News

The elderly man had been missing for weeks. Police had no clues. Search dogs and helicopters found nothing. A worried family was demanding answers.

Monroeville police Detective Will Greenaway couldn't figure out what happened to Sylvester Tonet, who vanished while walking home during a snowstorm in 1988. So when the family asked him to work with a psychic, he begrudgingly agreed.

"You do it to satisfy the family," said Greenaway, 66, and now retired. "It's a grieving family, so anything you can do. I just went along with it."

After 32 years of work as a psychic, Nancy Myer said she's grown accustomed to the skepticism that surrounds her profession.

Myer, of Latrobe, Westmoreland County, said she's assisted police in more than 550 cases.

"I really don't worry too much about convincing someone because a lot of people who are prejudiced, it doesn't matter what you say. It won't change their minds," said Myer, 60. "I just try to do my job to the best of my ability, and I feel like the work will speak for me. And it has."

The use of psychics in police investigations is nothing new. But with the success of television shows such as NBC's "Medium" and USA's "The Dead Zone" and their use in several high-profile cases, psychics are gaining more attention.

That could lead to more acceptance of the paranormal, which concerns Joe Nickell.

"With this kind of mumbo jumbo, where will it end?" said Nickell, an author and senior research fellow with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Amherst, N.Y.

"If you have police seeking clairvoyance -- something science cannot verify -- will we start using astrology to pick jurors? When will the ignorance and superstition stop? It ought to stop."

Police looking for missing Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar acknowledged last month they had consulted a psychic. Relatives of Natalee Holloway, an Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba six weeks ago, say they've consulted psychics.

Greenaway said he was skeptical when Myer first began her work on the Tonet case, recently profiled on Court TV's "Psychic Detectives," but her professionalism impressed him.

To begin her work, Myer said she requests the name of the victim, copies of photos taken at a crime scene and a recent photo of the victim.

"That will tell me what state of mind the victim was in, whether they actually knew the assailant," she said. "I can actually get into their memory banks that way."

She strives to give the cases a better focus, not to solve them.

"My goal is to provide new information that (police) can use to get the case moving in the right direction. That's my goal, because I believe that is a more realistic goal."

In Tonet's case, Myer began drawing maps of the area around the man's home and pinpointed a location where police would find his body.

One month after Tonet vanished, she and Greenaway attempted to reach the area, but cold weather prevented the two from getting to the site. The next day, Greenaway returned with search crews, and they found Tonet's body in the place Myer had described.

"I never believed in that stuff before, I don't know if I still do, but what she did -- her assistance in that case -- was really something," Greenaway said.

Myer said she often hears comments like that.

"I've dealt with some very, very skeptical police officers who ended up saying, 'I still don't believe in this, but you've got it,'" she said. "I just focus on doing my job. I know the prejudice isn't going to change, but if it's ever going to change, it will be because of an accumulating body of a job well done."

Nickell said he's still waiting to see evidence of any psychic's success.

"Let them come forward right now and find Natalee Holloway. Where were they when we needed them to find Chandra Levy? The world was begging for information on her for months and months," he said.

"Where are these psychics when they are really needed? Where are their successes? There aren't any."

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News