‘Cotton Club’ Witness Says Flynt Has Contract Out on Him

The prosecution’s key witness in the ongoing “Cotton Club” murder hearing, William Rider, testified Wednesday that he and his family have gone into hiding because Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt put a $70,000 price tag on his head.

Flynt’s attorney, Alan Isaacman, called the allegation--only the latest of a string of death threat allegations made by Rider--”absurd” and said it stems from a 5-year-old employment dispute between the publisher and Rider, Flynt’s former brother-in-law and security chief.

Wrongful Termination Suit

In 1984, Rider sued Flynt for wrongful termination, Isaacman said. That suit, scheduled to come to trial this fall in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges emotional distress and seeks several million dollars in damages. Isaacman said he believed Rider was making the murder contract allegation against Flynt in order to influence the outcome of his civil suit.

“Larry put no contracts out on anybody,” Isaacman said.

But Rider maintained that he is afraid of a long list of potential assailants: private investigators, drug traffickers, people on the periphery of law enforcement, people employed by Flynt and--as he contended in testimony earlier in the week--the “Cotton Club” defendants.

On Tuesday, Rider testified that a Cotton Club defendant told him that Hollywood producer Robert Evans and another defendant ordered the killing of theatrical producer Roy Radin in 1983. Evans has not been charged in the killing, but prosecutors refuse to rule him out as a suspect.

It was one of the Cotton Club defendants, 29-year-old Alex Lamotta Marti, who Rider said first told him of Flynt’s $70,000 murder contract. Marti and another defendant, William Mentzer, had both worked for Rider at one time as Flynt’s bodyguards.

The district attorney’s office is apparently taking some of Rider’s fears seriously.

Protected as part of the county’s witness protection program, Rider has been collecting cash payments of as much as $3,000 a month from the district attorney’s office since he began cooperating with sheriff’s investigators a year ago.

Throughout Rider’s testimony in the “Cotton Club” hearing, he has been accompanied by two or more plainclothes deputies who act as his bodyguards in the courtroom. Everyone entering Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Patti Jo McKay’s courtroom is checked with a metal detector.

On Wednesday, Rider added Isaacman and Hustler magazine’s general counsel David Kahn to the list of those he fears might conspire to harm him or his family.

“I guess he wants to destroy his credibility all by himself,” Kahn told The Times. “At some point you have to sit back and say, ‘Oh, really?’ ”

‘Make You Wonder’

“People who go around with a shotgun approach make you wonder,” Kahn said. “If someone told you that (former House) Speaker (Jim) Wright was doing something wrong, you might listen, but if they told you every single member of Congress was up to no good, wouldn’t you wonder?”

Rider is the prosecution’s sixth witness in a preliminary hearing to determine whether to bring Marti, Mentzer and alleged Florida drug dealer Elayne (Lanie) Greenberger to trial on charges of conspiring to murder Radin. Radin’s body was found in a canyon northeast of Los Angeles six years ago, the apparent victim of an execution.

Prosecutors believe Greenberger ordered Mentzer, Marti and a third former Flynt bodyguard to kill Radin because he was trying to cut her out of a deal involving the financing of the movie “Cotton Club.”