After a meeting at the Hard Rock Cafe, the twins gave Joe Hunt $160,000 they had inherited from their Uncle Wilbur and announced to their adopted father that they had been appointed to the board of directors at a new corporation, BBC Consolidated of North America. "There is one voice that will never be stifledand that's the voice of an innocent man talking about his innocence," Hunt said in court. In truth, he had met the couple for the first time two years earlier, shortly after the Sturkeys moved to Los Angeles from Detroit. The situation was criticaleven Joe admitted it, Dean saidbut Hunt never showed any sign that his resolve was weakening. Hunt is being assisted in his effort by his family. 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. For young Joe Hunt, Levin would remain a figure who not only fascinated, but also frustrated him. Several observers in court remarked upon Hunts physical resemblance to a young Andy Griffith. It contains outdated and potentially offensive descriptions of race, gender, and class. At the time of his disappearance, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was investigating an informants tip that the Iranian had imported opium in rugs from Afghanistan. Three months later, Joe was marketing options on the machinerenamed Cyclotronto investors in six western states through a BBC subsidiary called Microgenesis of North America Inc., one of four new companies under the BBC umbrella. 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. Browning nearly laughed out loud when the groups gangly, baby-faced twenty-three-year-old leader introduced himself. The Billionaire Boys Club was real. All rights reserved. After Karny, the only other person with whom Joe discussed the murder was the third Shading, Ben Dosti. She thought he would fall head over heels, the BBC member recalled, and Joe acted like, No big deal.. 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 . 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. Hunt defended himself at trial for a second murder case. Finally, Joe called Jack Friedman at Clayton Brokerage, hoping to gain information that would help him trace the $13.5 million. A few years later came Hunt's trial in the 1984 kidnapping and murder ofHedayat Eslaminia in San Mateo, Calif. [7] Pittman, granted release with time served in two murders, died of kidney failure in 1997, age 44. He wasambitious and charismaticand also on scholarship, meaning he didn't have the deep-pocketed parents that so many of his classmates had. They had agreed in advance that the place they chose would have to be remote, Dean explained, so that the screams could not be heard. What convinced them to rent the house, though, was a hidden trapdoor in the hall closet that led directly to the basement. So, he tried it again in Beverly Hillschristening himself Joe Hunt and forming an investment club with some of his former classmates, using his bravado and promises of quick, big returns to get them to put up the capitalfor what eventually became known as the Billionaire Boys Club. Joe thought that it was a symbolic gesture of guilt, Dean said. Yet the school remained that rare L.A. institution where Hollywood glamour carried little cachet: the son of a studio head might be admitteda Zanuck, for examplebut among performers, only those stars who had ascended to the economic firmament, the Greg Pecks and the Chuck Hestons, got their boys onto the campus. The European autos imported for West Cars became their private fleet: twenty-two-year-old Ben got a Mercedes 350, Dean and Steve took big BMWs, and Joe gave himself a Porsche 911. They hit the party circuit and club scene with Joe out front and tried to project this image of the BBC as being a cool group of people who really had our heads screwed on straight, Dean said, who were making money and had pretty girlfriends.. Soon Hunt really did have a few million dollars in his investment accounts and he leased a suite of offices in Beverly Hills. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. In its affirmance, the court noted that "fairminded jurists could disagree" as to whether Hunt's trial lawyer was ineffective in his defense of Hunt, but cited the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996's "doubly deferential lens" in its refusal to overturn the Central District's decision. I did say I knocked off Ron Levin. They had been waiting since 7:00 A.M.: Ron had promised to take them with him on a trip to New York that morning, but there had been no answer when they rang the buzzer. Joe was taken into custody wearing an Armani business suit and a Rolex watch from Tiffanysa birthday present from Ron Levin, he said. I lived in the same building in Los Angeles in the early 1980s as the members of the BBC. After school, when more popular and fortunate classmates like the Mays and their buddy Steve Taglianetti drove convertibles home to Beverly Hills, Gamsky rode a bus out to the smoggy, sunburnt rim of the San Fernando Valley, within walking distance of the tiny tract house where he spent three hours at night reading the dictionary. As the plan grew more definite, each of them was assigned a list of duties. He continued to insist there were always new contingencies, further possibilities. It was Joe who suggested the sex shop, confiding that it was where he had found the cuffs used during the first murder seven weeks earlier. You had met Dean Karny at one of the many parties you had attended. He began by interviewing Olga Vasquez. 1,746 following. That, Hunt says, was the trial at which jurors got to hear the truth about his activities. I am convinced that he cannot distinguish truth from fiction. . From his prison phone, inmate No. Hunt was charged with Eslaminia's murder, too, in 1985. Wearing an Armani suit and his mask of indifference, Joe claimed to have made maximum use of his time in jail, achieving fluency in French and Japanese. "They dismissed itso it would be like double jeopardy to try me twice.". 