The Rhine Research Center: Ignored psychic charade for 22 years

Runway Part 3: Pseudo psychic criminologist Noreen Renier spins fantastic visions and exaggerations about Gardner air crash events.

Part 3 of 4 (This is a segment of a larger web site. You may wish to see HOME or refer to the index at the bottom of this page)

It is not unusual to find comments from researchers and law enforcement officers noting that "new information" has come from TV police psychic Noreen Renier. Yet in the case of the Gardner Massachusetts plane crash Renier indicated bodies in the wrong places, the carrying of bodies sealed within the crashed aircraft to places that never existed, and the stumbling over of bodies that never happened.

Even snowmobiles and mountains that did not exist. Lots of new information, but each a complete fantasy. In this segment we explore some of Renier's actual testimony and critical comments from key witnesses.

Renier claims she speaks "under the auspices of the Rhine Research Center" and she has given numerous lectures showcased alongside Rhine Research Center members in Durham, North Carolina. Yet in billing itself as a parapsychological research center the RRC apparently hasn't sought to publicly correct or acknowledge exaggerations in a host of psychic claims made by Noreen Renier, including her claims about the air crash events.

Renier has previously claimed she participated in extensive paranormal testing at the Psychical Research Foundation and also in testing "in conjunction" with the nearby Duke University. According to Renier's own web site she spoke "under the auspices of the Rhine Research Center" on June 16th, 2006, and recently in mid 2008.

Amazingly in June 2006, the Rhine Research Center posted a 1990 statement from Rod Englert of Forensic Consultants. It reads in part, "In a lot of the cases new information comes forth as a result of Noreen's consultation. She has established a formidable track record for honesty and professionalism."

Is this ultra pro-paranormal center so off course that it has become blind to psychic fantasies posing as truth?

Does Rod Englert as a "qualified court expert" actually back a TV police psychic criminologist who created a airplane crash fantasy in front of millions of TV viewers and before a jury? What does this say about his own judgment when he backs a woman who testified four years earlier that she spoke to the dead and thereby stopped toilets from overflowing?

There seems to be a disturbing issue where some "experts" may be more closely tied to a world of soothsayers, ghosts and screaming psychics than attempting to dig for rational judgments.

Magazines In June 2006 William Roll an Advisory Board Member of the Rhine Research Center stated "Noreen has now written a remarkable book, A Mind for Murder, about her work for the police and the FBI. I haven’t had much success myself in getting experimental evidence for this ability, but I've done the next best thing by writing reviews of the major work, including Noreen’s book."

And links between Rod Englert and Renier go back as far as 18 years. If the Rhine Research Center is investigating the truth and existence of paranormal events why repeatedly provide a public platform for those who make exaggerations?

And why would Rhine's Advisory Board actually promote her during sessions at their facilities?

And why would a key Board Member help promote A Mind for Murder which when he spoke had already been banished by her original 2005 publisher for six months?

Before the U.S. federal court granted the summary judgment against police psychic Noreen Renier on November 16th 2006, John Merrell was asked why it took him 20 years to follow up on this segment of his litigation against Noreen Renier.

Why in particular had Merrell not explored her claims about the aircraft crash in 1986 before six jury members in a southern Oregon county courthouse found him guilty of libel?

"Because she avoided providing the facts before the trial that led me to many of the key players. She clearly didn't want the facts to be investigated before the trial. And for 14 years after 1992 I was under a settlement agreement even as major research personnel remained in a cover-up mode or deep in silence about her fantastic claims." The Washington U.S. federal court noted on November 16, 2006 that the 1992 settlement agreement was "unquestionably breached" by Noreen Renier with the publication of the book A Mind for Murder in May 2005.

Therefore the book's publication allowed Merrell an ability after 14 years to explore and investigate once again. There were more than 20 years of deceptions and cover-ups that would be revealed.

As an example, during a review of the original court deposition taken by Noreen Renier on March 28, 1986 --- two years after the crash but before the courtroom trial --- Merrell's attorney attempted to get some facts about the air crash from Noreen Renier during a deposition.

This included asking Renier to verify where the location was of the crash site, to compare against her psychic claims. To protect himself in the courtroom Merrell was attempting to get additional details about the crash literally hours before the trial from the only source making the claims --- Noreen Renier.

