Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Saren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: What's up, dude, I got a question for you.
Speaker 3: I got a question for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, you guys first, what's your question?
Speaker 3: You know what's ridiculous? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, I do? Oh, okay, okay, Mark Twain and Tesla.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Tesla the guy, the guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, like Nicola Tesla, my dude, right, two of my
Speaker 2: favorite guys in history. Do you know they were friends?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were really good friends. They met in a
Speaker 2: gentleman's social club and both like billiards. That's not what's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: What's ridiculous is that Tesla once played a really crappy
Speaker 2: joke on his friend. Yeah. So in the past, Mark Twain,
Speaker 2: he complained to Tesla about how he had this really bad,
Speaker 2: recurring bouts of constipation. Right, So Tesla's like, oh, don't worry,
Speaker 2: I got you, buddy, I got this new invention. You
Speaker 2: got to come by my lab, but it'll hook you
Speaker 2: all up. And he's like, really, for reals, yeah, come
Speaker 2: by it. He's so he goes and he checks it
Speaker 2: out and this is vibrating, humming, oscillating metal disc. He's
Speaker 2: like how is this gonna help my my constipation? I'm
Speaker 2: all jammed up, Tesla. And Tesla's like, oh no, here's
Speaker 2: what you do. You get on this and it imparts
Speaker 2: vitality and he's like, what do you mean in parts
Speaker 2: of by tell he's this one of your electric doo
Speaker 2: witsy He's like, yeah, yes, this is one of my electrict.
Speaker 3: Like, what do you mean get on it?
Speaker 2: So yeah, So this is what he says, is you go,
Speaker 2: when you stand on top of this stand metal oscillating
Speaker 2: disc and oscillating just going up and down, but don't right.
Speaker 2: So he's like, yeah, you go, do stand on that
Speaker 2: and it'll give you this really pleasing feeling and you
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about being constipated. It'll be basically
Speaker 2: shake it at you. And he's like what He's like,
Speaker 2: oh are you for real? To Tesla and fast you
Speaker 2: can say Caliverari's county. He jumped right up on there,
Speaker 2: and Tesla he told him, now, when I tell you
Speaker 2: Twain to get off this thing, you gotta get off right.
Speaker 2: And Mark Twain's like, oh you bet, you don't you
Speaker 2: worry about that? Flip the switch, Tesla, And so Tesla's
Speaker 2: like go now. You can imagine him like in his
Speaker 2: white suit and Tesla's there and like the black rubber
Speaker 2: smock and gloves and electricity is arcing everywhere in the background.
Speaker 2: He's like, okay, stand still, Twain, and he hits the
Speaker 2: switch right, and electricity surges through the cables and then
Speaker 2: now arcing right and everything's sparking and going crazy. And
Speaker 2: inside this crazy voltage crackling all around him is Mark
Speaker 2: Twain and he's just delighted. He's laughing. It feels like
Speaker 2: I don't know, like MDMA, but electricity.
Speaker 3: Right, He's just this amazing He's not like getting electrically
Speaker 3: just beggled.
Speaker 2: No, No, there's like a surge of Like the Tesla
Speaker 2: it had figured out ways to run lots of voltage
Speaker 2: around as long as you didn't run a lot of
Speaker 2: ampage into the person. So it's the amps that kill you,
Speaker 2: it's not the voltage.
Speaker 3: So I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the amperage was was was not so much that
Speaker 2: it could hurt him. So the vaults are just racing
Speaker 2: past him, just basically sparking the air, right, so just
Speaker 2: turning into like a light show of crackling electricity. And
Speaker 2: so this was the Tesla is just like, you know,
Speaker 2: telling Twain, Oh you enjoy any Twains, it is great.
Speaker 2: He's like, okay, now you need you need to get
Speaker 2: down off the disk. In Twain it's like, nah, I'm fine,
Speaker 2: this is great. He's like, no, no, you really need
Speaker 2: to get down off the disk. And Twain it's like,
Speaker 2: don't tell me what to do when I'm having pleasure, boy,
Speaker 2: just leave me alone. And so he does, and Tesla's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well you'll find out for yourself. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Twain found out for himself it had indeed done what
Speaker 2: it had been practiced and purported to do. It had
Speaker 2: imparted vitality, and it had jiggled everything loose. He started
Speaker 2: to feel the first leak cawling down his leg and
Speaker 2: he's like, Tesla, my man, the water closet post haste.
Speaker 2: And he had to make a bee line for the
Speaker 2: water closet. And Tesla just pointed out and he had
Speaker 2: made Mark Twain soil his white suit.
Speaker 3: Wow, yes, I thought you were gonna say. He said,
Speaker 3: to stand on a plate and it would jiggle him,
Speaker 3: just jiggle the dukie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well no, that was it did.
Speaker 3: But there's all the lights stuff going around electricity, so
Speaker 3: weird science.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. He was ever seen like the things where
Speaker 2: he's like sitting in his like lab and there's like
Speaker 2: this huge arcing reactor to just kind of imagine that
Speaker 2: that was his laboratory.
Speaker 3: Why aren't people doing that now? Like, doesn't that seem
Speaker 3: like something that be doing Instagram people totally come into
Speaker 3: my orb.
Speaker 2: They do actually do this. You know. They have the
Speaker 2: stuff now where they strap on like this oscillating thing.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to jiggle your muscles into being stronger and
Speaker 2: it's like a late night kind of TV ad. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it'll get the it'll get the poop addy and the muscles.
Speaker 2: India interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, check that out that that's ridiculous. A lot of
Speaker 3: it that's so ridiculous. Do you want to know what
Speaker 3: else is ridiculous? Or for it hypnotizing your way to millions?
Speaker 2: Tell me more.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous. You are damn right, Yes, my nephew, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's four. Yes, I've talked about him a little bit
Speaker 3: on the show before totally good kid. He has this
Speaker 3: thing now where he holds out his hand like baby
Speaker 3: Yoda and he says, by the power of the moon,
Speaker 3: I hypnotize you.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I've seen him do this. Yeah, you're shown. Yeah,
Speaker 2: show me the videos.
Speaker 3: Of then, because I always play. Yeah, he orders me
Speaker 3: around to have fun here we do, we have, we
Speaker 3: have fun. The last time he was over here, he
Speaker 3: hypnotized me and told me to walk into the kitchen okay,
Speaker 3: and then he told me to pick up a watermelon
Speaker 3: that was on the counter, and like, at this point
Speaker 3: I thought he was going to make me drop it
Speaker 3: on the floor or like set it on my head.
Speaker 2: Gallagher gag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was prepared to like, oh, I broke
Speaker 3: the spell, look at me. And then he told me
Speaker 3: my order cut it and serve it to me before.
Speaker 3: It was like a really clever way to ask for
Speaker 3: of course I did, but it was really hilarious, like, yes,
Speaker 3: cut it, and that's the only time I've ever been hypnotized.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: You said before I think on here that you don't
Speaker 3: think you can be hypnotized.
Speaker 2: No, I don't believe that I can. So therefore I
Speaker 2: don't think it's possible. I won't submit to what you
Speaker 2: have to do, which is this power of suggestion same
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: I mean only if I'm told to pick up a watermelon.
Speaker 2: I'm mule stubborn.
Speaker 3: But you know, like people get into it though.
Speaker 2: Recom people all the time. I'm suggesting it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Just you have to think it works exactly.
Speaker 3: And there's like the subliminal messaging hypnosis where people listen
Speaker 3: to tapes while they sleep.
Speaker 2: But I know somebody work for them, so I believe it.
Speaker 3: And then there's the hypnosis we see on TV procedurals
Speaker 3: where a victim is hypnotized to remember facts.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, so.
Speaker 3: I've heard that happens on shows. And then there's entertainment
Speaker 3: hypnosis like loungejacks magician.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, walk like a chick in clock like a duck.
