Hollywood & Crime - The Cotton Club Murder | Interview with Lanie's Defense Attorney | 7

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Hollywood & Crime host Tracy Pattin interviews Lanie Jacobs' defense attorney, Ed Shohat. The veteran criminal lawyer shares his firsthand experience and the daunting challenges he faced in mounting Lanie’s defense during the high-profile murder trial.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder, early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Tracy Patton, and this is The Cotton Club Murder by Hollywood and Crime. Over the last six episodes, we've been telling the story of Roy Raden, Laney Jacobs, and Bob Evans. They all shared a Hollywood dream that ended in Roy's death, with Laney being convicted of second-degree murder.

It's a fascinating story of how greed, ambition, and cocaine played such a huge role in their lives. In this episode, we're talking to someone who had the daunting task of defending Laney Jacobs at her murder trial. You might recognize his name because he was in our series. Ed Shohat is a criminal defense attorney. He still practices in Miami, Florida. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, the Cotton Club Murder, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Each morning, it's a new opportunity, a chance to start fresh. Up First from NPR makes each morning an opportunity to learn and to understand. Choose to join the world every morning with Up First, a podcast that hands you everything going on across the globe and down the street, all in 15 minutes or less. Start your day informed and anew with Up First by subscribing

wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, Ed. It's great to have you here. Tracy, thanks for having me. Yes, we've got a lot to talk about. What a wild story. Well, let's actually start at the beginning in Miami, Florida, back in the late 1970s. How did you meet Laney? Well, Laney was a legal secretary in my law firm. That's how I met her. Laney was a very nice person, a sweet young lady. She dressed very, very well and she held herself very well. As I recall, she was

quite professional in the way she worked for my law firm. She didn't work for the firm for very long, and I remember her telling me she lived above a garage in somebody's house in a small apartment above a garage. And as I recall it, and this is going back a lot of years, Lainey liked to party at night. And at times we would have conversations about the partying that she did at night. But then she left. She left the firm and as they say, she went on to bigger, but not necessarily better things. Okay. Which brings to mind Miami in the late 70s and the early 80s was quite a wild place.

Can you describe the mood, the vibe? Well there was a lot of drug money moving through the city. A lot of it was being invested in real estate and in other ways. Miami, because of its geographic location at the tip of South Florida, close to the Caribbean, close to South America and Central America. Miami was a mecca for financial transactions. It was quite an exciting place. I graduated law school at the University of Miami in 1972, which was right at the beginning

of the war on drugs. And Miami was the epicenter of the war on drugs. What can I tell you? Business was booming. And by the way, it was also a very young city with a lot of young people. And the nightlife here was tremendous. The melding of the two languages, English and Spanish, and then the Haitians started to come with the Creole, all of that made Miami kind of a very, very international city.

But there was a lot of drug violence here, and there were a lot of drug dealers here, and the drug trade attracted a lot of people for easy, quick money. So let's jump ahead to 1988. You hadn't kept in touch with Laney, but you had run into her and her husband, Larry Greenberger, at one point. And then out of the blue, you get a call with Bombshell News that she had been arrested. When you were asked to represent her, how did you feel about that? And did you know about the murder, the Roy Raden murder at the time when you were asked

to represent? I knew absolutely nothing. I never heard the name Roy Raiden. I didn't hear the name Roy Raiden until I became involved in the case. So needless to say, receiving that phone call from a lawyer out of Denver who was in Orlando at the time when Laney was arrested with Laney, she had just completed what I understood was her interview with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which was investigating the death of Larry Greenberger, her husband. I didn't even

know that Larry had died. I learned it in the same conversation. And I was asked to come up to Orlando that Laney had been arrested. And I went up there and I met with Laney. And Laney was adamant that she wanted me to represent her. I wanted to represent her and I did. So Ed, why do you think that Laney really wanted you, specifically you, to handle her case? She knew me. So I was not coming to the situation

as a stranger. She knew my reputation as a criminal defense lawyer. She knew that I was selected from all the lawyers on the planet to defend Carlos Slater, the only member of the Medellin Cartel ever brought to trial for cartel crimes in the United States still to this day. The Medellin cartel was by reputation responsible for 85 to 90

percent of the cocaine that came into the United States. The most famous member of the Medellin cartel was Pablo Escobar. Medellin is a town in Columbia where the group supposedly was headquartered. She knew those things and she wanted me to defend her. And were you surprised to see this woman who was a legal secretary, you hadn't seen her in years, and now she's being charged with murder? Surprise doesn't express it.

