FBI agent Robert Ressler & police psychic Noreen Renier: Runway claims

Police psychic Noreen Renier: Fantasized claims a runway long.

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"January 28, 1984. A small chartered plane carrying four passengers had mysteriously vanished from the sky somewhere over rural Massachusetts or New Hampshire. . . . Reaching into the unknown, I began searching for the airplane. I saw the downed plane immediately. In fact, I found myself almost on top of it."

Those statements come from Noreen Renier's book, A Mind for Murder, in a startling and emotional chapter called "The Doomed Flight." Previous to this segment's posting, the majority of readers who contacted this web site believed this case best chronicles Noreen Renier's most acute psychic abilities.

But a new investigation reveals police psychic Noreen Renier neither found the plane nor conveyed accurate information to a jury or to millions of television viewers during the last 20 years. This investigation is apart from the federal court judgment against Noreen Renier, but also involving skeptic John Merrell.

Many followers of Renier, including Robert Ressler, the former director of the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, have cited Renier's psychic assistance in this seemingly spectacular case. In fact, the top of two of Renier's web site pages (as of early 2007) have quotes from Robert Ressler stating, "She helped to locate a plane containing the body of a relative of an FBI agent" and "She is the best!"

FBI Special Agent Ressler assisted in the defense of Noreen Renier in an Oregon courtroom in 1986 when Renier sued skeptic John Merrell for libel. Merrell's attorney told the jury that Renier's claims of finding the plane herself were untrue. Renier, however, told the jury that she was "instrumental in helping to find an airplane that had crashed in Massachusetts."

Renier herself notes in her book, A Mind for Murder, that the recommendation to use her on the case was "validated by Special Agent Robert Ressler" and "Robert always backed me up, especially in the face of skeptics, and recommended my services to the police."

On Renier's web site she includes a media article from the Journal, based in Durham, England, and dated July 12, 1997. She states in that article that her most unusual case came when she was asked to locate a missing airplane that had disappeared without a trace. "I came out with the longitude and latitude, and the number of miles away it was --- not bad for someone who can't find their way around a grocery store!"

And as recently as July 31, 2005, in an article in the Lynchburg News & Advance, she stated "I've found a wrecked plane a thousand miles away."

In early 2006, John Merrell decided to review, from top to bottom, Renier's claims surrounding the plane crash near Gardner, Massachusetts.

By surprise, after 22 years, in June 2006 Merrell located two people who knew about the crash. And these two residents from Massachusetts --- not psychic investigator Noreen Renier of Virginia --- actually found the plane. Amazingly neither of the two people who found the plane ---- Carl Wilber and his daughter Cheryl --- had ever heard of psychic investigator Noreen Renier who claims to have found the same plane they actually located!

Mr. Wilber told Merrell after reviewing A Mind for Murder (co-written by Naomi Lucks), that police psychic Noreen Renier "doesn't know what she's talking about. . . . I don't think she's got anything right. . . . My daughter and I found the plane ourselves. . . . We never heard of her. . . . She's lying." A review of local newspaper articles published at the time of the crash shows Carl (much the same as he appears today) and his daughter as the actual finders of the plane.

The plane was not found because of any psychic involvement, nor was it found because of any assistance from Noreen Renier even indirectly. Nor was the crashed plane lost "a thousand miles away" from Renier or considered by local police to have crashed in New Hampshire.

Detective Lieutenant Gerald J. Poirier, Gardner Police Department

Detective Lieutenant Gerald Poirier, of the Gardner, Massachusetts, Police Department, is the commander of the North Worcester County Drug Task Force and was on duty the evening of the crash. In June 2006, he assisted Merrell in obtaining police reports and background about the crash. After providing Merrell with a tour of the airport and showing him maps and aerial photography of the area, he told Merrell, "We knew for a fact [the crash site] wasn't in New Hampshire."

Lt. Poirier showed Merrell just how narrow the search area around the Gardner airport had become just 24 minutes after the crash. A pilot on the ground (Ronald Richard) phoned in the report of the crash from the airport and --- according to newspapers published the week of the crash --- estimated the direction coordinates of the crash site to within approximately 2000-3500 feet of the Gardner airport.

