Hunt Should Spend Life in Prison, Jury Recommends

Billionaire Boys Club leader Joe Hunt should spend his life in prison without possibility of parole for the murder of a Beverly Hills entrepreneur and con man whose body has not been found, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury recommended Thursday.

The lanky Hunt showed no emotion as a clerk in Santa Monica Superior Court read the decision of the 11-woman, one-man jury that had deliberated for 22 hours in the penalty phase of the case.

Hunt, 27, was convicted April 22 for the murder of Ron Levin, 42. The prosecution said Levin was shot in his Beverly Hills duplex and buried in a remote canyon after duping Hunt in a high-stakes commodities swindle. Because the same jury found that the slaying occurred under special circumstances--during a robbery--the panel could have called for the death penalty.

“We decided that the death penalty was too quick. Joe Hunt needs time to sit and think about the things he did,” juror Dean Rutherford, a 41-year-old truck driver from Lawndale, said at an impromptu news conference held by two jurors after the verdict was returned.

It was the first time jurors had been permitted to discuss the case. Juror Pat Robles said the panel took “quite a few” votes before reaching its decision. She said that Hunt’s failure to take the stand in his own defense did not affect the guilty verdict and jurors did not reject the death penalty because Levin’s body was never found.

But the jurors said that they were influenced by what Robles described as Hunt’s “cold and emotionless” demeanor throughout the trial. “He acted more like this was a joke or something,” Rutherford said.

Levin’s stepfather, Martin Levin, expressed disappointment at Thursday’s verdict, saying: “My son was brutally murdered. . . . Why should he (Hunt) live ?” But prosecutor Fred Wapner said: “I don’t look at it in terms of it being a loss . . . It’s a tough decision for anybody to have to make.”

Hunt had no comment Thursday. But his attorney, Arthur Barens, said that his client was “extremely relieved and is hoping for a new trial.”

Barens said a “variety of grounds” will be brought up in the appeal. In the past, the defense complained of alleged judicial misconduct, charging that Judge Laurence J. Rittenband deliberately elicited prejudicial evidence against Hunt by questioning witnesses, refused to allow co-defense attorney Richard Chier to ask questions and that he aligned himself with the prosecution by grimacing at crucial points in the case.

Rittenband will formally sentence Hunt on June 25.

Jurors said they were most influenced by the testimony of Hunt’s sidekick and club member, Dean Karny, and by a chilling “to do” list that Hunt made before killing Levin. The list contained such items as “close blinds, tape mouth, kill dog.” Karny testified in grisly detail about the second alleged BBC murder during the penalty phase of the case.

Robles, 45, a phone company worker, said she knew back in April that the conviction was the correct verdict when Hunt showed no emotion as it was read. “I would have gone nuts. I would have been beside myself.”

Levin, 42, disappeared in 1984, and according to the government’s key witness, Karny, Hunt boasted that he and his bodyguard, Jim Pittman, handcuffed Levin and put him face down on his bed where the guard then shot him in the back of the head.

However, the defense maintained that Levin pulled off the ultimate con by arranging his own disappearance to escape a pending grand theft trial, and produced several witnesses who said they had seen Levin since 1984.

Hunt was arrested after other BBC members told police that he had bragged of committing “the perfect crime.”

From Exclusive School

Described as a boy genius and Svengali, Hunt had linked up with several former classmates at the exclusive private Harvard School and others from prominent Los Angeles families to form a business and social group called BBC Consolidated of North America. Dubbed the “Billionaire Boys Club,” the investment club’s activities turned shady, testimony showed, culminating in a money-making scheme that involved millions of dollars and two mysterious deaths.

Hunt had met Levin, who agreed to place $5 million in a brokerage house account and let Hunt trade with it. They would split the profits. But it turned out to be a hoax. Levin persuaded the brokerage company that he was doing a television documentary about commodities trading and that none of Hunt’s buy and sell orders should be acted upon.

Hunt’s mother Kathleen Gamsky, pleaded in court for her son’s life, saying his problems may have stemmed from his efforts to please his father, Ryan Hunt, who relatives said used his son to fulfill a dream of personal wealth.

Hunt and Pittman face trial next fall in a second 1984 murder, that of wealthy Iranian Hedayat Eslaminia in Belmont, Calif. Fellow BBC members Ben Dosti, son of a Los Angeles Times food writer, and Reza Eslaminia, the victim’s son, are co-defendants.

As they returned with their verdict Thursday, two women jurors appeared on the verge of tears. Robles called the case “six months of hell. . . . It’s the hardest thing to decide what to do with another human being--if you call Joe Hunt a human being.”