average people look at life. With ESP, a scientifically oriented person need only extend the limits of believability a little, comparing the ESP faculty to radio waves and himself to a receiving instrument.
So widespread is the interest in ESP research and so many are the published cases indicating its reality that the number of out-and-out debunkers has shrunk considerably during the past years. Some years ago, H. H. Pierce, a chemist, seriously challenged the findings of Dr. Joseph Rhine on the grounds that his statistics were false, if not fraudulent, and that the material proved nothing. No scientist of similar stature has come forth in recent years to challenge the acceptance of ESP; to the contrary, more and more universities are devoting entire departments or special projects to inquiry into the field of ESP. The little debunking that goes on still is done by inept amateurs trying to hang on to the coattails of the current occult vogue.
It is only natural to assume that extrasensory perception has great practical value in crime detection. Though some law enforcement agencies have used it and are using it in increasing instances, this does not mean that the courts will openly admit evidence obtained by psychic means. However, a psychic may help the authorities solve a crime by leading them to a criminal or to the missing person. It is then up to the police or other agency to establish the facts by conventional means that will stand up in a court of law. Without guidance from the psychic, however, the authorities might still be in the dark.
One of the best-known psychic persons to help the police and the FBI was the late Florence Sternfels, the great psychometrist. Her other talent, however, was police work. She would pick up a trail from such meager clues as an object belonging to the missing person, or even merely by being asked whatever happened to so-and-so. Of course, she had no access to any information about the case, nor was she ever told afterwards how the case ended. The police like to come to psychics for help, but once they have gotten what they’ve come for, they are reluctant to keep the psychic informed of the progress they have made because of the leads provided. They are even more reluctant to admit that a psychic has helped them. This can take on preposterous proportions.
The Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos, whose help was sought by the Boston police in the case of the Boston Strangler, was indeed able to describe in great detail what the killer looked like.
Hurkos came to Boston to help the authorities but soon found himself in the middle of a power play between the Boston police and the Massachusetts Attorney General. The police had close ties to Boston’s Democratic machine, and the Attorney General was a Republican. Hurkos, even worse, was a foreigner.
When the newspapers splashed the psychic’s successful tracing of the killer all over the front pages, something within the police department snapped. Hurkos, sure he had picked the right suspect, returned to New York, his job done. The following morning he was arrested on the charge of having impersonated an FBI man several months before. He had allegedly said as much to a gas station attendant and shown him some credentials. This happened when the gas station man noticed some rifles in Hurkos’s car. The “credentials” were honorary police cards which many grateful police chiefs had given the psychic for his aid. Hurkos, whose English was fragmentary—for that matter, his Dutch might not be good, since he was only a house painter before he turned psychic—said something to the effect that he worked with the FBI, which was perfectly true. To a foreigner, the difference between such a statement and an assertion of being an FBI man is negligible and perhaps even unimportant.
Those in the know realized that Hurkos was being framed, and some papers said so immediately. Then the Attorney General’s office picked up another suspect, who practically matched the first one in appearance, weight, height. Which man did the killing? But Hurkos had done his job well. He had pointed out the places where victims had been found and he had described the killer. And what did it bring him for his troubles, beyond a modest fee of $1,000? Only trouble and embarrassment.
Florence Sternfels was more fortunate in her police contacts. One of her best cases concerns the FBI. During the early part of World War II, she strongly felt that