Nostalgia at its best?

From: AdultFYI.com

Laurie Holmes, the widow of John Holmes came on KSEX, www.ksexradio.com Wednesday night. She was a guest on The Wanker Show. Holmes had tapes with her- tapes of the late John Holmes, speaking from the grave, talking to a writer about the Laurel Canyon murder case which was depicted in the film Wonderland which starred Val Kilmer.

Laurie Holmes, who's now married to Tony Montana, worked in the adult industry under the name Misty Dawn and met "The King" in the early 1980's. She recounted some of those early years. "He was married before you- that was Sharon, right?" asked Wankus wanting to know how Laurie came into the Holmes mix."I met John right after he got out of jail for being held in contempt for not testifying," said Holmes, noting they met in San Francisco.

"Sharon eventually divorced him, obviously," said Wankus.

"They had been apart for many, many, many years," Laurie Holmes replied. "We had been together for a few years." Holmes said one day The King told her to sit down. He came clean about Sharon Holmes and his relationship with her. "He goes my divorce is final. I said what divorce. I didn't even know you were married." It was then that Holmes told her that he and Sharon hadn't been together for a long time. "But now that it's final I'll tell you."

"You guys started dating and things were going good?" Wankus asked.

Holmes said it all happened pretty fast. Once he got out of jail, according to Holmes, The King was far from over with the drug scene. "I was actually buying cocaine from him- and I didn't even do it- I just wanted to see him."

Tyler Faith, who was co-hosting the show, thought that was romantic. Holmes said it was a gesture just so she could spend some time with him. "One night I went there up to his house he handed me the mirror- it was, like, this stuff makes me feel funny. I don't want to do this. He just had this weird look on his face, like, huh? No coke? He went into the bathroom and freebased for about five hours. I just sat here. I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to leave. I was scared. There were like guns on all the tables. Imagine you walk into somebody's house. I don't know them. I just sat there."

Holmes again mentioned that The King spent five hours in the bathroom. Faith wondered how big the bathroom was. Holmes said really big. "And then he went cold turkey after that."

By saying no to him, Holmes gathered that The King wasn't used to people saying that to him. Wankus imagined that The King must have liked Holmes because it inspired him in a sense to come off drugs. Asked if The King's house was like a second Wonderland, Holmes said not really except for all the guns laying around. To which Faith said people who do drugs get paranoid.

Holmes stressed that their relationship was like being a kid. "We did Disneyland- the whole works. Not like the time you're going to have..." she told Wankus. Wankus imagined that Holmes had a lot of similar weekends at Disneyland.Holmes said she was with The King for five years and his HIV condition was revealed many years later.

"We were both still in porn. I did it for maybe two years after we met. He wanted me to get out of it so I got out of it. I was behind the scenes, basically running his company [Penguin Productions] at the time. I didn't do any porn again until 1999."

Holmes explained that's where she met Montana. "He walked into the kitchen, stuck his tongue up my ass and said, hey, I'm Tony Montana. I married him." Holmes stressed that although Holmes had HIV, she's totally negative.

"In 1985 John, his partner [Bill Amerson] and myself tried to organize AIDS testing. It failed. Because back then the tests were very expensive, they weren't very good and the talent thought it was an invasion of their privacy. Holmes said The King tested negative and one year later in 1986, tested positive. "I was with him till the end and am still with him." Asked what it was like to have the love of her life go away, Holmes said she didn't want to go there. "It was very hard- when you watch somebody die while their heart's still beating. But he went very fast."

Quoting Montana, Wankus said with today's medicine it's almost as though you don't have it.

"You're almost in remission but you're not," Holmes agreed.

Wankus said his mainstream friends thought Wonderland was a great movie. "And all my porn friends called me and said what a shitty, bad fucking representation of what really happened."

Wankus asked Holmes just how realistic was the film based on what she knew. "You got all the stories from John."

Holmes said she had John's side of things. "And nobody's ever heard John's side of it. In the movie Wonderland you are obviously seeing someone else's version of the story. That's not John's. I think Val Kilmer- I have all the respect for him in the world as an actor, however, I think he was given the wrong script. He didn't portray John right. He portrayed John as kind of giddy..." Faith thought Holmes was portrayed as kind of a pussy.

Wankus said in conversations with Laurie he got the impression that John was kind of a man's man, a John Wayne. "A take charge kind of guy."

"Very manly," said Holmes.

"But Val Kilmer was like a crowd follower, like, okay, I'll do that," said Wankus. Holmes just feels that Kilmer wasn't given the right direction in that area. "And, of course, the movie... I booed. There were three people in the whole theater when I went to go see it. And I booed. That's all I could do. I just sat there. And then I went into the depression afterwards I don't know how long. I was mad. I was angry. It's horrible."

