News Feature Murders and Clairvoyants Well-meaning or malicious, Skeptics sometimes find amusing Initially, police treated her disap- the bizarre claims of clairvoyants, pearance as a missing person, per- ‘clairvoyants’ can be cruel but there are many instances when haps a runaway. But her family to the grieving. their antics add to the trauma and knew this was not possible. She heartache of bereaved people. Hu- would never fail to communicate man tragedy is a fertile ground for with her loving family, under any clairvoyants, striking relatives and circumstances. Sarah had shared a friends at their most vulnerable. unit with her sister and there was Unthinking clairvoyants who offer nothing in her background to indi- unsolicited ‘visions’ that add im- cate that she would voluntarily van- measurably to grief at this time are ish. Her distraught parents searched singularly unfunny. for Sarah, printing posters and mak- ing public pleas for anyone holding Family tragedies her to return her safely. Of all human loss, the most difficult Just four months later, Jane for any parent to imagine is the Rimmer, a 23 year old child care shattering sadness of losing a child. worker who had been to another On Australia day 1996, Sarah Claremont nightspot, vanished in Spiers, a secretary aged 18, went the early hours of the morning. Her with friends to a nightclub in the body was found in bush 40 kilome- business district of Claremont, a tres south of Perth. Police believed well-to-do suburb halfway between she had been killed within hours of Perth and Fremantle in Western her abduction. Panic set in when 27 Australia. She knew the area well, year old lawyer Ciara Glennon van- having spent her schooldays in an ished nine months later from the adjoining suburb. Sarah left the club same strip around midnight. A serial at about 2am and walked to the next killer was at large, the police said, street, where phone records show and would strike again. Bret Christian is a long-time Skeptic sub- she called a taxi. When the cab ar- All this time Don and Carol Spiers scriber, and editor and proprietor of the Post rived she was no sign of her. She has had not given up hope of finding group of suburban newspapers in Perth. never been seen since. Sarah alive. Don Spiers took time off Page 6 - the Skeptic, Autumn 2004 from the shearing team he ran, and days, I was down Salters Point, disappeared from Glenelg Beach the couple moved into their daugh- thrashing around in the swampy near Adelaide after a morning of ters’ city apartment. They publicised areas down there at 11 o’clock at swimming and playing on the beach the phone number in the hope that night… walking around, bawling my with a “ tall, blond man”. No trace of anyone with information would come eyes out and getting nowhere.” them has ever been found. forward, and made sure at least one A frustrating aspect of this sorry Their stricken parents raised the family member was by the phone 24 saga is that the callers to the Spiers alarm, and a massive search was hours a day. family were almost certainly acting mounted. The usual crop of clairvoy- They got plenty of information, without malice. They were “only ants with “information” gleaned but it was bad information. It came trying to help”. A dream or a thought from dreams, séances and psychic in a torrent from the fevered minds had popped into their heads and visions bothered the Adelaide police. of clairvoyants, around 250 of them. they thought the “information” The followers of Croiset, a self- The callers told the desperate Spiers should be passed on. Just why did proclaimed psychic, hired a helicop- parents of dreams and visions that they give credence to these visions? ter to take photographs of the would lead them to their daughter. What were the thought processes beachfront which were sent to him in The calls placed Don Spiers into an that led them to pick up the phone to Holland, along with press cuttings, agonising and cruel dilemma. He did call a grieving family of strangers prints and other information. Croiset not believe in clairvoyants but was when they had nothing of value to relayed the results of his ever-chang- compelled to do everything in his offer? ing visions back to Adelaide. power to find Sarah. He felt he had One can only speculate on the His followers dug all over the to act on the information because he influence of trashy television pro- place – in sandhills, in a blocked was concerned that one of the callers grams and magazine features that drainpipe and in the yard of a chil- might have some factual information give psychics undeserved credibility. dren’s institution, where a bulldozer to offer but was hiding behind the The producers of these programs was hired to shift tonnes of sand. persona of a clairvoyant. sacrifice truth for ratings and adver- Skeptics will be unsurprised to learn ‘They have been a huge torment to tising dollars by sucking in gullible that nothing was found. myself and my family in giving cryp- viewers. They don’t want to spoil the These false hopes added immeas- tic clues as to where Sarah might be,’ effect by putting the sceptical view- urably to the anxiety and grief of he told the ABC’s Australian Story in point, by pointing out that no-one Grant and Nancy Beaumont. All February. has ever demonstrated the ability to their children had vanished and the Many of the clues sounded spe- “see” the unseeable or communicate psychics were offering false hope as cific, but they were just not specific with the dead. Perhaps these exploit- to their location. But failure was not enough. One clairvoyant told of a ive programs should be required to to deter Croiset. In 1967 he travelled house in the inner Perth suburb of carry a warning that they are simply to Adelaide, arriving to a celebrity Wembley where Sarah was being magician shows, for entertainment welcome, and the charade continued. held against her will. The seer de- only. He declared himself certain as to the scribed a house that was in a tree- Influencing the psychics who ped- location of the buried children, and lined street, with a white picket alled heartache and grief to the armed with a sketch-pad, camera fence and a For Sale sign at the Spiers family may have been the and tape-recorder, set of with his front. But the vision mysteriously long history of con-men and women acolytes in pursuit. After two days did not include a street name or who have been given prominence in and a whole series of ever-changing house number. the news media by claiming to have locations, he failed to produce any- Every street in Wembley has helped police solve serious crimes, thing. street trees. Don Spiers spent hours usually murder, a guarantee for He then dramatically changed his driving the streets looking for the headlines. mind again and declared that the right house, without success. On children were buried under new food another occasion he made the long, Croiset and the Beaumont case warehouse that had just been built. sad car trip alone to the old gold There a many such examples, the The South Australian government mining town of Southern Cross, 250 most infamous in Australia being the resisted strong public pressure to km east of Perth, where he was to Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset. spend $7000 replacing the floor of find a man fitting a certain descrip- The horrifying missing persons story the warehouse, but a committee of tion in a pub. This man held the key. that Croiset bought into is still citizens raised the money. A wall of But again he drove home empty seared into the minds of any Austral- the factory was knocked down and handed, frustrated, angry and shat- ian old enough to remember as far the floor dug up. Nothing was found. tered. back as 1966. On Australia Day (the Business was disrupted, thousands He described a night spent at an type of coincidence much loved by of dollars were wasted and false isolated reach of Perth’s Canning psychics) two girls, Jane 9, Arnna, 7, hopes were shattered. River. “I remember one night, early and their young brother Grant, 4, But that, sadly was not the end of the Skeptic, Autumn 2004 - Page 7 Murders it. In 1996, 16 years after Gerard and last names, licence plate num- There is another category of eerily Croiset’s death, followers of the dis- bers, apartment house locations etc. accurate psychic detective work de- credited clairvoyant had another go. was accurately produced by any of scribed by leading US skeptic James At great cost they decided to re-exca- the subjects. Randi. vate the warehouse site again. The UK’s Scotland Yard has the A man claiming to be a psychic Again, no trace of the missing chil- same policy. The Yard’s Inspector attracted the interest of police when dren was found. Edward Ellidon stated: he predicted a serious industrial fire. The accuracy of the detail after the Police responses to psychic claims Scotland Yard never approaches event could only have been provided So-called psychic detectives who psychics for information. There are by the psychic’s special powers. But allegedly help police solve crimes no official police psychics in Eng- police discovered that he had no have been a thriving industry in the land. need of paranormal powers to pro- United States, their reputations duce his visions – he himself was the booming after appearances on televi- The Yard does not endorse psychics arsonist.