The ranks of the Hare Krishna movement had swelled to more than 10,000 worldwide in the late 1970s, when 28-year-old devotee Alexander Kulik had dreams of developing a line of Krishna-sanctified health food cookies called Bionic Bits.
That was before Kulik and his Krishna investment firm became implicated in the gangland-style murder of a drug dealer in Newport Beach.
Kulik was a respected financial donor to Hare Krishna temples in Laguna Beach and San Diego, The Los Angeles Times reported.
He marketed his Bionic Bits cookies through his Newport Beach investment firm Prasadam Distributing International. The firm’s name came from the Sanskrit term for the vegetarian cuisine served at Krishna Temples. Many of Prasadam’s investors were Hare Krishna followers.
The late-night slaying of a small-time Newport Beach drug dealer in the parking lot of Avila’s El Ranchito restaurant in October 1977 would lay bear Prasadam’s secret ties to East Coast mobsters and a ring of drug-smuggling Hare Krishna devotees.
Police found the bullet-riddled body of Stephen Bovan, 36, on Oct. 22, 1977, in the El Ranchito parking lot on Newport Boulevard. He had been shot nine times at close range, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Witnesses saw a lime-green Cadillac convertible speed away after the shooting.
A 9 mm automatic pistol believed to be the murder weapon was later discovered in Upper Newport Bay, according to contemporary news accounts. The pistol was found buried in the mud, its hammer still cocked.
Investigators soon linked Bovan’s slaying to his involvement in a plot to kidnap Kulik in a bid to extort $100,000 from Prasadam, according to a Los Angeles Times story dated Oct. 28, 1977.
Police traced the distinctive lime-green Cadillac to its owner, Jerry Fiori, and his friends Anthony Merone and Raymond Resco. “The Italians,” as the men were known at Prasadam, were East Coast mobsters, The Times reported.
Federal law enforcement officials had relocated two of the men, Merone and Resco, to Orange County in exchange for their testimony, as part of the Witness Protection Program, according to contemporary news accounts.
Police contended that Kulik had hired the Italians to kill Bovan in retaliation for the extortion plot.
