Dr. Dante | 3. The Church of Dante
48:46 Share

There's something I haven't told you before. What? What? Camellia. Season 5. Dr. Dante. A production of Campside Media. Oh. Dr. Dante.

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Dr. Ronald Dante was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder. He was sentenced to seven to 20 years to be served in Arizona, and he was to surrender himself to the state at an agreed-upon time in Tucson. He never showed.

One thing I've learned about Ronald Dante is that he would never surrender. If they were going to take him to prison, they were going to have to take him to prison. They found him under a fake name at a motel in Santa Barbara, and he was transported to his new home, the Arizona State Prison in Florence. In early 1976, Dante arrived in the Arizona desert to start doing his time.

And it was clear to Dante immediately that this would not be easy time. In a few short years, he managed to fall all the way from the high thread count of Lana Turner's bed sheets to the hard bunk beds of one of the toughest prisons in America. Oh, it was the nastiest of nasty. It was the snake pit.

I mean, is it really this thing? In the summer months, the temperatures in the desert would routinely be over 100 degrees. And there was no air conditioning in the place. It was two people to a cell. The cells were hot, and they were claustrophobically small. Every morning before dawn, they'd all head out to do chain-gang style labor. They'd have to get you out at 3 o'clock in the morning, and they'd have you on chains, and they have guns, and they have horses, and they have you raked.

The raking was both tedious and dangerous work because the guards would place them right alongside the local wildlife. They know exactly where the snakes are, where the rattlers are. And they purposely have you go in. People are being bitten all the time. Dante would come in from a day sidestepping snakes in the desert and look out the tiny window slide and think about the next seven to twenty years of this. Seven to twenty years without his wife, Elizabeth, and their new daughter.

There was a chance he'd miss fatherhood in its entirety. First steps, graduation caps, all of it happening without him. On the outside, his wife Elizabeth was doing her best. She relocated to a town near the prison and started trying to figure out a life without Dante and find a way to provide for their daughter.

For as unpredictable and often unstable a life as Dante lived, against all odds for someone like him, he had found someone in Elizabeth he was committed to. And she him. I would work. I'd go to work every day. And my child would go to daycare and just go in to see Ron. I had no interest in doing anything else. And yeah, and it was...

It was hard. Elizabeth and her daughter would come during visiting hours as often as they could, affording Dante the chance to hold his little girl. Our little one would sit and comb his hair with car keys, you know, while we were sitting and talking. Prison was an adjustment for all of them. But the hardest part for Dante was adjusting to life without the drugs to which he'd grown chemically dependent. Without codeine, quaaludes, or barbiturates,

He was cold turkey sober, anxious, sweating, and cramping in a cell with nothing but the suffocating Arizona heat to help him through. In the desert, the only things that survive are those built for extremes. And there, in the grips of withdrawals, in this unforgiving place, Dante did what he'd always done. He found a way to thrive. He found a way to charm. That's what he learned in jail.

You're stuck in a cage all day with somebody. You get a great conversationalist, that's a popular guy to be around. Dante's godson, Bobby Gold, and Elizabeth again. Whoever he met, the guards, the other inmates, they were all fascinated and

He would befriend people, get them talking about themselves and their experience, and he was a great listener. Dante was an equal opportunity charmer. Whether you're a movie star or a prison guard, it was all the same. Everyone was an audience to be disarmed.

He'd listen attentively to his cellmates, and then he'd hold court, regaling his peers with stories of his Hollywood life, his A-list friends, his A-list women, his life as a stage hypnotist. And then he'd turn the prison yard and the cafeteria into his own private hypnotism clinic for the many who were trying to break their own addictions.

Dante's original sentence was for seven to 20 years.

But through a combination of excellent lawyering and turning on the charm before the parole board, Dante's 720 was reduced dramatically. And I spent like two and a half, three years there. All told, Dante only served two and a half to three years for attempted murder before walking out a free man and a changed man.

