THE POLICE USE OF PSYCHICS: A PhACT STUDY
William A. Wisdom and Ken Barnes
What are the images? Police investigator: tough, pragmatic, hard-headed, objective, skeptical.
Psychic: vague, obscure, soft on the facts, subjective, mystical.
Police investigator + psychic = the odd couple. Of course we often hear
psychics claiming that they gave valuable assistance to the police. We
tend to dismiss such claims. But are such claims ever made from the
other direction? That is, do police officers ever claim that they got
valuable help from psychics? And what would we make of such a claim?
These are the sorts of thoughts that led to the present investigation.
The first organizational meeting of the group that would become the
Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT) was held in
August of 1994. In November the group formally committed itself as an
organization to "[investigating] paranormal and fringe-science claims of local interest". This is the first such study.
In December of 1994, the suggestion was put forward that the
organization "investigate...police use of psychics (questionnaire,
interviews, etc.)". In April of 1995 such an investigation was endorsed
as an official PhACT project, and the text of a questionnaire was
approved (see Appendix A below). In September and October the
questionnaire was sent to the chief of each city, township, and borough police department in the five counties of southeast Pennsylvania: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia.
In December, the PhACT Council approved the proposal that any reports
of actual psychic help be followed up with a personal interview.
DATA FROM THE QUESTIONNAIRES
In all, 175 questionnaires were mailed, and 79 (45%) were returned.
(Philadelphia did not respond.) Of the 79 responding departments, 62
(78%) reported neither seeking nor being offered psychic help. 8 (10%)
reported being offered, but not seeking, such help. 2 (3%) reported
both seeking and being offered psychic help. Of the 10 departments
reporting offers of psychic help, 4 rejected the offers and 6 accepted
them. In addition, 7 (9%) reported seeking but not being offered such
help. So 13 (16%) of the responding departments reported having used
psychics. Of these 13 departments, 8 got no help, 4 (5% of those
responding) reported positive results, and 1 neither claimed nor denied
psychic assistance.
One interesting result that leaps out from the raw data is this: of the
8 unsolicited offers of psychic help, 4 were accepted, but not one was
helpful. Put the other way around, all of the departments reporting
psychic help had sought out the psychics themselves.
THE INTERVIEWS
In the second stage of the study, we interviewed the four police
officers reporting successful work with psychics, to enrich the picture
presented by the numerical data. We also interviewed a Police Chief who
had an interesting though not useful contact with a self-proclaimed
psychic. They were all quite friendly and cooperative. The police
officers interviewed were those who had worked with the psychics: they
were not necessarily the police chiefs initially surveyed. The
interviews were held between the end of June and the middle of August,
1996. The officers will be identified as A, B, C, ... in the order in
which they were interviewed. There is no significance to that order.
(The interviews were all recorded, and the material within quotation
marks is direct quotation from the officers.)
A. Lieutenant A works for a suburban police department near Norristown, the Blue Route, the Pennsylvania Turnpike,
and a large mall--a busy area of 10 square miles and 17,000 residents,
with a police force of 35 officers. He has worked with one psychic on
two cases, the first in 1987. She is a professional psychic who in her
private practice charges $75 for a half-hour reading. She does not
charge for her work with the police, nor does she want that work
advertised--for fear, we were told, of making enemies among the
criminal element. We'll call her Ms. X.
Lt. A first contacted Ms. X at the suggestion of a Philadelphia police
officer, after a murder investigation had reached a dead end. (Ms. X
was also independently endorsed by a Bucks County police officer.) Lt.
A figured that he had nothing to lose in talking to her. He hoped that
he could get some psychic assistance in the investigation, but was
initially skeptical about her ability to help. At the time, he had a
suspect and some evidence, but not enough to warrant an arrest. Lt. A
is confident that Ms. X knew nothing about the crime beyond what she
saw in photographs of the crime scene that he provided her, and that he
did not feed her any information inadvertently in the course of their
discussion. She proceeded to provide details about the murderer that
matched his suspect in startling detail: psychological profile,
personal history, habits, place of residence, first and last initials,
and a sketch. All this made a believer of Lt. A. Still, nothing was
provided that led to any new evidence, and no arrest has been made.
Lt. A also contacted Ms. X for help in a missing-person case that
appeared to be a homicide. Ms. X gave him a lot of remarkable facts
about the victim and claims about the perpetrator, but nothing that led
to an arrest or the identification of a suspect.
