Mickey Skee has written for AVN since 1987 and served as Gay & Bi Editor for much of the 1990s and early 2000s. He is now credited with helping solve one of the gay porn world's most mysterious deaths.
LOS ANGELES—The details of the murder were too gruesome even for Adult Video News three decades ago. A 25-year-old blond twinkie porn star named Billy London was brutally strangled and dismembered just before Halloween in 1990. Only his feet and his head with sparkling blue eyes were found in a dumpster in West Hollywood.
I wrote about the incident for AVN and also the gay magazine The Advocate, and even helped with the police investigation. And 10 years later, I helped his father with additional research when his dad thought I was among the last people to see his son alive.
My housemate, porn photographer and editor of the Gay Video Guide, Sabin, was working with Billy on a porn shoot only days before he disappeared. And, on the last day anyone saw him, he came to visit our house in West Hollywood, only blocks from where his body was found. I remember offering a cup of espresso from my new coffee machine.
So, a couple of years ago, documentarian Rachel Mason was combing through my porn photographs for some additions of porn stars from the past to add into her Circus of Books documentary (about the adult store her parents owned, which is on Netflix). An article I wrote fell out of one of the books with the headline: "Cops Have No Clues in Grisly Killing of L.A. Porn Actor."
Rachel asked, "What's this?"
"Oh, that's a really crazy story," I said, and then launched into the whole story of Billy London.
It's a story that haunted Rachel, long after she premiered her "Circus of Books" documentary when it opened Outfest. She received amazing accolades for her honest, funny and poignant documentary of the closing of the classic gay bookstore and porn shop, and unveiled the secret that her parents were producers for one of the most prolific gay video companies, Video 10. Yet, she couldn't forget Billy London.
"It kept coming back to me in my mind," Rachel said. "It's a murder that the police kind of swept under the rug and it's a story that the adult industry didn't really want to deal with very much."
And yet, after years of research and talking to scores of people in the gay adult industry, Rachel Mason and her team discovered who committed the brutal killing. They brought it to the Los Angeles Police, and they got a confession from another former porn youth, Billy Houston, who was a serial killer hiding in our midst for years after the killing, coming to our awards shows and making videos.
The LAPD got enough details from the kid who was once Billy Houston (in prison serving life sentences for two other murders) and confirmed that he committed the brutal slaying.
"It wasn't a story that the adult industry wanted to talk about very much," says gay video director Kevin Clarke, who helped put some of the final pieces together with Rachel after I introduced them. "It wasn't a very positive story to say, 'Welcome to West Hollywood, come be a porn star, and get your head chopped off and thrown in a dumpster.'"
Many adult industry luminaries from all over the world helped Rachel set the scene for gay life and the adult industry during the times of the murders, including Sabin, Kevin Glover, Vince Harrington, Phil St. John, Ross Cannon, Freddie Bercovitz, Buck Angel, J.K. Jensen and Chi Chi LaRue, who hosted the first Gay Erotic Video Awards in 1991 where Billy Houston first presented an award only six months after killing Billy London.
Not everyone knew Billy London, or Billy Houston, very much because they were never big stars or lasted very long in the industry.
Billy London worked with his boyfriend David Rey under the London/Rey Productions banner and also served as producer and makeup artist as well as one of the stars in front of the camera. His biggest credit is Catalina's Bulge: Mass Appeal with director John Travis with superstar of the day Tom Brock in 1988. He was also seen in Head of the Class, Fantasy Boys, Hot Pages Bound for Lust, Make a Wish and Blow, Dreamen: Dirty Dialogue, Dreamdoll, Swap Meat, Hard Labor, Commercial Sex and his last movie Grip of Passion.
He visited the popular nightclub Rage the weekend before his death Oct. 29, 1990 and walked to Sabin's house in West Hollywood where he said he would be heading over to the club again. He asked us for some money to help him rent a car or take a bus to visit his sister in Las Vegas, and said he came from the 24-hour diner Yukon Mining Company down the street.
Two days later, his head and feet were found in a dumpster a few blocks away. I interviewed David Rey, and police seemed to think it was a trick gone bad, or a drug deal gone bad, or maybe even a retaliation bashing for a gay guy who might have had AIDS.
Billy Houston was given his name by director and producer Richard Lawrence, months after Billy London disappeared. Lawrence worked with Houston in a series of movies for Avalon/YMAC videos and wrote The Devil and Danny Webster for Houston, who is seduced by the devil.
Houston and Lawrence attended the first Gay Erotic Video Awards produced by Sabin and me in 1992 where Head Bangers won Best Sex Comedy.
At that awards show, Houston's agent Johnny Johnston (who also represented Billy London for a time) asked if Houston could be considered for a future Best Humanitarian Award. That was two years after he committed the heinous murder of London. Houston also begged to be involved in an AIDS charity photo session with fans who posed along with superstars like Joey Stefano, Ryan Idol and others, but when it came time to do the photos after the show, Houston was a no-show.
