2 Charged in Murder Like One in Film They Produced

In the video movie “The Takeover,” a bloody fight for control over nude clubs with names like Bare Elegance and The Jet Strip rages across Los Angeles, ending when the clubs’ owner is murdered.

That story line, authorities say, is strikingly similar to the crime with which the movie’s executive producer and one of its co-stars were charged Monday.

The two suspects, who in real life run the clubs featured in the film, are accused of hiring a hit man in the 1989 slaying of Horace McKenna, a former CHP officer and owner of nude clubs who was gunned down as he sat in a chauffeured limousine in Brea. Authorities charge that the hit was part of a scheme to take control of McKenna’s businesses.

The arrests of club operators Michael Woods and David Amos as well as a third man capped a three-year probe into a case that’s long been one of Southern California’s most sensational whodunits.

The case hinges on the testimony of the alleged triggerman, who went to police because he felt he was being cheated while his partners got rich. There were months of surveillance and wiretaps.

The cast of characters includes McKenna, a 6-foot, 6-inch bodybuilder, who was forced out of the California Highway Patrol and later did time in federal prison for distributing counterfeit money. He lived in a hilltop estate in Brea with a menagerie of exotic animals, including a tiger, monkeys and an alligator.

“He didn’t care much for people, but he liked animals,” said Paul Vail, a friend of McKenna’s who helped renovate some of the clubs. “He had a lot of enemies, but he had a lot of friends too.”

And there was Woods, prosecutors now say, who was both McKenna’s friend and enemy, but who, according to his attorney, had nothing to do with the crime.

In the 1970s, he and McKenna patrolled the Sunset Strip on motorcycles for the CHP. Both eventually left the department--Woods took disability retirement--but they remained close.

The former partners eventually went into business together, opening The Jet Strip nude club on Hawthorne Boulevard in 1976, followed by a string of others, according to investigators. Woods worked as McKenna’s No. 2 man at the clubs, they said.

But the ventures soon were being investigated by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, which suspected a tax-fraud scheme. The probe was part of a special program that sought cases against “full-time criminals,” and McKenna became the investigators’ first target.

As a convicted felon, McKenna couldn’t get a permit to operate a nude club and was never listed as an owner on corporation records. But detectives at the time alleged that he took the bulk of the profits from the ventures, which grossed as much as $2.5 million a year.

Woods and McKenna began to feud over the direction of the clubs and other personal problems, investigators said. Woods allegedly was frustrated with the way McKenna tried to bully him and others at the club and feared that his partner was drawing the attention of law officers.

Enter David Amos, Woods’ bodyguard. Woods paid him $50,000 to have McKenna killed, according to prosecutors. Amos allegedly gave half the money to another strip club employee, John Patrick Sheridan, to make the hit.

“When Dave said he wanted it done, I said I’d find somebody to do it. But I couldn’t find anybody,” Sheridan said in a jailhouse interview Saturday. “There’s an old saying: If you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself.”

On March 9, 1989, Sheridan told a Times reporter, he drove up the hill to McKenna’s compound and waited for his target to return home. Just after midnight, McKenna’s stretch limousine pulled up. His chauffeur got out to open the gate to the driveway.

Sheridan said it was then that he emerged from the shadows and pumped 23 rounds from a 9-millimeter Uzi into the limo’s back seat.

“I’ve been shot,” McKenna groaned to his chauffeur. “I’m not going to make it.”

After the job was done, Amos became a business partner in the clubs, authorities say.

*

In “The Takeover,” produced in 1995, Amos, a handsome British immigrant and part-time actor, portrays an ex-con who is forced to work for a Chicago-based crime family battling to take control of a rival group’s cocaine and strip club empire.

As part of his work, he helps commit kidnappings and other crimes before eventually becoming the hero of the movie when he murders the heads of both crime families and ends up controlling the clubs. He plans to turn one of the clubs into a family restaurant.

“I thought that was kind of arrogant to be involved [in the killing] and then make that movie,” said Rick Morton, an investigator for the district attorney’s office. “It’s like they’re putting it in people’s faces.”

