In the annals of horrific Hollywood-related crimes that have left a lasting imprint on Los Angeles, the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders have always ranked in the top tier. The bloody killing of pregnant actor Sharon Tate and others over two days by members of a cult headed by Charles Manson has sparked its own cottage industry of books and films, including Quentin Taratino’s “Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood.’

But acclaimed novelist and former Times reporter Michael Connelly has always been fascinated by another dark and savage incident, fueled by sex and drugs, which he says left a deeper scar on Hollywood and L.A. culture — the 1981 Wonderland Massacre, in which four people were brutally slain inside a posh home in Laurel Canyon.

Adult film star John C. Holmes, drug kingpin Eddie Nash, famed entertainer Liberace and his “boy toy” Scott Thorson were among the colorful personalities caught up in the case. A juror was bribed. Even after three trials, there were no convictions, and the killers were never brought to justice, making the Wonderland murders one of the LAPD’s most infamous cold cases.

The details, Connelly contends, were outrageous even by Hollywood standards: “There’s aspects of this story that I don’t think would work in fiction because you actually have to be more believable in fiction.”

After decades of writing bestsellers — many of them featuring the fictional, no-nonsense Los Angeles Police Department Det. Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch — and adapting his novels into popular series (Prime Video’s “Bosch,” Netflix’s “The Lincoln Lawyer”), Connelly is finally taking a deep dive into his obsession with the blood-soaked slaughter in MGM+’s “The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History of Hollywood.”

With the four-part docuseries, which concludes Sunday at 10 p.m. and will be available to stream in full, Connelly, partnering with documentary filmmaker Alison Ellwood (“Laurel Canyon,” “The Go-Gos”), extends his exploration into the case, which started with his 2021 Audible podcast. The project also probes Hollywood’s decadent culture of nightclubs and underground parties during the 1970s and ‘80s.

A centerpiece of the project is an extensive interview with Thorson, who was portrayed by Matt Damon in the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra” — his memoir of the same name served as the basis. An addict who operated in Hollywood’s dark circles, Thorson served as key witness in the Wonderland case. Thorson died in August of cancer and heart disease.

The first chapter of the series, “The Heat of a Cold Case,” outlines the gruesome discovery on July 1, 1981, of four people — Ron Launius, William “Billy” Deverell, Joy Miller and Barbara Richardson — who had been bludgeoned to death. The victims were members of the Wonderland Gang, a group of small-time drug dealers. Launius’ wife, Susan, survived the attack but suffered brain damage and partial paralysis.

The slayings were allegedly ordered by Nash as retaliation for a robbery at his home, but Nash and his bodyguard, Gregory DeWitt Diles, were acquitted of the crime.

In a video interview, edited here for length and clarity, Connelly and Ellwood discussed the effect of the Wonderland case on Hollywood, its connection to the crack epidemic, the cat-and-mouse interactions with Thorson and whether there’s a possibility of reopening the case.

Why have the Wonderland murders intrigued you more than the Manson family murders?

Connelly: They’re both brutal, very shocking crimes. They both have something to say about the culture of their time. But Wonderland was on the precipice of huge change in terms of drugs being much of the inspiration and cultural change. It was the shifting to drugs that were designed to addict. That headed toward crack, which destroyed communities. So the impact was much more significant than the Manson case. Its tentacles go all over the place. It’s not only Los Angeles but representative of what happened in our society in the ‘80s.

Ellwood: When Michael first approached me, I had just finished “Laurel Canyon,” about the music scene there. The Manson murders marked the midpoint of that, this dark wave that no one was suspecting in this bucolic place. It had been mind-expanding drugs before, and then the drugs turned to cocaine. The artists leave, and then these houses become drug dens occupied by thieves. The image of what Laurel Canyon had been was taken over.

Michael, when did you first start obsessing over this murder?

Connelly: I first came to Los Angeles from Florida in the mid-’80s to cover crime for the Los Angeles Times. Any kind of story where people got away with murder was intriguing to me as a journalist. Then I transitioned to novels, and what happens in novels? Everything gets solved, there’s no loose ends. The opportunity to explore this case where justice was never served is something that intrigues and obsesses me. Over time, I’ve come to know almost every detective who has worked on this case. It has really stuck in their craws and that kind of transferred to me.

One of the most shocking images is the bloody footage from the actual crime scene.

Ellwood: It’s really brutal. I watch a lot of movies, so I’m used to gore. But when it’s real, it’s very different. There is much worse imagery, which we did not use.

How is the docuseries different from the podcast?

Connelly: It’s a visual story. The archival stuff that Allison and her team were able to pull together took it several steps above a podcast. The footage from the crime scene alone is significantly different when you see it. We got fresher interviews.

Michael Connelly and Alison Ellwood took a noir approach to shooting the docuseries.

(MGM+)

What was the main element to make it into a film?

Ellwood: The story struck me as a very negative image of what L.A. had become during this era, so we really wanted to take a noir approach. We have a lot of night driving with Michael, and very moody settings for the interviews.

The Zoom interviews that Mike was doing with Scott Thorson were immediately intriguing. You could see this back-and-forth, cat-and-mouse game that Michael was having to play with Scott. I thought, “Wow, we got to get them in a room together.” So we went to Musso and Frank’s in Hollywood, a luxury, old-time environment. Scott had hung out there a lot.

Connelly: He’s such a strange and interesting character. All these cops counseled me: “You got to watch him, don’t trust anything he says.” I went from being very standoffish about him and not trusting him to really enjoying our conversations. It was an interesting relationship. He was such an interesting foil who I would try to catch in a lie. Believe me, I tried. I thought it would be helpful if I showed him to be an unreliable narrator. I never told him where I lived, never gave him my cellphone number. But I ended up kind of liking him, despite all the bad things he did. And that’s a very strange thing for me. We knew he was sick when he did the interviews, but it was still shocking when he passed.

