Noreen Renier, once Florida's most famous "psychic detective" before moving back to Virginia in early 2004, is
clearly emerging as the darling of Court TV's (now known as "truTV") one-sided
Psychic Detectives weekly series. Having been
twice featured earlier in the year, her involvement in the
Williston, Florida, case was the subject of the September 22, 2004, episode, titled "End of the Road."
I investigated this case intensely, initially at the behest of a producer for A&E Television's series The Unexplained
for its January 9, 1997, episode, in which I appeared. My findings were published in
several issues of Tampa Bay Skeptics Report (Fall 1996, Winter 1996-97, Summer 1997) as well as in an article for
Skeptic magazine (Vol. 5, No. 4, 1997) which in 2002 became a chapter in
The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience.
In summary, Norman Lewis, an elderly resident of the tiny town of Williston (just southwest of Gainesville), disappeared on
March 24, 1994, and had been missing (along with his red truck) for a year. Only after Renier was called into the case
was his body eventually found, submerged (inside his truck) in the murky waters of a deep quarry.
The Court TV program begins with Williston Police Chief Olin Slaughter stating that when police first checked Lewis'
house, "There was nothing out of the ordinary
After an intensive initial search yielded nothing, Slaughter says on the program, "We had to
Unmentioned on the program was that Hewitt had learned, as documented in his
official report dated May 12, 1995 -- two months before
Renier's reading -- that three weeks prior to his disappearance, Lewis had confided to a handyman friend that if his
life deteriorated sufficiently "he would find a river or pit," i.e., commit suicide in one of the many quarry
pits in the area. Hewitt's interview with that friend further reveals that "Norman seemed agitated and dissatisfied
with
In any event, the show's narrator says that Slaughter instructed Sgt. Bill Baxter to send Renier some items belonging to
Lewis, given her ability to "tune into a person by handling objects that belong to them." Some unspecified time
thereafter (approximately three weeks, per my timeline, after she was called to set up the appointment), "Renier conducts
a reading over the phone. All they've told her about the case is that a man is missing, nothing more." Miraculously, in
this TV re-creation of her reading, she divines an "older" man and "a truck
Though the police file's paperwork references only a single July 17, 1995, session with Renier, according to the TV show
the police conduct a second session at her Orlando home, during which she sees new clues including "a bridge," a pile of
"bricks," a "railroad track," the number "22," and the fact that Lewis is dead. And during a third session sometime
thereafter in Lewis' Williston home, Renier feels him going "down
However, Tampa newsman Dave Monsees, in his April 19, 1996, WTVT-TV 13 story about the case, reported the following: "Another
clue that amazed Slaughter was that the psychic saw a bridge nearby. Turned out he'd passed it countless times and
never saw it -- on the access road to the quarry, an old, wooden truck scale that smacks for all the world of a
bridge, if you take the time to stare at it." If true, that clue was actually credited as a "hit"
after the fact. The "railroad tracks" clue was also "retrofitted," if the Gainesville Sun article of
April 4, 1996, is accurate: "While waiting for the divers, workers near the pit uncovered something they didn't know
was there -- abandoned railroad tracks, completing the image Renier had of the location." (Emphasis added.) This
article also references only the single July 17, 1995, session.
Toward the show's conclusion, Slaughter retrofits Renier's "21" clue to coincide with Lewis' body being found "2.1 miles
from his front door" (a stretch, especially since, in the session audiotape obtained from the police, we hear Renier
say "45 miles
The narrator says that forensic experts ultimately attributed Lewis' plunge to a "freak accident," oddly ignoring the suicide
plan alluded to in Hewitt's interview notes. But, probably of even more importance to this readership, were Noreen
Renier's "psychic" clues truly instrumental in pointing the police to the correct watery grave? Though Chief Slaughter swears they
were, I remain highly skeptical.
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