Speaker 3: I feel like there were more of these in like
Speaker 3: the sixties through the eighties.
Speaker 2: There's more all the nightclub aacs. That's why it fill off.
Speaker 3: People don't go to club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thereose are old nightclub Take vaudeville, run that into
Speaker 2: the nightclub. After TV kills off vaudeville and then he
Speaker 2: goes underground, becomes a little darker, a little more edgy,
Speaker 2: little sexier, and then it gets killed by the seventies
Speaker 2: with the Dean Martin Row.
Speaker 3: No, the seventies eighties we had hypnotists. I think the
Speaker 3: nineties is when I'm talking about the nightclub acs my hypnosis.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that you could catch like a hypnotist show
Speaker 3: now in Vegas or Branson.
Speaker 2: People do that stuff. People will still love that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, there's one notorious hypnotist from the loungeacked hypnotist area.
Speaker 3: If you say hypnotist too many times stopped chizing its. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he was this guy also a ridiculous criminal. Ronald Peller,
Speaker 3: come on down. Yeah. He was born in nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: and he said in an interview that he grew up
Speaker 3: in Kuala Lumpur with his parents, his brother, and his sister.
Speaker 3: And then he said his sister and his parents died there,
Speaker 3: that they were killed in an attack by Malaysian insurgents,
Speaker 3: sad story. And then he and his brother got shipped
Speaker 3: off to an orphanage in Chicago. Okay, the boys dipped
Speaker 3: out on the orphanage when he was eleven, so like
Speaker 3: nineteen forty one, they started living on the streets and
Speaker 3: thus began their criming ways.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah.
Speaker 3: They would take cheap watches, it'd stick them in the
Speaker 3: packaging of expensive ones and then sell them on the street.
Speaker 2: Classics.
Speaker 3: Classic. He saved, and he saved that sweet watch money.
Speaker 3: And when he was eighteen, he rented a suite at
Speaker 3: the Palmer House hotel and he and all his little streeters.
Speaker 2: Like his eighteenth birthday or just like I'm eighteen.
Speaker 3: I I think I'm eighteen, and now they'll let me
Speaker 3: run around. Okay, So he had all this little group
Speaker 3: of minions, his little urchins, and they said, come on
Speaker 3: live with me, so they all live there. Later he
Speaker 3: told his future wife that he was raised in Singapore.
Speaker 2: Okay, they are starting to sound like lies.
Speaker 3: He said he went to college there and eventually got
Speaker 3: a doctorate in psychology.
Speaker 2: But the truth I've said that at parties on the truth.
Speaker 3: Zarin is that he grew up in Chicago with his
Speaker 3: parents and his brother. No adventures in Southeast only adventures
Speaker 3: in his head.
Speaker 2: Ah, the ones in the mid ones in the mine.
Speaker 2: So they're the best kind.
Speaker 3: By the nineteen sixties, he was performing as a nightclub hypnotist.
Speaker 3: He'd graduated.
Speaker 2: It's like a cruise ship magician. It just sounds a hypnotist.
Speaker 3: There's a really good short documentary about him called Mister Hypnotism,
Speaker 3: super easy to find online. He talks about how in
Speaker 3: his early days he would put gray paint in his
Speaker 3: hair to look old and season oh smart, and he
Speaker 3: has this whole riff about how you know, then he'd
Speaker 3: fall asleep and it would get all over his face
Speaker 3: and over the lady's face too. One of those guys,
Speaker 3: ah so Ronald Pellar, but he called himself Ronald Dante,
Speaker 3: or more popularly doctor Dante.
Speaker 2: Doctor Dante, doctor Dte in the house.
Speaker 3: And he also conducted self help seminars using hypnotism. According
Speaker 3: to The Wall Street Journal, he had a whole pitch
Speaker 3: at these performances slash seminars. He would say, quote, look around.
Speaker 3: You see the fat people and the chainsmokers. See the
Speaker 3: folks with nasty children, strained marriages, and stressful jobs. They're
Speaker 3: burned out, they're blue, they're ripe for you. You can
Speaker 3: be their neighborhood hypnotist. You'll handle stress one night, smoking
Speaker 3: the necks on weight lost night, you'll stuff your fattest
Speaker 3: friends into sturdy chairs in your living room, turn the
Speaker 3: lights low, put on soft music, and entrance them with
Speaker 3: words like fatty greasy front foods are noxious. Afterwards, you'll
Speaker 3: do a few hypnotic parlor tricks. You'll have some someone
Speaker 3: make like a concrete slab while you stand on her stomach.
Speaker 3: It's easy. You can get incredibly rich at it.
Speaker 2: This is insane like and in the era of tupperware parties.
Speaker 2: If this is also one of the pictures, you're going to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's like, do this at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: In July, No thanks, I'm good love.
Speaker 3: July of nineteen sixty two, Claire Rosamond Golden Kissel Pillar.
Speaker 2: That's a heck of a name. Yeah.
Speaker 3: She filed suit against her husband, Dante the Hypnotist.
Speaker 2: Oh not Ron Dante.
Speaker 3: No. She said that he hypnotized her and that while
Speaker 3: she was in a trance, he convinced her to marry him.
Speaker 2: I would totally read a book called The Hypnotist Wife.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there is one.
Speaker 2: I just want want to read.
Speaker 3: That night, I imagine him like, by the power of the moon.
Speaker 2: You will marry me? Say I do? So?
Speaker 3: He hypnotizes her hypnotie Mary and hypnotizes her and makes
Speaker 3: makes her give him money. Wow, nineteen thousand, three hundred
Speaker 3: and forty two dollars and twenty two cents. WHOA, why
Speaker 3: so specific?
Speaker 2: We asked, Yes, why so specifical?
Speaker 3: As it was every last dime that she had in
Speaker 3: her bank account. Oh, he was like, by the power
Speaker 3: of the moon. Yes, be my bride and give me
Speaker 3: and just empty your bank empty.
Speaker 2: Your bank account into my pocket and maybe stopping my bride.
Speaker 3: After that, papers in their reporting on this said that
Speaker 3: the marriage was never consummated.
Speaker 2: How did I know?
Speaker 3: And that Claire and Dante never lived together as husband,
Speaker 3: So like, this must have happened like in the bathroom
Speaker 3: of the nightclub.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a one day wedding, yes, or one day marriage.
Speaker 3: So February nineteen sixty three, a judge upheld her claims. So, yes,
Speaker 3: indeed he used the power of the moon on you.
Speaker 3: And she said that she gave Dante an endorsed check
Speaker 3: made out to him. It's like, yeah, I did that,
Speaker 3: but I did it because he wasn't going to cash it.
Speaker 3: He said he was. He said he was going to
Speaker 3: use it quote as evidence of financial condition with certain
Speaker 3: tax officials. I'm not sure what that means, but I
Speaker 3: think he's like going to show it to the I
Speaker 3: R S.
Speaker 2: I kind of get it. Good for this bill, I
Speaker 2: don't be it's not the lie that I had questioned them?
Speaker 2: Is that someone believe the lie? Fill out this check?
Speaker 2: I need this, it's feign I need to do bookmark
Speaker 2: for my book the moon. Could you just fill out
Speaker 2: this check?
Speaker 3: The power of the moon. It makes you serve a
Speaker 3: four year old watermelon.
Speaker 2: It makes her stuff.
Speaker 3: It is. Uh so he wasn't supposed to cash the check.
Speaker 3: He cashed the check and then he used that money
Speaker 3: to buy us savings bonds in his mom's name, the
Speaker 3: mom who's supposed to be dead in Kuala Lumpur. Yes, yeah, so,
Speaker 3: the judge said Claire quote was under hypnotic influence to
Speaker 3: such an extent that she did not fully comprehend the
Speaker 3: nature and significance of her actions and was rendered thoroughly
Speaker 3: incapable of consenting or entering into marriage relationship freely and voluntarily.
