This article originally appeared in the September / October 2013 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Subscribe today and read this entire issue. You will also gain access to our full archive, dating back to 1976.
An update of our “Psychic Defective” analysis examines developments in eleven cases Sylvia Browne made predictions about, explores a new reading, and scrutinizes her other failed predictions about the papacy and American politics.
Sylvia Browne continues to offer $850 phone readings,
sell books, deliver public lectures, and head her own
church as she remains one of the most famous
psychics in the United States. My 2010 coauthored
article, “Psychic Defective: Sylvia Browne’s History of
Failure,” compiled every publicly available
prediction Browne made on missing person and death
cases, totaling 115 readings, and concluded Sylvia
Browne was mostly correct zero times, mostly wrong in
twenty-five cases, and had ninety unknown outcomes
(Skeptical Inquirer,
March/April 2010). In the last three years there have
been developments in the
cases of Amanda Berry, Nicholle Coppler, Jerry Cushey,
Alexandra Ducsay, Dustin Ivey, Hunter Horgan, Amanda
Lankey, Christopher Mader, Dena McCluskey, Michelle
O’Keefe, and Pat Viola that were
listed as having unknown outcomes.
This article updates the previous analysis with a new
reading, bringing the total to 116 cases, and
investigates changes in those eleven cases with
previously unknown conclusions by showing Browne mostly
wrong in eight, with three remaining in the unknown
category. The result? The evidence demonstrates
Browne still has never been mostly correct in a single
case, thirty-three cases have mostly incorrect
predictions, and eighty-three cases have unverified
outcomes. The article also looks at the human toll
Browne’s predictions have had and other notable
predictions that can be finally evaluated.
On April 21, 2003, Amanda Berry went missing a day
before her seventeenth birthday. Louwana Miller, Berry’s
mother, was desperate to find her daughter and
believed Browne was the key to solving the
disappearance. In 2004, Miller was flown to
The Montel Williams Show where Browne told the
grief
stricken mother that “she’s not alive,” mentioned
“water” as a location where Berry was, and said she was
dead because “your daughter was not the type that
would not have called you” (Radford 2013). Besides
claiming that a potential person of interest was “sort
of Cuban-looking, short kind of stocky build,
heavyset,” she said he was “maybe 21, something like
that, 21, 22.” When Miller asked if she would ever see
her daughter, Browne told the bereaved mother,
“yeah, in heaven, on the other side.”
The impact of Miller’s appearance with Browne on
Montel was crushing for a mother who held out
hope her daughter would be found alive. In a
detailed interview with Miller by Stephen Hudak, the
mother said she believed Browne “98 percent” (Hudak
2004). When Miller died of heart failure in 2006,
reporter Regina Brett explained how hard Miller worked
at drawing attention to the case and looking for her
daughter “before that psychic did her in”
(Brett 2006). According to that article, Browne was more
specific than what was aired on television, telling
Miller that Amanda “died on her birthday,”
“she didn’t suffer,” and “that her black hooded jacket
was in a dumpster with DNA on it.”
Browne’s prediction was wrong. On May 6, 2013, Berry
fled after being held in torturous conditions for ten
years, and police called Berry a hero for her
escape that led law enforcement to her kidnapper and two
other abducted girls, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.
DeJesus had been missing since 2004 and
Knight was kidnapped in 2000. In the chilling phone call
to police, Berry identified herself as Amanda Berry,
missing for ten years and identified her
captor as Ariel Castro, a fifty-two-year-old man. In a
statement posted on Browne’s website, a message says
Sherry Cole, Amanda Berry’s cousin, “reached
out to Sylvia this morning to let her know that she
supports her, loves her, knows Sylvia never claims to be
100 percent right, but wanted to let her know
that she was accurate in her description of the
perpetrators at the time” (“Sylvia’s Statement on Amanda
Berry” 2013). That Castro, born in Puerto Rico, is
“Cuban-looking” is debatable for several reasons,
including the fact that being Cuban is a nationality
that includes a broad category of people who have
ancestors from Africa, Europe, or both. Thus, in the
broadest sense many people, not just Latin Americans,
could fit that description. Browne was wrong
about the kidnapper’s age; she claimed in 2004 that the
person involved was about twenty-one or twenty-two, but
Castro is currently fifty-two, making her
claim off by two decades, as he was in his early forties
at the time. Her description was also that the suspect
was “short,” but an online booking
photograph shows he is about sixty-five inches (AP Photo
2013), which is only slightly smaller than the most
recent U.S. government data that lists an
average height of 67.1 inches for Hispanic males between
forty and fifty-nine and 69.5 inches of all males
between fifty and fifty-nine (United States
Department of Health and Human Services 2010). Castro
may have a “stocky build,” but he does not appear to be
“heavyset.” The website statement also
referred to Browne’s description of the “perpetrators,”
despite police announcing Castro “ran the show and he
acted alone” (Dolan et al. 2013). This
reading is moved into the wrong category of the “Psychic
Defective” list.
