Can psychics really help solve a crime?

Is it true that the police turn to psychics

Yes and no. Usually mediums themselves offer help to the police or relatives of the victims. Clairvoyants are especially interested in mysterious murders and disappearances - in such cases, psychics are downright imposed. For example, Don Spears, whose daughter went missing, toldK. Arlington. Supernatural sleuths and the search for truth / The Sydney Morning Heraldthat he was "chased" by about 400 mediums. And in 2002, when the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart received great publicity, the Utah police receivedE. Jarvik. S.L. police put psychics on hold / Deseret News several thousand "tips" based on visions, dreams and "spirit stories".

Although investigators themselves very rarely refer 1. K. Arlington. Supernatural sleuths and the search for truth / The Sydney Morning Herald
2. H. Barnes. Can psychics help solve crime? / BBC News

to the testimony of psychics seriously, the police have no right to ignore information about crimes, even if it came from a dubious source. Therefore, for example, in the UK, Australia and the USA, information received from clairvoyants is takenE. Jarvik. S.L. police put psychics on hold / Deseret News note as secondary. Such reports can be checked if the police have little or no leads. In isolated situations, individual employees may informally turn to mediums for help.

In Russia, too, there are no official statistics on the joint work of psychics and investigators. Criminologist Nikolai Kitaev toldN. N. Kitaev. Psychics and shamans in the investigation of crimes / In Defense of Science No. 5that in 1993 the Ministry of Internal Affairs tried to find out how often employees turned to mediums. Police officers did this at least once in 45 regions, and in 20 of them systematically. In eight more subjects of the country, relatives of the missing or dead came to see clairvoyants.

In the mid-2000s, Kitaev repeated the experiment on his own. He sent out requests to the Internal Affairs Directorate of 89 regions of the Russian Federation. Of these, 63 investigators responded. Only in 16 did police officers or relatives of the missing turn to psychics. But in none of the cases did supernatural abilities help solve the case.

So officially, the police still do not work with psychics. However, this does not prevent clairvoyants, magicians, parapsychologists and mystics declare 1. Recording from the VKontakte group of the Mikhail Vinogradov Center
2. Site of psychic Svetlana Proskuryakova about such cooperation.

What happens when psychics are still investigating

As a rule, they do not help in any way, and sometimes they even direct law enforcement officers along the wrong path. This, of course, is addictive.N. N. Kitaev. Psychics and shamans in the investigation of crimes / In Defense of Science No. 5 searches and discredits investigators. There are many such cases.

In 1980, under public pressure, Atlanta police officers who were investigating a case of a maniac turnedM. Oliver. Dorothy Allison; Volunteered to Aid Police as ‘Psychic’ / Los Angeles Times for help to psychic Dorothy Allison. She named 42 possible names of the perpetrator. But Wayne Williams was not among the candidates, who was eventually convicted.

A year before this story, a detective from New Jersey said that Allison took credit for finding the body of the missing boy, although in fact she did not help the investigation in any way.

In 2002, clairvoyant and author of 50 books Sylvia Brown statedJ. Kirkland. Michelle McNamara Solved the Shawn Hornbeck Kidnapping Case Long Before I'll Be Gone in the Dark / Esquire on a talk show that missing boy Sean Hornbeck from Missouri is dead. Almost five years later, the police, investigating the disappearance of another child, found the guy alive.

Two years later, the same Sylvia Brown announced on televisionK. Rogers. Sylvia Browne: fans lash out at ‘psychic’ over false Ohio abduction prediction / The Guardian missing Amanda Berry's mother that her daughter is dead. The woman died of heart failure, never knowing that Amanda was alive. She and two other girls were kidnapped and held hostage until she was able to escape with her six-year-old daughter in 2013. Then the police detained the criminal and released two other captives.

Missing in Illinois in 2007J. Napolitano, H. Dardick, Tribune staff reporters. Psychic tip leads search to animal bones / Chicago Tribune mother of two children, 37-year-old Liza Stebich. When the police failed to find anything, Lisa's relatives turned to a psychic. He indicated the place of the alleged burial, and the police did find the bones there. Only it turned out to be the skeleton of a deer.

