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Nancy Grace
Nancy Grace for November 23, 2005, CNNHN
Aired November 24, 2005 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, can just looking at a map find a missing person? How about holding a murder victim`s photo? Can that solve a case? Well, tonight, amazing stories of psychic detectives. Of course, they defy the legal rules of evidence, but take a listen to this. A former paratrooper vanishes. At a dead-end, police cave in, call a psychic detective.
Can the psychic detective pinpoint the victim in a massive 2,000 acre national park? Then there`s the Rose Swartwood mystery murder. Two suspects, but not enough evidence to tie them to the crime, much less go to trial, but then a psychic detective enters the picture.
Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us tonight. Can psychics solve unsolved crimes? I`m a skeptic. But before you reach a verdict, there`s the case of Rose Swartwood murdered in her own apartment, upstate New York. Two suspects, no evidence. Did a psychic detective help crack the case?
But first tonight, former paratrooper Dennis Prado vanishes, missing over two months without a trace, but with a map covering thousands of miles and a psychic detective`s vision, police head to a massive California national park in the desperate search for Dennis Prado.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNETTE MARTIN, PSYCHIC DETECTIVE: My conscious mind is not working. It is my subconscious, unconscious mind that is really processing all of this and working, and so the words are just coming out. I pick up conversations as to what`s going on and what`s happening. I`m in a movie when I`m actually sitting and doing a case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Let`s go straight out to Diane Dimond investigative reporter. What happened in the case?
DIANE DIMOND, CNN INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: It`s a fascinating but sad case, Nancy. A 71-year-old man, as you said, a paratrooper, Dennis Prado, and he lived alone. How many of us have elderly relatives who live alone. We worry. Our worst nightmare, we call and call, as his sister did, and there`s no answer. Finally the police go to check and there`s nothing.
There is nothing in the apartment to show anything about a struggle, and nothing is out of place. He was a meticulous man, being a paratrooper, interestingly, everything in his house, al the clothes on his body, all the furniture in his apartment was green, like paratrooper green. They noticed that he had some antidepressant pills, as many elderly people do when they find out they`re all alone. And he went out apparently for a walk one day, gave his landlord a check, and then vanished, absolutely vanished.
GRACE: Take a listen to what police had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SGT. FERNANDO REALYVASQUEZ, PACIFICA, CA POLICE DEPT.: I found some pills in Mr. Prado`s apartment and the prescription that I found indicated it was some sort of antidepressant. Obviously, the first thing we think of, well, is this a suicide we`re dealing with?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: No leads, no clues. A former paratrooper missing. And then finally, a psychic detective brought into the case. Let`s go straight out to Pacifica Police Department Sergeant Fernando Realyvasquez.
Thank you for being with us, Sergeant. When did you first learn that Prado was missing in?
REALYVASQUEZ: Nancy, we first came -- we first got the information from Dennis Prado`s sister, about the first week of May, 1997.
GRACE: And what did you do?
REALYVASQUEZ: At that time, we conducted a preliminary investigation, a looking for as many clues as we could, trying to figure out what had happened to him. And the more we looked, that we followed up as many -- followed up on as many leads as we could, and we came up empty-handed.
GRACE: You know, that`s very unusual. Usually at least there`s some sort of a lead. What did you do then when you began to reach a dead-end?
REALYVASQUEZ: Well, after about -- after several weeks of looking for him and following up on anything that came our way, we started to look at different options. Finally, about nine to 10 weeks into his disappearance, his family had come to me and asked me if I would go see a psychic on their behalf.
GRACE: And what was your gut reaction, your knee-jerk reaction to seeking out a psychic?
REALYVASQUEZ: Well, you know, to be honest with you, when they first mentioned that idea to me, I rolled my eyes, just like the next person. I was a little skeptical. I wasn`t quite sure what I wanted to do. And I told her that we would consider it, but I`d have to get in touch with them.
