Below is the text of an article from the June 27, 1994 issue of People Weekly magazine as posted recently to the email me and we'll work things out.


IMPORTANT NOTE: ALL TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS IN THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE ARE COPYRIGHT 1994 BY PEOPLE WEEKLY MAGAZINE.

From: anon@somewhere.org (Alf)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.lynne-russell
Subject: People Weekly article
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 05:07:08 GMT
Organization: AFLR
Message-ID: <397cc$1779.0@news.sfasu.edu>

People Weekly, June 27, 1994

HERE NOW, THE SLEUTH

A CNN anchor doubles as a private eye

Network anchors are to some degree glorified traffic cops, directing the flow of information on wars, politics and all manner of natural and unnatural disasters. But Lynne Russell, the pert, no-nonsense prime-time host of CNN Headline News, may be the first anchor to literally direct traffic. A few weekends ago, in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in downtown Atlanta, there she was, firing off snappy hand signals and terse commands in the khaki campaign hat, white gloves and orange reflective vest of a Fulton County volunteer deputy sheriff. The only bad news Russell delivered that day was aimed at the occasional slowpoke. "Okay," she warned one driver, "if you don't move, I'm going to impound your car and you can spend the rest of the weekend trying to get it back."
Now, sipping ice tea with her husband of 16 years, radio-programming consultant Jim Dunlap, on the backyard deck of their suburban Atlanta home, Russell, 47, breathlessly recalls that freshman outing. "It was like being a kid and finally getting to do something you've always wanted to do," she says. Being a cop was no childhood fantasy though. What whetted her appetite for police work was a course she took last year to become a licensed private investigator.
Russell, P.I.?  By day, yes. Some 10 hours a week, before she heads for her normal 7-11 p.m. stint at the anchor desk, Russell serves as a bodyguard for visiting film stars (whom she declines to name) and tails clients' unfaithful spouses while sleuthing for the 140-person United Security Group, headquartered in Atlanta. So far, despite the occasional double take, no one has fingered the private eye as a TV anchor. ("People are not really sure that I am who they think I am," says a bemused Russell.) And nobody better mess with her while she's got her gumshoes on: She's also a martial artist who took up karate 18 years ago while living in a high-crime area of Miami. "I've never had to put it to the test," she says. "I've also never had to draw a gun on anyone" -- though she is licensed to carry one and does (a SIG-Sauer 9mm).
"She turns out to be ideal for this work," says USG's owner, Keith Flannigan, who oversaw Russell's 180-hour training course. "She's been an investigative reporter [16 years in local radio and TV news], so she knows about record searches." Those searches have helped her investigate everything from shady businesses to phony workmen's comp claims. "If someone says he's got a bad back," she says, "and he just got a building permit, is he digging a pool with a bad back?" Some of Russell's favoritecases involve what she calls "moving surveillance with more than one car." If she loses sight of a suspect she's trailing, she radios a colleague, who'll pick up the unwary target a few blocks away.
Russell does all this for no pay -- to avoid, she says, "any conflict of interest" with her CNN job, for which she earns a six-figure income. But her bosses have no qualms about her off-duty detective work. "I don't believe it will have any effect on her delivery of the news," says senior producer Roger Bahre. "If anything, it gives her a unique perspective on crime stories that no one else in the newsroom has."
Russell's route to her current employment was a tortuous one. An Army brat, the only child of John Russell, a now-retired warrant officer, and his wife, Carmen, Lynne traveled with her parents from Orange, N.J., where she was born, to the Bavarian Alps, then back and forth across the U.S. Nursing was her first career choice. But as a University of Colorado nursing student, Russell would often burst into tears when tending gravely ill patients.
She quit nursing school and in 1967, with no firm career plans, took a job as a secretary at KCOL, a Fort Collins, Colo., radio station small enough to give her a shot in the broadcast booth. A brief, unhappy marriage produced a son, John, now 23 and a jazz-rock guitarist in Atlanta. John was an infant when he and his mother moved to Miami and met Jim Dunlap. Lynne was program director of WKAT, the city's first talk-radio station, and Jim was her counterpart at WQAM, then the hottest Top-40 station in town. They began dating and married in 1978. Russell soon made her mark as a reporter for Jacksonville's WLTV-TV. Other TV news jobs followed in Boston, Honolulu and San Antonio before Russell joined the fledgling Headline News in Atlanta in 1983.
Even now, juggling her various lives, Russell tries hard to keep weekends free for herself and Jim, who is often away at odd hours as a part-time paramedic. "Getting enough time together is a problem," he admits. "But we have a truly solid relationship." For which his spouse gives him full credit. "No one," says Russell, "is more supportive than he." After all, she says, "I'm sure I'm the only news anchor in the business whose husband gave her a thigh holster for Christmas."

-- Michael A. Lipton
-- Gail Cameron Wescott in Atlanta
-- Photographs by Thomas S. England

PHOTOS: (sorry, gang, I don't have copies to include on this web page! -BL)

Page 40: "I get in a bad mood when I don't do [Choi Kwang-Do]," says Lynne Russell (getting her kicks in a 90-minute workout in suburban Atlanta). "The confidence, the well-being, transfers into other areas of your life."

Page 41: "Lynne's a free spirit and so am I," says husband Jim Dunlap (with her at their home outside Atlanta). "I believe strongly that if there's something you want to do, go ahead and do it."

"It was exhausting but I loved it," says Russell of her recent traffic duty as a member of Atlanta's deputy sheriffs corps. To hone her skills, she says, "I plan to go to the police academy."


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