Most experienced police seem to recognize the basic trick of psychics

http://web.archive.org/web/20060409101139/http:/www.parascope.com/en/articles/psychicSleuths.htm

by Joe Nickell
Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest


Uncritical news reports and pseudocumentaries continue to tout the alleged successes of "psychics" who supposedly assist law enforcement agencies in solving crimes or locating missing persons. Exaggerated claims notwithstanding, most police departments (72% according to researchers) have not used psychics (Durm and Sweat 1994). And of those who have, few have done so officially or claim significant success for them.

Most experienced police seem to recognize the basic trick of psychics, called retrofitting. This involves tossing out several vague "clues" (such as a number, a mention of "water," etc.) which are then interpreted to fit the true facts after they become known. But psychics are not merely ineffectual; they actually harm investigations by misdirecting police efforts -- for example by having them drag rivers, search rugged areas, dig up yards, and drain ponds, typically to no avail. Following are 20 selected case studies of such wasted efforts, presented chronologically:



Boston, Massachusetts, 1964. High-profile, Dutch-born psychic detective Peter Hurkos (Pieter van der Hurk) claimed to have divined the identity of the serial killer known as the Boston Strangler. Unfortunately for Hurkos, the man he accused was eventually cleared of involvement in the rape-murders, and Albert DeSalvo confessed to the crimes. Shortly afterward, Hurkos was briefly jailed in New York for allegedly impersonating an FBI agent. Hurkos died in 1988. (Nickell 1994, pp. 23-24.)

Nutley, New Jersey, 1968. In December 1967, housewife and mother Dorothy Allison had a dream that the body of a missing 15-year-old boy was lodged in a drainage pipe in a park. The Nutley police subsequently expended an afternoon in digging up the culvert but failed to find the body or even an alleged bend that supposedly marked the site. The child's body was later found elsewhere, in a small pond, by a man walking along the river. (Nickell 1994, pp. 44-45.) Nevertheless, published sources have continued to report that the body was found in the drainage pipe. (Newport News, Virginia, Daily Press, June 22, 1988.)

Oakland, Michigan, 1977. Psychic Phil Jordan was called in by police on a multiple child-murder case. In what police dubbed "Operation ESP," Jordan was taken to the various abduction sites and provided with evidence and photos to "psychometrize" (obtain psychic feelings about). Later five senior investigators reviewed his pronouncements, finding them not only vague but even contradictory and fundamentally useless. An interoffice memorandum concluded that such psychic claims "simply cloud the facts and cause an investigator undue feelings of failure." (Lyons and Truzzi 1991, pp. 226-27.)

Patterson, New Jersey, 1980. Self-styled psychic sleuth Dorothy Allison offered to help find a missing boy whom she believed had been sexually molested and murdered. She said the boy's body would be in an abandoned building's flooded basement. The police enlisted the fire department to pump out the water but discovered nothing. The boy's body was discovered two weeks later, across town. According to Detective George J. Brejack, "She was in for seven days, but she kept making wrong predictions. We went all over the place with her." (Nickell 1994, pp. 49, 53-54.)

Boston, Massachusetts, 1981. The November disappearance of Harvard student Joan Webster attracted three psychics, one of whom envisioned her body in a Manchester, Connecticut, pond. Nine years after the disappearance the student's skeleton was discovered, by a woman walking her dog, five miles from the pond. (Morris Co., New Jersey, Daily Record, May 2, 1990.)

Northern Alabama, 1985. The search for a missing Lockport, New York, native, Elizabeth Kenyon, was extended to rural Alabama by a psychic who asked not to be identified. The missing woman was supposedly being held in a remote cabin in the northern part of the state. Sheriff's deputies searched some "two thousand to three thousand" cabins in a futile search, according to Kenyon's father who accompanied them. The psychic subsequently claimed the young woman had been moved. (Buffalo News, April 25, 1985.)

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1987. A search for the body of a 13-year-old girl, who had vanished in 1975, was directed by psychic Nancy Czetli. She had police search Schenley Park. The search was a wasted effort, and Theresa Lynn Rhodes remained missing. (The Pittsburgh Press, September 10, 1989.)

