Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio, Zarin Elizabeth.
I'm doing Wow. How about you good?
I'm hanging in there. Tell you do you know what's ridiculous? Oh girl?
Do I imagine taking a Ford Taurus okay and a Volkswagen passaty filling them with like foam, like you know, like industrial pham or like you know, the stuff you'd put in like say, like that phone exactly like really.
Highly the kind of fans and.
Exactly now, in nineteen ninety nine, the Amareadi brothers did exactly that, and they brought a friend with them. So two brothers and their friend, They're filled up cars with this foam and also like you know, I don't know, a bunch of other types of phone, maybe a couple for ballast.
And uh.
They decided to cross from the Canary Islands and then they said, we're gonna go to the Caribbean and you know, you can kind of float across the Atlantic and part.
Of the world. I suppose, well they did that.
It took them one hundred and nineteen days, and they floated across the Atlantic in four taurists and folks back and filled the phone.
And they made it and made it.
Yes, they they They said that there was all sorts of mental strain on this because they had they had leave part of the car for them to be inside of the wise that they die of exposure.
And nineteen days. They had to have some room too for Yeah, they had some.
They had mechanical issues too, because you need to navigate a little bit right, so they had basically an inboard engine, if you will. Generated they got exhausted from like paddling and trying to fish along the way.
They got sick.
They had all sorts of issues that one would have when you're trying to drift across the Atlantic.
But these three idiots, why did they say? Why? Now were they said? Were the cars connected to each other? Yeah?
Yeah, they were like running together like a big raft. Yeah, so nineteen ninety nine things were different.
It was a difference.
I've my friends that I come up with dumb ideas, like you know about me, like making my friend let me fly off the top of his Like we see a ton of dumb. We never said, you know, we should do trying to cross this in a foam filled Volkswagen.
Wow, So there you go, that's ridiculous.
Mad ridiculous.
I just don't know. I don't know why.
Because they were boys, That's why they could do it. They're like, I've got the foam, I've got the Volkswagon. He's got a four tourists.
Let's do this. We got time off, Bob, don't gotta work, my god.
So there you go, Elizabeth.
That's ridiculous in my world. Don't know what else is ridiculous.
Yeah, I would love to.
I'm getting a vision. Yes, I can see that you're going to be going to Mars in the next five years. Yes, I'm sure of it. What this is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heists and cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Do you always leave and then have to come back? So I made it?
You did.
We've talked about psychics here before.
Yeah, and psychic detective yeah.
Con artists like that French lady whose name escapes me, Yes, and then the other French lady, remember there were two, there's two, yeah, and then the TV evangelist guy who was sort of like in the making of a psychic, And then there were all the ones that you talked about who were hunted by the chief hunter of fraud psychics, Bob night Guy totally and then also the Psychic Horse, the psychic Horse. And I've talked out a skeptic King of the skeptics, James Rand.
Oh yeah, amazing Ran, truly the King of Skeptics.
I can't remember if I said before that I would like to be psychic or if I would not want to be psychic. I don't remember which one.
Make your opinion changes on any given day.
Well, right now I think I want to be psychic. Yeah, because like, I'm so rocked and damaged that I don't think there's news that the other realms could deliver to me that would be so upsetting as to destroy me. I've reached that point.
So wait, that's what you were worried about being psychic?
I think so probably. I don't know. I don't remember, I don't remember what happens. But right now I'm saying, bring it, tell me everything before it happens. And I feel like I would I would like to feel like I dwell in the liminal space between this world and another. Oh yeah, Like I like knowing things that other people don't know.
I got a friend is like that, although that's.
Sort of the delusion behind QAnon. No, like we all feel like we know more than others.
Or that you know, those are slightly different things knowing, like what's like between you and the other dimensional realms versus inside.
I like to be behind the curtains. I like to know what other people know. And that's kind of like anyway, so.
You just generally want to know everything. Everything pretty what I'm hearing.
I mean, I kind of already do you know, how Like I'm always right because even when I'm wrong, I know I'm wrong, therefore I'm right. Yeah, well put that's how that works. So anyway. Psychics, My current favorite psychic is ritasonte Oho Rita is yigonte Rita's gigante. She's on Instagram and I highly recommend following her. She's got some like psychic self help, scammy feeling stuff. But the best of these excursions to places in like the old neighborhood.
Is her name like Giant Rita Giant. Im just wondering I saw.
Speaking of Instagram, I saw the worst one the other day where this lady was making hot dog tacos. But aside from that she was wearing a shirt, you know, Little Debbie's snack cakes, but it was like an inflated version of the goal and it said Big Deborah. And I was like mad at myself eating sucked into watching her make hot dog tacos. But I was so captivated by Big Deborah anyway, So this is a giant Rita.
So she does like Okay, so she has there's this one where she makes morning coffee with a raw egg yolk in it. Yeah, I'm a little obsessed with that one. I don't what is that she like, she whips up an egg yolk sugar in a cup. Yeah, gets it like a real light colored right.
Sure.
Then she brews coffee on the stovetop and then pours coffee in it. She drinks it and she's like mad and she throws the spoon. Oh yeah, she throws the spoon in the sink. It's so good.
Vanish with the no no no no so uh Italian. That changes things.
So like, I don't know much about her psychic readings, Like you can.
Book this is the psychic that she drinks the egg yo.
Yeah, you can book a thirty minute private reading and spiritual mentorship with Rita for one hundred and fifty dollars. Uh huh, so like a book. My birthday's coming up. I feel like she's harmless, right.
At least be fun that's.
My psychic reading of the situation. Good. But do you know what another fun fact about her?
Elizabeth, I'm gonna be honest with you. I know zero fun.
Facts about her. Do you know who her dad is?
I don't know. Frank Gagante, Vincent the Chin?