Speaker 2: Wonder what the legal statutes are around hypnotism. You know,
Speaker 2: what do we have about this? It's all about exercise
Speaker 2: and control. The law is all about exercising control and
Speaker 2: so forth, or your will. But if you have somebody
Speaker 2: else exercise and control over you, are they then legally
Speaker 2: culpable for what you do? Could you then say, oh,
Speaker 2: whatever crimes I did, as long as you have a hypnotist,
Speaker 2: you're like, it's on his How far does this work?
Speaker 3: But honestly, is this not the best endorsement for the hypnotists?
Speaker 2: The law set I would practice in the newspaper.
Speaker 3: So he didn't need Claire. He had his sights on
Speaker 3: bigger fish.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: On May ninth, nineteen sixty nine, he got married again.
Speaker 3: Of course, in the course of his life he got
Speaker 3: married seven times.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this was the most spectacular. He was marrying
Speaker 3: a woman who was on her seventh marriage.
Speaker 2: How did they find each other? Like at a convention?
Speaker 3: No, they met at a disco three months prior, and
Speaker 3: there they were.
Speaker 2: You can find someone married seven times?
Speaker 3: Well, there they were in Vegas. They're trying the knots.
Speaker 3: The bride min up model actress fem A Tall, America's
Speaker 3: number one sweater girl. Born Julia Jean Turner. You know
Speaker 3: her as Lana Turner.
Speaker 2: Oh no way?
Speaker 3: He married Lana Turner. Wow. So Let's not forget that
Speaker 3: Lana Turner was previously mixed up with mobster Johnny Stompinado.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, john he wooed her.
Speaker 3: They began dating. It was a violent relationship. Stompinado was
Speaker 3: a domestic abuser, was absolute filth, scum of the yearth I.
Speaker 2: Just know the stuff about the salt pepper. He was
Speaker 2: a grinder.
Speaker 3: He was a horrible person. On the set of Another Time,
Speaker 3: Another Place in London in nineteen fifty seven, Stompinado threatened
Speaker 3: Lana Turner and Sean Connery with a gun. Whoa and
Speaker 3: Connery double O seven to the guy.
Speaker 2: This is when Sean Connie was mister Universe. He's a
Speaker 2: huge body.
Speaker 3: Grabbed the gun and like twisted Stompinado's wrist.
Speaker 2: He yes, He's like, break the gun.
Speaker 3: You're playing boshaw. And then April fourth, nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl stabbed and killed Stompinata as he
Speaker 3: was beating Lana.
Speaker 2: Turn I also know about that.
Speaker 3: I don't count this as one percent because he doesn't
Speaker 3: deserve the respect of one percent.
Speaker 2: A lot like unt more self defense.
Speaker 3: It was it completely was she saved her mother.
Speaker 2: Monster. They don't consider that murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah he was. It was a huge scandal.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was definitely. That's how I only know the stories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but her career didn't really suffer.
Speaker 2: No, No, she was a sweetheart of America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was whining down though her career when she
Speaker 3: hooked up with Dante. H So, about a month played
Speaker 3: the back nine. About a month after he married Lana Turner,
Speaker 3: someone tried to kill Dante. Oh no, it wasn't Sheryl
Speaker 3: O Good. So he pulled into the garage of his
Speaker 3: apartment building in his car, not just like in a canoe.
Speaker 3: He was in the process of emptying the place out
Speaker 3: and moving into Lana's house, and as he went to
Speaker 3: get out of his car, someone popped out and shot
Speaker 3: at him five times.
Speaker 2: I guessing this was an old lover.
Speaker 3: Then well, no, the dude takes off. The windshield of
Speaker 3: Dante's car was shattered and he had cuts from the glass.
Speaker 2: Oh didn't get hit out of the five bullets.
Speaker 3: This is what Lana Turner said in her nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: two autobiography quote, shortly after our wedding, he was shot at,
Speaker 3: or so he said, in an underground garage by a
Speaker 3: gunman wearing an Australian bush hat. He got a lot
Speaker 3: of attention in the papers. Maybe that was what he wanted.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with the lie, you know why,
Speaker 2: the very specific details.
Speaker 3: So he wearing an Australian bush hat. Really his eyes
Speaker 3: were hazel. This is what Dante said, quote, I don't
Speaker 3: know anyone who would want to kill me, unless it
Speaker 3: would be someone who is jealous about the woman I
Speaker 3: just married. Oh yeah, yeah, so poor Lana Turner, she
Speaker 3: can't catch a break and the partner can be a
Speaker 3: good man apparently, Yeah, that's what I'm saying, and things
Speaker 3: about this winter. Dante kept piling up. So right after
Speaker 3: this supposed attempt on his life, like hours later, Oh nice,
Speaker 3: he was arrested on a felony grand theft warrant.
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Speaker 3: A year before, in nineteen sixty eight, he'd been arrested
Speaker 3: for trying to steal eighteen thousand dollars worth of motor boats. Wow, which,
Speaker 3: like when you say it's like ballparking the price, Like
Speaker 3: I asked for a bag of motor boats? Like weigh
Speaker 3: it out eighteen coptoat? How do you get pinched for
Speaker 3: trying to steal boats? Though he tried, he didn't success.
Speaker 2: Does she just love the bad boys who were not
Speaker 2: at bad boys? Well?
Speaker 3: Power the moon. So he wrote a check for eighteen
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to Ronald Snyder of the Marlin Boat Company
Speaker 3: out of San Anna, California, that was to pay for
Speaker 3: seven sixteen foot boats. And the check bounced, and so
Speaker 3: Snyder went to Dante's like, where's my money? What the heck?
Speaker 3: Bub and Dante said, tranquilo cool out, I'll bring the
Speaker 3: cash tomorrow morning. Fine, says Snyder, bring the cash, you
Speaker 3: can have the boats. And then Snyder walks off in
Speaker 3: his short shorts and deckshes. So then that night Snyder
Speaker 3: went down to the office and he noticed something fishy.
Speaker 3: The lock on the gate was broken. And with each
Speaker 3: detail this sounds more and more like a later episode
Speaker 3: of Colombo. But so what else did Snyder find besides
Speaker 3: the broken lock? Just Dante overseeing a crew loading the
Speaker 3: boats on into a.
Speaker 2: Flatbed truck loading the boats.
Speaker 3: Yes, just load him up. He was arrested but never
Speaker 3: showed up for court. And remember he married Lana Turner
Speaker 3: on May ninth, nineteen sixty nine. November fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: Dante filed for divorce. Dante he accused her of extreme
Speaker 3: mental cruelty and during the divorce trial, Dante pulled out
Speaker 3: a paper and it was one that Lana Turner had
Speaker 3: never seen, which is suspicious.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: On the document, it said that if Dante and Lana
Speaker 3: ever split up, Lana would give Dante two hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: and Turner said that that could never be the case.
Speaker 3: She said that Dante had actually stolen about one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars worth of jewelry from her, and it also
Speaker 3: defrauded her out of thirty five thousand cash, and Turner
Speaker 3: turned around and sued Dante. Sue me, Oh yeah, sue you.
Speaker 3: The court awarded Lana Turner twenty five thousand dollars and
Speaker 3: then two days after they divorced, Dante took out an
Speaker 3: ad in a Dallas newspaper. Was he issuing a public
Speaker 3: apology for being such a dirt bag? Well, he was
Speaker 3: like in Texas at that time. He was hanging around.
