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From Psychic Sleuths:
ESP and Sensational Cases Edited by Joe Nickell Prometheus Books (1994) (Pages 60-85) |
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Renier has also taught a non-credit course in "ESP and Awareness" at the Rollins College Center for Life-long Education, although she does not hold faculty status at Rollins College, which is located in Winter Park near Orlando.1 Further occupying a great deal of her time for a half-dozen years, until its unexpectedly sudden settlement in March 1992, was her longstanding and bitter legal battle with skeptic John Merrell, whom Renier successfully sued for libel in 1986 following his allegations of "fraudulent" activity. (The case will be discussed further throughout this chapter.)
Supporters of Renier's alleged psychic abilities can be found in the law enforcement and academic communities. Her promotional packet, entitled "Book a Spellbinder: Psychic Noreen Renier - Meetings/Conventions/ Workshops/Seminars," includes copies of letters, on impressive letterheads, containing passages such as the following:
"It is a pleasure to extend to you an invitation to address
"You definitely opened my eyes to the potential investigative tool of the psychic. Obviously, many a doubting Thomas had to revise his ideas concerning this somewhat esoteric area."
"I have observed Ms. Renier in several situations where she has demonstrated her psychic talents and I was very impressed with these demonstrations. She has been willing to have her abilities scientifically evaluated in a laboratory setting which is rare for most psychics."
"Your 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."
Though her career as a "psychic" was barely a year old, University of Central Florida anthrolopologist David E. Jones selected Renier as one of four test subjects for his 1979 book, Visions of Time: Experiments in Psychic Archeology. The ability of Renier (and the others) to "psychically describe the origins of various artifacts led Jones to declare, "
The Daily Progress article further states that WXAM (where Renier hosted a weekly radio call-in show) news director Elliot Wiser played for the reporter a tape from Ms. Renier's show of Nov. 5, 1980, containing the following prediction: "Right now I feel very insecure about saying this, but I keep feeling problems in [Reagan's] chest. It's not a natural problem, perhaps it might come from outside.
I spoke with Elliot Wiser, who is now the news director at WTVR-TV in Richmond:
Renier was one of three "psychic detectives" featured on the May 30, 1991, edition of "Geraldo." An Albany, New York couple had been shot to death in 1986 while the murdered mother was speaking on the telephone with her daughter, but the police had yet to make an arrest. After reading a National Enquirer article about Renier, the couple's son requested that Detective Ray Krolak call her in on the case. Explained Krolak from Geraldo's studio audience, "We'd just about run out of leads after two years of investigation.
In Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques, written by New York City Police Squad Commander Vernon J. Geberth and used as a textbook by the FBI and other police academies, Renier's insights are prominently featured in the "Psychics" portion of the section on "Identification of Suspects." Geberth identifies Renier as "a psychic and recognized authority on the phenomena of extrasensory perception [who] has worked with various police agencies including the FBI on homicide cases and other criminal investigations."4
As stated in the 1988 US News & World Report article, "The Federal Bureau of
Investigation has hosted lectures to police officers by psychic Noreen Renier at its Quantico, Va., training center. She impressed her
listeners by predicting in January 1981 that there would be an assassination attempt on President Reagan in the spring, which indeed took
place [on March 30]."
Robert K. Ressler, a Supervisory Special Agent assigned to the Behavioral Science Unit of the Quantico center, attended that performance, and was questioned about it during his 1986 deposition in the Renier v. Merrell case. Ressler testified that "she said she felt that [Reagan] was having a heart attack in the future
But, says Ressler, Renier's vision went further, as "she went on to say that
Ressler: She thought it was President Reagan.
Question: She was wrong on which President it was, then?
Ressler: Yeah
Yes, Noreen Renier is also known for having successfully predicted the assassination of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat. However, in her version of the story, the U.S. Secret Service seems responsible for her apparent ambiguity. In a 1988 New York Post article included in her promotional packet, Renier says that following the Reagan shooting, and after hearing that she had predicted it, agents from the Secret Service paid her a visit.
"They thought I might actually know John Hinckley. I didn't. Then they came back again and asked what I saw in the future for the President. I said I saw a parade, a reviewing stand, foreign uniforms, and gunfire. After Sadat was shot, I realized they never asked me which President" (emphasis in original).7
When I called the FBI Academy, I was informed that Robert Ressler has since retired from duty. In his stead, I spoke with Richard Ault, also a Supervisory Special Agent in the Behaviorial Science Unit and instructor at the FBI Academy, and long-time co-worker with Ressler. Ault, who holds a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, informed me that indeed "Bob [Ressler] did have Renier down here to the Academy to speak. It was against my recommendations [but] he did it anyway." Ault says that he attended a couple of Renier's lectures, and recalls that "At no time during any of her lectures, or any of the time that I was associated with her, did she make any 'uncanny' predictions, nor was I impressed with anything that she did say.
Ault added that although he did not attend Renier's January 1981
presentation, "I've questioned Bob about it on several occasions, and it sounded like the same stuff I've heard before.
