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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