Speaker 3: He said he had a quote computer developed recording of
Speaker 3: himself that could be used for self hypnosis, and there
Speaker 3: was a PO box address for the Office of American
Speaker 3: Medical Hypnoidal Association. And another thing in the ad was
Speaker 3: a positive celebrity testimonial from Lana Turner, naturally two days
Speaker 3: after their divorce. So he was doing basically correspondence class hypnotism. Yes, okay, yes,
Speaker 3: and he was obsessed with celebrities. He worked hard to
Speaker 3: be in their orbit. You know, when we come back,
Speaker 3: we're going to take a break. I'll tell you who
Speaker 3: else got sucked into Doctor Dante's madness. Zaren over here, Zaren?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Elizabeth front Row, what was your question, Doctor Dante?
Speaker 2: Actually know? Helen Thomas?
Speaker 3: Go ahead, My question is shut up, Helen. Do you
Speaker 3: want to hear more? Yes, Okay, I do so, Doctor Dante.
Speaker 3: He marries and divorces Hollywood legend Lana Turner. We talked
Speaker 3: about that like four hours ago. I was before that
Speaker 3: he survived to suppose an assassination attempt.
Speaker 2: Yes, that I don't believe happened, neither do I, or
Speaker 2: that he arranged. I do believe shots were fired.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Maybe he fired the shots and then spun
Speaker 3: around and ran back. In the next year after the
Speaker 3: marriage and divorce, nineteen seventy, he got shot at again
Speaker 3: in Texas.
Speaker 2: It's really a bullet magnet.
Speaker 3: He really is. It was five in the morning and
Speaker 3: someone popped out and fired at his car with a shotgun,
Speaker 3: and once again he was treated for cuts from the
Speaker 3: broken windshield glass.
Speaker 2: He just grabbing it, rubbing it on his face.
Speaker 3: I think I just falls forward. He'd been going to
Speaker 3: this bakery, this bakery called Missus Baird's, and because a
Speaker 3: woman had called him and said meet me at Missus Baird's,
Speaker 3: and he was like, all right, but there was no woman.
Speaker 3: No one showed up. And as he was driving away,
Speaker 3: the shooting started. Oh he said, quote. I swerved the
Speaker 3: car to the right and jumped out the passenger's side.
Speaker 3: Just as I hit the deck, I heard a shotgun explode.
Speaker 3: There must have been five other shots that followed, and
Speaker 3: I wouldn't doubt they had three people in the car.
Speaker 3: I've got a good smacking of who it was who
Speaker 3: tried to kill me. Now, there are a lot of
Speaker 3: issues in this. First of all, it's always five shots
Speaker 3: with him exactly.
Speaker 2: And also I gotta one to know this. If you're driving,
Speaker 2: you're on the left side of the car. If you're
Speaker 2: gonna someone's gonna do something, wouldn't you swerve to the
Speaker 2: left and jump out of the left side as to
Speaker 2: the right and jumping out of the right because now
Speaker 2: you swerve, you got to get over to the right
Speaker 2: and then open the door and jump out of the car.
Speaker 3: Make those It doesn't make any sense. The person who
Speaker 3: tried to kill him, according to him, was an entertainment legend,
Speaker 3: someone who is actually made an appearance on this show before.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm listening.
Speaker 3: So Dante said he had quote a very warm relationship
Speaker 3: with a woman, but they hadn't seen each other for
Speaker 3: a couple I was really opened.
Speaker 2: To Sammy Davis Junior with his good eye.
Speaker 3: Well, this is how Dante explains it. Quote. For the
Speaker 3: last three or four months, I've been harassed by phone
Speaker 3: calls of people who claim to be friends of Frank Sinachi.
Speaker 3: They told me to stay away from Nancy or I'd
Speaker 3: get my legs broken.
Speaker 2: Messing around with his daughter. Nancy's either his wife's daughter.
Speaker 2: It has to be his daughter, most likely his daughter
Speaker 2: his daughter. But either way, don't mess around with frank
Speaker 2: daughter or his what whatever, his sister, his mother.
Speaker 3: Brother, it's is Yeah, I think it's his daughter anyway, So, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's messing around with Nancy. Frank's like they're gonna.
Speaker 2: Nancy Nancy Sinatra shows up on ridiculous Crime on the right, really.
Speaker 3: Does she really does? So Dante, he went around intimating
Speaker 3: that it was Frank who put the hit out.
Speaker 2: And make himself important with Frank Sinatra. Yeah, he tried
Speaker 2: to kill me live.
Speaker 3: Someone asked Nancy Sinatra about it, and a spokesman for
Speaker 3: Nancy Sinatra said, quote Miss Sinatra said she did not
Speaker 3: know Dante and that she had never even heard of him. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's good. But now that Dante had created a
Speaker 3: connection between he and Nancy Sinatra, he wasn't going to
Speaker 3: give that up. Chris, I mean, you figure there's a
Speaker 3: good portion of the population who doesn't keep up with
Speaker 3: follow up news. Yes, so, like they hear that Lana
Speaker 3: Turner married some weirdo hypnotists, but they don't pay attention
Speaker 3: to the talk of divorce, and then they hear about
Speaker 3: Frank Sinatra possibly putting out a hit on a freaky hypnotist,
Speaker 3: but they don't hear about the follow up that Nancy's clarification.
Speaker 3: I don't know who this was. In December of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. They put out an
Speaker 3: announcement they were having a New Year's Eve blowout party
Speaker 3: and the featured guest celebrity hypnotist doctor Dante.
Speaker 2: They really needed the internet back then.
Speaker 3: Who are the special guests with this? Lana Turner and
Speaker 3: Nancy Sinatra, And of course neither of them show up.
Speaker 2: This guy's shameless.
Speaker 3: He's so shameless. That's exactly what he is.
Speaker 2: He might as well have said anybody because they weren't
Speaker 2: going to show up. It could have been anybody. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so u Ja Jagabor will be a this week in Della.
Speaker 3: He's just taken out ads all over the place. He
Speaker 3: loved over hyped newspaper.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, he loves hype.
Speaker 3: In January of nineteen seventy one, he ran an ad
Speaker 3: for his appearance at the Ramada Inn in Irving, Texas.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He said that this would be the last stop on
Speaker 3: his world tour that he had played Athens, Bangkok, Japan, London, Paris,
Speaker 3: and Rome. And I like how Japan doesn't get a city.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's just.
Speaker 3: The whole place. It's like how people say Africa. It's
Speaker 3: like a continent, not country. And so now where do
Speaker 3: you go next? After all that Irving Text serving Texas Natural.
Speaker 3: He was always totally full of hot horns, he said.
Speaker 3: He said that his eyes and his voice were insured
Speaker 3: for ten million dollars. Crazy. So he said that he
Speaker 3: was the quote favorite husband of both Lana Turner and
Speaker 3: Brigitte Bardeaux. Here's the problem.
Speaker 2: He was never married.
Speaker 3: No, he was never married to Brigitte Bardeau. I couldn't
Speaker 3: even find anything about them being like linked romantically or
Speaker 3: even in the same room. Yeah, but it's kind of
Speaker 3: like how the time that I was married to Jack
Speaker 3: White from the White Stripes and I was his favorite
Speaker 3: wife and.
Speaker 2: A yeah, it was a ten minute long story, you tell.
Speaker 3: It was, And I'm a Vagoda's favorite wife.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: He still says that whose favorite husband are you?
Speaker 2: How Lindon just all Barnie Miller Miller fans.
Speaker 3: That's so crazy that we were each married to someone
Speaker 3: from Barney Miller.
Speaker 2: No, we get around.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Cast parties were rocking.
Speaker 3: They were they were so crazy. Doctor Dante he wasn't
Speaker 3: the only man in the game, though. There was another
Speaker 3: hypnotist on the scene. His name was doctor Sandford Berman
Speaker 3: a k a. Doctor Michael Dean.
Speaker 2: Right, I was still hoping the thing to be doctor
Speaker 2: Sandy Berman.
