Bill Newton's "handsome face and bright blue eyes ... stared back at her from the dumpster," recalls since-retired LAPD Det. Wendi Berndt. The year was 1990, and Newton's head was in the Los Angeles dumpster, as were his feet—and nothing else. The investigation was exhaustive, but the LAPD was never able to land on a suspect in the 25-year-old gay porn actor's murder. But as Kevin Rector writes for the Los Angeles Times, a motley crew of sleuths—a documentary maker, a pair of podcast hosts, an LAPD detective—has just managed to finally identify his killer. But it was Clark Williams, "a stay-at-home dad turned empty-nester," who landed on a name. He came across the case on Facebook in December 2021 and thought to research a local sleuth (now deceased) who had worked on the case at the time and was so helpful it actually made police a little suspicious of him.
Williams discovered he had been a gay porn producer, researched the people he worked with, and found Billy Houston. That name led him to an article from 2007 or 2008 about Darrell Lynn Madden, who went by the stage name Billy Houston and had killed a gay man in Oklahoma. He learned Madden had been interviewed for a book, ordered it, and discovered Madden had told the author he had killed in LA, too. Williams took his findings to the LAPD detective, who discovered the porn company Madden worked for had a building along the alley where Newton's head and feet were found. On Jan. 4, the detective interviewed Madden—who now identifies as a transgender woman and Orthodox Jew—in prison and secured a confession to the murder. Charges won't be filed—Madden "is already set to die in an Oklahoma prison," notes Rector—but the case is now closed. Read the full story. (Or read other longform stories.)
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