What the mobster?
You used to go around in a bathroom to tell the feds he was too crazy to.
Be able to go to court.
Yes, that somehow puts pathectally and I ordered into the chin.
Gagante is one of my heroes, like he beat the Feds by for decades walking around his New York neighborhood in the bathroom. And daughter, of course she is. That's amazing. Scam on scams on scams.
Oh my god, I love it so much.
Tell his story?
Well, yeah, I've got I'm going to read the book her her tales of her dad. Yes, I ordered it and I'm going to read it before you.
Why doesn't she have a reality show's daughter?
She's got Instagram. She's amazing. She wears like a house dress.
So she streams on Instagram.
She's so good and where's house dress? Oh yeah? But then other time she dresses like lou Read in New York or New Jersey. I think she's in New York. She walks around like she goes. They go to like Little Lily and go to restaurants, and then like she and all her pals and her girlfriend, they sit there and they order a bunch of food, and she's like this place based vescirl. They do it right. She's fantastic anyway, So she's harmless.
In my book, she's a harmless psychic.
Car but there are some psychics who are harmful. By the way, I'm totally getting you a reading with her for your birthday. Oh my god, I'd be like Rida, what's gonna happen with my life?
You can FaceTime her there right, not like you send her a question and.
I don't know, I don't know how it works.
I don't want one of those tarot card things were they like, I can hear this from an instance. I want you, guys to have.
I want her to get all upset and go mad on. Yes, I love it.
I want that for you too.
You know. So the harmful psychics, right, they take people's money, but worse is they give them false hope or sometimes dash the hopes they had.
Yeah, they were. They just straight up lie to them either way.
Yeah, and when people are desperate, they're looking for any comfort or certainty that they can find, and that's when the crimers swoop in and take advantage. Some people won't go to therapy, they will go to a psychic exactly. So people like old Gal I'm going to tell you about today, lady by the name of Sylvia Brown.
Why is that name familiar?
Well, Sylvia Brown was absolutely everywhere. She'll ring a bell. She was born Sylvia Celeste Shoemaker in nineteen thirty six.
Like Willi Shoemaker's kid, tell me her father's famous too.
She made shoes for a living a baby, you know, the jockey, Yes, yes, but that was not she was not a jockey baby Kansas City, missoo. Okay, So she's raised Catholic, but she told people that she had an Episcopalian mother, a Lutheran maternal grandmother, a Jewish father, and relatives from all these fates. That's a heck of a still dead with an episcopalian mom and a Jewish father. I'm not sure how we get a Catholic but go off.
Yeah, no, I mean unless you want to say, like, if it weren't for Henry the Eighth, I would have been right.
But it's like she was born in nineteen thirty.
Yeah, it's not happening.
So she said, maybe she's want to be like a mainline Pierson.
She's like, you know, I want to be rich.
Yeah, that's basically I'm episcopalian. That's the thing like if you yeah, if you're Catholic, but you want to be rich, Yeah, exactly, you wear a boiled old jacket. You just head of off to Talbot's. So she said that she became aware of her psychic abilities very early in childhood. She's three years old.
Wow, look at her.
And apparently her grandma is also a.
Psychon see a nap in my future.
If you don't give me a lollipop. Her grandma's a psychic naturally, and she guided young Sylvia and understanding her powers.
You know, it skips a generation. I'm just making that.
Out for sure. There was another psychic in the family, her great uncle. He was a psychic medium and also super into UFOs.
They do kind of go hand in hand.
She leaned a lot on this lore of family psychic ability.
By the way, just real quick, since the uncle likes aliens, right, and isn't this being a psychic. Do you think he believed that aliens had angels too, So there's like alien angels. Oh, probably he's just got a full like almost like a Hindu level of dt supernatural.
Yes, that must be fun. Sure, just having such a big world, it's just boundless and anyone can take you in the night. So she would tell everyone went about like this family history. I bet to prove that she's the real deal. But the spirits had chosen her at a young age. She comes from this long line of seers. At some point she moved to California, because we attract all the cooks down to California. We are cooks, the weirdos at the edge of the continent. So she married
a couple of times. She had two sons. One of them, Christopher, grew up to be a psychic too. Naturally, Christopher, and it was sometime early in the nineteen seventies that she started working professionally as a psychic. To be exact, it was May eighth, nineteen seventy three. Wow that when she did a small reading in a private home. Boom, psychic done.
So she's doing like psychic tupperware parties in the seventies.
Yes, chef, pamper chef. You have to get at least one reading and bring a friend. She grew her brand, as they would say, and she did these paid readings, she did lectures, she published books, she gained more notoriety, she held larger events and got like bigger book publishing deals. Good for her, I know. So she starts this business called Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research in nineteen seventy four,
just one year after she went pro fast. Yeah, so she established it to provide professional licensed framework for her psychic clairvoyant and counseling services.
But if she established it, who's doing the licensing. She's licensing just the Licensing Bureau, licensing registered bond.
I've heard on one thing how they were saying she was like as one of her bona fides, she's a member of the Better Business Bureau. So take that, okay, chamber, watch out, buddy BBB. So totally, so she she's like keeping it on the up and up. This Nirvana Foundation. They held meetings, they had a newsletter, and basically legitimized her work from private homes to public events. I took a look at the March nineteen seventy eight newsletter for
the Nirvana Foundation Please Share. The cover says, the way of all peace is to scale the mountain of self. The love of others makes the climb down easier. That's actually not that's easier just to fall down the hill.
But that's actually not bad. Sure, I mean, like, master yourself and then you can easily walk down to.
Others and you can step on people. We're here in the valley, I love you.
Our mountains are much lower.
Then then there's like so it's this mimeograph like blurry black and white photo of Sylvia and her husband dal Oh, right, that's short for Kenzil Dalzel brown. What kenzled Kenzil Dalzel brown.