Even in early 1986 --- 24 months after the crash --- Merrell could not find any crash across the United States that matched the claims being made by Renier. In 1984 Renier had been hired by Jessica Herbert to find her brother Arthur Herbert, and Renier had met and worked with Jessica Herbert closely, for pay. They had even met in Noreen's home and been linked together by Robert Ressler according to Renier. This is a partial exchange from Renier's 1986 court deposition about the Massachusetts crash. Remember the location of the crash --- a crash she claims to have seen "immediately" --- was in Massachusetts!

Question: Mrs. Renier, there was a previous article that appeared in the Ashland [Daily] Tidings and it recalled a time or a vision that you had with respect to a downed airplane?

Answer: Yes.

Question: In Virginia?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is this the case where a wife called you and her husband was an FBI agent, do I have that correct?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Could you tell me first of all what the woman's name is?

Answer: No, but I could find out for you, I don't have it in my head.

So shortly before his trial, Renier gives "Virginia" not Massachusetts in answer to a question. And even while under oath she claimed not to recall Jessica Herbert's name, which would have narrowed down Merrell's search for a specific crash. (And Renier never did honor her offer to "find out for you.")

But by not recalling Jessica Herbert's name --- even while under oath --- we can now see how Renier played her game. Just two years before Noreen Renier had worked on the case closely with Jessica Herbert. She had taken payment from Jessica Herbert and Jessica had spent the day with Renier in Renier's home. But Renier clearly wasn't going to allow the name of Herbert to be known. Not to Merrell or his attorney.

Yet when writing in her book A Mind for Murder twenty years after these activities, Noreen Renier was able to describe her encounter with Jessica Herbert with astounding specificity. Her memory returned!

Renier writes of her encounter with Jessica Herbert that "She was beautiful --- beauty queen beautiful --- with a perfect oval face and warm, intelligent brown eyes that smiled as she introduced herself. She was expensively dressed in a cream silk blouse and dark slacks, with her jacket draped over her arm. The outfit looked good on her model-thin figure."

Merrell states, "I can hear Renier's defenders now. They would like to believe Renier was simply attempting to protect her client. That would be dead wrong however. And it certainly would not be appropriate when you are providing testimony under oath. But more importantly even before Renier took her deposition she had previously spoken to the press about finding the plane. In fact, a local Oregon newspaper had already run the story of Renier's claim to have found the plane. So there is no reason to believe she was attempting to conceal her involvement or keep the matter private. Indeed I believe it's accurate to assume her sudden memory failure was exactly what it appears --- a deceptive game --- with a memory that returns selectively when she wants."

The original text of Renier's testimony in her court deposition by Renier was transcribed without punctuation. Here, in these following quotations this web site has added commas and dashes for clarity. A typo ("It" was "I") has also been corrected and key words are also shown in italics. Caught in her stated error by Merrell's attorney, Renier's answers below in this exchange add further concerns:

Question: So when you indicated in this particular article [Ashland (Oregon) Daily Tidings], that it occurred in Virginia that would be in error?

Answer: I probably would maintain that I worked on it in Virginia, and it was misrepresented --- it was in Virginia, I worked on it, I referred to where I worked on the case in Virginia.

Question: So when it says, "The dream belongs to professional psychic Noreen Renier, and she used the image to help authorities to locate a lost aircraft in Virginia..."

Answer: No.

Question: You would have meant in Massachusetts?

Answer: Right.

Question: Could you tell me where in Massachusetts that occurred?

Answer: I have no idea.

Question: Don't know if it was close to Boston, close to the New York border, don't have any idea?

Answer: What you have to realize is when people use me they don't give me information, so I never know anything, I just give them information.

[Advanced to follow-up question]

Question: We already know the state's wrong. What kind of assistance did you give the authorities to help them locate the plane?

Answer: I put myself up like a helicopter or a bird and I saw the road, a little gas station that had barking dogs --- It was really dilapidated and [I] gave them that as 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 --- There were quite a few clues that they felt were instrumental in finding, she told me that they were instrumental in finding the plane.

But again, there was no "they" or "them". Renier only passed apparently jumbled and mixed information to Jessica Herbert. Yet a very confusing trail back to reality was being established. And Renier was about to set the whopper.

Edward Raymond assists. And Renier apparently added confusion when she passed on Virginia rather than Massachusetts to a newspaper reporter in Oregon. And even after to admitting it was Massachusetts in her deposition, during a follow-up question Renier was vague, responding, "I believe it was Massachusetts."

