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sychic's Powers
Istound Police
PAUL BANNISTER
Dutch psychic Warner Tholen has amazed and
tounded police and civilians alike with his uncanny
ilities to find missing bodies and lost articles -
ad even predict the future.
Among his successes, Tholen has: pinpointed for police
: exact spots at which bodies of missing people would be
ind. He has also:
. Located urgently needed
ter at an African mission -
wm an aerial photo.
. Documented the precise
jury of an astronaut
lashdown.
at
de police in a great many
ses," revealed Prof. W.II.C.
nhacff, 84, a
ychology pro-
sor at Uni-
. aty of Ut-
cht, who has
served Thol-
I's work.
found the vehicle (and the miss-
ing man's body) in the water.
"Tholen really has incredible
power. He's been called in by
police many times."
In another case, police found
the body of a missing 20-year -!
"Tholen has found many | old man in water near Lelystad
ssing people and has helped
in the Netherlands - where
Tholen told them it would be.
At his home near Utrecht, the
psychic produced a letter from
the local police acknowledging,
"Without"
Tholen's help
we
would never have solved this
case. We would not have found
the body."
One of the most astonishing
One o Thol-
's recent suc-
esses occurred
hơn the Dutch
nte Police at
successes of the 66-year-old
psychic came when a mis-
sionary priest, Rev. Nicholas
PSYCHIC
Warner Tholen
Borst, appealed to him for help
in finding desperately needed
nethoorn asked him to help [water near his Catholic mission
in Tanzania, Africa.
'ind a missing man. "Tholen
ild us to look in a particular
pot at the Beukesgracht Ca-
al," recalled Police Inspector
'endrick Schut.
"Ile sent me an aerial pho-
tograph of the mission and the
land around it," Tholen said. "I
concentrated on the photograph
"There were the tracks of a
ear leading into the water. We
and pinpointed the exact spot."
A letter of thanks that Father
. ent for the river police and they | Borst wrote to Tholen tells how
WHERE BODY WAS FOUND: Inspector Hendrick Schut
shows where psychic directed police.
water was found at 75 feet and of the Provenci:
Museum 01
Drenthe in the Netherlands.
at 112 feet - the exact depths
the psychic had predicted.
In 1969, Prof. John Beloff of
the department of psychology,
at the University of Edinburgh
in Scotland, recorded Tholen's
prediction that the youngest of
the Apollo astronauts would be
slightly wounded on the right
side of his head when landing,
and that they would not land in
their target region.
On splashdown, Nov. 24, 1969,
Al Bean, youngest of the astro-
nauts, received a blow over his
right eye when he bumped into
a loose movie camera, and the
capsule landed two miles off
target - just as Tholen had pre-
dicted.
In Tholen's favorite case, he
located plans for 800-year-old
Coevorden Castle, after a futile
four-nation search.
Tholen advised Dr. Corneille
Janssen, architect and director
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"Look for a fair-sized band-
ing to the southeast. There you
will find a large carved, wooden
chest painted red, green and
white. In it you will find a draw.
ing of the tower." When Dr
Janssen went to a farm 's'
three miles southeast of his owi
home, the farmer handed hi.n .
drawing of the tower.
"The farmer told me that un.
til two years before, they ba:
been kept in a chest exactly like
the one Tholen had described,'
said Dr. Janssen.
UNCLASSIFIED

UNCLASSIFIED
L.A. Police Researching Psychics'
By Mark Jones
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - How could it be,
a police detective wondered, that a
housewife apparently with psychic
capabilities could help put together
the drawing of a man who a week
later would be the prime suspect in
a triple murder?
, . How was it, thought a deputy dis-
' trict attorney recently, that a second
local psychic could reenact a two-year-
old murder after touching the killer's
fingerprint card?
And how was it possible, the FBI
wondered last month, that yet a third
Los Angeles psychic knew so much
about a $500,000 kidnaping in Las
Vegas when, in fact, the crime was
still in progress?
Are any or all of these three cases
examples of clairvoyance or coincid-
ence? Did each of the psychics "see"
through time and distance or were
they just lucky? Answers are not
easy to come by when the topic is as
elusive as parapsychology.
But while psychics have been cas-
- ually involved for years in criminal
investigations - the most recent local
case resulted in the arrest of a murd-
er suspect earlier this month by police
in South Gate near Los Angeles -
there have been few experiments to
determine their reliability in crime
cases.
Until now.
Members of the Los Angeles Police
Department admitted recently that
for the past eight months they've been
conducting serious research into psy-
chic phenomena. The latest study,
which began in October, involves near-
ly four dozen specially selected Los
Angeles psychics, homicide investi-
gators and "ordinary" citizens.
The man leading what may be the
first announced police-psychic study
in the country is Dr. Martin Reiser,
director of the LAPD's behavioral
sciences department.
"So far it hasn't been demonstrat-
ed to my satisfaction that so-called re-
putable psychics can solve crimes,"
he said, "and yet the homicide division
and I do want to make a serious re-
evaluation of paranormal phenomena.
""In other words," he said, "I-want
to find out once and for all whether
the hundreds of tips volunteered by
psychics are all screwy or indeed
whether some of them have merit."
Reiser said that late last month
the police department, with the aid
of clinical researchers at UCLA and
Los Angeles City College, gathered
four separate teams of psychics, homi-
cide detectives and citizens.
He said that during the next few
months each of them would be in-
dividually tested for their abilities to
perceive-or to "see"-crimes describ-
ed inside 12 sealed envelopes contain-
ing items of evidence pertaining to a
different crime.
"We're trying to be as unbiased as
possible," Reiser said. "And if it looks
as though investigative information
supplied by psychics not only is fea-
sible but has utility, then we'll use it.
