Blanche used her own key to open the front door. Near the bottom of the hill, the coyotes had left a scrap of white cloth with a label that read JOCKEY CLASSIC BRIEF, SIZE 36. Levin was a truly incredible character, Joe said, a professed graduate of Harvard College, number one in his class, with a 186 IQ, whod taken a $200,000 inheritance and run it up to $25 million, and knew everything about everyone in town. Ben, suddenly cautious, had brought along a can of air freshener and this spray-on Band-Aid that he thought would help avoid leaving fingerprints, Dean remembered. They pulled the money right off the table in front of their eyes, Breiling said. Reza returned with these to Los Angeles in his fathers Cadillac. Tall and slender and always expensively dressed, Levin had fine silver hair, an immaculate white beard, a smile that was an affront to some, irresistible to others. You dont have blights. Network News already had arrangements with Merrill Lynch and PaineWebber, Levin said, but needed one other brokerage house for a segment that would be focused on an outside trading adviser, a young man named Joe Hunt. Judd Nelson portrayed Joe Hunt in the 1987 network TV adaptation of his story. Other students remembered him as an A student who read the Congressional Record at lunch. 1,014 talking about this. Within the week, Reza was arrested in San Francisco as he attempted to pick up a passport issued to Christopher Potter. During his junior year, though, Joe lost even his status as a star debater, dismissed from the team by coach Ted Woods for falsifying evidence during a tournament. Joe played the commodities market the same way he played the pinball machines in his favorite dark corner at the Hard Rock Cafe, occasionally reaching a new record total, but more often bashing the machines into tilt. Subscribe to Billionaire Boys Clubwherever you get your podcasts. They traveled only a short distance together, Dean remembered, before Joe noticed that the sounds from the trunk had ceased. Levin was making $10,000 a month from this arrangement, he told Holmes, but he couldnt stop there. One story he told about her involved the time she had taken him to a spiritual medium who stood up shrieking in the middle of a sance, announced that the boy was the antichrist, and fled the room. The beauty of the BBCs corporate structure was that Joe could endow college students with titles like president, executive vice-president, and chairman of the board. . This time, Tom was included. In October 1983, the BBCs core members took up residence at the Wilshire-Manning, a high-rise of luxury condominiums above Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, where their neighbors included Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews, Mr. T, and a young Saudi prince who sent the bellboys scurrying every time he opened his front door, hoping to catch one of the hundred-dollar tips he handed out. After the BBC attorneys failed to obtain a search warrant, Dean recalled, Reza and Steve Lopez broke into the Belmont condo. On her own, Brooke claimed, she won a part on the TV series Diffrent Strokes, but when her father found out, he made a single phone call, and the next day the job was no longer hers. Joe continued to solicit Rons respect. Before they left, Evan remembered, Joe stopped to play back the messages on the twins answering machine. In Los Angeles, he persuaded Lawrence Gamsky to become Ryan Hunt, and later, when asked under oath, Why did you change your name? Joe would answer, I wanted to have the same last name as my father. Dean and Ben were kind of wavering in our faith, Karny said, but Joe would win Dean over once and for all on a ski trip just before Christmas 1982. Dean paid the real estate agent $9,000 cash for six weeks of privacy and caught a noon flight to San Francisco. . He wasambitious and charismaticand also on scholarship, meaning he didn't have the deep-pocketed parents that so many of his classmates had. Ron was really amazed and said that Joe had found a real fish, Dean remembered. Dean Karny, Hunt's best friend who had previously stuck by him when other investors started to drop out, agreed to testify in exchange for full immunityand he also said that Hunt was behind the . An hour later, Joe, Ben, and Jim entered the condominium complex wearing their brown outfits, Dean said; within ten minutes, the three returned with the loaded truck, and the plan proceeded on schedule through the transfer at the U-Haul agency. Karny met Jim first, working security at a party in the Manning. Levin's body was never found, and Hunt maintains that Levin, who was under criminal investigation and out on bail at the time of his disappearance, instead fled the country to escape prosecution. Rons reverse spin was to prepare a three-page treatment as the pilot for a proposed TV series he titled The Reporter. Perhaps the most stunning came on Halloween Day, 1983, when he went to San Juan Capistrano to address the stockholders of an energy company called Cogenco Systems. And the bonds were very strong as long as Joe appeared to have the answers to things, both in terms of philosophies and in terms of coming up with money to keep people happy and activities to keep them busy.. Ron identified himself as a reporter for Network News and brought an attorney who objected to virtually every question his client was asked, on the following grounds: first of all, privacy; second of all, relevancy; third of all, were dealing with freedom of the press herereporters privilege.. Joe thought the best idea was to have a large, weighted truck