wife) Barbara Lee "Butterfly" Easton Richardson (October 15, 1958 - July 1, 1981) (Lind's girlfriend) Ron Launius Ronald Lee Launius was a United States Air Force veteran of the Vietnam era, who had been dishonorably discharged and convicted of smuggling heroin from Vietnam back to the United States in the coffins of American service members. Reportedly, at the time of his death, police investigators in California, largely in the Sacramento area, had 27 open homicide cases they believed were perpetrated by Launius. In May 1974, he was arrested for and charged with the 1973 murder of a reputed police drug informant who had been killed over a botched drug deal. After a key witness for the prosecution died in an unrelated police shootout, the murder charges against Launius were dropped. That year, however, Launius was convicted of smuggling heroin and cocaine across the US/Mexico border and eventually served three years of an eight-year sentence in a federal prison. A California police officer described the blond, bearded Launius as "one of the coldest people I ever met". Another officer commented, upon hearing of Launius' death, "I suppose they won't need many pall bearers". When asked to elaborate, the policeman explained: "A trash can only has two handles". Launius was known for remaining composed under pressure. His associate, David Lind, once said of him: "You could put a gun to his head and his pulse would never break 70". Launius' brazen and fearless nature led both to his dominance in the drug trade as well as his demise, stemming from the events leading up to his death in the Wonderland Murders. Launius and Susan Murphy, were married in Carson City, Nevada on April 16, 1971. Billy DeVerell William Raymond DeVerell was Launius' right-hand man and a voice of reason. David Lind characterized him as an otherwise decent individual who had been lured into the drug world because of the easy money and indicated that DeVerell experienced periods of self-loathing for his actions, during which he expressed a desire to stop dealing and using illegal drugs. DeVerell was an overhead crane operator – and heroin user – who had been arrested 13 times in relation to his addiction, which is part of the reason why he stayed in the gang. The autopsy performed after his murder identified numerous injection scars on his forearms, in addition to hyperplasia of the lymph nodes – a