Just a few months earlier, prior to Renier filing her lawsuit against Merrell, Renier told Merrell that the plane was in Virginia, Massachusetts or New York.

But as Merrell became increasingly tied up in Renier's litigation rather than investigating Noreen Renier's claims Noreen Renier unveiled her ultimate air crash fantasy before millions.

On July 16, 1990 --- four years after the jury found in favor of Noreen Renier --- Renier was a guest on the Joan Rivers Show. Dramatically, she recounted once again her work in finding the plane. In front of a national television audience, she stated, "When they found the plane the two people in the front --- their necks were broken --- [and] her brother had carried a headless woman and sat this headless woman against a tree and walked several yards away."

"I was absolutely stunned," Merrell reports. "I had lost a lawsuit to Renier and yet she announced before another national audience that the young woman [Caroline Porter] was headless and was removed from the plane by Arthur Herbert and set against a tree. What was the purpose of announcing this fantasy on national television other than for shock value? Clearly there was no sensitivity to the relatives involved to portray any truth about what actually happened. Now Renier indicated that when they found Arthur Herbert he had walked several yards away and had a broken leg. Even after Renier heard in the courtroom that the medical examiner had said all four passengers died on impact she now claimed Arthur Herbert carried a headless girl across ice and snow just to set her against a tree! Renier's bizarre fantasy just kept evolving --- but always as an attention-getter with ever wider audiences who didn't know the truth. Not once did she mention the radar tracking, the eye witnesses, the police on site or that the plane had been found by people who didn't even [until 2006] know she existed."

More than a million television viewers watched Noreen Renier as she sat next to Joan Rivers in 1990. From convincing six jury members in 1986 Renier had skyrocketed to national stardom by 1990.

Jessica Herbert, having never spoken with Merrell, and after testifying on Renier's behalf, stated Renier "really came through" during a difficult period. Apparently she believed (at least in 1986) that her brother lifted a young woman from the airplane in his last moments of life and carried her outside the plane. From the court transcript a statement referenced to Jessica Herbert states "Everybody told me, and Ms. Renier told me, that my brother carried a woman away from the plane who still survived the plane crash, and then walked a few steps and collapsed and died."

Pilot Using Aliase Merrell asks, "How could a headless woman have survived? Nothing made sense. The fantasy was becoming so warped it simply had no reality."

But Renier was raising her rates significantly and beginning to bask in an international spotlight.

And on page 189 of her book Renier writes, "I saw the young man lifting something with great effort and carrying it out of the mangled plane. After a few steps he placed it gently on some dark, flat rocks, under a tree."

But Caroline's body was found inside the fuselage, not on dark, flat rocks under a tree. And Arthur Herbert lifted nothing from the mangled plane nor did he walk a few steps and place anyone or anything on rocks. Readers were fed a fantasy. It never existed. It never took place.

Equally disturbing is that among the 27 pages of testimony Jessica Herbert provided, not once does she mention the names of Carl or Cheryl Wilber, the people who actually found the plane and her brother's body. And as these truths have unfolded Jessica Herbert has sat in Salem Massachusetts in silence, never offering an explanation for why she continues to support a lie. Even as she has watched Merrell twist in the wind due in part to her own testimony.

If Jessica Herbert ever believed that members of the Civil Air Patrol found the plane based on information she herself provided them, she is highly naive. There were no search teams hunting that morning near the crash site. Nor did her brother Arthur ever carry an injured survivor in his last minutes of his life. In hiring Noreen Renier to find the plane, Jessica Herbert instead purchased a fantasy that she in turn re-conveyed to the Oregon jury as fact. While she may not have realized what she was doing, her testimony supported a fantasy the jury apparently took as the truth. According to Merrell two of the six jury members teared up when the heard Arthur Herbert had carried a dying Caroline Porter in his arms and then collapsed.

Nothing is as it seems to readers of A Mind for Murder. Instead readers are offered fantasy posing as fact, just as the Oregon jury received descriptions of the crash site from police psychic Noreen Renier.

