Sleuths or scammers?

It's great TV fodder but what are we really seeing when psychics dabble with crime scenes? PHILIP MATTHEWS investigates.

Laugh if you want, but Sensing Murder might be the most important TV show of our times. It all boils down to this: the show is either a colossal fraud, an entertainment conspiracy the size of Watergate, or it's the most amazing and incontrovertible evidence of paranormal activity ever recorded. And it has to be one or the other. It can't be neither.

For those unfamiliar with the show, this is the set-up: on separate days, two psychics are given a photo of the victim of an unsolved murder. The show's producers say they know nothing going in. They are filmed as they communicate with the victim's spirit and deduce, before our very eyes, the background of the victim, the facts of the case and the cause of death. Sometimes they name a killer. Then the psychic is bundled into a car and using their sixth sense as a kind of GPS locates the spot where the killing happened. If we're lucky, we might also learn where the body went.

So far, so astonishing. Sensing Murder is into its third high-rating series and has made paranormal celebrities of New Zealand psychics Kelvin Cruickshank and Sue Nicholson and Australian Deb Webber. It's been a success for Wellington's Ninox Television, whose managing director David Baldock bought the format from a Danish company. Along with selling New Zealand-made episodes to networks in Britain, Australia, France, Norway and either the Netherlands or Germany Baldock can't remember which Ninox is helping negotiate the sale of the format to the United States, meaning that we could see an American version. And while the format is still owned by the Danish, Baldock is a creative consultant for international versions.

But, paranormal evidence or entertainment conspiracy? Christchurch businessman Tony Andrews is convinced it's the latter. Last year he put an offer online $20,000 to the Sensing Murder psychics if they can prove their abilities in a basic test. Surely it would be money for jam? They could keep the $20,000 or give it to charity. Andrews emailed the offer to the Sensing Murder psychics. Months later, there's still no reply from the current three, but Australian psychic Scott Russell Hill, from an earlier series, politely declined.

So is Andrews on an anti-psychic crusade? He says that he also likes to pop into the discussion forum on the show's website to remind the fans that for all their apparent success, the psychics have not solved a single murder.  

Well, Andrews says, what looks like a crusade is really for "entertainment purposes only". But $20,000 of his own money sounds serious?

"I guess I take it seriously in that they use people's grief for their financial gain, fame and fortune.

"I'm not against people having beliefs. I'm a libertarian as much as I'm a sceptic. If anyone tried to stop people having beliefs, I would campaign just as strongly against that."

How does Andrews think the show works? Most sceptics talk of psychics as actually being skilled in "cold reading" techniques.

New Zealand sceptic Vicki Hyde has described this as a combination of basic psychology, flattery, suggestion and statistics. Start with a general statement you have some concerns in your life, you had a much-loved pet as a child and then narrow down your responses based on facial expressions and other signals from the subject. The trick is that subjects give psychics more assistance than they realise.

Some critics suspect that the Sensing Murder psychics are just fishing like this, with Ninox editing out every bad guess or dead end. But Andrews opts instead for something known as "hot reading" the show's psychics know the answers in advance and are acting the whole process.

In Andrews' scenario, the producers show the psychics a summary of the known facts. But there are always unverifiable details that go beyond what even the police know and the psychics usually get these same details on separate days? Simple they talk beforehand and get their psychic stories straight.

In other words, conspiracy. Andrews has no evidence, but his informed viewing of the show suggests that the psychics aren't doing cold reading and "assuming they're not genuine", it's the only possibility.

So is Ninox prepared to put its mediums where Andrews' money is? David Baldock sighs. He's not interested in these tests, this "circus approach". He's already tested them. When the show was developed, he auditioned 75 psychics by giving them an obscure but solved murder case to work on.

Many well-known New Zealand psychics "did not get within cooee of the case we were showing them". But the ones they use now were surprisingly accurate. And "as the show's gone on, their skills and our ability to get the best out of our environment have improved".

