The Psychic Murder Detective

Speaker 1 Why choose a sleep number smart bed?

Speaker 3 Can I make my site softer?

Speaker 4 Can I make my site firmer?

Speaker 5 Can we sleep cooler?

Speaker 7 Sleep number does that, cools up to eight times faster, and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side.

Speaker 8 Your sleep number setting.

Speaker 7 Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. It's our Black Friday sale, recharged this season with a bundle of cozy, soothing comfort.

Speaker 7 Now only $17.99 for our C2 mattress and base plus free premium delivery.

Speaker 1 Price is higher in Alaska and Hawaii. Check it out at a sleep number store or sleepnumber.com today.

Speaker 8 You're tuned into Auto Intelligence live from Auto Trader, where data, tools, and your preferences sync to make your car shopping smooth.

Speaker 11 They're searching inventory. Oh, yeah.
They find what you need. They're gonna find it.
They can make a budget for your palette to help you succeed.

Speaker 11 Pricing's precise and true. So true.
Get smarter car shopping. Oh, just for you.

Speaker 8 Oh, it's just for you.

Speaker 8 Find your next ride at auto trader.com, powered by Auto intelligence.

Speaker 6 The WMBA playoffs are in full swing, and Tommy Alter's The Young Man in the Three brings you closer to the game.

Speaker 6 Get complete WMBA playoff coverage as Tommy sits down with the game's biggest stars and delivers unmatched analysis. The Young Man in the Three's WMBA playoff coverage is presented by Quest Nutrition.

Speaker 6 From irresistibly crunchy protein chips to rich chocolatey protein bars, these treats make giving in feel so good. Quest, big on protein, low on sugar, huge on flavor.

Speaker 6 Shop Quest on Amazon at amazon.com/slash QuestNutrition and enjoy all the WNBA action on the Young Man and the Three wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 14 This interrogation is going nowhere.

Speaker 9 The suspect is seated across from you, arms folded, head cocked in smug defiance.

Speaker 21 He thinks you have nothing on him, and in a way, he's right.

Speaker 24 So now you try something else, the only option you have left.

Speaker 26 You begin describing specific details about the crime, but none of what you're saying is from the case file.

Speaker 30 This isn't the sort of evidence that police are able to obtain.

Speaker 14 You watch it happen in real time.

Speaker 33 The bravado drains from the suspect's face.

Speaker 25 His eyes widen.

Speaker 23 His breathing quickens.

Speaker 33 The expression on his face turns quizzical.

Speaker 38 What he wants to know is

Speaker 5 how?

Speaker 40 Because the details of the murder you're describing, no living person could possibly know.

Speaker 43 Saturday, August 8th, 1987.

Speaker 30 In the small town of Belvidere, New Jersey, the late afternoon sun beats down.

Speaker 41 It's almost dinner time, and it's still close to 90 degrees.

Speaker 18 Kids run through sprinklers in their backyards.

Speaker 16 The smell of hamburgers on a grill wants through the air.

Speaker 33 Inside the Belvedere Police Department, an old metal desk fan rattles.

Speaker 41 It's stuffy.

Speaker 38 It's one of those long, hot summer days that seems to have no end.

Speaker 41 It's then that the phone rings.

Speaker 26 Belvedere PD doesn't get many calls.

Speaker 23 The town is simply too small and too safe.

Speaker 16 And when they do, the calls are never like the one they get today.

Speaker 31 Dispatch answers.

Speaker 24 There's a male voice on the other end of the line.

Speaker 35 He's hysterical.

Speaker 51 It's hard to understand him him at first, so Dispatch tells him to take a deep breath.

Speaker 43 The man does so and then says it's his girlfriend.

Speaker 45 Please come quick.

Speaker 53 He's found her in her apartment, and she's dead.

Speaker 42 Minutes later, Officer Kent Sweigert arrives at the Blair House apartment complex in Belvedere.

Speaker 23 Like the rest of the town, It's quiet here, unassuming.

Speaker 16 Still, though, he prepares for the worst. He draws his service weapon and enters the first floor apartment in question.

Speaker 49 Inside, the man who called the police, Paul McCarran, is standing alone in the living room.

Speaker 35 He appears shocked, dazed even.

Speaker 17 Swiger looks around and sees no one else.

Speaker 36 Nothing seems to be out of place.

Speaker 59 But when he moves to the apartment's bedroom, He makes a horrific discovery.

Speaker 5 Everywhere around him, there's there's blood.

Speaker 21 It's splattered on all four walls, as well as the ceiling.