Yet even 20 years later a Renier supporter, retired Professor Robert Van de Castle of the University of Virginia noted, "The author, Noreen Renier. . . won libel damages in court from a critical skeptic [Merrell] who publicly said she was making fraudulent claims. This book [A Mind for Murder] was riveting in the way it held my attention as she traces out how each challenging case unfolded." Professor R.L. Van de Castle, like the Oregon jury and millions of television viewers may have been easily overcome with beliefs rather than examining whether the "challenging" cases were actually portrayed accurately. It's so much easier to ignore the facts and believe a lie.

Car lWilber With State Police On the morning of their final day of searching, Cheryl Wilber recalls her father saying that it's terrible that no one was still searching for the plane. Troubled with that thought, they decided to try again on their own. It took approximately 40 minutes after they left a side road to find the crash site.

Once they left the plane it took them approximately another 30 minutes to get back to the side road where they had parked their car --- which protected them from the sub-freezing temperatures. From the time they left their home until the time they found the plane the area was silent and they saw no other search teams. "It was over," recalls Carl. "Folks were tired and cold. The search teams had gone home."

Amazingly for more than 20 years Noreen Renier portrayed herself before millions as being active on site and critically aiding search parties and local authorities. Yet on February 11, 1984 the Gardner News shows a photograph of Carl Wilber directing state police to the crash site. In the article written by Rose Foley which accompanied that photo Carl states "All I kept thinking is what if somebody had survived? Nobody's been in the woods, I know they didn't look. There were no footprints in the woods. I think that's pathetic."

Accompanied by his daughter Cheryl and after about five hours of searching over two days in sub-freezing temperatures they found the plane. But unlike these silent heros Noreen Renier spent 20 years taking credit and building a fantasy.

Carl Wilber gazed down at a copy of A Mind for Murder handed to him by John Merrell in 2006. After reading the pages where Noreen Renier informs readers about the crash site he simply concluded, "I don't think she got anything right." This comes from the man in a black and white photograph taken on the day the search ended in 1984 as he prepared to take officers to the crash.

But color videotapes taken years later in a New York City television studio and broadcast to millions also show Noreen Renier boldly taking credit for locating the same plane on the same day. But unlike some exaggerations this one also carried over to a courtroom where Renier's fantasy visions helped defeat John Merrell before a 6-member jury.

Jessica Herbert testified that Noreen Renier said, "My brother had tried to help her [Caroline Porter] out of the plane and he was going to go for help. . . . The woman [Caroline] was lying between two trees, as though she had been placed there. . . . Noreen said [my brother] had survived, the girl had survived . . . and that he had taken her out of the plane, set her in a safe place and gone for help. Also [Renier] described how he had tried to get down the side of the big hill and sat down because of a broken leg." That testimony by Jessica Herbert helped Renier defeat Merrell in the small county courtroom in Oregon in 1986.

But Carl and Cheryl Wilber found no hill around the plane site. The swamp-like area is perfectly flat for thousands of feet in all directions. Not just hundreds of feet, but thousands.

Yet Renier writes, "Reaching into the unknown . . . I was on the side of a hill." Apparently Renier created the elements of the terrain from her imagination, having no firsthand facts to go on. And Renier's principal source of information --- Jessica Herbert --- did not visit the actual crash site.

Noreen Renier was interviewed for an article written by Karen Mahabir and published by the North Jersey Media Group on February 10, 2004 --- almost exactly 20 years to the day after the plane was found. In describing her general psychic work she stated, "There are a lot of frauds, a lot of charlatans . . . who know all the right things to say. . . . You have to get so many details right, you have to be exact."

And yet it is police psychic Noreen Renier who stated, "Everything I've said is true" and "The woman's brother had walked several feet and died, but they found everything that I described."

And in the Court TV Online transcript Renier states, "I even found a missing airplane for an FBI agent's wife a long time ago. . . .I don't think I could be working with the police for 20 years and have as many successes if I was a fraud. Frauds and charlatans exist in many professions but they seem to flourish in mine because of the average individual's innocence/ignorance about the phenomena."

Cheryl Wilber said in June 2006, "It makes me feel terrible that somebody took advantage of the situation and nobody even bothered to call us. She [Renier] could have at least checked the story. . . . She made up a lot of stuff."

Merrell notes, "Imagine attempting to find the truth from a person like Renier even when she is under oath. It's amazingly difficult to track her comments. Virtually the only specifics that come out are limited to fantasy visions one stumbles over like her stories of dogs and gasoline stations. Yet before network television cameras and in her book Renier it makes it appear she is very specific --- right down to the shape of rocks on the ground."

