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