smash into them on the open highway. Jack Nicholson and Warren Beaty, photgraphed in 1976. After Hunt's conviction, eight witnesses came forward stating that they had seen Ron Levin alive in various locations in 1986 and 1987, including Greece and Los Angeles. He was gaunt, often in a distracted state, borrowing money in amounts he would have scoffed at three months earlier$10,000 from Tom May, $5,000 from Evan Dicker. Nelsonreturned to the story to play Hunt's father in the more recent film, which was announced in 2010and shot in 2015 in New Orleans with Ansel Elgort as Hunt, Taren Egertonas Karny and Kevin Spacey as Ron Levin. He wanted Michael Dows phone number so he could get a million dollars out of him. With just a few thousand in savings, he had earned $35,000 already, Joe said. He seems so believable and exerts such charm that until you start to take the thing apart, he gets a lot of people sympathetic to him., Haggard and homeless, Joe continued to talk in ten figures, but came back to L.A. with four dollars in his pocket. The state attorney generals office has asked for a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. "They cannot charge me for the murder of Ron Levin because they dropped it," Pittman said. "Absolutely 100 Percent Not Guilty": 25 Bizarre Things You Forgot About the O.J. He lasted only six months before resigning to trade on the commodities market. Bond trading was a very special field of endeavor, Joe explained: There are no crop periods or seasonality. Raymond remained best friends, however, with Dave May, one of the six BBC members excluded as untrustworthy from the June 24 meeting. Three prominent investors challenged Hunt, pounding on the table, demanding the truth. Hunt and Pitman's trials for murdering Levin had delayed their trials for murdering Eslaminia, with other pre-trial motions pushing Hunt's Northern California trial to 1992. And so a lot of people became very hostile toward him, and one of the big brokerage houses had decided to squeeze him out., That was not how Tom Utrata, director of the Mercs Compliance Department, remembered it. .. The firms sixty-eight-year-old president, Bruce Swartout, had invited Hunt to discuss a merger of Cogenco with Microgenesis. Twenty-four-year-old Dean Karny, on summer vacation from law school and still wearing the gray business suit he had put on in Los Angeles that morning, climbed into the back of the truck and. He has defused violence and helped start a project at Folsom State Prison to address how trauma in inmates past can lead to violent behavior. How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! As the plan grew more definite, each of them was assigned a list of duties. This article originally appeared in the September 1986 issue of Esquire. Cantor, Fitzgerald even subpoenaed Levin. [7] Pittman, granted release with time served in two murders, died of kidney failure in 1997, age 44. Hunt has long insisted that the list left at Levins duplex was designed to scare him. It looked like Ron had been killed for nothing, Dean said. A homosexual, he traveled with a retinue of young men, but his longtime friends included Muhammad Ali, who often visited the house on Peck Drive with his wife, Veronica, and flew Ron to several of his fights. . Fred Wapner, who adamantly opposed Hunts release on bail and was visibly upset when Judge Laurence Rittenband granted it, said afterward, This is the one person Ive ever prosecuted who actually scares me.. The guest staying in that room, Mr. Levin, had run up a $2,000 bill in just three days, largely by his use of the hotels limousine service. The film starred Judd Nelson as Hunt, Brian McNamara as Dean Karny, and Ron Silver as Ron Levin. "I don't know if anything is going to come of this or not," Lt. Frank Salcido told the Los Angeles Timesof Pittman's purported confession to A Current Affair. They just kind-of know," Pattin, who co-hosts Billionaire Boys Clubwith Timothy Olyphant,told E! You are not interested in weather. The two began to refer to a place they called the Ice House, an armed retreat where the BBC was to rendezvous when things got hot, Joe was building a personal library for Jim, a set of how to books with titles like Hit Man: Technical Manual for Independent Contractors and Black Bag Owners Manual II, which began, This pertains to the personalized killing that in peacetime is called murder.. For the first time, though, the others saw signs of stress in Hunt. Joe kept the master list and told the others he would personally conduct the interrogation. In the late 1970s, Joe Hunt(then known by his real name, Joseph Henry Gamsky) was a student at the exclusive Harvard Schoolin Los Angeles (then all-boys, now it's the co-ed Harvard Westlake). When they arrived, Joe was sitting on the floor in the study, Tom recalled; Dean was in a chair beside him, with Evan standing in the library. Dean Karny is a professional tennis player and the second in command for BBC. One was from the Beverly Hills Police Department. A few years later came Hunt's trial in the 1984 kidnapping and murder ofHedayat Eslaminia in San Mateo, Calif. The judge declared a mistrial,making Hunt reportedly the only person in San Mateo County legal historyto defend himself in a capital murder case and not end up sentenced to death. And Joe did, running the $5.2 million up to more than $13.5 million within six weeks. There was a big hoopla about it, Dean remembered, because we had just lost a great deal of money in our own commodity accounts at almost the same time. It was a virtual replay of Chicago. Blanche, a retired