LAUGH LINES

Eleven years after a flamboyant CHP officer-turned-nude club operator was gunned down outside his Brea mansion, Orange County investigators have arrested his former patrol partner and two others in connection with the notorious case.

Horace J. McKenna died in a hail of machine-gun fire on March 9, 1989, as he sat in a chauffeured limousine outside his estate--a 40-acre compound housing exotic animals including monkeys, wild cats and even an alligator.

The nature of the murder--and the story of a victim who straddled both sides of the law--made it one of Orange County’s most sensational whodunits.

Michael Woods, 58, was booked into the Orange County Jail on Friday, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Woods’ attorney, Richard Hirsch, confirmed Saturday that his client was arrested in connection with the McKenna murder.

Also taken into custody on suspicion of murder was David Amos, 41, according to police and his attorney. Both men are listed in state corporation records as business associates in two Los Angeles nude clubs.

The third suspect, who authorities allege is the gunman, said in a jailhouse interview Saturday that he confessed to the crime 10 months ago and has been working ever since as an informant for the Orange County district attorney’s office.

John Patrick Sheridan, who was manager of one of the clubs, said he wore a wire that recorded conversations with the other two suspects.

Detectives declined to comment on the investigation Saturday. But law enforcement sources said the arrests come 3 1/2 years after detectives with the organized crime unit reopened the “cold case.”

Woods and McKenna worked together as California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers in Los Angeles before becoming business associates in several nude clubs around Southern California, including Bare Elegance and the New Jet Strip.

At the time of McKenna’s murder, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office was looking at the strip clubs as part of a tax fraud investigation. Homicide detectives early on probed a possible link between the investigation and McKenna’s murder but could never find anything conclusive.

Attorneys for Woods and Amos said their clients have never been in trouble with the law before and that they are waiting for prosecutors to brief them with details of the case.

Woods has “never been arrested in his life,” Hirsch said. “We’re going to review the evidence when we see it and [will] have an appropriate comment at that time.”

A decade ago, Woods said through a different attorney that he had nothing to do with the murder.

‘Big Mac’ Did Time for Passing Bogus Bills

McKenna, a 6-foot-6-inch bodybuilder known as “Big Mac,” was forced out of the CHP in the 1970s and later spent four years in federal prison after being convicted of passing counterfeit money. He was sent back to prison a few years later for a parole violation after getting into a fight with an off-duty police officer, according to court records.

McKenna was arriving home in his limousine after midnight when the attack occurred. As his driver exited the car to open the gate to his estate, a man with a machine gun fired 20 rounds into the back seat.

On Saturday, Sheridan identified himself as the gunman and said he was paid $25,000 to kill McKenna. He first tried to hire someone else for the hit but couldn’t find anyone. So instead, he went up to McKenna’s hillside home himself and waited to ambush him.

“There’s an old saying: ‘If you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself,’ ” Sheridan said.

Almost immediately, he said he felt nagging guilt about what he had done.

“I woke up, and I saw it on TV,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I saw a car with all the holes in it . . . I felt bad from day one.”

For the next decade, he said he tried to put the murder behind him. Then, in January, a friend who worked in law enforcement approached him about the case and asked him to talk with prosecutors about cooperating, he said.

Sheridan eventually confessed to the district attorney’s office, he said, but was allowed to remain free and joined their investigation as an informant.

“How many hit men do you know who give a confession and post no bail, and then go home?” he said. “That was me.”

The homicide investigation focused on a group of nude clubs in Los Angeles County. Court papers filed by Los Angeles prosecutors handling the 1989 tax fraud probe allege that McKenna and Woods were “hidden owners” of the clubs.

McKenna’s slaying shocked neighbors, some of whom described the victim as a eccentric but kind man who loved his assortment of exotic animals and enjoyed showing people around his compound. Others, however, described him as an intimidating and bullying figure.

Nine months before the murder, the Department of Fish and Game seized two spider monkeys, a black leopard and a tiger at the property because they were being kept illegally.

For McKenna’s family, the arrest comes after years of wondering about whether the police would ever get this far.

‘It’s been a long time coming,” McKenna’s son, Michael J. McKenna, said Saturday. “It’s no closure yet just because three men have been arrested [and not convicted]. It’s just a wait and see, now.”