Speaker 3: I know, no, Michael Dean heed it so completely did so.
Speaker 3: Where doctor Dante took took took, doctor Dean gave gave gays.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was born curious. He was born just north
Speaker 3: of Duluth, Minnesota, in the nineteen twenties. Poor assault to
Speaker 3: the earth guy. Yeah. He got his bachelors in Radio
Speaker 3: and Communications from University of minnesotaol. Masters in speech from
Speaker 3: Columbia University. I heard that place is good too, me too,
Speaker 3: Doctorate in Speech communications from.
Speaker 2: Northwestern Ah good school.
Speaker 3: Yep, he had the bona fides. Yes, and he was
Speaker 3: heavy into the study of semantics, which fascinating. Let me
Speaker 3: read you a definition of general semantics.
Speaker 2: Oh please.
Speaker 3: General semantics is concerned with how events translate to perceptions,
Speaker 3: how they are further modified by the names and labels
Speaker 3: we apply to them, and how we might gain a
Speaker 3: measure of control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses.
Speaker 2: So we believe what we tell ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was super into that study, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: So when doctor Dean was in grad school, he learned
Speaker 3: hypnosis and he used it for scientific reasons. Not he
Speaker 3: losed it for good not evil.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He taught people self hypnosis for Behavioralay, he's.
Speaker 2: A white hat hypnotist.
Speaker 3: Yes. He he advised the boxer Ken Norton really yeah,
Speaker 3: one of the few men to beat Mahin.
Speaker 2: Yes, and his son is the hell of a football player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was an advisor to him. He was like,
Speaker 3: by the power of.
Speaker 2: The movie will he may pull like a butterfly, but
Speaker 2: you will.
Speaker 3: Hit like a tank, Doctor Dean. He turned to entertainment though.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the money.
Speaker 3: When you got the hypnotist, he got the gift. He
Speaker 3: had a long career as a professional nightclub hypnotist. I'm
Speaker 3: going to get you business cards, that says Aaron Burnette.
Speaker 2: And flip it over cruise ship magicians exactly.
Speaker 3: And he mostly was in Vegas, which is like that's
Speaker 3: where you got to go, try.
Speaker 2: To hang out, And so I go there for the carpets.
Speaker 3: It smells so good. In nineteen seventy four, Doctor Dean
Speaker 3: accused Doctor Dante of following him around and copying his act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hit him, get him.
Speaker 3: Here's the quote. I first met him in Chicago in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty when he frequently caught my act. Then I
Speaker 3: went to Hawaii to perform before the International Society of Samantasis,
Speaker 3: and Dante came in to see my show every night
Speaker 3: for three weeks. I returned to Chicago and saw him
Speaker 3: perform my same act at the Cairo Supper Club. I
Speaker 3: had to borrow him from the San Diego gas Light
Speaker 3: Club about eight months ago, since he had been following
Speaker 3: me around the country trying to steal my act for
Speaker 3: his own shows, which he puts on in North Hollywood.
Speaker 3: He sat in the front row during one of my
Speaker 3: recent Las Vegas shows. Often, after I'd leave a town,
Speaker 3: he'd come in and tell the hotel manager that he
Speaker 3: would perform the same type of show for much less money,
Speaker 3: the most amazing undercutting.
Speaker 2: You like that, But North Hollywood, shout out North Risk
Speaker 2: he does this in North Hollywood.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, man, I'm sorry for him.
Speaker 2: Geez, not even Studio city.
Speaker 3: Well, I also like the San Diego the gas Light Club.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, it's a whole district.
Speaker 2: It's a whole thing.
Speaker 3: So Dante. He was serious though, about eliminating the competition.
Speaker 3: He wanted Doctor Dean out of a picture. Okay, so
Speaker 3: doctor Dante. He approached three men, and he offered them
Speaker 3: thirty four hundred dollars to kill doctor Dean. Really, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's like eighteen and a half thousand dollars today.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's that's kill you money.
Speaker 3: I'd be insulted if someone was like, I'll give you
Speaker 3: eighteen grand to kill Elizabeth?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Do you know how much people were willing to take
Speaker 2: to kill something?
Speaker 3: I am? I'm worth more than that, I'd be insulted.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, yeah, I mean he could probably like
Speaker 2: ten grand is like a modern price. That would be like,
Speaker 2: you can get a good thing for like three grand.
Speaker 2: You're getting somebody you know, you met in a park.
Speaker 3: I'm worth like at least one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars for a hitman.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe in me and I believe in my
Speaker 3: value like you.
Speaker 2: I like that about you.
Speaker 3: It's a high ame high one hundred and fifty k.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Doctor Dean, Doctor Dante. Sorry, he gives he
Speaker 3: gives him fourteen hundred dollars up front. He's like, this
Speaker 3: is my down payments. Can I get a receipt? You're
Speaker 3: asking people to take a whole lot of risk for
Speaker 3: not a whole lot of money here, doctor Dante. But
Speaker 3: they agree one of the men was the owner of
Speaker 3: a night club.
Speaker 2: So there's semi professionally.
Speaker 3: Here's their semipro. One of them own's a nightclub, the
Speaker 3: other two undercover cops.
Speaker 2: Yes, most hit men are.
Speaker 3: That's what fine Friday News exactly. The whole point of
Speaker 3: this was so that Dante could get Dean's coveted San
Speaker 3: Diego nightclub gig. That was the whole thing I want.
Speaker 2: He wanted that gay play the gas light. He's like,
Speaker 2: I love soft lighting.
Speaker 3: It's just so flattering. So in February of nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 3: he pleads not guilty to this because obviously he got
Speaker 3: caught because it's undercover cops.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: He was released on his own recognaissance, so he was
Speaker 3: able to keep up his nightclub act. Okay, Zarines close
Speaker 3: you at.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I.
Speaker 3: Want you to picture it. You're a bartender at the
Speaker 3: Pirate's Den, a nightclub in Tucson, Arizona. It's June twenty first,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four, summer solstice. You have no idea that
Speaker 3: almost fifty years later the business will be called Raiders
Speaker 3: Reef Exotic Dancing and have a two point five star
Speaker 3: rating on Yelp, with reviews such as quote this place
Speaker 3: used to be really fun, but now it's like the
Speaker 3: waiting room to hell. The dancers are absolutely lifeless. The
Speaker 3: room is devoid of life or excitement, and most of
Speaker 3: the time dancers spend more time on their phone than
Speaker 3: working the room. I had more fun at dental appointments.
Speaker 3: If you have one hundred dollars burning a hole in
Speaker 3: your pocket, throw it in the garbage disposal because you'll
Speaker 3: have more fun doing that than spending it here. But
Speaker 3: right now's Aaron in nineteen seventy four. It's just a
Speaker 3: hot nightclub. Okay, calm down. It opened just a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago. The building is shaped like a pirate's
Speaker 3: galleon and drift in a parched lot on East Golf
Speaker 3: Links Road. Lots of acts come through, and it's a
Speaker 3: swinging place. I mean there are acts at the tail
Speaker 3: end of their careers. Herman's, Hermit's chubby Checker, Fabian, the platters,
Speaker 3: but still your work uniform is a pirate's costume, striped
Speaker 3: pants with jagged hems, a white blouse, a fake hoopering,
Speaker 3: no brown. The ground floor bar level is hopping tonight,
Speaker 3: lots of young Tusonians sit at small cabaret tables facing
Speaker 3: a stage light. Music plays in the background as people
Speaker 3: line up at the bar to order my ties, slippery Nipples,
Speaker 3: Takila sunrises. Your specialty is the zombie.
Speaker 2: You serve it in a.
Speaker 3: Giant fake coconut shell with all sorts of garnishes. You
Speaker 3: look at the clock tucked under the bar. Five minutes
Speaker 3: to showtime. You figure you'll just have enough time to
Speaker 3: slip outside and have a smoke before the show starts.
