1 Murder Suspect to Testify Against Other

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

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

Authorities allege that Woods wanted Horace “Big Mac” McKenna 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 ambush slaying of McKenna went unsolved for more than a decade until last year, when the admitted 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.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bruce Moore declined to comment.

In addition to Amos and Sheridan’s testimony, prosecutors are expected to introduce a transcript of a secretly recorded conversation in October at which the two men 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 Woods, according to the transcript.

“Yes, Dave,” Woods replied.

A few hours earlier, investigators with the district attorney’s organized-crime unit had arrested Amos and asked him to cooperate. Amos later 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, including Bare Elegance and the New Jet Strip.

McKenna, a 6-foot-6-inch bodybuilder, was forced out of the CHP in the 1970s, and later spent four years in federal prison after being convicted of passing counterfeit money.

He was sent back to prison a few years later for a parole violation after getting into a fight with an off-duty police officer, according to court records.

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

McKenna died in a hail of machine-gun fire on March 9, 1989, as he sat in a chauffeured limousine outside that estate.