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By Gary P. Posner
8½ Credulous Minutes
on 48 Hours
Having received what she considered "too much attention" following the 1981 shooting of
President Reagan (which she has been credited with foretelling, after incorrectly predicting
Jimmy Carter's reelection and assassination and Walter Mondale's suicide), Florida "psychic"
Noreen Renier decided to make her living as a "homicide detective." Her modus operandi is,
however, a bit unconventional -- Renier sits in the comfort of her living room easy chair and
performs "psychic" readings on evidence sent to her by the police.
Several times a guest on the Joan Rivers Show, and having also appeared on
Geraldo and other national television shows of the "infotainment" genre, Renier
graduated to the network newsmagazine level during the May 13 edition of CBS-TV's
48 Hours. In a credulous 8½ minute segment entitled "Hard Evidence," Renier
was featured as she offered assistance to two south Florida detectives working on a
1½-year-old unsolved murder case.
With CBS News crews videotaping simultaneously in Renier's home and in the office of detectives
Ralph Pauldine and Henry Mackey, reporter Doug Tunnell first explains how Renier "transports
herself back to the crime scene and enters the victim's body." Renier then accurately describes
the murder scene (a portly, shirtless, middle-aged man, mortally wounded in the neck). The
police, Tunnell reports, are convinced that Renier had no advanced knowledge of the case.
However, given the choreography required to put this TV spectacle together, a skeptic might
suspect that a person with police contacts (such as a professional "psychic detective"), or a
national television news department, could have made prior inquiries about the nature of the
case to be televised.
To further bolster the credibility of Renier and of his uncritical journalistic effort, Tunnell
also interviews detective Ray Krolak about a 1986 upstate New York murder case. Says Tunnell,
"One of the people Noreen led police to was a new suspect. . . . the grandson." The viewer must
assume that this was told to Tunnell by Krolak. Geraldo Rivera had made the same claim on his
May 30, 1991 show (perhaps the result of a pre-show interview with Krolak?). But the victims'
daughter, sitting next to Krolak in Geraldo's studio audience, had responded unequivocally,
"[Renier] did not do that. She did not finger my son. She did finger the other two." (They were
already suspects.) And Krolak did not contest the accuracy of the daughter's clarification. In
fact, though he gushed with accolades for Renier's valuable assistance, Krolak did note that
"she more or less reaffirmed what we knew previously . . ."
During the July 16, 1990 Joan Rivers Show, Renier had participated in a panel
discussion (along with a newspaper reporter and a criminologist) about New York City's "Zodiac"
killer. Renier once again "became" the killer, saying such things as "My beard is now shaved"
and "I feel like Spanish is very prominent in me." Gesticulating in all directions, she
described how "The bridge is up here. . . . And over here is a traffic light . . . The apartments
are over here -- the seventh, eighth story I live on. . . ." She did not specify what bridge,
what intersection, or what apartments, and again was inexplicably unaware of her own name, but
she nevertheless impressed Rivers, and indicated that she might even contact the police later
that day. Indeed, Rivers proudly announced on the following day's show that as a result of that
performance, Renier was now working with the New York Police Department on the "Zodiac" case.
My investigation, however, revealed otherwise.
A source had given me considerable advanced notice of Renier's 48 Hours appearance,
and so on March 26 I had called CBS News, and was referred to 48 Hours segment
producer Mitch Weitzner. Although he declined my offer to provide him with skeptical input about
Renier, Weitzner assured me that the segment, already completed, would be "balanced." Curious
description.
Return to Articles on Noreen Renier
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Renier then opens a package of evidence (a blood-spattered towel [right -- click image to watch the show]
and beer can believed to have been
handled by the killer). Says Tunnell, "Noreen now enters the body of the killer. . . . [and]
describes the killer's appearance," as she offers enough of a description to allow a police
artist to make a sketch that may or may not bear any resemblance to the real culprit. But when
Renier "becomes" the killer, she is unable to discern her own name, though she is able to
finger "Wanda," allegedly a prostitute accomplice sporting a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder.
Within a week, says Tunnell, police had already picked up for questioning five women fitting
that description.
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