, with the advent of X-rated porn films, Holmes moved into the movie business. His tall, slim build, curly light brown hair, a light mustache and bright blue eyes made him an instantly recognizable star.

Another story is that in 1967 Holmes was frequenting a men's card playing club in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena when a photographer for an underground magazine noticed his large "member" while standing next to him at a restroom urinal and gave Holmes his business card, telling him he could get plenty of work in still photo magazines.

Before his career in porn, he worked as a forklift operator in a meat-packing warehouse in Cudahy, California from August 1965 to June 1967 in which he had to quit his job as the contrast between hot and cold temperatures of driving a forklift vehicle in and out of a large walk-in freezer led to severe health problems, including three incidents of lung collapse between seven to nine months during the two years that he worked there.

After his discharge he moved to Los Angeles in 1964 where he married a young nurse, and worked odd jobs such as taxi driver, door-to-door salesman, postal clerk, temp worker, coffee vat attendant, ambulance driver and forklift driver.

In the late 1960s he gravitated to the underground porno industry. One story was that a female neighbor was making porno loops and advised Holmes he could make good money. Unfortunately, his first check bounced and, after that, he always insisted on payment in cash.

Born John Curtis Estes on August 8, 1944, in rural Pickaway County, Ohio, the youngest of four children, porn legend John Holmes was raised by a religious fanatic mother named Mary and an abusive alcoholic stepfather named Harold Bowman. He was a bible student, but at the age of 16 dropped out of school, left home and enlisted for a hitch US Army, where he was stationed in West Germany for three years.