Beaverton, Oregon, 1988. The ten-year-unsolved disappearance of a county court reporter resulted in a Portland-area private eye consulting Illinois psychic Bill Ward. Ward envisioned the woman's body buried on one or the other side of an outdoor barbecue formerly owned by her brother-in-law. Police removed brick and concrete and dug six-foot-deep holes, each about three by five feet, as indicated. No trace of a body was discovered. (Portland Oregonian, March 3, 1988.)

Joliet, Illinois, 1988. In April, a grain-elevator explosion at Archer Daniels Midland buried the bodies of five men under grain and debris; also a workman reported that he had seen another blown into the Des Plaines River. Psychic Bill Ward soon arrived on the scene and confirmed that a body would be located in water. But as it turned out, the eyewitness was in error and there was no body in the river, although one corpse was found in the grain elevator's basement where a water main had burst. Ward did admit he was wrong, according to his publicist. A fire department spokesman concluded that Ward was "totally incorrect in his predictions" and was "more trouble than he was worth," helping to create a circus-like environment. (Nickell 1994, p. 91-92.)

Shadyside, Pennsylvania, 1988. Psychic Nancy Czetli directed volunteer searchers to a cliff site in an attempt to find the remains of Michael Rosenblum who had been missing for eight years. Searchers scoured the area and discovered a fragment of bone. It came from an animal, and Rosenblum remained missing. (The Pittsburgh Press, September 10, 1989.)

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1989. A Springdale Borough woman, Patricia Drennan, went missing after a night of bar-hopping. Two days later psychic Doreen Boyd led police to the Allegheny River which they spent two days dragging in a wasted search. An anonymous caller, who claimed to be psychic, sent authorities on another futile search, through a Springdale park. On the sixth day, Mrs. Drennan's strangled body was found wrapped in a carpet in a local basement -- discovered by a handyman rather than a psychic. Springdale Borough Police Chief Jack Killian stated that the use of psychics slowed rather than aided the investigation "because it led us down other paths." The constant interference resulted in "taking the police away from the job they have to do," he said. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 6, 1989; The Pittsburgh Press, September 10, 1989.)

Vancouver, British Columbia, 1990. A six-week search for Selina Sung, who had gone missing in her blue Jeep Cherokee, attracted unsolicited reports from some 40 psychics, who offered varied opinions as to the nature and locale of her fate, without success. (One businessman with a psychic vision thought Sung had been kidnapped and was being held in an unfinished cabin on Birkenhead Lake. He rented a helicopter and flew to the site with the woman's husband -- to no avail.) Later, the crumpled vehicle with Sung's body was discovered by two rock climbers in Cheakamus Canyon. It had left the highway at high speed, plunged over a cliff, and lodged in a canyon crevice. (Vancouver magazine, February 1992.)

Hallsville, Texas, 1990. Twelve-year-old Kimberly Norwood disappeared in May 1989. More than a year later, a Dallas psychic, John Catchings, predicted her body would be discovered buried in the driveway of her parents' home. The prediction prompted several hours of backhoe work provided by the Harrison County road department. A week later, Sheriff's deputies with cadaver dogs (those trained to search for bodies) were back at the subdivision where Catchings directed them to six additional sites -- all of them negative. (Shreveport Times, July 27, 1990.)

South Amboy, New Jersey, 1991. The May disappearance of five-year-old Timothy Wiltsey from a carnival brought psychic John Monti to the area. But in the words of a police detective, Sergeant Ray Durski:

He gave us about four different locations that we checked out. He had strong feelings that the boy had been in an abandoned building on our main thoroughfare. We went through the entire building and found no articles of clothing that he suggested we might find. The following day he suggested an area near a railroad track where he had strong feelings that there was someone who had committed suicide, and that he could be in that wooded area. We searched that area and there was nothing there also. He then contacted our South Amboy First Aid Department and gave them strong feelings that we could possibly find a body in a landfill area adjacent to the waterfront. Then they conducted a search with over 100 people and they found nothing there. After that, he came back again, and he stated that he sees the boy running away from the mother's house in the direction of the railroad tracks. Of course we checked that area, too, and came up with nothing. (Nickell 1994, pp. 165-66.)