When you've never been to prison, the idea of it looms large as a sort of hell-like deterrent designed to keep us within the bounds of the law. But when you've felt the space of a small cell, the heat of the desert, and you've been able to manage it all and come through unscathed, ahead of schedule, it loses all its power.

For the rest of his life, Dante was not afraid of the rules. He was not afraid of prison. He knew that the rules didn't apply to a man like him. Once he came out, he had a little different attitude. My dad saw it, I saw it. He wasn't as afraid of the law anymore. Now, it wasn't about shooting people. It was about just, we're going to do it our way. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Dr. Dante. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

How do you feel great on vacation? Like really good? Easy. You go to Aruba. You'll spend your time relaxing on cool white sand beaches and floating in healing blue water. You'll immerse yourself in natural wonder and find your center on an island where things move at your speed. You won't just feel great. You'll feel relaxed, renewed, and ready for life. That's the Aruba effect. Plan your trip at aruba.com.

This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required.

After leaving prison years early, where did our freshly minted ex-con show up next? At

At an amusement park, entertaining and hypnotizing children, of course. "Just come for a visit to Knott's Berry Farm." Knott's Berry Farm was, and actually still is, a western theme park with roller coasters, a ghost town, and strangely, the Snoopy and Peanuts IP. It wasn't the most glamorous gig for someone who had performed in all the top venues for the decade prior,

And perhaps on paper, having a convicted murder plotter performing primarily to children wasn't the farm's greatest human resources moment, but the shows that Dante was doing were, by all accounts, consistently great. Dante loved performing to children and always said they made great subjects for hypnosis. When I see child, those are probably the best subjects to hypnotize because these young ones make it very easy for you. They have great imaginations.

And they use their minds to a greater degree than adults do, amazingly enough. Dante was grateful for the gig. It allowed him to land on his feet, to get on stage again, and still have lots of time to reconnect with his wife and daughter. But after months of performing these easy shows for families, Dante started to get restless, anxious to get back to his natural habitat.

So before long, he made his way back to the nightclubs, doing his regular runs of shows. But this time, with a new bit. Instead of shying away from his felony conviction, he'd take the stage and lay all his cards on the table, and spin his drug addiction and attempted murder charge into an inspirational story in a bid to win the crowd over with his tale of redemption.

And it worked for him. Because Dante knew a hypnotism show hinges on the hypnotist's ability to earn trust. So Dante would tap into his own vulnerability and say, "If it wasn't for that prison term, I almost certainly wouldn't be alive today." It was almost a sales pitch, like, "Look what hypnosis helped me overcome. Just imagine what it could do for you."

Before long, Dante had not only risen to his previous heights, but had leapfrogged to new heights. Because when he left prison in 1978, he stepped right into the thick of the "me decade," the moment where pursuits of self-help were really starting to explode, when baby boomer culture was laying the groundwork for the Tony Robbinses and the Oprahs of the future.

For over 10 years now, I've helped over a million people that take control of their life mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially. So it's not selfish to put yourself first? No, it's self-ful. It's self-ful. It's self-ful to be first. In the '60s and '70s, Dante had scanned the zeitgeist and saw the draw to old Hollywood, and he made his way to the center of that world. So when the zeitgeist pivoted to the self-help craze of the late '70s and '80s, he wanted in on that too.

Dante started ramping up his side hustle game. He wasn't just performing hypnotism shows anymore. He started selling audio cassette courses too. Sign up and you get tapes in the mail filled with Dante's dulcet tones teaching you one of 49 possible classes on everything from astral projection to stress management. I want you to picture yourself looking at yourself in a huge full-length mirror.

I want you to call this a special mirror, a mirror of success. If people didn't want to learn by listening to the tapes, he also sold a textbook. He was always an entrepreneur. He was always thinking of different things and ways to make money. In this moment, everyone was looking for a guru. Every time you turned on the TV, people like Tom Vu were inviting you in. I started with nothing. In just a few years, I made a fortune. I have everything I ever wanted.

Self-help seminars. A light bulb went off in Dante's head. A light bulb that would remain lit for the rest of his life. Teaching was where the money was.