Speaker 45 It's pulled in dark patches on the floor, and a massive amount of blood blankets the body of a woman.

Speaker 44 She lies lifeless on the bed.

Speaker 28 She's face up.

Speaker 49 Her arms are tied behind her back with an extension cord.

Speaker 40 Her nightshirt is pulled around her head.

Speaker 25 With this much blood, Swigert assumes that she's been shot.

Speaker 29 But he's about to find out that what happened to this woman is even more barbaric than he can imagine.

Speaker 1 The woman is 42-year-old Elizabeth Cornish, a nurse and divorced mother of five adult daughters.

Speaker 25 She recently moved back to Belvedere to be closer to her family and had resided at the Blair House apartments for about a year.

Speaker 58 When her parents are notified of her death later that evening, They're told, as Officer Sweigert assumed, that she was shot.

Speaker 60 But upon closer inspection, the Belvedere police realized that they were mistaken.

Speaker 16 There are no bullet wounds on Cornish's body and no evidence of a firearm.

Speaker 39 The autopsy quickly reveals that Cornish died of blood force injuries, at least 21 hits to the head with a hammer.

Speaker 5 And even worse, the claw end of it.

Speaker 35 Cornish was beaten so badly that her skull was punctured and bone was exposed.

Speaker 63 There's also evidence that she was sexually assaulted and that the time of death was midnight.

Speaker 30 Swigert and the Belvedere Police Department are in over their heads.

Speaker 12 They never get cases this cruisome, this violent.

Speaker 44 This is the first murder in their town in nearly 100 years.

Speaker 24 To help them wrap their hands around this case, they call in the team from the Warren County Prosecutor's Office, led by a Captain Dave Heater.

Speaker 43 Heater drives his car from the prosecutor's office over over to the apartment complex on Prospect Street.

Speaker 66 It's a quiet neighborhood.

Speaker 43 Shockingly so.

Speaker 16 He parks and ducks under the crime scene tape, striding across the lawn with the confidence of a man who's investigated his fair share of murder cases.

Speaker 35 And yet, when he glances into the apartment, the sheer amount of blood catches him slightly by surprise.

Speaker 16 He asks an officer already on the scene whether the murder weapon has been found.

Speaker 38 The answer comes back no, they haven't found a hammer or anything of the sort.

Speaker 26 Heater and his officers make the rounds to other tenants in the apartment complex.

Speaker 67 No one can remember hearing any screams or disturbances around midnight on August 8th.

Speaker 71 These people seem sincere and honest, but just to be sure, Heater gives them all polygraph tests.

Speaker 15 And everyone, as expected, passes.

Speaker 58 Following this, Heater turns his eye towards Cornish's boyfriend, Paul McCarran, the man who initially called 911.

Speaker 41 McCarron claims that he was out fishing all day Saturday and found Cornish's body that afternoon when he came back.

Speaker 14 As soon as McCarron mentions fishing, Heater perks up. Because on the grass just beneath Cornish's bedroom window, they had just found a pair of clippers used by fishermen.

Speaker 47 to trim their lines.

Speaker 36 And that's not all they found either.

Speaker 33 Cornish's bedroom window had been removed and was leaning against the exterior wall of the building.

Speaker 40 At first glance, it would seem that the killer removed the window in order to access Cornish's apartment.

Speaker 67 However, upon inspection, Heater's men find a fingerprint on the inside of the window pane.

Speaker 58 Because of this, Heater draws the conclusion that the killer must have taken the window out.

Speaker 16 after Cornish was murdered.

Speaker 20 He further concludes that this was done to trick the police into thinking that a stranger came in from the outside, when, in fact, it was someone Cornish knew who entered her apartment through the front door.

Speaker 41 At least, that's the theory Heater's working with.

Speaker 27 And so, with that window with the fingerprint on the inside, with those fishermen's clippers, Heater zeroes in on the obvious suspect, the boyfriend, Paul McCarran.

Speaker 18 The lab will take about a week or so to analyze the print.

Speaker 16 In the meantime, McCarran's brought brought in for questioning at the Belvedere Police Department.

Speaker 32 He indulges Heater and the detectives for a few minutes and then has a change of heart.

Speaker 33 He's done talking.

Speaker 42 He wants a lawyer.

Speaker 45 Heater isn't surprised that McCarran has clammed up.

Speaker 57 He's seen this before, the sudden vow of silence that is in fact an indication of guilt.

Speaker 41 He goes to give the family members of the deceased the promising news.

Speaker 50 It seems that they've found their man.

