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Social 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.
