All About Psychics

Pushkin.

Hi, it's Lucy. This is a bonus episode of Where's Dea, So if you haven't listened to the series yet, please listen to that first, because our episode today is diving into one of the more polarizing elements of the story, the use of psychics in criminal investigations. While I reported on the case of Dea Abrams, I found myself trying to make sense of whether psychics are actually utilized in investigations,

He saw the case that we worked and we found the guy, or found the kid, and the psychics actually told us who killed him?

What was the outcome there was there arrestmaker.

Oh yeah, it was the father killed him. It was a big divorce and the kid hated the father and the court forced him to go there on a visitation and end result was he killed him. How did you find the general area? A psychice told us where to go? We went there and literally the guy who was in charge of the investigation wanted us to go to the twelve thousand foot level and work our way down, which we did, but no one indicated that the kid was up that high, and then went down to where our

According to Kelly, the psychic was the one to point them in the right direction, and then the search dog did the rest of the work. The whole thing turned into a bit of a circus, with a ton of press coverage and at least a few articles which did mention that investigators followed tips from psychics and mediums. Mark Dylan's father was eventually arrested, and in twenty twenty one, he was found guilty of murdering Dylan and sentenced to

Nobody had a clue where he was.

Searches were done.

He just like he disappeared into thin air, and then Kelly comes in and within days solves the damn case.

Yeah.

Well, I'll take credit for it, but it's actually the dogs and the psychics. The forty five million dollar reward was worth it.

Yeah, I got forty five dollars. Solve it today.

Quick disclaimer here, we couldn't corroborate if Kelly's psychics actually contributed to Dylan's case. One news article did mention cops received tips from psychics, but only said that quote as a matter of due diligence, law enforcement had to follow up on many of them, and then another local news story said that Dylan was found thanks to hours of police manpower, not some psychic tip off. But there is a testimonial on the find me website from a sergeant

Psychics look like everyday people. I mean people are usually shocked when they find.

Out what I do.

This is Dave Campbell. He's based in Arizona, and the first thing I learned while talking with him is that in addition to being a psychic, he has a few other skills too.

Well, so a hypnotherapist. They talk to people when they sleep. I talk to dead people. Wow, all kinds of fun stuff. And then I'm also as an astrologer and I also wrote the book called Forensic Astrology, which is solving crimes using astrology, which works amazingly and synchronistically. If people have no clue what that is either they think it's just sunfighting astrology, and I'm saying, oh, the pastis did it?

No, No, that's not it. We like to blame pass for everything anything, So.

I'm of Icy's moon, so I can half take offense to that.

Dave has been working with fire Me for years and, like I said before, contributed to DIA's case, so I wanted to hear about his experience and process. I would love to hear how you got involved with Kelly Snyder, like how you met him, because the funny thing about him, it's like he is like the most unlikely person that would be working with psychics, Like he's grasp She's like like just me and potatoes.

Guy.

I was like, well, who are you yourself?

Yes?

And a retired DEA agent. Yeah yeah, not You're typical. So it's really synchronistic too, because during my schooling with the astrology, my teacher really always liked to do mystery charts, and I was solve crimes or figure out who murdered who or where's this personnet? Are they alive or dead? And so to bring in district attorneys that were working on case and give us a bunch of cases just with their charts, and we would amaze them with what

And how does it work.

Does he put out a call and then you guys kind of decide whether you want to help.

Yeah, we.

Each case, he sends it to all of us and we all just return it in what we get within a week. I try to do all of them as much as I can, Like sometimes I usually will meditate on it first. I'll read the story like what we do now, and we know very little. We usually just get like they were missing on this day they were last seen, and what's the circumstances what happened. So I usually will get their birth date, I'll do their chart the day they were missing, you know, put it all together,

So you worked on DA's case.

Yes, I don't want to talk too much in detail about it, but I will say, you know, general things. I have really reluctance to talk about personal cases because if there's still any open ended to it, or it's not solved and put to bed in prison time you can I mean, I've been stocked and almost killed before, so I don't want that to happen. Yeah, not my favorite thing to do. So I'm really reluctant to say specifics on any case other than you know, unless I know it's can't come back.

But I did work on it.

Can you remember what I mean?