GRACE: Well Sergeant, I`m exactly the same way. Of all the years I prosecuted, the reality is they can`t come into evidence. What they have to say will not be heard by a jury, most likely. It`s not hard evidence that you can cross-examine so in my mind as a trial lawyer, what good is it? You know, we`re just trained that way. Take a listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REALYVASQUEZ: I never really have given a psychic`s opinion much thought other than, you know, come on, I`m not really -- I wasn`t really crazy about it, but I thought, OK, let`s give it a shot, what do we have to lose? As I`m talking to Annette Martin and she`s coming up with all these little details, I`m actually really surprised because, you know, a lot of this stuff I didn`t say anything to her about it, but at the same time she`s hitting on al these details.
MARTIN: Whether it`s myself or another psychic, they`re always a little skeptical. And you know, I think that`s good. I really think that`s good, because they need to go back and ask the questions and not get emotionally involved. Receiving too much information for a psychic can sometimes color the situation. I really do not need to have that much information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Back to Sergeant Realyvasquez. Sir, what was it about her details that impressed you, things she had not been told?
REALYVASQUEZ: Well, Nancy, you know, she -- Annette had asked me a lot of preliminary questions regarding his character, where he lived, and that sort of thing and in -- at the conclusion of our hour and a half interview, she had an idea that -- a pretty good idea of what had happened to him and based on the final conclusion, she was very, very accurate, based on what we found.
GRACE: Well, when you said she started mentioning things she couldn`t have known about, like what?
REALYVASQUEZ: Well, she -- first of all, she first started to tell me that she felt that he was having difficulty breathing, that he might have gone out for a walk, that -- and some of his personal characteristics such as knowing that he likes the color green and that sort of thing.
GRACE: So did any of your fellow officers give you any grief about contacting a psychic?
REALYVASQUEZ: Well, as I said before, I think that straight across the board, within our organization or the police department, there`s a lot of people that are very skeptical of a psychic, just as I was and they did give me a hard time, a little bit, but we proceed to go with it based on the consensus of the other investigators within the department, and we went with it.
GRACE: You know, we`re taking a look right now at Mr. Prado`s home. It`s incredible. Without knowing him, she said she was getting visions of green. This is crazy. You know, Dr. Robi Ludwig, a psychotherapist, why do we just instinctively -- you either latch on to the theory that psychics aren`t legit or instinctively reject it. Is it...
DR. ROBI LUDWIG, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: A lot of it is based on your own personal idea. And of course with psychics, it can`t be verified scientifically, so it`s very hard to prove and in some cases there is impressive anecdotal stories, but in some cases retrofitting.
You know, the psychics claim that they really know and help solve the case but only say that in retrospect when they say oh see all these things that I throw out, which in some cases are general pieces of information -- see it all makes fit or makes sense, when in fact it might be general information or a person who`s guessing might do as well as some psychics claim to do.
GRACE: I`m going now to Roberta Hauser, joining us from San Francisco. She got involved in the search for Mr. Prado.
Welcome, Roberta. Why did you get involved in the search?
ROBERTA HAUSER, SEARCHER: My search and rescue team had been involved in the first week that Mr. Prado was missing and then we had gone out about four weeks later, we had done another search with another larger group of searchers, because he had not been found, and we had covered several areas in the park. And the park where he was missing happened to be near my home, so I had been searching for him on my own for several weeks.
GRACE: And what did you first think, Roberta, when you learned they were calling in a psychic?
HAUSER: Well, I have done a lot of searches and search and rescue work and I work for the sheriff`s department and it`s not really common practice we would use a psychic in any search investigation.
GRACE: And Diane Dimond, investigative reporter, you`ve covered so many trials, worked with police, lawyers, your whole investigative career. When I hear we`re calling in a psychic, I`m like, no, please. I can`t get it in evidence. The jury will probably think the psychic did it, if they do come up with anything. That`s happened before.
DIMOND: Oh, yeah.
GRACE: And then it will give some juror a reason not to believe the evidence that one day we might come up with it.
