Ex-Actor Testifies on Slain Producer’s Fears

A former actor who portrayed a central character in television’s long-running “Sanford and Son” situation comedy testified in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Wednesday that he acted as bodyguard for slain theatrical producer Roy Radin and was armed with a handgun to protect Radin the night he is believed to have been executed in a remote canyon north of Los Angeles.

“He (Radin) was my personal manager,” former actor Grady Demond Wilson said after taking the stand in the 3-week-old preliminary hearing into Radin’s murder. “He said something might happen to him as a result of his association with the film thing . . . the film ‘The Cotton Club.’ ”

Radin’s bullet-riddled corpse was found near Gorman nearly six years ago. He had been dead for several weeks, according to a coroner’s autopsy. Before his disappearance, Radin had been negotiating with producer Robert Evans and a representative of the Puerto Rican government to underwrite production of Evans’ movie, “The Cotton Club.”

Wilson, 43, who was represented by Radin from 1980 through 1983, testified that his life style in the early 1980s--during his heyday as TV’s Lamont Sanford and later as half of “The New Odd Couple”--was characterized by drugs, alcohol and high living. Now a Christian minister, Wilson said that by 1983, he had acquired a cocaine habit that amounted to as much as two grams daily.

On the last day Radin is believed by prosecutors to have been alive, May 13, 1983, the producer asked Wilson to meet him at Radin’s suite at the Hollywood Regency Hotel. Later that evening, Radin was to have dinner with business associates at La Scala restaurant in Beverly Hills, according to Wilson, and Radin wanted it to appear as though Wilson coincidentally was having dinner at a nearby table.

Wilson testified that he regularly carried a gun with him in his sports car in those days and frequently acted as Radin’s bodyguard. Radin asked him to park in front of the hotel and surreptitiously follow the producer to the restaurant.

As Radin and a flashily dressed woman entered a stretch limousine that stopped outside the hotel, Wilson began to follow in his own car. After several blocks, he lost sight of the limousine on Sunset Boulevard.

Wilson and his secretary then drove to La Scala and had dinner, but neither Radin nor the woman ever showed up.

Prosecutors believe that the woman was Karen DeLayne (Lanie) Greenberger, an alleged Florida cocaine dealer who introduced Radin to Evans. According to previous court testimony, Greenberger is believed to have ordered Radin killed by William Molony Mentzer and Alex Lamota Marti, two former bodyguards for Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, and Robert Ulmer Lowe, a fourth co-defendant.

Prosecutors believe that Greenberger thought Radin might have been involved in stealing cocaine and money from her and that the producer was refusing to cut Greenberger in on his “Cotton Club” deal with Evans.

Did Not Recognize Accused

From the stand, Wilson said he did not recognize three co-defendants accused in Radin’s murder. As Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Thomas stood behind Greenberger, Mentzer and Marti and asked Wilson to identify them, Wilson said he recognized none of them.

“He looks like the cab driver who brought me over here,” Wilson quipped when Thomas stood behind Marti.

“We’ll stipulate to that he’s the cab driver,” retorted Richard Hirsch, Marti’s attorney.

Lowe, the fourth defendant, is fighting extradition from Maryland.