A Tale of Intrigue: Wife Is Slain, Empire Fails, Husband Vanishes

It seemed a wonderful life. They were the picture of success, an up-and-coming young couple etching a niche among the rich and trendy in North County.

He was dark-haired and dynamic, an entrepreneur forging a mini-empire in the budding field of telemarketing. She was a blond beauty, an accomplished dancer and artist poised to launch a career as a professional painter.

Indeed, Chuck and Pam Russ appeared to have it all. They resided in a tony bluff-top condominium in Leucadia, drove Mercedes-Benzes and partied at chic watering holes along the coastline. He gambled at the Del Mar Racetrack, she spent long hours painting portraits in her rented artist’s loft in downtown San Diego. They traveled extensively for business and pleasure, to Australia, Hawaii, Hong Kong.

Then, it all ended. Early in the morning on Feb. 1, the battered body of Pamela Russ was discovered along an isolated stretch of highway curving down from Torrey Pines State Park to the Pacific. The 33-year-old woman’s cream-colored Mercedes sat benignly nearby. A 250-foot-long trail of blood led along the highway to the body. Homicide detectives concluded that an assailant had beaten Russ, then run her over with the car as she tried to flee.

Along with family and friends, Charles Russ grieved after his wife’s death. For him, however, the trouble was only beginning.

Seemingly overnight, his economic kingdom crumbled like a sand castle at high tide. In May, an attorney for his mother-in-law, Ginger Allen, filed a lawsuit against Russ alleging he bilked the 66-year-old widow out of her retirement nest egg of more than $80,000.

Late last month, police followed that lead, issuing a criminal warrant against Russ on charges of embezzlement and forgery in the Allen case. In addition, a Superior Court judge in San Diego granted a temporary order in the civil case forbidding Russ from spending the $600,000 in life insurance due him from policies he had taken out on his wife.

While San Diego police have been careful to avoid pointing fingers during the homicide investigation, Russ’ attorney contends that the civil suit and criminal charges are little more than a ploy to spotlight the 37-year-old businessman through “innuendo and rumor” as a suspect in the slaying. Although the San Diego County Grand Jury has begun looking into the slaying case, several friends of Russ maintain he is nothing more than a victim of police harassment.

Amidst the tumult, Russ has vanished. He was scheduled to surrender to police two weeks ago, but never appeared. Investigators quickly traced him to Taos, N.M. They found only an empty condominium Russ had rented.

Police were not surprised. The disappearance fit a pattern, a method of operation that Chuck Russ has followed in his business ventures and personal dealings for more than a decade.

During that time, Russ has hopscotched about the West, from Encinitas to New Mexico to Montana. It always seemed to go the same way. Russ would sweep into a town, full of hope and promise, only to flee some months later under a cloud of controversy, leaving behind a legacy of betrayed friends, broken business deals and crumpled dreams.

They met at the old Del Mar Drive-in. Chuck was 20, manager of the concession stand. Pam Allen was 16, a cashier at the drive-in and one of the cutest girls around, petite and blue-eyed.

From the beginning, Chuck Russ cast a spell over her. He wrote poetry, bought her a bicycle. In her eyes, Chuck could do no wrong.

“Pam really fell deeply in love with Chuck early on,” recalls Miriam Bloom, a friend of the Allen family. “And I think she was blind to anything else.”

Ginger Allen, Pam’s mother, could hardly stand to see her youngest child torn away at such an early age. To Allen, who teaches Polynesian dance in a cramped studio beneath the family’s home overlooking Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, Pamela was her little Teahani , always the best dancer in class.

Sheltered as a girl by her parents and two older brothers, Pam began to pull ever so slowly away from her family after meeting Russ.

“She was always self-conscious about the fact that the least expectations were placed on her, that she was not being taken for real like her brothers,” said Mark Allen, Pamela’s brother. “When she met Chuck, he fed on that. He taught her that she could excel beyond her family’s expectations.”