It was shock. How could this happen? Who did Laney become? And what did she do or didn't do? And yeah, it was a shock to my system. I was very, very surprised. Did she seem different from when you had seen her before, all those years ago?

I don't remember thinking that she seemed different. Laney was always very nice to me and very articulate, dealt with things in a straight up way. And I concluded early on that she would be a good client to represent. She wouldn't be a problem or a difficult client, which isn't always the case. And that proved to be the case and she had the wherewithal to finance a top-line defense and the prosecutor David Kahn in Los Angeles made it very clear to me on my very first conversation that they were going to try

to have the death penalty imposed for Laini Greenberg. And so the case had enormous stakes in it. So it was important to me that the finances were there to do a first rate capital murder defense. AMT – Were you confident that you were going to win the case? Did you feel confident about that? BD – No. You're never confident that you're going to win the case. I became over time in my investigation of the case, in my learning about the case, confident that a very

viable defense could be raised for Laney. So let's get into the pretrial. Let's talk about the prosecution's evidence as you started to assemble the trial. What happened there? Well, there are some unique aspects to the way California works. The most significant overall is that they have what is known as open file discovery. In other words, the defense gets absolutely everything that's in the prosecutor's file. David Kahn told me he would send me what they call the murder book. The murder book is literally a notebook

or a series of notebooks that contains every piece of evidence the prosecutors have in the case. So early on in the case, I had available to me the People of California's entire evidence book and was able to use it to Prepare for what first would be a preliminary hearing you had to have a preliminary hearing in order for a lower court judge To determine whether the evidence was sufficient to bind it over to the higher court the Superior Court of Los Angeles For trial and so we actually had the superior court of Los Angeles, for trial.

And so we actually had a mini trial in Los Angeles in 1989, which was the preliminary hearing in the case. So in addition to having the murder book, you get your first shot at cross-examining their witnesses. I lived in Los Angeles for six weeks in a Hollywood Hills home belonging to a friend of mine. And I spent that six weeks driving downtown every day to the Superior Court building to have the preliminary hearing.

Ed, let's talk about Robert Evans at the pretrial. Robert Evans didn't testify either at the pretrial or at the trial, and then was never called as a witness. And because he wanted immunity, he wouldn't testify unless he had full immunity and they didn't give it to him. Well, I can't say that Evans ever offered to testify as a prosecution witness if he got immunity. I cannot back that up because I don't know.

My impression was that Shapiro did everything he could to steer Evans away from the case. And that once Evans refused to testify at the preliminary hearing, the matter was a dead letter because the prosecution went throughout the entire case until the middle of the trial believing that perhaps Evans was involved in putting Laney up to the murder. And of course, Laney later testified that Evans wasn't involved in the murder at all. So during this whole process, as an attorney from Florida, did you feel that you were at a disadvantage here in California?

Of course. But I cut that disadvantage down to its knees, as they say, by bringing on a woman by the name of Marcia Morrissey as my co-counsel. Marcia Morrissey was a Los Angeles-based criminal defense lawyer whose entire practice was court-appointed murder cases. Back in 1989, Los Angeles was way ahead of the curve in handling capital cases. They passed a law in California that every defendant who was indicted for a capital crime was entitled to not one, but two criminal defense lawyers. And if the defendant could only afford one, the state would appoint a second one. And we had the state appoint Marcia Morrissey to co-counsel the case with me.

Marcia was and is today, I'm sure, a sensational lawyer. And if it wasn't for Marsha, I might not have survived the case. Marsha knew the rules in California inside and out. She knew the courts and the judges inside and out. And so the answer to your question is, yes, it was daunting being over 3000 miles away and in a strange legal system with unique procedures,

different in many, many ways from what we experience or I had experienced in the state courts and federal courts here in South Florida. So Marcia was my savior in the case. And Ed, in the pretrial, were you surprised by the outcome? I certainly came away from the preliminary hearing believing that there was more than sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that a crime had been committed and that Laney was involved in committing it, along with the other defendants who were charged with her. And there was sufficient evidence to bind her over for trial.