Apparently over the last 25 years during psychic "download sessions" with some law enforcement personnel the sessions have been extremely informal compared with traditional murder inquiry interviews. Renier has been shown on video recordings portraying paranormal characteristics while drinking red wine. One former Virginia Sheriff described one such psychic session as "sauced ramblings."

But what about the information exchanged back and forth between Noreen Renier and FBI special agent Robert Ressler? Renier notes that the recommendation to use her on the air crash case was "validated by special agent Robert Ressler." In mid August 2006 the opening page of Noreen Renier's web site boldly includes a quotation from Ressler, " ...She helped to locate a plane containing the body of a relative of an FBI agent."

But the same Robert Ressler, when contacted by Merrell in 1985 --- just months before depositions were taken --- passed along erroneous information. In Ressler's testimony (taken in September 1986) he stated, "...I believe it was in Maryland and Merrell indicated that is was in Massachusetts but I thought it was Maryland." So shortly before the trial Ressler was indicating what little information Merrell had about Massachusetts was for the wrong state. Why did Ressler believe it was Maryland?

So it is interesting that the two key people --- Noreen Renier and Robert Ressler --- who now 20 years later are shown on various web sites as supporting Renier finding the lost plane, actually testified to the crash location with "I have no idea" (Renier) and "Maryland" (Ressler). Mates in a maze? Both are among the highest proponents found on the internet who have spoken with the media about using police psychics with law enforcement agencies during the past 20 years. And Robert Ressler is the man behind providing Noreen's name to dozens of law enforcement personnel.

Merrell notes, "It is quite evident that FBI officer Robert Ressler is a flat out, full-fledged supporter of Noreen Renier and her police psychic claims. But his first hand knowledge about this air crash case is both flat-out dismal and smells particularly funny. He has certainly reached a point of zero credibility with me by failing to clarify his statements as they appear on Renier's web site and in other media. One must wonder whether Robert Ressler has told the dozens of law enforcement agencies that he linked to Noreen Renier that new facts are now in conflict with his characterization of Renier as 'the best.'"

But perhaps "the best" only refers to Renier's ability to create an air crash fantasy before millions of TV viewers.

A local newspaper article by John Monahan published just days after the air crash stated, "Cricket Frost, 40, of Keene, provided the most detailed explanation so far about the suspected crash of a plane that matched the description of the rented Piper Cherokee Arrow. She and a Winchendon pilot, Ronald Richard, had reported to local and state police that night (January 28, 1984) that they saw a Cherokee Arrow fly over the runway at the Gardner airport at about 60 feet. The plane, she said, banked west about 15 degrees at the end of the runway, and within a minute, at about 7:10 p.m. they heard a loud crash and explosion. She said she heard the engine running steadily right up until the moment they heard the explosion. Then there was silence, she said."

In early June 2008 Cricket Frost (now known as Cricket Johnson) who once worked for the Department of Corrections agreed to add some additional new information to this web site. She has worked for Health and Human Services in New Hampshire the last ten years.

She stated that "Beside myself and Ron [Richard] no one else was at the Gardner airport that evening." And she confirms that the search towards the crash site later taken by Carl and Cheryl Wilbur --- about 2700 feet from the runway --- was one based on directions that she herself had originally provided to police more than a week prior to the plane being found.

Unfortunately when she and Ron Richards first went looking for the plane they did not find it. "I had two of my three sons with me but we were about half a mile too far north of the crash site. There were no other people searching in our area and no prints other than our footprints where we searched. The search teams never searched in our area since they were searching in another area further away where Ron (the pilot at the airport that evening) indicated the plane was heading when it crashed. Ron had gone back to tying his plane down and did not the see the 180 degree turn the plane made seconds before it crashed."

However the facts are that Cricket Frost provided the virtual dead-on directions to the crash site at the time of the crash more than a week before Noreen Renier became involved and without ever speaking to Noreen Renier.

In fact she never heard of Noreen Renier before December 2007! Thus she didn't use Renier's wild fantasy visions of letters, quick sand, numbers, rocks, hunting dogs, hills, mountains, an abandoned Texaco station, big gorges, and or an old lady with no teeth to narrow down the crash site location.

Instead she used authentic facts and observations. And she --- not Renier --- actually gave information directly to police officials and was on site and involved in searching herself.