He'd already dabbled in instructional cassettes and odd workshops, but that was small potatoes. But a seminar over a weekend in a big venue would be a way to perform to more people and charge more per head. So in addition to his regular nighttime shows, he started offering clinics on how to quit smoking or how to lose weight. He tried a bunch of different angles until finally he discovered the bullseye.

It turned out the thing that the masses most wanted to learn from Dante, the thing that would make him the most money, was the thing that he was best at. He was going to teach people how to become hypnotists. His hypnotism seminars and workshops grew to the point where Dante realized he'd taken the idea as far as he could on his own. If he was going to take this thing to where he wanted it to go, he'd need a team to help him.

The logistics of a traveling seminar are no joke. There's rentals and travel, advertising, recruiting. If he was going to turn this into a real business, he was going to need a right-hand man. And he knew exactly who would be perfect for the job. My name is Robert Gold.

Bobby Gold. If ever there was a name destined to be on a marquee, it was that. And Bobby's journey to the marquee was about to begin. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Bobby Gold's father was one of Dante's closest friends. They grew up on the north side of Chicago together. They kind of, they found each other. They would travel in the same circles and they'd go...

I agree with that guy. They recognized in each other a fellow outsider, someone who didn't quite fit the societal norms and didn't want to.

Someone who always had an eye for the game. When Bobby was little, every time his Uncle Ron swung by the house to see his dad, it was an event. To young Bobby, it felt like Uncle Ron was larger than life, with that voice and those wild stories. But also, it always felt like Uncle Ron really saw him, even as a young kid.

There was a friendliness he had, even as a little kid, you know, because you know how adults are like from another world. You almost don't even hear what they're saying. Ron had a way of looking at you, even when I was little. It was like he was your buddy. If you'd go walk in the backyard, he'd pick up a rock and skip it with you or look at a marble with you. And you just start feeling everything's okay. And Bobby said his dad was sort of a hothead. But when Dante was around, he was one of the only people who could really disarm him, really make him laugh.

But one day, something happened that would tie the fates of Bobby Gold and Ronald Dante together forever. When I was six years old, I got a real bad case of scarlet fever. Genuine, almost died.

It came on really fast, and Bobby's parents watched in disbelief as his temperature got higher and higher. There was nothing left for the doctors to do. And as Bobby's parents watched over him, terrified, unsure if he'd pull through, the phone rang. It was Dante.

Bobby's dad broke the news. "My kid's sick. He could die." And Dante said, "I think I might be able to help." "You know me as a stage hypnotist," he told Bobby's dad.

And Ron said, "Well, it can be used seriously too." Whether hypnosis occurs on a nightclub stage or in a clinical setting, the steps of induction remain the same. And over the decades, hypnosis has been used for lots of things related to health. Helps you lose weight, stop smoking, gain confidence, whatever it is, mind over body. Hypnosis used to be used in surgery in lieu of anesthesia.

And sometimes, Dante said, it could be used in the case of fever. Especially with kids hypnosis is a very powerful tool because children don't know the difference between what's real and what isn't. So when you tell them something, they just react to it. Bobby's parents were skeptical at first.

my dad made a couple phone calls to some doctors and they said, "Yeah, if you know someone who knows how to do that, absolutely." So Bobby's dad called his dearest friend back and said, "Come over. Do the thing." And he said, "I could try." So Dante came over to the Gold House and sat next to the feverish Bobby.

and began the induction. Dante's deep voice broke through the fever, telling his godson to focus on the temperature of his body. There was a comfort to what he was telling me to do,

and a confidence, and you just start feeling everything's okay. Ron got Bobby to focus on the fever, to hone in on the intense heat of it, and slowly guided Bobby to believe that he could turn the temperature down, that he could literally cool himself just by thinking it. And within a matter of days, I'm laughing, my immune system

was stronger, I was sitting up, I was healthier. Now, you know, some people say, well, he would have recovered anyway. Or perhaps, hey, this scarlet fever story sounds an awful lot like that Dante tuberculosis story. You know, maybe it wasn't the hypnosis. I don't know. I just know that started the relationship. From then on, whenever he was in town, Uncle Ron would swing by and their bond would grow.

