Missing person psychic Noreen Renier & Murdergate: The lies and exaggerated claims behind a Massachusetts air crash

Claims Revised Jessica Herbert's testimony in 1986 helped convince a jury that pseudo psychic criminologist Noreen Renier was authentic at locating missing persons. Herbert testified that Renier described the events surrounding the crashed aircraft ---discussed in the last three sections of this web site --- and that the plane had gone down at the junction of 3 letters provided by Renier.

Facts and truth are often distant from the claims and visions of psychic crime investigator Noreen Renier according to witnesses. Even as Renier connects herself to psychic investigations of old crimes, rapes and murders, missing persons and other psychic criminology --- her exaggerated paranormal claims and fantasized visions are troubling.

Herbert implied that Renier was remarkable when she stated "Well, as it turned out those letters were the first letters of three towns and where the plane went down and as a matter of fact, it took the authorities a couple of days to determine whether it went down in Templeton, Gardner or. . . I forgot the name of the third town, but she had given me the letter of the three towns. It had gone down right at that point."

That TV crime psychic Renier was able to triangulate the location and picked three correct letters must have amazed the jury when they heard about Renier's mapping abilities. Herbert testified that this junction point "was right where the plane was down, it was right where the actual town lines crossed and so it was out in the woods, but Templeton and Gardner and I forget the name of the third town, but the three of them where they meet, where the town lines are together, at that point."

The testimony by Jessica Herbert woke up the jury. It appeared Renier had an extraordinary psychic gift. But Herbert went further. In her testimony she stated that Renier literally "took a map and with her finger put it on Gardner. . . and it turned out that the longitude and latitude were correct for Gardner!"

But 23 years later we know there is a serious problem with Jessica Herbert's testimony. Her testimony doesn't match the truth --- not even close. While Renier continues to cite Herbert's testimony as factual it was in fact a fantasy played before a jury. But it's clear that playing the jury for all it was worth was the goal.

The actual crash site is surrounded by three communities, including the small settlement of Pitcherville. All of them are within approximately 4600 to 5400 feet from the crash site. So surrounding the crash site (at a mile or less) are Gardner, Templeton and Pitcherville. Herbert noted Gardner and Templeton but could not recall Pitcherville.

But even if Jessica Herbert had recalled the settlement of Pitcherville the letters for each town would have begun with 'G-T-P'.

Yet even Renier's 2005 edition of her book A Mind For Murder cited that the letters were H, D and A and these "were the initial letters of the names of three towns whose outskirts all connected in the area marked by the longitude and latitude." So clearly Jessica Herbert gave support where again none was actually deserved. And during the investigation by Merrell he showed the letters 'H-D-A' provided by Renier are either dead wrong or attempting to use cues that are off by miles from the actual crash site. Or match other crash sites elsewhere.

The small town of Hubbardston is more than six miles south, nearer Wachusett Mountain. Of course psychic investigator Renier doesn't initially say in her 2005 edition of A Mind For Murder that the letters represent the first letters of towns. First she says they could be towns. But then she writes "they were the initial letters of three towns whose outskirts all connected in the area marked by the longitude and latitude." (Emphasis added.)

So even in her own book she can't seem to get it straight whether they do represent towns or they don't. But it doesn't matter. There are no towns with the letters H, D or A that feasibly overlap or connect at or near the crash site. Unless one considers another explanation which explains a possible reason for her error (click here).

Interested in viewing the actual pages of the 2005 and 2008 editions of A Mind For Murder where Renier flipped her selections from HDA to GTO? Click here for the link to four pages of conflicting statements between 2005 and 2008.

And for the Fall 2008 Tampa Bay Skeptics Report cover article on this "Watergate-worthy doctoring" by missing person psychic Noreen Renier see A Mind for Murdergate

But changing her claims again on May 8, 2008 at exactly 49 minutes into an webcast interview, Renier claimed her initials were not towns or a river but intersecting counties. She also falsely stated the Civil Air Patrol had given up their search and closed the case only to re-open it after she provided new information.

None of those claims are true as the Civil Air Patrol never closed the case and in fact had never spoken to Noreen Renier directly. Local resident Carl Wilber along with his daughter Cheryl, and entirely independent of Renier and her fantasized letters, numbers, and inaccurate visions lead the search teams to the proper location of the crash site.

Yet in 2008 Noreen Renier continues to repeatedly modify her claims before the public. Click here to hear a 40 second audio segment from The Music of Your Mind with host Maureen Caudill originally aired on 7th Wave Network May 8, 2008.