The anyone I can think of is medium? What mediums you used to work on DA's case? Were you using cards? We're using astrology?

I almost always use astrology.

Almost every case, and then I don't always use terror but sometimes I do if I need more information or want more, or if I just get.

Pulled to it. I always meditate.

I always get psychic scept as well, and it usually even starts with the charts, and usually.

If the even is better.

Which I keep trying to tell people, if they would give me the birth time of the person, it's like nine day difference. It's like pleasy, hanzy information versus sharp, clear perceptive, like I know exactly this.

Did you get a hard time of No, there's no time of birth. Why don't I try to find it?

That would be awesome.

I can find it.

Yeah, okay, that would be very helpful.

So yeah, like I say, I usually work on a case for usually about a week, and then once I've turned it in, I kind of let everything go. I've had to learn to do that otherwise are we bonkers? And I tried to let everything go in that even if it's not solved or whatever. I just you can't hang on to it unless it comes up again, and if he asks me, then I.

Revisited going back to the astrology. I'm really fascinated how you use it to locate somebody or to find out what happened.

Okay, so there's two different methods you can do profiling with it. I did a whole case study of serial killers charts, which was really crazy and fascinating to see if there was patterns, to see if I could tell why they did what they did. And there's similar patterns in almost all of them.

Are they Is that why you made the no?

No?

I was just.

Yeah. So the profiling is one thing.

And then also the transit to the time of the planets of like, somebody gets killed, the day and time of that killing is a chart itself, and so I overlay it with the chart of the natal chart and see what was happening, it was triggering if if there was potential for you know, if it shows murder, it should then it'll be in the chart. Then if they give me suspects or if I can find, you know, suspects, I can do their natal chart and the transits for

And what like, what do you say to people who are skeptical about all of this, because obviously there's a lot of non believers out there. Do you kind of just strug them off or.

I don't pay attention anymore? I don't really care.

I mean, I've proved myself so many times, and I think the being scientifically tested really gave me confidence to like, you know, like I don't need to prove myself anymore. If you want to prove it to yourself, then come to get a reading. I actually have quite a few friends that are cops, so they come to me for readings, and I've had detectives come for readings I've had, you know, so they know I can do what I do. They come to my medium night and get you know, they'll

Why do you think there's this reluctance to acknowledge the usefulness of psychics.

I think that they partly it's ego like that they want to be the ones responsible, which is okay, and I think that the police do.

They do fine. They do the actual work.

We're just a tool that they could use a tool, and that's it. They still have to do all the please work and you know, due diligence and go be the ground.

But I do think.

They should use this a lot more than they do, and I would rather they do it sooner than later, because usually when later been a missing person means they're already passed ninety percent of the time in my case, so I would rather find them while they're still alive and could be saved, rather than when they've gone cold and can't figure it out and it's too late.

I desperately want to believe Dave, but there's another side of me that still has questions. And until I can find a cop who will openly say, yes, we've used psychics to help as solve a murder or find a missing person, I think those questions will always remain. After the break. I speak with a researcher who conducted studies with psychics while she was at the Los Angeles Police Department.

We found with the psychics did come up with some very interesting clueser information.

We'll be right back.

It's hard to say how seriously law enforcement listens to psychics like Dave. A lot of departments categorically say they don't use them, at least that's what I've read. The research on psychics and crime solving is also pretty sparse, but one study caught my eye, an older one from nineteen seventy nine. There was a collaboration between the Los Angeles Police Department and an associate professor at Los Angeles City College.

Yeah, just for fan We'll do anything. People will cancer, will go to Mexico and eat grapefruit or whatever it is. I mean, people will try anything, and the police departments won't stop people from doing what they think they need to do as long as it doesn't interfere with the police worker or the investigation to get the job done.

This is doctor Susan Sachs Clifford.

I'm a licensed psychologist and a board certified in police and Public safety, and I spent fourteen years with LAPD in the beginning of my career, and then for many years I've had a private consulting business, consulting with law enforcement and public safety agencies, mostly on assessment.

In the seventies, Susan was a staff psychologist with the LAPD, eager to put her knowledge of research design and evaluation to use, which is how she became involved in this study of psychics.