DIMOND: Well, I tell you, I really have to take my hat off to this Sergeant Realyvasquez, because a lot of cops that I have worked with say "no way, psychics, forget it, we`re not doing it, period." When I was covering the Chandra Levy case, for example, which was very similar -- she walked away into a park, never to be seen again -- I had psychics calling me, begging me to get their information to the Washington, D.C., police department. One in particular kept saying, "here she is, here`s a map. There`s a concrete plant outside town. Here she is." of course, that`s not where she was at all. So, I think a lot -- it`s easy for many police detectives to say, "forget it, we`re not going down that path. We`re busy enough."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: When retired army paratrooper Dennis Prado fails to answer his sister`s repeated phone calls, she fears something terrible has happened. She calls police and asks hem to check on her brother. Police race to Prado`s apartment not knowing what they`ll find behind the door. A dead body? A burglar?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Or it could just simply be a missing person where, you know, they left the apartment and that was that.
I walked into the bedroom and adjoining bathrooms and everything was neat. The bed was made. No signs of anything out of the ordinary.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Police have called on psychic, Annette Martin, to help them find ex-military man, Dennis Prado. In the middle of her psychic vision, Annette gasps for air.
MARTIN: I will begin to feel what the victim is feeling, what panic, what anxieties.
I feel like he can`t breathe, and I feel like he just can`t get enough air.
ANNOUNCER: Annette senses that Prado is in trouble. Finding him is more critical than ever.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: An incredible story? No, it may not be allowed in a court of law. But can simply holding a map find a missing person? Straight to investigative reporter Diane Dimond. We`re talking about a 71-year-old man, a former paratrooper, gone missing without a trace. So the cops are at a dead-end, they don`t know what to do next. What happens?
DIMOND: They bring in Annette Martin. And, actually, the sergeant and Annette meet at the location where the man was last seen. She has this feeling of peace around him.
GRACE: Where was he last seen?
DIMOND: He is not in pain, at his apartment, near this big national forest, a huge national forest where he often went for walks. And she saw the color green. She saw him being peaceful. She said, you know what, he`s over there, give me a map of his location. She held the map in her hand and do you know, Nancy, she took a pen and she drew a little circle on part of this massive map of this park, a little eighth of a mile. That`s about, you know, the size of a Wal-Mart, in this big map.
GRACE: I actually measured it out, Diane. It is less than two New York City blocks.
DIMOND: Right, exactly. And can you imagine she is that precise?
GRACE: And, Sergeant, following up on what Diane Dimond just said, how big was this park?
REALYVASQUEZ: Nancy, the park is approximately 2,000 acres plus in size.
GRACE: And out of 2,000 acres, she draws a circle that -- on the map, equals one eighth of a mile -- two city blocks, right?
REALYVASQUEZ: That`s correct. That`s correct.
GRACE: I want to introduce you to someone very special, right now, psychic detective Annette Martin.
Annette, thank you for being with us. When did you first realize that you believed you had psychic ability?
MARTIN: Well, actually, Nancy, I discovered that I had this gift when I was seven years old. Believe it or not.
GRACE: When you were seven?
MARTIN: Yes.
GRACE: What happened?
MARTIN: Seven years old. Well, I had a vision that the playmates that I was playing with were going to stone me to death. And within 10 minutes, that vision became a reality. And that is when it all began.
GRACE: They started throwing rocks at you?
MARTIN: Yes. Rocks and stones, mm-hmm.
GRACE: And so were you seven years old?
MARTIN: Yes. Yes.
GRACE: Annette, what was your first psychic vision to crack a case?
MARTIN: My first psychic vision was extraordinary, because I was in a yoga class, meditating. And as I was meditating, suddenly, I saw this body hanging in the air over my body and then I saw a street sign. And I sat straight up off the floor because it frightened me so much, because I knew that this was a dead body. And after the class, my secretary was with me, and I told her what I had seen. She was very disturbed and concerned.