schoolteacher, had been introduced to Ron at a private party where her husband was working as a bartender. By 1984, despite the Billionaire Boys Clubs trappings of success and dreams of its members becoming more prominent than their wealthy parents, the group had lost nearly $1 million in bad investments. Hunt defended himself at trial for a second murder case. He appeared with Dan Aykroyd in Caddyshack II. Joe and Dean drove to Beverly Hills, opened a corporate account, and paid a fee of $5,000 to have the check cashed within five days. As Hunt and Pittman watched Levin die, the blood began to flow, seeping onto the bedcovers. He just had this calm. Reza had told Hunt and Dosti that his father was a former high official in the shah of Irans government, top officer of the Savak. Your source for entertainment news, celebrities, celeb news, and celebrity gossip. Within hours, Jim Pittman was in a holding cell at Manhattans Midtown North precinct, where he was printed, photographed, and booked under the name Ronald Levin. Nothing ever came of it, authorities secure in the knowledge that Joe Hunt was in prison. It was a matter of principle, he explained: I felt very strongly about the reasons why we had started the BBC . Dean signed a six-week lease on the house the next morning and flew north for a rendezvous at the Villa Hotel. Joe was concerned that Ron would think, once they pulled a gun on him . Karny did not see Hunt again until 8:30 the next morning, when Joe walked into Deans bedroom with his hair still wet from the shower, wearing a clean suit and carrying a briefcase that he opened to reveal a $1.5-million check drawn on a Swiss bank account in the name of Ron Levin. Join Facebook to connect with Dean Karny and others you may know. His body would never be found, but a Santa Monica jury convicted Hunt in 1987 of murdering Levin. [It] was labeled At Levins, TO DO. Below were fifteen numbered items, a crude map of mountain roads, and the words Jim Digs Pit, all composed, Zoeller would learn within the next few weeks, by a young guru who taught his disciples that internal guilt was what caused criminals to fail. Jim remembered watching Hunt hand a teller five and six deposit slips at a time: He would tell her, I want to put $400,000 in this account here, BBC Management. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. At the top of the page was a title: At Levins, TO DO. Below was a list of fifteen numbered items: Close Blinds; Scan for Tape Recorder; Tape Mouth; Handcuff . He was portrayed by Taron Egerton. From Beverly Hills, they drove north on the San Diego Freeway, following fire roads into Soledad Canyon, to a spot where Jim had dug a pit earlier that day. He even prepared a prospectus for world domination, describing the inevitable collapse of the global economy as Third World countries defaulted on loans and pulled First World banks under with them. Steve Cooley said that Hunt killed for greed and that his case was one of the highest-profile murder cases handled by the office in the 1980s. The two of them wrapped the body in the comforter before carrying it outside, where the most difficult part of the evening was loading the stiffening corpse into the trunk of Joes car. After Pittman boasted that he had survived eighty-seven consecutive karate tournaments without a loss, Dean introduced him to Joe. Together they wrapped the empty blue trunk in heavy brown paper, addressed it to HEDAYAT ESLAMINIA, 400 DAVEY GLEN ROAD, #4322, BELMONT, CA, and carried it to the parking lot. While Dean and Brooke were at the movies on the night of June 6, Joe said, he had shown up at Levins with two take-out dinners from La Scala. Michele Hanisee, an L.A. County prosecutor and president of the countys Assn. Joseph Hunt made my ministry and work in prison worthwhile, Chaplain Dennis Merino wrote. The proceedings ended with the jury hung ten to two for conviction. In 2018with the support of a Free Joe Hunt campaign started by friends and family onlinehe petitioned then-California Gov. Mr. Eslaminia was dead, Dean told Joe and Ben. The first rule was, Never feel sorry for anything you do, and the second was, Its all right to lie if you know the truth.. In both trials, north and south, Hunt will take the stand as the chief witness for the defense. They were of that belief because Hunt hadbasically said as muchin a meeting at the BBC. Having lost money, he started his own investment fundandwas promptly kicked out of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. After graduation, he enrolled at USC to study accounting, passing the CPA exam when he was only 19, after which he promptly dropped out. Hedayat Eslaminia had fled the country during the Ayatollah Khomeinis revolution with more than $30 million plundered from the national economy, his eldest son said, and had enlarged upon his fortune in the United States by smuggling opium. Hunt faces an uphill battle, despite the criminal justice reform movement sweeping California. Dean Karny is Hunt's best friend and a professional tennis player. After she told Hedayat that Reza was outside, Olga recalled, he became very upset and told me never to allow him in the apartment.. Another mystery. For $5,600 a month, Dosti and Steve Lopez, a new BBC recruit whose main function was the entertainment of wealthy widows and divorces, moved into a two-bedroom suite on the twelfth floor, while Hunt and Karny took a huge three bedroom place on the fifteenth floor, sharing it with Joes new nineteen-year-old girlfriend, Brooke Roberts.
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