Browne remains relatively quiet on Berry’s rescue aside
from saying her “heart goes out to Amanda Berry,” but in
2012 Browne’s website posted a video of
her 2002 Montel appearance about Nicholle
Coppler. In citing the case as a “validation,” Browne
wrote she accurately told the mother that Nicholle
Coppler “was no longer alive and could be located in or
under the house and that the person who killed her was
also involved with both young boys and
girls” (“Webcast Previews” 2012). When Coppler went
missing in 1999, she ran away from home and met an older
man, Glen Fryer. Police suspected Fryer was
involved in the disappearance early on, and in August
2001 they not only found Coppler’s identification at his
house but also her hair and photos. He was
arrested for rape and child pornography after police
retrieved videos and photos of him raping underage
girls, including a girl who was murdered in
Kentucky in 2000. Fryer, who was a suspect in his wife’s
murder as well, agreed to a plea deal, but on February
18, 2002, he committed suicide before
telling detectives what he did to Coppler.
Nine months after the guilty plea and suspect’s
death in 2002, Nicholle’s mother, Krista Coppler,
appeared with Browne in November 2002 on
Montel where she told Krista the obvious
outcome that Coppler is deceased. The mother asked, “Do
you know where she’s at?” and Browne replied,
“She’s right near his house.” Krista then asked Browne,
“Is she in his basement?” and Browne responded vaguely
with “yeah, in the house or under the
house.” According to Lima News in 2012, “police
found her skeleton after the house was demolished and
while the foundation was being dug out”
(Sowinski 2012). Out of the entire reading Browne was
correct on the most likely scenario given Fryer’s guilty
plea, suicide, connection to two previous
murders, and the evidence: Coppler was deceased. Her
other predictions about Coppler being “under” the house,
“near” the house, that she was “smothered,”
that Fryer transported girls “across state lines,” that
she did not leave the house, that people named Kevin and
Billy were involved, three males were
involved, or that she was killed out of fear for
reporting Fryer’s crimes are either wrong or
unsubstantiated. For example, Coppler’s remains cannot
be
“near” or “under” the house while also being “in” the
house.
In total, Browne’s “validated” statements for the
Coppler reading were one or, at best, two out of ten
predictions (counting the body buried next to the
foundation as either “in” or “under” the house as per
Browne’s website claim). Accepting the body as being
“in” the house makes Browne’s two other
statements about the remains resting “near” or “under”
the house incorrect. Therefore in this reading with ten
claims, Browne has a 10 percent or, at best,
20 percent accuracy, while 20 percent of her statements
were wrong and the remaining 60 percent of her
statements, including cause of death and possible
accomplices, are unknown. Due to a lack of evidence that
could either confirm or deny Browne’s other six
statements, this reading remains in the unknown
outcome category. This case is also a revealing look at
how Browne operates. In the transcript, it was Krista’s
statements about Fryer’s basement that
prompted Browne to focus on the home’s interior.
Furthermore, nearly ten years lapsed between the reading
and finding her remains; law enforcement found
the deceased and Browne played no role in police
locating the body.
Browne was also proved wrong in her predictions about
the August 1992 murder of Hunter Horgan, a priest at St.
John’s Episcopal Church in Louisiana. In
1997, Browne was paid $400 by local police for the
reading in which she claimed, “The priest was killed by
a ‘young mulatto’ homosexual who was enraged by
Hunter’s rejection of his advances” (McMillan 1997). The
psychic said, “Someone was in love with the minister and
he [the minister] wasn’t predisposed to
be in love with a man” and the “priest was trying to
help him” (McMillan 1997). While Browne said she
expected the perpetrator “to get caught,” she claimed
that “somebody with the street name of ‘King’ directed
gang people to do it,” but when asked for a name she
declined, saying, “she is concerned about the
ethics of doing so” (McMillan 1997).
