Dr. William Kroger, Forensic Hypnotist

LOS ANGELES - Dr. William S. Kroger, a gynecologist and neuropsychiatrist who pioneered the use of hypnotism in medicine and criminal investigation, has died. He was 89.

Dr. Kroger, who practiced for more than 65 years first in Chicago and later in Los Angeles, died Monday of heart and kidney failure.

The author of a dozen medical textbooks, Dr. Kroger began experimenting with hypnotism in 1930 and taught more than 100,000 physicians to use the 4,000-year-old technique as the least intrusive method of dealing with such areas of medicine as childbirth and chronic pain. The American Medical Association finally gave the nod to hypnotism in 1958.

"One must not be afraid to have his thoughts called absurd," he once told a biographer. "What is heresy today is conservatism tomorrow."

Dr. Kroger was often consulted for uses of hypnotism in fields other than medicine, notably interviewing victims or witnesses of crime. In 1977, the FBI asked him to question the school-bus driver who was kidnapped with his 26 young passengers in Chowchilla.

Under Dr. Kroger's hypnosis, driver Frank Ray was able to recall all but one digit of the license plate of the kidnappers' van, greatly assisting in tracking them down.

The psychiatrist trained FBI agents in hypnosis technique and assisted them in solving some 30 homicide and other cases using age regression, time distortion and imagery to interview hypnotized witnesses. He was also a consultant to law-enforcement agencies around the country.

Dr. Kroger is survived by his wife of 43 years, Jimmy Louise Kroger; one son, William Jr., of Los Angeles; three daughters, Carol Lynn Kroger and Lisa Robin Eitani, both of Los Angeles, and Debra Sue Lesser of Creskill, N.J.; and four grandchildren.