6200 Carbon Canyon Road: Big Mac and Me

By Terri Lenee Peake

Terri was engaged to a notorious strip club owner known as 'Big Mac' McKenna for seven years. He was gunned down in his limousine in his driveway at 6200 Carbon Canyon Road. He took twenty- one bullets in the chest. By sheer luck Terri had escaped being in the limousine with him by leaving Mac three months earlier. She was rocked by the murder and frightened by the prospect of who could have done it.

"I usually drove to check the mailbox, which was down by the road at the end of a mile-long winding driveway, but it was a beautiful southern California summer day in August 1987, sunny and inviting outside. I needed the fresh air, and it was a chance to enjoy some rare time alone in a turbulent life that seemed at a turning point. I must have anticipated that something important would be waiting for me in the mail. I opened the letter addressed to me, Terri Lenée Peake, from Penthouse magazine and couldn’t believe my eyes—there with the letter was a gold Penthouse key necklace for me and a note saying “Congratulations, you are October 1987 Penthouse centerfold.” That moment I went from nobody to suddenly somebody and things were about to take a drastic turn. I was living in an increasingly abusive relationship with Horace "Big Mac" McKenna, a six-foot-six, black bodybuilder, ex-cop, and notorious gangster who co-owned a string of strip clubs. He had moved me into his lavish forty-acre ranch at 6200 Carbon Canyon Road in Brea, an address that would later become infamous as a murder scene. For now, it was where Mac kept his Arabian horses, his pet tiger and jaguar, four attack dobermans, his spider monkeys that he dressed in tuxedos, his collection of lethal snakes—and me."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terri Lenee Peake
• Release date: Nov 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005639631

Terri Lenee Peake

Born in San Diego 1962

Book preview

6200 Carbon Canyon Road – Big Mac and Me

Terri Lenee Peake

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 Terri Lenee Peake

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Prologue:

Chapter 1: Red Letter Day

Chapter 2: Born To Be Wild

Chapter 3: Welcome To Hollywood

Chapter 4: Dream A Little Dream Of Me

Chapter 5: A Gangster and A Gentleman

Chapter 6: Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch

Chapter 7: If I Said You Have A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?

Chapter 8: Love Is Just A Four Letter Word

Chapter 9: Slip Slidin’ Away

Chapter 10: You Can’t Go Home Again

Chapter 11: Postcards From The Edge

Chapter 12: Two Tickets To Paradise

Chapter 13: Dial M For Murder

Chapter 14: Is There A Doctor In The House

Chapter 15: Hope For The Hopeless

About the Author

Prologue

Most of us are told we can be anything we want to be when we grow up; a fireman, a teacher, Miss America, or even the president. Then we are told we can have a nice house with beautiful flowers and a white picket fence and live happily ever after. Then we find out that’s just not true... Bang. Bang. Bang.

Chapter 1

*Red Letter Day*

I usually drove to check the mailbox, which was down by the road at the end of a mile-long winding driveway, but it was a beautiful Southern California summer day in August 1987, sunny and inviting outside. I needed the exercise, and it was a chance to enjoy some rare time alone in a turbulent life that seemed at a turning point. I was anticipating my acceptance letter from Penthouse magazine that morning and the anticipation had me on cloud nine. I couldn’t wait to see what would be waiting for me in the mail.

I was living in an increasingly abusive relationship with Horace Big Mac McKenna, a six-foot-six, gorgeous, creole bodybuilder and notorious gangster who co-owned a string of strip clubs, including the Jet Strip near Los Angeles Airport where I danced. After divorcing his wife, he had moved me into his lavish forty-acre ranch at 6200 Carbon Canyon Road-in Brea, an address that would later become infamous as a murder scene. For now, it was where Mac kept his Arabian horses, his pet tiger and jaguar, four attack Dobermans, his spider monkeys that he dressed in tuxedos, his collection of lethal snakes and me.

As I began my walk to the mailbox from the large two-story, white Spanish-style house, I passed the six-car garage where we housed the Bengal tiger I had named Sheba and our baby black jaguar who I’d had the privilege of naming Sinbad. I bottle-fed him, and he would follow me around the estate nipping at my heels; oh, he was so cute until his nipping got a lot stronger and he almost broke my skin. It was time to split the garage into sections and time for my little Sinbad to be out of the bed.

