Love Triangle Caused Slaying of Actor in ‘82, Friend Claims : Crime: Frank Christi often played tough guys in movies and TV shows. He even had a real-life rap sheet.

Brooklyn-born character actor Frank Christi was the consummate New York tough guy, police say, and sometimes the lines blurred between the roles and reality.

On screen, he played villains in 1970s movies like “The Godfather,” “Terminal Island,” “The Hit” and “The Don Is Dead.” He appeared in countless episodes of television crime shows such as “Beretta,” “Mannix” and “The Rockford Files.” Off screen, Los Angeles police said, he’d been involved in counterfeiting and forgery scams.

“The irony of course is that he was shot to death in much the same fashion as the characters he played,” said Detective Tom Lange of the Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide unit.

But, according to Christi’s friends, the underworld didn’t cost him his life.

It was a woman.

Los Angeles police, who earlier this month cracked the 11-year-old mystery of Christi’s murder with the arrest of three suspected hit men, are discussing few details about the motive for the slaying. The case remains shrouded by grand jury secrecy rules.

But Christi’s longtime friend, actor Scott Wells, said he has known for 11 years: “This was a love triangle deal. The other guy said, ‘Stay away from my girlfriend.’ Then the guy went and hired these three knucklehead safecrackers to do the deal.”

Wells said Christi died because he didn’t heed his own advice: “He told me once, ‘Scott, no matter what you do, never get whacked over a broad. They’re like buses. There’ll always be another one.’ ”

Police will say only that the case remains under investigation and that there might be other suspects.

But details of the alleged murder-for-hire plot should soon emerge once the cases of the suspected hit men start working through the courts, beginning today.

A Los Angeles County grand jury indicted the three--Harvey Rosenberg, 60; Alan Betts, 45; and Ronald Coe, 41--in November, 1992. Rosenberg, who was arrested Oct. 1 in Ventura, is scheduled to be arraigned today. Betts and Coe were arrested Oct. 4 near Seattle and extradition hearings are scheduled this week.

Lange said the three are convicted burglars and safecrackers who have worked together for years.

The indictments and murder warrants received little notice at the time they were issued. But later, in May, police sought the public’s help in finding the men, who’d disappeared just before the indictments came down.

Lange remembers well how they’d slipped away. Testimony before the grand jury was wrapping up when his beeper went off. “I was paged out of the grand jury room and notified by an informant that Rosenberg has fled. He got ahold of the other two and the three of them fled together.”

Lange has worked the case from the beginning, since July 9, 1982, when the 52-year-old Christi was shot to death in the carport of his ramshackle house in the 6900 block of Woodrow Wilson Drive, in the hills above Studio City. “More than one weapon was used,” Lange said, but he won’t discuss details. Christi was found lying in his carport, next to his red 1974 Datsun 260-Z.

A neighbor said at the time that he’d seen “two figures” scuffling with Christi about 12:15 a.m.

The early stages of the investigation were marked by an ironic coincidence: Two of Christi’s friends died violently about the same time he did, Lange said.

“During the week he was murdered, right across the canyon, Frank Salitieri was shot and killed at his house,” Lange said. Salitieri, an attorney and movie producer, had represented Christi in his divorce. About the same time, another friend, actor Vic Morrow, was killed during a freak helicopter accident while filming “The Twilight Zone” movie.

“The three of these guys all knew each other, they were all acquainted professionally, and they all died within days of each other. It turned out to be a big coincidence,” Lange said.

Initially, police came up with three possible motives: Christi’s involvement in “funny money” schemes; possible cocaine dealings, or a love triangle. At first, the money scheme seemed most likely to inspire murder.

Christi had an arrest record for burglary and grand theft dating back to the 1950s, Lange said. And, he’d been arrested by the Secret Service in 1973 on charges of possessing $100,000 in counterfeit money. He cut a deal, Lange said. “He turned government witness on this thing and testified against another conspirator who was convicted. That looked like a pretty obvious motive.”

The investigators’ early suspicions about Christi’s death were colored by the people they interviewed. Few seemed to like Christi or have much positive to say about him, Lange said.

“The people that we interviewed conveyed to us that he was an overbearing, obnoxious, in-your-face individual. He never had a lot of respect. He didn’t have a lot of friends,” Lange said. “He seemed to be going through a disjointed period in his professional life. Just talking to all these people, you start to think that probably in his personal life either subconsciously or consciously, he acted out a lot of the roles he was involved in.”

Wells said Christi did have a circle of friends. “I knew Frank since ’61 in Greenwich Village. We were good friends.” But he acknowledged that Christi had a strong personality. “Frank was kind of the Don Rickles in our circle of friends. He had a great sense of humor and wit.”

Lange said he and his then-partner, Detective Enoch (Mack) McClain, got their first break in 1988, when an informant came forward. Later, the informant’s information would help them make their case against the three alleged hit men, he said.

The three had been busily crossing the country until their arrests.

A quirky car alarm on Rosenberg’s black Mercedes-Benz, parked outside a Motel 6 in Ventura, proved to be their undoing. Police searched Rosenberg’s motel room and found a loaded .357 Magnum revolver as well as false identification cards and other items that led them to Betts and Coe.