Speaker 31 But the family's reaction is not at all what Captain Heater expects, because they don't believe him.

Speaker 52 They tell him to his face that he's got the wrong man.

Speaker 49 They know McCarran well.

Speaker 25 He's a great guy.

Speaker 16 He loved Elizabeth.

Speaker 54 There is absolutely no way that he could have done this.

Speaker 50 The family and Heater leave the meeting with differing agendas.

Speaker 1 Heater, who knows all too well that it's almost always the boyfriend, hands off to prove his theory correct.

Speaker 22 Meanwhile, Elizabeth's family members, especially her sister Peggy Goebel, leave the meeting concerned that an innocent man is about to be accused of murder.

Speaker 70 Goebbels firmly believes that there's another explanation for what happened to her sister, something the police just aren't seeing.

Speaker 19 And if standard police procedures aren't working, it means that she'll have to try something else.

Speaker 21 Something unorthodox to uncover the truth.

Speaker 14 It's August 16th, Elizabeth Cornish has been dead for just over a week.

Speaker 67 20 miles away in Flanders, New Jersey, a phone rings.

Speaker 19 Maybe it's everyday intuition, or maybe it's something more.

Speaker 43 But before she even answers it, Nancy Weber has a sense that this is no ordinary call.

Speaker 9 She picks up.

Speaker 48 A woman's voice introduces herself as Peggy Goebel.

Speaker 40 She believes Weber might be able to help solve a mystery currently unfolding in Belvedere.

Speaker 17 Believe it or not, this kind of call is not unusual for Weber to receive.

Speaker 16 For several years, she's been making a name for herself among law enforcement circles as something of a psychic detective.

Speaker 31 Weber is intrigued.

Speaker 46 She can hear, she can sense.

Speaker 74 the unspeakable pain and anxiety in Goebel's voice.

Speaker 36 She agrees to talk, but it needs to be in person.

Speaker 33 Proximity is very important to her work.

Speaker 60 It's also absolutely crucial that Goebbel tells her nothing more.

Speaker 15 No details about the situation whatsoever.

Speaker 75 Weber's done this enough times to know that she must piece together the mystery in her own mind and not be clouded by outside information.

Speaker 17 She can't explain exactly how she does it.

Speaker 1 It's something that Weber's been able to do for as long as she can recall.

Speaker 71 Her first vision came to her when she was only two and a half years old.

Speaker 64 She looked through the belly of one of her mother's friends and saw something inside.

Speaker 49 And then, thereafter, a voice told her, baby.

Speaker 56 Her mother's friend had not told anyone that she was pregnant yet, not even her husband.

Speaker 54 But Weber saw and heard the truth on her very own.

Speaker 27 As a kid, Weber didn't think that she was any different from anyone else.

Speaker 71 It was only when she got older that she realized that she had a talent.

Speaker 44 And so, as word got out about her abilities, people began coming out of the woodwork to ask her for help.

Speaker 10 And the most desperate of these people were the family members of killed and missing persons.

Speaker 58 It was here that Weber found her niche.

Speaker 10 She found it endlessly rewarding to help these people find closure and justice.

Speaker 35 By this time, she'd already aided a number of grieving families and police investigations, including a particularly high-profile case in 1982 involving the abduction and murder of two young women from the area.

Speaker 33 When the police's trail ran cold, they reached out to Weber, who had a full-time psychic, medium, and medical intuitive practice.

Speaker 25 With her strange abilities, Weber was able to envision things that the police could have otherwise never discovered, including a green sedan with the name James.

Speaker 29 Two clues that would ultimately lead the police straight to the murderer, James J.

Speaker 58 Kodotik, who drove a green Chevy sedan.

Speaker 27 When inspected, the interior of the vehicle contained damning physical evidence, linking him to both murders.

Speaker 35 Whatever closure or justice Peggy Goebel is seeking today, Weber hopes that she'll be able to provide it.

Speaker 5 She gives Goebel her address, come by, and together they'll see what can be done.

Speaker 26 When Goebel arrives, Weber ushers her inside.

Speaker 47 She reminds Goebel that she should tell her no details because they would only interfere with her work.

Speaker 21 Goebel abides.

Speaker 25 The two women sit across the kitchen table from each other.

Speaker 73 Weber focuses on the aura surrounding Goebel, and she can sense an overwhelming feeling of grief.

Speaker 58 She can tell that there's been a great loss.

Speaker 63 Weber then closes her eyes, and there, in her mind, She sees a woman.

Speaker 59 The woman is tied up in her bed.

Speaker 51 She's covered in blood.