And in 2009 the Welsh Police spentW. Manger. The psychic detectives who claim they can help police find missing people / Mirror £20,000 to investigate the death of Carlos Assaf. Psychics insisted that bandits forced to drink gasoline and bleach and then strangled. An autopsy found no traces of either liquid and confirmed the original version of suicide.

In Russia, similar stories also happened. Thus, in 1994, one of the speakers at a scientific and practical seminar in Moscow toldN. N. Kitaev. Psychics and shamans in the investigation of crimes / In Defense of Science No. 5 about several successful cases of cooperation between the investigation and psychics. In the Sverdlovsk region, as many as 16 crimes were allegedly solved. However, the Sverdlovsk policemen themselves did not confirm this information, and the local clairvoyant turned out to be senior sergeant of OMON, who participated in illegal interrogations (there were no lawyers for them) suspects. The medium himself could suffer schizophrenia.

ConnectedN. Repenko. Allow me to tell. How the police and investigators in Russia cooperate with psychics / Present psychics and to the search for Lisa Tishkina, who disappeared in 2009. Each time they pointed out a new place where the girl supposedly should be, but she was not found there.

Over the years of investigations, there was not a single confirmed case when psychics were able to solve some kind of case.

Why Psychics Can't Help Solve Crimes

The reason is simple: psychics do not have any paranormal abilities, including detective ones. Moreover, scientists have confirmed this statement in practice with a whole series of different experiments.

Thus, in the 1950s and 1970s, 1. M. Reiser, L. Ludwig, S. Saxe et al. Evaluation of the Use of Psychics in the Investigation of Major Crimes / Journal of Police Science and Administration
2. N. N. Kitaev. Psychics and shamans in the investigation of crimes / In Defense of Science No. 5 two experiments where psychics were asked to tell about crimes based on evidence sealed in envelopes. In the first experiment, the objects were not connected to anything criminal at all, but the participants could not understand this. In the second, psychics were able to correctly list negligible details: 4 out of 21 on the first clue and 1.8 out of 33 on the second.

In 1982, psychics competedN. N. Kitaev. Psychics and shamans in the investigation of crimes / In Defense of Science No. 5 with students and detectives. Each of the three groups was told about four cases and asked to guess what happened. The psychics' responses were six times longer and generally more dramatic than those of the others. But this did not make it more accurate.

In a similar experiment in the UK, students and psychics were given 1. R. Wiseman, D. West, R. Stemman. An experimental test of psychic detection
2. R. Wiseman, D. West. An experimental test of psychic detection / The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles three items related to the solved crimes, and offered to describe the feelings and ideas that arose when interacting with these things. The clairvoyants' guesses turned out to be just as inaccurate as the students' reflections.

Why many people still rely on the help of psychics

Psychics use various tricks to convince people of their superpowers. For instance, cold reading - when the clairvoyant builds a story based on answers to previous questions, which he gave a lot of back. Or intentional vagueness of predictions so that streamlined formulations are easy adjust under the facts. For example, "the missing person is in a house next to a large body of water" or "the corpse is hidden in a dark forest." And the seers do not forget about common sense: if a person disappeared in a lake area, then he will most likely be found near the water. And if the disappearance happened a long time ago, the missing person is probably already dead.

Thus, psychics often manage to create the illusion of correct testimony - after all, there is no question of facts. The selectivity of our memory also helps clairvoyants: people remember “accurate” predictionsN. N. Kitaev. Psychics and shamans in the investigation of crimes / In Defense of Science No. 5 better than wrong ones. “Small mistakes” are also interpreted in favor of mediums.