New Hampshire is more than 10 miles further north of the airport. As Noreen Renier claims to have re-created the events of this specific crash in her mind as they happened why does she mention New Hampshire? By the time she was brought into the case (more than a week later), no one thought it was in New Hampshire as witnesses at the Gardner Massachusetts airport reported the crash. Amazingly they actually heard the plane crash approximately 30 seconds after passing 60' over the airport runway! So why is she confused about the state? Indeed she claimed in testimony she knew the terrain underneath as the plane flew and saw the crash site "immediately."

The telephone call from Ronald Richard, who sighted the plane and heard the crash (along with companion Cricket Frost), was placed to the Gardner Police Department at 7:32 p.m. on January 28, 1984. That call to police came just 19 minutes after the plane was officially lost by radar. The exact time of the crash was able to be matched when Air Force officials received results of a Federal Aviation Administration review of area radar records, "which indicated an aircraft disappeared from radar contact near the [Gardner] airport at about 7:13 p.m."

Ronald Richard's phone call is listed on the January 28, 1984, Gardner Police blotter at 7:32 p.m. and includes the words "plane crash in woods south of Gardner airport."

None of this very specific information of time, location, police involvement, eyewitnesses, or radar tracking is mentioned in A Mind for Murder. Instead, Renier describes the plane as having "mysteriously vanished from the sky."

From the time of the crash through the next 800 hours (the plane was found approximately 275 hours after the crash), there is no evidence that Renier ever reported anything relating to the crash directly to FAA officials at the search scene, nor to any of the five Gardner Airport Commissioners, nor to the local search and rescue coordinator. Renier is not mentioned in any daily logs by the Gardner Police Department or the nearby Templeton Police Department.

Renier provided absolutely no foresight about the location of the crash to prevent more than 65 Civil Air Patrol members from searching more than 6,650 square miles. Amazingly --- for someone who claims psychic sensitivity --- she never told a single police officer or Civil Air Patrol authority that the crash was less than the length of the runaway away from the Gardner Airport search center. In fact her statements more closely match another plane crash in a different state!

Yet Noreen Renier told millions of television viewers that she provided the longitude and latitude of the crash site. And in A Mind for Murder she writes that "the numbers I had given . . . turned out to be the longitude and latitude of the downed plane." That bold exaggeration is just one of many.

In 1986 in her Oregon lawsuit against John Merrell, Renier's attorney, Lee Werdell, told the jury, "The evidence will indicate that Noreen Renier gave quite a bit of information about where to search; actually some numbers that turned out to be the latitude and longitude of how far it was from a major city. . . . She said it was in a wooded area and a lot of specific things; and described an old woman that had been selling things in kind of a beat-up old house near a Texaco gas station."

John Merrell, June 2006 at Gardner Airport

Renier writes in A Mind for Murder, "I saw two sets of numbers. Breathlessly, I repeated them. . . . I could feel that they were important."

Merrell notes, "It is very common for most people who hear longitude and altitude to assume you say them as two numbers --- like 45 degrees by 30 degrees. But it's far more complex than providing two numbers. As an example, the longitude and latitude for the Gardner Municipal Airport located just a half mile from the crash site is N4233.0, W 07201.0. And the Statue of Liberty is located at latitude 40.6897 and longitude -74.0446. Unknown to the vast majority of the public, pinpointing a location, even as big as the Statue of Liberty, is far more complicated than just tossing out two numbers."

Yet in a lengthy interview conducted by Florida Magazine and published on May 17, 1992, journalist Charles Fishman quotes exactly how Renier claims to have provided the longitude and latitude. Renier stated, "I get lost going to the grocery store, but I found a plane once. I gave them two numbers , it turned out to be the longitude and latitude for it." (Emphasis added.)

If so, she might have pinpointed a site location over Lake Ontario, Canada, or miles off the Atlantic seaboard near Greenland.

But who is the "them" Renier claims in interviews to have given these longitude and latitude numbers to?

