[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
In 1990, well-known gay porn star Billy London was brutally murdered in Los Angeles. His dismembered head and feet were found in a dumpster in West Hollywood, but the rest of his body was never recovered.
For more than thirty years, his murder had gone unsolved. And for most of that time, it looked like it would remain unsolved forever. His family prayed for justice, but none was to be had. That is, until an unlikely team involving a documentary filmmaker, a detective, a stay-at-home dad, and two true crime podcast hosts began sharing notes.
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The Los Angeles Times detailed London’s case in a jaw-dropping new feature published on Tuesday morning. The piece tells the tale of LAPD detective John Lamberti, documentarian Rachel Mason, and Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn, who co-host The Dinner Party Show podcast.
That unlikely group solved London’s murder after several years of painstaking research. It all started when Rice received a tip from someone who claimed to have seen London — whose real name was Billy Newton — leave a Los Angeles club on the October 1990 night of his murder with “someone who looked like Jeffrey Dahmer.” Rice and Quinn began to look into the case and report about it on their podcast.
For a while, they were stumped about who could have killed London, and wondered whether Dahmer actually was involved. Dahmer himself had previously denied killing London. As it turned out, the infamous serial killer had nothing to do with this death — and the real story would eventually come to light.
Simultaneously, Lamberti was looking into the cold case from his perch within the LAPD. Doing research online, he came across Rice and Quinn’s podcast. Finding out they had received the Dahmer tip, he started looking more deeply into the case. Eventually, Lamberti brought Rice and Quinn into the fold and began coordinating with them on tips and leads. With the blessing of London’s remaining family members, the three of them forged ahead.
Around the same time, Mason was doing her own work on the cold case. While she was researching and producing her documentary-style coverage, a stay-at-home dad named Clark Williams reached out to her. He was intending to provide Mason with background info “about what it could have been like for Billy growing up in Wisconsin.” Clark was from the same area as Billy had been, and knew the small-town vibes there very well.
Williams and Mason quickly realized they both cared deeply about the case, and started doing a “deep dive” on it. In a conversation with TooFab, the stay-at-home dad explained how he and the filmmaker began to use every free moment they had into trying to solve the case:
“We nurtured a growing obsession to study and investigate every single aspect of this case — literally, to leave no stone unturned.”
Finally, Williams’ very thorough research into the gay porn industry of the late 1980s produced a lead: actor Billy Houston. The actor’s real name had been Darrell Lynn Madden. As Williams began to research more, he discovered Madden (pictured in a mugshot, above) was a self-admitted white supremacist who had pleaded guilty to the murder of another gay man in the early 2000s.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the stay-at-home dad revealed how the second murder seemed to push the focus even harder on Madden:
“It was a coincidence that I just could not ignore.”
As Williams began to uncover more information, he found a decades-old interview Madden did for a book called American Honor Killings. In that interview, Madden claimed to have committed another earlier murder in Los Angeles. Alarmed by how things seemed to be getting to a key point, Williams reached out to Detective Lamberti with what he found. Soon, the detective began to look into Madden.
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As it turns out, Madden is currently serving a life sentence for murder in Oklahoma. The former actor now identifies “as a transgender woman and Orthodox Jew named Daralyn,” according to what Lamberti told the Times. In early January, Detective Lamberti and his partner flew to Oklahoma to interview Madden. Under interrogation, the prisoner admitted to “targeting” London for a robbery that fateful night in 1990. Along the way, something went wrong, and Madden strangled London to death. Per the Times, other details Madden gave to cops matched evidence detectives collected decades ago.
But when Lamberti asked Madden about accomplices, or where the rest of London’s body had gone, the murderer balked at divulging any more information:
“I may be a murderer but I’m not a snitch.”
Jeez…
Considering the age of the case and the fact that Madden is already in prison, the Los Angeles County District Attorney declined to file charges in London’s murder. However, the LAPD now officially considers the case closed — after receiving the blessing of London’s family to do so.
For Williams, the fact that closure has come is a reward beyond belief:
“I am truly humbled to have played a role in finding the killer(s) who so brutally murdered this wonderful young man in October, 1990 and to deliver some justice and peace to his many friends and family.”
And in an Instagram post about the unbelievable story published on Tuesday morning, Mason added her own reaction to the incredible conclusion:
“This is the most amazing news I could possibly share. After five years of research- and 32 years of being cold- the case is SOLVED. Billy’s killer is serving multiple life sentences. So much will be revealed in the new documentary series we are working on.”
Unbelievable!
You can read the full Los Angeles Times story HERE.
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To learn more about how you can help the LGBTQ+ community, check out https://www.glaad.org/.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence and would like to learn more about resources, consider checking out https://www.rainn.org/resources.
[Image via WISN 12 News/YouTube/Oklahoma Department of Corrections]