The facts are that the longitude and latitude for the airport (N4233.0, W07201.0) were already known before the crash, and neither mystery numbers nor mystery letters had anything to do with locating the crash site. The plane was found just 2700 feet south of the end of the runway by people who didn't use longitude or latitude.

But Jessica Herbert's testimony skipped reality and built a story founded upon pure fantasy. Jessica Herbert restated and even enhanced Renier's elaborate fantasy about the letters along with Renier's actions. And Herbert made statements which weren't just in error --- she repeated fantasized claims. Indeed if Noreen Renier had directly told any of the FAA authorities or local search and rescue personnel the location of the crash site (even narrowing it down to the final 2700 feet), there were personnel who would have responded. And if Renier had told any of the local police or sheriff's personnel (with two city police departments within a short drive of the crash site), they would have immediately made the relatively quick search from the nearby access road to reach the plane. Even if she was passing her psychic visions on to others, it is clear that the Wilbers never received any such information to lead them to the site.

Court TV psychic detective Noreen Renier may have been "breathless" when numbers and letters floated through her mind, but they had nothing to do with the plane being found. But this psychic hocus pocus apparently made Jessica Herbert a believer --- and then she falsely repeated the letters matched the crash site in her own words.

Renier's Oregon attorney Lee Werdell even drew things out for the jury and spent several minutes discussing headings, degrees off the airport, and coordinates. Psychic visions or fiction? A quote taken directly from the Oregon court transcript has Renier's attorney Lee Werdell stating "I'm not an artist, but this is a circle; this is zero degrees, that's 90 degrees, 180, 270 and 360. All right, if that is 180, about 15 degrees to 195 would be something like this, maybe over to there. Two hundred and twenty five is halfway between 180 and 70, I believe. That's 45 degrees. That's 45 less 70. Twenty five from 70 is 45 degrees, so 225 degrees is right dead center between the two 70 and 180. If you're in an airport and you start flying at 195 heading, it will be something like that. If the heading you should have been flying is 225, it will be something like that."

John Merrell recalls watching Lee Werdell spend minute after minute before the jury. "It was pretty apparent that Werdell's mission wasn't to do much beyond making numbers, angles, headings, degrees and distances seem important to locating the plane crash. He won the case for his client by challenging the concerns of psychic fraud by Noreen Renier but in doing so he made it seem Renier was a psychic Einstein of aeronautic trajectories and navigational mapping. But longitude and latitude or the distance to any city had absolutely nothing to do with why the plane was found by the Wilbers. Absolutely, positively nothing. But in the eyes of the six member jury Renier became a female Einstein with amazing psychic powers."

Throughout descriptive pages about forested hills, gorges, and mountains around the crash area, Renier's book states that "the area looked primitive, undeveloped. I caught glimpses of rocks below . . . and big gorges underneath me." Yet after local residents Cheryl Wilber and her father Carl found the plane on the ground, Cheryl was flown by helicopter back to the site and could see nothing of the plane even when hovering directly over the crash site --- just level treetops about the crash site. No gorges, no rocks. Hemlock trees and dense undergrowth prevented all visual spotting of open ground around the airplane from the air, with the only gaps being the lakes and swamps. And Renier in her 2005 edition of A Mind For Murder failed to note the waterway which feeds the crash site swamp area or further away Snake Pond, Kendall Pond, Otter River, Bents Pond or even Crystal Lake, which extends north to south for more than a mile.

But suddenly now in the 2008 edition of A Mind For Murder Noreen Renier claims she did not provide the letters H, D and A but rather instead G, T and O. Did Noreen Renier gaze at this web site and the maps below over the past two years and decide she should revise her psychic claims to better match the facts?

But did she then also decide to avoid a perfect score and substitute "O" for Otter River instead of "P" for Pitcherville? It may not be a township on the map but perhaps she assumed that it would still be considered a hit by most readers. Not surprisingly she never mentions that she originally selected three other letters (H, D and A) in her 2005 edition of A Mind For Murder.

Air crash site Map This Location

Unlike Noreen Renier, critic John Merrell actually walked much of the area surrounding the airport and drove all of the streets and unpaved roadways nearby. "I even walked up towards a sand pit and wandered off-road towards a local stream and swamp area."