We learned very quickly that unlike the tiger, Sinbad could climb so we had to cover the top of his cage. As Sheba and Sinbad grew larger, they loudly used the support columns for scratching posts. Their noises scared me at night and for that reason I never stayed home at the ranch by myself. I went into town with Macand I would have been in the car that night no doubt about it.

I made a mistake one morning going by the cages in shorts-that was a big no-no. Mac’s bodyguards and others would tease and play with the big cats by sticking their shoes at the edge of the bottom of the cage; the animals would bat at any feet that came too close. I had always been told by Mac to wear jeans so if they did reach out to try and snag me, Sheba and Sinbad would catch only my clothing. Well, when Sinbad pawed at me, he caught skin and it must have felt like butter to him. I couldn’t pull away or move, or my flesh would most certainly be ripped open, so I screamed, and Sinbad slowly released his claw. He knew it was an accident and began making sorrowful noises, bless his heart. He released his claws and they retracted. I had three deep puncture wounds from the three claws, and they bruised from the inside out.

Mac saw what happened, scolded me for having shorts on, and then said to me, ‘You can’t go to the doctor, you know. I asked him why and he said they weren’t registered and would be taken away. I collapsed at that point from the damage to the muscle on the inside of my thigh and I never said anything about it, till now.

There were big blue barrels of water in the garage and Mac kept a bunch of chickens around that he’d throw in there for the big cats. You’d hear them playing with the chickens and batting them around. And then, all of a sudden, you’d hear ‘crunch’ like they were eating a biscuit.

Looking down the hill from the house, you’d see the stables, elaborate aluminum-sided quarters for the dozen or so expensive Arabian horses that Mac bred and my $400 quarter horse. There was a large ring to take the horses out to exercise, and a swing where we could sit to enjoy the view.

Mac made me exercise the horses and ride every day, and he talked about having our wedding on horseback. Mac was talking more and more about marriage. When we had first started getting serious three years earlier, Mac gave me a one-carat diamond engagement ring, but he was still married and I never thought it would come to fruition. You know what they say about how the man never leaves the wife for the mistress. I felt pretty safe, as long as he was still with the wife. But this time he actually left the wife. I never thought that would happen, and I never expected it.

Once Mac officially got divorced and moved me to the ranch, I worried that there was no escape, and that I would be his permanently. I saw how he had treated his wife, and I didn’t want to be stuck like she had been. He’d roughed me up on several occasions when I’d displeased him and I’d left him because of it, but he always came and got me back.

Now there were the threats, like, If you ever try leaving me again, I’ll bury you in the backyard, and nobody will ever find you. He almost always had his bodyguards with me, so I couldn’t just leave. I felt pretty trapped, and pretty much a prisoner.

I often wondered how I’d gotten myself in so deep, but looking back there was a clear pattern. I had gone to Mac from an equally abusive live-in relationship with a kinky Los Angeles newscaster. The partying and cocaine were constant and were wearing me out. Maybe these choices could be explained by the fact that I didn’t have any role models I could turn to for advice from a female perspective. All I had was competition everywhere I looked, in the club, out modeling, at movie shoots.

My mother suffered severe physical and mental illness, and from childhood I took care of her more than she took care of me. We moved back and forth between San Diego, where I was born, and my grandparents’ place in Arizona after my parents split. I looked after my two brothers. There was a move to Colorado planned, only to find out that the man my mother was to marry had ditched her before we arrived. I was finally sent to live with my father in Washington State for a couple of years, but at fifteen my mother called for me to take care of her and I dutifully went back to San Diego.

Mom’s life was in shambles, and soon so was mine. She set me up with boys in their twenties, a continuation of a sexual initiation that had started when I was twelve and charged one of them rent to live with us. My only salvation was Crawford High School, where I got good grades and became involved in drama and theater as an escape. I was a natural for the stage.

In high school I could be anybody. I was a straight A student, and my teachers looked out for me; they knew I had a bad home life. At school I could blend in and be just like all the other students. I was in advanced classes and did very well, graduating ahead of my class. I lived for the drama productions. I did everything to stay at school as much of the day as I possibly could because I didn’t want to be at home.