Speaker 41 Weber opens her eyes and asks Goebbel if this woman is her sister.

Speaker 60 Goebel nods, the tears streaming down her face.

Speaker 47 Yes, it's her sister, Elizabeth Cornish.

Speaker 42 Weber asks if the boyfriend is the chief suspect in her case.

Speaker 11 Again, Goebel nods.

Speaker 53 And that's when Weber looks Goebel directly in her eyes and states,

Speaker 50 he is not the killer.

Speaker 13 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Speaker 13 Well, with a name-your-price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com.

Speaker 13 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states.

Speaker 3 This is a real good story about Drew, a real United Airlines customer.

Speaker 78 After almost four years of treatments, I was finally cancer-free. My mom's like, Where do you want to go to celebrate? I'm like, Let's go somewhere tropical.

Speaker 78 And then Pilot hopped in the intercom and started talking about me. And I was like, What is going on here?

Speaker 79 My wife beats cancer too, and I wanted to celebrate his special moment.

Speaker 3 That's Bill, a real United pilot.

Speaker 79 We brought him drinks and donuts. We all signed a card.

Speaker 78 I was smiling ear to ear. Best flight ever for sure.

Speaker 79 That's how good leads the way.

Speaker 72 It's been over a week since Elizabeth Cornish's body was found, and Sergeant Tom Traynor of the New Jersey State Police is getting restless.

Speaker 42 It's another hot one today.

Speaker 14 Even though he's standing in the shade of a large maple tree, he can't keep from sweating.

Speaker 40 The tree's in front of Elizabeth Cornish's apartment building.

Speaker 37 Traynor and a few other investigators are gathered there, listening intently as Captain Heater brings them up to speed on the case.

Speaker 50 It's not looking good.

Speaker 16 There are zero eyewitness reports.

Speaker 15 The family refuses to believe that the boyfriend did it, even though he's refusing to talk.

Speaker 64 The only thing they do have is the single fingerprint from the bedroom window.

Speaker 45 Traynor wipes his brow.

Speaker 63 He knows that the lab will take forever to process the print.

Speaker 14 He figures all they can do right now is retrace some of Captain Heater's initial steps to see if they missed something.

Speaker 32 It's then that he notices a woman, dressed as a civilian, striding across the lawn towards them.

Speaker 19 Trainer doesn't recognize her, but he assumes it's someone from the apartment complex who wants to talk.

Speaker 17 The woman appears to be deep in thought as she makes her approach.

Speaker 9 It's almost as if every sight, sound, and sensation she's experiencing is weighing heavy on her mind.

Speaker 44 The woman walks directly up to Trainer, extends her hand, and introduces herself as Nancy Weber, the psychic who will be helping them today.

Speaker 64 Trainer's first instinct is to laugh, but he remains professional and instead turns to give Heater a look of disbelief.

Speaker 29 But Heater isn't laughing.

Speaker 14 He explains to Trainer that he's worked with Weber in the past, and he's hoping that she'll be able to offer the assistance they so desperately need.

Speaker 47 Heater and Weber head off towards the front of the apartment building, and Trainer follows, completely baffled.

Speaker 58 The captain can't be serious about this, can he?

Speaker 37 A A psychic helping on a homicide investigation?

Speaker 53 They reach the front of the apartment building, and Weber addresses the group of cops.

Speaker 15 She doesn't want to be told any specifics about the investigation before they begin.

Speaker 38 Her visions have her convinced that McCarran is not the killer.

Speaker 21 There's murmuring among the group.

Speaker 56 Trainer's brow furrows.

Speaker 33 This contradicts the evidence that the investigation has uncovered so far, like those fishermen clippers on the ground outside, underneath the bedroom window.

Speaker 58 If the killer is not McCarran, then who on earth does this so-called psychic believe it is?

Speaker 64 Weber politely calls for silence as she begins her work.

Speaker 18 Trainer takes a deep breath and looks on incredulously as Weber takes in the scene.

Speaker 25 She walks into the building and stops at the base of the interior staircase.

Speaker 27 that leads up to the second floor apartments.

Speaker 80 For some reason, she seems fixated on these stairs.

Speaker 39 Suddenly, her eyes widen.

Speaker 15 She points to the landing at the top of the stairs.

Speaker 72 She says she just saw a shadow climb the stairs and disappear.

Speaker 61 She's getting an overwhelming feeling that this shadow belongs to the killer.

Speaker 30 Traynor isn't ready to buy Weber's theory.

Speaker 36 He was standing right there next to her, looking at the same set of stairs, and he did not see a shadow.

