True Crime Thursdays dives into the latest crime stories being chronicled on news and streaming platforms. This week, travel back to 1981 when L.A. was riveted by a shocking series of drug-related murders on Wonderland Avenue in the otherwise peaceful Laurel Canyon neighborhood.
When is a true crime series also an unexpected final testament? When that series is The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History of Hollywood, premiering Sept. 8 on the MGM+ streaming service.
Overseen by director Alison Ellwood and journalist-turned-author Michael Connelly, the four-part documentary pieces together the bloody circumstances surrounding the notorious Wonderland Avenue murders that splashed across Los Angeles newspapers in July 1981. The still-unsolved massacre claimed four lives and shined a spotlight on the city’s violent drug trade.
A key voice in that investigation—and the documentary—is Scott Thorson, the enigmatic Hollywood-adjacent personality with a connection to the crime that he never fully clarified to authorities or writers on the crime beat. And now he never will. Thorson died on Aug. 16 after a battle with cancer and an accompanying heart condition. The Wonderland Massacre is his final on-camera interview about the murders, although Ellwood and Connelly both say they weren’t aware of that during production.
“We knew he was undergoing treatment for cancer, but we did not think he was at the end of his life,” Ellwood tells TVNewser about the duo’s interviews with Thorson, which took place roughly nine months ago. The director recalls that Thorson had just started chemotherapy and while his prognosis seemed positive, he did have evident health struggles.
“We cut our first interview short, because he couldn’t get through it—he was literally falling asleep,” Ellwood says. “But then he came back a few weeks later and we pretty much filmed all day.” (The fourth and final episode of the series closes with a dedication to Thorson.)
Connelly had previously interviewed Thorson for the podcast version of The Wonderland Massacre, which debuted on Audible in 2021. When they reconnected for the documentary, the author says that Thorson seemed energized about his future projects, including a new tell-all, Beyond the Candelabra—a sequel to his 1988 memoir Behind the Candelabra that revealed previously undisclosed details about his years-long relationship with famed singer, Liberace.