I didn't harbor any illusion that that process would end the case by any stretch of the imagination. So let's get to the trial. So there were four defendants. Just to reiterate that this is in California, with four people involved in the crime, they all are in the trial together. Correct. They're all on trial together. So was she at a severe disadvantage in this situation?

Yes. We had moved for a severance of the defendants before the trial to get Laney a separate trial from the three hit men who carried out the murder on the theory that they were going to be presenting antagonistic defenses. We had a hearing and we argued that pre-trial, and the judge denied that motion. And of course, during the trial, the prosecution played tapes of Menser and Lowe, each talking to their key witness Bill Ryder. What did you think of those tape recordings?

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They didn't have recordings of Laney. They implicated Laney and they weren't helpful. They didn't have recordings of Laney. So what Bill Ryder did is he went to the Los Angeles County Police and he said these guys have been bragging about this murder and they wired him up and he went to each one individually and got very damning statements from them implicating themselves in the murder. That's devastating evidence. As we say, you cannot cross-examine a tape recording. So that must have been a big challenge for you.

It was a huge challenge. We litigated very heavily to get the recordings redacted, to eliminate references to Laney under what we thought were solid constitutional principles. But Judge Rapey disagreed and he allowed those tapes to be played. And when the appeal went up, the Court of Appeals affirmed it. AMT – So when it came time to present your key witness, there's quite a story to that. Tell us about Tim Whitehead. BD – Tim Whitehead was a longtime acquaintance of Lainey Greenberger, who drove truckloads

of cocaine and returned with cash from the sale of that cocaine. Cocaine was stored in the home that Lainey had in Sherman Oaks, the quote unquote stash house, and he ended up being a central figure in the case because the information that we developed in investigating the case was that he was present when the murder of Roy Raden was ordered in Milano Beliches' Coco Plum home. You had to search for him. Tell us about that. We had a team of private investigators looking for him for a very long time.

And that finally worked. Whitehead was found months into the trial, and I had to take a day off from the trial, leave Marcia back, and drive 40 miles or whatever it was east of LA to a truck stop to meet with him and with my investigator, interview him, and then convince him to come to court and testify. I had to impress upon him that if he didn't come and testify, Lenny might end up on death row, that he was the lynchpin. Reluctantly, he agreed to do it, and he did, and he was an excellent witness. Tim Whitehead, I believe established that the idea was not to involve Laney in the murder, but simply to use her and abuse

her to get Raiden out of his hotel room, which is, in my view, what happened, without telling her that there was going to be anything done to him other than to try to get him to confess and get the drugs and the money back, which made consummate sense from what would have been a drug dealer's standpoint. Any theories on why he didn't want to be found initially? Who in the world would want to get involved in this mess? Why would you want to get involved? And remember, it involved him admitting

that he drove truckloads of cocaine. We got on the witness stand and admitted it. Now, the statute of limitations had long run on any of it, but who in the world wants to come into a courtroom in the glare of the cameras and the press and everything and admit that you're driving hundreds of kilos of coke on a regular basis. That was huge. And after you had Whitehead on the stand, why did you still bring Laney on the witness stand? That's a very good question.

And the answer to it implicates attorney-client privilege conversations with Ms. Greenberger that I'm not going to go into. I will point out in my opening statement, I said to the jury, and it's the only time I ever did this, and it will be the only time I ever do it. And I did it because we didn't have Whitehead. We didn't have a witness to exonerate Laney. I said to the jury, I knew what the evidence was gonna show.

I said that the jury had to keep an open mind that this was gonna be a long trial, it was gonna last many months, and that they could not decide this case until they heard Laney's testimony. And Laney needed to explain what she did that night and why she did it and that she didn't know or intend for Roy Raden to be hurt in any way. But my view was that because we found the missing witness, Tim Whitehead, it was no

longer necessary for Laney to testify. But she did. That's a very unusual thing to do, right, for an attorney to put their client on the stand? Different defense attorneys have different philosophies about clients testifying. There are some defense attorneys who believe that you can't win a serious case without the defendant telling the jury his or her version of events in an exculpatory way. I am amongst what I believe is the large majority of lawyers who believe that putting a defendant accused of a crime on the witness stand is an act of utter desperation.