Speaker 40 Traynor remains skeptical as they move along to Cornish's apartment.

Speaker 39 Inside, the bedroom is still as it was on the day her body was found.

Speaker 16 Traynor looks at all the bloodstains on the walls, ceiling, and floor and is reminded of the brutality of the crime.

Speaker 43 Weber, meanwhile, seems to be looking at something else entirely.

Speaker 34 She tells Traynor and Heater that she sees another man in the room.

Speaker 48 He's about 5'10.

Speaker 59 He has a scar on his right cheek.

Speaker 60 and he's wearing a western belt buckle around his waist.

Speaker 55 She closes her eyes.

Speaker 25 She's having another vision.

Speaker 44 This one is more of a feeling than an image, though.

Speaker 16 It's about when the murder took place.

Speaker 21 Their timeline is all wrong.

Speaker 36 This did not happen at midnight.

Speaker 75 Cornish was murdered much, much later, closer to 3 a.m.

Speaker 40 or so.

Speaker 21 Trainer pushes back.

Speaker 5 The medical examiner already concluded that Cornish died around midnight.

Speaker 58 Weber, however, is insistent that she's right.

Speaker 53 Captain Heater shoots Trainer a glance.

Speaker 5 Let the woman do her work.

Speaker 59 Another vision is coming to Weber now.

Speaker 5 This time, it's not a person or a feeling, but a name.

Speaker 17 First name John.

Speaker 23 Last initial, R.

Speaker 30 She recalls the shadow she saw go up the stairs only a few minutes ago.

Speaker 38 She asks the name of the tenant who lives in the apartment above Cornish.

Speaker 74 Trainer looks at his notes and is surprised by what he sees.

Speaker 62 The man upstairs is named John Reese Jr.

Speaker 19 He lives with his fiancée and her two daughters and works manual labor at a local sawd farm.

Speaker 29 But as he explains to Weber, they've already ruled out Reese as a suspect along with the other neighbors.

Speaker 61 Reese has an alibi for where he was that night around midnight, and he passed a polygraph test.

Speaker 30 Now it's Weber's turn to push back.

Speaker 1 If she's right and the murder happened three hours later than they think, then Reese, of course, could have passed the polygraph test.

Speaker 39 He was asked, after all, about his whereabouts at midnight, not at three in the morning.

Speaker 1 Weber implores Heater and the others to take another look at Rhys.

Speaker 48 And so, Heater turns to Trainer and tells him to get up there.

Speaker 2 He heard the lady.

Speaker 58 Annoyed and sweating, Trainer takes the stairs up to the second floor.

Speaker 67 He knocks on the door of the unit directly above Cornish's, and a man answers.

Speaker 62 It's John Reese.

Speaker 74 The first thing Traynor sees is the scar on Reese's right cheek.

Speaker 23 And then the next, just as Nancy Weber described, a Western belt buckle.

Speaker 31 Three days later, August 19th.

Speaker 16 Sergeant Traynor is sitting at his desk, wondering if it's too late in the afternoon for another cup of coffee, still trying to make sense of the things Nancy Weber said she saw.

Speaker 69 It goes against his nature to blindly believe the things she sees, but he can't deny that what she's seen so far has been eerily accurate.

Speaker 46 His phone rings.

Speaker 25 He picks it up immediately, hoping it's the call he's been waiting for.

Speaker 39 And it is.

Speaker 33 Captain Heater's on the line, and he's got good news.

Speaker 64 The fingerprint from Elizabeth Cornish's bedroom window finally came back from the lab.

Speaker 69 And it's a direct match for John Reese.

Speaker 58 Trainer stands up out of his chair, coursing with excitement.

Speaker 26 He shoots a glance at the clock on the wall.

Speaker 25 He knows Reese is getting off work at the Sod Farm right now.

Speaker 73 And so, wasting no time, he drives straight over to the Blair House apartments.

Speaker 21 Minutes later, he's parking his squad car outside the apartment complex.

Speaker 14 His pulse is pounding, so he takes a deep breath.

Speaker 25 He wants to be composed for this.

Speaker 39 He's actually developed a nice rapport with Reese since they first spoke.

Speaker 47 Emboldened by Weber's visions, Trainor's gone back to the upstairs neighborhood a few times to ask more questions about the night of Cornish's murder.

Speaker 54 Rhys hadn't gotten squirrely at all.

Speaker 56 In fact, he's fielded all of Tranor's questions easily and comfortably, just like an innocent person would.

Speaker 36 Traynor walks up the stairs to Rhys' apartment and knocks on the door.