So, in 1996, the body of the missing Paula Brown was discoveredW. Manger. The psychic detectives who claim they can help police find missing people / Mirror two kilometers from the place indicated by the clairvoyant Philip Durant. The corpse was accidentally discovered by a tractor driver, but the public announced the success of the psychic. And in 2010 in Australia, the clairvoyant foundK. Arlington. Supernatural sleuths and the search for truth / The Sydney Morning Herald the remains of a 31-year-old woman in the bushes, although she was looking for a six-year-old girl. Some newspapers wrote sarcastically about this: "At least they managed to find someone." However, there were people who seriously considered that the spirits brought the psychic to the burial place.

What forensic technologies really look like magic

Thanks to science, investigators have almost paranormal possibilities.

genetic traces

One of the main assistants of the current forensic science in the investigation of complicated cases is analysis DNA. Modern technologies allowHow Is DNA Profiling Used to Solve Crimes? / Maryville University use as evidence the most insignificant remnants like hair or microscopic particles of saliva. Even 15 cells of biological material can be enoughA. Ford. Suspect in 1989 slaying ID’d using world’s smallest sample of DNA evidence / Las Vegas Review‑Journal. If they are lined up in one line, this strip will be a little more than 0.1 millimeters long.

The DNA data that is in the database makes it possible to solve even forgotten crimes. For example, the murder of 32 years ago through the restoration of the family tree of the suspect.

And with the help of genetic information, you can find out what a criminal looks like: some alleles correlate with certain appearance features. In this way, in 2012, North Carolina was identifiedM. Gannon. Amazing DNA Tool Gives Cops a New Way to Crack Cold Cases / NBC the masked killer who left a few drops of blood at the crime scene.

Molecular aura

Other fantastic technology in the arsenal of modern criminologists is mass spectrometry, or a high-precision method for determining the concentration of a substance in an analyzed sample. With this technology, traces of any substance that the suspect has touched can be detected. The mass spectrometer will find them, even if there are only a few molecules left on the hands.

Technology will come in handyR. Corzo, T. Hoffman, P. Weis et al. The use of LA‑ICP‑MS databases to calculate likelihood ratios for the forensic analysis of glass evidence / Talanta, if glass was broken at the crime scene, and the police found the smallest fragment on the suspect's clothes. Experts will be able to compare it with the indicators of the control sample and find outA. J. Dodds, E. M. Pollock, D. P. land. Forensic Glass Analysis by LA‑ICP‑MS: Assessing the Feasibility of Correlating Windshield Composition and Supplierwhether or not the shard was part of the broken glass.

Tips from the microcosm

In humans, not only DNA is unique, but also the proteins secreted by their body. The latter, for example, can tellE. D. Merkley, D. S. Wunschel, K. L. Wahl et al. Applications and challenges of forensic proteomics / Forensic Science International about the conditions under which they were produced. If you analyze proteins and use mass spectrography at the same time, you can find traces of toxins, drugs or doping. To do this, it is enough to study a person’s hair or his bones, if examinedN. Procopio, A. Williams, A. T. Chamberlain et al. Forensic proteomics for the evaluation of the post‑mortem decay in bones / Journal of Proteomics dead body.

Really use as evidenceL. Brinkac, T. H. Clarke, H. Singh et al. Spatial and Environmental Variation of the Human Hair Microbiota / Scientific Reports and found samples of the microbiota - microorganisms that live on and in the human body. For example, to identify the offender.

Opening without surgical instruments

No less impressive is the possibilityG. Lo Re, S. Salerno, M. C. Terranova et al. Virtopsy and Living Individuals Evaluation Using Computed Tomography in Forensic Diagnostic Imaging / Seminars in Ultrasound, CT and MRI conduct an autopsy without the intervention of a pathologist. No magic - just 3D photogrammetry, X-ray, MRI and CT, and a three-dimensional reconstruction of the body is ready.

Virtopsia (virtual autopsy) allows you to more accurately determine the location of the wound, and its results are stored in their original form - they can be shared with colleagues or reused. In addition, the body of the deceased remains intact, and MRI images are not as shocking as photos of a regular autopsy, which is important for court hearings.