Is there a possibility of the case ever being reopened?

Connelly: Yes and no. Our work on this project got the head of the cold case unit of the LAPD to come in with the file and talk to us. But she basically said the case doesn’t have the things that would usually bring about a cold-case investigation decades later, like DNA and fingerprints. Someone would have to come forward to start this again.

Ellwoood: Certainly all of the detectives would be happy to bring this case to closure. It really is unrequited justice. People got away with murder.

Janhvi Kapoor’s latest spy thriller, Ulajh, is now streaming on Netflix. Ulajh features a decent cast with names like Roshan Mathew, Gulshan Devaiah, and Adil Hussain.

The film starts off intriguingly, with Janhvi Kapoor playing a high-ranking government official who gets caught in a sexual blackmail scheme involving video recordings. The plot revolves around how anti-national elements use this to manipulate her for their gain against India.

However, it doesn’t take long for the film to lose momentum. As the story progresses, the silliness increases, and by the climax, all the initial promise is lost, largely due to the poor writing and the lack of logic in the narrative.

Janhvi’s role feels extremely dull, which adds to the lackluster storytelling, especially for a spy thriller like Ulajh.

For viewers who don’t mind weak content on OTT platforms but enjoy the spy thriller genre, Ulajh might still be worth a try for its cast—if you have no other options for a home watch.

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Blac Chyna’s ex-boyfriend has filed a domestic violence lawsuit against the reality television personality, claiming she physically and verbally abused him over the course of their three-year relationship.

Taiyon “Twin” Hector alleged in a Tuesday filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court that Blac Chyna — who now goes by her birth name, Angela White — “would regularly drink alcohol, and use other drugs, to excess” and when under the influence was “physically violent and verbally threatening and abusive.” The couple dated from 2000 to 2023.

The abuse reached its peak in 2021, according to court documents reviewed by The Times, when the former “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” cast member allegedly violently ambushed Hector while he was sleeping. He is suing the model-entrepreneur for civil assault, civil battery, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and premises liability — and seeking more than $10 million in damages.

White did not reply immediately Friday to The Times’ request for comment.

In his filing, Hector cited previous testimony from White’s former fiancée Rob Kardashian and his famous family, who said she “has a propensity for verbal abuse and extreme physical violence toward her domestic partners and others, primarily when she consumes alcohol.” Kardashian and White share a 7-year-old daughter, Dream.

The former exotic dancer, 36, previously faced domestic abuse allegations from Kardashian and in 2016 was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication and a felony charge of possession after an incident at a Texas airport. The disturbance arose after a bartender refused to serve White the amount of alcohol she wanted, The Times previously reported.

“Almost anything could send Defendant into a violent rage at any time of the day or night,” even when she wasn’t drinking, Hector’s filing said. “Without warning, in the middle of conversations or during her basic interactions with Plaintiff, and others, Defendant would devolve into a rage, and immediately begin throwing violent punches, shoves, slaps and kicks at Plaintiff.”

White also allegedly threatened several times to kill her ex-boyfriend “in his sleep” — a remark that Hector said nearly came to fruition one night in 2021. The attack began when Hector was “completely asleep” in their shared Woodland Hills home, the filing said. White’s two children were also in the home at the time of the incident, the lawsuit said.

In her “most violent attack yet,” the account continued, White “pushed, shoved, kicked, punched, and threatened to kill and/or cause great bodily harm,” pinning Hector’s arms down with her body weight so he was unable to defend himself. Then she called her private physician.

When the doctor arrived, the filing said, “Defendant’s hands were still bloodied” and Hector was “in shock.” After delivering immediate treatment, the physician recommended Hector see a plastic surgeon to treat “various open wounds on his face and body” as well as an ophthalmological surgeon and a neurologist. He also advised Hector to speak with a psychiatrist, given his “obvious emotional distress.”

Since the attack, Hector has suffered from “severe insomnia” and “disturbed sleep,” the complaint said, adding that “nearly every night, at least once, Plaintiff awakes fearing, and temporally sensing, he is being beaten and attacked, and facing imminent death, if he does not awake and react.”

“The right to be free from domestic violence is not limited to women. During police investigations this fact is all too easily forgotten,” Hector’s attorney, Kirk Edward Schenck, said Friday in a statement to The Times.

“While women unfortunately make up the majority of victims, men are all too often the victims of domestic violence, but are disincentivized to come forward because of law enforcement and societal presumptions that they must be the aggressor. We hope this case shines a light on this unfortunate and unjust faulty presumption.”

Although she is never mentioned in Hector’s complaint, White’s mother, Shalana Hunter, a.k.a. Tokyo Toni, took to Instagram Friday to claim responsibility for the attack.

“I really didn’t mean to hurt him this bad but when you are upset over yours and others, keep trying you and then they try you again you come see them. Why tell that loud on my little girl!!!,” Hunter wrote in one of several posts referring to the incident.

“Tell the truth!!!!!!!! I told you I was going to,” she said in a separate post, directly addressing Hector. Both posts featured a photo of Hector’s injured face. The photo was taken after the 2021 attack and included in this week’s filing.

Hector and White began dating in August 2020 and officially separated in March 2023. While Hector said in the complaint that he “wanted the relationship to work” and repeatedly “begged” White to seek medical and/or psychological treatment, she always refused.

White has since recommitted to her Christian faith and pledged sobriety, she told The Times earlier this year.

“I was drinking, I just had to open up my eyes and realize it,” she said. “And then not even just in front of people, even in private. A lot of times, we do things in private, or try to hide things from people, but once you start being real with yourself, that’s when you start to really see or realize certain things, and your life is just going to get better.”