When Bobby was a teen, Ron's stories from the road as a traveling hypnotist were like a portal into a world and life that young Bobby wanted for himself. A world of nightclubs and movie stars and being the person in control of the room lit by a spotlight.

Every time he spoke, Bobby would get little glimpses, morsels that made him want in. He'd come into town and I'd be in high school and he'd say, "How much does your teacher make?" And I think in those days my teacher made $17,000. And he said, "Well, I'm probably going to make $15,000 tomorrow." And Ron would say, "It's not even hard, Bobby." All you have to do is listen to people. You don't have to invent a new product just to find it. They already want it. We're doing nothing more than giving people what they want.

So a few years later, Bobby's at college on a badminton scholarship when his mother gets diagnosed with cancer. Bobby leaves school and moves home to take care of her until she passes away.

In the wake of her death, Bobby felt completely directionless. After the heaviness of caring for his mom, college life seemed almost frivolous. I wasn't going back to school. I couldn't do it. I'd lost my scholarship. I had to drop everything for my mother dying. My dad was such a mess, and my family was a mess. So he turned to his godfather, his uncle Ron. He was more of an uncle than my real uncles. So I talked to Ron on the phone. He'd been through cancer with his mother. And Dante said...

Bobby, come to California. He didn't need to say it twice. Bobby packed his bags and told his dad. I'm going to go with Ron because my head was ready for Ron. I knew I'd learn a lot. So Bobby gets on a plane and flies out. And day one.

First thing, Dante throws Bobby into the deep end. This would become a pattern for them. As soon as Bobby gets off the plane, Dante says, "Bobby, I've got something I need you to do for me." "You're gonna go meet with this guy." This guy ran a venue that Dante wanted to book in Huntington Beach. He'd been negotiating, hoping to book the room long term to set up a home base for his hypnotism show.

Lesson number one for Bobby: contract negotiations, Dante style. He sent Bobby in with two contracts to meet the booker. He goes, "Here's your contract." He goes, "You've got his copy and your copy." But these copies were not identical. There's going to be one line that says you can never put another hypnosis show in, but his. He goes, "But it's not in his copy."

So Bobby took these two contracts and walked into the negotiation, Ron's voice in his head. You've got to remember, keep your copy on the bottom so when you show it to him, you're going to go over it. Make sure you do it that way. The top one goes to him. It'll be very natural. Just give it to him.

He handed the guy the contract on the top, the one without the line, did a little sleight of hand exactly as Dante described, and got the signature no problem. And thus, he was officially initiated into the Ronald Dante Mentorship Program, which wasn't a real program, but that didn't make it any more or less legitimate than any of the other programs they would go on to create together.

Dante started teaching Bobby a new way to see the world, the way Dante did. Dante taught him how to read people, to study people. Whether you're on stage or meeting someone on the street, listen, observe, analyze. Do they represent a threat? Do they represent an opportunity? And what would they like to buy? You know, what would they want? Study people and study in general.

Dante started bringing Bobby up to speed on his hypnotism seminars and started sharing with Bobby his master plan on how they were going to pack venues all over America. The key to this, the key to everything Dante would have success at, would always be the same, advertising. We had a ritual. Every Sunday was a big day. You get up early, go all around the city, and we'd pick up every newspaper from every city everywhere. London Times, New York.

They'd head home with their stack of papers and magazines, spread them all out on the table, and start scrutinizing the advertisements. And we'd go through to see what was being repeated. If you see the same ad with a lot of money spent over and over and over again, it's working. They're not going to keep paying for it.