Wow.
And at the end of their names at this point, it's.
Just brown brown, like the color.
Yeah, but they're both white. I guess that it's.
So even though I had kenzl whatever. But I was like, no, that's that's that's still a white name. I can tell.
So it's a twenty page booklet with a message from Sylvia, notes from Dal because he's the president. There's some data on ESP test scores from the staff what, and then some stuff about pyramids.
How do you even compare test scores?
I don't know, it's I couldn't. I started seeing charts and numbers, and like my I just I fell asleep and I woke up and it was sixties.
I guess you got a certify it somehow.
You do the pyramid stuff. Yeah, a poem by Sylvia that I really want to read to you in its entirety, but I won't. But let me just give you a couple of stanzas. Yeah, it's called Soulmate, Waiting and Boiling your Love over a shut up. Let me read this beautiful piece of literature, and I'm going to read it like as if it's a you know, I'm going by the line breaks and everything. I'm putting my all into this buckle up. I'm doing it for the spirits and the angels.
You didn't let me know.
Waiting and boiling your love over a cauldron of dying embers, fragmented images come back in the hallowed halls of my mind, belonging to the you and I of us a small glimpse of what it was before the world beyond a reflection that is not a reflection. The glass shatters, and you and I move on towards the permanency of togetherness. Here we are like fragile butterflies caught in a hand of time, beating wildly to be free in thee. Write that in a card and try and go woo, some fella.
That is really what that's like. You get fired at a gift card company.
We love over a cauldron. I'm dying, embers, I'm gonna boil your loves oil. Careful, lookt sir. I don't know about you, but I just can't take it. So anyway, there's membership information on the back of the newsletter. An individual lifetime membership was three hundred and fifty bucks and twenty twenty six dollars. That's a little over seventeen hundred dollars annually fifty bucks, which is like two fifty today. So it's not cheap as far as subscriptions or memberships go.
None at all.
It's good for them, I say, right, that's so good. So she's got that going on. And this is the beginning of when James Randy started looking into Sylvia Brown in her work.
He was done with Uri Geller. He's like, I need someone.
Else fresh meat. Much more on that later. So a decade after starting the Nirvana Foundations, she got wise. I think she figured out that there was a better, more tax exempt way to do things, so she started a church for In April of nineteen eighty six, she founded a gnostic church called the Society of Novus Spiritus A gnostic. Yes, of course she picked that up. Yes, so this is like the center point of her identity as a spiritual teacher,
not just like a TV psychic. The church is still around from their website.
Good Churches Never die.
Elizabeth Novus is Sylvia's monument to God, a forum to express the joy and love that is God, with no fear, no guilt, no sin, no hell, and no Satan.
No taxes.
Through Novice or Novs whichever, Sylvia gives the world a means to understand God, life and the reason for being all right. So there are twenty one tenants of the church. I will not read all of them.
Do you have any highlights?
Yeah? Tenant one quote, the way of all peace is to scale the mountain of self. I still like that loving others makes the climb down easier, but then it keeps going. We see all things darkly until love lights the lamp of the soul poetry. Yeah, it's a crotch tingler. You get the picture. Do they they do dream analysis via a phone or Skype? Is that still a thing? So?
I don't know.
Twenty minute sessions start at forty nine dollars. There's an online shop that only accepts paypaler Venmo, and you can donate money to them on the website and they take zel for that.
I figured they maybe must also take crypto, like we'll take a stable coin or bitcoin.
Maybe not yet though, these guys are operating in the PayPal Oh wow. Okay, So now she's got the foundation in the church and she and her husband decided to do some non psychic scamming. So, according to a detailed case summary published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Sylvia and dal were involved in selling interest in a gold mining venture in the late eighties. So the venture failed, no, and bankruptcy was declared in nineteen eighty eight. So I guess it didn't pan out. Oh oh you do it?
Are psychics? Good at finding gold? Is that like a thing that is that more likely you're a diviner and you're like, fine, gold, Well.
Let's let's take a break because we're not done with the gold thing.
I didn't think so.
We never would be be right back, Zarenizabeth. Okay. So Sylvia Brown and her husband Dal, they sold interest in a gold mining venture. It fails, they declared bankruptcy. That was nineteen eighty eight. In nineteen ninety two, Sylvia and Dal were accused of illegally selling securities that had not been registered at the State of California, and there were charges of misrepresentations grand theft. Dal caught an additional fraud
chart charge. So, according to the criminal complaint, the Browns hustled a twenty thousand dollars investment in their gold mining venture by misrepresenting the financial status of the company. And we've seen that many times. It's going the financials. Yeah, it's happening as we speak. However, they weren't just trying to inflate the value of a company that they knew had legs and just needed to get off the ground.
And we're looking for like an angel investor. No, yeah, so they picked a hit or miss industry on purpose, I think, and instead of using the money for operating expenses, they used most of it to pay off their personal and corporate debt corporate meaning Nirvana Foundation, not the mining interest. So a few weeks later, back in eighty eight, after they declared bankruptcy, they they didn't tell the investor ever, So it's a big nope on that, yes, yeah, and
so you have to give your list of creditors. Yeah. They also told the investor the his money would be recovered when the mining equipment was sold. That was false. In ninety three they so you flash forward when all this goes through legal they plead no contest to a felony violation of sale of securities without permit. So they paid restitution. They get sentenced. Both have to serve a
year on probation. Sylvia has to do two hundred hours of community service as probably that's probably what she did well through her church. Dal he gets sentenced to one hundred days in county jail. I should note that Sylvia divorced Dal in eighty eight around the time of the bankruptcy, kept his last name but added an E at the end. Who knows whatever, but yeah, so she's Sylvia Brown.
Upgrade it now.
