Adel Gharib Nasrallah (June 1929-9 August 2014), also known as Eddie Nash, was a Palestinian-American gangster, drug dealer, and nightclub owner. Nash was a powerful Los Angeles crime boss, and he was rumored to have had dozens of people killed, burying their skulls in the desert; he would take the teeth out to prevent the police from identifying the bodies. He was the mastermind of the 1981 Wonderland murders, but he would be acquitted of his role in the murders.
Biography[]
Adel Gharib Nasrallah was born in Ramallah, Mandatory Palestine in June 1929 to a family of Orthodox Christian Palestinians, and he was the owner of several hotels by the time that he had turned nineteen. After Israeli soldiers gunned down his brother-in-law during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Nasrallah decided to leave the country, arriving in the United States during the 1950s. Using the Anglicized name "Eddie Nash", he worked as an actor and stuntman before buying several nightclubs, including Starwood in West Hollywood, Soul'd Out in Hollywood, and several clubs and strip clubs elsewhere in Los Angeles.
Wonderland murders[]
Nash in 1981
Nash became very rich, owning his own yacht and mansion. He became known as a vile human being, often spending time with prostitutes, doing drugs, and even giving girls cocaine if they would clean his butt with their tongues after he used the bathroom. In 1981, Nash was robbed at his home by the Wonderland Gang, which beat him up, hurled racial epithets at him, shoved a gun down his throat, snorted cocaine on his daughter's vanity mirror, and forced him to give up $1.2 million of his belongings. Nash retaliated by having his henchman Greg Diles and his former friend (and the armed robbery's mastermind) John C. Holmes (whose life he spared in exchange for his participation) murder the gang at its rowhouse in Laurel Canyon. His henchmen used striated lead pipes to murder the victims in a brutal and gruesome fashion. By this time, Nash had already become known as a feared and vicious gangster, burying his victims in the desert and removing their teeth to prevent the authorities from identifying them. In 1984, he had his former lover and her son murdered.
In 1990, Nash was acquitted of his role in the Wonderland murders, but law enforcement continued to hound Nash throughout the 1990s, as they believed that he had gotten away with murder. In 2000, he was arrested and indicted under the RICO Act. In September 2001, Nash - suffering from emphysema and several other ailments - pled guilty to RICO charges and money laundering, and he served four-and-a-half years in prison and paid a $250,000 fine. Eddie Nash died on 9 August 2014.