Reply With QuoteI guess it was cold reading crap then.Her evidence was not the type you can put before a jury.
Incidentally, anytime you see a question in a headline, particularly in the Daily Mail, the answer is 'No'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
Anyone know any details on Nella?
Could psychic powers be harnessed to help solve crimes?
They soon had their answer when a woman named Nella Jones came to their attention, claiming that she could help locate a priceless Vermeer painting, called The Guitar Player, that had been stolen from Kenwood House in North London in 1974.
Nella told the police that she had been ironing some clothes and idly watching the television when her mind suddenly focused on the whereabouts of the painting.
She hurriedly sketched it out and took it to the police, who were understandably sceptical.
But having nothing else to go on they followed the lead. The painting was eventually recovered from St Bartholomew's churchyard as a result of the information she gave them.
Again, it would be easy to dismiss Nella's guidance to the police as just blind luck.
Easy, that is, if she hadn't spent the following 20 years helping them ensnare murderers and other serious offenders.
"Nella gave invaluable assistance on a number of murders," says Detective Chief Inspector Arnie Cooke. "Her evidence was not the type you can put before a jury. But senior investigating officers have got to take people like her on board and accept what they are saying."
In fact, so useful was Nella to Scotland Yard that in 1993 they publicly thanked her and senior officers hosted a dinner in her honour.
Scotland Yard later wrote to her, saying: "Some police officers may have seemed sceptical of your abilities ... but it is a mark of those abilities that police turn to you time and time again."
I guess it was cold reading crap then.Her evidence was not the type you can put before a jury.
Incidentally, anytime you see a question in a headline, particularly in the Daily Mail, the answer is 'No'
Mousse from a bowl is very nice, but to put it on a person is demented!
Typical quality of Daily Mail comments on that page too:
Did no one tell him about Randi's $1 million?I have done this for years over great distances with family and friends. We thought it was normal human ability. I have demostrated telepathic mind reading and image sending too. Most people can do it. Just practice with a friend or loved one. But learn to block out unwanted thoughts by imagining a wall around yourself. Otherwise you will never get any sleep!
An admission there is nothing to prove?No, not all psychics are bunkum. The government has to be very careful with the new law it is enacting. The Spiritualist Religion was created by a law in Parliament. Just like C.o.E. Mediums are very much part of the religion. I believe that the government is ignoring the Religious Freedoms Act and discriminating against a minority Religion, because we don't have anyone to lobby for us and we don't have the kind of money other religions have to sway the ideas of Government. I do wish that there was someone brave enough to speak for us, but sadly we are all regarded as fools or at the very least naive. Neither is true. It smacks of Opus Dei interference to me! By this proposed new law mediums have to 'prove' that they are in contact with so-called 'dead' loved ones, I think that all major religions should have to prove that there is a God, in that case. Many Spiritualists are, in fact, Christian Spiritualists.
I am sure that claim that the Spiritualist religion was 'created by a law in Parliament' is pure BS.
Mousse from a bowl is very nice, but to put it on a person is demented!
Well I know nothing on Nella but have done a little quick googling of the Vermeer theft, it did indeed happen.Originally Posted by Zendal Darkman
It was taken from Kenwood House on 23rd February 1974,
The Times recieved a ransom note demanding the transfer of IRA car bombers Marian and Dolours Price to a jail in Northern Island for safe return of the painting. I can't find the date for this but it might suggest that the poklice did have something else to go on.
The painting was found undamaged in the churchyard of St Bartholomews on 6th May 1974. I can't find any further details of how it was found or if Nella's information might have been useful.
I couldn't find any information on Arnie or Arnold Cooke.
She's been debunked by Randi apparently:
http://theskepticexpress.com/An_inte...ames_Randi.phpru: What are your views on so called ‘psychic detectives’?
Randi:
Well, first of all they like to advertise that they were called in by the police to be consulted. We find in the vast majority of cases, they weren’t called in by the police at all, that they intruded themselves by walking into a detective’s office for example, sitting down and saying I know something about that murder. Well then the police have to listen of course, that’s their duty to listen to anybody who says they know something about a crime, either coming up or already passed or whatever. They have to listen to them, and they will sometimes sit there and make endless tape recordings with them.