That's the nature of a police organiza-
tion, isn't it?"
. Despite the psychologist's guarded
.
optimism, there was through it all a
bedrock of pessimism laid down by
the results of Reiser's first police-
psychic study last May.
In that smaller experiment a dozen
Los Angeles psychics were tested in
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UNCLASSIFIED
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,
.
1
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UNCLASSIFIED
L.A. Police Researching
Psychic' Crime Solving
PSYCHIC, From G1
evidence-to "see" the killer together
with his victims in a psychic vision
one afternoon in October.
Sims said that the psychic and a
police artist produced the drawing
of a man who later was identified by
the mother of one of the victims as
having been with her boy shortly be-
fore his death.
Under questioning, Sims said, the
man-a family acquaintance with a
record of sex offenses-told police
where they could find the body of one
of three victims. And with that, and
other evidence, the 33-year-old unem-
ployed truck driver, Harold Ray Mem-
ro, was arrested and charged with
murder.
In nearby Downey and Torrance a
Dutch-born psychic named Jan Steers
figured in some of the most curious
police-psychic cases in Southern Cali-
fornia in the early 1970s.
The small, quiet, middle-aged psy-
chic, who has since returned to Hol-
land, is said by police officers to have
disclosed secret information about at
least two unsolved murders and-
over the telephone-was able to pin-
point the location of a dying police-
man within minutes of his near-fatal
injury.
One of the officers who worked
with the psychic in 1973 was'Torrance
police detective Ray Gross. One day
recently Gross recalled the first time
he met the psychic.
"It was the strangest thing," he
said. "I was staying late at the sta-
tion one night when this man called
me and began rattling off some stuff
about the Rolling Hills Theater mur-
der (in which four persons were slain
in 1972).
"The guy insisted that if I would
return to the scene of the crime, I
would find a set of the killer's finger-
See PSYCHIC, G6, Col. 1
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+1.
...
1
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-
Ability to Solve Crimes
The Washing
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1978
NATIONAL NEWS
G1
much the same fashion as those in the
current study.
One psychic, he said, astonished
everyone by managing to "see" a
crime involving a church while hold-
ing one of the test envelopes (the con-
tents of which described the murder
of a church official).
In another example, five of the in-
dividually tested psychics "visualized"
a crime in which a car was especially
important (the case described in the
test envelope concerned a murder
associated with an auto theft).
In spite of the infrequent surprises,
though, Reiser spelled out his disap-
pointment in a 14-page research paper
entitled "An Evaluation of the Use
of Psychics in the Investigation of . lic for fear of censure.
Major Crimes," to be published in
March by the Journal of Police Science
and Administration.
In it Reiser concluded, ". . . Over-
all, little, if any, information was eli-
cited from the 12 psychic partici-
pants that would provide material
helpful in the investigation of the
major crimes in question."
'For years the stereotype of psychics,
in the words of Los Angeles psychic
Kebrina Kinkade, on the whole has
been "a bunch of nuts and kooks who
came out of the woodwork when a big
case broke."
And it followed, she said, that if
police had brought a psychic in on a
particularly baffling case they cringed
at the thought of admitting it in pub-
That may be changing. Parapsy-
chology is the subject of clinical re-
search at recognized universities, and
there is a growing public belief that
some individuals may be invested
with the ability to "see" through time
and distance.
South Gate police detective Wil-
liam Sims said his department had ex-
hausted what was felt to be every
lead in the sex murders of three
young boys between 1976 and Septem-
ber 1978. Then, through an interme-
diary, Sims and a second officer soli-
cited the aid of a local (and unidenti-
fied) woman psychic in her 40s.
The detective told the Los Angeles
Times he is still "spooked" at the way
the psychic had been able-without
a single clue or revealing item of
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1
G6
Thursday, November 23, 1978 THE WASHINGTON POST
Psychics' Crime Solving
PSYCHIC, From G3
prints on the right door jamb, exactly
4/2 inches up from the floor.
"."Well," said the detective, "my
sergeant and I figured what the heck.
The guy was pretty insistent and, any-
way, by that time we hadn't any really
solid leads in the case."
So the next day the detective re-
turned to the theater, where he found
a set of prints overlooked in the ori-
ginal investigation and where the
psyhcic said they'd be.
Well, almost. They weren't 41/2
- inches up from the floor, Gross said.
:"They were 41/4 inches." The finger-
:
-prints later matched those of a sus-
pect.
. "When the psychic volunteered to
come to the station to share his in-
formation, Gross thought, "By this
time I figured that when the guy ar- ,
fived I was going to throw him in the
clink because he knew as much about
the murder as I did." As it happened,
however, the psychic had an unshak-
able alibi. And more.
: "When Steers began to tell the
sergeant and myself about how the
. victims were laid out the night of the
murder -- and believe me, he was cor-
rect all the way down the line-I got
white as a sheet," the officer said. "I
mean, there was just no way this man
could have known what we found at
the murder scene unless he was truly
psychic."
The officer, who through his associ-
ation with Steers came to be humor-
ously known by his fellow investiga-
tors as "detective of the kook squad"
(someone even put a miniature crystal
ball on his desk one day), said also
that the psychic's predictions about
the killer all checked out down to the
.32-cal pistol hidden in his blood-
stained boots the day of his eventual
arrest.
:
;
The case never went to trial,
though because the suspect hanged
himself in the Torrance jail.
"I don't think you can say that
psychics are a panacea in solving
crimes," the Torrance detective says.
"But they can be an invaluable inves-
tigating tool. I mean, you get the right
investigator working in tune with the
right psychic and a department could
settle a lot more of their unsolved
cases."
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