2 Billionaire Club Members Convicted of Slaying Iranian

After 10 days of deliberations, a San Mateo County jury Monday found Billionaire Boys Club members Arben (Ben) Dosti and Reza Eslaminia guilty of kidnaping and murdering Eslaminia’s wealthy Iranian father in the summer of 1984.

Jurors refused to comment on their verdict and left the Northern California courtroom by a back door.

“There’s no indication of why it took so long, except that they took their job seriously. I don’t think we can ask for much more,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. John Vance, who prosecuted the case.

Dosti was remanded into custody and taken to the San Mateo County Jail. His attorney, Tom Nolan, said he will appeal the jury’s decision.

“We’re very disappointed,” Nolan said. “The jury probably had some difficulty understanding the true magnitude of (BBC leader) Joe Hunt’s deceptive nature.”

Hunt, the alleged mastermind of the crime, has not yet come to trial in the case.

Eslaminia’s lawyer, Gary Merritt, was not immediately available for comment. Eslaminia has been in custody since his arrest.

San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Robert Miller, who presided at the 64-day trial in Redwood City, said he will set a sentencing date for the pair, both 26, on Feb. 29. They could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The defendants, once involved in a fast-lane social and investment fraternity in Los Angeles that boasted a membership of young men from some of Southern California’s most prestigious families, had been charged with conspiracy, murder and kidnaping for purposes of extortion.

Theft and Conspiracy

Both were convicted of second-degree murder (the only murder conviction possible under the judge’s instructions), kidnaping for extortion, conspiracy to commit grand theft and conspiracy to kidnap. Dosti, the son of a Times food writer, was also found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap for murder.

The victim, 56-year-old Hedayat Eslaminia, an Iranian exile living in the San Francisco Peninsula community of Belmont, had been a high-ranking official in Iran during the Shah’s regime and had amassed a $30-million fortune.

The Billionaire Boys Club’s plan, prosecutors said, was to kidnap the elder Eslaminia, torture him in the basement of a rented house in West Los Angeles until he transferred his assets to the group and then kill him.

But the plan went awry, according to testimony in the case, when Hedayat Eslaminia suffocated in a steamer trunk in the back of a pickup truck driven by Billionaire Boys Club founder Hunt as it sped down Interstate 5 from the Bay Area to Los Angeles.

No trial has yet been set for Hunt, who is already serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for the 1984 slaying of Beverly Hills con man Ron Levin. An appeal of his conviction in the Levin case is pending.

Billionaire Boys Club bodyguard Jim Pittman, who pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of being an accessory to Levin’s murder after two juries were unable to reach a verdict, also has been arraigned in San Mateo County Municipal Court on charges of kidnaping and killing Eslaminia.

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 had punched in the trunk containing Eslaminia to silence his screams and moans, inadvertently causing the man’s death.

It was Karny, once Hunt’s best friend, who led authorities to Eslaminia’s skeletal remains in Soledad Canyon, in a remote area of the Angeles National Forest.

Dosti’s defense was that he thought the Billionaire Boys Club was helping Hedayat Eslaminia to escape from drug dealers and representatives of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and to gain rightful access to his wealth.

Dosti testified that he fell asleep at a Northern California motel where the group assembled, however, and was left behind during the alleged abduction. He said he later rode back to Los Angeles in the cab of a pickup truck driven by Hunt, but that there was no trunk or person in the back of the truck, and that Karny was never in the vehicle with them.

Estranged Pair

Reza Eslaminia testified that he had gone to San Francisco to visit a girlfriend and knew nothing of the abduction. He said Hunt, who was also in the Bay Area on business, told him only that there would be an attempted reconciliation between the estranged father and son.

After the elder Eslaminia’s death, according to court testimony, the Billionaire Boys Club prepared conservatorship papers for his son and he and Dosti were dispatched to Europe in search of the assets. The pair, reported to have been hiding out in Europe after the arrests of Hunt and Pittman, were arrested in 1985 when they returned to the United States.