Now I’ve heard some of these tape recordings and they can go on for 90 minutes, two sides of a long cassette and you’ll hear expressions like; the colour red is connected here and I get the initial R or perhaps its P I’m not too sure, it could be a Peter or something starting with P, I’m not sure. I get running water, yes I sense running water nearby and electricity, electricity figures in this and there’s an automobile of some kind. It’s a rather small automobile, either white or beige, it’s a light colour, I can’t make out quite what it is but it’s somehow connected.
Well if you go on like this for 90 minutes something is going to happen afterwards when the detectives, if they ever do, solve the case and then go back over the tape recordings, the psychic will be sure to go back over the tape recordings and say didn’t I say the initial R, that was the middle initial of one of the people who was a suspect. So they will look for evidence. They ignore all the rest of it that’s wrong of course but they will find something that coincides and of course they will crow all over the place about that. But in most cases the police don’t go to the so-called psychic/psychics. The psychics come to the police and the police have to listen to what they say.
Now I tested Nella Jones on a Granada program, a series that I had a few years ago in the UK, and we gave her a number of articles and we asked her for her impressions of these articles - whether or not they were used in crime? Now they were all sealed up in evidence packets, transparent evidence packets and appropriately labelled and she handled a number of them and she gave us all kinds of fancies about some of them. Some of them were right off factory lines. They were taken in the factory, right of the assembly line, with gloves on and put into the envelopes so they hadn’t been touched by anyone so they couldn’t have been involved in a crime. Yet she found that some of those had been connected with crimes. In one case there was a fireman’s axe, which is a very specific hatchet device and she said that was used to gain entrance to a house that was robbed. Well no, it wasn’t Nella. It was actually used to kill a couple in bed, chop up their bodies put them in packages and mail them all over the UK. So that one figured in rather a larger crime than just a burglary. So Nella Jones fell on her nose with those tests, which were done double blind, because I was Not aware of what the history of the items was. I simply gave them to her in numbered envelopes and I wondered myself if they had been used in crime. So we did a good double blind test of Nella Jones, and she at the time was I think, one of the most famous so called police psychics in the UK.
"Expect the Inquisition..."
Nella Jones was one of the many psychics who claimed to have helped the police in their search for the Yorkshire Ripper - Peter Sutcliffe - who was arrested on 2nd January 1981. This is what Psychic News had to say about her in the 5/6/82 issue:
"Eighteen months before the police arrested Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, Kent medium Nella Jones drew a picture of him, described where he lived and worked and accurately predicted two more murders before he was caught...Eventually Nella went to Yorkshire and accompanied police to help them locate clues and places. Her mental pictures were always accurate. Nella could exactly describe details of a location before they even arrived at the spot. Police were amazed that the psychic could direct them to places she had never seen."
This would of course be remarkable if her claims are true, but researchers are immediately faced with a problem. Although Jones insisted that her major predictions were witnessed, they were made public long AFTER the event. When Melvin Harris - author of Sorry, You've Been Duped!, to which I am indebted for much of this article - wrote to her to suggest that she deposit copies of the relevant items with the Society for Psychical Research she did not respond to his letter. However, it is clear from newspaper reports and Jones' own book Ghost of a Chance that she did NOT provide any worthwhile information to the police. Here's a breakdown of her most impressive "prophecies":
1) Fourteen months before the murder of Jacqueline Hill on 17/11/80 Jones "saw" that "The next victim will be found on a small patch of waste ground". She later added: "I suddenly saw with tremendous clarity the scene of the Ripper's next attack...The girl, I knew without seeing, had dark hair."
Of the Ripper's previous victims six had been found on waste ground, two on grass land, one in a wood yard and one on a rubbish pile. Only one had been killed indoors. Ten of the Ripper's twelve victims had dark hair. Jones hardly needed psychic abilities to predict that the next victim would be a dark-haired woman whose body would be found on waste ground.
2) Back to Jones' own words about the killer: "I believe he lives in Bradford and that he is a long-distance lorry driver...I had the strongest feeling that the police had already spoken to him."
