Longtime Counselor Also Says Former Treasurer Never Sought Investment Advice : Psychic Prediction: No Jail Time for Citron

The Orange County psychic who counseled Robert L. Citron for 15 years said Tuesday that she told the former Orange County treasurer she didn’t feel he would be sentenced to prison.

Jeannie Smith, 63, said Citron never asked her for investment advice, even as he continued to consult her after interest rates plunged in 1994, causing a $1.64-billion loss in the county investment pool that he managed and forcing the county into bankruptcy.

Nor did he ask about his future, she said, but she volunteered.

“He didn’t have to ask me about those things; I just told him,” Smith said. “I feel he may get home arrest, but I hesitate to say that because I wouldn’t want to influence things. I’m afraid [the judge] may do the opposite because of that.”

Citron, 70, who pleaded guilty to six felony charges of securities fraud and misappropriation of funds, could face up to seven years in prison, although a Probation Department report recommended probation. His sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates with agencies investigating the bankruptcy.

Smith, who has known Citron for more than 15 years, said she ultimately feared that their friendship might cloud her psychic feelings. So she referred him last year to Barbara Connor of Anaheim. Connor also told him she did not see prison in his future, she has said.

Smith had declined to be interviewed about her involvement with Citron. But she changed her mind, she said, after the Learning Light Foundation in Anaheim asked her to speak publicly at the center on May 10.

Smith said that she has known Citron socially through the Orange County Trojan Club, a group of USC boosters, and that she considers him and his wife good friends.

She began counseling Citron after he saw her give a business card to a woman in the club. He told her he was interested in the occult.

Unlike many of her clients, Citron wasn’t seeking advice for a personal problem, Smith said. In fact, she said, at the time “things were going good” for him.

“He was just interested in [psychic phenomena] in general,” Smith said. “He’s got a very nice wife, a happy marriage. He’s a very quiet person, a nice person, a caring person, which I don’t think a lot of people have seen. But he is.”

Smith said Citron developed his interest in psychic matters as a child.

“It came from his father, and the fact that his father was a homeopathic physician. He took Bob to places where [psychics] did trances and things like that,” she said.

Citron’s father, Dr. Jesse Citron of Hemet, treated comic actor W.C. Fields for pneumonia and then became embroiled in a highly publicized trial to collect his fee. He eventually did.

Smith said she has had psychic powers since age 9. As the oldest of eight children in a Catholic family in Kalamazoo, Mich., she first noticed her ability after having a vision that an uncle would be killed in an automobile accident.

“I told my mom and dad at the time, and they said, ‘Don’t say things like that.’ ” Three days later, her uncle died in a crash, she said.

“From that point on, whenever I’d get anything, I’d just push it away because I didn’t feel comfortable,” Smith said.

She came to California at age 28 and raised four children as a divorced parent. She worked as a bookkeeper and secretary, then began giving readings on the side in the mid-1960s, after becoming an ordained minister in the Metaphysical Fellowship Church in Stanton.

Smith said she doesn’t meditate, slip into a trance or consult spiritual guides.

“I just have a knowing,” she said, after hearing a person’s voice and feeling their “vibrations.”

As a psychic counselor, Smith said, “I felt I could help people by giving them information. Sometimes I felt I could help them avert some tragedy. I have a thing that I don’t talk about death, disease, divorce or disaster--the four Ds.”

“I never talked about those things to my clients because they really couldn’t do too much about them,” Smith said. “If I saw a death in the family or anything like that, I never told them. But they did have a right to know if their life was going in a certain direction where they could change things.”

Sometimes, Smith said, she referred clients to psychologists or agencies.

“I felt I was doing life counseling,” she said.

About four years ago, she quit doing readings, except for a few longtime clients and friends.

“I’m trying to enjoy my life and not be tied down by other people’s problems,” she said.

Of Citron’s well-publicized troubles, she said: “I have worked very hard not to be involved. To me, I don’t see [why] all the people are interested in the fact that he went to a psychic.”