Witness Tells of Club Leader’s Murder Boast

Averting his eyes from those of “Billionaire Boys Club” leader Joe Hunt, a former member of the investment fraternity testified Thursday that Hunt bragged that he had murdered a Beverly Hills con man who had double-crossed him.

“He said that ‘Jim and I took care of, killed, Ron Levin,’ I don’t remember the exact words,” said Jeff Raymond, the first former club member to take the stand in Hunt’s trial. It was Raymond who broke the group’s silence and went to police.

Hunt, 27, and his bodyguard, Jim Pittman, 33, are charged with murdering Levin in June of 1984, and, aided by club members Ben Dosti and Reza Eslaminia, killing Eslaminia’s father, Hedayat Eslaminia, a month later in Northern California. Hunt is being tried separately.

Raymond, 26, a stocky, clean-cut Newport Beach resident, said Hunt woke him early on the day after the alleged crime, brandishing a contract and check for $1.5 million signed by Levin, then called a top-secret meeting of his trusted lieutenants several weeks later at which he explained his actions.

But he reassured his surprised audience of nine club members, Raymond recalls, “ ‘Don’t worry; this was the perfect crime. . . . They’ll never find the body.’ ”

Asked by Deputy Dist. Atty. Fred Wapner how Hunt persuaded Levin to part with the money, Raymond said Hunt shrugged, smiled and said: “He was under a little duress at the time.”

Levin had played a hoax on Hunt by enticing him to trade in a fake commodities account, according to the prosecution, which contends that revenge for the hoax and money was the murder motive.

At the meeting in Hunt’s lavish Westwood condominium, Raymond said, Hunt told club members that he had some good news and bad news, and that those who chose to stay and listen would be crossing a line and “once you cross you can’t go back.”

Hunt threatened that anyone who told would “wind up as fish bait in the outer Adirondacks,” said Raymond, who added that he kept quiet at first.

“You didn’t want to go to the Adirondacks and be fish bait?” asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Laurence J. Rittenband.

Raymond said he told his best friend, David May, and May’s father, a member of the May Co. department store family, and that they contacted an attorney and met with Beverly Hills police officials several weeks later, after Levin failed to reappear.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Arthur Barens suggested that Hunt’s boast may have been little more than a technique to keep his followers under control and that Levin was never killed. His body has not been found.

The elder May, Raymond said, “thought that maybe Joe was conning us, that the whole BBC thing was a con.”

But Raymond said he was concerned and bewildered.