Lawrence produced and wrote one of the groundbreaking art house porn movies Pleasure Beach, but also worked for RAD Video and won multiple awards for A Dream Come True. Under the name of Rick Jensen, Lawrence's last movie was a film festival favorite Dead Boyz Don't Scream where gay models are brutally murdered by a serial killer.
What people in the gay industry did not know, is that Lawrence used his real name, Rick Paskay, to help detectives for years investigate the Billy London murder, and he never told police he worked in the adult industry. Nor did Lawrence (or Paskay) interview or talk to me or Sabin or others in the industry about the murder, perhaps because we also were discussing details with the police. Paskay was trying to point fingers at London's boyfriend, David Rey, who ended up in prison on drug charges.
While Rachel Mason was doing research, I introduced her to many people in the industry who helped with crucial information, including an introductory phone call to Rey—and someone who Sabin and I always thought was a prime suspect.
I also introduced her to Kevin Clarke, now in New York, who gave some insight into the history of the industry, and knew Richard Lawrence while working at the gay editing company Delta Productions. Clarke also was brought in to RAD Video to complete Lawrence's last porn project called A Dream Come True and accepted the award for Best Sex Comedy at the 2002 GayVN Awards. Lawrence died of cancer in 2017.
"It is hard for me to imagine that Richard Lawrence didn't know that Billy Houston killed Billy London," Clarke says. "This was a murder that shook the industry to the core, but everyone ran away from it, and didn't want to talk about it. This was inside the porn industry, and had to be solved from the industry."
Clarke points out that Lawrence wrote The Devil and Danny Webster specifically for his protege Billy Houston, and said, "It's eerie knowing that you are watching a serial killer who literally fucks the devil."
I was also the one who told Rachel that authors Eric Shaw Quinn and Christopher Rice (son of great vampire author Anne) had a podcast called "The Dinner Party Show" where they spoke a lot about Billy London's murder and conducted interviews and asked for tips on the 30th anniversary of the murder. That led the Los Angeles Police homicide department to re-open the investigation into the killing.
Retired social worker Clark Williams heard about the case when we were putting queries out on the internet, and he became fascinated by the case. He and London were born just a week apart in 1965 in the same part of northern Wisconsin and each fled to Los Angeles to seek a better life and get away from a world of homophobia. He became Rachel's chief assistant in helping put pieces together, flying to Wisconsin and other places to meet Billy's remaining family members.
Williams spoke many hours to Kevin Clarke, who suggested that Billy Houston may be a prime candidate to look at because Houston was serving a life sentence in prison convicted of abducting and killing another gay man years after London's murder—and long after he left the adult industry.
Williams discovered that Houston, whose real name is Darrell Lynn Madden, not only was convicted of one murder, but also pleaded guilt to killing another man who was his accomplice in the first murder. He was part of the Chaos Squad Skinheads, and pretended to be a sex worker and lured a victim to a secluded area of Oklahoma City, beat him, strangled him with a coat hanger and dumped him in a creek. Then he shot his co-hort.
Madden, the former gay porn star, shaved his eyebrows and replaced them with tattoos saying "SKIN" and "HEAD."
Then, Williams found a book called "American Honor Killings" and saw that Madden told the author about another killing he did in Los Angeles. That was enough information to go to the police. Detective John Lamberti visited Madden in the Oklahoma prison and got enough never-before-disclosed information to determine that he was also responsible for the Billy London murder.
And, (you can't make this up) Madden now identifies as a transgender woman and an Orthodox Jew named Daralyn. The detective was interviewing a suspect with swastika tattoos and wearing a pink knitted yarmulke.
Madden confessed to abducting London on Santa Monica Boulevard, not knowing he was also a porn star, and they planned to rob him. Madden, with his skinhead friends, ended up strangling London to death.
It was enough information for the LAPD to close the case, and it was unnecessary to get an additional conviction because Madden serves two life sentences. Madden refused to identify the colleagues who committed the murder with her and cut up Billy London's body. Madden said, "I may be a murderer, but I'm not a snitch."
The case of Billy London, whose real name is Bill Newton, was nicknamed the "Gay Black Dahlia" case in West Hollywood because it was so mysterious.
I wrote multiple stories for AVN when Newton's father tried to revive interest in the case 10 years after the murder.
"I know someone in the adult industry knows what happened, I think it is connected to the industry somehow," Newton's father, Richard Harriman, told me. He also said he believed that Sabin and I were among the last people to see his son alive.
Mason is working on a multi-part documentary about the murder and the crime, and is still collecting information from anyone who knew any of the key players. She has also contacted Madden in prison and hopes to get an interview from her.
Many people from the gay adult industry, she assures me, will be part of the documentary.
If you know of someone, or have and more information about Richard Lawrence, write Rachel directly at [email protected].
