The Last Days Of Dr. Runkle

By KURT ANDERSEN

Horses, love and death begun a new race-track murder mystery and then abandoned it as hopeless after one chapter. But the case is sadly real. About the strange death of Dr. Janice Runkle--a racehorse veterinarian who ministered to Pleasant Colony, the winner of this year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness--hardly more than one fact is totally clear: her body was discovered on a bleak stretch of Lake Michigan shore line in Illinois. The rest is a troubling bundle of loose ends. There are unrequited loves and an assumed name, a quest for comfort and sudden flight, enigmatic letters and a lethal dose of drugs. There is a quixotic gumshoe with a black eyepatch and beard. He was hired by the victim's uncomprehending family and insists Janice Runkle was murdered. Says her sister Christine Runkle Casselman: "We feel that she might have found out something she wasn't supposed to know."

The evidence points much more to suicide than to foul play. It suggests that the earnest young horse doctor was distraught over an affair and went off alone to die. The Lake County, Ill., coroner found that Runkle, 28, died from an overdose of pentobarbital, a drug used in veterinary medicine as a sedative, probably swallowed in liquid form. There were no signs that it was administered forcibly. Says Lake County Chief of Detectives Frank Winans: "She voluntarily took either an accidental or deliberate overdose."

Raised in suburban Detroit, Runkle never abandoned the standard schoolgirl passion for horses. She took her veterinary degree at Michigan State University in 1976, and found a job with Dr. Mark Gerard, a noted racehorse vet in New York.

When Gerard was convicted of substituting a champion horse for a nag in a 1977 race, Runkle was untainted, and picked up some of his erstwhile clients. She worked long hours and built a respectable practice, caring for the horses of prominent trainers.

Runkle also dated a couple of her clients. Her most serious friendship apparently had been with Johnny ("Fat Man") Campo, Pleasant Colony's trainer since March. They were vivid proof that opposites attract. Campo, 43, is a bombastic, street-wise man who rose to prominence by turning cheap horses into winners. Runkle was a slight, shy, sweetly bookish young woman given to quoting Her mann Hesse and Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Just before her death, Runkle described their relationship in as a letter she sent to Newsweek Columnist Pete Axthelm: "Johnny and I do love each other in our own, twisted ways." But Campo, married and the father of two sons, denies any intimacy. "We were close, sure," he told a reporter. "But I never touched her. Our relationship was one of employer and employee. I made her what she was. She would have been nothing without me."

Runkle's lurching, furtive journey to her death may have started on Saturday, July 25. That night she dined at a Manhattan steak house with Axthelm, whom she had been seeing occasionally since the Kentucky Derby in May. After dinner, Runkle returned to her office at Belmont Park Race Track, just outside New York City and not far from where she lived. She later wrote Axthelm: "We never really loved each other." According to her letter, Runkle called Campo later that night; he flew down from upstate Saratoga Springs, then returned with Runkle to Saratoga the next day. A day later, Monday, Campo had an early dinner with Runkle and then drove her to the airport, where he bought her a one-way ticket to New York City.

Instead of boarding the flight home, Runkle, using the name M. Clark, paid $204 in cash for a one-way fare to Chicago. Still using her assumed name, she registered at the O'Hare Airport Hilton Hotel and paid cash for her room. She browsed the lobby later that night--and was never seen alive again.

By Wednesday her family was anxious, and her sister Dianne Ramirez launched a search. In Janice's Volvo, parked at Belmont, Ramirez found a bank statement with a five-figure balance and a note bequeathing the money to Piggy Bank, her riding horse.

On Wednesday evening a call came from the Illinois Beach State Park, 30 miles north of Chicago: a packet of Janice's ID cards had been found in a trash can. The next morning, Axthelm received the rueful letter, 13 pages handwritten by Runkle on the flight to O'Hare. In it she recounted her last, stormy hours with Campo. "The first two hours he spent threatening to kill both of us," she wrote. "Funny part is, a couple of years ago, I went out with someone he knew and he hardly batted an eye, though we were even closer then than we are now." Another line explained her feelings of alienation: "No one can understand what a lonely place this world is for me."

On Saturday night Runkle's body was discovered by a family of Lake Michigan boaters on a beach miles from the closest road. In her pockets were $3.60, a list of clothing and her hotel room key. Her family retained a New York City law firm and the private investigator to look into the matter. The Runkles also commissioned their own forensic study. Said Janice's father Robert Runkle: "As far as we are concerned, the speculations about her state of mind are strictly a smokescreen. Her being depressed just doesn't make sense." Runkle's funeral was Thursday. Campo did not attend. Said he: "I'll send her a bunch of flowers."

Janice Runkle might have appreciated the mysteries surrounding her death. She was a writer herself, the author of a children's book (Piggy Bank and the Magic Peppermint Penny) scheduled for publication this winter. She yearned to create one character "people will remember," to make her ultimate mark as a writer of fiction. "Nobody," she said not long ago, "is going to remember a vet at Belmont Park."

--By Kurt Andersen.

Reported by Lyn Delliquadri/Chicago and James Wilde/New York

With reporting by Lyn Delliquadri, James Wilde

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.