And Ron had some simple theories. Many times he'd say, "We could just copy that ad because they don't know how to get good placement. We get the same ad, better placement, we steal all their business." He had a very good mind for that kind of thing. Before clickbait, consumer data, and sophisticated internet algorithms,

There was Dante, running different ads in different markets with different wordings, using different images, casting not just one fishing line, but dozens, always cataloging which rods were getting the bites. We had two ads we ran. One was with just Ron's face and it said all the things he'd done. The other one was with Johnny Carson, Lana Turner, had pictures all over it, looked like energy.

Both ads featured fabricated pull quotes, imaginary sold-out venues all over the world, and bogus credits. It was almost entirely illegitimate, which is why it read so impressively. Dante would alternate between the two ads, and the results were clear. They both did well, but the one with his face that seemed more scholastic only worked once.

But the one with the color and all the movie stars and stuff, you can almost run that every week. As he expected, in a battle between style and substance, style won. Once they worked out the ad copy, they were rolling. We didn't have to work real hard at getting publicity. If it wasn't L.A. or New York, there was always 10 o'clock news if we were in town. You always got news. Once word was out, their venue secured, their attendees locked, they'd get everything ready for showtime.

And there was a system for this, too. For as many things that Dante would shrug off, like getting insurance or starting shows on time, Bobby knows that there were certain things that Dante was meticulous about. And then he'd always do his own lighting. He'd always use the chandelier lighting, what they'd use for a wedding, but he'd add some of his own lighting in certain spots. Dante would adjust the faders, trying to find the exact right levels, conducive to putting so many people under hypnosis.

He says, "Why? Whatever lights up is what your eye notices. What your eye notices is what you're stimulated by." And then he'd be very clear about how he wanted the chair set up, insisting on the angles, trying to strike just the right balance. Yeah, you do not want back rows. You want everybody by you.

You want to be there with like theater in the round. And when the seminar weekend would kick off, the show would start as the attendees were approaching the building. Almost all of these seminars would take place in hotel conference rooms or performance spaces.

But the attendees would always see two things in the parking lot. One, Dante was a big fan of the 20th century Fox-style heavenward-pointing spotlights, you know, signifying that Dante is here. And two, whenever he rolled into a new town, he'd call up the local limousine company and be like, I want your fancy, it could be a piece of shit that doesn't run, it doesn't need an engine, I don't need a chauffeur, I just want the most beautiful, big, fancy limousine

you know, limo out in front of that hotel. And a lot of times they'd have one that doesn't run real well and they'd say, okay, you don't need to drive around. Nope, I just want to park in front of the hotel. I'm not taking it anywhere. I'm just going to put my plate on it. He had a magnetic Dr. Dante plate and a chauffeur costume for one of his staff. And always there would be a bodyguard, the right bodyguard, which sometimes took a few tries. So the first time we get some quiet little Asian guy, nobody even notices and we're like,

No, no, no, we don't need him. Oh, no, he killed 27 people. Yeah, we don't want him. We want them to see him. The second guy the security company sent was big, like 6'8". But he was so friendly. Little kids were coming up. No, no, no, no, no.

Then they got us. Probably a guy who couldn't probably fight at all, but some biker guy who just stared at everybody, a mean-looking guy with a jacket and looking around like a... Look at Hells Angels. You know, that's the guy. Like, well, he can't really fight, but he sure looks scary. Sure, you want that presence, you know. And then when you walk into the venue, there would be music hand-selected by Dante himself, intended to create a certain vibe very opposite of Hells Angels guy. ♪

Everywhere he went, he was playing Disneyland music. All these tunes you only hear when you go to Disneyland. It's a small world and all this stuff. Unexpected, but with a purpose. You know, all these Mickey Mouse tunes you hear at Disneyland. And he said the only place you ever hear those is when you're on vacation, usually with your kids or when you were a kid. And you'd see all the women looking around smiling and people laughing.

The lights would fade and the show would begin with Bobby's story of his miraculous recovery from scarlet fever. Bobby wasn't sure at first if he was ready for the stage, but Dante always had a way of reframing things for his protege. Stage Freddy said came from being selfish and he's right. You're not supposed to be worried about what they think of you and if they like you. You're supposed to be worried about are you giving them what they came for? What the audience wants was the power of hypnotherapy and that Bobby could give them.

