Witness Blames Victim’s Threats

The star witness in the murder case of Horace “Big Mac” McKenna testified Thursday that the strip-club owner was gunned down in 1989 after allegedly threatening to hurt the daughters of his business partner.

Prosecutors have charged McKenna’s partner, Michael Woods, with ordering the hit on McKenna outside the victim’s Brea estate in an attempt to take over the nude clubs the pair owned.

But David Amos, the government’s key witness, revealed another possible motive as he took the stand in Superior Court on the second day of Woods’ trial in Santa Ana: Woods, a retired CHP officer, was angry about specific threats McKenna had made about assaulting his two college-age daughters.

Amos, Woods’ bodyguard before becoming his business partner after McKenna’s death, said he hired the Uzi-wielding hit man who gunned down McKenna as he arrived at his Brea home. Amos said he was paid $50,000 to arrange the murder.

“We discussed a lot of things,” Amos told Deputy Dist. Atty. Bruce Moore, clarifying the motivations for the crime. “Mostly his daughters.”

Amos and the admitted hit man, John Patrick Sheridan, are cooperating with prosecutors in a case that went without an arrest for more than 10 years before Sheridan surfaced and admitted he had been hired to murder McKenna.

During Amos’ testimony, prosecutors played a tape of Amos and Woods discussing the murders over lunch at Jerry’s Famous Deli on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. The conversation was captured on a hidden recording device Amos wore shortly after his arrest in October.

In one exchange, Amos tells Woods he is worried about Sheridan’s loyalty because the hit man complained he never got all the money he was promised.

“Well, I hate to say this, but you’re the one . . . you told me you would take care of Johnny,” Woods tells Amos.

“I know,” Amos responds. “I thought he forgot about it. I mean, you said you’d do it, and I forgot to give it to him. . . . I mean he can’t prove it’s you.”

“Yeah,” Woods replies.

Woods’ defense attorneys suggest that Amos is the one who wanted McKenna dead.

Amos also flatly rejected suggestions by one of Woods’ lawyers, Vicki Podberesky, that he planned to blackmail and even arrange for Sheridan to kill Woods.

Sheridan “said he could take Mike out real easy,” Amos said. “I put an end to [the idea] right there and then.”