Yet Ressler continues to publicly endorse (and perhaps even
embellish, if the following account is accurate) Renier's abilities. According to a recent newspaper story, "Ressler
Readers may recall the audacious Reagan assassination prediction hoax by Tamara Rand, a Los Angeles psychic to the stars, who predicted in a TV interview allegedly taped on January 6, 1981, that the President would be shot in late March or early April by a sandy-haired man with the initials "J.H." Within days of the shooting, the tape was being shown on the network news, as evidence of Rand's startling abilities. However, skeptical AP reporter Paul Simon discovered that the tape had actually been produced the day after Reagan was shot, with the complicity of Rand's friend, Las Vegas columnist and TV personality Dick Maurice.11
With regard to Renier's predictions of the shooting, I know of no
evidence of any such hoax. I asked Elliot Wiser if the 1980 radio tape was still available, but he informed me that he does not have it, and that the station has long since changed format and management. Judging by the Daily Progress' description of that prediction, it seems to have been somewhat more vague than Wiser recalls. In fact, if Robert Ressler's version of events at the FBI Academy in 1981 is correct, Renier's scenario had not yet involved a shooting, but rather a heart attack, until it underwent a mid-course correction during that lecture. And the precision of even that revised prediction has been questioned by Richard Ault. But Renier's National Examiner prediction sounds quite precise, assuming that it was hers. Renier was asked to address this point during the 1986 libel trial:
A: Some of those predictions were not mine. The newspaper put in three or four jazzy ones without
my-- I didn't do two or three of those predictions.
Q: So the list of predictions that are under your name with your picture, they just threw in some
without your knowledge; is that correct?
A: Yes, they did, yes.
Q: So the wrong ones weren't yours and the right ones were?
A: No, some of mine were wrong, but where they went wrong was they had put some sort of what I call
jazzy predictions in.12
Renier had apparently also made some rather "jazzy" predictions in
1979 about President Reagan's predecessor. According to The Blue Sense, a book generally favorable to the notion of psychic detectives, Renier had forecast that President Jimmy Carter would be reelected in 1980, and subsequently assassinated on the White House lawn. She had added for good measure that Vice President Mondale would commit suicide.13
Richard Ault had remarked during my interview with him that, "If you throw out enough predictions, you know how it is.
Our next guest is helping to put a bite on crime in an unusual way. She has used her psychic skills
in helping to solve 120 police cases. She is the only psychic to ever work with the FBI. She
predicted the assassination attempt on President Reagan in vivid detail three months before it
happened. Welcome psychic detective Noreen Renier.
--Host Gary Collins introducing Noreen Renier
on "Hour Magazine," November 7, 1988
Such plaudits from media celebrities have helped catapult Orlando, Florida's,
Noreen Renier to star status among the nation's psychics. Now earning her living
as a "homicide detective," Renier, age 57 [when this book chapter was published in 1994], has in the past few years also been featured on
other national TV programs such as "Geraldo," the "Joan Rivers Show," ABC's "Incredible Sunday," and CBS's "48 Hours," as well as in the
December 5, 1988, US News & World Report article [click image on right] entitled, "The Twilight Zone in Washington: There are some
important people in government who have enlisted psychics' help."
"[Renier's] class was outstanding. She worked on two local cases and taught officers how to work with a psychic. All the students requested I find a way to bring her back."
--In a memo to "All Florida Academy Directors" from
David E. Walsh, Director
Southwest Florida Criminal Justice Academy
Lee County Area Vocational Tech. School, Fort Myers,Fl.
--James W. Greenleaf, Assistant Director
FBI Academy, Quantico, Va.
--Daniel Grinnan, Jr., Training Coordinator
Commonwealth of Va. Bureau of Forensic Science
Richmond
--Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D., Professor
Dept. of Behaviorial Medicine & Psychiatry
University of Va. School of Medicine, Charlottesville
--Peter Slusar, Director
Peninsula/Tidewater Regional Academy of Criminal Justice
Hampton, Va.
An April 1, 1981, article ("Psychic Predicts Shooting") in the Charlottesville, Virginia, Daily Progress (and perhaps carried
elsewhere via AP, as indicated at the article's heading) begins, "It was there in the March 10 issue of the Canadian tabloid: A prediction
from [then-] Virginia psychic Noreen Renier that President Ronald Reagan would be shot -- but not killed -- in the upper left
chest.
I was the host of Noreen's radio show, in addition to being the station's news director. It was the
most popular radio show in Charlottesville in the early '80s. I went into the show a skeptic of hers
but I came away a believer. I think that she has ability. She did predict the thing with Reagan
extremely accurately. She hit it right on the head -- I was there when she did it. She even
predicted things about me that came true. I don't believe in that stuff at all, for the most part,
but I think she does have a gift. I've been in this business a long time, and out of everyone I've
ever met claiming to have similar abilities, I think Noreen comes the closest. I found her to be the
most accurate of the people that I've seen in the business.3
Question: Do you recall if she specifically said the second shooting would be President Reagan?
Q: Do you recall the predictions that you made in the same article that appeared in the National
Examiner where you predicted President Reagan was going to be shot?
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