Yeah, She's like, I just want a little bit of the on the end. But so by the nineteen nineties, Sylvia Brown is this recurring fixture on major TV talk shows, especially The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Love Yes, Yes, Okay. She's really popular for her like dead pans, smokers, gravel voice, no nonsense. So I watched an episode of Montel with her on it, and it was really, I have no idea, you know how. I don't like watching videos I watched. I watched so many videos for this, and I listened
to so many radio shows. Really it gets worse. So but the episode was interesting because like audience members would ask questions and it felt like she would just say whatever came into her head okay, And I was like, she's just she's just riffing. She's jazz and I could do this and that smoker's croak yeah, because a lot of it's like you take a look at the person, You're like, oh, I totally know what I can do.
A lot of times though the reaction of the person asking her the question made it clear that she was off the mark. So like a woman was like you know, I've lost some people recently and I want to know if they're okay. And Sylvia Brown's like, it was the woman who was very round, and the lady just looks blank, like I don't have no idea which talk about. And so she's like, you know, the woman who always wore an apron. The lady's just like, okay, no, and she's like,
you the round woman. She smells like talcum powder or lavender, nothing, and she's like, well, she's not like round round. She just has a soft face. And then the lady like kind of slightly reacts, and then they cut to the next person. Really oh yeah, and she's like, she's fine, she loves you.
Turns out she lost like three guys who.
Are all I think. So she's like, I've never met another woman in my life, and I have no mother. I was grown in a lab and so anyway, I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. So it's obvious this woman's just winging it, right. So they they had taped segments with people who had questions but were also in the audience, but it was like
a longer like backstory thing. One young woman said that a spirit that looked like a giant monster man threw her against across her dorm room and held her down and then tossed her onto the other bed and she was able to get the light on, but there was no one there, like Exorcistyle Well, and I'm like, okay, you had sleep paralysis and you might have a seizure disorder. Oh but you know, like the sleep paralysis thing, like being held down. I'm like, if anyone's ever had that,
that's what that is. I'm unfamiliar the worst with ghosts, you know. Yeah, And because like the first thing Sylvia Brown says is like go to a doctor. She's like, oh, it's the you know, it's your great grandfather exactly. The first thing was like go to a doctor. And like her explanation though, was that spirits don't physically throw people.
That was my thought.
But here's my favorite. Montel backs that statement up by saying that, you know, if they could throw people, the victims of nine to eleven would throw Osama bin Laden down the stairs.
Wow, the former marine really jumped out there.
Yeah. But Sylvia's advice is like spot on, and she's like, I think you might have PTSD from something so okay, you know, harmless and only mildly entertaining, Like it was basically everyone in the show is asking about family or friends who had died in car accidents. The time period, it was weird, like I guess everyone's having car accidents and saying like, are they okay, well they're dead people like you know, but do they want to tell me anything?
And every single time she's just like, they love you, and they're they're happy for you, and they're proud and they didn't want to leave. But it was depressing because there's all these like poor suffering people and she just shuffles around and the answers until she hit something that works.
She ever goes to anything specific, like they missed the bowling leave Yeah, no.
No, And she's it's just you're just watching someone bs people. And if you want to see that, watch me at a party where I don't know anyone, but I still have to make small talk. That's me.
I'm still browned a party.
So like apparently though, right now she's having a bit of a renaissance online on TikTok. Yeah, they've stumbled these clips of her on Montel and stuff. Mystified by the brusque delivery because she's cold blood. She's like, he doesn't care, like she just says, you know, and is she smoking on the no, But it sounds like she just stubbed one out. So I told you how she went on Montel. She was also a frequent guest on that AM radio show Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Yeah, that's back
when it was hosted by Art Bell. George Norri took it over in two thousand and three, and she was on then too, or on that later I like George. Her publishing career scaled alongside this visibility publishing career. Yeah, so she had all these big best sellers, Adventures of a Psychic The Other Side and Back. So both of those did.
She got into our you know, I'm a Convict book club, but only off of probation.
She didn't even have to go to jail and the community service. Good for her, Good for her. So those those two books outlined her abilities the spirit guide system cosmology, and they did, you know, they did really well. I bet they were published by hay House and her author biography there describes her as a New York Times best selling author with quote numerous popular books. They said that she twenty two of which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Twenty two.
Does the New York Times ever sue anyone for saying I was on New York Times bestseller.
Telling people all ninety seven books of mine.
Yeah, so the swores wrote a postcard that was on the New York Times bestseller list.
The more she got out there, the more she was asked about high profile stuff. Oh and like you can only watch her talk about people's dead grandmas for so long, he asking her, did do it? Yeah? Well, they're like what, like they wanted to know about the missing folks that the public knows about and that are like being searched for, like use them powers to find them? Yes, find the kids in the well. Yeah. So she she talked about how she and that's the thing she's on all these shows.
She talks about how she works with the cop the FBI on all these cases which would later be found to be untrue. No, so imagine her bs game like on Montel, but with folks people have heard of and are like following. So she's gaining fame and she's gaining critics, and those critics increasingly framed her not simply as like wrong sometimes, but repeatedly wrong in high stakes contexts, especially missing person's case. So like the family goes to her
and then they waste time looking wrong. Us yes, And so she's making these like confident definite on air pronouncements, and she is like this comes out. She had a couple big boners right in a row. Like you can call a mistake a boner, right, it's early nineteen hundred slang.
Oh yeah, its always nineteen thirty two.