I would come home and there wouldn’t be any food to eat. My little brother and I were always hungry, lived in horrible conditions, and my mother was constantly trying to commit suicide. I never knew how I was going to find her. I’d come home from school and my mother would have cut herself or she’d be high on pills. She was always having seizures and I’d have to call the ambulance.

When I’d finally had enough of the craziness at home and ran away, school counselors got me into good foster care, and I didn’t have much involvement with my mother after that.

She committed suicide when I was twenty-one, not too long after I’d started dancing in Mac’s club. I always felt guilty about my mom and that was still weighing on me six years later. If I had only done more; if I hadn’t left her. But at the same time, I kind of expected it, and I was kind of relieved in a way, as hard as that sounds. She had been threatening to do it my whole life, so when it was finally over it was like, Oh, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. Having that threat always hanging over me is what made me suffer.

Mac’s winding, hilly driveway was like barren scrubland during wildfire season, and all the way down, I had to watch out for rattlesnakes. The only color came from pretty wildflowers Mac had planted along the way.

I walked past the ghost town Mac was building with its authentic Western façade, a working saloon and a boot hill. I wondered if I’d be the first resident. Down from the main house, there was the snake house he had built. One of his favorite snakes had frozen to death in the evening cold, so he built the rest of them their own little house with elaborate heaters and warmers. He was breeding rabbits just to feed the snakes.

One night I came home late-I was never supposed to get home after Macand he choked me because I hadn’t been there in time to turn on the lights and warmers in that snake house. It was terrifying; he was six-feet-six, more than 300 pounds, and I was five-feet-one and weighed next to nothing.

He came from around the corner and he grabbed me by my throat and choked me, and I passed out right there. When I came to, I was having a little seizure. He had a clock in his hand and threw it at me and it hit me in my chest as he told me about the time.

He said, Now I want you to go down there to that snake house and turn that snake house light on. He held a shotgun on me out the bedroom window while I went down there in the dark, scared half to death.

Keep in mind that this is written in hindsight, and back then my life didn’t always seem as horrid as it looks now. It was exciting to live in the fast lane, and there were the drugs and heavy partying to blur away a lot of the pain. My relationship with Mac was complicated and conflicted. Despite the violence, his obsessive need to control me, and the mental terror, there was an undeniable connection between us, and at times a real sweetness. To this day, I consider Mac the love of my life.

If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I got off on the danger. At one point, I was juggling Mac, the LA newscaster, and a Compton cop. It was dangerous, but exciting, and a part of me fed on that. After where I’d come from, it was addicting to teeter on the edge, to see how far over I could go, and to feel like I was cheating death. I misjudged many times and was beaten up by my mistakes, but in my view it just made me better at looking out for the pitfalls. The men thought they were using me, but in the end, I always won their hearts.

My bottom line with Mac was that I didn’t want to be trapped there with him. I really felt like if I married this guy, I would be doomed. Just doomed. Then he would own me. He already owned me, but marriage would make it legal. Thank God I left. I always felt, honest to God, that it saved my life because if I had stayed, I would have been in that limousine the night a hail of bullets ended it for Mac.

More and more I knew that a life of fear, violence, and cocaine wasn’t what I wanted for myself, and the success I was having professionally, the result of careful calculation, gave me hope of a way out.

I was a headline dancer at one of Mac’s clubs, the Jet Strip, and regularly made $500 or more a night. I had learned how to dance and put on a show in high school and always felt like I was born to be a performer. The customers liked me because I was down-to-earth, talked easily to everybody, and had a girl next door look. I was comfortable with myself and that made it easy for others to be comfortable around me. I never let them see the rage beneath the innocence and sweet nature. Being Mac’s girl, I got a lot of deference as the queen bee of the club, so I was able to keep it reasonably classy and enforce my strict policy with customers: You can look, but you can’t touch.