And she goes, "you have to go to the police department," and I said, "oh no, don`t be silly, I can`t possibly do that. Whey they`d think I was crazy," and she said, "no, no, we have to go down there." And so she drove me down to the Marin sheriff`s office. We walked in there; I was just scared to death. And I spoke to a sergeant, a homicide detective, Sergeant Richard Keaton.
And, you know, it was very interesting, because he just sat there, he never blinked. He said, "Can I record this?" which he did. And he said, "I have some articles here." he said, "I`d like you to hold them." So he had spoken to a psychic before. And what happened was about four hours later I had given them a great deal of information about this dead body that I had seen hanging in the air.
GRACE: Long story short, did it crack the case?
MARTIN: Yes, it certainly did. They had found the body, actually I believe, the day before and I helped them track the perpetrator. And I had seen the perpetrator. When I do my work, I go into like a movie, and what occurs is I pick up conversations, and I had told them that they would find this perpetrator within a year and he would be wearing white.
GRACE: And let me guess. He was.
MARTIN: He was. They found him in a hospital. I had also said he would be out of California, which he was. He was in Washington State.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Dennis Prado walked out of his apartment and vanished. Police don`t have any leads, but they`re starting to believe that Annette Martin can shed some light on the case. With Sergeant Fernando Realyvasquez on the phone, Annette will use a technique called psychometry to visualize the missing man.
MARTIN: I pick up conversations as to what`s going on and what`s happening. I`m in a movie when I`m actually sitting and doing a case. It`s like I am in a movie.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Psychic Annette Martin says Dennis Prado is somewhere in San Pedro Park. But the park is huge, 2,000 acres of tangled underbrush, steep cliffs and dense forest. Search and rescuer tracker, Roberta Hauser, is skeptical. During the search for Prado she scoured much of the park and found nothing.
HAUSER: You know, we`ve been through a lot of these areas already maybe once, even twice. Two teams have been through this area.
ANNOUNCER: But the psychic has a hunch and the detective is willing to give her a shot.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. Joining me now, the psychic who is credited with cracking the case of missing 71-year-old, a former paratrooper, Dennis Prado. Also with me, the sergeant that sought her out. Let`s go straight out to Annette Martin.
Annette, do you member when Sergeant Realyvasquez contacted you and what happened?
MARTIN: Oh, yes, I do. He came down to my office and actually, he brought the photo of Mr. Prado and I had asked him to bring a map along with him. And he did, he brought a map of the whole area of where Mr. Prado lived.
GRACE: What happened?
MARTIN: Well, what happened was I sat down and I started doing the session. And I held the photo of Mr. Prado, which is the process that I use, called psychometry. And I began to give him information about Mr. Prado, especially about wearing green. Mr. Prado loved green and he always wore green, and I kept seeing green everywhere. And then I began to track him, which is the process that I use. And with the map, I held this huge map and I tracked him out of his condo, down a path and he walked up a path about half a mile or so and turned to the left on this dirt road.
And he was heading for this little hill to sit. And then suddenly I started to feel like I was choking and I couldn`t breathe, I was gasping. And I felt he had fallen over into the brush and I believe had like a heart attack or a stroke and that -- Sergeant Realyvasquez says where is this right on the map? And he says can you draw a circle? Which I did. And of course, as we know, that`s exactly where they found him.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: A retired paratrooper disappears without a trace. Investigators struggle to find the missing man. But the trail goes cold.
REALYVASQUEZ: No one`s seen him. No one`s heard from him. All we know is that he`s vanished.
ANNOUNCER: Desperate for answers, police look for help from an unlikely source.
MARTIN: The other thing that I`m picking up, detective is the color green. And he looks like he`s covered in green.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SUSAN HENDRICKS, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. I`m Susan Hendricks. Here`s your "Headline Prime Newsbreak."
People who live in one of the most violent areas of Iraq say four insurgent groups may be ready to talk peace now. Residents of Anbar province say the groups are considering naming their representative to meet with the Iraqi president. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is blamed for a majority of the attacks, is not among the groups taking part.