She had some blamo boners in the early odds. So the first The first was in two thousand and two. Okay, and eleven year old boy named Sean Hornbeck went missing while he was riding his bike to a friend's house in Missouri, in Richwood's, Missouri. So when he never turned up, parents call the cops. The bicycle is later found abandoned near a wooded area not far from his house, and the location suggested a possible abduction rather than like him
running away. So search efforts begin immediately, just expand local law enforcement volunteers, search teams they like comb through all these wooded areas, tracking dogs, helicopters. Everything they search and search. There's no confirmed trail. They can't find anything. They have no suspects. So the case first draws regional and then national media attention because of his age. You know, he's like eleven and this lack of evidence, he just vanished.
So his parents maintained a really visible public campaign. They handed out flyers, they were working with all these search organizations that were focused on finding kids missing kids. Law enforcement was like following all these tips, every tip that comes in, but they have no viable suspects. So the case starts to grow cold in terms of, like, you know, any action that they can take, but it's open and
they keep reviewing it periodically. So during this period, his parents go on national television programs looking for help and like seeking exposure. And so his parents went on the Montell Williams Show.
Just about asked.
Sylvia Brown is on there to do a reading about the case. So Brown tells them that their son is dead, and she talks about the circumstances and the perpetrator is he did in that Smoker Croke. She's like, your son is dead. She said he was a Hispanic man with dreadlocks. It took him and she said that his body was twenty miles from their house in a wooded area near two jagged boulders.
I think was a New Yorkan.
So you're hearing that his parents are hearing this, and like the truth is basically the opposite. This guy, Michael J. Devlin, who is a pizza parlor manager from the Saint Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri, approached Hornback during his bike ride, subdued him, took him away from the area, takes him to his apartment in Kirkwood that's like sixty miles from his home, and Devlin held him there for more than four years. What yes, so Sean.
Was having his own bedroom or like he's like now his son.
He's now yeah, and well yeah, And so Sean is held in the apartment, kept under tight control, given a false name, has to present himself as Devlin's child in public Saturday school. He's abused, he's restricted in his movement, he has these threats against him if he reveals his identity. And so he's living in plain sight for years. Oh god. And then January eighth, two thousand and seven, Devlin abducts another boy, Ben Ownbe from Missouri. Owned b disappeared while
walking home from school from a bus stop. So witness descriptions of a white pickup truck led Lease to focus on Devlin. The police located the truck traced it to Devlin. January twelfth, two thousand and seven, officers go to his apartment with a search warrant. They find ben Ohenby alive and Sean Hornbeck alive. Good. He's been missing for you know, five years. So everyone came down on Sylvia Brown because she was so cold about it, just like flat the boys dead and this really.
The odds because it was completely parents believed her, but they kept searching.
But it's like you hear this, and so they're going and looking for these two jagged boulders. Horrible. Everyone starts to kind of sour for a bit. On TV, cyched she wasn't done. So two thousand and four, two years after, she declares Sean Hornbeck dead and three years before he's found alive. Oh no, she's on the Montel Williams Show again.
Why does he keep bringing her back?
Makes TV? Also on the show was Luwana Miller and her daughter Amanda Barry disappeared on April twenty first, two thousand and three, at the age of sixteen. She had a job at Burger King in Cleveland, Ohio. She was you know, left work to go home. Disappears. Her case got regional and then national media attention. Her mother was on Montel in an effort to get media exposure keep the case visible. So during the segment, Brown tells Miller
that Amanda Berry's dead. She's like, she's not alive, honey, Like, I mean, it's just so flat out and all these all these mainstream news outlets just keep playing that line from the broadcast. Really yeah. According to CNN's transcripted coverage and CBS News reporting, Brown was like that the transcript says she's not alive, honey, because I couldn't find the episode anyway.
I love that she just kind of hit the perfect like rhyme or meter her or whatever. Everyone just sees on that one line.
So Miller is the mom is just absolutely broken and distressed, and like she's like, but you know what, she's in heaven. She's at peace, and like she but she's totally like this is it. I'm not speculating like I feel like it or like odds are She's like, no, this is the facts. And so she also kind of goes into like the circumstances of how the daughter died. Oh no, yeah, so obviously the mother's devastated. The clip shows her crying,
She's visibly shaken. Miller continues searching for her daughter afterward, but family members later said that that like psychic pronouncement, caused this horrible grief for her. She died in two thousand and six, like holding the pain of the loss of her child. In May of twenty thirteen, Amanda Berry's found alive. She escaped from a Cleveland house where she'd been held captive for a decade by Ariel Castro. That guy has Two other women were rescued her. The McDonald's right, yeah,
And it turns out she watched Montelle in captivity? Does she see that? And she used to wish that her mom would go on there so that Sylvia Brown could be like, she's okay, she's alive, She's gonna be okay. No, Sylvia tells her mom that she's dead, and Amanda said, quote, I just broke down crying because I can't believe she said that, and my mother episode Yeah, then my mom broke down crying, so that hurt even worse.
Oh, my God, this mother goes to her rest with ever's own yes.
No, yeah. So after the rescue news organizations rediscovered and rebroadcast that Montell segment, the clip just spreads everywhere national international media online platforms as this example of like a high confidence psychic claim that's proven false, so she's found alive. The clip resurfaces, Montell Williams is like starts publicly distancing
himself from her. In public statements reported by all these major outlets, he said that Sylvia Brown had not been on his show for several years, and he didn't rely on or endorse psychic determinations in criminal matters. So I think you and I have mentioned briefly in passing the radio show Coast to Coast Amy. It's a late night radio talk show that goes heavy on discussions of the paranormal conspiracy theory.
Oh yes, the supernatural. The Kennedy assassination at all times was sood from the sea, from the sky everything.
It was hosted by Art Bell, who created it from nineteen eighty eight to two thousand and three and then hosting duties transferred over to the current host, George Neuri. Now it existed pre nineteen eighty eight on like radio stations in like the Southwest. Yeah, he was coming out of Peru and exactly. And so Sylvia Brown was a frequent guest, and they'd talked to her about prognostications for the coming year or like the ins and outs of
dealing with the spirit world. And that the show goes on for like four hours.