Speaker 74 Reese answers.

Speaker 23 He's drinking a beer and looks exhausted from that day's work.

Speaker 45 His clothes stained and dirty.

Speaker 43 There's a TV playing loudly in the next room.

Speaker 72 Striking the same friendly, conversational tone, Traynor tells Rhys that they found his fingerprints on Cornish's bedroom window.

Speaker 34 The same window that was found removed and leaning up against the apartment building.

Speaker 43 And then, Traynor asks him point blank why they would find his print there.

Speaker 28 Rhys doesn't miss a beat. His explanation is quick and succinct.

Speaker 56 Cornish's window would often get stuck, and Rhys, being the nice neighbor he was, would go over and help her get it unstuck when asked.

Speaker 17 This is news to Trainer.

Speaker 64 At no point in their previous questioning of Rhys did he ever mention going inside Cornish's apartment.

Speaker 31 An hour later, Trainer's back at his desk, trying to determine if he thinks Rhys Reese is telling the truth.

Speaker 51 Reese's explanation was so quick and so genuine, it was believable.

Speaker 16 Traynor picks up the phone and calls Peggy Goebel.

Speaker 49 He wants to know if she ever remembers her sister mentioning her neighbor helping her with her bedroom window.

Speaker 46 But Goebbels' reply is firm.

Speaker 54 Her sister never mentioned anything like this.

Speaker 49 And even more, Her bedroom window never got stuck.

Speaker 33 In fact, it was exactly the opposite.

Speaker 65 That window was so loose that it had to be held in place with small pieces of wood.

Speaker 1 Trainer thanks Goebel for the info and hangs up.

Speaker 50 Taking a deep breath, he leans back in his chair to clear his head.

Speaker 15 He finds this discrepancy troubling.

Speaker 74 If Rhys is lying, he certainly doesn't seem like it.

Speaker 25 But a lot of the evidence, psychic and otherwise, seems to be pointing towards Rhys being their man.

Speaker 53 And yet, it can't be him.

Speaker 38 He has an alibi the time of the murder.

Speaker 47 Trainer's phone rings.

Speaker 52 Again, it's Captain Heater.

Speaker 14 He's just received word from the medical examiner.

Speaker 61 They've only just realized that they've made a mistake.

Speaker 38 It turns out that when they were poring over crime scene evidence again, they determined that the time of death was not midnight, as first thought.

Speaker 40 It actually happened much closer to the wee hours of the morning.

Speaker 67 2, maybe 3 a.m.

Speaker 28 This is the same time visualized by Weber while inside Cornish's apartment.

Speaker 62 It's also a part of the evening that John Reese does not have an alibi for.

Speaker 55 Trainer can hardly believe it.

Speaker 64 This, coupled with Reese's fingerprint, changes everything.

Speaker 23 But a fingerprint and psychic visions are not a smoking gun, and a smoking gun is what Trainer needs, or rather, a bloody hammer.

Speaker 56 And so, Trainer goes back to the one person who helped them get this far.

Speaker 43 He calls Nancy Weber and asks her to come to his office.

Speaker 69 The police need more help than only she can provide.

Speaker 64 The following day, Weber and Trainer are seated across a table from each other in the conference room.

Speaker 58 Trainer doesn't go into detail.

Speaker 33 about Rhys and the window, but he does reveal to Weber that the time of death has now been altered to match her version.

Speaker 56 Weber nods ever so slightly.

Speaker 33 Trainer can tell by the subtle smile on her face that she knows he's starting to come around to her strange methods.

Speaker 63 Trainer thanks Weber for her assistance thus far and asks if she can do one more thing for them.

Speaker 55 They need help locating the murder weapon.

Speaker 54 Weber again nods her head.

Speaker 17 She asks Trainer not to tell her anything else.

Speaker 31 and closes her eyes.

Speaker 58 Trainer watches intently.

Speaker 54 He can see her eyes moving behind her eyelids, almost like she's dreaming.

Speaker 51 They sit in complete silence for a while.

Speaker 55 So long, in fact, that Trainer grows uncomfortable, as though he's watching something very private take place.

Speaker 21 Finally, Weber's eyes pop open.

Speaker 33 She asks for a piece of paper and something to write with.

Speaker 51 And immediately, Trainer slides the items across the table to her.

Speaker 63 Weber picks up the pencil and without another word, begins to draw.

Speaker 44 Trainer holds his breath as she sketches out what appears to be a long road.

Speaker 9 Then she draws a few trees at the end of the road.