He had the testimonial to beat all testimonials. He was a child at death's door, saved by the power of hypnosis at the hands of the master you, dear audience, have the privilege to learn from tonight. Each time Bobby told the story, he got more comfortable being on stage and the seminar would hum along from there.

After Bobby's part, they break into smaller groups, teach some hypnosis fundamentals, give them the tools, then lunch, then a PowerPoint-style session. But really...

None of that stuff mattered. Lots of the seminar was filler. The success of the whole thing would hinge on when, at 10.30 p.m., Dante would finally arrive on stage. Dr. Dante, ladies and gentlemen. And by the time he finished his thing, everyone went home happy. Thank you so much, lovely people. Bye-bye.

The main reason people would pay the money wasn't just so that they could learn a little bit about hypnosis. It was so that they could leave a practicing hypnotherapist. That's what Dante was selling. Some people go to school for years to become a licensed, legitimate hypnotherapist, but

But this was two days in a hotel ballroom. So Dante knew that it was important to give it all a sheen of legitimacy, to give everyone a license to hypnotize. But we're like, how are we going to certify him? And that's when...

Upon completion, they'd stamp your registered number on your official-looking diploma. And there you had it. By the power not at all vested in the not-actually-a-doctor Ronald Dante...

you would leave this Marriott courtyard, in air quote, hypnotherapist. They started taking the seminar everywhere. Bobby was making more money than he could spend and having more fun than he'd ever had, falling ever more under the spell of his Uncle Ron.

According to the two of them, they were pulling in tens of thousands of dollars a week, all in cash. And though Dante loved the money, it wasn't all that he was getting from this. He just loved the game of it all. He loved cutting corners that didn't need cutting, just for the fun of it. Like with our airline tickets.

They'd always fly Jet America. Jet America had this deal where if you get the tickets on the last night before the flight's going to go out, they're flat $100 to go anywhere they want. So he'd have our people calling in, booking up all these Jet America tickets. We're going to Philadelphia or wherever it is.

And they'd cancel them all on the day before the flight. At which point, Jet America would drop the prices. And you could go down to the airport. You'd have me go down and buy two tickets for $100 each. Bobby was like, Uncle Ron, we don't need to make this so complicated. I go, why are we doing this? We're going to these states making $50,000 a day. You know, we're...

Well, Bobby, it's just too easy. Dante was getting bolder and bolder with the corner cutting. He'd pay for newspaper ads with checks that he'd stop payment on. He'd ghost on venues when it was time to pay. It didn't make sense to Bobby. It all felt so unnecessary. But he was the protege and Dante the master. And honestly, it was fun living like this. But it was about to catch up with him.

You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further astray.

into the depths of demand shut. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen and the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.

From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Robert F. Carver III.

In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes.

From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

When the real, actually credentialed hypnotherapist community caught wind of what Dante was doing, they were not happy. Dante was effectively leading thousands of people to believe that they were leaving his seminar certified professionals. So the real certified professionals started trying to get Dante shut down. What Dante was doing was illegal, they argued.

So when officials started showing up at his venues, Dante reluctantly agreed to change the language on his ads and his certificates. But then he was forced to make a larger concession. He was told that the only way he would be allowed to continue was if he no longer charged for admission. And it seemed like all that money, this high-rolling life that Dante had built and Bobby had come to love, was about to vanish.

And that might have been the end for most people. It probably should have been the end, but it gave Dante a new vision.

He thought, if the seminar's free, maybe we could get more people, play bigger venues. And then he could make up the lost money by selling more stuff at the end. They could lean more into the merch table, sell more cassettes, books. Maybe they could make a hypnosis kit with the spinning spiral thing and all the accoutrements that you need to become a real hypnotist. ♪

Ron didn't love this pivot, but he was confident. If we put on a good show, people will pay at the end. But he found that when you do a free seminar, it changes the vibes entirely. People will walk into it more skeptical than before. And we're all, "Come on, the catch is coming, the catch is coming." And then at the end, we finally sell him stuff. But he hated that. He hated having a catch.

