Psychics Make Firm Predictions

Psychics working for the TruTV (“Not Reality. Actuality.”) network claim to have some very specific information about the abductor of little Madeleine McCann, the four year old English girl who disappeared in Portugal in May 2007. The “Haunting Reality” program apparently features “psychic profiler Carla Baron, medium John J. Oliver and paranormal investigator Patrick Burns” who, I imagine, make the usual guesses about the nature of various unsolved crimes. But here they have gone further than the usual vague guesses. Get a load of what they claim to know:

• What the abductor looks like – and they have released a drawing of him
• The abductor’s first name,
• The actual address of an apartment where the abductor was supposed to have stopped
• The location of Madeleine’s body.

From the British Sunday Express newspaper, you can read the usual vague guesses that are either trivial or impossible to verify (“He took her to his car. There were people walking who saw him but he just looked as if he was a father carrying a sleeping child and they didn’t take any notice.”) But some of the more specific information was also published. Sensibly, the actual addresses given to police were not reported. The supposed abductor’s drawing was published though (which is irresponsible in my view. I refuse to do so, although I have saved the drawing for such time as the actual abductor is caught.) But there were some more specific pieces of information that I want to put on record:

…the man has a pronounced accent and looks and sounds Middle Eastern, possibly Egyptian, and drives a mid-sized dark silver car with a parking permit or some other identifying sticker inside the windscreen on the driver’s side.

[…]

…the man is known as Steve or Stav and took the child to a summer rental apartment in the nearby village of Lagos.

[…]

[The abductor had a] dark silver car, which may have had even darker or black trim.

Mr Oliver said he believes that the abductor may have stopped briefly at a deserted farmhouse east of the town before driving to his eventual destination – a ­furnished room rented out during the summer in nearby Lagos.

(“May have”? How can they say “may have” if they have given police the actual address?)

OK, here we have a fairly clear cut case with some fairly specific information given by the psychics. A name, a picture, even supposedly two addresses. Let’s see how useful this psychic information turns out to be. Let’s see if “Steve or Stav”, looking like the drawing, is actually found. Let’s see if Madeleine’s body is found where the psychics say it is. Shouldn’t take long. This is a high profile case where this lead will be investigated pretty quickly.

Additional Information

The Independent Investigations Group on Carla Baron.  Summary – “every case we investigated was either solved without Baron’s involvement or remains unsolved. Either way, her claims of being a “psychic detective” are completely unsubstantiated.”

Hope these predictions don't come back to haunt us.

Comments

[Techskeptic]

the sad part:

Time and money will be wasted following this nonsense up.

As a parent, I fully understand the overwhelming desire, NEED, to do something..anything, to save your child. If this horror ever happened to me, and I have run out of logical resources, I hope someone is able to convince me to spend my money on charities and/or services that help other poor children or families, rather than give more money to these self-important goons. I'm a relatively logical person, but I'm not 100% sure that I wouldn't fall prey to idiots like that.

[Big Al]

I notice they've waited until the case is getting cold and there's almost no chance of this ever being verified.

I would have thought the sykick woo vibes would have been stronger nearer the time of the event.

But what do I know? I'm only a closed-minded so-called sceptic.

[Thomas]

I wonder if the so-called psychics take drugs? Maybe that's where they get their images.

[GDad]

Keep us informed. This kind of nonsense needs to be exposed.

[AndyD]

We're currently going through a similar situation in Western Australia where three psychics performed at two sold-out stage shows called "Psychic Taskforce" where they claimed to have identified a Perth serial killer (The Claremont Killer).

They publicly released an identikit drawing and supposedly gave name address and other details to police - who dismissed it as worthless.

But at least they had two sellout shows at $135 a head and annoyed the crap out of at least one parent of one of the victims of this long-unsolved crime. So I guess it was worth it.

More on my blog here

[Skeptico]

Yeah I saw that. In my view, that guy looks like Uri Geller. I say arrest him anyway.

[Big Al]

He's just laugh and bend the bars aside with his magic finger.

Sykicks is awesome powerful...

I'd like to see a meta-analysis of all the other Maddie woosters' prognostications showing how their various eldritch powers stack up against each other. Surely we'd just be immediately able to sort them into genuine (all essentially similar in their details) and fake (no better than random guessing)?

But I'm not holding my breath.

[AndyD]

Ha! You're right, the West Oz suspect does look like Geller! Anyone know his whereabouts?