But I hadn’t left college and a brief marriage in San Diego to come to LA to be a stripper. My dream was to move into the entertainment mainstream, and I was making progress with jobs outside the club. I was doing more traditional modeling, had a few small spots in film and TV, and had test shoots for centerfolds in both Playboy and Penthouse. Playboy didn’t accept me for a centerfold, but they had just started the Playboy Channel and needed content, so they offered me work in the videos that were being shot. It wasn’t pornography or anything like that; I just got naked and acted sexy.

Penthouse loved my test pictures and thought they were beautiful, gorgeous, but they thought my 34D breasts were a little saggy. Cocaine makes you lose muscle and get skinny; it makes your boobs start to sink in. They wanted to know if I would be willing to get implants if they advanced me the money, $5,000.

I didn’t know anything about implants, but they assured me there were new saline implants on the market that were safe and didn’t have the problems of the old silicone implants.

They said, They make your breasts look natural, just fill them out a little bit.

I said, Well sure, if they’re going to advance me the money. So, I went to a plastic surgeon I knew in Beverly Hills and got the implants in. It was one of those little decisions you don’t give much thought to in the headiness of the time that comes back to haunt you in a major way later.

About a month later, my new 34DDs and I did a shoot in Laredo, Mexico, on an uninhabited island off the Sea of Cortez on the Gulf of Mexico. We had to take a little fishing boat out there and we shot for five days. It was in December 1985 when we shot, and nearly two years later I still hadn’t heard if or when my centerfold would actually come out.

I was becoming impatient because it was my chance to change my life, my way out. I was thinking that finally I was going to get the career I always wanted and had come to LA for. I was going to be able to work in television and movies and be an actress. It had been done before by former centerfolds, and so I knew it was possible.

And if I was in the spotlight like that, Mac couldn’t just snatch me back. If a dancer disappeared into a hole in the backyard, it would be no big deal. If a centerfold, who is in the public eye disappeared, it would be much more obvious, and I didn’t think he would take that chance. Too many people would be aware of who I was and it would be almost like kidnapping a cop or something.

At the bottom of the driveway, there was a stucco-design entrance with the address in big numbers on the left-6200 Carbon Canyon Road. Between the stucco pillars were big wrought iron gates with a horse design on them. It said Tara, reflecting Mac’s fascination with Gone with the Wind". There were neighbors down the old winding road, but you couldn’t really see them.

The gates were open during the day, and the mailbox sat at the roadside. As soon as I opened it, I saw the letter from Penthouse. I was jumping up and down before I finished reading the first sentence, which said, Dear Terri: Congratulations on being named Penthouse Pet of the Month for October 1987. Less than two months away! Enclosed was the little gold key that they give to Penthouse Pets, attached to a gold chain. I put it on right away, still hopping up and down and doing a little dance.

All of the clichés that describe pure joy applied. I was on cloud nine, on top of the world. It was like I won the lottery. I thought I had made it. I grew up poor, living on welfare. I thought, Here I am this little girl who came from nothing and now I feel like a movie star, like Marilyn Monroe. It was also the culmination of a lot of cold calculation in my determination to get to the top-to be the girl that every woman envied and every man wanted.

The short letter was signed by Michael S. Brown, the West Coast promotions manager for Penthouse, and he invited me to meet with him about working with Penthouse on a promotional basis. I thought, this is it. I knew it was going to take a little more work, but I believed that having Penthouse behind me, I would be able to get the stardom I had always dreamed of.

With this letter, my goals were officially within reach. Up until that point, it was always, It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be. Now it was. I thought the phone would start ringing off the hook and I’d be getting offers left and right for movies and television and all kinds of good things. Instead of stripping for $500 a night, I’d get $500 just to sign my name on a magazine centerfold.

The first thing I wanted to do was scream it from the rooftops, but I was by myself out there on that deserted driveway. We didn’t even have cell phones back then. I ran back to the top of the hill as fast as I could so I could start calling people.

Looking back on that day, I understand the old saying about being careful of what you wish for. Sometimes what looks like the beginning of a dream come true, turns out to be the start of the real nightmare.

Chapter 2

*Born To Be Wild*

I’ve told you a little about my rough childhood, but the weird thing that sounds strange to a lot of people is how disconnected I felt from it at the time.

I always felt as a child like I just woke up one day and was there in