It's a long time.
Yeah. So the first hour or two, the host chats with the guest, and then they go to the phones and take calls for the rest. So January second, two thousand and six, an explosion occurred at the Sago mine in Upshur County, West Virginia. Thirteen miners were trapped underground. So in the first hours after the blast, information was like muddled and confused and inconsistent, and the families gathered
at this church near the site awaiting news. Yeah, and so in the early morning of January fourth, all these news outlets briefly and incorrectly reported that twelve miners had been found alive, and that was false. In reality, only one had survived and twelve others had died from carbon.
Monoxide plays they flipped.
Yeah, So Sylvia Brown appeared overnight on coast to Coast between when the disaster happened and when the tragedy was revealed, and so during this specific appearance, she was asked about the face to the trapped miners while rescue efforts were still underway, and like the facts weren't confirmed. I listened to this almost the whole episode, and then the next day the thing for this show, I know, I care
too much. And so she she says with confidence that the trap miners are alive, and like her comments are framed as psychic insight rather than speculation. So saren it was like the longest four hours of my life listening to this thing. So there are ways to parse what she said if you look at it solely the words of it, but it's the way that she says it like that leaves well, like she's like, oh, yeah, I knew they'd be found, And so then she tries to
play it found no, like their bodies would be found. No, no, no, the way you said it found alive.
Oh I got you.
So there's no doubt that she was positive they were alive, and as a result of her blowing this, they got really upset. On Coast to Coast, George is like, really pissed off towards the end of that episode, and then the next day he's talking about it, and as a result, she gets banned from coast to coast. Good for you, George exactly.
I interviewed him once and I got a sense it was a good guy. Even though he's really curious and open minded and entertain things a lot of people won't, he still seems decent.
One of the things I realized in listening to these episodes, like some of the old Art Bell ones with her in these, is that they really like the stuff they're talking about in terms of environmental issues and like global climate change. They sounded kooky at the time, but they're right now. You know, we start looking at like weird like conspiracy rings of high powered people, and it's like we brush them off, and.
Oh man, Art Bell is gonna be right about the aliens.
Too, Like wait a second, pyramids, Okay, so she's out of there. Don't darken our doorway again. Eighty six. Because her Coast Coast AM statements were made close to like the peak of uncertainty, you know, critics were like, well maybe, but at the same time, like, no, she could have said if she really knew if she really was a psychic.
So this and a bunch of other bad predictions and false statement like sent up a red flag for the eighteen And that's the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, helmed by none other than James Randy. Oh yeah, engines pumping. Let's take a break and when we come back, Sylvia Brown versus the amazing Randy.
Yes, all right, Zaren Darren, you're going to say that I've been working on my psychic powers during a break.
It's like, say my name, how did you know I'm so.
Good at you're so good at that? James Randy he was a Canadian American magician, a scape artist, and scientific skeptic, best known for investigating and publicly challenging paranormal and pseudo scientific names.
A skeptic with a good sensation, and he used.
To say, I'm not He didn't call himself a magician. He called himself a conjurer because he's like, there's no magic involved.
I was going to correct you, but I didn't want to thank you.
So he started his career as like a stage magician slash conjurer escape artist. In the forties and fifties and he performed under the name the Amazing Randy, and he was inspired by Harry Houdini. He did these like specialized like escape acts, illusion work, and then he got, you know, work on TV. He did a lot of live performances.
By the sixties and seventies, though he shifted focus toward investigating paranormal claims, and he used his knowledge of conjuring techniques to explain how all these like supposed psychic feats could be simulated by trickery, yeah, slight of handstype, and he talked about cold readings and hot readings for psychics.
And so he became really widely known for scrutinizing high profile paranormal figures faith healers, most notably as you mentioned Uri Geller, Yeah, the spoon Bender, and then Peter pop Off I talked about him, Yes, that's right. So he would demonstrate through controlled tests and media investigations how their effects could be duplicated or explained, and then he all his investigations were in books, TV appearances, lectures. Johnny Carson loved to.
Have Johnny Carson loved him. Then later on the magician Ricky j and Pennin teller who kind of just inherited his traditions exactly.
So in nineteen ninety six he founded the James Randy Educational Foundation, which created the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, and the challenge offered a million bucks to anyone who could demonstrate paranormal ability under agreed controlled conditions, and the challenge rules and the purpose were widely published and repeatedly covered
in mainstream media, so everyone knew about this. During this same period, Sylvia Brown, She's coming up through the media ranks, and because she made specific, testable paranormal claims on national television, she became one of Randy's most frequent examples when he was talking about why controlled testing is necessary. So throughout the nineties in the early two thousands, Randy repeatedly criticized Sylvia Brown's claims in interviews, lectures, all his published commentaries.
He said that her claims were empirical and testable, but she was avoiding these controlled tests, and that her televised readings used common cold reading techniques. So that's when you're just like phishing basically.
Yeah, and then you wait to sew they react.
Yeah. Hot reading is when you do a little bit of background information ahead of time and then you can kind of, you know, to reach research them to know what you're going into.
Someone's feeding.
Yeah, or his example, there was one example from some TV psychic that I think was on This was a John Oliver special about TV psychics, but he was explaining how there's this reality show psychic who gave Matt Lauer a reading and was like, you know, I'm seeing something
with phishing and that's important. He's like, it was really important my dad and I fishing, And then they were demonstrating that the hot reading on that is that the guy could have googled Matt Lauer and there's a ton of articles where he's like.
I love fishing with.