Speaker 3: You serve the zombie you were making and slip out
Speaker 3: the side door into the parking lot. Traffic races by
Speaker 3: on East Golf Links. You take out your pack of
Speaker 3: smokes and you tap it into your palm. A car
Speaker 3: enters the parking lot. It's Jerry, one of the owners
Speaker 3: of the club. He's coming in hot You soon realize
Speaker 3: that's because he has that doctor Dante, the hypnotist in
Speaker 3: the car, must have picked him up at his hotel.
Speaker 3: The car doors swing open just then two Department of
Speaker 3: Public Safety officers jump out from behind the dumpster. What
Speaker 3: the blazes were they doing back there? You wonder? Another
Speaker 3: cop car peelsing a lot and blocks on Jerry's cap.
Speaker 3: They draw guns and present badges. Ronald Peller aka Ronald Dante,
Speaker 3: you are under arrest. Huh, asked doctor Dante. This is
Speaker 3: getting good. Well, you're charged with grand theft for taking
Speaker 3: thirty five hundred dollars worth of radio equipment for your
Speaker 3: private plane and not paying for it. Jerry, the owner
Speaker 3: pipes up. Look, can't you wait one more hour. We've
Speaker 3: got a show to do. We've got three hundred people
Speaker 3: in the club waiting to see him. One of the
Speaker 3: officers bark. Stand back, mister, and keep your mouth shut.
Speaker 3: They cuffed Dante, throw him in the back of the
Speaker 3: squad car. Doctor Dante has been double arrested. You open
Speaker 3: the side door of the nightclub and the sound of
Speaker 3: the patrons and smooth yacht rocks smack you in the face.
Speaker 3: You wonder how Jerry's going to take care of this mess.
Speaker 3: Just a few days later, charge smoke breakover. Just a
Speaker 3: few days later, the charges for the radio equipment would
Speaker 3: be dropped. Apparently he did have receipts for the stuff.
Speaker 3: There was still the matter of the attempted murder for hire.
Speaker 2: Though, yes, that is a sticky, wicked post charges.
Speaker 3: Had not been dropped. Let's take a break. When we
Speaker 3: come back, we'll see how that was working out for
Speaker 3: old doctor John Pey. Hey.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes, yes, Elizabeth, Hey, I was. I wasn't sleeping.
Speaker 2: I was here.
Speaker 3: I'm here, go ahead, just resting my eyes. So doctor Jaunted, Yes,
Speaker 3: my god, he was. He was charged with attempted murder,
Speaker 3: your guy. Charge was attempted icious murder for hire, I
Speaker 3: should say, after trying to pay two undercover cops to
Speaker 3: take out his hypnotist rival, doctor Dean.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I know.
Speaker 3: In a pre trial hearing for the attempted murder case,
Speaker 3: the defense put forward a theory that maybe doctor Dante
Speaker 3: wasn't competent to stand trial.
Speaker 2: Your honor, have you listened to the Mike clients?
Speaker 3: Why drugs? They said his mental abilities were impaired by drugs,
Speaker 3: And he was seen by two different doctors, and there
Speaker 3: was a split decision on this. One said he was okay,
Speaker 3: the other one said he was bonkers, all hopped up
Speaker 3: on goofballs. In the end, the judge found him fit
Speaker 3: to face justice.
Speaker 2: For you to say that drugs are the problem, why
Speaker 2: you're not competent to stand trial. Don't they just say,
Speaker 2: don't give them the drugs.
Speaker 3: Well, and then it gave him the brain damage. Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: he was found guilty naturally. Yeah, January seventy five, he
Speaker 3: was sentenced to twenty two years. That's harsh. They just
Speaker 3: didn't like him, but not all the way. District Attorney
Speaker 3: Gary Neap. He was both tickled by and irritated with
Speaker 3: Dante during the trial.
Speaker 2: I like to imagine him physically tickling him. Yeah, during
Speaker 2: you'll go back over there to the other test.
Speaker 3: Come on, this is what the DA said. Quote. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I kind of like him. He's got some sort of
Speaker 3: magnetism that gets people into.
Speaker 2: His confidence with bullets. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Thus, well that's a con man the confidence.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. People always missed that. It's like conment are likable.
Speaker 2: That's why they.
Speaker 3: Became confidence man. Well, and then don't forget doctor Dante
Speaker 3: has the power of the moon, yes, in his pocket.
Speaker 3: Doctor Dante appealed the conviction on the grounds that he
Speaker 3: was never given the opportunity to plead insanity, and that
Speaker 3: was rejected. But he only served twenty eight months of
Speaker 3: his twenty two year sentence.
Speaker 2: How does that work out? I'm not going at math
Speaker 2: like that, that makes no sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but according to Bob Gold, doctor Dante's personal aid.
Speaker 2: He hypnotized the parole board.
Speaker 3: After his release from prison in nineteen seventy eight. Everyone
Speaker 3: wanted to rebook quote the big bad mysterious Dante.
Speaker 2: Big bad, big big, he's a bad boy coming out in.
Speaker 3: The leather, the outlaw hypatis.
Speaker 2: I'll habnotize you against your will, sir, You need to
Speaker 2: calm down.
Speaker 3: He chose to put his powers to use though at
Speaker 3: the Mind Science Church.
Speaker 2: Doctor Dean, that is so late seventies.
Speaker 3: So totally. Doctor Dean, who wasn't murdered, said hypnosis was
Speaker 3: quote too powerful a tool to teach to any idiot
Speaker 3: off the street. The power the moves.
Speaker 2: That is so quotable.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know. So. Back in nineteen sixty nine, Dante
Speaker 3: had opened a clinic for cancer patients, the Psychoneurology Foundation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a lot of charity money in this.
Speaker 3: Say, well, no, I understand the desire to try anything
Speaker 3: that could possibly help if you're fighting cancer, especially in
Speaker 3: those days when treatment was nowhere near what I believe
Speaker 3: on the cancer side, but I would sincerely hope that
Speaker 3: this wasn't the only treatment that those cancer patients saw it.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I hope not. Yeah, I hope that this
Speaker 2: was like the last of it, right, Oh, I'm desperate.
Speaker 3: In eighty one, he expanded the Psycho Neurology Foundation and
Speaker 3: was now covering AIDS patients too.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Well, and like, yeah, this was pretty forward thinking for
Speaker 3: that time, seeing how.
Speaker 2: If doctor Dean was doing it, I'd be cool with it,
Speaker 2: Doctor Dante.
Speaker 3: No, No, I mean like HIV AIDS was thought by
Speaker 3: the public to be transmissible by handshake.
Speaker 2: They weren't doing CPR during the early eighties.
Speaker 3: Zigma was insane. And now like we have HIV treatment
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical ads playing right alongside ones for plaque soriatis. You know,
Speaker 3: we've come a long way, baby, so doctor Dante. He
Speaker 3: said he funded the clinic through donations from the thousands
Speaker 3: of patients cured by the free hypnosis. He said that
Speaker 3: the hypnotists at the clinic got top notch hypnotherapy training
Speaker 3: from him, all in exchange for twelve hours of work.
Speaker 2: Yeah so Lies.
Speaker 3: Lies, always the promoter and always wanting to be celebrity adjacent.
Speaker 3: He took up a one page ad in a bunch
Speaker 3: of papers for the PNF in nineteen eighty five. The
Speaker 3: banners the top of the ad proclaimed how to be
Speaker 3: a Hypnotherapist, Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Free, Come down, Ed McMann will be here.
Speaker 3: He did these gigs all over the country. He would
Speaker 3: spend Uh, it's funny that you mentioned that he would
Speaker 3: spend about forty thousand dollars on ads, and then he'd
Speaker 3: do three to five days of seminars and he'd pull
Speaker 3: in at least one hundred and twenty thousand for the stand.