Lt. A readily acknowledges that he is now a friend of Ms. X and a
believer in her special powers. It's clear, however, that he's been
persuaded not by any help she's given him in advancing his
investigations, but by other sorts of things: her striking provision of
information previously known to him but not to her, and stories told
him by other officers and by Ms. X about the help she's given the
police, the F.B.I., and the C.I.A.
In particular, he suggested that we talk to Detective B in a borough
north of Philadelphia: "She just got a successful closure on a homicide
up there." In fact, Detective B was next on our list.
B. Detective B is a 25-year veteran on a police force of 22 full time
and 4 part-time officers. The borough is about 3 square miles in size,
and has a population of about 16,000. He has worked with psychics twice
in his professional career.
Some 18 years ago, the mother of a young woman he was hunting in a
missing-person case sought the help of a female psychic (not Ms. X)
who, in discussion with Det. B, insisted that the missing woman was in
the south: "I see Florida or Louisiana. No, it's Mexico--she's in Mexico." When the missing woman returned on her own, where do you suppose she'd been? That's right: in the town of Mexico, New York, near the Canadian border. Do you count that a "hit" or a "miss"? Det. B was impressed.
In December of 1993 the body of a murdered woman was found in the
borough, and by February of 1994 the investigation had reached a
dead-end. At the suggestion of his friend Lt. A, Det. B sought the help
of Ms. X. Provided only with photographs of the body and crime scene,
and perhaps a purse, Ms. X gave very accurate information about the
victim. "She was right on the money in a lot of the stuff....A lot of
things she told me were the truth." She drew a picture of what she said
was the murder weapon, which resembled a special wrench photographed at
the scene. The murder weapon itself, she said, was a similar object
still at the scene of the crime. (Further searches turned up nothing.)
Prior to Det. B's visit with Ms. X, a suspect had been arrested in a
neighboring community for a similar attack. Without referring to the
newspaper accounts of the second crime, Ms. X gave that suspect's first
name and last initial as those of the murderer Det. B was seeking. He
does believe that the same person committed both crimes, though he
doesn't know whether or not Ms. X had seen the newspaper reports. There
has been no arrest or conviction in Det. B's case, so there is no
independent confirmation of Ms. X's claims about the murderer. But his
suspect was sentenced to a long prison term for the second attack. So
Lt. A may in one sense have been right, but was in a more important
sense wrong when he said that "she just got a successful closure on a
homicide up there". In any event, the psychic made no positive
contribution to the solution of either crime. And Det. B considers his
case open in more than the technical sense: he isn't sure that Ms. X's
suspect did it.
Det. B says he has no professional feeling about psychics. He turned to
one only when he had reached a dead-end and had nothing to lose. He
claims to be skeptical in general about their alleged powers. But
"personally I think there's something there. I've always been very
open-minded about things like that. But who knows." "Psychics are used
commonly in major police cases across the country....A lot of the law
enforcement officers involved won't admit it. But they are; they're
used as a matter of routine--for major murder cases or missing person
cases, things like that, throughout all major cities, and state police,
across the country."
C. Chief C is a 22-year veteran of the police force of a rural township
in far western Montgomery County. Ten officers serve the township of 16
square miles and about 8000 residents. Our discussion was based on his
recollection of events occurring some 15 years ago.
Chief C's one professional contact with a psychic came before he was
Chief of Police. A woman had been raped in the parking lot of her
apartment complex by a man she couldn't see. About a month earlier, a
psychic (she was not Ms. X, so we'll call her Ms. Y) had told her that
"something was going to happen to her". Ms. Y "didn't pinpoint exactly
what was going to happen to her, but [the victim and her family]
figured that it was this incident." The police thought it might be
useful to see what else Ms. Y knew, so they interviewed her. Ms. Y gave
a description of and detailed information about the person she said
committed the crime. Though the police had independent evidence in the
case, Chief C feels that Ms. Y definitely helped lead them to the
person who was arrested and subsequently confessed to the crime. "She
was a big part in this....Everything that she told us led us right to
this guy....She was very very helpful; as far as I'm concerned, she
was." But the victim decided not to press charges. So the suspect was
never tried. Still, the confession and other evidence convinced Chief C
that they had the right man.