Totally. So Sylvia Brown, like she's using these cold reading techniques and her track record on verifiable cases was terrible. So like, you know, is my grandma okay? On the other side, Yeah, she loves you and she's looking down on you and she's happy. That's one thing, But like you know, Amanda Barry dead, honey, he's yeah. So the
criticisms appeared in skeptical Inquirer articles like his publication. In his lectures, he and other skeptical investigators also pointed to all her felony, securities, convictions, and for the saying they're like, she's not credible, look at that like that, you know, speaks to her lack of integrity. Credible. It's the convictions exactly. So both James Randy and Sylvia Brown were regular guests on CNN's Larry King Live, so it was only a
matter of time before they collide. There matadoran bull meeting in the arena. Zaren, close your eyes. I want you to close. It's September third, two thousand and one. You work at CNN Studio in Los Angeles in a very specialized position. You are Larry King's spe archivist. You catalog track, acchoire and maintain the hundreds of pairs of suspenders Larry King has in his stable of braces. You've chosen for him today, a pair in aubergine, but an aubergine's so
dark it reads as black. They pair nicely with his salmon colored shirt and green and black striped tie, or so you are telling yourself. You watch him in the monitor and you're thankful you are only responsible for the suspenders. You're in a commercial break right now. Studio staff whisper and make adjustments to lights or microphones. Larry's guest tonight is that psychic Sylvia Brown. She's unassuming in her blonde page boy bob black sweater and dangling earrings. She sits
in her chair and looks at her nails. Larry takes a sip of coffee from his mug on a huge monitor facing Larry and Sylvia and broadcast of viewers. When you come back from commercial is James Randy. He's appearing from Miami via satellite. You love this guy, no nonsense. He's wearing a suit and his white beard is fluffy and neat. You can't tell if he's got on suspenders under that suit jacket. God, you'd give anything to find out. You'd love to know what he's working with. Is there
any stretch to the material? Maybe silk leather? Is he a y back guy or an xback? Maybe one day you'll get to meet him in person and ask. The producer gives a signal that the ad break is ending and you're about to go on live, and in five four three that's your cue to step out into the hall. You lean against the wall and stare off into the distance. People walk back and forth, guy drops a big stack of books and you help him pick him up. Above you,
the on air light glows red against the ceiling. You look through the window into the soundproof studio. There seems to be a tense exchange between Randy and Brown. You usually tune the stuff out because so much of it is just manufactured for TV, but Randy is serious. He's not one for stunts. You really wish you were in there. Finally, they wrap and you head back into a company Larry and his suspenders to his dressing room. The two of you walked down the hall and you ask how it
went well. He tells you Randy really put her on the spot to do his million dollar challenge, the one with the control groups and such, And you ask she said she'd do it? She said she agreed, and I told him we can host it on our website or whatever they need. She kept saying it didn't bother her, didn't bother her, That's why she came on the show. But I wasn't buying it. I got her to say
she agreed to the conditions. Well, see what happens. You reach the dressing room and Larry turns his back to you. You reach down and gently unbutton the back of his suspenders. He's a why back guy. Larry unbuttons the front tabs from inside his waistband. You gingerly lift the suspenders from his shoulders, smoothly fold them over your arm, and walked to the side table where their box has been waiting
since Larry got dressed for tonight's episode. See you tomorrow, kid, Larry says, and you nod and head out to the suspender room. This is Aaron.
I love that he has an archiveoist. And then I'm imagining him like walking out with loose pants.
Because it's like.
Dropped the grass backly he walks out in the shorts.
So as you went to Sarah. During the broadcast, Randy publicly challenged Sylvia Brown to take the million dollar Paranormal Challenge and she was, she said on air. She accepted it, and then he was like, it's available. You will be tested under mutually agreed you know, controlled conditions. She responds affirmatively, Yes,
I'll do it. So following that Larry King Live episode, the James Randy Educational Foundation said that it was working with Brown's representatives to set up a formal test protocol that was consistent with the challenge rules, and that a preliminary protocol had been negotiated and they scheduled a test date. Brown didn't show up. No, I mean, obviously there's no test.
So I would like to make note that the Larry King live appearance was on September third, two thousand and one, and Sylvia Brown had no message about anything that was coming in the next week. That's interesting, that's curious, Sylvia.
So on me, it'll be a really strong nexus of energy around about a week and a day from now.
Yeah, Sylvia, are you feeling anything in the No. No, but your grandmother says hi. So in May sixty she's dead, honey. May sixteen, two three is horrible. Almost three years after she accepted the throwdown, she goes on Larry King again and she had to admit she still hadn't taken Randy's test. Why hadn't she done it? Well, she's like, you know what, Randy won't put the prize money in escrow.
Oh got him on a technicality.
Yeah, Randy's like, okay, let's go. So he sends her a notarized copy of the prize account status where the balance is more than a million dollars. She wouldn't accept the letter, and so in two thousand and five, she's like, you know, I know forgot any confirmation that there was any prize money, and like, do you think you can mess with the amazing Randy?
The giant check at her door that's actually a certified.
Receipt of James Randy was ready. He had a certified mail receipt showing that she refused to accept the letter. So in two thousand and seven, the whole mess winds up on CNN again, this time on Anderson Cooper three point sixty. Did I watch the episode? Of course they did. There's lots of cross talk and accusations, but it wasn't Sylvia. It was her business manager, Linda Rossi, trying to take on James Randy and like she was not here for it.
She said that Sylvia didn't have to participate in the challenge because she quote has nothing to prove to James Randy, and James Randy's like, yeah, I know she doesn't, and then she's like attacking him for being an atheist. And Anderson had a chastiser for using quote high school debate tactics like ad hominem attack. Yeah, Yeah.
It was amazing, a good dismissive insult, and it was like.
I had forgotten about the old Anderson Cooper was wild. Yeah. So Sylvia Brown, she keeps publishing and touring into the twenty tens, she released additional spiritual and psychic titles through Hayhouse and like other related publishers. And she's talking about like prophecy, spirit communication, health, intuition, and then she gets into like end time scenarios.
