On Oct. 29, 1990, the severed head and feet of 25-year-old gay porn actor Billy London, aka William “Bill” Newton, were found inside a Hollywood dumpster. The gruesome cold case has haunted West Hollywood for more than 32 years. It was the gay community’s version of the Black Dahlia murder. But it seems that a group of amateur sleuths has helped solve the case, according to the Los Angeles Times. Photos: ONE Archives and Rachel Mason.
On Oct. 29, 1990, the severed head and feet of 25-year-old gay porn actor Billy London, aka William “Bill” Newton, were found inside a Hollywood dumpster.
The gruesome cold case has haunted West Hollywood for more than 32 years. It was the gay community’s version of the Black Dahlia murder.
But it seems that a group of amateur sleuths has helped solve the case, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Billy London
One person who is searching for answers is Rachel Mason, who directed the documentary “Circus of Books,” and is working on a documentary on Newton’s murder.
“Billy reminds me of all the young men I got to know that worked at my parents’ store, but I had never heard of anything so brutal happening in the community, which had already suffered so much death due to the AIDS crisis,” Mason told the WeHo Times in 2021. “His murder just hit me very hard, and I wanted to commit to helping the effort to solve this case.”
Mason worked with Detective John Lamberti, of the Los Angeles Police Department, and amateur sleuth Clark Williams to solve the cold case.
The murder case was unsolved until the LAPD said earlier this month that Daralyn Madden, 53, had confessed to the killing, the LA Times reports.
Madden has been serving a life sentence in Oklahoma since 2008 for murdering two other men.
Madden, a former skinhead, now identifies as a Jewish woman, the newspaper said.
The break in the case
Williams made the break in the case, Lamberti said.
Williams told the Times he was drawn to the case because he shared similarities with Newton: Both men are gay. They were born on the same week in 1965, and they grew up in northern Wisconsin before moving to larger cities.
During his research in early 2022, Williams discovered that Madden had previously claimed to have killed a man in LA when she was a self-proclaimed white supremacist and skinhead who led a second-life as a gay porn actor named Billy Houston in the early 1990s.
Williams then contacted Lamberti
In 2008, Madden pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and murder of Steven Domer, a gay man, and her own accomplice in the crime, Bradley Qualls, in Oklahoma City.
Madden told police she and Qualls wanted to kill a gay man as part of an initiation into the Chaos Squad Skinheads gang, luring Domer to a secluded area before kidnapping him, beating him, and strangling him with his own coat hanger, according to published reports.
Police said Madden later shot and killed Qualls, fleeing the scene before police arrested her.
The confession
In a recorded confession last year with LAPD, Madden said she abducted Newton from Santa Monica Boulevard after she and her skinhead friends saw Newton walking along the street and “basically targeted him for robbery,” the Times reported.
Madden said she approached Newton and put her arm calmly around his shoulder and told him that they were going to rob him and “probably beat the crap out of him,” and that he was going to go with them without making a scene, according to the Times.
Madden said she couldn’t remember where they had taken Newton, but she strangled him to death, which matched the coroner’s findings.
Madden thought Newton was high at the time, which also matched the coroner’s findings that Newton had methamphetamine in his system.
Madden’s description of the timing and location of the attack also matched other witness statements about Newton leaving the nightclub Rage.
Madden insisted she didn’t dismember Newton’s body; however, she knows who did but refuses to “snitch,” the Times reported.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s office has said it will not file charges against Madden, citing a lack of evidence beyond the confession, too many unanswered questions remain, and prosecutors would have a difficult time proving Madden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt after 30 years.
LAPD said it believes Newton’s killer has been discovered, and it has officially closed its investigation in consultation with Newton’s family.
On social media, Mason has said her upcoming documentary on Newton will address many unanswered questions such as who knew what and when as well as what happened to Newton’s body.