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. 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. Pittman was right; somebody always talks. Dean Karny will be the states star witness. Already over six feet tall, Gamsky was a comical figure, a stalk-skinny boy with a pale face, a Prince Valiant hairdo, and a trickle of beauty marks along the right corner of his mouth. He had come to California early in 1983 with a fifty-two-inch chest and the idea that there would be people out west who would appreciate his special talents. As his crisis deepened, Joe reacted not by lowering expectations but by raising them, describing his plan to expand the BBC into a national organization of kids close to their inheritances. Joe worked relentlessly, formalizing the BBCs structure in a nine-page document provided to all members, envisioning an organization of 2,187 individuals divided into cells, sections, and divisions, with a hierarchy of nexuses, axes, and thraxes. Ron willingly signed the Microgenesis contract and wrote a $1.5-million draft on his Swiss account, Joe told Dean. Within weeks, Joe not only set up West Cars of North America, but provided the company with more than a quarter-million dollars in assets by persuading other BBC members to sign over their own cars as collateral. His younger sister and her husband are funding the FreeJoeHunt.com website and campaign. Richard Winton is an investigative crime writer for the Los Angeles Times and part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011. But he also has repeatedly rejected parole requests for high-profile killers, including members of the Manson family.. The Dostis hired top criminal attorney Richard Hirsch to handle their sons defense. I have tried to contribute to the welfare of my fellow human beings ever since.. He said he was doing a four- or five-part series on commodities trading, Friedman recalled. Ron was really amazed and said that Joe had found a real fish, Dean remembered. According to the governments star witness at trial, Hunt and his bodyguard forced Levin to sign a check for $1.5 million at his Peck Drive home in Beverly Hills. Karny had met Eslaminias twenty-four-year-old son Reza at a BBC party several weeks earlier. With him was Martin Levin. If I did a wholesale capitulation, then I would be a perfect candidate for parole, Hunt said. 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. It was Friedman, though, who asked the first question: I said, Did you ever do that story? When Hunt did not answer, Friedman asked another question: Were you aware that the money wasnt real?, After a very long pause, Joe told him, Yes, I was aware., Joe cornered Levin that night, but now Ron had a new story: He said . The petition notes that in prison, Hunt "is a different person: a chapel assistant and law clerk," and "a voice for nonviolence". For the first time, though, the others saw signs of stress in Hunt. The others were all waiting for him in a room Ben Dosti had rented under the name Davis: Joe and Ben had already changed into the brown UPS outfits Dean bought for them a few days earlier. by (now Judge) Cliff Cretan and Jeff Boyarsky. . During the celebration, Joe called the Bank of America to ask how long it would take to cash a Swiss check. 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. Actually Jim Pittman asked me once in the lobby if I would be interested in meeting Joe and Dean because he thought that I would fit in with the group. When his secretary asked him for a temporary loan, Levin said he didnt have the money, but offered to have her car rear-ended. Dean again argued that they should tell the others. Professional Formula DRIFT driver of the HYPER NFT Dodge Viper. When the Mays pleaded ignorance, Joe said that if he found out who had taken the documents, he would have their hands broken, Tom remembered. Reza and his associates were seen in Belmont often during the following week. He manipulated other BBC members, Hunt said. They are trying to capitalize on a push by various criminal justice groups to end life without parole. Dean would find happiness, Joe explained, only if he achieved purity of action. The starting point was an understanding that the impediments between what you had and what you wanted were external, not internal. Joe, Brooke, and the boys became the shock troops of L.A. night life, traveling fifteen and twenty at a time to the China Club, Le Dome, La Scala, and the Hard Rock Cafe, running up tabs of $3,000 in a night, letting Ben run amok with the wine list, leaving $500 tips, making an impression. They traveled only a short distance together, Dean remembered, before Joe noticed that the sounds from the trunk had ceased. Ben Dosti, aka Lansing Lee Potter, was apprehended by the FBI the same day in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was a strong odor of urine as he lifted the lid, Dean remembered, and he opened and shut the trunk five times, assembling a mosaic of glimpses that arranged themselves into the picture of a stocky, gray-haired man wearing handcuffs and lying motionless in a fetal position. Thats all youre qualified for.. He was bothered that Ben had stopped to wash his hands in the middle of the abduction. The mans eyes were closed and there was drool on his chin. Hunt faces an uphill battle, despite the criminal justice reform movement sweeping California. Tom and Dave sported complicated but thoroughly impressive pedigrees. Atty. The bodyguard and alleged triggerman in Levins killing, James Pittman, pleaded guilty to accessory to murder. Through the endless passages of the cosmos. Prosecutors decided not to retry him and the charges were dropped in 1993. At the duplex on Peck Drive, Blanche Sturkey was just arriving for work. Four days later, Evan Dicker reported that the BBC office had been burglarized and filed an insurance claim in excess of $100,000. Joe continued to solicit Rons respect. "They cannot charge me for the murder of Ron Levin because they dropped it," Pittman said. Thats when Levin, according to prosecutors, agreed to place $5 million in a brokerage house account and let Hunt trade it. Also starring Emma Roberts, Rosanna Arquette, Billie Lourd, Suki Waterhouse and Cary Elwes, surely it sounded like a good idea at the time, but sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey made in 2017 basically assured that it wouldn't be the production that brought this story to the masses. For Joe Hunt, it was the opportunity to prove his trading theories on the sort of scale he had always dreamed of. 