Myra Lewis, a 2-year old girl from Canton, Mississippi, disappeared on March 1, 2014 from the front yard of her home. Madison County Sheriff Randy Tucker says he’s received thousands of tips but her fate remains a mystery.
Enter a group called “Find Me” - a collection of volunteers who discuss clues and hypotheses about missing person and crime cases over the Internet. Tucker, who admits to being emotionally affected by not knowing what happened to Myra, has accepted the advice of the crowd-sourced investigation group.
Find Me was founded by a law enforcement officer who wanted to help. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. According to their web site, the volunteers consist of law enforcement officers, professional search and rescue volunteers and “talented psychics”. The latest media reports have keyed in on that last item - psychics.
The group has given the Sheriff’s office a report with locations of where they believe Myra is, and how she disappeared. Members of the psychic team claim to have solved 59 of 300 cases presented to them since 2002. It’s unclear how to judge or conclude that such a claim (20%) is accurate.
Enter a group called “Find Me” - a collection of volunteers who discuss clues and hypotheses about missing person and crime cases over the Internet. Tucker, who admits to being emotionally affected by not knowing what happened to Myra, has accepted the advice of the crowd-sourced investigation group.
Find Me was founded by a law enforcement officer who wanted to help. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. According to their web site, the volunteers consist of law enforcement officers, professional search and rescue volunteers and “talented psychics”. The latest media reports have keyed in on that last item - psychics.
The group has given the Sheriff’s office a report with locations of where they believe Myra is, and how she disappeared. Members of the psychic team claim to have solved 59 of 300 cases presented to them since 2002. It’s unclear how to judge or conclude that such a claim (20%) is accurate.
Psychics are notoriously INACCURATE and often troublesome in such cases. While individual psychics brag about a high accuracy in helping police, in reality, many official lead investigators do not appreciate tips from beyond that they must follow up on, the same as every other potential tip. It wastes time, manpower and money and, unless they get lucky by coincidence, the psychic-derived tips are of no better value than those of a person who would think carefully and knowledgeably about the case. Several countries or individuals police forces have made public statements that they don't accept psychic advice. But some still do.
Here is one “success” from the Find Me group from a local news piece in Tempe, Arizona:
Here is one “success” from the Find Me group from a local news piece in Tempe, Arizona:
When the authorities, friends and other volunteers couldn't find Jack Culolias this December, his family called an outside group for help.
Within hours of arriving at the riverbed near Tempe Marketplace, where Culolias was last seen, those searchers from FindMe found the 19-year-old's body.
"As soon as we came down in this area, the dog alerted, pulled the handler towards the water and there was the body right there," said FindMe founder Kelly Snyder.
FindMe not only uses former law enforcement officers and trained search dogs with their handlers, but also more than 100 psychics from around the world.
In this case, one psychic involved said he used a pendulum over a map in which specific locations were requested. But note where they looked - in the last place the person was seen. It’s a good bet to play the odds. One does not need a pendulum for that. Also note that the dog was a help here.
Typical methods of psychic detectives include dowsing, remote viewing, retrocognition (the paranormal perception of the past), psychometry (information gained from objects), and telepathy. In some cases, psychics will claim to be in contact with the dead person’s spirit. To be generous, none of these powers have been shown to be at all reliable. To be blunt, none of these abilities have been definitively shown to be real!
It appears likely that the Find Me group use practical investigation techniques and efforts under the guise of “intuitives”. You do not have to be psychic to help with a crime investigation. A group of fresh eyes looking at a cold case can bring much needed new life to it. Discussing and pooling ideas is a valid way to assess the best options - even if some of the members say they get their ideas via psychic means.
The verdict on psychic detectives is VERY clear. Psychics have never demonstrated any special powers in such investigations. They routinely fail or come up with vague information that isn’t helpful or that any non-intuitive could have discovered. Public failures of psychics to help solve crimes include the cases of Elizabeth Smart, Chandra Levy, Madeleine McCann, and the infamous cases where psychic Sylvia Browne claimed kidnapping victims Shawn Hornbeck and Amanda Berry were dead. Psychics failed to find the hiding places of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. They can’t currently find accused murder suspect and fugitive Eric Frein.
While many psychics tout their rates of success, this simply does not check out. When the details of such cases are examined, the sense of “success” can be attributed to good old confirmation bias.
The latest media attention to Find Me is misleading in that it is suggestive that psychics are helping to solve the crime. This will invariably lead more people to pin their hopes on psychics to help solve more cases. It's a false hope.
Sheriff Tucker does not buy into the idea that psychics can get him the answers he needs to finally close the Myra Lewis case. But at this point, a point of desperation, he’s willing to try anything. And the psychics are more than happy to take credit for having special abilities to help. That ability may be nothing more special than teamwork.
You can peruse many recent cases of so-called psychic help in crime cases at the Doubtful News site.
Typical methods of psychic detectives include dowsing, remote viewing, retrocognition (the paranormal perception of the past), psychometry (information gained from objects), and telepathy. In some cases, psychics will claim to be in contact with the dead person’s spirit. To be generous, none of these powers have been shown to be at all reliable. To be blunt, none of these abilities have been definitively shown to be real!
It appears likely that the Find Me group use practical investigation techniques and efforts under the guise of “intuitives”. You do not have to be psychic to help with a crime investigation. A group of fresh eyes looking at a cold case can bring much needed new life to it. Discussing and pooling ideas is a valid way to assess the best options - even if some of the members say they get their ideas via psychic means.
The verdict on psychic detectives is VERY clear. Psychics have never demonstrated any special powers in such investigations. They routinely fail or come up with vague information that isn’t helpful or that any non-intuitive could have discovered. Public failures of psychics to help solve crimes include the cases of Elizabeth Smart, Chandra Levy, Madeleine McCann, and the infamous cases where psychic Sylvia Browne claimed kidnapping victims Shawn Hornbeck and Amanda Berry were dead. Psychics failed to find the hiding places of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. They can’t currently find accused murder suspect and fugitive Eric Frein.
While many psychics tout their rates of success, this simply does not check out. When the details of such cases are examined, the sense of “success” can be attributed to good old confirmation bias.
The latest media attention to Find Me is misleading in that it is suggestive that psychics are helping to solve the crime. This will invariably lead more people to pin their hopes on psychics to help solve more cases. It's a false hope.
Sheriff Tucker does not buy into the idea that psychics can get him the answers he needs to finally close the Myra Lewis case. But at this point, a point of desperation, he’s willing to try anything. And the psychics are more than happy to take credit for having special abilities to help. That ability may be nothing more special than teamwork.
You can peruse many recent cases of so-called psychic help in crime cases at the Doubtful News site.