In 2007, the investigation was reignited in what turned
out to be a highly unusual case that Browne failed to
predict. After re-interviewing two men,
police accused Derrick Odomes, an African American who
lived across from the church cemetery, of robbing and
murdering Horgan and obtained DNA and
fingerprints from Odomes that linked him to the crime.
As it turned out, Horgan was robbed. Both his wallet and
car were stolen, and police found his pants
pockets were “turned inside out” (Monroe 2011). The
trial was slow to move forward because Odomes’s lawyer
argued he should be tried as juvenile, because
Odomes was fourteen in August 1992 and therefore legally
a juvenile. In August 2011, Odomes, at age thirty-three
was found guilty for the murder he
committed as a fourteen year old. The judge sentenced
Odomes to incarceration until he was twenty-one, but
since he was over that age he did not serve any
time and faces life in prison for other charges (Nolan
2011). As for Browne’s predictions on the murder, a gang
was not involved, multiple people did not
commit the crime, no “homosexual advances” were
motivating factors, there was no evidence Odomes loved
Horgan, no mentions about Odomes being “mulatto,”
and no person named “King” was involved. Browne’s
prediction is placed in the wrong category, since most
of her claims were not supported by fact or they
indeed contradicted what was presented at trial.
In 2003, Browne gave a reading to Sonya Helmantoler on
Montel about the 2001 disappearance of her
brother Jerry Cushey Jr. A transcript of the
reading could not be located, but a journalist at the
time wrote: “Browne said Cushey had been struck on the
head and choked and his body dumped,” pointing
to “how hard it is to find a body in water” (Smydo
2003). Another journalist wrote that “Browne told
Helmantoler on
The Montel Williams Show that
Jerry was killed because he saw something he shouldn’t”
(Brubaker 2006). In 2010, Ronald Curran and Christopher
Myers, Cushey’s roommate, were charged with
the shooting death of Cushey and hiding his body over a
drug debt Cushey owed. In 2011, Myers pled guilty and
Curran pled guilty in 2012 (Buckley 2012).
Myers took police to the two locations where they buried
Cushey’s body in wooded areas (Buckley 2010). Browne’s
statements about the reason, manner of
death, and location of the body were false. This was a
mostly wrong prediction and has been moved to that
category.
On October 11, 2006, Browne did a reading about the
death of Alexandra Ducsay for Linda, her mother, and
said her daughter’s murderer is “sort of like” the
“Zodiac Killer.” Browne gave a name, but it was censored
by The Montel Williams Show, claiming he “got
in and followed her in” and it was linked
to “four” other women who were found and told the mother
to search for rapists in the area. In September 2012,
Matthew Pugh, Alexandra’s former boyfriend,
was charged with murder and burglary after a small piece
of tape led police to him (Juliano and Cleary 2012).
Pugh is only accused of one murder, but as he
is awaiting trial this case will remain in the unknown
category.
In contrast, Browne gave more detail in her October 26,
2005, reading on Montel for Tamara Ivey, mother
of deceased Dustin Ivey, by saying a
teenage boy and a “dark-haired young” female were
involved. Said Browne, “I think it’s going to be solved
really soon” and “a sexual predator” was the
suspect who used “a rock.” Tamara replied, “They told me
that it wasn’t sexual.” In 2006, Richard Joshua Collier,
Dustin’s brother and Tamara’s son, was
charged with Dustin’s murder. Police claimed the two got
into an argument and Collier killed his brother. He was
found not guilty at trial (Stoner 2007).
If the police and the prosecutor’s charges are correct
and Browne was right about the case being solved “soon,”
then all other details in Browne’s reading
were false. Conversely, if the charges were wrong then
Browne’s timeline as well as the nature of his death
were incorrect. Browne’s verifiable statements
in either instance were mostly incorrect, which puts
this reading in the wrong category.
On February 8, 2006, Amanda Lankey’s 2004 murder was
featured on Montel, where Browne spoke with her
mother, Victoria Foster. Browne asked, “Do
you know anybody by the name of [censored]” to which the
mother said yes. Browne claimed, “There was also a
female involved with the first initial of ‘C,’”
and Browne said Amanda was killed in a “car,”
specifically a blue Honda Civic. Browne said Amanda met
the person on the Internet. In 2004, Cecil Wallis Sr.
was immediately named a person of interest in the murder
because Lankey was last seen alive at his house and her
body was found not far from that location.
In 2011, Wallis Sr. committed suicide before trial in an
unrelated rape case involving teen girls at the same
home between 1998 and 2002 (Tunison 2011).
