SANTA ANA — Investigators have arrested three men in the 1989 machine gun slaying of a former CHP officer-turned-nude club operator.
Among those arrested is a former California Highway Patrol partner of Horace J. McKenna, who died in a hail of machine gun fire while he sat in a limousine outside his 40-acre Brea estate on March 9, 1989.
Detectives declined to comment on the investigation Sunday, but John Patrick Sheridan, former manager of one of McKenna's clubs, told the Los Angeles Times in a jailhouse interview that he told investigators about a year ago he was the gunman. Sheridan said since his confession, he has been working as an informant for the Orange County district attorney.
Sheridan, who claims he was paid $25,000 to kill McKenna, said he wore a wire that recorded conversations with two other defendants, Michael Woods, 58, and David Amos, 41.
Woods was booked into Orange County Jail on Friday. Woods' attorney confirmed his client was arrested in connection with the McKenna killing. Police and Amos' lawyer said he also was taken into custody for investigation murder.
McKenna and Woods were business associates in Southern California strip clubs such as Bare Elegance and New Jet Strip. Woods and Amos are listed in state corporation records as business associates in two Los Angeles clubs.
At the time of McKenna's slaying, his clubs were the subject of a tax fraud investigation by the Los Angeles County district attorney. Early in the shooting case, detectives looked for a link to the fraud case but were unsuccessful.
McKenna's slaying shocked neighbors, some of whom said he was an eccentric but kind man who kept exotic animals including wildcats and an alligator. Others, however, described the 6-foot-6 body builder as intimidating.
McKenna, known as "Big Mac," got into the strip club business after being forced out of the CHP in the 1970s. He was sent to prison twice: Once for four years for passing counterfeit money, and later for a parole violation involving a fight with an off-duty police officer.
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