What's his personal view? "I've got an open mind. I'm not locked into one view or the other. But I am astounded at what comes out during our psychic readings. I have no rational explanation for what is basically an irrational process. But there is something there.

"And anything that can shed light or give an opportunity for some progress to be made in a case should be welcomed. I mean, these are unsolved murders. There are murderers walking around. And they're just forgotten."

It should be pointed out that Baldock is a well-regarded documentary maker and that Ninox has an impressive track record. Like many independent producers, Ninox found the going tough in the late 1990s and nearly went into receivership in 2001. The booming genre of reality TV has saved the company besides Sensing Murder, Ninox also produces Mitre 10 Dream Home and Location, Location, Location.

But Baldock likes to emphasise that his documentary nous always stands behind what Ninox do. How does he define the show reality, documentary, entertainment?

"I call it reality. I don't know what that means. It's part-documentary, it's part-investigative. Is it entertaining? Yes it is. Is it an entertainment show? No, it's not. We're dealing with murders here. We're dealing with real people's lives. I don't consider that entertainment. But we've given these cases the kind of twist that's enabled them to get the on-air exposure and presence they would otherwise never have.

"No matter who these people are, they are still someone's son or daughter. The Blake Stott story was just tragic. That family, their hopes, their dreams just wiped out. And it didn't add up."

The Blake Stott episode screened earlier this month. In 2006, the 19-year-old Stott was found burnt to death in his car, which was parked off the road near Owaka, South Otago. The coroner could identify no cause of the blaze and ruled that the death was an accident. But the family wasn't convinced and contacted Sensing Murder.

Or so a dramatic voiceover said. Actually, Baldock concedes, local police suggested that the family contact private investigator Duncan Holland, a former police officer who does investigative work for the show. And he flicked the case on to Sensing Murder. But directly or indirectly, all five cases in the current series come from families contacting Ninox. This points towards a growing acceptance, Baldock says.

In the first series, all the stories were initiated by Ninox. In the second series, it was about half and half.

The Stott episode is interesting for another reason. It's not an unsolved murder. Which throws up a whole new set of issues for any sceptic who watched it carefully.

This is what could seem fishy. Nicholson and Cruickshank flew into Dunedin on different days knowing nothing about the case. They were collected at the airport and taken to a hotel room, where a TV crew had already set up, and started their readings. Given the premise of the show, they would have assumed from the beginning that Stott was murdered.

So why did we see the psychics suddenly decide, during their readings, that the death wasn't accidental? Cruickshank even paraphrases the police response: "We don't really know how it happened so let's just shelve it." Nicholson gasps in shock: "Someone did this on purpose!"

But on a show called Sensing Murder, you would expect that to be the case, so why did she seem surprised? Baldock has an explanation: not only have the psychics worked out how the crime was done, they've also intuited all the ins and outs of the police investigation. To buy this, you have to believe that Stott's ghost isn't only able to tell Cruickshank and Nicholson about his last few hours, it also has an account of what happened back on the terrestrial plane during the months that followed.

It sounds unlikely, but Baldock has staked his reputation on this being the way that it works.

"The psychics are told nothing," Baldock stresses. "Even after the readings, they're not told if they're right or wrong. I wasn't on the shoot in Owaka, but I was a nervous wreck waiting for the call in terms of how those reads went. They could easily have said it's an accident. So I wasn't sure if we had a show or not. But to get the call that both came up with exactly the same scenario ..."

It was a good day for Sensing Murder. But its critics might have another word for this one you find in the title of Eating Media Lunch's controversial report, "Sensing Bullshit". That report included Australian footage shot in 2004 when a current-affairs show did a sting on Deb Webber three reporters invented dead relatives and kept a hidden camera running as Webber "communicated" with them.

