BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB CASE GOING BACK TO COURT.

Byline: Jim Tranquada Special to the Daily News

Nine years to the day since he was convicted of murdering Beverly Hills con man Ron Levin, Billionaire Boys Club leader Joe Hunt will walk into court Monday asking for a new trial and the chance to prove Levin is still alive.

Hunt, who was once denounced by a prosecutor as a ``Manson for the '80s,'' insists he can prove he was wrongly convicted.

``There's no question that if I was given a new trial, I would be acquitted,'' Hunt said by telephone last week from the Los Angeles County Jail.

``But it's pretty clear the result of this hearing will be unrelated to the reality of this case,'' he said. ``I'm not expecting to get justice.''

Prosecutors say there is absolutely no doubt that Hunt, now 36, got justice in 1987 - when he was convicted of murdering Levin, whose body was never found, and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

But they're taking Monday's hearing seriously.

Just winning an appellate court's agreement that he had a right to the hearing was a major legal victory for Hunt, who also beat a separate murder charge in San Mateo after jurors in that case voted 8-4 in favor of acquittal.

``It's our position that when it comes to being in court, no one should be underestimated,'' said Deputy District Attorney Andrew McMullen, one of two prosecutors handling the case.

``His attorneys have had 2-1/2 years since the appellate ruling was handed down, and they spent 5-1/2 years preparing that case,'' McMullen said. ``I think he's had lots of time.''

Hunt has been denied permission to act as his own attorney, but he has been deeply involved in preparing for Monday's hearing. And he's turned into a pretty good jailhouse lawyer.

Acting as his own attorney in his 1992 trial for the murder of wealthy Northern California businessman Hedayat Eslaminia, he persuaded eight jurors to vote for acquittal - which led to a mistrial and the dropping of all charges against him.

The legal victory astonished prosecutors and legal observers, who found it hard to believe that a college dropout with no legal training could become the first defendant in state history to successfully defend himself in a death-penalty case - with San Mateo County taxpayers footing the $3 million bill for his defense.

Hunt prevailed again one year later in his appeal on the Levin case, when a state appellate court panel ruled unanimously that he was entitled to a hearing on new evidence to determine whether he should be granted a new trial.

To bolster his claims about the significance of the new evidence, Hunt submitted declarations from six of eight jurors who voted for acquittal in the Eslaminia trial testifying to the effectiveness of the evidence - most of it testimony the jury in the Levin trial never heard.

But Monday's proceeding before Superior Court Judge Stephen Czuleger will be an evidentiary hearing, not a trial, and Czuleger has denied Hunt the right to defend himself.

And the former BBC leader complains bitterly that his attorneys had not been given adequate time or resources to track down witnesses, review tens of thousands of pages of testimony and prepare his case.

Hunt's bid for a new trial is the latest twist in a long, convoluted case some see as emblematic of an era of greed and amorality - a case whose volatile mix of murder, money and high society that has spawned two books and a television movie.

Once again, the heart of Hunt's case will be the whereabouts of Levin, who disappeared in June 1984 and whose body has never been found. Among the witnesses Hunt intends to call are several people who came forward after the original trial claiming to have seen Levin after he disappeared.

And once again, Hunt is portraying himself as the underdog - just as he did in interviews prior to the Eslaminia murder trial, when he called himself ``outnumbered and outgunned . . . frankly, I'm scared.''

It was a confident and charismatic Hunt who, despite a childhood spent shopping in thrift stores, recruited young men from some of Los Angeles' most prominent families for the BBC, a social and business group that used members' wealth to finance a luxurious lifestyle and a series of get-rich-quick schemes that quickly soured.

Searching for a way to make up for the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars and save the club - which he admitted in his 1992 trial was ``a knot of lies . . . honeycombed with fraud'' - Hunt became involved with Levin, who conned him with a phony commodities scam Hunt believed would prove the BBC's financial salvation.

On June 6, 1984, after Hunt discovered he had been duped, Levin disappeared from his Beverly Hills duplex.

Five months later, Hunt's chief lieutenant in the BBC, Dean Karny, went to the police and agreed to testify against Hunt in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

A Santa Monica jury convicted Hunt of murdering Levin, based largely on the strength of Karny's detailed testimony and seven pages of notes in Hunt's handwriting - found in Levin's apartment - that included a ``to do'' list with such items as, ``Tape mouth, Close blinds, Handcuff - put gloves on . . . kill dog .''