Merrell smiles and notes this bigger issue. "Her most notable claim --- one she has repeated for more than 20 years --- is providing the longitude and latitude of the crash site for the search teams. With hundreds of people involved in a search during sub-freezing temperatures Renier claims to have "immediately" seen where the lost party was. And according to testimony the woman who hired Renier said Renier told her two of the four passengers survived the crash. So when this incredible psychic moment hit of the plane's location did Renier instantly reach for the phone? Did she immediately call the search and rescue team headquartered less than a half-mile away? Did she phone the local police? The FAA? The airport close-by? Did she immediately call either of the two nearby fire and rescue facilities --- one within just several thousand feet? Amazingly ---- or perhaps not surprisingly --- she did none of those things."

In fact Renier avoided any urgency and simply passed her visions on through the woman who hired her to find the plane. A woman who apparently received nothing very specific or critical from Renier, and according to Renier then waited until the following day to discuss it with others. And even then yet another day would pass before an entirely independent party found the plane. Whatever the vision Renier had it appears that it was not enough to immediately pass along to authorities. This is a far different scenario than what she has presented to the media for 20 years.

Even the woman who hired Renier to find the plane (Jessica Herbert) testified that Renier didn't actually provide specific longitude and latitude numbers, but "lots of numbers" that she attempted to somehow relate to a map. Herbert stated in testimony, "She [Renier], you know, said some of them could be numbers of major highways, or small back roads, whatever, and so I jotted all these down. Some of them she had feelings were major highways and others she thought might be smaller roads and then she had three other numbers that I've forgotten. . . . And she said 'I don't know what these mean but they definitely have something to do with the location.'"

Before millions of television viewers and readers of A Mind for Murder the sense is that Renier led authorities directly to the scene of the crash. Yet under oath during a court deposition Merrell's attorney asked Renier which authorities she gave the crash site information to. Statements from this deposition have never been publicly referenced in the media before now. Amazingly Renier responded " ...I didn't give it to anybody, I gave it to her [Jessica Herbert who had hired Renier to find the plane]."

And when asked if she had "any contact with any of the authorities whatsoever" Renier answers "no". So the real fact is that Renier never handed anyone anything that was clearly specific longitude and latitude. Nothing from Renier kept search and rescue members from continuing their efforts across frozen swamps.

So what did Renier provide? It appears she spent 20 years creating a very elaborate fantasy after developing portions of it for use with Jessica Herbert and for use with a six-member jury in her lawsuit against Merrell.

Clearly Renier's longitude and latitude numbers --- if they ever existed at all ---- had nothing to do with finding the plane.

Renier stated in posted Court TV transcripts , "I led them from the air as if I was an airplane to where they crashed." But Renier actually only "led them from the air" in her mind. She was in her Virginia home throughout the search. A home not 1000 miles, as she earlier stated, but just 463 miles away --- close enough to easily obtain newspaper and media coverage that had run stories for more than a week.

Longitude and latitude numbers are not the only claim Renier is famous for. Renier writes in her book with co-author Naomi Lucks that " . . . Now letters came into my head. . . . H,D, and A. . . . They are significant. . . . They could be initials of towns. . . . They definitely have something to do with the location of the missing airplane."

Gardner Airport looking northeast

In late 2005 Merrell wrote, "There are more than 350 towns and cities in Massachusetts. Why does Noreen Renier only report her awareness of three letters -- not even the full name of a single town? None of the towns immediately surrounding the crash site match those three letters."

In 1986 Renier told the Oregon jury, "I saw a dirt road. And at the bottom of the dirt road was --- it looked like an old, rickety gas station that really wasn't a gas station anymore. And I saw an old woman and she didn't have any teeth and she sold things in the camper , and then I remember hearing dogs barking. Oh I hear dogs barking. There's dogs there . . . up this road and to --- I believe I said it was to the right. Not all the way up the road, but part way up. . . . She has lots of hunting dogs. I can hear them. . . . When you reach the gas station, take the road up the mountain. You don't need to go all the way to the top. The plane will be found to the right of the road." (Emphasis added.)

And backing up Renier was Jessica Herbert's testimony. She testified that the woman according to Renier "had been there for many years and she mentioned dogs. Dogs barking everywhere in the area. . ."

While Renier --- who was never in the search area in 1984 --- states the old woman "sold things in the camper," this conflicts with the testimony of FBI special agent Mark Babyak who said that Noreen had stated that "an old lady sold supplies to campers." So did the toothless woman sell things in a camper or supplies to campers?