Speaker 56 And then finally, just beyond the rough sketch of them, she draws a circle.

Speaker 10 At this point, she looks up at Trainor.

Speaker 73 She points to the circle on the piece of paper and says that this is some kind of pond or another body of water.

Speaker 44 It lies just beyond some trees at the end of a road.

Speaker 35 She can't say exactly where this is, but if Trainer can find the location she's drawn, he'll find the murder weapon.

Speaker 4 The hammer used to kill Elizabeth Cornish is at the bottom of that water.

Speaker 55 Trainer considers what Weber has just told him while looking over her crude drawing.

Speaker 25 It's not very specific.

Speaker 73 This pond, these trees, this road could literally be anywhere.

Speaker 29 Maybe not even in this county, let alone this state.

Speaker 24 It feels awfully flimsy, but it's all they have.

Speaker 45 Reese has a semi-believable explanation for the fingerprints, and Traynor knows that if they want to convict him, they're going to need him to crack.

Speaker 5 He had been so sure that all of this psychic stuff was all a total crock when he first met Weber outside the Blair House apartments.

Speaker 33 And now, he's not so sure anymore.

Speaker 23 He has to admit that so far, Weber has been spot on.

Speaker 16 The scar, the western belt buckle, the name John R.

Speaker 35 Even the time of death.

Speaker 43 And so he makes up his mind. He's going to believe her.

Speaker 14 Captain Heater believes her, and that's good enough.

Speaker 64 He decides to use Weber's drawing and will try to get a confession out of Reese with what Weber has envisioned.

Speaker 38 Traynor soon finds himself sitting at another table, this one in the state police's interrogation room.

Speaker 35 Another officer sits next to him, and across from them both, on the other side of the table, sits John Reese.

Speaker 29 Reese is as calm as ever.

Speaker 44 He sits casually, with his arms crossed and an unbothered expression on his face.

Speaker 33 In his mind, he's not under investigation.

Speaker 43 He's here to help.

Speaker 48 Trainer brings up the bedroom window again.

Speaker 33 He goes over how Reese said that he often helped with the window when it got stuck, but then reveals that Cornish's sister and daughters told him that it never got stuck.

Speaker 33 In response to this, Rhys looks confused and a bit surprised.

Speaker 44 He's sticking to his story, though.

Speaker 35 The window got stuck and he helped.

Speaker 33 Then Trainor mentions that the time of death has been changed.

Speaker 25 It's now believed to have happened around 3 a.m.

Speaker 36 And that's a time that Rhys does not have an alibi for.

Speaker 29 Suddenly, Rhys's crossed arms tense up.

Speaker 14 The expression on his face begins to shift.

Speaker 76 Next, Trainer brings up the latest piece of psychic evidence: the small pond where the murder weapon was dumped.

Speaker 64 He doesn't tell Rhys that the location of the pond has yet to be found, but he doesn't have to.

Speaker 34 When he mentions the pond and the hammer, the final shreds of confidence fall from Rhys's face.

Speaker 20 It's not even 30 minutes before he cracks.

Speaker 42 John Reese confesses to the murder of Elizabeth Cornish

Speaker 51 In his videotaped confession, Reese says that he was drunk that night.

Speaker 24 In his version of events, the reason he went inside her apartment in the first place was because he saw that her bedroom window had been removed.

Speaker 1 He entered the apartment and woke up Cornish.

Speaker 14 He tied her up and she violently kicked him in the groin.

Speaker 38 It was then that Reese picked up a hammer that he says just so happened to be there on the floor and hit her on the head with it to make her quiet.

Speaker 49 He then hit her again and again

Speaker 31 and again.

Speaker 34 He looked down and saw blood everywhere.

Speaker 45 He knew she was dead.

Speaker 23 He quietly made his way back upstairs to his apartment.

Speaker 35 He put the hammer in a garbage bag.

Speaker 68 He had a beer and then went to bed.

Speaker 76 The next morning, he went to work at the Sawn Farm like any other day and dumped the hammer in a muddy pond there.

Speaker 25 Trainer goes to visit the sawn farm.

Speaker 23 As he drives up the road leading to the facility, he sees a small wooded area off to the side.

Speaker 21 He walks through the woods and soon comes out to a clearing.

Speaker 5 In the middle of it, a muddy pond.

Speaker 22 And at the bottom of that pond, a hammer, exactly like Weber drew on that piece of paper.

Speaker 67 On August 26th, just 10 days after Weber was contacted by Peggy Goebel, the neighbor upstairs, John Rees Jr., is placed under arrest and officially charged with murder.