Maybe there was a better way to make money with this. Because Dante thought, what is hypnosis but salvation? From smoking, from anxiety, or pain? Dante really did believe that it could change your life.

And he always said that if he wasn't a stage hypnotist, he would have been either a rock star or an evangelist. And an evangelist he became. He registered his company as a church foundation. With the angle being, through hypnosis, we're helping thousands of people live better lives. Won't you donate to this righteous cause?

And they did. Dante started cultivating not just customers, but followers and donors like Minnie Girvin. This woman, Minnie Girvin, was a woman he met on a cruise ship who was a very rich woman. She had actually been a babysitter for sheiks and she had millions of dollars, but nothing to do with the money. And when she met Dante on that cruise, he made a real impression. And she just adored Ron.

And she loved hypnosis. She apparently already had previous experience with hypnosis and saw it help her family members. And so when Dante said, Dear Minnie, how would you like to help us bring the power of hypnosis to the masses? And soon enough, checks started coming into their psychoneurology foundation. She'd send money to the psychoneurology foundation for the cause, for the cause, and we'd get $50,000, $100,000 sent to us. And in return, she would call Ron once a month, and he would spend hours on the phone with her.

making her feel special, keeping her on board. Every month, a call from Minnie, and every month, a check from Minnie. Until... Finally, she stopped calling. And he said, Minnie, what's wrong? She goes, I'm just not supposed to talk to you anymore. My family says that you're just a con man, and I just can't send you money anymore, okay? Because my family just hates me for it, okay? I just can't do that anymore. ♪

At first, Dante was like, "Well, it was good while it lasted." And he said, "I probably should just, you know, write that one off." But Ron's way of thinking was now Bobby's way of thinking too. And he had trained his protégé well. And I said, "I got a better idea. We're doing all these free seminars. Obviously, her money is helping create them. And why don't we bring her in to see what her money does?" Bring her in to that free seminar coming up. Right here at the Bonaventure in LA. She lives in Phoenix.

It's a very short plane flight. The wheels started turning in Ron's head. He says, get a nice limo. Let's buy a ticket for her first class coming over. It costs nothing. He says, for the second day of the seminar. And so sure enough, the morning of the second day of the seminar, Minnie's plane lands. And as she's being driven to the venue in a limo, Dante's on stage finishing up his act. And printed on the bottom of everyone's program are the words, brought to you by Minnie Girvin.

Toward the end of these free seminars, the audience would inevitably start getting a little antsy. They went through a day, it's pretty good, but where's the catch coming? Where's the catch coming? And that day, he turns to the audience. And he says, I know you've all been asking, how can we do this? And just then, into the Bonaventure Ballroom, the idyllic setting for a wooing. It's a beautiful, beautiful ballroom. It looks majestic. I mean, the whole national convention's for, like, you know, president there. Into this beautiful ballroom filled with thousands of people.

This nice little old lady who never even gets around a lot of people is being brought in and looking around and he goes, "Well, there she is back there. You've read this name. There's Minnie Girvin. She's the reason you're getting this free. She's the reason that all this is happening and people are being helped." And she's almost shaking and they're walking her up the stage and they're helping her up the stairs. And she gets up and Dancia told me, "We got to get a standing ovation going."

And while I was getting ready to try to start, it didn't matter. They were already doing it. They're standing up and people are crying. And Minnie Girvin gets up and she goes, I always knew that Mr. Dante would be doing this. And I can't believe all you people are doing so much good that my money's going to a good place. I mean, tears coming out of people's eyes. She's crying. She said some passage out of the Bible, you know, about helping other people.

They applaud, she's like shy and he goes, "Well, that's enough excitement for her." They walk her back down the stairs, put her right back on the limo. She goes right back to the airport, tells her family about it. These people bought more than anybody ever bought in any seminar. They loved it. Everybody's crying. And within a week, she sent more money than she ever sent. And that was Ron Dante. Everybody was happy. Wasn't really a lie. The money did go roundabout some way to the program. And who's he really hurting?

