Tarzana : Suspect Arrested in Mafia Sting Released

A Valley man acquitted in 1991 of four brutal killings in Laurel Canyon walked out of prison again this week. Eddie Nash was released after the district attorney’s office declined to charge him following his arrest in a federal operation against the Russian Armenian Mafia, authorities said Thursday.

Nash was arrested Tuesday when Los Angeles police officers served a federal search warrant on his Tarzana home and found a substance that tested as crystal methamphetamine, LAPD Capt. Rodger K. Coombs said.

The alleged “godfather” of the Russian Armenian Mafia had mentioned Nash as a drug dealer on a tapped phone conversation, according to a federal affidavit.

But a more sophisticated test in the LAPD crime lab Wednesday showed the substance was not crystal methamphetamine, Coombs said, and the district attorney’s office declined to file charges against Nash, who is in his mid-60s.

“That’s why those tests aren’t admissible in court,” Coombs said, referring to field tests. “You always hate to arrest somebody and find that what you thought you had you didn’t have.”

Nash was acquitted four years ago of the notorious 1981 “Laurel Canyon murders,” in which four people were bludgeoned to death in a reputed drug den just a few blocks from a house owned by then-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown. Pornographic movie star John C. Holmes was also acquitted of the killings.