‘89 Killing Suspect Cuts Deal

One of the accused masterminds in the 1989 machine-gun slaying of a flamboyant Los Angeles strip-club owner has cut a deal with prosecutors in which he will become a star prosecution witness in a trial set to start next week.

British immigrant David Amos will receive a reduced sentence for his testimony against Michael Woods, the man police say ordered the club owner’s killing.

Authorities allege that Woods wanted Horace “Big Mac” McKenna of Brea dead so he could take over his Los Angeles County strip-club empire. Woods allegedly gave Amos the money to hire a hit man. After the slaying, Woods became the clubs’ majority owner, with Amos, his former bodyguard, holding a stake, according to court documents.

The 1989 ambush slaying of McKenna outside his Brea estate went unsolved until last year when the triggerman confessed and agreed to help implicate Amos and Woods.

Woods, Amos and confessed killer John Patrick Sheridan have been in jail without bail since their arrests in October.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the case. But Woods’ attorney, Vicki Podberesky, said that in exchange for his testimony, Amos will receive a sentence of 20 years, making him eligible for parole within 10 years.

With the deal, prosecutors will present testimony from two of the three men accused in McKenna’s murder, both saying that Woods planned the killing. Still, Podberesky said Amos will not make a believable witness.

“We’re going to prove he’s not a credible witness,” she said. “The only people culpable for this murder are teaming up against my client.”

In addition to Amos’ and Sheridan’s testimony, prosecutors are expected to introduce a transcript of a secretly recorded lunch conversation in October during which Amos and Woods discussed the killing.

“If I take the fall for you, what are you going to do? . . . Are you going to look after my family?” Amos asked, according to a transcript of the conversation.

“Yes, Dave,” Woods replied.

A few hours before the conversation, investigators with the district attorney’s office had arrested Amos and asked him to cooperate. Amos declared he would not testify at Woods’ trial but recently agreed to cooperate, attorneys said.

Woods and McKenna worked together as California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers in Los Angeles before becoming business associates in several nude clubs around Southern California.

McKenna, a 6-foot-6 bodybuilder, was forced out of the CHP in the 1970s and spent four years in federal prison for passing counterfeit money. He was sent back to prison on a parole violation.

Despite his troubles, McKenna turned the strip clubs’ profits into a lavish lifestyle that included a 40-acre hilltop estate, where he housed wild animals.

He died in a hail of machine-gun fire on March 9, 1989, as he sat in a limousine outside his home.