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To Find Missing College Student, ‘Psychic Detective’ Enlisted
Help From the Other Side
April 15— There are nearly 100,000 active missing person cases in the United States alone — most of them children and young women.
But too often, the cases grow cold, leaving grieving relatives with no hope — and no answers.
Carla Baron knows that desperation well. For 20 years, she says, families have been pleading with her to help solve their cases.
Baron, who lives in North Hollywood, Calif., is a self-described “psychic detective.” She has no formal training — but she says she has a wealth of spiritual contacts.
Recently, she was contacted by police working on the case of 21-year-old Penn State University student Cindy Song, who disappeared after attending a Halloween party in 2001 in State College, Pa.
She began work with State College police Detective Brian Sprinkle. Sprinkle said psychics were never a part of any training he had in the past.
But he added, “At this point, we have no clues where Cindy is. We have no crime scene. We don’t even have a body to investigate.”
Search for Answers
Baron began by laying out tarot cards while looking at a picture of Song. With Sprinkle and Primetime’s John Quiñones looking on, she addressed questions to Song, asking for clues.
Sprinkle had also given Baron the name of two possible suspects, Hugo Selenski and Michael Kerkowski.
Selenski has pleaded not guilty in another case — to killing two of five people whose remains were found on his property. Kerkowski, a known associate, was also found dead on Selenski’s property. Selenski denies any involvement in the Song case.
“She’s telling me she’s in a different place now. She now knows why this happened to her,” Baron said. Baron continued, asking, “Cindy, how did you lose your life?”
“This was somebody obsessed with her,” Baron said.
Sprinkle asked, “Is it Selenski or Kerkowski?”
“They were at the helm,” Baron said. “They were orchestrating, but the person, she knew the person.”
Then, Baron asked, “All right, Cindy, where is, where are your remains?”
The Rate of Return
Three years ago, convicted killer Rafael Tello brutally killed his wife and 13-year-old daughter in Southern California, and then dismembered their bodies.
Baron told investigators she thought Tello’s wife and daughter had been burned in an incinerator. “I’m going to a factory — because I am seeing these tall like pillars, smoky things, smokestacks,” she said on recordings made at the time. “They’re probably a 40-mile drive from where they were first dumped.”
Two weeks later, police found a skull and an arm bone identified as belonging to the victims. The remains were found 38 miles south of where the bodies were first dumped — near an industrial plant with three smokestacks.
In 2002, Tello pleaded guilty and was sentenced to at least 50 years in prison.
Then there is the case of Trevor Israel, who disappeared near Indianapolis on Aug. 12, 2003. Police had used a plane, helicopter and search dogs to search for him, with no success.
Five other psychics told Trevor’s father, Lloyd Israel, that his son was alive and well and had simply run away. But on recordings made by Lloyd Israel, Baron is heard telling the desperate father his only son is dead. She says Trevor took a handgun from the family home and drove to the countryside to kill himself.
Lloyd Israel said it was hard to believe, and he wondered why no one had found his son’s body.
The crops and then the snow had hid his remains. Lloyd Israel said Baron told him where to find his son’s remains seven months ago — but he didn’t want to believe it, and he did not share that information with police.
A Skeptical Eye
Last month, Detective Dave Tilford went to some corn fields as part of his investigation into Trevor Israel’s disappearance. With the snow gone, he found the body. But psychics, he says, had nothing to do with it.
“I was not aware of the psychic that was involved with the father, the one out West, till eight days after we found the remains of Trevor,” he said.
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, calls the work of psychic detectives a scam.
“They are playing on the emotions of people that are desperate, that are hurt, that are grieving, and in that case they even waste the time of police departments that are actually doing the search,” he said.
“Not all the police know that this is a scam and it doesn’t work, and that this is phony. Where are these psychics when we want to find people like Osama bin Laden and Jimmy Hoffa?” Shermer continued. “They can’t find people.”
Baron says she recognizes the concerns of the critics, but she asserts that she sees everything she says she does.
“I see it, I say it, and, and this is what I proffer and this is what I give to the investigation,” she said. “But I don’t go beyond that if I’m not shown.”
A Rocky View
In the Song case, Baron accompanied Quiñones and Sprinkle on a drive around eastern Pennsylvania. She said she was looking for some railroad tracks, water and “some sort of generator.”
At one point, she said she got a painful “vision” with some vital clues. “I saw rocks on the bank,” she said. “There is going to be a part of the bank, that has rocks … bigger stones … It’s not just water, right at the bank, right at trees.”
Sprinkle sighted an area that looked like Baron’s description. They pulled over to get a closer look. “That’s exactly what it looks like,” Baron said.
Looking at the craggy landscape, Baron said, “They didn’t walk down here with Cindy. They threw her.
“There’s gotta be something. Maybe like a shred of fabric, something. Something around here. Because No. 1, I was hurting right here really bad as soon as we drive on this road. This is the closest thing to what I have seen. This is so eerily scary to me.”
There has not been anything certain yet on what happened to Cindy Song.
But a source tells Primetime that an informant has given details possibly linking Song’s disappearance and the area where Baron says she got the strongest vibes. Police are still investigating.
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