Evans Linked for First Time in Court to Radin’s Murder

A witness in the “Cotton Club” preliminary hearing testified Tuesday that a defendant in the case told him that former Paramount Pictures production chief Robert Evans and a reputed Florida cocaine dealer were the two people responsible for ordering the 1983 murder of New York theatrical producer Roy Radin.

An attorney for Evans branded the testimony “an outrageous lie.”

William Rider, a brother-in-law of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, answered “yes” to each of Deputy Dist. Atty. David Conn’s questions regarding secretly taped conversations with one of the accused killers, William Molony Mentzer, during the fifth week of the Radin murder hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court.

“Did Mr. Mentzer indicate to you that anyone else was involved in the killing of Mr. Radin?” Conn asked.

“Mrs. Greenberger and Robert Evans,” answered Rider, referring to the producer and to Karen DeLayne Greenberger, the reputed narcotics dealer and a defendant in the case.

“Did he say what their involvement was?” Conn asked.

“Yes, essentially that they paid for the contract,” Rider said.

Evans, who is currently co-producing a sequel to “Chinatown” called “Two Jakes,” could not be reached for comment. Evans was called as the prosecution’s first witness, but refused to answer a single question. On advice of his defense attorney, Robert Shapiro, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

“The bottom line is that Bob Evans did not pay for it,” Shapiro said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Any statement by anyone to the contrary is an outrageous lie.”

Shapiro and Evans have maintained that the former Hollywood wunderkind would be willing to testify if Conn would guarantee Evans immunity from prosecution, but the prosecutor has never ruled him out as a suspect in the case. On Tuesday, Conn again refused to rule Evans out as a suspect.

“Bob (Evans) is getting killed in the press and he’s totally innocent,” Shapiro said. “We can’t even cross-examine.”

Although Rider’s statement implicating Evans marked the first time that testimony in open court linked the producer to Radin’s murder, reports of Rider’s claims first surfaced last year. The Times reported several weeks after the arrests of the four Radin co-defendants that Rider had told investigators that both Greenberger and Evans were involved in the killing.

Rider, who is being paid $3,000 a month by the district attorney under terms of the Witness Protection Program, claims that he fears for his life and the safety of his family as a result of his cooperation with investigators.

At one point during Tuesday’s testimony, Rider disclosed that he has a concealed weapon permit and carries a gun for protection. Judge Patti Jo McKay called a short recess during which Rider and his two Sheriff’s Department bodyguards disappeared into a side room briefly, apparently to determine that Rider was not carrying a gun in the courtroom.

Taped Conversations

Rider told of a series of surreptitiously taped conversations that he had with Mentzer and two other suspects, Robert Lowe and Robert Deremer, from May through September of last year. In those conversations, which Rider turned over to sheriff’s homicide investigators, Mentzer boasted of killing Radin and doing so at the behest of Greenberger and Evans.

“Radin was trying to be . . . a movie producer,” Mentzer told Rider on one of the tapes played during Tuesday’s court session. “He was selling drugs, he was selling drugs and, ya know, he did more than he sold, I think. And, uh, ya know, when he met Bob Evans, ya know, and Elaine Jacobs (Greenberger) introduced him to Bob Evans--at that time Bob Evans was the biggest producer ever.”

In 1983, when Radin was driven to a desolate canyon in northeast Los Angeles County and shot to death, Evans was, indeed, one of the most successful film makers in Hollywood history, boasting a string of hits that began during his decade as Paramount production chief and included “Love Story,” “Chinatown,” both “Godfather” films and “Rosemary’s Baby.”

First Meeting

It was his independent venture--”The Cotton Club”--with director Francis Ford Coppola and screenwriters William Kennedy and Mario Puzo in 1983 that brought about Evans’ association with Radin and Greenberger.

Following a string of box office failures, Evans was having trouble coming up with the financing for his story of the notorious 1930s Harlem nightclub. According to testimony, he met Greenberger through a limousine driver who, in turn, introduced Evans to Radin. Radin subsequently signed a deal with Evans promising to raise $35 million to make “Cotton Club.”

Prosecutors believe Greenberger hired Mentzer, Lowe and Alex Lamota Marti to kill Radin because the 33-year-old Long Island producer cut Greenberger out of the movie deal.