Bill Newton’s gruesome murder in 1990 rattled West Hollywood. For the next 30 years, Newton remained one of L.A.'s many unavenged souls. But now, police say a team of amateur internet sleuths has helped crack the case.
A true story of love, deceit, denial and, ultimately survival. The hit L.A. Times podcast is now a Bravo TV show.Newton had a “sort of Hollywood, blue-eyed, blond-haired, boy-next-door” appeal that people adored, said Marc Rabins, Newton’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. “He was devastatingly handsome in my eyes, and in a lot of people’s eyes.”We’re offering L.A. Times subscribers special access to our best journalism. Thank you for your support.
Rabins and Newton were together on and off for the next few years. Rabins produced gay porn videos, and Newton started working with him. The pair also partied hard and did methamphetamine on the weekends, Rabins said, and he often worried that they did too much. Two days later, Newton’s head was found in a dumpster in an alley off Santa Monica Boulevard, not far from La Brea Avenue, by a transient digging in the trash.Retired LAPD Det. Wendi Berndt, who was assigned the case, still remembers that day as hot and humid, the heat “just packing down” on the taped-off crime scene. The sun was shining “very, very bright” — including on Newton’s handsome face and bright blue eyes, which stared back at her from the dumpster.
“I needed something that was personal,” Mason said. “I wanted to pay homage to the guys that I grew up seeing, who were these beautiful, real people.” Materials from cold LAPD homicide cases are usually contained in a single three-ring binder, 3½ inches thick. But the materials about Newton’s murder — much of it compiled by Berndt — filled six, each crammed with meticulous notes, theories, interview transcripts and photographs.But they’d never identified a real suspect.
When Mason put out her own request for tips, one of the people she heard from was Williams, the man who, like Newton, was from Eau Claire, Wis. He said he might be able to fill in gaps in Newton’s life story, possibly by explaining what it was like growing up in their hometown.The team of sleuths had formed.In December 2021, Williams and his husband were living in Sherman Oaks. Their daughter had gone off to college. Williams said he “wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Paskay, who has since died, had operated a skate shop in West Hollywood but also dabbled as a private investigator and had devoted a large amount of time trying to solve Newton’s murder — including by working closely with Berndt, feeding the detective tips about people in Newton’s orbit.
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