Bill Ward has worked on more than 700 police investigations across the country, everything from missing persons to homicides to bank robberies.
Most of the time he doesn't leave his house to work. He says he just sees what happened.
Ward, of Lockport, says he is a psychic, an ability he thinks developed after working as a medic during the Vietnam War.
He doesn't seek recognition or payment for his services, and he doesn't contact police. They call him, he said.
"Why should police believe me? They don't have to. I just tell them what I see," he said. "Pictures just start coming in, just like I'm watching TV. It was scary at first, but you get kind of used to it."
Ward said he prefers to remain incognito, only working with one member of a department in each case. He wouldn't name any specific cases he has worked on, or whether he's currently working on anything locally.
"I'm always on something," he said.
So far, psychics have not played an active role in the search for missing Plainfield mother Lisa Stebic, who was last seen April 30 at her home.
Psychic consultations
In 1995, two Will County sheriff's deputies found the body of 10-year-old Christopher Meyer a week after he was abducted while fishing along the Kankakee River.
One of the deputies said a psychic told him to look east of where a pair of underwear the same size and brand worn by Christopher was found. The boy's body was found about two miles east of that location, in a shallow grave along a path in a hunting area.
A psychic indirectly aided volunteers during a search for Stebic earlier this month. On May 12, during a massive search in Plainfield, one party found the body of an elderly man in a field near Aux Sable Grove Cemetery in Kendall County.
That group hadn't checked in with search organizers, said family spokeswoman Melanie Greenberg. But they based their search site on advice from a psychic, who told them to look for a body near a cemetery.
Greenberg said Lisa Stebic's family has received several unsolicited readings from psychics and e-mail from people asking them to consider consulting one. As of yet, they have not.
Plainfield Deputy Police Chief Mark Eiting said he was not aware of any psychics contacting investigators regarding Stebic's disappearance, nor have police sought assistance from a psychic. But if one called, they would listen.
"We take everything, because you never know," Eiting said. "Every bit of information might be that piece of information we need."
'Amazingly poor' records
While most psychics are sincere and genuinely believe they're helping, their impressions aren't always meaningful, said Benjamin Radford, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
The Skeptical Inquirer investigates claims such as psychic power from a scientific point of view. Radford has done extensive research on psychic detectives and has appeared as an expert source on CNN, National Geographic and Discovery Channel.
"What the public has to understand about police using psychic detectives, is (police) can't ignore information from any source," Radford said. "If you have a missing loved one, you don't care where the information comes from if it'll help. It's the same case with police."
Historically, psychics have an "amazingly poor" record of finding missing persons, he said. Some psychics try to improve their record by providing vague premonitions that can be tailored to fit the outcome of a case.
"One very common one is to say the missing person will be found near water," he said. "When they find the body, often it will be near water. That could mean in a stream, a lake, a river, by a Coke can, a power plant. Just about anywhere's near water, depending on how you want to define it."
He pointed out two high-profile cases psychics publicly predicted. One psychic said Jennifer Wilbanks, the "runaway bride" who disappeared to avoid her wedding in April 2005, would be found dead. She turned up three days later in Albuquerque, N.M.
Another psychic said Shawn Hornbeck, a boy who was reported missing from his Missouri home in 2002, was dead. Hornbeck was discovered in January alive, still living with his abductor.
"When you start to look at these things more critically, a lot of these claims start to fall apart," Radford said. "If a lawyer lost as many cases as psychics do, they'd be laughed out of the profession."
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/hera ... S1.article
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