2nd Mistrial for Billionaire Boys Club Bodyguard

A Santa Monica judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in the murder case against Billionaire Boys Club bodyguard Jim Pittman after jurors deadlocked 8 to 4, leaning toward acquittal.

Superior Court Judge James A. Albracht dismissed the jury after the foreman sent him a note saying jurors were unable to reach a decision and they told him that there had been no change in their individual positions in nine days of deliberations and six ballots.

The mistrial was the second for Pittman, 34, the alleged triggerman in the 1984 murder of Beverly Hills con man Ron Levin, whose body has never been found. Two years ago, a different jury in a trial conducted by a different judge was also unable to agree on a verdict. However, then the jury was split 10 to 2 in favor of conviction.

“We’ll get ‘em next time,” Pittman said afterward, according to his lawyer, Jeff Brodey, who added that he was disappointed, but that Pittman, who did not testify at either trial, was “relieved that this one is over.”

Prosecutor Fred Wapner said he was also “disappointed.” He and his superiors in the district attorney’s office must now decide whether to prosecute Pittman a third time. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert I. Garcetti said triple trials on the same charge are rare, but that “there may be good reason to do so” this time.

Pittman, also known as James Graham, continues to be held in lieu of $500,000 bail. Should charges be dropped, Pittman would then be transferred to Northern California, where he faces charges in a second 1984 murder, that of wealthy Iranian Hedayat Eslaminia.

Santa Monica jurors told reporters that while they agreed that Levin is dead, the majority believed that there was not enough hard evidence linking Pittman to the alleged shotgun slaying. Some said they believed he was merely a pawn of his boss, Joe Hunt, leader of the preppy social and investment group of affluent young Southern Californians known as the Billionaire Boys Club.

Hunt was found guilty of killing Levin last April and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

But Hunt, witnesses testified, had boasted about the murder and even left an incriminating list of “things to do” at the scene of the crime, while the strongest evidence presented against Pittman was testimony that he “smiled” at a BBC member’s suggestion that “I guess Ron Levin was killed for nothing.”

Hunt and his followers allegedly plotted to kill Levin after he duped them in an elaborate commodities trading hoax. Hunt parlayed a $5-million investment from Levin into $13 million--on paper--only to discover that Levin was broke, that the trading transactions had never been executed and that the BBC would never get its $4-million share of profits.

Hunt told members that he and Pittman “knocked off” Levin after forcing him to sign over a $1.5 million check, which bounced, and that they dumped his body in a remote canyon in the Angeles National Forest.

Pittman was arrested several days after Levin’s disappearance at New York’s Plaza Hotel, where he was using Levin’s name and credit cards. He had attempted to slip out of the hotel without paying after running up a bill that exceeded Levin’s credit limit.

“Most jurors felt we did not establish a sufficient link between Hunt and Pittman in the few days before the crime or didn’t prove that he was there (at the murder scene) or that he had knowledge of what Hunt was going to do,” Wapner said.

Brodey, who did not represent Pittman in his earlier trial, said his defense stressed that “maybe Levin is still alive, but if he isn’t, he was killed by Joe Hunt and no evidence exists to link Pittman to the killing.”

Brodey said some jurors told him that they were skeptical about the “to do” list that turned up two months after the alleged murder--which had such notations as “Jim digs pit”--and that they found key prosecution witness Dean Karny’s testimony unbelieveable.

Brodey had asked Albracht to halt a four-hour NBC-TV miniseries, “The Billionaire Boys Club,” scheduled to air Sunday and Monday, arguing that it could taint the jury. Tuesday’s mistrial rendered the question moot, but Brodey still fears “if we come back (to trial) in December, how are we going to find 12 people who didn’t see it and weren’t influenced by it?”

“It’s a terrible problem,” Brodey said.

He said late Tuesday that he had decided not to file a civil suit because a hearing on the matter is scheduled today in U.S. District Court.

The hearing is on a motion brought by an attorney for Hunt, Jeffrey Melczer, asking that the network be barred from airing the programs while trials are in progress or pending. Two members of the BBC, Reza Eslaminia and Ben Dosti, are currently on trial in Redwood City in Northern California in the kidnap-murder of Eslaminia’s father, Hedayat.