Wankus brought up some elements from the film, like the hitchhiker girl and wondered how accurate they were. To which Holmes said you'd have to get the DVD which is being released by Hollywood Video in January. It's titled The Real John Holmes- the Wonderland Murders Exposed.

It was noted that Holmes has tapes of interviews The King conducted with a ghost writer for a book he was writing. According to Holmes, the tapes have never been heard before. "Other than the authorities."

Wankus touted his show as the first broadcasting forum in which some of the excerpts were being heard.Holmes explained that the DVD also contains some classic footage of Holmes in action. "We've got Seka, myself, Ginger Lynn along with the audio portions of the DVD. There's a slide show, a John Holmes game. It's an interactive DVD."

Wankus wondered if Holmes ever did any radio interviews back in the day. "I don't think I recall ever hearing about it or seeing any tapes or footage. This might be the first time that John Holmes is ever heard on the air- ever. Alive or not with us. It's amazing."

Wankus explained that he broke up the tapes into three clips and worked it- as humanly possible- so that the KSEX audience could understand and make out what Holmes was saying. "The quality is okay but you do have to listen carefully. There's some of it that's muffled. It's usually the ghost writer talking. John's voice is pretty clear in it."

The first tape Wankus played was Holmes explaining how he met the hitchhiker girl who introduced him to Wonderland.

Homes is heard to say- though not clearly- that the hitchhiker girl was very heavy into drugs. "I picked her up on an on-ramp. She was going the same way as I was." Holmes said the girl was fairly attractive and so gave her a ride based on the fact that she was cute. "We got to talking and she recognized me. Are you really John Holmes? I said yes." According to what Holmes was saying to the writer he and the girl started talking about drugs and the girl told him she knew a great place where he could score some. Holmes tells her he knows places as well. Holmes goes on to explain how the girl directed him to Wonderland. "I wound up hanging around." The girl went upstairs to get some coke. Her friends recognized Holmes and urged for introductions though Holmes was first reluctant.

"Wonderland was a big party house," said Laurie Holmes. "I met people that used to hang up there. They were crazy up there." Holmes herself never went there and said to this day the case remains one of the most gruesome in LAPD files. Four were murdered.

"And one survived but she can't remember what happened," said Holmes. Wankus wondered if that was a can't or won't situation. Holmes holds to the fact that the woman might be pretty fucked up.

In another clip, Holmes talks about he slept in the house and how his fingerprints were all over. "When they found these people murdered it was like you're finger prints were all over. Obviously. He slept in the house," said Wankus.

"He was always in the house. They couldn't identify a lot of the other prints but they knew his were there."

Holmes on tape talks about how the cops had 133 sets of fingerprints to identify and about how he had been in every room of the house. It's also talked about how Holmes slept in the bedroom where they found one of the bodies.

"But not on the same day according to his story," Wankus said. "This is kind of freaky." Holmes said the tapes were analyzed and authenticated. "The FBI analyzed the tapes and their findings are in the court record," said Holmes. "But you didn't find that in the Wonderland movie."

Holmes also says the LAPD ignored the tapes. "The LAPD ignored them in 1999 when I took them down there. I took them down there because they were so compelling. I didn't want to be sitting on evidence in an open murder case." Holmes said she was very surprised when a detective in homicide turned them off after listening to about a minute.

"He said they weren't important. And then in 2000 Eddie Nash was served a 47-page indictment. John's name was named again in this indictment." Holmes said she then contacted the FBI who were very surprised that the LAPD had not accepted the tapes. "There had been a five year Federal investigation going on. It makes you wonder, huh?"

In another excerpt Holmes is explaining events that led up to his meeting up with David Lynn another principle in the case. Explaining a portion of the tape Wankus said, "He's [Holmes] is talking about one of the guys- the guy that hunts people- he's like a stoolie. He was a weird dude because he'd like buy cocaine from people then he'd follow them so he could find out where their suppliers are. But then he would tell the police. He was a rat. But he was also a cocaine addict. He'd actually use the drugs but would never get in trouble because he was ratting to the cops. The police were giving him money for his finds. The cops were paying him to give them information and letting him slide with all his drud use. He had a perfect little life going."

Apparently on the tapes Holmes names names- who committed the murders and the reasons why. "Through the robberies, through the events that led up to it, everything," says Holmes. She said that Seka would also be signing at the Hollywood Video booth. Professionally, Holmes said she worked with The King two or three times on camera. "He was very elegant, very charming but manly."

Laurie Holmes, who's been in the business about 22 years, looks at the Wonderland movie as "an artistic license to lie."

Asked for her impressions of the current state of the business, Holmes pointed out that she's been in every aspect of the industry. "Right now I'm in sales. What I'm seeing now is that people are wanting the classics again. The classics are getting their turn all over again. I'm seeing a trend in that direction. Nostalgia is what it is. They like their nostalgic rock n' roll. They want their nostalgic porn."