Two weeks after deadly bombings, Jordan has a new prime minister. King Abdullah II appointed the former ambassador to Israel and Turkey to the post. Sources say the government shake-up has been in the works for weeks now.
Well, the official shopping season doesn`t start until early Friday morning, but many stores are already open trying to court holiday shoppers. If you`re too stuffed to head out, you can find deals on the Internet, where Sears and Wal-Mart are giving customers a preview of all of the huge weekend sales.
And that is the news for now. Hope you`re having a great Thanksgiving. I`m Susan Hendricks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: A peaceful walk in the park. A man surrounded by green, suddenly gasping for air. It`s a tragic end. But thanks to the psychic, Dennis Prado`s family can finally bring him home.
MARTIN: I do not solve the case. They solve the cases, the detectives. The information that I`m able to retrieve in details assists them in following through, in either trying to find a missing person or trying to find the perpetrator.
ANNOUNCER: But Realyvasquez knows he couldn`t have solved this mystery without Annette`s help.
REALYVASQUEZ: I have no idea how Annette Martin does it. All I can say is, in this particular case, had I not gone to her, we probably would have never found him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Seventy-one-year-old Dennis Prado. He was a former paratrooper, willing to serve, to die for our country, but then authorities couldn`t find him after he had been missing over two months, until a sergeant went out on a limb from Pacifica Police Department, Sergeant Fernando Realyvasquez.
He took the grief others may have inflicted upon him about calling a psychic, and he contacted Annette Martin.
So, Sergeant, when she drew this little circle on a map, what was your first thought? That was a 2,000-mile park.
REALYVASQUEZ: Well, Nancy, when she first drew that circle on the map, all I could think of is, "OK, we`re going to give her the benefit of the doubt here, and we`re going to go take a look."
GRACE: I want to go to Roberta Hauser, a searcher who had searched long and hard to find Mr. Prado.
So what happened, Roberta?
HAUSER: So I went to the sergeant`s office and I listened to the tape of the interview with Annette Martin. And I immediately -- she was describing him going for a walk and the concrete turning to a dirt path.
And I started to recognize things about what she was saying in the interview. And I was really starting to get the feeling that she could see where he had been. And she described he was on a trail, looking down at another trail, and he could see people walking.
So I listened to the entire interview. And then the sergeant gave me the map and said, "And she circled this circle on the map." And she also said, "A person`s not going to find him. A search dog is going to find him."
So, at that point, I got a friend who had a search dog that worked for the sheriff`s department. And I told them that I wanted him to help me search this area. But I didn`t tell him that it was on the advice of a psychic.
GRACE: And?
HAUSER: We went to the park, and we started working with the dog in the area that she had indicated on the map. And within about 15 minutes, we had located him just off the trail.
GRACE: Roberta Hauser, out of this 2,000-square-mile park, the circle she drew encompassed about an eighth of a mile. That`s about two city blocks, correct?
HAUSER: Yes.
GRACE: What was your reaction, Roberta, when you found Mr. Prado?
HAUSER: Well, I was really astonished, because I truly believed that this was -- it was going to be another part of a search that didn`t work out. And we had searched the area before and hadn`t found him.
So it was kind of like we were doing it once again. And then the dog clearly indicated that it had found something. And we followed the dog off the trail, and there he was. And he was exactly where she said he was going to be.
And we checked the map several times to make sure that the position where he was, was in the circle, and it was.
GRACE: To Sergeant Realyvasquez, what actually happened to Mr. Prado? I mean, when I think of him, a 71-year-old man, a former military man, out taking a walk, or we think, I think so much of my own dad. He goes walking for exercise five times a week. So what happened to him?
REALYVASQUEZ: Based on the coroner`s autopsy, his body was so decomposed at the time that he was located, because it had been almost eight to 10 weeks since he had been reported missing. And, you know, at the end of July, you know, it was very hot, probably in the 80 to 90 degree temperature.