Holly Weston, a friend of Pamela’s since the age of 6, agreed. “Chuck had a very magnetic quality about him,” Weston said. “He had a way of controlling people with his personality. I think he knew how to read people. Pam was drawn to him from the first day.”

An Odd Couple

In some ways, though, they seemed an odd couple. Longtime friends say that Pamela was demonstrative, affectionate, her feelings always bubbling to the surface. Chuck was more reserved, private, his emotions almost always in check.

But the relationship rarely seemed to waver. When Pam went off to UC Santa Cruz in 1973 to study fine art, Chuck soon followed, taking classes at a local junior college. He left after about a year, returning to Solana Beach after his father died to help run the family business, an aerospace engineering and electronics firm.

The firm eventually folded, an event that may have had a profound impact on Russ.

“His father was a real success story, and Chuck was always trying to measure up to that,” says Bill Ganong, a college friend of Russ. “He never really did, so he was always trying to make these fast bucks and these big deals. And when he couldn’t do it, he got caught in these positions where it all fell in on him.”

It was through Ganong that Russ came in 1975 to Gallup, N.M., where he worked at the Indian Trader, a publication for collectors of Indian jewelry and artifacts. Pam soon joined him, working as an artist for the paper.

After a few months, problems arose.

Though he had little money, Russ was able to persuade several investors to bring him in as a partner and let him take on financial duties and the advertising section. “The guy was quite a talker,” recalls Bill Smith, a partner in the operation who served as publisher of the paper. “He was a charming guy. He could charm the socks right off you.”

Smith said he and the three other partners noticed that the venture was falling far short of the profits that should have been reaped based on the paper’s advertising volume. Smith and the other partners tried to investigate, but were unable to find any books or financial records being kept by Russ.

The group confronted Russ with their suspicions and he agreed to resign if they bought him out for about $9,000, Smith said. The group considered suing, but opted to chalk it up to a mistake and pay the cash so the affair would not drag on, Smith said.

John Thompson, the San Diego attorney representing Russ in the civil case with his mother-in-law, said he had little information on his client’s dealings with the Indian Trader and could not comment. In a deposition Russ gave in June for the embezzlement lawsuit, he mentions his work with the Indian Trader, but does not allude to any problems.

In 1976, Chuck and Pam returned to San Diego County and, undaunted by the problems in New Mexico, decided to start a small beach-wear business in Encinitas with Mark Allen. Tapping Pam’s artistic talents, they sold T-shirts and cotton dresses bearing pictures of dolphins, flowers and animals airbrushed on the front.

Hunkered in a small shop stuffed with sewing machines and Pam’s airbrush equipment, the business struggled for a year before Mark bowed out. He remembers it as “a constant struggle to stay ahead.”

“I got tired of all the bad checks and the hassling to pay the bills,” Mark Allen said, noting how he had to pull money from his personal funds at times to take care of overdue payments Russ was supposed to have made. In one month alone, Allen said, the small firm bounced about 60 checks.

Despite the precarious financial footing of the business, Russ was able to get a $33,000 loan from Chuck and Fay Bagby, the parents of a longtime friend, Bill Bagby. Russ immediately rented a roomy new headquarters for the firm in Sorrento Valley, had new stationery made and bought plush new office furniture.

Bill Bagby said Russ had a knack for persuading people to invest in an idea. He recalls how Russ once was riding the train to Santa Barbara and struck up a conversation with the owner of a backpack manufacturing firm. By the end of the trip, a friendship had blossomed and the man introduced Russ to other wealthy types, who eventually sunk money into the airbrush business.

“He was always working these kinds of deals,” Bill Bagby said. “He did a lot of deals in bars. He came across as very personable and sincere, and that’s how he was able to get money from people.”

In 1978, the airbrush business folded. When Chuck Bagby sent his son over to see how the firm was doing, he found it padlocked. Russ had left for Montana without a word.

“We thought about suing, but realized that after all the time and cash for attorneys and so forth, we would only have a judgment at the end to show for it,” Chuck Bagby said, noting that Russ had virtually no money at the time.

