"Billionaire Boys Club' figure given new identity in federal program
YaKnow
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/05/26/
NEWS5286.dtl
"Billionaire Boys Club' figure given new identity in federal program
REDWOOD CITY - The confessed killer whose testimony sent two fellow members
of the Billionaire Boys Club to prison for life has emerged from 13 years of
concealment in the federal witness protection program to say he still fears
for his life and wants to stay hidden.
"If my whereabouts and the details of my present life are revealed to
anyone, I feel my life is in danger," the slim, sallow, 39-year-old UCLA law
school graduate who used to be known as Dean Karny said Tuesday.
Karny provided the only direct testimony linking Reza Eslaminia and Arben
"Ben" Dosti to the 1984 kidnap-murder of Eslaminia's father in Belmont. They
were convicted by a San Mateo County jury and sentenced to life in prison
without possibility of parole.
Eslaminia, 37, and Dosti, 38, were freed in the spring of 1998, after their
convictions were reversed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The
court said the jury that convicted them had been tainted by an inadmissible
tape recording that undermined their defense.
A new trial for both men is scheduled to begin Oct. 19 before a San Mateo
County jury in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Carl W. Holm, whom the
defendants are asking for a ruling to pierce the veil of secrecy that cloaks
federally protected witnesses.
Without knowing how Karny has spent the last 13 years, defense attorneys
contend that they are unfairly handicapped in their efforts to impeach the
man on whom prosecutors' entire case rests.
The motion to compel the disclosure of the life of a protected witness is so
unusual that Deputy Attorney General Eugene Kaster, who has the burden of
showing that Karny is in fact in danger, had never heard of it before being
required to undertake it.
The danger that Karny and prosecutors say makes the preservation of his
secret identity necessary is an unsolved 1986 murder of a rock groupie named
Richard Mayer, who was found dead in a Hollywood hotel room.
Evidence at the crime scene, including credit card slips from Karny's father
and a distinctive box of bon-bons that his family enjoyed, pointed to Karny
as a suspect. But a Los Angeles Police Department investigation not only
cleared him but pointed to Joseph Hunt.
Hunt, a prep school classmate of Karny and Dosti, was the founder and
controlling member of the Billionaire Boys Club, a group of affluent young
men who turned to murder after their get-rich-quick schemes failed.
Karny said that the elaborate frame-up apparently concocted by Hunt scared
him. "This whole thing was pretty disturbing. Someone had been killed just
to discredit me," he said, leaving no doubt that Hunt planned the murder and
pointed suspicion at him. Hunt had discussed various scenarios for framing
people when he and Karny were best friends, said Karny.
Hunt is currently serving life without possibility of parole in Folsom
prison for the murder of Ron Levin, a Beverly Hills con man who stiffed the
Billionaire Boys Club with a worthless $1.5 million check. Levin's body has
never been found; Hunt insists that he is still alive.
Karny admitted participating in the murders of Levin and Hedayat Eslaminia,
Reza Eslaminia's father, who had been a high-ranking security official in
the government of the late Shah of Iran. In exchange for what he described
as "blanket immunity," he testified at the trials of Dosti, Eslaminia, Hunt
and Billionaire Boys Club "enforcer" Jim Pittman.
Karny said he was under Hunt's sway during what he described as the
Billionaire Boys Club's larcenous, murderous days. "Judging from the things
we did, things I would never do again, I would say he (Hunt) exercised a
great deal of control over me," he said.
Ironically, none of the three men who are accused of - or have admitted to -
actually committing the murder of the elder Eslaminia faces trial for the
murder. Karny has immunity. Pittman is dead. And Hunt, serving as his own
lawyer, had charges against him dismissed after a San Mateo County jury
deadlocked after deliberating for 26 days.
Reza Eslaminia's defense is that he not only did not participate in the
murder of his father but was not aware of it. His mistake, he says, is that
in his eagerness to impress the flashy, sophisticated, tuxedo-wearing
members of the club, he boasted about his father's great wealth, even though
he knew that the elder Eslaminia was almost broke. Eslaminia, an Iranian
immigrant, was a troubled, semi-acculturated young man who had known the
club members for just a few weeks before his father was murdered.
Dosti's defense is that he believed that he and his friends were
participating in a mock kidnapping to save Hedayat Eslaminia's life from
death squads that had supposedly been dispatched by Iranian revolutionaries.
fredd...@my-deja.com
"YaKnow" <NoS...@Bluefield.Net> wrote:
> This story is at:
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/05/26/
> NEWS5286.dtl
>
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