And, you know, to the best of our knowledge, he died of natural causes. And that was the best we can determine at the time, based on the condition of his body.
GRACE: And, of course, even with skeletal remains, Sergeant, forensically, you can determine if there was a gunshot, sometimes even a knife wound, if it comes in touch with a bone or a blow to the head. So all of those causes of death were clearly ruled out.
So, Annette Martin, psychic detective, you not only pinpointed in a 2,000-square-mile area the location of Mr. Prado, but you accurately -- it seems as if you relived his cause of death.
MARTIN: That`s very true, Nancy. I did relive it. And like I had said earlier, it`s like being in a movie. And so the whole process was really very sad for me to see that he had died of natural causes. But I was happy that something -- no one had murdered him. And I was very happy about that.
GRACE: Annette, remember this? Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN: The detective from the Pacifica Police Department told me that this gentleman, Mr. Prado, was missing. And he gave me his birth date. And he told me that he had been in the military.
I see Mr. Prado walking a lot. He really likes to walk a great deal. He had something in his hand.
I just don`t see him very far away from home. I don`t see him taking an airplane. I don`t see him driving anywhere. I just really feel that he`s very close to home.
I have this sense that he`s around here, and I`m just getting this very strong sense -- you know, I think it`s over there in the park. I think that he`s dead. I`m not getting any struggle whatsoever, but there`s just no life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: What was the reaction, Sergeant, of Mr. Prado`s family, what remained of it?
REALYVASQUEZ: You know, Nancy, once Mr. Prado was found, his family was very grateful for the work that we did. And they finally had some closure to the point where we developed a pretty strong relationship during the time he had disappeared and to the point where they actually even invited me to the services when he was buried.
GRACE: And, you know, Sergeant, it`s like you said. He didn`t have much of a family left. I believe his sister was the one that realized he was missing. She hadn`t heard from him in well over a week, right?
REALYVASQUEZ: Yes.
GRACE: So all he had left, all they had left of the family was each other. At least you gave them a final answer. Sergeant, thank you so much for sharing with us.
And, Roberta Hauser, what a story. You`re going to have to share this with your grandchildren one day.
HAUSER: Yes, I hope to.
GRACE: It`s a story you`ve got to pass on.
And to Annette Martin. You know I`m a skeptic, right? I`m just an old trial lawyer.
MARTIN: I know.
(LAUGHTER)
GRACE: But I`ve got to tell you, Annette, one word: Thank you.
MARTIN: Oh, and thank you, Nancy.
GRACE: Yes, ma`am. We`ll all be right back with another incredible story. Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN: Whether it`s myself or another psychic, they`re always a little skeptical. And, you know, I think that`s good. I really think that`s good, because they need to go back and ask the questions and not get emotionally involved.
Receiving too much information for a psychic can sometimes color the situation. I really do not need to have that much information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Rose`s sister, Violet, talks to her every day. But one August morning, Rose`s phone just keeps ringing. Frantic, Violet calls the police. At first, Sergeant Charles Patterson thinks there must be a logical explanation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When an elderly person is not heard from, there`s any numerous reasons why. It could be they went on a trip or didn`t tell anybody. It`s possible they could have fallen and hurt themselves.
ANNOUNCER: But what police find at Rose`s apartment is no accident. Someone smashed the back door window and gotten inside. Upstairs, investigators make a grim discovery: Rose Swartwood is dead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: She could be our own mother or grandmother, 74-year-old Rose Swartwood. Not a clue as to who violently killed this literally little, old lady. Let`s go straight to investigative reporter Diane Dimond.
What happened?
DIMOND: Well, it`s another sad story, like the paratrooper we just heard about. She lived alone...
GRACE: Diane, we`re in the legal business.
DIMOND: I know.
GRACE: It`s always a sad story.
DIMOND: You`re right. You`re absolutely right, especially when an elderly person, suddenly, when someone calls them on the phone, they don`t answer. People panic. So the police go over. They find her dead. They find a bite mark on her arm.