Hunt's habeas corpus petition seeking a new trial was based in large part on new evidence uncovered during an estimated 9,000 hours of preparation for his 1992 trial for the murder of Eslaminia, who prosecutors argued was the victim of a failed extortion plot concocted by Hunt and his fellow club members Arben Dosti and Reza Eslaminia, the victim's son.

After the appellate court found in November 1993 that Hunt was entitled to a hearing to consider some of the new evidence, Hunt predicted the hearing would last for months as he demolished the case against him.

``This hearing will give the public its first opportunity to see how the misconduct and perjury of prosecutors and detectives assigned to the case distorted the outcome of my first trial,'' he said at the time.

Yet since being transferred from Folsom State Prison to Los Angeles County Jail the following March, Hunt has suffered a series of setbacks.

His attempt to get out on bail failed. He was denied the right to represent himself and cross-examine witnesses as he did so effectively in the Eslaminia murder trial. His efforts to have the start of the hearing postponed to allow for better preparation fell on deaf ears.

Most recently, at a March 29 hearing on a motion from prosecutors, Deputy District Attorney Imogene Katayama persuaded Czuleger to limit the number of evidentiary issues to be considered at the hearing.

Instead of the 28 different issues identified by the appellate court, Czuleger will hear witnesses testify on just seven, a ruling that slashed Hunt's witness list from 98 individuals to less than a dozen.

The remaining issues will likely be briefed at the end of the hearing, when the judge will issue a ruling on everything.

``The expectation is that that would shorten (the hearing) considerably,'' said McMullen.

Czuleger's decisions was a major disappointment for Hunt.

``This piecemeal adjudication is grossly unfair,'' he complained last week.

Chief among Hunt's remaining witnesses are four people who claim to have seen Levin alive after June 1984 - on a Greek island, getting into a Mercedes-Benz on San Vincente Drive, and standing in line for a movie in Westwood.

Hunt also is expected to call Levin's neighbor, Karen Sue Marmor, to testify that she remembers seeing a ``to do'' list that included the phrase ``kill the dog'' on Levin's desk shortly before he disappeared - a list she claims Levin told her was part of a film treatment on which he was working.

Other Hunt witnesses are expected to testify about the failure of his trial attorneys to uncover evidence that could have been used to undermine the credibility of prosecution witnesses, including Karny, the state's star witness.

Still others are expected to testify in support of Hunt's contention that Levin staged his own disappearance - what Hunt has called ``the ultimate con'' - to duck substantial debts and avoid prosecution for his own considerable crimes.

Czuleger's ruling means Hunt won't have the opportunity to call any witnesses to present evidence he claims links Karny to the 1986 murder of a rock band roadie, Richard Mayer, in a Hollywood hotel - evidence he claims prosecutors and police improperly withheld from him.

Among the evidence is a letter in Mayer's handwriting and addressed to Karny which suggests a close relationship between the two and implies that Karny threatened to kill Mayer after confessing to setting up Hunt and other BBC members in the Eslaminia murder.

Police say they are convinced the letter is probably bogus, part of an attempt to frame Karny for Mayer's murder.

Regardless of how Czuleger rules, the case won't end there.

Both have the right to take the case to a higher court, and should Hunt eventually win a new trial, prosecutors could come back with some new evidence of their own: A confession by BBC bodyguard Jim Pittman that he killed Levin at Hunt's behest.

Pittman dropped his repeated denials three years ago and confessed on a tabloid television show that he killed Levin and buried the body in the Soledad Canyon area near Santa Clarita.

Yet repeated efforts to locate Levin's remains, even with Pittman's help, have proved futile.

Regardless of his recent setbacks in court, Hunt's wife, Tammy - a paralegal who volunteered her services after his 1987 conviction and then married him three years ago - is convinced her husband will ultimately prevail.

``The key points will be made,'' she said last week. ``There's just an overwhelming amount of good evidence and facts going our way.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--color) Joe Hunt

Convicted in 1984 murder

(2)Ron Levin

Con man's body never found