Chief C was also impressed by the accuracy of information that Ms. Y
gave about matters not directly related to the case. At one point a
friend of C's was in a waiting room with them. Ms. Y said that the
friend's wife had recently had a miscarriage, that his father would
soon die, and that there would be another death in the family. All of
these were true, though she could not possibly have known them under
ordinary circumstances. In the midst of this story, as further evidence
of her astonishing powers, Chief C reported: "She said to me: 'One day
you're going to be a doctor.' She's telling me this. And I am
interested in medical practice....A very close friend of mine is a
doctor at the University of Pennsylvania. But I never really got into
it."
D. Chief D is a 14-year veteran of the police department in a small
borough north of Philadelphia--barely 1000 residents in less than 2
square miles. The force has one part-time and five full-time officers.
The situation is unique in that on our questionnaire he neither claimed
nor denied that psychics had helped his department; but he did indicate
that one had been used. Our interview clarified the matter.
In the summer of 1985--before Officer D had become Chief--the murdered
body of a young woman who had been missing for five days was found in a
wooded section of the community. After intense work, borough and county
investigators reached a dead-end, and the case remains open to this day.
Some two or three years after the crime, a man who claimed to have very
strong psychic tendencies came in to offer now-Chief D his feelings
about the case. He named someone as the murderer, and gave the police
some detailed and accurate information about both that man and the
victim, but no significant addition to the body of evidence. The
"psychic" lived in Canada, and with his wife was visiting his in-laws
in the borough. In fact, his wife had once been engaged to the alleged
murderer, but had broken off their relationship because she said that
she'd been afraid of him. She claimed that he was manic-depressive, a
diagnosis confirmed by the man's doctor. The suspect had left the state
a year or two earlier, and so was unavailable for questioning. Chief D
gave the new "information" to the county investigators in charge of the
case, who apparently did not pursue it farther.
Chief D realized that the "psychic" could have gotten most of his
information either from his wife or from the newspapers. He said that
"probably 70, 80% of what he told me he could have heard from somebody
else." As for psychic powers, he said: "I tend to lean toward the side
of not believing; but I feel an obligation to listen to people to see
what they have....He interested me."
He interested Chief D for two reasons. First, the Chief remembered
having watched the "suspect" change, in the years before the homicide,
from a clean, well-groomed ex-Marine to a dirty, long-haired slob.
"Something wasn't quite right with this guy....When they brought his
name up, it lit a light bulb for me: 'Well, maybe there's something
here.' So I was willing to consider what he had to tell me, because at
least my outward observations were that here was a person whose life
has gone through some big changes."
And second, the "psychic" mentioned, in connection with the crime, a
very distinctive vehicle of a sort that someone in the borough did own.
Chief D thought it highly unusual that a stranger to the community
would mention such a unique vehicle; but the police could not connect
it either to the "suspect" or to the crime. So in the end, no
information provided by the psychic was useful to Chief D.
E. Sergeant E is a 12-year veteran of the police force in a largely
residential borough near southwest Philadelphia. The community has
about 12,000 residents in a little over one square mile, and a police
force of 15 full-time and 7 part-time officers.
In September of 1991, Sgt. E undertook the investigation of a woman's
brutal murder. Several months later, a county detective working with
Sgt. E on the case happened to mention it to the psychic, Ms. X, with
whom he was discussing another case. Pursuing her expressed interest in
helping with Sgt. E's case, two county detectives and Sgt. E visited
Ms. X with photographs of the crime scene and of the people--friends
and family members--most closely associated with the victim. Ms. X said
she had strong feelings that a particular one of the people close to
the victim was the murderer. Sgt. E said: "Our suspicions were on that
person also." But that suspect was the most obvious one. "You could
have told me that," he said. Ms. X also offered a description of the
murder weapon and its location; but her suggestions never panned out.
She provided no help in advancing the investigation, and the case is
still open.
Sgt. E stressed that there had been far more extensive press coverage
of the crime and its investigation than the police wanted; so Ms. X
could easily have gotten her information about the case from newspaper
and other media reports.
Incidentally, Ms. X volunteered individual "readings" of the three
police officers. All three agreed that she was surprisingly accurate on
some matters and completely wrong on a lot of others--like a career
change within a year for Sgt. E. He summarizes his position this way:
"I was a skeptic then, and I'm still a skeptic." He repeated that he
got no help from the psychic in this case. Further, he thought that the
county homicide detective with whom he'd worked, and who has had much
more experience investigating major crimes, would also say he had
gotten no help from psychics.
OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Even though we did not get the whole picture, if what we got was
substantially complete and accurate, then some of the stories are
initially impressive. The image of psychics mumbling vaguely "I see
water...look near water" was not borne out by our interviews. The
claims they made were often considerably more detailed and specific.