Speaker 15 Despite his initial confession, however, Reese pleads not guilty.

Speaker 14 In court, his lawyers argue that his videotaped confession was coerced by the police.

Speaker 5 They then develop a theory that Cornish was actually murdered by the police's initial suspect, her boyfriend Paul McCarron, who was enraged when he found out that Cornish went on a date with his best friend.

Speaker 28 But the judge does not allow this theory to be presented to the jury because it's entirely based on rumor and gossip.

Speaker 58 There's something else that the jury doesn't hear either, and it ties in with what Nancy Weber saw when she first visualized Rhys in Cornish's apartment.

Speaker 30 specifically with how Cornish's hands were bound behind her back with an extension cord.

Speaker 22 Prosecutors want to be allowed to put some of Reese's former girlfriends on the stand.

Speaker 58 Doing so, they say, will show that this is not the first time that Reese has engaged in bondage, sexual assault, and torture.

Speaker 63 But none of these girlfriends ever press charges.

Speaker 39 And in the judge's eyes, what happened in the past has no bearing in the case and would only create undue prejudice.

Speaker 36 The jury does hear testimony from Reese's boss at the Sawd Farm, who reveals that Reese confessed to him on the job shortly before his arrest.

Speaker 44 And they also hear a conversation between Reese and his fiancée that authorities were given permission to record inside the prosecutor's office.

Speaker 73 In that tape, Reese offers up the same confession he gave on videotape to the police.

Speaker 62 In October of 1989, a jury finds John Rees Jr.

Speaker 16 guilty on 11 counts, including capital murder, felony murder, and two counts of aggravated sexual assault.

Speaker 43 He's sentenced to life in prison with parole possible after 30 years.

Speaker 33 A result that might have been impossible, if not for the assistance of Nancy Weber.

Speaker 24 But as novel as it might seem, she's hardly the only psychic who's helped law enforcement crack a tough case.

Speaker 40 For more than a century, other psychic investigators such as Rosemarie Kerr, Dorothy Allison, and Snell Newman have been helping law enforcement solve some of their most baffling crimes as well.

Speaker 43 And though their methods can sometimes differ, they've yielded real results.

Speaker 47 In 1901, Snell Newman saw a murder take place in her mind like she was watching a movie.

Speaker 30 What she saw directly led police to a man who had murdered his girlfriend.

Speaker 58 In the 1970s, Dorothy Allison saw and smelled things that were present at the site where a missing 14-year-old girl's body was found, leading to the arrest of the killer two years after she disappeared.

Speaker 33 And around the time Elizabeth Cornish's murder was being solved, Rosemarie Kerr was working on a case of her very own.

Speaker 58 In Kerr's case, physically touching a photo was what jump-started her visions.

Speaker 72 Visions that helped catch two men who had killed in cold blood.

Speaker 15 The work of psychic detectives often goes unseen.

Speaker 53 Many dismiss them as con artists who exploit those who are grieving or looking for answers to unanswerable questions.

Speaker 67 And that's certainly fair criticism.

Speaker 23 Not every self-proclaimed psychic has yielded results the same way Nancy Weber or Dorothy Allison have.

Speaker 35 But in the eyes of law enforcement, psychic detectives can be a legitimate resource.

Speaker 44 Even the CIA has released a memo detailing the positive relationship between psychics and law enforcement agencies.

Speaker 43 In the memo, 11 police officers who had used a psychic in a case were interviewed.

Speaker 33 Out of those 11, 8 said that the psychic had provided them useful information that was otherwise unknown.

Speaker 80 Three had said that missing bodies were discovered using details provided by the psychic, and only one officer said that he wouldn't seek help of the psychic again.

Speaker 63 So while it does remain rare for a police department to team up with the psychic, It's an unlikely partnership that's been taking place for well over a century.

Speaker 70 One that's just as strange and mysterious as the cases they team up to solve.

Speaker 51 Clues that only some of us can truly see before the rest of us believe.

Speaker 10 Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

Speaker 36 Executive produced by me, Mr.

Speaker 77 Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Speaker 53 Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Speaker 48 This episode was written by Zeth Lundy.

Speaker 55 Copy editing by Luke Baratz.

Speaker 33 Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

Speaker 45 Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media.

Speaker 27 Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood.

Speaker 56 Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway.

Speaker 14 Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Ocasio.

Speaker 33 Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

Speaker 45 Artwork by Jessica Klogston Kiner and Robin Fane.

Speaker 29 Theme song by Ross Bugden.

Speaker 53 Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.

Speaker 65 I love you all, and good night.