Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 2, 1990 TAG: 9004020337
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A5 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DALLAS LENGTH: Medium
When Runnells and his wife fled Norfolk, rumors flew.
Runnells, people speculated, must be on the lam in the Caribbean. Others said the fugitive financier - whose second mortgage firm in Virginia Beach collapsed in sea of bad loans - had gone to Budapest or was living among Hungarian immigrants in New York with his Hungarian-born wife, Marika Lody Runnells. The FBI issued a wanted poster for the couple in Hungarian.
Even Runnells' attorney, Richard Brydges, said openly he believed Runnells had fled the country.
An end to all that speculation came Thursday morning when Runnells answered an FBI agent's knock at a luxury apartment in a stylish Dallas suburb. Disguised in a gray wig, Runnells identified himself as "Dr. Allen."
Dr. William Cabot Allen, Ph.D. in psychology, master hypnotist, to be exact. Runnells - as Allen - told clients that he could cure them of lifelong addictions in a single hypnotic session.
"He said he had a Ph.D. in psychology, I guess it was from Georgia," said Carolyn Smith, with whom Runnells worked at the Phoenix Centers for Addiction Control in Dallas. "I never questioned him because you don't have to be a doctor to do hypnosis."
Besides, it was pretty clear he knew what he was doing, Smith said.
"He was a very good hypnotist, one of our best," she said. "He was able to hypnotize them and they quit smoking. They were happy and we were happy." Runnells was "just a charmer," Smith said.
"He was always in a hurry," said an executive who worked in an office near Runnells. "The thing that stuck in my mind, he was so nervous, he was so hyper."
Runnells, he said, "always wanted to have everything yesterday."
Smith said Runnells was intensely private about his personal life. "As far as I knew, he was divorced," she said.
Runnells apparently came to Dallas in October from Santa Ana, Calif., where he also had worked as a hypnosis therapist. His role at Phoenix is unclear; in court papers, Runnells lists himself as the operation's "business manager," but Smith insists he was a part-time therapist who answered a classified ad for the job.
Phoenix moved into the polished granite Occidental Petroleum tower late last year. Businessmen who worked nearby said Runnells showed up every day wearing an obvious gray wig.
A hypnotherapy session costs $495, but with advertising coupons could be had for just $295, according to ads heard frequently on radio and television stations.
On Thursday, a U.S. magistrate ordered Runnells returned to Norfolk for trial on a dizzying assortment of fraud and conspiracy charges.
by CNB