This sounds impressive, but as early as October 1975 the police were already looking for a lorry driver in connection with the murder of Wilma McCann. Two years later, after the murder of Jean Royle, a vital clue was found in her handbag - a £5 note issued from the Shipley and Bingley branch of the Midland bank in Bradford. Detectives from Manchester and Bradford visited factories in Bingley, Shipton and Bradford to interview all male employees, who were also asked to check their wage packets for £5 notes within a short range of serial numbers. The search took three months and over five thousand men were interviewed. DCS Jack Ridgeway didn't need a psychic to tell him that "It is more than likely that we have interviewed the person who received the fiver."
3) According to Jones, "The murders, it was disclosed during the trial, did involve the use of a hammer, among other weapons..." This seems to be a reference to a horrific dream experienced by Jones in August 1979. In fact the Bradford Telegraph and Argus had already revealed the Ripper's choice of a murder weapon. According to the 12/7/79 issue, the Ripper "Kills with an engineers' ball-pein hammer". The article went on to state that the murderer "Wears size 7 boots", an important clue that the Ripper was of small stature, and one that could have suggested to Jones that his height would be 5' 7" or 5' 8".
4) Jones' psychic skills served her no better when it came to a description of the Ripper's house. She saw "...a grey house with a wrought iron gate in front...the impression of a small garage nearby." Most unusually she risked giving an address - 6 Chapel Street.
She struck lucky with the number six, but although there are four Chapel Streets in Bradford (plus Chapel Walk, Chapel Lane, Chapel Place, Chapel Fold and Chapel Lane) Sutcliffe lived in Garden Lane. And the house was painted pink.
5) By means of clairvoyance Jones "saw" the Ripper's face several times in July 1979. She drew a clean-shaven man who would have been capable of disguising himself as a woman (remember that the Bradford Telegraph and Argus had mentioned the Ripper's small shoe size).
In fact, Peter Sutcliffe had a beard and would have been a somewhat unconvincing female impersonator.
6) In July 1979 Jones made her most dramatic prediction to date - the Ripper's next victim would be a boy of fifteen or sixteen.
"He" turned out to be twenty year old Barbara Leach.
7) Jones made the claim: "I don't think he has ever been married, but I believe his mother is dead and that his father was a cripple...I have the feeling that he was taken away from his mother when he was ten or eleven years old."
The only correct statement here is that Peter Sutcliffe's mother was dead.
What about Psychic News' claim that Jones had "accurately forecast two more murders before he was caught?"
In fact there were three more murders - those of Barbara Leach, Marguerite Walls and Jacqueline Hill.
9) Jones came up with a truly bizarre scenario for the murder of Jacqueline Hill in which the Ripper parked his car in the centre of Leeds, walked to Headingley, killed Jacqueline, walked back to Headingley railway station, took a pay-train to Leeds and drove back home.
Needless to say, Jones' account of the killing is sheer nonsense. Sutcliffe was in his car outside the Arndale Centre in Headingley when he saw Jacqueline getting off a bus, followed and eventually overtook her in the car, got out of the car and knocked her unconscious, then dragged her onto a patch of waste ground and stabbed her to death with a sharpened screwdriver. Common sense alone should have told Jones that a killer covered in blood would hardly risk using public transport.
10) In her book, published in early October 1980, she wrote about the Ripper: "He is killing indiscriminately now. But he is coming to the end of the road. He will try to do another, but it will go wrong and he won't finish the job. He will be caught before he gets the chance."
Jones was wrong yet again and continued to contradict herself. The Ripper managed to "finish the job" when he killed Jacqueline Hill on 17/11/80. Only four days later Jones told the Daily Mirror "...he will strike again almost immediately. I see him coming back to claim another victim within the week." According to the Mirror reporter, "She said the next victim would be a youngish woman but refused to give further details. 'I do not want to frighten the life out of some poor young girl with a similar description'". Bearing in mind the fact that the only description she could have offered, based on previous murders, was that the victim would be young (ish) with dark hair, a sizeable proportion of Bradford's female population would have been at risk! In fact Jacqueline Hill would be the Ripper's final victim.