Case closed? Not entirely. Yes, Baldock saw that report and thought "it was an interesting look at the jokes and rip-offs that have happened through the years", but he felt it lacked balance. Why not also include footage from a sting done by the TV3 consumer show Target? That time, Cruickshank was put in a similar position, but managed to out the fakes. "That would have put the cat among the pigeons."

And what can Baldock say to those sceptics who think that the psychics simply get a quick briefing from the police file? He confirms that before the psychics are flown in, a team of researchers led by Duncan Holland do their own investigation into the case. And that sometimes the police will co-operate. The most helpful are retired officers who still have an unsolved case in their career.

"They give us enormous support and information," Baldock says. "Sometimes they're allowed to refresh their memories from the file. But I can't recall if we've ever been given full access to the police files. I don't think we have. Even Duncan doesn't get access. But in many cases we get confirmation of whether we're right or not in terms of what is known or what is on the police file."

In the case of Blake Stott, the conclusion that the psychics reached that the fire was started by two guys tossing a lit cigarette into Stott's car as a prank wasn't new. It had already been heard as a rumour around Owaka. After the show was filmed in March, Ninox handed its information over to Dunedin police. Names of suspects that would be bleeped out for legal reasons were unedited. There was the clear description of a vehicle. It was all on a plate.

And? The day after the show was aired, Inspector Dave Campbell, area police commander for Dunedin and Clutha, said that police would investigate any new evidence raised in the programme. This remained his tight-lipped response when The Press called him a week later.

But as Andrews and others have pointed out, the track record hasn't been great. In June 2006, Webber gave West Auckland police the name of a suspect in the 1976 killing of teenager Tracey Ann Patient. No arrest has followed.

The same year, the psychics identified a spot near Tauranga as the burial place of Luana Williams, who disappeared in 1986. The police got digging and found some bones unfortunately they were pre-European.

Have psychics ever actually helped police? Almost every high-profile case from Ben Smart and Olivia Hope to Iraena Asher brings them out of the woodwork, phoning in their dreams. In the US, this approaches epidemic proportions last month, Dave Hartman, the father of dead Arizona teenager Jackie Hartman, said that at least 60 psychics contacted him after his daughter went missing "and every one of them was farfetched". They included one of the world's most celebrated Allison DuBois, whose life is the basis for the TV drama Medium.

But there is a recorded case of a psychic helping New Zealand police. In 2006, after a call from a psychic, police in Palmerston North found the belongings of a man who had been missing for a week. The location was unknown to the psychic, but she guided the search team straight there. The body was found weeks later, much farther away.

Which is why the police are still able to reiterate their official line with confidence: "Information from a psychic has never been instrumental in the resolution of a case in New Zealand."

Yes, Baldock has heard the criticism that nearly 20 murders have been investigated on his show and no arrests have been made.

"A lot of people say, why haven't you solved any of these cases? I say, Sensing Murder's not about solving cases. If there is evidence or a new perspective that the police can pick up, they have to do the investigation. They have to make the call about whether what is identified will stand up in court."

And what about the grieving families? Baldock says that Sensing Murder won't do a story without the family's support and that Ninox has never had unhappy or disappointed relatives come back to them.

But "we have had families who have been disappointed about the lack of police response after the show".

A different story was told online in February by someone who said that she is the sister of Tracey Ann Patient. It was the usual account of a TV experience: the producers were very friendly in advance and didn't want to know her afterwards. But what did she make of the paranormal claims?

"At the risk of having loads of people ridiculing me, I do believe in life after death," she wrote. "I have seen ghosts, spirits, call them what you will both before and after my sister was murdered, in England and New Zealand ... I haven't called on them or anything; they have just turned up of their own accord. I know I sound like a nutter, but I also know what I've seen.

"I have never seen or heard from my sister and I don't believe those psychics did either. It was painful, to say the least, for me to watch the programme, but I felt that I had to. As soon as they started to say that Tracey was talking to them, I knew it was a load of rubbish."

 

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