GRACE: On a little old lady, a bite mark?
DIMOND: She had struggled with somebody. A lot of dogged police work, just like you saw in the last case, this time Detective Mike Mucci.
They had a pretty good case. They had two suspects. She had had a problem with someone who lived in her complex. The neighborhood had changed around her, if you get my drift. And she had complained about loud parties. Well, the night she died there was a loud party.
GRACE: Well, of course, she`s 74. She should have complained about a loud party.
DIMOND: Right. Right. Well, there were a couple of suspects at a loud party at that same apartment where she had complained about who had gone out for beer but they had been gone quite a while.
They were the two prime suspects. They brought one in. He almost confessed, but you know what? One of those lawyers showed up, and the guy stopped talking.
So they kept working at it. They had a jailhouse snitch at one point. Two prime suspects, one already in prison.
GRACE: But not enough hard evidence.
DIMOND: But not enough. So they turned to a psychic. And this one, Phil Jordan, just as interesting as the last one we visited.
GRACE: To Dr. Robi Ludwig, what`s the downside of using psychic detectives?
LUDWIG: The downside is there have been cases where psychics have said, "Listen, you need to find the body. I`m sure the body is in this lake." And then the police department will -- you know, whatever they do to search in a lake, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of resources. And in some cases, you don`t find what the psychics say you`re going to find.
So you have that time wasted money. And in some cases they point the finger at the wrong person...
GRACE: Ruh-roh.
LUDWIG: ... because psychics will claim to be accurate when, in some cases, it`s a very -- it`s their own personal opinion more than anything else.
GRACE: To former detective Mike Mucci, how did the investigation unfold?
DET. MIKE MUCCI, FMR. DETECTIVE AT SHERIFF`S OFFICE: Well, Nancy, originally, we had -- I was not involved in this case. I got information about a year-and-a-half after it had occurred in `88 from an informant that he had spent time in the county jail with an inmate who had claimed he had killed the woman in Elmira and gotten away with it.
GRACE: So all you had was a woman in Elmira, upstate New York, and got away with it. That was your case?
MUCCI: Well, there was some evidence that eventually, you know, we proved. We did have some evidence with the bite mark on the victim. We did develop some DNA evidence, although it was not totally conclusive.
GRACE: Well, I`ve got to tell you something, Detective. I have actually had forensic dentistry evidence at a murder trial before. And I did not follow through with it, because forensic dentistry, I mean, when you`re talking about a bite in flesh, if the flesh moves during the bite, that can change the outcome.
I mean, if you`ve got a really good match, it can be very persuasive. But it can also be attacked like mad on cross-examination. So you had this quasi-statement from a snitch. You had forensic dentistry. And then you found Phil Jordan, psychic detective. What did he do?
MUCCI: We contacted Phil, and we felt we had nothing to lose. My partner at the time, Sergeant Patterson, and I decided we would go down and just see what insight Phil might have to it, although we had no expectations on ourselves going down there.
GRACE: Let`s go straight to psychic detective Phil Jordan.
Welcome, Mr. Jordan. Now, you know I`m a skeptic.
PHIL JORDAN, PSYCHIC DETECTIVE: Thank you.
GRACE: But when do you believe you first realized you were a psychic?
JORDAN: I first realized I was a psychic when I was about 16. I had a dream about an uncle who was like a dad to me. And I had a dream he had a heart attack. And the next morning, everything happened exactly as I had dreamt it, down to names of nurses, and how he would survive, and everything in great detail.
GRACE: How old were you?
JORDAN: I was 16 at the time.
GRACE: And how did your family react? Or did you tell them?
JORDAN: Well, I grew up in a traditionally Irish home, and my mom was very much into understanding the mysteries of life. And so she always would investigate further some of the things that I was seeing.
I also had the privilege of being a twin. And my sister and I were quite telepathic with each other. When she had all of her children, I had all of her morning sickness. And she broke her arm above the right elbow. And I knew it the moment she broke it, and she was three hours away.