11) Jones did come up with a few rather curious "hits" but none of them were of the slightest use in solving the case. However, they demonstrate that like other psychics Jones revamped mundane scraps of information and coincidences from the past and recast them as predictions of the future.
a) The name 'Peter' was already associated with another sadistic murderer and rapist, Peter Kuerten - the famous "Dusseldorf Vampire". Indeed, the first book about the Yorkshire Ripper, published in 1979, drew a parallel between the two killers. There is nothing mysterious about Jones' choice of the name.
b) Jones had a feeling that the name "Ainsworth" was important in some way, and sure enough she discovered that one of the Ripper's victims had been found on land belonging to a man surnamed Hainsworth. Also, long before Jacqueline Hill was killed Jones had a premonition that the initials "JH" would be of significance in a murder committed in November.
Again, there are no supernatural forces at work here. At the time it was suspected that Joan Harrison, killed in November 1975, may have been the Ripper's second victim (although Sutcliffe later denied killing her). "Harrison" and "Ainsworth" are coupled in the name of the bestselling Victorian novelist Harrison Ainsworth, one of whose books - Preston Fight - may have provided Jones with a coincidental link with the town in which Joan Harrison died. In short, "JH" was a memory of Joan Harrison's murder, not a premonition of Jacqueline Hill's.
c) But what about Jones' apparently successful prediction of the date on which Hill would die - the 17th or 27th of November?
Firstly, most of the Ripper attacks took place in the last fortnight of the month. Secondly, another medium - Reginald du Marius - had already predicted that a murder would take place on the 27th of a month. Jones was not taking too great a risk by choosing the same date as du Marius and adding its ten-day interval partner as another option, and a lucky hit hardly compensates for the rest of her grossly inaccurate information about the Ripper.
Melvin Harrison sums up Jones' claims about the case in a single paragraph:
"It can be said with certainty that at no time did she supply a single name, location, address, or description connected with any of the murders that was of any use to the police. The impression that she in some way co-operated usefully with them and supplied valuable information is false."
Julia,
Thanks for that. Fascinating reading.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
Here is the TV programme on which Randi tested Nella Jones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQHYkyq7Hs
The style as we like is the humdrum.
Seconded - interesting reading but no great surprise.
I look forward to the headline in every newspaper - " All the psychics in the world fail to predict *******.
**Insert your favourite story of a flood, plague, plane crash, random disaster, tragedy, 911, tsunami, Princess fucking Di's death, winning lottery numbers, oil price hikes, Barack Obamas' election as president (OK I just predicted that one - call me psychic, see if I care).
If only the media would stop fawning over these charlatans and report their antics honestly their careers would go down the toilet as fast as they deserved to. I Wish!
But honesty doesn't sell newspapers.
Defendants might as well have said: Beneficent creatures from the 17th dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief and whisk them off to their home world every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.
Judge Frank Easterbrook commenting on the Q-Ray bracelet
"For Gods sake you're an American! Stop thinking of the consequences and blow something up" - Stan Smith, American Dad!
I know - sad isn't itBut honesty doesn't sell newspapers.
The media's record of covering the paranormal is absolutely dreadful. You literally shouldn't believe a word they write or broadcast on the subject.
This is based on personal experience. I know many serious paranormal researchers who have been involved with the media, to their cost. The general experience is that the media get facts mixed up (whether intentionally or through incompetence I'm not entirely sure - probably a bit of both) or simply invents them. They like to give 'both sides' of an argument, even when one side is incontestably right and the other completely wrong (as frequently occurs in this field). They also do their own 'background research' which amounts to simply recycling previous media travesties.
The result is a mish-mash of nonsense and myth. You only have to watch any of the TV ghost hunting programmes to see this approach in action. I think the only reason they cover the subject at all is because the public is interested so stories sell.
I wish the media would leave the subject alone because they just propagate daft myths that the rest of us have to painstakingly take apart until the next time it's recycled.
What you say has a lot of truth Mulder , but I really, really want to believe in this article. Not so much the whole remote viewing thing, just the experimental procedure described therein
How much would that cost to arrange in Amsterdam ?Dr Chris Roe places a pair of enormous fluffy earphones over the head of a blonde 20-year-old woman. He carefully slices a ping-pong ball in half and tapes each piece over her eyes. Then he switches on a red light that bathes the woman in an eerie glow...
Parapsychology. It's the best job in the world.
(probably)
Last edited by dalriada; 9th February 2008 at 09:02 PM.
"Expect the Inquisition..."
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