And Ed, after she testified, how did you feel? Well, how did you feel during the time when she was on the stand? What was your take? I felt like I was having every one of my teeth pulled one at a time in seriatim without anesthesia. And it wasn't so much that Laney was a bad witness. Laney was a good witness. But you have to understand some of the dynamics that were at work and that were at play at that point of time. Everything at that point forward depends on whether the jury believes your client. And that question can turn on so many factors other than whether your client is a good witness in telling the truth, that it is a daunting task to move

a client through testifying in her own defense. The jury has heard a tremendous amount of evidence from prosecution witnesses. They've heard from the key witness for the defense, and then she takes the witness stand. We had at that point almost a completely female jury. I thought it would be best if Marsha Marcy, who was a fine lawyer and she did a fine job, did the direct and redirect of Laney. The direct lasted about a day and a half. One thing you need to understand is that while Lainey denied her own knowledge in the murder

or involvement in the murder, she implicated the other three defendants on the witness stand. This created an incredible dynamic in the courtroom where some extremely unusual things occurred, things that I had never seen before and have never seen since in a trial. What were some unusual things? Well, the first thing that happened was that when Marcia tendered Lanny for cross, there was a stampede to the sidebar and the prosecutor and all three defense teams begged for a recess of the trial so they could prepare to cross-examine

her. Now, that might sound like not a particularly unusual thing, but I got to tell you it's an extraordinarily unusual thing, particularly due to the fact that in my opening statement, I said to the jury that I would be putting Laney on the stand. Now you have everybody begging. They were asking for a week and a half to two weeks off to prepare for a cross examination that they were told they would have to do months earlier. So the judge granted it.

And we had a week or a week and a half recess in the trial so that the prosecution and the other lawyers could prepare for cross. That was number one. Number two was that she was on a cross-examination for nine and a half days. Nine and a half days of cross-examination where she was first attacked by the prosecutors mainly as a drug dealer, which she admitted, she didn't hide from that. They bloodied her up as a drug dealer

who was keeping a stash house with her, what was a three, four year old son living in the stash house. So they bloodied her up that way, but it went on and on and on and any effort that I made or that Marscia made to cut them off was rejected. And then one at a time, one of the two defense lawyers, remember in a capital case, every defendant has two lawyers. One of the two got up and did their own multi-day cross-examination of Laney who had implicated. Because of the fact that

she clearly implicated them in the murder of Roy Raden, they were all royally angry at her and they cross-examined her accordingly. And that was like, you know, it was it was difficult to take at that point. So how did you end Laney's defense? I closed on a somewhat contradictory theory because I felt it was necessary to do so. Hello ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with his The Grinch holiday podcast.

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manslaughter. And that's the most that they should convict Laney of, the highest crime. And why was that? I did that because I didn't see much of a chance of an outright acquittal at that point. But I still to this day don't believe there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Laney was involved intentionally in that murder. My view was and remains today that there literally was no link other than potential anger on Laney's part between what happened with respect to the cotton club, the film

The Cotton Club, and the death of Roy Raden. These guys, Alex Marti and Bill Menser and maybe to a lesser degree Robert Lowe, the driver of the limousine that night, were out of control. I'll just put it that way. So let's go to you waiting for the verdict. So the trial's done. How are you feeling? How's Lainey feeling as you await the verdict?

She was very nervous. I recall her being nervous. How would anybody be waiting to determine whether she would ultimately end up executed. I mean, that's an enormous weight on anybody. What was that like the day the verdict came in for you and for Laney? It was difficult for both of us. You never want to have a verdict against you. I was realistic. I felt there was a good chance that we would get the manslaughter verdict, but we didn't. And at the end of the day, that jury convicted the hitmen who carried out the murder of Roy Raden of first degree murder with special circumstances.

