Mediums/psychics who ‘help the police’ re: murder etc?

[TartanTexan]

Am I correct in my thinking:

1. No psychic/medium has even given information to the UK police that has directly solved a cold case?

1. UK police have stated they have never worked with psychics/mediums to solve cases?

1. If a psychic claims they have worked with the UK police and therefore, alone, successfully solved murder cases etc, then they must be untruthful?

1. Do the UK consult mediums etc but this is not in the public domain?

Thank you.

Sorry, Palo, I thought you were suggesting this was evidence for psychic crime-solving success!

I'm uk police tho not a murder detective, tho can't say I've ever heard of such a thing in my force.

I'd be very sceptical.

I worked in a murder team for 12 years and we would never even consider this... Ever

There is a reason we are not supposed to understand

Please explain this cryptic comment.

@alaric77 - I think a psychic helped in the Holly Wells/Jessica Chapman murders

How did he help exactly, beyond saying they were dead, which is a 50/50 punt of being right?

If we understood the universe and everything in it we would have no reason to live to experience or to grow. It also depends on your current understanding of life and beliefs. This is a spiritual one.

Take the bible for example. Why are we not told every secret of the universe of life and beyond in it? Why are we not supposed to know? Why are we born? I can answer that from a spiritual point of view but not a religous one.

If we understood the universe and everything in it we would have no reason to live to experience or to grow.

I'm sorry, I completely fail to see the logic in that sentence. It's like saying if 2+2=4 then blue octagon.

Both your paragraphs contain false premises - that we have to have mysteries to make life worth living, and that the bible provides anything more than Bronze Age knowledge of the universe.

I worked in a murder team for 12 years and we would never even consider this... Ever

Obviously not the same part of the country that I was in. However I did say that it wasn't a case of being approached, it had already been a topic of conversation during the earlier stages of the investigation.

There is no such thing as a psychic. I’ve watched “The Mentalist”.

Interesting article on the BBC about spiritualism. There's lovely example of cold reading at the start - who doesn't know a Dave, or someone with breathing difficulties? Charlie will go home thinking she's actually communicated with her dead grandfather, when actually the "medium" just threw out random suggestions and she filled in the missing bits.

SpringForEver-you are either lying or deluded. Or the police were humouring you.

Thanks for calling me a liar. I have two words for you and the second one is off. I m sure you know more about the murder than I did.

We saw a programme filmed in America and the 'psychic' predicted what the murderers looked like in two separate unsolved attacks. It was filmed in the 90s. We watched it last year. We looked up the murders the 'psychics' got the faces of the two murderers correct.
How could they have known?

I didn’t call you a liar. I said that was one of three explanations. You are welcome to choose any of the three.

What was the programme, lenonsquinky?

The uk police have used psychic mediums

From an article in the guardian:

In 2006, a group called UK Sceptics formally asked every police force if they had ever used a psychic. All the replies were a predictable "no" – except one. The Metropolitan Police admitted that in one case in 1965 a psychic had "played a major part"...

*... The psychic's involvement is still unclear... that no body was ever found and the case is still officially "unsolved".

Perhaps in cases of desperation or at the request of a victim’s family this may have happened in the past, but it would be unofficial and not part of usual procedure. At least I should bloody well hope it isn’t.
So called psychics interfering with, say, a murder case, is morally reprehensible attention seeking behaviour.

Lemonsquinky, I want to know more. What information was already in the public domain? Because if the police were looking for a short Hispanic man, saying that he's around 5'5" with dark hair and eyes isn't a hit.

Also, how many other predictions did the "psychic" make? What was his/her hit rate? Throwing out random descriptions will produce something that can be claimed as a success eventually. How specific was the information given? - correctly predicting a V-shaped scar above the right eyebrow is impressive, but claiming a tall man with fair hair, thin lips and blue eyes in the Midwest is much less so because the area had a lot of settlers from Scandinavia.

I wish I could remember BertrandRussell. It was on one of the crime channels. It had a woman psychic with long blonde hair and a man with a wavy haired mullet. It was set in America. I'm really sceptical about tv psychics, so I was really surprised when we googled the crimes and the men looked like the descriptions.

Honestly listen to the police on the thread - they don't use mediums in the uk.

They got an artist to draw a picture of the killer with them giving the description.

I really hope taxpayer money isn't being wasted on scam artists and delusionals. It's bad enough that the NHS only recently stopped funding the bullshite that is homeopathy.

Do these 'psychics' get paid or are they just volunteers?

One of the most famous missing presumed dead cases is Madeleine McCann.

Given the huge amount of publicity that would happen if a so called psychic would get if they came forward and revealed where her body is, why have none of these self proclaimed psychics revealed what happened?

Because they can't.

Even if the psychic concerned wanted no publicity they could surely have sent an anonymous tip off- and she would be found.

It’s all a load of bollocks.