Greed Drove 4 to Murder Producer, Prosecutor States : Trial: Opening statements in ‘Cotton Club’ case are heard. A defense attorney says the woman accused of hiring three hit men was framed.

Driven by greed, a drug dealer hired three reputed hit men to murder New York vaudeville producer Roy Radin after he cut her out of a deal involving financing of the movie “The Cotton Club,” a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David Conn, in opening statements in the trial of Karen DeLayne (Lanie) Greenberger and three former bodyguards for Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, said the defendants were motivated by “one reason and one reason only: for financial gain and for reasons of their own personal greed.”

But a defense attorney countered that Greenberger, 42, an admitted cocaine dealer, was framed. He implied that the crime was actually engineered by reputed Miami drug lord Milan Bellechesses.

Bellechesses, the father of Greenberger’s child, is not charged in the case.

On trial with Greenberger are Alex Marti, 29, and William Mentzer, 39, both of the Los Angeles area, and Robert Ulmer Lowe, 44, of Rockville, Md.

Radin’s bullet-riddled and badly decomposed body was found in June, 1983, about a month after he was slain in Gorman in northern Los Angeles County.

A high school dropout from Long Island, N.Y., Radin, 33, had come to California in the early 1980s intent on making it big in the movies. He became a millionaire in his early 20s and was seen as a show-business phenomenon, first promoting vaudeville acts and later hoping to break into the highly charged world of Broadway and Hollywood.

Conn told the Superior Court jury that in exchange for introducing Radin to Hollywood producer Robert Evans, Greenberger wanted 50% of the profits from the production company the two men intended to form to finance the making of “The Cotton Club.”

But Radin did not want to give Greenberger any money, and that prompted Greenberger to order his death, Conn said. Greenberger also suspected that Radin had engineered a $1-million theft of cocaine and money from her home by one of her reputed drug runners, Talmadge Rogers, Conn said.

“The evidence will show that Greenberger, Lowe, Marti and Mentzer were involved in a conspiracy to kidnap and kill Roy Radin,” Conn told the nine-woman, three-man jury in his two-hour opening statement.

Conn said Radin was last seen alive entering Greenberger’s chauffeur-driven limousine in front of the Regency Hotel in Hollywood on the evening of May 13, 1983. The two had planned a business meeting over dinner at La Scala, an upscale restaurant.

Conn said that after the limousine left the hotel, Lowe, posing as the chauffeur, pulled the vehicle over. Greenberger then got out and Mentzer and Marti hopped in with guns, the prosecutor said.

They then drove Radin to the Gorman site where Marti emptied his revolver into the back of Radin’s head, Conn said.

“Mr. Mentzer fired a single shot, the coup de grace, into the back of Radin’s head,” Conn said. “Mentzer then put a little stick of dynamite in Radin’s mouth, lit it and blew off his face.”

Greenberger’s attorney, Edward Shohat, told the jurors that while Greenberger was a drug dealer at the time of the killing, no evidence exists linking her to Radin’s killing.

“Lanie Greenberger was set up and used. She was literally and figuratively framed for the murder of Roy Radin,” he said.

“The real killer is out those doors,” Shohat continued. “But . . . Milan Bellechesses should be on trial here.”

Evans, the former Paramount Pictures head who oversaw the making of such films as “The Godfather” and “Chinatown,” has not been charged in Radin’s murder. However, he has never been eliminated as a suspect.

The defendants, all in custody without bail, have pleaded innocent to the charges. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death.