On to Montana

Faced with the crumbling business, Russ tagged along with Gary Allen, Pamela’s oldest brother, when he moved to Big Sky, Mont., to work as a chef at a ski lodge. After about six months, Pam moved up to Montana as well.

A year later, Russ decided to try his hand in the newspaper business again. Don Hart, a Big Sky real estate agent, lent him $5,500 to purchase a small weekly. With Pam providing drawings and Chuck writing articles and selling advertising, the paper seemed to be doing well, with Russ claiming a circulation of more than 500.

Again, problems arose. By 1982, Russ decided to sell the paper, telling locals he had been diagnosed as having a heart ailment that required he live at a lower altitude. In his June deposition, however, Russ said his decision to sell hinged largely on a falling out with Don Hart over the paper’s content. His in-laws say Russ never complained about a heart problem to them.

Kevin Kelleher, a ski instructor who had written articles for the publication, bought the newspaper for $3,500. But when Kelleher showed up at Russ’ house one day to begin two weeks of on-the-job training, he found nothing but dirty dishes in the sink and some clothing strewn about.

The phone rang. According to Kelleher, it was Mike Davitch, the original owner of the paper, claiming that Russ had paid him only $1,000 of the $5,500 selling price.

‘Fled in the Night’

“When Chuck Russ got the $3,500 from me, he went to a used-car lot, bought a pickup truck, loaded up all his worldly belongings and fled that night,” Kelleher said. “When I showed up at his house, all the doors were open, the drawers were open. It looked like a very hasty departure.”

Russ fled without repaying Hart, prompting the Realtor to file a lawsuit. Eventually, Hart won a $7,000 judgment in a Montana courtroom, but has yet to collect.

In his recent deposition, however, Russ contends that repayment of the loan “was not part of the terms of the investment” and that at the time he “could not afford to do so.”

Kelleher, meanwhile, said he realized soon after buying the paper that Russ had stretched the truth by suggesting it had a paid circulation of more than 500. Soon after assuming control, Kelleher said, he began getting calls from angry residents who had paid Russ $20 for a subscription, but never received a single paper. Since then, Kelleher said he has had to work hard to re-establish the paper’s good name in the community.

When Russ left, other Big Sky residents and businesses were also complaining that he owed them money. A printing shop that produced a magazine Russ had started publishing was never paid about $10,000 it was owed. And a partner in the magazine, Paula Halverson, contends she was bilked of about $7,000 by Russ in a deal to purchase 10 acres of land in nearby Ennis, Mont.

Halverson said she gave Russ a $2,000 down payment and $200 a month in checks made out to him. But when Russ left town, Halverson said she learned that her partner had made no payments on the property for two years and the owner was preparing to foreclose.

For a time, Halverson attempted to pursue Russ, trying to convince Montana authorities to have him extradited from California. She eventually gave up. The sour land deal ultimately was turned around with the help of a friend who knew the owner of the Ennis property.

“At the time this all happened (Russ) was one of my closest friends,” Halverson said. “All this was premeditated. He befriended people and established trust. When they vanished, we realized we had been used as puppets.”

Russ tells a different story. In his recent deposition, Russ maintains that he and Halverson “chose to utilize” the payments for the magazine, but when the publication “was not doing as well as she hoped, she felt that the money should have been distributed to the property.”

As always, Pamela stood resolutely behind Chuck.

“Pam was just sort of naive, unfortunately,” Halverson said. “She was one of those sweet, innocent, happy-go-lucky people who never seemed concerned about anything. I think he had her brainwashed. She really idolized and respected him.”

The couple arrived back in Encinitas in mid-1982, their pickup truck loaded with furniture, household belongings, clothes--and some important news. On the trip back, Pam and Chuck had stopped in Las Vegas and gotten married.

For the first year, they lived with Pam’s parents, helping Ginger Allen tend to her husband, Butch, who had suffered a stroke and broken his hip.

