Well, we all know how wrong psychics are. Both empirically and morally. This should put a skeptical boot up ’em. H/T John Grove:
A year after Amanda Berry disappeared in Cleveland, her mother appeared on “The Montel Williams Show” to speak to a psychic about what happened to her daughter.
Psychic Sylvia Browne, who has made a career of televised psychic readings, told Louwanna Miller on a 2004 episode of the show that her daughter was dead, causing Miller to break down in tears on the show’s set.
“She’s not alive, honey,” Browne told Miller on the show, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. “Your daughter’s not the kind who wouldn’t call.”
Miller told the newspaper that she believed “98 percent” in what Browne told her. Miller died a year later from heart failure.
On Monday, Berry was found alive after she broke free from a home in Cleveland where she says she has been kept for the past decade.
Browne did not return phone calls seeking comment today by ABC News. The Montel Williams show, through syndicator CBS, also did not return calls for comment. The show no longer airs new episodes.
It’s not the first time that Browne, and other psychics, have come under fire for their involvement in law enforcement cases.
In 2003, Browne incorrectly told the parents of missing teen Shawn Hornbeck that their son was dead, and his body could be found somewhere near “two jagged boulders,” according to her premonition.
Nearly four years later, Hornbeck was found alive, and Browne was widely criticized in the media for causing the Hornbecks additional grief.
A website called “Stop Sylvia Browne,” dedicated to cataloguing Browne’s purported failures at prediction, sprang up in 2006.
Last year, Dwayne Baker told ABC News that after his son went missing in 2007, he was flooded with calls from psychics offering potential leads into the whereabouts of Travis Baker.
“It’s very hard,’ Dwayne Baker said. “I went through everything. My son was missing for two years, two months and 12 days. “Psychics called me. I even received a DVD in the mail that a guy claimed he could talk to the dead and this was Travis’ voice, with no return address. I don’t understand why people would want to do that.”
“The psychics…” said Baker, 45, before pausing to let out a long sigh. “I hate to say how many of those called me and said they knew where Travis was. My mother and wife went to one and paid them $100.”
Travis Baker’s remains were located in 2009.
Brad Garret, a former special agent with the FBI and ABC News consultant said that alleged tips from psychics rarely help solve a case.
“As far as finding a victim, finding remains, finding evidence or in any way helping to solve the case, it’s never been my experience,” he said. “So, it’s really a disservice to victims.”
“We’ve never had a psychic lead that turns out to be correct,” said Lt. Dave Parker, of the Anchorage, Alaska, police department, after 18-year-old Samantha Koenig went missing in February, 2012.
Today, Brown faced backlash on social media for her incorrect prediction about Amanda Berry. It is unclear whether she has helped to solve a crime with her psychic predictions.
“Psychics make me sick. Here’s an example: Sylvia Browne told Amanda Berry’s Mum (now dead) her daughter was dead,” wrote Twitter user Chris McBriarty.
