By Jean Christou
LIMASSOL-BASED psychic detective Robert Cracknell has just returned from helping to push forward an investigation into a suspicious death in Australia where for the first time police allowed a psychic to view and handle evidence.
Back in Cyprus yesterday, Cracknell said he had been asked by the family of James O'Connell, 24, to travel to Darwin in the Northern Territories to help solve the case.
Cracknell, 72, at first turned down the request because he was retired but eventually the case ?grabbed me?, he said.
O?Connell?s decomposed body was found in a ditch in a remote area last December, three weeks after he went missing. His burned out car was nearby. He was in the middle of bringing a case of wrongful arrest against seven policemen when he disappeared.
Cracknell said an initial post mortem ruled O?Connell had died of exposure. A second, after the family refused to accept the cause of death, found he may have died of possible suffocation. A third said it could not rule out suspicious death.
He said O?Connell was no stranger to run-ins with the police but during one incident they had pepper-sprayed him, banged his head on the ground and kicked him ?for resisting arrest?.
After he filed suit, a man appeared on the scene just before his disappearance, asking around about O?Connell.
Cracknell said he suspected police involvement in the disappearance from the start. He said when he went to Australia, he went to the scene where O?Connell had been found.
?It was the most amazing thing,? he said. ?The police allowed me to view the burnt-out car and to handle, with gloves of course, all of the forensic evidence.?
From what he observed, Cracknell said the police had obviously only carried out a cursory initial investigation. ?I realised categorically that the police were covering up,? he said.
From the crime scene. Cracknell also deduced that O?Connell had not been killed at that spot but his body had been taken there.
O?Connell?s lawyer also told him that on the day he disappeared, he had gone to the law office and begged to be able to withdraw his case against the seven officers. He did the same thing at the police station.
?The following day he disappeared,? said Cracknell.
?He was terrified of the police and he had said to his mother if anything happened to him, that it was the police [that did it].?
Cracknell said the positive outcome of his visit had been renewed interest in the case because he had managed to establish a motive that had forced the authorities to finally treat O?Connell?s death as suspicious. He himself clearly suspects the involvement of officers in the disappearance and death of O?Connell.
?The whole thing was a whitewash,? he said.
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.ph ... 3&cat_id=1
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