Russ soon jumped into the line of work that would become the centerpiece of his business life for the next five years--telemarketing. He took a job with a firm that sold photographic products via telephone.

After a year learning the ropes, Russ started his own telemarketing business, dubbed Beach Town Marketing, in 1983. Setting up shop as the fund-raising arm of the Paralyzed Veterans Assn. and other charities, the firm grew quickly during those early years, expanding to include more than half a dozen offices scattered throughout California.

Russ moved his administrative headquarters into an exclusive office building along Cardiff’s restaurant row, occupying a plush, 2,200-square-foot corner suite with a commanding view of the Pacific.

With business flourishing, he and Pam relocated to the rented condo in Leucadia, decorating it with expensive leather sofas and lush plants.

“For a couple who came back just the year before in an old beat-up pickup truck, they were doing quite well,” Mark Allen said.

As the telemarketing business grew, Russ gradually began to withdraw from the day-to-day operations, leaving those duties to his right-hand man, Wade Jenkins. Eventually, Russ and Jenkins formed a partnership, establishing a new business entity, Creative Telemarketing Concepts, in 1985.

Amid those trappings of prosperity, however, was a paradox.

Despite the plush office and expensive condo, Russ needed the help of his mother-in-law to lease a Mercedes 300D he wanted as a working car. Later, when Russ purchased a $69,000 Mercedes 560SEC as his personal car, Ginger Allen again signed on Russ’ behalf.

For Allen, it was a quantum shift. A decade earlier, she had disliked Russ, considering him conceited and cocky. After a few years, however, she warmed to him. And by the time his telemarketing business was flourishing, Allen considered her son-in-law “a financial wizard.”

So it was that the stage was set for what Ginger Allen calls her “greatest mistake.”

In 1985, Chuck came to her talking of an opportunity to get a 24% annual return on an investment. According to Allen, Russ persuaded her to draw out $75,000 by mortgaging the San Diego home she had inherited from her husband’s parents. Later, Allen liquidated an IRA account and turned over the $8,150 to Russ.

Robert Moore, the El Cajon attorney representing Allen, contends in legal papers that Russ never invested the money for Allen, using it instead “for himself to benefit his business interests and to pay off debts.” Now Allen is in precarious financial straits because a balloon payment on the mortgage comes due early next year, Moore said. If the payment is not made, she stands to lose the property.

It was not until the death of Pamela that the intricate facade Charles Russ had constructed began to topple, his in-laws say.

Late in 1986, Russ told them he had sold his telemarketing business “for all kinds of money.” He talked of new business ventures, of founding a magazine about Australia or moving to the Rockies to kick back for a while. The Allen family say they had no idea he was having a hard time financially.

Moreover, friends say the couple never gave any indication about marital problems. Chuck and Pamela, however, began spending increasing amounts of time apart in 1986, she at the art loft in San Diego, he with his business.

“Toward the end, they were in some ways leading very distinct and separate lives,” recalls Mark Allen. “A loving couple? I think that would be an overstatement. With 20-20 hindsight, I wonder where the focus of their lives was.”

In the days after Pam’s death, Chuck seemed every bit the devoted son-in-law, coming to visit Ginger most days. He would take long walks with her, holding his mother-in-law’s hand as she cried about the death of her youngest child. “He’d turn his head and look off and say, ‘We’ve just got to go on,’ ” Ginger Allen recalls.

But soon, the calls began trickling in: Russ had failed to make some payments on the two cars; several months’ rent on the couple’s apartment and the artist’s loft was due; Chuck’s firm owed more than $20,000 in back rent on the Cardiff office.

About a week after his wife’s death, Russ was named in an ongoing lawsuit against Creative Telemarketing Concepts filed by authorities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The suit contends that the telemarketing firm used misleading tactics to convince customers that a large percentage of the money they donated went to charity. In fact, only about 10% to 12% did, prosecutors say.