Because she was at the airport that evening the events had a major impact on her life and are "the worst thing ever experienced" in her life. In 2007 she was able to provide almost 2 dozen newspaper articles she saved about the crash and many of those she provided for display to this web site.

Interviewed by Merrell she feels the Gardner crash never got real a completely thorough and open investigation.

"My hair stood up and I knew something wasn't right when things came out about the crash. Not everything made it into the record and people got sick of us [Ron Richards and herself] calling."

Cricket Johnson remembers talking to radio talk show host John Glick at WBZ in Boston just shortly after the crash and also helping search for the plane. "We were very credible witnesses yet we had to call the FAA rather than the local police or state police themselves contacting the FAA and forwarding our report. We never had any dealings with the state police or FBI personnel. We never heard anything from them."

So what is the conclusion from this actual witness who was at the airport and actually heard the crash?

"There is no way she [Noreen Renier] had anything to do with finding the plane. . . there is no way she could have. I don't think about the crash every day but when I do I know from the bottom of my heart that what came out was not the entire story. There wasn't real openness and honesty, it was like a murky cloud covering everything."

Was it a murky cloud partially because some of those involved were more interested in keeping a lid on factual realities while helping to promote or concoct psychic nonsense?

Interestingly Jessica Herbert completely ignored in her own testimony that Cricket Frost and Ron Richard were at the airport that evening. And it was Jessica Herbert's testimony that claims the plane could not land because landing lights were off and the airport closed.

Deer tracks, rather than psychic powers. We know that is wrong since the plane turned off the lights that pilot Ronald Richard had actually turned on while at the airport. But Herbert went further. Rather than citing Cricket Frost's correct statements Herbert instead gave the sense that the airport was abandoned and described reports that the persons who heard the crash were "neighbors" in the area and "they also thought it could have been a car crashing" --- though the reports by both Cricket Frost and Ronald Richard are quite specific to a plane and never mention a car.

Jessica Herbert claimed in her testimony that this report of a car crash came from the Civil Air Patrol. But no one surveyed remembers any reports from anyone who cited the sound of a car crash. And remember Carl and Cheryl Wilber are among the closest neighbors to the crash site. They neither heard the sound of the plane crash nor any other kind of crash. If they didn't hear a crash who did? It appears no one.

Fortunately based on the report by Cricket Frost local residents Carl Wilber and his daughter Cheryl decided again to renew their search. With a compass they used Cricket Frost's description (as noted above) to locate the general area on a survey map. Carl Wilber noted, "That was the way we were going when we spotted deer [tracks] on the ground. Cheryl said let's follow the deer tracks! Because [both of us] know they are curious animals!"

So instead of dramatic psychic visions soaring amid the clouds to locate the crashed plane, the real discovery was a natural pathway in the snow. And the deer tracks were a virtual straight line to the plane. Within 40 minutes, Carl and Cheryl Wilber came upon the crash site within the area originally identified by Cricket Frost.

And just as with Cricket Frost, neither Carl and Cheryl Wilber were assisted in any way or had knowledge of Noreen Renier --- though Renier claims to have located and found the plane.

Mr. Dana Vickery, a Gardner Airport Commissioner at the time of the crash, said he "never heard of any psychic taking credit for finding the plane or involved in any way" until Merrell notified him on June 18, 2006. He also notes that the plane came in with its craft lights on, then turned them off before attempting to land on the runway with all lights off. This doesn't match with Jessica Herbert's concept that an innocent plane with an engine problem needed to land. Why would the plane shut down its own lights?

And when a local pilot on the ground (Ronald Richard) saw the plane approaching for a landing and turned on the runway lights --- which the airborne pilot would be capable of doing himself with his on-board transmitter --- someone in the plane turned them back off and then flew away without lights! What reasons are there to attempt to land at a small unmanned airport at night with both the airplane and runway lights off?

In the Court TV Online transcript covering the chat with guest Noreen Renier (almost 20 years after the crash), Renier states, "It was a missing airplane that I found. I was in Virginia and the plane disappeared somewhere in Massachusetts. I gave my client the longitude and latitude."

Swamp area within 1 mile of crash site

Roxie Cuellar, Merrell's attorney in the Oregon trial, knew the jury was swayed by the testimony of Jessica Herbert and FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler --- testimony skillfully edited by Renier's attorney to have the maximum impact. Indeed between Renier's testimony and the support comments from Jessica Herbert it appeared Merrell was attempting to silence someone with amazing psychic powers.