Once again, it doesn't matter. Whether it's a badly misplaced reality or a wildly creative fantasy, it simply has nothing to do with finding the crashed plane.

In early February 1984, Carl Wilber and daughter Cheryl found the plane. Carl and his wife Pat, along with their daughter, have lived near the area of the crash site for many years --- Carl Wilber now in his mid 60's for his entire life. Carl remembers the area from more than 55 years ago, and even his daughter remembers it for more than 30 years. They know the area well, as it surrounds their home, and Carl has been an active hunter for more than 40 years in the region --- even 20 years before the crash. They know of no old rickety gas station, nor any woman who sold things in a camper. In fact, with so few neighbors nearby in 1985, the Wilbers were quite adamant that there was simply no such woman at all. Ever.

But most amazing is that for 40 years Carl, Pat and Cheryl have had one principal occupation --- the care of dogs. They run two businesses which have expanded into the care of multiple pets, but the taking care of dogs is their principal business.

Noreen Renier neither found the plane nor conveyed accurate information to a jury or to millions of televsion viewers. The Wilbers found the plane.

The Wilbers have taken care of generations of dogs throughout the area --- and can match dogs to owners. Over dinner with Merrell they ran through everyone in the last 40 years --- not just 23 years --- in the crash area who could possibly have matched the hunting dog owner Renier described. And Renier's description of that owner is quite specific --- "an old woman who runs the gas station. She doesn't have any teeth. She sells a lot of junk." And Renier's book includes the additional comment, "We learned the toothless old lady had died the year before."

Merrell notes, "That's a lot of information to pinpoint someone in the small community the size of Gardner and Templeton. But of course Renier likely assumed no one would ever check up on her claims."

The Wilbers prompted one another about dogs on various streets around the crash site and far beyond. They considered a variety of dogs and owners --- and not just hunting dogs as described by Renier. Their conclusion? A complete fantasy. Their credibility? These are the actual people who found the plane as volunteers in sub-freezing temperatures amid ice and snow.

In her 2005 book, Renier wrote that "A dirt road came into focus, and I followed the thin, winding yellow thread down the mountainside. . . . There is an old dirt road near the crash site, and at the bottom of it . . . is an old fashioned house. The house has been turned into a gas station." (Emphasis added.)

In her court deposition taken in 1986 Renier claimed it was this "little gas station that had barking dogs" that gave authorities "a point from up in the air, I told them how they would go up and they would turn, I also gave them longitudes and latitudes, I believe, if I remember correctly, they told me that I gave them the exact miles which I don't know if it is miles where they left to where the plane was or what exactly."

But the reality is that even Renier testified that she never actually spoke to any authorities. So her continued use of providing "them" information is apparently a fantasy since she gave no one but Jessica Herbert information. And that information --- whatever it might have been --- did not result in the plane being found. And the repeated references to hunting dogs nearby the crash site is untrue.

What about the "dilapidated little gas station" created from a "old fashioned house" that allowed air search teams to spot a reference by the crash site? Jessica Herbert in her testimony stated that Renier told her about an old woman who "lived in a house but it had been a gas station. . . it had a Texaco sign, rusting out in front of it. She described a lot of stone fence, foundation. . ."

There are several "old fashioned" houses in the crash area --- but none which was ever in the last 30 years a gas station. And though Renier's attorney also referenced the Texaco to the jury, it has never existed. There was no Citgo. No Standard. No Shell. No 'Flying A' gas station with a basset hound named Axlerod. Not even the stone fence or foundation of a gas station. Nothing. What the jury heard was only Renier's fantasy repeated again by Herbert and Renier's attorney.

And who, again, is qualified to know the old homes in the area of the crash site? Again, the Wilbers themselves, whose own home was built in the 1800s. "She doesn't begin to know what we know," said Carl Wilber of Renier.

Careful investigators have found Noreen Renier repeatedly links herself before the media with the criminology and laws fields even though she has absolutely no professional experience or accredited college degrees.

Yet Renier proceeded to expand her crash event claims before millions of TV viewers while pumping out psychic criminology hocus pocus and whopping exaggerations. For more, continue with segment 5, titled "Runway Part 2" below.