The task of finding McKenna’s killer fell to Brea police, a department of only 100 officers that rarely is faced with such a high-profile murder. The agency spent “hundreds of hours” following clues and tracing people who knew McKenna.

But detectives quickly discovered that the victim’s associates were far from helpful. Many had criminal records and were reluctant to cooperate.

McKenna’s son, Michael, said he concluded early on that his father’s killing never would be solved. By putting those concerns aside, he said, it was easier for him to move on with his life.

“I wrote it off a long time ago,” Michael McKenna said. “It was never going to happen.”

*

In the years since the murder, Woods and Amos continued to profit from the clubs, authorities allege, and branched out into the film industry.

“The Takeover” was distributed by Live Entertainment, the movie company run by Jose E. Menendez before his notorious death at the hands of his sons in 1989. The company was among the largest suppliers of direct-to-video titles.

The movie, which Woods backed as executive producer, typified the “erotic thriller” genre that won early success in the direct-to-video market, said Thomas K. Arnold, editor in chief of Video Store magazine.

“Pretty girls and guns. That’s the mantra for these movies,” Arnold said.

The movie sold fewer than 50,000 copies, Arnold said. Woods’ next film, “Flipping,” starred Amos as a tough who passes information about an organized crime syndicate to a Los Angeles police detective.

“Flipping” actually had a small theatrical run. The Times gave it an unfavorable review, saying, “Gangster pictures don’t come any phonier than this misfired attempt.”

Arnold said the independent film business is filled with novice producers like Woods who throw good money at bad ideas.

“He basically bought himself into the movie industry,” Arnold said. “I think a lot of these people are driven by ego.”

Investigators thought so, too. They said they were struck by some of the similarities between the characters portrayed on screen in “The Takeover” and those in real life.

Amos’ attorney, however, dismissed the suggestion that his client’s starring role in the film entails a sort of celluloid confession.

“You can’t say movies portray real life,” said lawyer Michael Molfetta. “Otherwise, Oliver Stone would be in an insane asylum.”

*

In 1997, Morton decided to take a fresh look at three unsolved killings in the 1980s that had suspected links to organized crime. They included the slayings of Jimmy Casino, the founder of the Mustang Club strip bar in Santa Ana, and George Yudzevich, an associate of Casino, and McKenna.

Morton had monitored McKenna while working for the Los Angeles Police Department’s vice squad 20 years earlier. Now, he noticed that Woods had taken over the running of the clubs along with his bodyguard, Amos.

Morton also zeroed in on Sheridan, an ex-con who worked at Woods’ clubs. And then he got his big break. Through a Ventura County sheriff’s detective, Morton learned that Sheridan wanted to talk. He confessed in January, admitting that he killed McKenna.

Shortly after the slaying, Sheridan went to prison for drug trafficking. After his release, he learned that Woods and Amos were running the clubs. They hired Sheridan as a $5-per-hour security guard.

“Mac goes down and everybody hits the lottery,” Sheridan said. “I go to prison, I get out and everybody is making money except me.”

That made it easy for Sheridan to decide what to do this year. He worked for 10 months as an informant for Orange County detectives, recording conversations about the killing with Amos and Woods.

On Thursday, investigators arrested Amos. During a meeting with his attorneys and investigators, Amos learned for the first time about the evidence Sheridan had built against him. Like Sheridan, he agreed to turn against Woods, prosecutors revealed Monday.

On Friday, Judge Steven Perk ordered both Amos and Sheridan, who appeared at a separate hearing, to be held without bail pending Nov. 17 court appearances. Woods is scheduled to appear in court today.

Prosecutors said they made no promises to Sheridan or Amos in exchange for their cooperation, but told them such cooperation might net them sentences in the range of 15 years. Woods will get no such deal.

“I wanted everyone involved,” Morton said. “Especially the former cop who we believe was behind this and orchestrated it. There are many people we talked to who thought he got away with it because he was an ex-cop.”

*

Times staff writers James Bates and correspondent Louise Roug contributed to this story.