Saturday, August 24, 2002
'Some of the information may be legitimate,' said a Roanoke police official
Psychics lend visions, support to Jennifer Short case

Cyd, a self-proclaimed psychic featured on WJJS's morning show, offered a description of a man that may be with the missing child.

By KATHY LU
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   The description was chilling: A tall, thin man who is missing a tooth and has poor hygiene could be the one with Jennifer Short right now.

    It came from a woman named Cyd, a self-proclaimed psychic who was offering information on the missing 9-year-old girl. Cyd was a guest on WJJS-FM's "David Lee and Melissa Showgram" morning show Wednesday.

    "The information could be wrong, but what if it's right?" said David Lee, also the station's program director. "How do you discount it?"

    Jennifer has been missing since Aug. 15 when her parents, Michael and Mary Short, were found shot to death in their Henry County home. Jennifer's disappearance has gripped the region - missing-child posters are everywhere, yellow ribbons of hope dot Henry County, and her relatives have tearfully pleaded on television for her return.

    Most recently, a handful of psychics and visionaries have also joined the search.

    "People want to help. It's a natural human reaction," said Cecil Greek, an associate professor at the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Florida State University. "People who think they have these abilities want to do good by it."

    Cyd, who goes by her first name and lives in Colorado, has been a regular guest on WJJS for the past six months. She usually spends an hour taking calls from listeners, Lee said. But she made a special, 40-minute appearance Wednesday at the station's request. Lee said a friend of the Short family had contacted the station and "was interested in what Cyd had to say."

    On the air, Cyd said that as she was looking at a photograph of Jennifer, she also saw a man, a woman and a blue van. She gave descriptions of each and said Jennifer was alive.

    Lee, who forwarded Cyd's information to the Henry County Sheriff's Office, said one of the reasons he features Cyd is because of her credentials: according to her Web site, Cyd has a 98.7 percent accuracy rating.

    But Greek said he has a hard time believing in psychics.

    "If they could really help, why doesn't every police department have one full time?" he asked.

    Cyd isn't the only psychic who has offered information on the case.

    A man in Texas who has written a paper about John F. Kennedy's assassination sent a fax to The Roanoke Times on Monday saying "the best area to check would be the area around Glade Hill" on U.S. 220. He wrote that he found the area by looking on a map of Virginia. He suggested checking motels and hotels for Jennifer.

    Also, a woman sent an e-mail to a Roanoke Times reporter saying she had a dream Aug. 14. She said she saw herself walking through a "white house" and finding a frightened child "huddled" in a closet. She tried to get out with the child but was stopped by a "bad man." In the dream, he has brown, wavy hair and is about 6 feet tall.

    Neither could be reached for comment.

    Capt. Bill Althoff, head of the Criminal Investigations Unit with the Roanoke Police Department, said it's not unusual for psychics to come forward in high-profile cases. It's also not unusual for the police to check out the more plausible leads.

    "We gather any and all information and evaluate it in view of what else we have," Althoff said. "Some of the information may be legitimate. It's best to keep an open mind on all theories."

    In fact, Althoff said, the police department's crime line received a tip Thursday regarding Jennifer from an anonymous caller claiming to be a psychic. It was forwarded to Henry County.

    "We give a certain amount of credence to some of these," Henry County Sheriff Frank Cassell said Wednesday. But the department has also received some "off-the-wall" calls, such as one from a person in California who claimed to have known the Shorts by a different name, the sheriff added.

    Cassell said the department receives about two or three such theories a day. That's nowhere near the response Salt Lake City police received earlier this summer in the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who was taken from her home at night by an unidentified man.

    Sgt. Don Bell, the detective in charge of the Smart investigation, said police set up a separate fax line just to receive theories from psychics about the June 5 abduction.

    Bell remembers one weekend when 15 to 20 faxes came in. One man sent 51 typewritten pages - single spaced - with his thoughts on the case. Two people even flew to Salt Lake City to see if a vision they had was a real place.

    Despite the good intentions, both Jennifer Short and Elizabeth Smart are still missing.

    Zeke Barlow and staff writer Kim O'Brien contributed to this report.

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