Assuming Cecil Wallis Sr. was behind the murder, there
is no evidence a female with a “C” was “involved,” and
Browne was wrong about how the person met
Lankey. Cecil Wallis Sr. was not charged with Lankey’s
murder, and without more evidence or a trial there are
too many unknowns. Thus, this case remains in
the unknown category.
Sylvia Browne’s November 30, 2005, reading for Samantha
Mader, mother of Christopher Mader, had a much clearer
outcome. Browne gave the mother a name,
which was again censored, and claimed Christopher’s
murder stemmed from the killer not liking “the food” at
the bar he worked at, then later the killer
“saw him passing by, and shot him.” Browne also told the
mother to start looking “where he ate breakfast.”
Matthew Correll and Shawn Myers were charged
with the murder, and Correll was found guilty and Myers
pled guilty in 2012 (Newman 2012). The two had attempted
to rob Mader. Browne’s predictions were
not true about how many people were involved, the reason
for the murder, or how the crime happened. This case has
been put in the wrong category.
On February 26, 2003, Browne made predictions for Dena
McCluskey’s stepmother Donna, asking the stepmother,
“Who is David?” and Donna responded, “David
doesn’t ring a bell at all.” Browne then said, “She’s in
like a basement thing” locally and “the reason I brought
up David is because David, with an ‘L,’
last name ‘L,’ like something like [censored] or
something, knows about this.” In 2007, the police found
Dena McCluskey’s body “in a secluded area of
Tuolumne County” and arrested Russell Todd Jones for her
murder (Ahumadara 2007). In 2011, Jones was found guilty
of voluntary manslaughter in the killing
of Dena McCluskey, Jones’s roommate (Ahumadara 2011). He
admitted to burying her body in a shallow grave near
property owned by his parents after burning
her body. Browne’s predictions were false. There was no
David involved, or an “L” last name, she was wrong about
the body’s location and a “basement” and
failed to mention that the person involved was her
daughter’s roommate. This reading is moved into the
wrong category.
In October 2000, Browne sat down with Patricia O’Keefe,
the mother of Michelle O’Keefe, who was murdered in
February 2000. A transcript could not be
located, but according to news reports Browne said the
killer was “a blue-eyed, dark-skinned white man named
Lee or Leon, who fled the scene on a shuttle
bus” (Botonis 2000b). She further obfuscated, saying the
murderer is “very dark-complected and could be mistaken
as being black” and “he had a blue uniform
with a pocket and a badge or something over it” (Botonis
2000b). Browne then claimed O’Keefe’s murder was part of
a series of murders at that location and
that the gun used in the murder could be found “in a
large green metal trash can next to an elevator or door”
that had not been emptied since the murder
eight months before. In response to the taping, police
announced they were following the tips Browne offered
not because they believed her, but “you don’t
reject any information,” as “a person could say they’re
a psychic and really be trying to give you information
either firsthand or from another source”
(Botonis 2000a).
In late 2009, Raymond Lee Jennings was found guilty
after three trials for Michelle O’Keefe’s February 2000
murder and was later sentenced to forty years.
Long before Browne’s October 2000 reading, on April 4,
2000, Jennings was told by police he was the suspect in
the murder (Brown 2012). Jennings, a
security guard at the school where O’Keefe was killed,
was the sole witness and told conflicting accounts of
what happened (Fausset and Blankstein 2001).
For example, he told investigators about when he first
saw O’Keefe, which contradicted his earlier statements
and physical evidence (Fausset and Blankstein
2001). While Browne was wrong about the suspect being
named Leon, she was correct about one of his names being
Lee. Browne’s website celebrated this fact
by promoting a Dateline episode showing Browne
saying it was “white man named Lee or Leon, who fled the
scene on a shuttle bus,” which had no
further analysis or clips from the show (“The Girl With
The Blue Mustang” 2010). It is important to note that
Raymond Lee Jennings was named as the suspect
less than two months after the murder and six months
before Browne’s involvement. This case received
national attention before Browne’s reading,
and O’Keefe’s murder was even featured on
America’s Most Wanted in the summer of 2000. No
physical evidence, such as a gun, was discovered
despite
Browne’s claims and police following up on her
statements. She was correct about the name Lee, being
white, and eye color, which could have been surmised
by anyone who followed the case knowing that Jennings
had been the suspect since April. Browne was wrong about
the Leon name, his being “dark-skinned,”
“very dark-complected,” “could be mistaken as being
black,” and he did not “flee,” as he stayed at the scene
and did not take “a shuttle bus.” Furthermore,
Browne’s claims about where the gun was were false, and
O’Keefe’s death was not part of a series of other
murders. While one might expect a security guard
to have a blue uniform and a badge, this was not the
case. According to the Dateline episode, his
uniform consisted of black pants, a black
jacket, and a brown shirt. The shirt had the company’s
red logo with a pattern of a badge on the sleeves and
chest, but it was not a badge, and Browne’s
claim that it had “something over it” is unclear. So
while she was correct on three statements that police
already knew months before, Browne was wrong on
at least ten claims. This reading is moved into the
mostly wrong category.