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). Bobby Roberts disapproved vehemently of his daughters relationship with Joe Hunt, but at the Manning, Brooke went to almost any length to capture her young mans affection. 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. Levin was making $10,000 a month from this arrangement, he told Holmes, but he couldnt stop there. . Joe was all talkative until I pulled out the seven pages of to-do list and put in front of him, Zoeller said. At his next appearance in court, Karny wore a bulletproof vest. In a meeting at the Hard Rock Cafe, Jerry Eisenberg told police, Joe had threatened his life. "But it's not right that I get to be the garbage dump of everybody's peccadilloes.". The proceedings ended with the jury hung ten to two for conviction. 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. News in a recent interview. Before he left Chicago, he changed his last name. From the minute you started telling them about it, everybody wanted to believe, Mary Brown said. The boys drove classy cars, drew a large monthly allowance, and kept an apartment in Brentwood where they entertained a harem of girls every summer. As he reached into the back seat for his briefcase, Swartout said, the black man threw the contents of the cup on his back. . The increasingly founderingHunt encouraged (and needed) Levin to invest with himand Levin, who had multiple arrests for fraud and theft on his record, eventually agreed to $5 million, but to be held in his own brokerage account. Three days after the June 24 meeting, Browning said, he had met Hunt for breakfast in Westwood. As they moved their load into the U-Haul, Dean heard pounding on the lid of the trunk, then a muffled voice: Please, sir, please let me out.. Eight young men and Brooke Roberts pulled the pieces of a playpen sofa into a semicircle. And in Costa Mesa, uniformed officers twice evacuated Gene Browning and his family from their home after warnings that Hunt had purchased a contract on the inventors life. But Wondery'sBillionaire Boys Clubdelves beneath the known facts of the case toprobe what motivated not just Joe Hunt, but the already wealthy, privileged young men who ended up in his orbit, lured by the promise ofmore money, more stuffand, maybe, a bigger piece of the pie than their rich parents could give them. Enraged that Bruce Swartouts negotiations in Denver had stalled the BBCs deal with UFOI, Joe began talking about taking out a contract on the Orange County man, Dean recalled. Dean graduated from the Whittier School of Law in 1985 and has applied for admission to the California Bar. It was on a street corner outside the BBC office in West Hollywood that Joe and Ben first described for Dean the fabulous wealth of a man named Hedayat Eslaminia. In 2018with the support of a Free Joe Hunt campaign started by friends and family onlinehe petitioned then-California Gov. Back in Belmont, the citys tiny police department was bringing both the FBI and the DEA into its investigation of the Eslaminia disappearance. Having lost money, he started his own investment fundandwas promptly kicked out of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. 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.. Then we, of course, went and told our parents, Hey Mom and Dad, we got a shopping center, Dean recalled, and our parents said, Well, do you have a title? And we said, No, but that doesnt matter, because Joes going to take care of it., As the end of the year approached, Hunt pressed Levin to deliver title to the shopping center as collateral for a loan. Hunt and Pittman pursued the Mays into the Mojave Desert the next afternoon, hunting them without success by truck, motorcycle, and twin-engine plane. A few days later, however, at a meeting with Hunt, Pittman, and Dosti in Bens office, Dean suggested telling the others. 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. Joe treated Dean and Ben to a movie that night and met them again the next afternoon. I thought I was stabbed at first, he recalled. Those charges were dropped after jurors deadlocked on the allegation that he and others killed Hedayat Eslaminia, a wealthy Iranian-born businessman, in July 1984. [24], The true-crime podcast series Hollywood & Crime, narrated by actor Timothy Olyphant, covered the subject in the summer of 2020. 