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CSI: Turning from Science to Psychics
By Benjamin Radford

posted: 14 July 2006
03:49 pm ET

Psychics claim to guide us in matters of romance and money, predicting handsome strangers or future fortunes. (If anyone finds a psychic who correctly predicts lottery numbers, please let me know.)

But what happens when psychic powers are used for much more important and practical purposes, such as solving crimes? Psychic detectives have a long and glaring track record of utter failure in criminal cases; from Elizabeth Smart to Laci Peterson to Chandra Levy, Jimmy Hoffa, and countless others, psychic information has been worthless in leading police to missing persons.

Still, when crimes remain unsolved and families are desperate, psychics will offer to help. And sometimes entertain.

Obscure cases

Following the success of Court TV's series Psychic Detectives, the network launched a new “reality TV” program titled Haunting Evidence. California “psychic profiler” Carla Baron and two other investigators spend 24 hours revisiting real-life cold case murders in the expectation that their powers will succeed where police have failed.

Oddly, the team doesn't tackle obvious missing persons cases known to many Americans, such as the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, or Natalee Holloway's 2005 disappearance. Perhaps those cases are too high-profile, and might cause the public to wonder why America's top psychic detectives hadn't solved those long ago.

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