Yeah.
Well she said something about a pandemic hitting in twenty twenty in one of those books. Really yeah, and folks like, well, she was gone by then. Folks like Kim Kardashian referenced it when COVID hit. They're like, oh, look at this book. Ya course, But when you look at it in the context of what she was talking about, she was more referring to avian flu i. But see, here's the thing, though, a ton of expert had been sounding the alarm about this for a while now, about a global pandemic. Again,
she was playing the odds, yeah, exactly. So she remained affiliated with her Gnostic church, continued private readings and events. She died on November twentieth, twenty thirteen. In California at age seventy seven. Her son, Chris Dufrain, carries on her psychic legacy.
Naturally, someone got to He's got.
A website, Chris RightNow dot com. And I was going to copy and paste his about Chris section here to read to you. But when you write click on his website and message box pops up that says alert copyright twenty twenty by Sylvia Brown Group, Incorporated. Well guess what, Chris, I use image to text, so I took a screenshot so I wouldn't have to hand transcribe it. This is for journalism. My good dude, that's You'm not breaking any copyrights. So now I'm going to read it to you. Go
to the website and do the same thing. Internationally recognized psychic and author Chris Dufrain has been in professional practice for over thirty years, helping countless people. Chris is the son of world renowned psychic, author, lecturer, and researcher, the late Sylvia Brown. Chris's lineage includes over three hundred years of practicing psychics, including individuals involved in the field of parapsychology. Like his mother, Chris is also an award winning author.
He has written seven books, two of which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller List. Chris Dufrain has also appeared on several TV programs over the years, such as People Are Talking, Base, City Limits, Northwest Afternoon, Unsolved Mysteries, and The Montel Williams Show. He has also been a featured guest on countless radio shows. Chris is very involved
with his community, giving back any chance he gets. His primary goal in life is to help people with his gift through readings booked on his website and live question and answer segments on social media. You can find recordings of Chris on his YouTube channel. You can watch one of his frequent live YouTube Q and as meet and greets, as well as teaches courses in hypnotherapy but apparently doesn't have an editor.
Or you can check his real estate seminari, which he also.
Since Sylvia's passing, Chris is embarked on his own path, including lectures throughout the country, radio podcasts, and television appearances. In this way, he continues his mother's legacy, bringing spiritual awareness to our world, as well as his own personal messages of hope, peace and love in his own way, like if You parsel those sentences.
He definitely needs more than an editor. He needs also a BS detector.
I'll be yeah, yeah, Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Like I have to say this often, but like the world is so glad I decided not to become a con man or a charlatan because I would hire you as my editor.
I would have the.
Good website, people would believe it. I've done enough research over the years. I know the language they want, and like I wouldn't be so just patent agreed greedy about it, Like I wouldn't be out there She's dad, honey, you know, like you gotta have a little like grace with this. You give people an emotional story. So I say, what's ridiculous?
My takeaway for this is, thank God I don't want to be a con person because if this is the bar to clear, right, Sylvia Brown is not that like I can think I could trip over that bar.
I just I feel like I'm gonna go ahead and tell my ridiculous take Ok, Yeah, what is yours Elizabeth for once? I you know, I think about a lot of psychic stuff that you see. They're really kind of heavy on the self help because that's basically what they're doing. Yes, that's what they can make their money. Reading is it's like you can tell who people are asking about, like you know, and there's big patterns usually sure exactly, But
when you take it that step too far. It's one thing when it's a novelty and you're basically reassuring someone like yeah, you know what a horoscope, you lost your you lost your dad, but you know what, like if if someone has a good relationship with her father and says, does he send me messages? He's still there, you're not going to say like yeah, they're like no, I hate him. You know. It's like the very question tells you everything you need to do, saying never buy a Chevy, and
you're reassuring that person. And so I think that there sometimes people you know, maybe don't want to do a lot of self reflection or can't you are not emotionally developed to do it. And if this gives them a way to feel good and like kind of you know, develop out their feelings on things, that's one thing. But to god, the taking advantage she's dead, honey.
Well, it's like the tarot cards and the horoscopes. The real power of those is when you kind of project onto it and you end up interpreting what you already feel. So it's a way to just kind of conjure up your own intuition, you know what I mean, if you fit the pattern with what you think will occur, or what you're worried about, or what you're feeling but not saying. Yeah, So they actually have some value as like a diagnostic tool for yourself if you're really to go with.
It and I want to believe in like woo wooh. There are different degrees of it. I think that you can't say like with certainty with certainty, but I think that you know, you definitely get like feelings of some more than others.
You know, some people can't really blow you away, you know, Like I've heard numerous stories where I'm like, Okay, I'm willing to believe you. If you listen to a couple of old exorcists sit around and tell you stories, You're like, there's something I don't know what it is, but you guys are.
If I've learned anything from Art Bell, don't dismiss twenty years and then we'll find out. Yeah, you know what I think we need now? Is it? Talk back. I was gonna say lemon cookies, well and lemon cookies. Oh my god, I.
Want hello, my beloved Ridiculous crimbing through. This is Kelly from Madison. I recently found out that my favorite screwball cop from the Police Academy Movies, one Stephen Gutenberg, got his start in showbiz buying. It's a fascinating story. I won't ruin it here, but I highly recommend checking it out.
It'd be great to hear.
About on the show. But Stephen Gutenberg Crime, Wait.
A minute, does he have like a Tim Allen like story? Flip a coin, See he gets the guten.
That's amazing. Okay, thank you for that. You're already writing titles. I see what you do. That's it for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and on Instagram, and we're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. You can email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and you can leave a talk back on the iHeart app and we would love it. I appreciate it. Reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett.
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