He was a very good con man. He was very clever, but he made everybody happy. Everyone but the real hypnotherapists, who were redoubling their efforts to get Dante out of their business for good. And so they'd come and try to sabotage us. They'd show up, and you knew they were. They're walking around with suits. Dante was able to put out almost every little fire that started. But when it came to this group of people, he started to understand that they weren't going to go away. And they were turning up the heat.

One of the things that was amazing about Ron is the more pressure there was, the better he was. Dante was on stage in the middle of the seminar one day when he started noticing men in suits starting to file in, standing at the back of the room. We took a break because we were like, okay, they're here and now they've got papers to pass out.

They'd hand out flyers to all the people in Dante's audience. Flyers that had printed on them, this guy's a con artist, a felon, an attempted murderer, a thief. And Dante on stage in the spotlight would be like, they're trying to turn my crowd against me? They don't know who they're dealing with. I'd never seen this before. I didn't know he had this much talent. I knew he was charming. I knew he had that savoir faire. But I didn't know he could do this.

Ron grabs the microphone from its stand. He says, "I want you all to look around the room. You see these men in suits back there? You know what they all have in common? They want to charge you a lot of money for what I'm giving you free."

He goes, "They want you to have to pay." He goes, "They think somehow they're doing this more official because they've got that little state piece of paper." He says, "It's all about money." The people start staring at the suits, glaring at them. And then he starts talking about his mother and cancer, because that's when it all happened. He starts talking about what it was like, that his mother dying. He had people in the audience crying. And their tears turn to anger as they start running these men out of the room. And I saw this. I'm telling you it's the truth.

He hit them so mad at these money grubbers, I saw people spit on him as they went up. They might have known as much about hypnosis as Dante, but they knew nothing about managing a crowd. He'd get people so much on his side that they would want to start a riot. He had this spirit about him that the more the other side would fight, the more he'd fight. And in his mind, he was fighting for the people.

Dante was at the height of his powers in a lot of ways, feeling invincible because he kind of was.

When you're Dante, a failed marriage to a Hollywood star is a marketing opportunity. A trip to prison, a redemption story. He loses his foundation's biggest donor and he not only wins her back, but gets her to send twice as much. And when his enemies ambush him at a show, they're run out of there, covered in the saliva of Team Dante.

By the mid-1980s, this was a man who knew the rules didn't apply to him. Throw all the lemons you want at him, the dude's just gonna make a lemonade empire. When public interest naturally started to wane, as the hypnotism fad went out of style, and attendance at the seminars started to decline, Dante began considering what he should do next.

He realized that it wasn't hypnotherapy that was making him all this money. It was him. They were coming to see him. Standing on a stage, talking into a microphone, teaching something. And he started to think, that something could be anything. But what was the next thing? Where were the millions of dollars just waiting for the right person to seize upon? And then, it hit him.

It was so obvious. It had been staring him in the face his whole life. He knew what the next big thing was. Women's eyebrows. Next time on Dr. Dante. He didn't have the first clue how to be a tattoo artist. I taught people how to do permanent makeup. No one but Ron could pull that off.

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. Dr. Dante was written and hosted by me, Sam Mullins. It's produced by Aboukar Adan and edited by Karen Duffin. Our associate producer is Tanita Rahmani. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Garrett Tiedemann.

Additional music by APM and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Lauren Vespoli. Our consulting producer is Bradley Beasley. Special thanks to Johnny Kaufman and to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Aaliyah Papes, and Destiny Dingle. The executive producers at Campside Media are Josh Dean, Matt Scher, Vanessa Grigoriadis, and Adam Hoff.

Want the full story? Unlock all episodes of Dr. Dante ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. All episodes, all at once. Plus, you'll unlock brand new stories dropping every month. That's all episodes, all at once, all ad-free.

Just click try free at the top of the Dr. Dante show page on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com slash podcasts.