Finally, Allen family members say, they discovered that Russ had used Ginger Allen’s nest egg for his own purposes, forging some documents to transfer the money into his own accounts. In May, they sued, igniting a bitter feud with Russ’ family.

Angered by the whole affair, Russ’ family contends that the entrepreneur is being unfairly harassed by police and the Allens.

“They’re accusing him of murder, and he didn’t do it,” said Steven Pocius, the husband of Russ’ sister. “They’re accusing him of business practices that are not kosher, and they shouldn’t be doing that. The courts of law will decide that.”

For a time before he left for New Mexico last month and then disappeared, Russ lived with the Pocius clan in their Cardiff home. Pocius said his family has “been victimized” by the efforts of police and the Allens to finger Russ.

“It’s too bad they’ve gone to this length to try to hurt someone,” Pocius said.

Thompson, Russ’ attorney in the civil fight with Allen, agreed that his client was being singled out for a crime he did not commit.

“The police seem convinced Chuck is responsible for the homicide,” Thompson said. “It is beginning to look like they are going to use every possible method available to them to ensure that his life is made miserable.”

Settlement Rejected

In addition, the attorney said Ginger Allen and her family seem intent on pushing their case forward as a means of helping police in their investigation. Several weeks ago, the family rejected a settlement offer by Russ of about $100,000.

Thompson said Russ purchased the life insurance policies on his wife about a year after he had insured himself for $510,000. Moreover, Russ has maintained that the policies covering Pamela, purchased in 1985 and 1986, had been considered primarily as “an investment tool” that could be cashed in later, Thompson said.

“One could have bought tons of term insurance for far less if your intent was to murder someone,” the attorney said. “And I think this is one of the dilemmas facing the Police Department in terms of this being a motive.”

Although details of Russ’ business dealings remain clouded, the entrepreneur acknowledged in his June deposition that Creative Telemarketing Concepts is now defunct. The cause of the firm’s demise will likely remain under wraps until the civil case goes to trial, Thompson said.

One source close to the case, however, said the Internal Revenue Service began an investigation into Russ’ business dealings a few months before his wife’s death but has put it on hold until the homicide probe is concluded.

In the meantime, police maintain they are pushing forward with their search for the killer of Pam Russ. Lt. Phil Jarvis insists that detectives are working “every day” on the 6-month-old homicide case.

Investigators will say only that Pam Russ left around midnight from her home to retrieve some negatives from her loft in San Diego the day before the couple was scheduled to depart on a trip to watch the America’s Cup in Australia. Her body was found at about 5 a.m. by a pair of night watchmen returning home from work.

Refused Polygraph

Chuck Russ told police that when his wife failed to return, he began searching the freeways for her. Russ said he went to the police station to report her missing only to discover that she had been killed. Police asked him to take a polygraph on the morning his wife’s body was found, but Russ refused.

An autopsy report on Pamela Russ reveals her skull was fractured and jaw was broken. Her body suffered internal injuries in addition to numerous cuts, gashes and bruises. A clump of hair was found clutched in her left hand, but a police source said it had not provided any case-breaking clues.

In addition, police have confiscated the tires, floor mats and foot pedal pads from Russ’ Mercedes 560SEC. Pamela’s car is still locked up in the police impound yard. In a cruel twist, Ginger Allen is still paying $450 a month as a co-signer for the car that killed her daughter.

Prosecutors have remained mum on the Grand Jury’s look into the homicide, saying they can neither confirm nor deny that an investigation is taking place. Several friends of Russ, however, say they have been called before the panel to testify and admonished to not talk about the case.

As the hours and days click by, Ginger Allen and her family wait and hope that a killer will be brought to justice. For both the family and friends of Pamela, it is the final link in the dreadful chain of events that has dominated their lives since February.

“I think it’s really hard for all of us,” said Weston, Pam’s longtime friend. “It’s just that unknown that makes us uncomfortable. It’s a nightmare that has come to life. It just feels like we’ve been touched by so much evil.”