- FREE UNION -- You'd almost
have to be psychic to find where Noreen Renier lives. And she likes it
that way.
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- A barely discernible dirt track snakes back into the
piney woods a few miles outside of Charlottesville, with Renier's tiny
rented log cabin at the end of it. Inside, a telephone answering machine
breaks the bucolic silence every five minutes or so, and the place is cluttered
with boxes and bulging manila envelopes.
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- "There's a pair of shoes in this one," Renier
said on a recent morning, rummaging through one box, "and a shirt
in this one. I usually ask for something like a shoe or a toothbrush, because
only that person will have used it."
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- "That person" being a murder victim or a missing
person. Like a tracking dog on a scent, Renier uses the shoes, toothbrushes
and other personal objects to help form a mental image, a process called
"psychometry."
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- "The best thing," she said, "are bloody
clothes from the crime, but you work with what you can."
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- Needless to say, hers is not a crowded field, and Renier
has become one of America's best-known psychics through a series of highly-publicized
successes and a growing resume of TV appearances. She is also the only
"medium" ever to lecture at the FBI Academy.
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- "That's why so many people call me," she says.
"My phone rings constantly, even late at night."
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- In early 2003, for example, Renier received one of those
calls from Jackie Peterson of Modesto, Calif.
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- As just about everyone in America knows by now, Peterson's
daughter-in-law Laci, eight months pregnant, was reported missing on Christmas
Eve of 2002. Her body and that of her unborn child washed up on the shore
of San Francisco Bay four months later, and her husband Scott was convicted
of their murder in a trial that became a national circus.
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- "I asked her (Jackie Peterson) to send me something
that belonged to Laci," Renier recalled, "and what I received
was a sweatshirt that had never been worn. I called Jackie back to tell
her that I really needed something with more of an attachment to Laci,
and Scott answered the phone.
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- "I told him the problem, and I could just feel this
wall coming down as he talked to me. A little while later, a single shoe
arrived in the mail, and it also looked new."
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- Renier says she told Jackie Peterson that Laci's body
was in "a place with water, a bridge, and flat rocks."
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- "I only worked with them for a little while,"
Renier said, "but I later found out that a lot of what I had seen
was right."
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- A Floridian who lived in Ruckersville for a time during
the 1980s, Renier moved back to the Charlottesville area this year to finish
her autobiography, "A Mind for Murder."
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- "It only took me 20 years to write," she said
with a smile, "but this was a great place to finish it without being
disturbed."
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- Her interest in the paranormal started in 1976, when
she was the public relations director for a Hyatt hotel in Orlando.
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- "A friend of mine wanted me to book a psychic into
our hotel auditorium," she said, "and I wasn't crazy about the
idea. I thought all psychics dressed like gypsies and had warts on their
faces."
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- But her friend insisted that she meet Ann Gehman, the
psychic, and Gehman not only described Renier's daughters and a recent
surgical scar, but mentioned the new chair in her office.
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- "How could she have known about my new chair?"
Renier wrote in her book. "I had just gotten it, and hadn't had time
to tell anyone about it."
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- Impressed, she wound up booking the psychic into the
hotel - at a discount - and felt herself compelled to re-connect with an
old friend named Joanne who "found spiritual connections in all things,
and felt everything had vibrations' and auras.'" After just one mediation
session at Joanne's house, Renier says, she realized she, too, possessed
extra-sensory abilities that had been unknown to her previously.
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- "Slowly, this psychic stuff' began to take root
in my life," Renier writes in her book. "I didn't understand
it, but I couldn't deny it, either. I was completely captivated by the
amazing new world that had opened in my mind. I started neglecting my job.
All I wanted to do was practice what other people claimed they could do
in the books I was reading."
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- Before long, she said, she was booking herself into nightclubs
on the side. When word of this reached her employers, she lost her job.
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- "My daughters weren't sure how to take this,"
Renier said. "One minute, I'm working as a public relations person
for a respected hotel chain. Then, suddenly, I'm wearing a gypsy outfit
and asking people to give me their rings and watches so I can tell them
something about themselves."
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- Renier moved to Virginia the first time in 1979 to be
closer to her mother and sister. In the interim, she had contacted the
Psychic Research Foundation affiliated with Duke University and traveled
to Durham regularly to be tested by researchers there.
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- "Everyone is psychic to some degree," she said,
"just like everyone can sing. Some people just have more of an aptitude
for it than others."
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- Not long after relocating, Renier became involved in
the case of a serial rapist in Staunton. It was her first encounter with
the police.
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- Her entry point into the investigation was the sister
of one of the victims. Renier went to the homes of that woman and another
victim, touched rings they had worn during the attacks, and received impressions
of a man wearing a uniform, with a scar on his leg, driving a truck that
"went round and round." He lived in a brick house, Renier's intuition
told her, and he had been in prison.
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- "I didn't know what all that meant," Renier
said. "It's just what was given to me."
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- This information was then passed along to the Staunton
police, whom Renier said were polite and receptive, if a bit dubious.
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- "I didn't solve that case," Renier said. "The
police did."
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- A ex-convict named James Bruce Robinson ultimately confessed
to the rapes after he was first arrested as a peeping tom. Investigators
then discovered that he did have a scar on his leg, drove a cement-mixing
truck for a living and lived in a brick house.
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- Word got around, and Renier was invited to speak to the
Tidewater Academy of Criminal Justice. That led to a later lecture to the
FBI Academy in Quantico, and a longtime acquaintance with FBI serial killer
expert Robert Ressler.
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- Since then, Renier has been credited with helping to
solve several crimes, locate a wrecked aircraft and find the bodies of
a half-dozen missing persons. Last week, she was working on cases as far
removed as North Carolina and Nepal (a missing child).
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- "Missing children cases have the most pressure,"
she said, "because there's the pressure of time."
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- Renier said she does all her work by "remote viewing,"
using clues that have been mailed to her.
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- "I don't go to crime scenes," she said. "For
one thing, there's too much confusion. I have to have quiet so I can go
into a trance."
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- As might be expected, not everyone accepts the idea that
Renier can enter the mind of a missing person, victim or murderer merely
by handling an object hundreds of miles away. Skeptics abound, chief among
them Gary Posner of Tampa, Fla., who has repeatedly offered Renier $1,000
if she can prove her psychic ability.
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- Renier told Reed Williams of the Charlottesville Daily
Progress that she has so far refused to take Posner's test because she
was told that trickery would be involved.
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- Moreover, $1,000 isn't all that much to Noreen Renier
any more - it's what she charges for her services.
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- "It used to be $600," she said. "I actually
raised the price to discourage people, because I've got more work than
I can handle."
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- A message currently displayed prominently on her Web
site (www.noreenrenier.com) says: "Please read this (the first) page
before e-mailing Ms. Renier about the Aruba case."
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- That, of course, being the disappearance of Alabama teenager
Natalee Holloway, who vanished while on a post-graduation trip to Aruba
with friends. But Renier will only enter a case, she said, if she's invited
by a family member or the police.
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- "It's very draining, what I do," said Renier.
"It leaves me exhausted."
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- For that reason, she said, she only works on police cases
in the afternoons.
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- "I always drink a glass of red wine before I go
into a trance," she said. "It used to be because I was scared,
but now it's just sort of a habit. It relaxes me."
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- Does her psychic ability overflow into her day-to-day
life? Renier says no.
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- "I won't let it," she said. "It would
be too much to be psychic all the time. So I've found a wrecked plane a
thousand miles away, but sometimes I can't find my car keys."
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