Merrell followed the outer rings around several swamps and lakes. "I spent two days speaking with dozens of neighbors and Gardner and Templeton citizens in the area. I spent several hours near the airport actually walking the outside of the 3000-foot runway and stood at the southern end of the runway looking south towards the crash area. It doesn't take psychic imagination to visualize the first 2000 feet off the runway (the 2000-footclearing is cited in airport landing data), as there are no trees and no large exposed outcroppings of rock. It is essentially (as seen in early June) an unobstructed swamp, dense with mosquitoes."

Crash Map 2 In her book, A Mind for Murder, Renier stated that search members "followed directions that I provided when I was in the plane --- landmarks, speed, sharp turns, longitude and latitude --- and they saw what I had described."

However, we now know from those who found the plane that what Noreen Renier described is not what they saw. They saw a completely different scene. And the phrase Renier uses --- "when I was in the plane" --- only adds to the confusion when one attempts to carefully catch up with her meaning. She was never in any search plane above the snow and frozen marsh near Gardner during January or early February 1984. Only in her mind.

Noreen Renier didn't point out a plane window and actually identify landmarks below where others could see them, or call out air speed while in measurable and specific locations relative to the surroundings, or offer corrections in turns while aboard a plane. Her directions, travel speed, aircraft turns, and longitude and latitude were merely part of the fantasy she created as she sat in a comfortably heated room inside her Virginia home, 463 miles away. And her thoughts came more than a week after police had been informed of the crash near the airport and the media had extensively reported on searches in weather so severe that search parties were recalled at times.

Noreen Renier showcased her lawsuit with the aid of several strong witnesses including FBI Special Agents Robert Ressler and Mark Babyak, and Babyak's his ex-wife Jessica Herbert. And a third FBI agent flew a search plane.

According to Merrell, the jury "kept hearing the letters FBI repeatedly from Noreen's attorney and repeated references to a lecture given by Noreen Renier at the FBI Training Academy, arranged with the assistance of Robert Ressler. And of course Jessica Herbert was both the ex-wife of an FBI agent and the sister of Arthur Herbert, who died in the crash."

This link to members of the FBI has helped create psuedo criminologist Noreen Renier's notoriety among police psychics and other psychic detectives. But what does it say about the FBI, and the FBI Training Academy, that their personnel would arrange a platform for a "psychic medium" and that an FBI agent (according to Renier's Oregon testimony) would pay her cash for other services? No FBI official has ever denied these cash payments. What does the FBI really think about the police psychic who also believes she has multiple "spirit entities" including one who is "a gruff no-nonsense personality named Robert?"

Air Force News Clipping Carl Wilber told Merrell in June 2006, "I just told people who asked that they were all dead when we found them. . . . [Until May 2006] I'd never heard about any psychic. . . . She [Jessica Herbert] would rather believe a psychic than me. . . . Why people think that way I don't know."

It appears Jessica Herbert would prefer to have her family and friends believe a falsehood about her brothers death rather than the sudden and immediate death determined by the medical examiner.

Indeed Jessica Herbert according to Merrell continues to promote the excuse that any comments she might make would cause grief to her family. Merrell notes "Jessica Herbert has never apologized for her testimony or for her continued support of this psychic fantasy. Nor has she answered whether she or her mother met with Carl and Cheryl Wilber soon after they found the crash. At least one member of the Herbert family did according to the Wilber's. If so the Herbert family knew the truth before Jessica Herbert testified that Renier's fantasy was accurate. What kind of person is it that promotes a fantasy before a jury and then walks away to allow a jury to decide between the fantasy or the truth? Was her brothers death worth promoting a facade as a hero in his final moments alive? Did she have any reservations as she watched me fail in court in 1986 based in part on her testimony? Or is there another reason?"

Money and fame drive many psychic mediums. Merrell notes that "the paranormal is a $14-billion industry with an extensive support community so utterly naive (or profitably brilliant) that they remained silent on this escapade for 22 years. No paranormal believer questioned Renier's fantastic claims. Though many within the paranormal industry are multi-millionaires, they showcase psychics as a foundation connected to everything from unconventional health cure businesses to death therapy treatments."

And Noreen Renier is touted by many as "the best" among police psychics. Her rates for a private session (typically about 60-90 minutes in length according to a previous web site) have climbed from $40 in 1985 to $1,000 today. In the Lynchburg News and Advance on July 31, 2005, the reporter noted, "Moreover, $1,000 isn't all that much to Noreen Renier anymore -- it's what she charges for her services. . . . 'It used to be $600,' [Renier] said. 'I actually raised the price to discourage people, because I've got more work than I can handle.'"