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. Judd Nelson portrayed Joe Hunt in the 1987 network TV adaptation of his story. . . After his release, Joes preoccupation was the $127,000 Ben and Reza were to send from Switzerland, Dean remembered, but the money never came. Burned the arcade when he was at the 3rd grade and framed Syndney Evans' cousin. He wanted Michael Dows phone number so he could get a million dollars out of him. Descriptions of the murder scenes are largely reconstructed from police reports and from trial testimony of Dean Karny, currently with the California Witness Protection Program. Usually you weren't the kind of girl for one night stands, but Dean had something about him you couldn't withstand, the alcohol playing part in it too. At the BBC office in West Hollywood, they didnt let it worry them much: the profit Joe had made with the Levin account would more than cover their escalating overhead until the Microgenesis contracts were signed. Ten minutes later they were back, struggling with the weight of the trunk. of Deputy District Attorneys, said she is not surprised that Hunt is making a bid to commute his sentence. Contents 1 Biography 2 Personality 3 Gallery 4 Trivia Biography When they were two, their mother had married David May II, who controlled a vast real estate empire accrued from the formerly family-owned May Company department-store chain that made him one of the wealthiest men on the West Coast. Some testified at the trials. Cantor, Fitzgerald even subpoenaed Levin. He wanted to film the trading process as it happened, Levin explained, and the documentary should have a dramatic feel. The next morning he was back in Beverly Hills, describing what he knew of Ron Levins disappearance. From a high of about thirty, BBC membership collapsed to a core of sixteen. Or Ben Dosti, swarthy and athletic, whose mother, Rose, food writer at the Los Angeles Times, had taught him to appreciate the finer things: by the time he was thirteen, Ben had his own tailored tuxedo and could read a wine list or The Wall Street Journal with equal facility. 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 sat down. Investigators were closing in on the BBC from both the north and the south now. At the Harvard School, debate was the most popular and competitive sport on campus. .. Capital formation, Joe would say later, is always a problem, but he had solved it neatly with the help of one of the BBCs first female members, Allison Weiss. Judge Carl Holm ruled that Reza Eslaminia was entitled to know Dean Karny's - who was now in wit-ness protection and the prosecution's star witness - current name and where-abouts so that the defendants could investigate Karny's possible criminality since 1984 for impeachment purposes. Blanche, a retired schoolteacher, had been introduced to Ron at a private party where her husband was working as a bartender. By late August, Joe was able to tell the BBC that their share of the earnings came to more than $4 million. He said with that higher level of information came a very great responsibility.. Another Billionaire Boys Club member, Dean Karny, an admitted participant in the Eslaminia murder who was granted immunity from prosecution, testified that he and Dosti taped up air holes he. The plan was to set up a dummy account in the amount ofsay, $5,225,187.80. At graduation, each member of the senior class was given one full page in the Harvard School yearbook. Dosti and Reza Eslaminia both were released on appeal using evidence from Hunt's second trial, and Hunt was also acquitted of the Eslaminia murder charge. Joe got Ben Dosti to take Jim shopping for clothes, promised to send him to UCLA to improve his vocabulary, even bought him a tuxedo for the BBCs black-tie New Years Eve party. That inmate was released last month. 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. Dean Karny, whose father was a . Karny provided the only direct testimony linking Reza Eslaminia and Arben "Ben" Dosti to the 1984 kidnap-murder of Eslaminia's. And I said, Youve been watching too many movies. And he said, Now that I have Pittman, I can have anybody killed in the world that I want. 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. Tom and Dave May are also prosecution witnesses. Then something changed, Dating in L.A. is exhausting, so I asked a chatbot to flirt for me. Browning joined the Mays and Raymond at a meeting set up in the office of the Mays private counsel. [citation needed] The Billionaire Boys Club is also the topic of two books: The Billionaire Boys Club by Sue Horton and The Price of Experience by Randall Sullivan. The Mays and Raymond approached Gene Browning, who decided at once he believed the story was true. He was one of Billionaire Boys Club (also known as BBC) founders, Joe Hunt's former best friend and main witness in Joe Hunt's trial. He was in an Emmy-winning episode of Family Ties in 1987 as Alex Keaton's friend, Greg. The four of them discussed who would be able to handle this kind of information, he recalled, and Joe decided to schedule a meeting for the following weekend. It would then be a world where only hard assets counted, Joe explained. Gamsky was so avid he even spent his lunch periods in the debate room, arranging and rearranging the plastic name tags on the tab board where the squads rankings were displayed. it really didnt sit right with me at all, because I felt somehow that the ideology I had come into the situation with was being compromised., Jim was the only one who had a definite opinion on the subject, Dean recalled: He said that he didnt know of anyone that could be trusted with information like that, and that there is always someone who talks., Joe decided to test the waters. Among the coils of rope and spools of tape was a brown bottle containing chloroform and a steel bucket filled with cat litter to serve as a portable toilet. Just before 8:00 that evening, Vega recalled, he observed a gentleman carrying two suitcases down the number 7 stairway. But Hunt insists hes a changed man and ready for rehabilitation. His back began to burn a few moments later, and fearing he had been attacked with acid, Swartout undressed in his office and rinsed himself with water. They wrapped the body in a comforter and drove 45 minutes north to a canyon, where, Pittman claimed, they fired shotgun blasts at the body to further disfigure it and buried it.

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