And the six member jury saw before them the image of Jessica Herbert and her tragic loss of her brother Arthur Herbert. And each jury member could not escape Arthur's heroic death scene as he exited the plane with Caroline Porter in his arms. That scene by Renier still filled the small Oregon county courtroom.

And if Jessica Herbert backed up Renier how could Merrell be right about her being a fraud?

Attorney Roxie Cuellar --- Merrell's sister --- told the jury that volunteers "went through snow. They went through a swamp. They went through a heavily wooded area to find that plane. And Ms. Renier has the nerve to sit here on the stand and tell you and I that she, while sitting in a comfortable house in Virginia, found that plane."

But the Jessica Herbert and Noreen Renier combo had made their mark. And the two were aided and supported by Robert Ressler and the letters FBI.

Amazingly, on September 16, 1986, after winning the original Oregon lawsuit, Renier told the Orlando Sentinel, "Truth was my ally." The verdict, she said, proved "that I'm real, that psychics do exist, that everything I've said is true." Now with a November 2006 federal judgment against her has truth changed allies? Would you want an innocent man investigated by this particular police psychic or directing a police force murder search?

For more than 20 years, television reporters and newspapers have repeatedly noted that Renier was vindicated by a jury after being libeled by a skeptic (Merrell). The real events in January and February 1984 in Gardner, Massachusetts, became buried. History was rewritten with each new media inquiry and many readers have gushed on the Internet about this incredible feat. In the last ten years, the Internet has all but erased any remaining tracks outside of the 1984 newspaper articles and photos .

Renier's attorney in her lawsuit against Merrell in 1986 took almost 30 minutes in his closing arguments to the jury. Attorney Lee Werdell of Medford, Oregon, told the jury, "My client thinks she's a good psychic. That doesn't make her guilty of fraud. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, in some ways this case is almost reminiscent of times long ago gone by in the northeastern part of this country. I don't know why, but it reminds me a little bit of the Salem witch hunt. The defendant has appointed himself the guardian of our public morality as it relates to psychics and psychic phenomena and it is his intent to expose them." 8:13 am over Gardner Airport Massachusetts

It is interesting that 22 years after Lee Werdell cited a 'Salem witch hunt' that a principal participant in this psychic portrayal is Jessica Herbert who has lived in Salem since her original court deposition was taken by Werdell. Was Werdell being a comic with the line? Was he sending a message of his own that the truth was in Massachusetts? In A Mind for Murder Noreen Renier writes, "I must also thank my attorney, Lee Werdell, who tried my libel case against the skeptic brilliantly and saved my reputation. He will always be my hero."

There is one final intriguing note about the crash near the Gardner Municipal Airport that "psychic" Noreen Renier appears to have failed to sense. For the last 22 years, while re-experiencing with the media the "exhilarating feeling" at becoming "the plane" and soaring with a "panoramic view" above Gardner, Noreen Renier has never mentioned the following moment in time.

On September 11, 2001, after flying 50 miles west of Boston, American Airlines flight 11 was hijacked in the sky directly over Gardner at 8:13 in the morning. Thirty-three minutes later, it slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, beginning a day of horror with an impact on billions of people around the globe.

For America's most prominent police psychic --- one who claims to foresee the future and to communicate with the dead, this is another question that readers must ponder. How could Noreen Renier have missed this overlap when she herself became a plane flying in the pathways of space and time? Born in Massachusetts just miles from the crash site why does Noreen Renier need to create psychic fantasy stories?

And having created a psychic fantasy that has now reached internationally to millions through the media, why does Noreen Renier maintain (and continue to embellish) a fictional scene using the deaths of four people? And why haven't truTV and the Biography channel revealed these concerns to the millions of viewers they serve?

Yet the psychic community continues to have faith in Noreen Renier even amid these revelations. In January 2006 psychic Pam Coronado noted on her own web site "Noreen, of Court TV's Psychic Detectives fame, continues to pass clients over to me when she is too busy to read for them herself. I greatly admire her work and I am honored that she has such faith in me. So thank you Noreen and may you continue to shine!" One must wonder why someone would admire a woman who told millions of TV viewers and her own book readers an incredible fantasy lasting more than 20 years.