At such rates, a similar practicing psychic could work just four days a week, six hours a day, and gross $832,000 per year. Add a monthly lecture, book royalties and payments from television show syndication, and you can quickly exceed a million-dollar income as a psychic medium. The claims of accurate psychic clues and solving the case using the powers of her mind continue by police psychic Noreen Renier in dozens of published articles and on video TV appearances.

Her own web site continues to highlight several media articles which include some of the unfounded claims we cited here.

The facts are that psychic Noreen Renier displayed no psychic capabilities at all in the Gardner Massachusetts plane crash case. Nothing she said offered anything of value in finding the plane.

John Merrell at Gardner Municipal Airport, June 2006 From the time of the crash until the airplane was found, the local newspapers had covered the case extensively. On February 15, 1984, a local newspaper noted that Arthur Herbert had boarded with Caroline Porter, Robert Brewster and pilot Charles Perry --- and two days later the newspapers reported Perry had used an assumed name and was actually Charles Principe.

Did Charles Principe select to use the name Charles Perry because a real Charles Perry (click here) was both a pilot and hero during World War II? And more importantly, why didn't the "amazing psychic" who claimed to be so accurate about events surrounding the crash mention to authorities that the pilot wasn't who he claimed? We get only failure after failure when Renier's psychic claims are compared with the actual events.

A 1984 local Gardner area newspaper story, with a photograph of Carl and Cheryl Wilber, mentions a state police narcotics detective on the investigating team. It also notes the two people at the airport who witnessed and reported the plane flying approximately 60 feet above the runway, and that they stated that the plane was coming in with the runway lights off. Ronald Richard, one of the people mentioned in this 1984 article, recently noted that the plane, as it approached in darkness, had actually turned off its own aircraft lights and had also shut off the runway lights (which Richard, thinking the plane was having difficulty activating, had turned on himself).

The airplane that crashed was a rented plane. Like many small, unmanned airports, the Gardner airport runway lights can be automatically and simply activated using a plane's radio transmitter. In addition to attempting a landing at night with no landing lights and no runway lights, neither the pilot (Principe) nor any passengers had filed a flight plan. Nor did anyone in the Gardner area come forward to say that they had been there to meet the four arriving passengers. And the airport has no public transportation. Nothing.

The Gardner airport is not a choice spot to be during bad weather in late January --- it is generally unmanned and deserted even during daylight hours. What were four people doing as they swooped down on the airport in total darkness?

On April 9, 1984, the report from the National Transportation Safety Board was published in the local papers, stating that they found the aircraft's light switch to be in the "off" position. Evidently someone made the decision that it was better not to be seen than to fly with visibility in the evening sky. Curious.

Carl and Cheryl Wilber reported that they saw a large satchel or canvas bag at the crash site. It appeared full but they did not disturb it before going for law enforcement personnel. Upon their return two officers immediately located the satchel and walked away with it. That was the last time the satchel was seen by the Wilber's and interestingly these federal officers are not referenced in reports. What was in the bag and why was the satchel and it's contents never publicly reported? Were some amid the extensive search looking as much for the bag as for the plane and its passengers? Was a psychic fantasy considered a good cover-up story by two officers who took the satchel away? These issues are being examined by others and will be reported here.

Herbert confirmed under oath that even prior to her first face-to-face meeting with Renier about 11 days after the crash, she gave Renier significant information. Together with the phone information she had given Renier the day before their meeting , she also provided Renier with the names of Civil Air Patrol personnel she (Herbert) was working with. In A Mind for Murder, Renier fails to mention that she had been given this critical information.

Jessica Herbert had even given Renier the name of the crash site area --- Gardner, Massachusetts!

The crash location lies approximately 2700 feet from the south end of the airport's sole runway --- 700 feet beyond a swamp that begins at the runway's end and extends for 2000 feet. Herbert had provided information to Renier from news reports spanning more than ten days, including reports of a possible crash near the airport! Compare this to Renier's opening in her chapter, which states, "A small chartered plane carrying four passengers had mysteriously vanished from the sky somewhere over rural Massachusetts or New Hampshire." (Emphasis added.)

So the reality is that Renier was told of the crash location within 2700 feet of where the wreckage was ultimately found. But even with that information, Renier didn't pinpoint the last 2700 feet --- less than the length of the airport's runway.

Noreen Renier supporter Daniel Grinnan, Jr., of the Bureau of Forensic Science, Commonwealth of Virginia, provided a public endorsement of Noreen Renier, noting "You definitely opened many eyes to the potential investigative tool of the psychic. Obviously, many a doubting Thomas had to revise his ideas concerning this somewhat esoteric area."