Speaker 2: I'm disgusted by that.
Speaker 3: It's totally so. In the ad this time around was
Speaker 3: doctor Dante with Johnny Carson, what host of NBC's Tonight Show.
Speaker 2: I think like a con you did.
Speaker 3: That was just Ed McMahon.
Speaker 2: He went for that. I knew right to Yeah. I
Speaker 2: didn't think he could afford.
Speaker 3: John so well, he's sitting in this table and a
Speaker 3: picture in the ad sitting with Johnny Carson, and the
Speaker 3: caption said doctor Dante being interviewed by Johnny Carson. Wow,
Speaker 3: it was a real photo. I'm sure caption is false.
Speaker 3: Carson's attorney, Jerry Stobbs said the photo was taken quote
Speaker 3: sixteen or seventeen years ago with Carson's permission, But they.
Speaker 2: Weren't like a tables next to each other.
Speaker 3: It wasn't for advertising, and it wasn't an interview. It
Speaker 3: was a typical like hey, can I get a picture
Speaker 3: with you? Photo with a celebrity. Yeah, Carson's lawyer said.
Speaker 2: Did I sit down at the table?
Speaker 3: Exactly? This is what Carson's lawyer said. Quote. There was
Speaker 3: a clear indication that when that photo was published, that
Speaker 3: Carson was endorsing that clinic, which he is not. We
Speaker 3: are not aware of any authorization to use that picture
Speaker 3: in advertising. What did doctor Dante have to say about
Speaker 3: this quote? It makes it look like I associate with
Speaker 3: Hollywood people, so maybe people will come into the clinic.
Speaker 2: He just says it, just says the thing. Just this
Speaker 2: is why I did it.
Speaker 3: But you know what, you mess with the bully, you
Speaker 3: get the horns. Carson sued doctor Dante for fifty one
Speaker 3: million dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh, Johnny will suicide, Yeah.
Speaker 3: You will, Dante. Then he turned around and he accused
Speaker 3: Carson of trying to shut down his free clinic for
Speaker 3: AIDS and cancer patients. Sue me, sue you, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But come on, no one's going to believe that, Like,
Speaker 2: oh yes, Carson's really against cancer and AIGE patients, and
Speaker 2: you tried to.
Speaker 3: Stop their true That's what doctor Dante said. Doctor take countersuit.
Speaker 3: Oh god, for one billion dollars, would they be.
Speaker 2: With the doctor evil fingership face.
Speaker 3: One billion dollars. Here's what doctor Dante had to say
Speaker 3: at a press conference. Quote. Carson is indirectly but nevertheless
Speaker 3: responsible for letting hundreds of people die who might otherwise
Speaker 3: be saved by the Foundation's breakthrough treatment. Carson's suit is
Speaker 3: really against the Cancer and AIDS patients, knowing full well
Speaker 3: that I cannot afford his unheard of suit of fifty
Speaker 3: one million dollars. Wow, He's like, why do you hate people?
Speaker 3: Johnny Carson?
Speaker 2: He has all the goll like none of us have
Speaker 2: any goalls, all of the Now.
Speaker 3: I Dug and Doug and Doug. I don't know whatever
Speaker 3: happened with that lawsuit. I'm going to assume there was
Speaker 3: out the settlement of some sort with Johnny. I got
Speaker 3: thrown out, but Johnny's suit the fifty one millions.
Speaker 2: Oh, I bet he'd let his Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nothing popped up again in the pages.
Speaker 2: You're not going to get anything from that. No, It's like,
Speaker 2: how long do you want to pay a lawyer to
Speaker 2: make this guy?
Speaker 3: You should have just had the clinics shut down anyway.
Speaker 3: That same year, though, nineteen eighty five, Dante legally changed
Speaker 3: his name from Ronald Hugh Pellar to doctor Dante, with
Speaker 3: doctor being his legal first PI.
Speaker 2: He is such a scamp. Doctor is my name. It's
Speaker 2: exactly It's on my driver's license. You were a mistake.
Speaker 2: And when I said I was a doctor, I meant
Speaker 2: one of the various men named doctor doctor.
Speaker 3: So next year, eighty six, he made it into the
Speaker 3: Guinness Book of World Records.
Speaker 2: For being the worst criminal of the year, the biggest.
Speaker 3: Jerk for getting paid the highest lecture fee for his
Speaker 3: weekend in the therapy course that took place in Chicago
Speaker 3: from June first to June's second, nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: How is the greatest therapy price a record lecture fee?
Speaker 3: How much do you think he made in those two days?
Speaker 2: I have no idea million. I have one billion.
Speaker 3: Dollars, three million dollars, three million dollars. This has to
Speaker 3: be a lie. But how is Gunny's keeping track of
Speaker 3: the If it's not, I'm not surprised because people are stupid,
Speaker 3: But come on.
Speaker 2: I know Gunnis book keeps a track A lot of
Speaker 2: dumb records. Come on, yeah, really the speaking fees the.
Speaker 3: Highest lecture fee in the years to come, saren. Doctor
Speaker 3: Dante started more businesses.
Speaker 2: Was he making wax statues?
Speaker 3: Oh? They were outside of the hypnosis world, of course.
Speaker 3: He started a paralegal academy. A what and it's called
Speaker 3: an academy and I like to imagine it's like military
Speaker 3: paramilitary paralegal.
Speaker 2: Academy spelled differently, pair of legalsh.
Speaker 3: He launched the permoderm Academy in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Is this like for like getting your Jerry girl right?
Speaker 3: No, it's even better. This place offered two day permanent
Speaker 3: makeup workshops at hotels.
Speaker 2: Permanent making, like tattoo your face. You're gonna let this
Speaker 2: man tattoo your face with sticks.
Speaker 3: Would pay twenty five hundred dollars to learn a tattooing
Speaker 3: technique on bananas and at the end of at the
Speaker 3: end of the two days, not even like pig flesh,
Speaker 3: just use a banana. It was like a sex said
Speaker 3: workshop labor. At the end of the two days, the
Speaker 3: students would be given the title of Board certified dermatologist.
Speaker 2: Certified by what board? Just by he's holding up this board,
Speaker 2: said I'm.
Speaker 3: Good, bangs him on the head. There you go, the.
Speaker 2: Board underneath the banana. That's what certified me.
Speaker 3: The FTC started an investigating I am open, and in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one they accused Permaderm of making FRAUDUC.
Speaker 2: It just sounds like a lie.
Speaker 3: He said that they made fraudulent claims about the credentials,
Speaker 3: the training, the job outcome, the address. They got an
Speaker 3: injunction on doctor Dante and Permiderm.
Speaker 2: Boy just lied about their height, Yeah, for.
Speaker 3: False representations height right there. In ninety seven, Dante was
Speaker 3: convicted on ten counts of criminal contempt for violating that injunction.
Speaker 3: Oh and like keeping it up. He later got sixty
Speaker 3: seven months in prison for the contempt conviction, but fled
Speaker 3: one day prior to the last day of the trial.
Speaker 3: So like before they even he's just I'm out of here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: don't worry though.
Speaker 2: The last time you saw me.
Speaker 3: He kept in Mexico and he immediately was sent to prison.
Speaker 3: But he still had other businesses that he was keeping going.
Speaker 3: One was Columbia State University, Columbia, Columbia State University, Okay,
Speaker 3: late nineties, distance learning is all the rate. So it's
Speaker 3: both like correspondence courses by mail, which is a long time,
Speaker 3: and then this new option of online learning. And in
Speaker 3: this expanding frontier of higher education came scammers, lots of
Speaker 3: them diploma mills, which is exactly what Columbia State University was.