Falmouth, Illinois, 1991. Psychic Greta Alexander clairvoyantly directed the search for an elderly man lost on a ginseng hunt September 4. She led searchers in precisely the wrong direction, even though only a four-square-mile area was involved. Moreover, Alexander said the man was in a ravine, but he was eventually discovered in a flat beaufield. Fortunately, the man was still alive. (Nickell 1994, pp. 143-50.)

Cape May County, New Jersey, 1991. On a chilly November day, 12-year-old Mark Himebaugh vanished from a park where he had been playing. When an intensive search by helicopter, ground rescue teams, and bloodhounds failed to locate the boy, psychics began showing up "like flies to horse manure" as Mark's father, Jody Himebaugh, characterizes it. He was besieged by palmists, crystal gazers, psychometrists (who imagine they get psychic visions from an object that belonged to someone) - even dowsers, who used their divining rods to look for water that might contain the boy's body. All failed. Himebaugh said the psychics did not ask for money but seemed to want some type of spiritual validation. (Albuquerque Journal, August 28, 1994.)

Decatur, Illinois, 1992. A woman missing since Halloween had last been seen with an unknown man at a service station. The apparently abducted woman left a note in the restroom saying the man was armed with a gun. Two local psychics soon claimed to know where the victim was held and directed authorities to an abandoned farmhouse. Visited by Sheriff's deputies about midnight, with the psychics in tow, the house was found empty. (Springfield, Illinois, State Journal-Register, November 12, 1992.)

Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1993. The wife and son of a man arrested as a suspect in a murder were missing and feared dead. On the assurance of a psychic, who claimed to envision the pair's whereabouts, U.S. Marshals drained a large farm pond. The result? An empty pond. Diggers then waited for the mud to dry, spent a day digging by hand, and finally brought in a digging machine, using a crane truck to keep it from slipping into the pond. "We can't dig to China," concluded a U.S. Marshal, who admitted the search had produced no evidence. The suspect later hanged himself in jail. (Tulsa World, July 25, 1993.)

Dayton, Ohio, 1994. After her son was missing for six weeks, an Ohio woman consulted a psychic. The soothsayer stated that the son was dead and that his body was to be found in the Great Miami River. The mother enlisted the aid of even volunteer divers who searched the river for the man's body -- without success. (Cincinnati Enquirer, November 28, 1994.)

Arlington, Texas, 1996. The abduction of a nine-year-old girl sparked "hundreds" of calls to the Arlington police department. "Everyone whose long-lost sister-in-law had a premonition called in," stated a spokesperson, along with "people interpreting their dreams. It's well-intentioned, but the volume of it gets almost unmanageable in a situation like that." One man's "vision" prompted an unsuccessful search, by helicopter and search parties on foot, of a south-Arlington park. The girl's body was later found in a rain-swollen creek near an apartment complex on the opposite end of the city. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 16, 1997.)



As these examples show, psychics are a hindrance rather than an aid to police. In fact, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a branch of the Department of Justice, states there is not a single documented instance of anyone finding a missing child through the use of psychic power. (Marder 1994.) The same is true of crime solving. No longer should self-styled psychics be given credit for the difficult work done by law enforcement personnel.



References:

Durm, Mark W., and Jane Ayers Sweat. 1994. In Nickell 1994, pp. 224-35.

Lyons, Arthur, and Marcello Truzzi. 1991. The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime. New York: Mysterious Press.

Marder, Dianna. 1994. "Psychics Peddle Last Glimmer of Hope," Albuquerque Journal, August 28.

Nickell, Joe, ed. 1994. Psychic Sleuths. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

and yet gerry , a trained scientist, believed in mumbo jimbo..and he took all the psychic info to the police.
last month just for fun we went to a psychic show...the dithering about and obvious searching for clues for the audience feedback to the so called clairvoyent just didn't impress ..peope were walking out ..but i dont know what those people were expecting. .the hilairious bit was when the clairvoyent started a conversation about local mining accidents with his 'spirit guide'. ..