We propose, for further consideration, some possible sources of error
in the study so far. On the one hand, the use of psychics might be
under-reported. We would not be surprised if departments that actually
did use psychics either denied doing so or failed to return our
form--perhaps because they thought that their citizens might object to
such methods, or because they saw no point in sharing credit with
someone whose testimony must remain in the background anyway. Further,
the smaller the municipality, the larger the role of the county in the
investigation of serious crimes. In this study, we didn't contact
county law enforcement officers, who might themselves have sought
psychic help in local cases.
On the other hand, our report might exaggerate the use of psychics in
police investigations. The "Yes" responses came from relatively small
rural or suburban municipalities, hosting only a tiny percentage of the
serious crimes in southeastern Pennsylvania. In addition, these
departments, with their limited experience and resources, might run out
of leads and turn to psychics more readily than a city, county, or
federal agency would.
This much we can report with confidence: we found absolutely no
evidence of a psychic actually advancing a police investigation.
Further inferences about the police use of psychics in the five-county
area of southeastern Pennsylvania could not be made without at least
these three things: (a) a much closer look at the specifics of our
cases and similar ones; (b) discussion with county detectives; and (c)
exploration of Philadelphia's experiences, if any, with psychics. So
ours must be regarded as a preliminary study. Our data are available to
any PhACT members who want to follow up with and report on further
investigation.
Anyone investigating the issue more deeply might want to meet with Ms.
X, the psychic in three of the five reports above. In our one telephone
conversation with her, she proved to be a thoroughly delightful woman
eager to discuss her background and psychic accomplishments. She gave
us the names and telephone numbers of highly-placed figures in the
F.B.I. and the Philadelphia police department whom we should contact as
"references". And she said she had taught students in an Abnormal
Psychology class at St. Joseph's University how to see auras. All such claims should be examined in a further study.
The fact that all the departments reporting psychic help had themselves
sought out the psychics (remember: no unsolicited offers of psychic
help proved useful) leads one to suspect that the police officers had
some prior disposition to believe in paranormal powers. But one could
as easily imagine that a basically skeptical officer who'd run out of
leads in an important case might contact a psychic as a last resort,
figuring "What do I have to lose?"
It's clear from the interviews that most of the "information" provided
by psychics could have been obtained through normal channels. And many
of the leads offered sounded like unverifiable guesses. Some of the
police officers who were moved to believe in special powers were
persuaded not by any genuine help they got in solving crimes, but
either by the testimony of others or by astonishing but peripheral
claims that did nothing to advance their investigations.
Perhaps the strongest evidence of paranormal power came from Chief C,
who was persuaded that Ms. Y provided significant help in identifying
the culprit. But on the one hand, the suspect was never tried. And on
the other hand, this same psychic confidently but falsely foresaw for
Chief C a career as a doctor.
One lesson emerges most vividly from these interviews: one's prior
willingness or reluctance to believe in psychic powers heavily
influences one's standards of evidence in the area. We are not
surprised to learn that a woman is raped a month after a psychic
foretells that "something was going to happen to her"; but the family
regards the prediction as uncannily accurate. We count the "Mexico"
vision a miss; Detective B counts it a hit. We count the prediction of
a medical career a miss; Chief C counts it a hit, or at least evidence
of unusual psychic power. Surely, which attitude is appropriate is by
no means a simple, straightforward matter. So the bottom line remains:
more extensive and detailed investigation is required if one wants to
know whether the police in southeastern Pennsylvania can expect help
from psychics.
APPENDIX A
TEXT OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE SENT TO POLICE CHIEFS
The Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking is eager to get
information about the use of psychics by police departments in the
area. We would sincerely appreciate your spending just a few moments to
complete and return this questionnaire.
1. Has anyone in your Department ever asked a psychic to help with police work?
_ YES (Go to question #4)
_ NO (Go to question #2)
2. Have people claiming psychic powers ever offered help to your Department?
_ YES (Go to question #3)
_ NO (Go to question #6)
3. Has such an offer ever been accepted?
_YES (Go to question #4)
_ NO (Go to question #6)
4. Have psychics ever been helpful in the work of your Department?
_ YES (Go to question #5)
_ NO (Go to question #6)
5. Briefly describe the ways in which they were helpful (and go to question #6)
6. Whom may we contact for further information about this issue?
Thank you very much for your help.
William A. Wisdom, Ph.D.
Secretary
Copyright © 1996, PhACT