Similarly, on February 11, 2004, Browne conducted a
reading for Jim Viola, whose wife Pat Viola went missing
from Bogota, New Jersey, in 2001. The psychic
said she “had a major seizure,” was then given a ride by
a grocery truck driver, and the husband needed to look
in Akron, Ohio (Mahabir 2004). In September
2012, authorities announced they had Pat Viola’s body
since July 27, 2002, when they found it washed ashore on
a Rockaway beach in New York. DNA tests of
the bones were taken in 2006 and new samples from 2011
led to the identification (Baustista and Superville
2012). Pat Viola was dead at the time of
Browne’s reading so she could not have been alive in
Ohio since her remains were in New York. This reading is
moved to the mostly wrong category.
Browne’s dismal record has not dissuaded people from
asking her questions about criminal cases. In 2011, she
was asked by Angela Spinks, in front of an
Albuquerque, New Mexico, audience, who killed Lloyd,
Dixie, and Steven Ortiz, her parents and brother, with a
pickaxe on Father’s Day. According to
journalist Nico Roesler, Browne told Spinks the murderer
was Jesse Rios, her brother-in-law (Roesler 2012). The
police had previously questioned Rios and
his wife Cherie Ortiz-Rios, who found the bodies and
lived on the property (Roesler 2012). An official with
the New Mexico state police “told the family to
disregard Browne’s answer because the show was rigged
and that it was a stunt” (Roesler 2012). The murders
remain unsolved, and it is unclear what, if any,
information Browne knew about the triple homicide from
the media. Adding this case to the list of Browne
readings with unknown outcomes to the “Psychic
Defective” article brings the total to 116 cases total
with eighty-three unknown outcomes.
These readings are not Browne’s only miserable
predictions in recent years. Browne predicted in
Prophecy (2005): “After Pope John Paul II
passes,
there will be only one more elected pope” and wrote “he
will be succeeded by what is essentially a triumvirate
of popes” (Browne and Harrison 2005). In
2013, Pope Benedict XVI resigned, the first in nearly
600 years, and Pope Francis was elected, becoming the
first pope from the Americas. Browne’s
predictions about the Pope were wrong, and she failed to
predict these rare moments in the papacy. In
End of Days (2008) Browne made predictions
such as: “Many of the dramatic advancements in our space
travel will be the direct result of what we’ve learned
from them, from the manned Mars exploration
in 2012” (Browne and Harrison 2008). There was no 2012
mission to Mars. In 2011, Browne predicted Mitt Romney
would defeat Barack Obama in the 2012
presidential election, only to reverse herself in late
September 2012 when Romney was trailing in polls and
received negative press for his private
comments made to donors (Skomal 2011).
If one focuses only on the missing person cases,
Browne’s prediction about Amanda Berry was not even the
first time Browne told a mother her child was dead
when the missing child was later found alive. In 2003,
Browne told the parents of Shawn Hornbeck he was dead,
but he was found alive in 2007. After her
failed prediction received media attention, Browne
released a statement to CNN’s Anderson Cooper saying:
“She cannot possibly be 100 percent correct in
each and every one of her predictions. She has, during a
career of over 50 years, helped literally tens of
thousands of people” (“Psychic Told Parents That
Son Was Dead” 2007). The question is, if Browne cannot
be 100 percent accurate then just how accurate is she?
The Ortiz reading has been added to the
metric, while Browne was wrong in the cases of Amanda
Berry, Jerry Cushey, Dustin Ivey, Hunter Horgan,
Christopher Mader, Dena McCluskey, Michelle O’Keefe,
and Pat Viola. The Nicholle Coppler, Alexandra Ducsay
and Amanda Lankey cases remain on the unknown list.
Following these recent updates to the “Psychic
Defective” article, Browne has never been mostly
accurate out of 116 readings, with thirty-three cases
mostly wrong and eighty-three unverified
predictions.
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