So I think having an awareness of your own spirit and how it works is a very important part of life.
GRACE: Question about this case, about Ms. Rose, Ms. Rose Swartwood: When you went into then-Detective Mike Mucci, what happened?
JORDAN: When I talked with Detective Mucci, what I do -- I don`t like to know anything about the case ahead of time, other than the fact that I may be working a homicide, an arson case, a missing person case, or whatever.
And then I try to relate to the detective what I call a psychic crime reconstruction. I try to relate what I think happened with the individual at the scene of the crime.
GRACE: When you got there, what did he have you do?
JORDAN: I didn`t go to the scene of the crime, actually. He...
GRACE: No, I mean when you got to Detective Mucci.
JORDAN: Well, he gave me pictures of Rose Swartwood. And I just said what I felt was significant in the course of the case with her death, that it was a brutal slaying and that there was -- I could see her twirling a ring on her finger, like a cocktail ring. And they had no indication that she wore that at that time, as I recall.
But I could see her constantly twirling the ring with her thumb. And I could see the individuals that I felt were connected to the crime.
GRACE: And, Detective, what did he tell you about the perps?
MUCCI: Nancy, actually, most amazing to me, we had taken down, without his knowledge, a stack of photographs, mug shots, that we presented to Phil, and asked him if there was any significance with any of the people in the pile of photographs.
Obviously, then, knowing who the defendants or who the suspects were, he actually pulled the two suspects out of that pile of photographs.
GRACE: Whew.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: In a case with little evidence, few leads and uncooperative witnesses, Phil Jordan`s insights became a guiding light for investigators.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His information that he gave to us relative to this case was nothing short of amazing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you don`t have any place to go, every tool you try.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How it works, I don`t know. I don`t care. As long as the bad guy ends up in jail, how they get there, it`s all irrelevant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The Rose Swartwood case is in serious jeopardy of going unsolved, but Detective Mucci isn`t ready to give up. He suggests they consult a psychic.
MUCCI: I had initially heard of Phil Jordan through other law enforcement agencies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he first brought it up, I wasn`t exactly skeptical and I wasn`t exactly enthused. I figured, well, why not?
ANNOUNCER: The detectives call Phil and give him only Rose`s name. Visions of the woman fill his mind.
JORDAN: It`s like a very intense day dream. Rose Swartwood had a very significant ring on. It was like a cocktail ring. And she would twirl that ring in a nervous gesture.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. Straight out to psychic detective Phil Jordan.
Mr. Jordan, how many photos did Detective Mucci hand you?
JORDAN: The original photos, I believe he handed me the two photos of Rose Swartwood. And then later on, he handed me a group of -- I don`t -- many mug shots that were involved with the perpetrators of the crime.
GRACE: A thick stack of photos?
JORDAN: Yes, a thick stack, probably 30 or 40, I would say.
GRACE: And out of almost 40 photos, you look through them all and pick out two people?
JORDAN: I looked through them and put two to the side and said, "These are the persons I think you`re looking for."
GRACE: What did you get? Did you get a burning sensation in your fingers? I mean, how did you know who to pick?
(LAUGHTER)
JORDAN: For me, it`s very much -- it becomes knowledge to me. Whenever I work a case, I try to stay within my own mind, within my own unconscious mind, and it becomes knowledge for me. It`s like, "These are the two individuals you`re looking for."
GRACE: And to former Detective Mike Mucci, they were the right guys?
MUCCI: They were the right guys.
GRACE: Please tell me what sentence they got.
MUCCI: William Cuddy (ph), 25 to life, Demetrius Moore (ph), 22 to life.
GRACE: I hope they`re enjoying their stay in the penitentiary.
Thank you, gentlemen.
But I want to thank all of my guests tonight. My biggest thank you, like every night, is to you, for being with all of us, inviting us into your homes. If you want to see more psychic detectives, they`re on Court TV every week.
Coming up, headlines from all around the world. I`m Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. Hope to see you right here every weeknight, 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.
END