Merrell notes "It certainly makes me wonder if the man knows the truth about this case."

Peter Slusar of the Peninsula Tidewater Regional Academy of Criminal Justice (Hampton, Virginia), previously noted Renier's "demonstrations and predictions were most accurate and although there still will be skeptics, you're able to have a lot of people leave with an open mind."

By comparison, Albert Stone a Tennessee teacher who wrote to Merrell in 2002 included the comment that, "A froth has percolated for more than 30 years. Much of it has come from small southern communities that haven't moved beyond the investigative levels of 60 years ago. There is no excuse for law enforcement agencies to be dealing in the paranormal today. Soothsayers and mediums who speak with the dead are a poor excuse to replace a well equipped crime lab and properly trained investigators. Law enforcement personnel who approve pay for mediums or allow them to lecture should be promptly fired as they are both incompetent and delusional. ...They should be utterly ashamed of lending credibility to frauds."

John Merrell noted in late 2005 that, "About every other month for many years a reporter would call me at work or home and ask why I had made up lies about a psychic who was clearly a hero. They assumed I'd admit to lying and furnish them with a direct quote to use. Instead, when I'd say I had no comment other than I hadn't lied in court, they'd respond that the jury had already determined otherwise, so it really didn't matter. American media compounded the story of a psychic finding a plane by failing to investigate. The stories produced over the past 20 years have combined mystery, entertainment, and the supernatural --- a quick write that is hard to resist by producers on the edge of entertainment rather than factual news."

A Mind For Murder

But these overwhelming facts are indisputable: Noreen Renier told millions of American television viewers, "I found a plane." And Noreen Renier wrote of this case in A Mind for Murder, "My clues had been accurate. . . . So much of my information was accurate. . . . The crash site was exactly the way I had described it. . . . Sitting on some flat rocks under a nearby tree, as if someone had placed her there, they found the headless body of a young woman."

But in reality there were no flat rocks under Caroline Porter. There were no rocks at all. And there was no young man who took Caroline in his arms and carried her away from the plane and sat her beneath a tree.

In the November 9th 2006 issue of The Hook (Charlottesville, Virginia) private investigator Marlene K. Rockwell who has worked with Renier over the last four years at Rockwell Investigations, stated she's seen a compelling track record during that time. "Her information is incredibly accurate," Rockwell says. "She says she's 80-85 percent, but I found her to be about 95 percent accurate. I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams the information that she could provide." Can this be true when in conducting an investigation into Renier's most publicly documented reference case --- her claims concerning the air crash --- Renier's information is more closely 95% inaccurate and filled with whopping exaggerations?

What kind of hard documented yardstick does Kansas based Rockwell Investigations use? Is an investigative team with a police psychic whom a federal court found "unquestionably breached" a court settlement an example of the "unstoppable team" described on the Rockwell Investigation web site? The November 16, 2006 order from the U.S. District Court (Western District of Washington at Seattle) states ". . . the record before the court shows that it is impossible that Ms. Renier breached the agreement in this case without some level of fault. She knew or should have known of the agreement, and breached it nonetheless." Authentic crime investigators can be both protective of the facts while abiding by legal sanctions.

In the Court TV Online transcript taken from her interview, the narrator states, "By the way, that plane story she told is the same one she sued the skeptic over. Apparently some guy said she was lieing [sic] when she told that story, so she sued him and the FBI had to testify in the case." In the same transcript, Renier notes, "I don't really think there are skeptics though, maybe 'de bunkers' who are cowards."

There are two principal science investigators whom Noreen Renier knows have publicly examined this case. One is an electronics imaging specialist (John Merrell) with patents covering public emergency warning systems, and the other (Gary Posner) is a doctor of internal medicine. Both have a record of serving the public in their spare time. There is no report that either has ever been called a coward by anyone within the communities of Seattle and Tampa that they serve. And it is John Merrell who sought and won a federal court summary judgment against Noreen Renier in November 2006.

On January 28, 1984, four passengers died in the frozen and isolated blackness of the night near runway 18/36.

They were discovered 13 days later, on the morning of February 10, following weather so severe that their bodies were glazed in snow. Described by Cheryl Wilber as appearing like "frozen white mannequins," four people were found in a scene of absolute calm in a foot of snow. There is absolutely no evidence that they suffered or that any of the four lived beyond the instant of the crash. After 22 years the real circumstances of the crash have now been revealed. They clearly and substantially differ from the events portrayed by Noreen Renier.

