© Steve Snowden/Getty ImagesSocial media users have lashed out at psychic medium and author Sylvia Browne after she told a mom several years ago that her daughter had died. Her daughter was in fact found alive Monday after she went missing in 2003.
In 2004, self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne had a heartbreaking message for the mother of Amanda Berry, one of the three Cleveland kidnapping victims.
"She's not alive, honey," Browne told mom Louwanna Miller on The Montel Williams Show.
Miller, who died two years later, would never know that Berry was in fact alive - she and two other women were discovered Monday after police say they were held captive in a home for about a decade.
Browne was blasted on social media for her dead-wrong declaration, with some calling her a "filthy, exploitative, greedy liar." She didn't return a call for comment Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Browne's baseless claim in the shocking Cleveland case has put a spotlight on how law enforcement uses clairvoyants, and whether they're helpful crime solvers - or opportunistic crackpots.
Noreen Renier, who calls herself a "psychic detective," defended her profession from skeptics.
"I don't claim to solve the crimes. Police do," Renier, of Orlando, Fla., told the Daily News. "I give information."
Renier, 76, said she's worked on more than 600 cases across the country and is currently helping to crack a homicide case in Mozambique.
© WOIOAmanda Berry (center) was reunited with her sister (l.) on Monday. Berry had gone missing in 2003 when she was 16. Her mother was wrongly told by a psychic in 2004 that she was dead.
In missing-person cases, she said, she's able to travel in her mind and describe where "the body" - she doesn't differentiate between the living and the dead - is located.
Joe Uribe, a retired agent with the Montana Department of Justice, said he first contacted Renier in 1994 after watching her on TV.
Although skeptical, he met her in Florida to see if she was the real deal. Uribe said he gave her no information about an unsolved case his team needed help solving, yet she managed to come up with striking details.
In 1989, Montana state auditor Walter Sullivan was found at the bottom of a cliff next to his car. He had been bound and gagged, and shot in the back of the head. Police had a suspect, but not enough to link the man to the crime.
Renier "laid out the crime scene," Uribe said. "She described the building he was murdered in, she described the residence of its owner and talked about how (Sullivan) was ambushed and how there were two people involved."
Renier said the men were Hispanic, they were related and they had traveled across the country.
She also gave a name that turned out to be "in the ballpark" of their true identities, Uribe said.
© nrenier04 via YouTubeNoreen Renier, who calls herself a psychic detective, says she uses her ability to help police with unsolved crimes. ‘Police once they work with me, they know I’m good,’ she says.
Uribe said Moore was an antigovernment radical who randomly targeted Sullivan because of his profession. Moore was never charged with the crime; he was killed in 1996 in a shootout with cops.
Uribe said Renier "gave us details that were crucial to close the case."
But information from mediums doesn't always pan out.
When 9-year-old Floridian Jessica Lunsford went mising in 2005, more than 400 psychics contacted cops, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Jessica was found buried in a shallow grave. Police said the discovery was thanks to their own work - not from psychic claims.
Authorities also have received hundreds of psychic tips in the disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, who was on vacation in Aruba in 2005 when she vanished. Despite the enormous media attention, Holloway's body has never been found.
Ron Freeman, a retired Pittsburgh police commander who headed the homicide division for 14 years, said he never turned to psychics for help - although many would come calling.
© MyspaceLouwana Miller is pictured with her daughter Amanda Berry before she vanished in 2003, aged 16.
"You put it on the back burner, but at some point you take a look at it because you just don't know," Freeman said.
Only once did a person who claimed to be a psychic raise an eyebrow, he said.
In July 1979, 24-year-old Penn State graduate Carol Jursik went missing in Monroeville, Pa., after going out for a jog.
Freeman said he got a call from a woman who claimed to be psychic. She said Jursik was dead, and then gave a general description of where her body was dumped.
"She's in a wooded area. You can look up and see the houses above. I see a blue van and I see a blue leaping dolphin," the woman told him.
The next day, police were alerted to a body of a woman in a park. She had been stabbed once in the chest.
"It was our jogger," Freeman said. "It was in a place where you could see houses higher up. What was shocking to me was that on the label of her shirt was a blue leaping dolphin."
During a news conference, police asked the supposed psychic to call back. She never did.
To this day, Jursik's death remains unsolved.
give the gal a break. hugs