Speaker 3: It operated out of a mail drop in Louisiana. There's
Speaker 3: this guy, this higher ed expert John Bear, and he
Speaker 3: was interviewed in nineteen ninety eight by the Boston Globe
Speaker 3: about just diploma mills in general. Let me read you
Speaker 3: a little bit for this article quote. Columbia State University
Speaker 3: is a complete fake, says Bear. There's no such university.
Speaker 3: The photograph on the cover of their catalog is of
Speaker 3: Notre Dame University in Indiana. And while administrative office number
Speaker 3: two thirty one is a three square mailbox. As for
Speaker 3: the Ivy League like campus shown in the Columbia State
Speaker 3: University catalog quote, it is actually a stately home in
Speaker 3: upstate New York called Lyndhurst, Bear says. The catalog also
Speaker 3: shows a photograph of its founder, doctor Austin Laird. Laird
Speaker 3: is a famous historian an archaeologist of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 3: says Bear. If he were still alive, he would be
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty one years old. The real owner
Speaker 3: of Columbia State University is Ronald Pellar aka ron Dae Dante.
Speaker 3: At Columbia State University, a six to eight page thesis
Speaker 3: got you a master's degree, so I think wonderful. Well
Speaker 3: hold on, and a twelve page one got you a doctorate?
Speaker 2: Damn page thesis got all? I got thirteen pages for him?
Speaker 2: So what do I get? The thing I always wonder
Speaker 2: about these pill mill or pill mill, these degree mill places,
Speaker 2: is who are you showing this degree too that you
Speaker 2: need it? Like you get to get the degree? Who's
Speaker 2: going to be convinced by a Columbia State University? Like?
Speaker 2: What job is many people? Really?
Speaker 3: At the time, you couldn't really research, like you know,
Speaker 3: you couldn't go online and look up a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff as long as you have a piece of paper,
Speaker 3: sounds Columbia states.
Speaker 2: Well then why did not just make the document yourself?
Speaker 2: I mean, why go through all the waste of like
Speaker 2: somebody else made it.
Speaker 3: You want to have some honesty to it, You want
Speaker 3: to put twelve pages down in a I just never
Speaker 3: tried to.
Speaker 2: Get a really bad lie across.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing though, like both of the degrees, a
Speaker 3: master's and a doctorate, could be completed in about twenty
Speaker 3: seven days. Yeah, but the average is about two to
Speaker 3: four months. You could get a PhD for around three
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. They also, this is like one of my
Speaker 3: favorite things. They let you haggle the price. So like,
Speaker 3: if you're like three thousands a little rich for my
Speaker 3: blood for this PhD?
Speaker 2: What do you want to pay geology? What's it going
Speaker 2: to take to get you in this degree and walk
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 3: Back and twice on it? Yeah, so the next year slaps.
Speaker 2: The hood of this college. I want you to go
Speaker 2: in in here? What's it going to take? Sarh.
Speaker 3: The Illinois Attorney General came calling for them. They had
Speaker 3: shut down a bunch of diploma mills, including Columbia State University,
Speaker 3: and then in two thousand and four he pleaded guilty
Speaker 3: to nine counts of mail fraud tied to the Columbia
Speaker 3: State University Diploma Mill operation who mail Fraud.
Speaker 2: They got him on that. That'll put your.
Speaker 3: Gott to send those catalogs somewhere. His guilty plea involved
Speaker 3: paying restitution of almost forty six thousand dollars, and he
Speaker 3: had to surrender his one point five million dollar yacht.
Speaker 2: I cannot believe this guy is able to work this
Speaker 2: well with all this stuff.
Speaker 3: I yeah, it's just little bits here and there. He
Speaker 3: had an additional eight months added to his prison sentence
Speaker 3: just for you know, shiggles. When he got out, he
Speaker 3: moved to a mobile home in Palma Valley, California. So
Speaker 3: the mighty had fallen. Yes, he said he had cancer,
Speaker 3: but at this point, who could believe anything he said?
Speaker 2: He'd say anything, but he didn't.
Speaker 3: Give up the graft. In two thousand and seven, he
Speaker 3: was selling a DVD that walked people through the process
Speaker 3: of making scented paper flowers.
Speaker 2: And where did for the law?
Speaker 3: I don't know. He was also advertising a seminar that
Speaker 3: would share how magicians make ten thousand dollars a show.
Speaker 3: What he's like, I will tell you the secret.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you the real trick to magic is this
Speaker 2: is this.
Speaker 3: He saw these enterprises as a way that he was
Speaker 3: like gonna get back on his feet. Quote, I'll charge
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred dollars for a two day seminar. This should
Speaker 3: get me right back up to snuff again.
Speaker 2: How do the people have the fifteen hundred dollars that
Speaker 2: they're paying for? These people? Or do do the seminar
Speaker 2: like they're.
Speaker 3: Like, look at that investment, fifteen hundred dollars. Now I'm
Speaker 3: going to learn how to make a ten thousand a
Speaker 3: night as a as a cruise ship magician.
Speaker 2: Full and their money were truly quickly and easily parting quickly.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and nine. That documentary I told you about earlier,
Speaker 3: mister Hypnotism, Mister Hypnis. It was screened at south By Southwest.
Speaker 3: I do need to add that his look got more
Speaker 3: and more out there in his later years. Oh really,
Speaker 3: Like I couldn't put my finger on it, but researcher
Speaker 3: Andrea totally nailed it. He looks like doctor Jacobe from
Speaker 3: Twin Peaks.
Speaker 2: I don't watch can unfortunately is do you hear like
Speaker 2: frizzy hair?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like tinted round glass.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's kind of what I'm imagining.
Speaker 3: Now there it is.
Speaker 2: There it is.
Speaker 3: June first, twenty thirteen, Doctor Dante died in his home
Speaker 3: at the age of eighty three in Escondido, California.
Speaker 2: What a run, What a hell of a run.
Speaker 3: What's your ridiculous takeaways?
Speaker 2: Aaron, Oh wow, Rather than what's ron with him? I
Speaker 2: would have to say my ridiculous takeaway is it? Seminars
Speaker 2: Apparently are kind of the equivalent to the musician, like
Speaker 2: if you play a live show, that's where the money is. Yes,
Speaker 2: I had no idea you could make so much on
Speaker 2: these seminars. I thought he was making like maybe like
Speaker 2: an eighty to eight hundred dollars, six hundred dollars. I
Speaker 2: got ten dollars tickets or whatever. Apparently he's charging a lot.
Speaker 3: I have got to start doing seminars.
Speaker 2: People are paying thousands, yeah, just to hear something that
Speaker 2: they could find anywhere else for free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeaheah.
Speaker 2: Like the library has most of the Yeah. Almost every
Speaker 2: time I hear about a seminar, I'm like, the library
Speaker 2: has all of this.
Speaker 3: The access to someone's got the better information, and I'll
Speaker 3: pay for it.
Speaker 2: They never started to think that that person may not
Speaker 2: be actually up to snuff, so to speak. That's a
Speaker 2: ridiculous take away. The crowd.
Speaker 3: The crowd is the ridiculous. That's excellent. That's all That's
Speaker 3: all I have for you today. You can find us
Speaker 3: online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime on Twitter, Instagram threads. Do not email Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I'll give you Elizabeth personal email.
Speaker 3: Do leave a talkback on the iHeart app, though people
Speaker 3: don't do that, and I love it.
Speaker 2: And so they gave me.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: I'm done, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,
Speaker 3: produced and edited by master mesmerizer Dave Kusten. Research is
Speaker 3: by permiderm technician Marissa Brown and Columbia State University graduate
Speaker 3: and valedictorian Andrea Song sharpened here. The theme song is
Speaker 3: by Pirates cove House band Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton
Speaker 3: Executive Pretty are Ben look into my eyes fallen and
Speaker 3: No you are getting very sleepy Brown.
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