There was no heroic death scene on January 28,1984. The scene of suffering and bitterness, as Arthur Herbert struggled to carry a dying Caroline Porter in his arms from the plane and then lowering her gently against a tree, never happened.

There was no tearful joint caress and no holding of hands before Arthur Herbert walked away in search of help. He did not stumble and collapse on a broken leg as he headed down a hill. And there were no cries of hunting dogs in the stillness.

Instead, just seconds after the plane hit the treetops, it became pitch black.

While the sky above had been crystal clear there were no nearby city lights and all of the plane lights had been shut off.

Having dropped approximately 50 feet to the ground within dense hemlock trees at 7:15 p.m. in late January, the plane was obscured under a dark forest canopy. The crash never created a fire.

Five miles away in Baldwinville the afternoon temperature had reached 50 degrees but had fallen to about 26 degrees and would reach a low of 19 degrees within five hours. Amid the blackness the freezing winds would have continued to blow from across two thousand feet of open swamp just 75' away. The ground froze and the edges of the swamp were likely crusting over.

With all four passengers dying instantly according to the medical examiner the only movement would have been broken tree branches collapsing and cascading down around the plane.

Four days later the temperatures in the area dropped to as low as 16 below zero And for 12 days the evening temperatures would remain below freezing with a total snow fall at the crash site estimated between 8" and 10".

Large shallow areas of the nearby swamp would freeze over and become covered with snow creating unexpected hazards for search teams.

A dozen mornings after the crash Carl Wilber and his 18-year-old daughter Cheryl followed deer tracks and found the plane.

And now after 22 years a psychic fantasy ends. Some family members, and both readers and supporters of psychic investigator Noreen Renier, will be offended. And perhaps her most prominent psychic defender, Robert Ressler of the FBI.

Noreen Renier is a prominent police psychic and soothsayer represented in litigation by the Seattle legal firm Stokes Lawrence, P.S. Her portrayals of speaking for the dead have been shown before millions of international television viewers and her attorney at Stokes Lawrence is Shelley Hall, a former television producer. On August 7, 2006 lawyer Shelley M. Hall defended her psychic client --- a client who claims she has multiple entities named Sing and Robert who relay communication from the dead --- and stated in a letter addressed to Merrell's attorney "I urge you to counsel your client to take down this web site..."

It is interesting that attorney Shelley Hall of Stokes Lawrence cited privileged and truthful throughout the filings for a 71-year old psychic medium who claims she talks with ghosts and found a crashed plane. Prior to the court order of a summary judgment against their client Noreen Renier, Hall had cited first amendment rights. But United States District Judge James Robart noted in the court filing that "the authority that Ms. Renier cities in support of greater First Amendment restrictions is distinguishable. She mistakenly relies on Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988)."

The Seattle attorney firm of Stokes Lawrence has a police psychic medium client with a long history of claims covering communication with the dead and entities within herself. With her extravagant list of paranormal claims Noreen Renier sizzles before millions of TV viewers, having portrayed herself as a victim stabbed repeatedly. But Noreen Renier has also taken on the role before national TV audiences of becoming a serial killer, such as her appearance on the Joan Rivers show when she "became" the Zodiac Killer.

Psychic Noreen Renier is a media extravaganza who claims to speak for dead murder victims and often has appeared on international television as "the voice" of those who have done the killing. Her claims of levitation, electrical manipulation, and the ability to see through clothing have been widely reported. Clearly Seattle legal firm Stokes Lawrence, P.S. took on a unique psychic medium as a client. And for more than a year attorney Shelley Hall defended her --- though her defense did not stop a federal judge from ruling against her client and awarding Merrell nearly $40,000.

After 22 years it is time "truths" are seen for what they are. Noreen Renier is now on her seventh legal firm against Merrell. Yet after more than 22 years it is Noreen Renier who cannot escape her own statements and claims. And Jessica Herbert must also explain why she has backed a heroic story of her brother that never happened even after she knew the truth. And retired FBI agent Robert Ressler should explain why he considers Noreen Renier "the best" and has not corrected his statement about her assistance in locating the plane.

Noreen Renier's unfounded claim of being a leading and credible psychic who provided accurate psychic clues in this disaster continues.

But Renier's extensive 22-year portrayal of the events surrounding the Gardner Massachusetts air crash only showcase a very elaborate charade built upon fantasy and exaggerations.

Would the four passengers aboard the plane have wished to have their deaths hidden beneath a psychic fantasy created for TV viewers and book readers by "the most credible" Noreen Renier?