But they convicted Laney of second degree murder, which suggests strongly that they did not believe that Lanny was involved in the planning of the murder, only in the carrying out of it on the night that it occurred. Because she did get Raiden out of that hotel room and she was in the car that drove along Hollywood Boulevard and turned off up into the hills when she was thrown out of the car when Menser and Marty jumped in and then took Raden off to the high desert north of LA and murdered him. We did an appeal and we had what we thought were tremendous issues but the Court of Appeals didn't agree and Laney was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

And have you been in touch at all with Laney? Not in recent years. In the early years and for some years after the case, Laney would send me a jail-made Christmas card every year and write a nice note. That hasn't happened for countless years. I talked recently with Terry Squalante, who raised her son Dax. He's graduated college and working. I don't know exactly

where. He's fine. So Squalante's been in his life the whole time. Absolutely. Terry did a hero thing taking on that child under those circumstances. Well, I'm glad he's doing well. Now, let me ask you about Larry Greenberger. Lainey was married to him. He died of a gunshot wound to the temple. And it was originally determined by the coroner that it was a suicide. There were two adults in the house when Larry died, Lainanie Greenberger and Terry Scolanti. Just to remind our listeners, initially,

they thought it was a suicide, and then they ruled it a homicide, and then it remained a cold case until recently. Did you know that it's been reopened? I've heard it. What do you think about that? Good luck. Any ideas of what happened?

Any theories? No. I really don't know because to answer the question would involve privileged information that I got from Lainey Greenberger. I'm not going to do that. And Lainey was, and probably to this day remains a prime suspect in that death. And the police, for years they would call me up and they would want me to bring Laney in for another interview and I respectfully declined to advise her to do that.

They haven't contacted, you know, I've heard the case has been reopened, but they haven't contacted me. And Ed, what do you know about Milano Bellaciasis? I know very little. He was in prison at the time, I think, doing a very significant drug sentence. What is only my opinion is that for some reason, the prosecutors never sought to bring him into the case.

When the evidence was so clear that he ordered the hit, there's no statute of limitations on capital murder. I couldn't understand why Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office didn't turn around and charge Belichesis with that murder. Maybe there's something I'm missing. It's entirely possible. But, and I'm only commenting here on the evidence as I understood it to be. And maybe there's something else out there that I don't know, but they just ended the case with the conviction of the four people in the trial in 1991. Do you have any final thoughts, Ed, on the case and Laney and the verdictuted after all these years in prison, and she would

get released and be able to return to her son and whatever family he has and live out her days in freedom. I wish that would happen for her. And if she would ask me, I'd be happy to help her with that. Well, her story is fascinating. Ed, when are you writing your book? You're not the only person that has asked me that question. And if I could, I'm a little bit different from some other lawyers. If I could figure out a way to do it right without violating my client confidences, I might try to do that.

Well, you have to do a fictionalized version then. I also think that's somewhat of a myth because it may be fictionalized, but if you're fictionalizing it to make it seem like a case and you're violating client privileges, it's still the same problem as far as I'm concerned. Well, thank you for saying that. Trust me, we're only scratching the surface here. And one last quick question.

When you just look back on the Cotton Club murder, the trial, Hollywood, that world compared to your world as an attorney in Miami. Just what would you say? The whole case was in some ways a bit of a circus in so many different ways that we don't see here in South Florida, but I guess that goes with the territory. So you're staying in Miami and continuing to practice law there. I'm 77 years old, and as long as they ask me to do it, I'll do it.

You're still young. Okay. Well, thank you so much for all of the fascinating stories and for shining a spotlight on the Cotton Club murder trial. Thank you for having me. by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. This is our final episode of The Cotton Club Murder from Hollywood and Crime. Our show was produced by Tracy Patton, Rebecca Reynolds, and Jim Carpenter for Hollywood and Crime. Our managing producer is Sophia Martens, and our coordinating producer is Taylor Sniffin.

Research by Adam Mellion. Sound design is by Kyle Randall. Our audio engineer is Dan Pashina. Audio assembly by Daniel Gonzalez. Additional audio assistance from Adrian Tapia. For Wondery, our senior producer is Laura Donna Palavoda and our producer is Yasmin Ward. Executive producers are Erin O'Flaherty, Marsha Louie, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

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