At that time, a group of psychics approached LAPD and they had some credentials on and I don't recall their association, and we decided to do a well designed study on actual cases to see if they could provide information that would lead to the solution of crimes. LAPD was completely open to it, and we sat down with the representatives of the parapsychologists and designed a formal study.

What do you think it was about the environment that made it right for this study? Do you think it was the fund that it was la Was it the seventies? You said the LAPD were open to it, which now sounds, you know, feel surprising to hear.

Well, I think it would not be surprising, and I think that people have images of rigid approaches and rigid mindsets. But truthfully, if anything would work, it would be looked at. And I was new and young and had my credentials, and I don't remember if I brought it forward, or if they had brought it to me, but saying, well, let's you know, we're not going to shut down all these people that come forward, but we also can't invest a lot of time because we're really trying to get

So can you explain the setup of the study and how did you decide what you were going to ask?

The study was actually very interesting because, as I said, the parapsychologists had a lot of input. What we decided was to take a number of cases. I don't remember if it was ten or a dozen, but we took cases that actually had been solved but were not published, so the information wasn't out there, but the cases that

Can you kind of give me the top line of the results and what that was in there.

So what we found with the psychics did come up with some very interesting clueser information. For example, one said that he or she I don't remember which saw a very brightly painted coal full door. Well, it turns out that the victim did in fact live behind a brightly painted I think it was a green door, and that was like ooh, but it didn't lead to anything. It didn't lead to further ability to research or to find anything. Another one had said that he sees the victim has

So just a quick recap here. Even though the psychics in their study got certain details right, they didn't end up providing any information that would help police departments solve the cases. The paper wraps up with this we are forced to conclude, based on our results, that the usefulness of psychics as an age in criminal investigation has not been validated. Later on, Susan helped out with another study

And then my job was to go to the homicide investigators, which was quite interesting. These were the old homicide investigator teams that you would envision, you know, crusty, own guys with a cigar and tons and tons of experience with the homicides. But they were also very kind and cooperative

That's hilarious.

It really was. Most of my career was like that.

The researchers surveyed all three groups. They looked to see how many of the details each group got right about the cases. The study seemed to confirm the results of the first. Even though each group got some details right, none of them came up with information that would help actually solve a case. And not only did the psychics fail to come up with useful information, the homicide detectives got just about as many details right as they did.

And the reason was they just went into their experience and pulled out the most common threads or the most common issues that they would find in all of their experience. Again, it would not have led particularly to a solution of a crime, but it might have narrowed down their search a little bit.

Now, these studies were both fairly small, the authors recommended further research into this area. So, like I said, I couldn't find much. I asked Susan about this.

I think, first of all, it's not front and center of what most agencies do. And I think it was unique at that time because there was a cooperation and everybody went in the department and they really went out on a limb. I'm not sure that they expected any results, but they gave it an honest look and put resources into it. I don't know, I don't know why. I think maybe that study was sort of the end agencies looked at that and said, well, okay.

I did find, by the way, a five page a journal I guess general article. It appeared on the Department of just US Department of Justice, and it was about the usefulness of psychics and police investigations and the annotation is their usefulness is controversial, but psychics have long been a more undoubtedly continue to be involved in unsolved criminal investigations.

And that was in nineteen ninety three. I don't know if you ever saw that.

I didn't, but that that does make sense.

Yeah, so that kind of really piqued my interest, and yeah, I was so desperate to see if there was anything else. So it feels like there's there's sort of like rumors floating around, but that they have been used, but it feels like no one's quite willing to come and say on the records, you know, we use them and successfully so.

And I kind of wonder if there's a stigma around it.

And I I think that if it was terribly useful, it would be it would be a wonderful tool. I just never heard that. Certainly, there are people who are intuitive, very intelligent, and and me approach things in a different way. I mean, we see on television, you know, all kinds of superhero types who you think outside the box and see things differently, and that's you know, that's all good. But the psychic ability, and again they put their hands above that envelope. I don't know that it would have

It's a shame there hasn't been more research into using psychics to help law enforcement, or if they already are working together, that law enforcement isn't more open about it. Surely finding missing people is the priority, right rather than keeping up appearances. I couldn't help thinking back to what Kelly Snyder said about Riverside's reluctance to use his information to find Dea. What if the cops had searched Lake Hemis sooner like Kelly was urging them to. What if