psychics and police work

[yak]

We've all heard the stories, but has there even been a documented, hard-evidence case of a psychic being brought in to help police solve a crime, where the psychic actually helped with no prior inside knowledge? As in, the psycic either found the corpse, or predicted the next one, or found the killer, etc.

[Rhythmdvl]

Rosebud (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=2604) knew you were going to ask that question!

[egkelly]

I recall reading, some years ago, about a Dutch criminologist who did a massive study about these psychics attempting to assist in criminal investigations. His conclusions were that in NOT ONE SINGLE case, did a "psychic" ever provide the location of a body, or ever actually provide evidence leading to apprehension of a perpetrator.
This pretty much tallies with what I see in the newspapers-these "psychics" are frauds. Any success is probably due to chance.
Sorry!

[Rosebud]

Actually, for a brief second Rosebud thought, "My God, somebody bumped my first ever thread?!" ;)

yak, several people posted several interesting links in the older thread. They're definitely worth following; one is an article by our own David B.

[(Tim)]

There was a Cecil's Mailbag (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpsychiccop.html) article on this topic earlier this year. I'm guessing it was in response to Rosebud's thread, but it wasn't linked in there...

[yak]

Oops. Didn't see the earlier thread. Thanks for pointing it out!