Psychic assists homicide inquiry in Durham

DURHAM -- An Oregon woman who claims a horse accident brought out her psychic abilities is working with Durham police trying to solve a 17-month-old murder case.

Laurie McQuary was in Durham this week helping investigators in the case of Janet Abaroa, who was stabbed to death in April 2005 at the age of 25.

McQuary has been on the case since summer, after Abaroa's family lobbied for her.

Abaroa's sister, Dena Kendall, said private donations are paying for McQuary's services, though McQuary has said in previous interviews she doesn't charge for murder cases.

Kendall wouldn't say how much McQuary is being paid.

"We had talked to [Durham police] several times about the possibility of using a psychic," Kendall said Thursday.

"After nine months of an investigation, they had exhausted all leads they had. When it got to be a year and they still hadn't made an arrest, I think that's when we really started pushing. I think it's just helping them develop new leads, basically."

Kendall wouldn't say what new information McQuary had offered police. Investigators did not return phone calls Thursday. McQuary couldn't be reached for comment.

Employing psychics in investigations is rare but not unprecedented in the Triangle.

Raleigh police asked a Durham psychic to help them solve the 2002 murder of Stephanie Bennett.

Sherrie Dillard spent several hours at Bennett's apartment complex, but police said her services didn't provide any new information. Officials in Chapel Hill and Cary said they've never employed a psychic.

Durham Sheriff's Office investigators brought in a psychic more than 20 years ago to help with a cold case.

Gary McCorkle was heading the investigation and said the psychic didn't shed any new light. In fact, the now-retired captain said Thursday, her information "didn't make any sense."

Cecil Greek, a criminology professor at Florida State University, said psychics are a waste of time for police. "Psychic abilities have been disproven over and over, but human beings can't face this fact," Greek wrote in an e-mail message.

"All I can say is if it 'worked,' police departments could get rid of their detective divisions and just hire psychics."

Detective Bob Lee of the Lake Oswego (Ore.) Police Department, who married McQuary after she helped him crack a murder case, once was as skeptical but has changed his tune.

Lee had hit a dead end in his investigation of the death of Alexis Burke in 1986, he said.

McQuary had contacted Burke's mother, who told Lee about her.

"I basically contacted Laurie for the first time by telephone to set up a meeting to find out whether she was a nut case or not," Lee said from his office in Lake Oswego on Thursday.

But McQuary gave him 30 tips, 29 of which panned out, and Burke's husband was convicted of murder, Lee said.

Lee said he didn't know how many murder cases she'd helped solve, but it's "way more than a dozen."

Police are skeptical, Lee said, but they use a kind of sixth sense every day.

"They don't like to use the psychic word," Lee said. "But cops believe in intuition, believe in hunches, believe there's a voice in the back of your mind that says something is out there and logic doesn't have a whole lot to do with it."

McQuary said in an online chat with viewers of Court TV, where she has been featured several times, that she fell off a horse when she was 18 and cracked her skull.

When she awoke from a coma three weeks later, she said, she received horrifying visions.

"I began having precognitive dreams of plane crashes which happened within three days after I dreamed them," she wrote during the Court TV online chat.

"And it was like watching a newsreel. In fact I would see it on television as I had dreamed it."