University of Utah Police just closed their 52-year search for 23-year-old physics major Douglas Brick after weathered skull fragments found on Black Mountain proved a 99.9 percent DNA match—but the most shocking detail? A psychic predicted the exact location 35 years ago. That tip was never fully explored.

Two hunters stumbled on Brick's bone fragment in October, six miles above the university’s giant white “U.” They pinned the spot and called dispatch.

It was the same hillside a Salt Lake City store clerk—a self-described psychic—had pointed to in 1990 during a chance encounter with Brick’s mother, Donna.

According to her journal, Donna was browsing a department store when the clerk offered an uncannily accurate read on her personal life. 

When Donna asked if she could sense what happened to her son, the woman described Douglas hiking into the foothills above the university, contemplating suicide, becoming afraid in the dark, and slipping to his death.

“He really wants you to find him,” the psychic told her—a line that stayed with Donna for decades.

When Detective Jon Dial followed up on the hunters’ GPS pin and hiked the same stretch of Black Mountain, he found the terrain exactly as the medium described: steep, treacherous, and disorienting.

“I was having a hard time in the daylight keeping my footing under me and figuring out where I was going,” Dial said in a news release. 

The area had been searched only once, in 1973, by Brick’s roommate and campus officers. Despite the psychic’s tip, it was never revisited until now.

Can Mediums Really Solve Crimes? What the Numbers Say

Stories like Brick’s are media catnip, but what do studies say about the efficacy of mediums?

A declassified 1979 CIA memo reported 8 of 11 police agencies surveyed had seen a psychic offer otherwise unknown case details. Three found victims’ bodies exactly where the psychic said they’d be. Only one dismissed medium input entirely.

31 of America’s 50 largest police agencies had never chased a psychic tip, and the remainder “could not link a solved case to psychic information alone,”according to a 1993 U.S. Justice Department survey.

A 1979 LAPD study of 12 psychics found they averaged just two correct clues out of 25 per case—“statistically no better than chance.”

A 2012 nationwide survey of 102 homicide investigators yielded mixed results. Just 6.3% had ever seen a psychic actually close a case. Yet, 26.9% said the tip helped.

 “Psychic provided detailed information of the whereabouts of a missing victim… when the body was located it was exactly as described,” one detective wrote.

“You have to follow up on any information given during a homicide whether it was solicited or not,” another added

Former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt dismissed most psychic leads as “so general [they’re] useless.” ABC News consultant Brad Garrett, also a former agent, said on Nightline’s Beyond Belief program he’d “never seen a psychic solve a mystery.”

Even U.S. intelligence agencies have warned psychic leads are “too vague and unreliable to permit operational application.” Still, some detectives admit to involving mediums “to appease the family.”

Headlines That Keep Mediums in the Mix

Why, then, do some detectives still tap mediums for help? Because every few years, a headline like Brick’s explodes.

In 1980, Etta Smith dreamed-mapped Lopez Canyon and personally located nurse Melanie Uribe’s body there. The L.A. Times later described her accuracy as “remarkably precise.”

Dorothy Allison—a New Jersey psychic who volunteered on more than 5,000 investigations, was remembered for “helping to solve more than a dozen murders and find at least 50 missing children.”

Retired DEA agent Kelly Snyder’s Find Me Group makes a similar pitch. The organization says it has over 160 vetted volunteers—from psychics to K-9 handlers —who have helped locate 106 people. Its volunteers on GreatNonprofits write that the team has helped solve about 44% of the cases it has taken on since 2002.

More recently, Fionna Johansson—known as the “Persian Medium” to her 1 million followers—says she helped police locate a missing neighbor’s body in Stockholm, leading to an arrest. Johansson now consults for law enforcement across several U.S. states and argues psychic detection fills gaps in investigations when conventional tools fall short.

“Psychics fill these gaps by providing insights that may guide investigators to overlooked evidence, witnesses, or motives. In some instances, psychics have provided accurate details about crime scenes, helping investigators corroborate their findings,” medium Kelly Kristin added. 

Yet mainstream playbooks still leave psychics on the bench. Neither the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s guidelines nor the IACP’s model policy mentions them.

The Verdict– Do Psychic Tips Deserve a Place in Policing?

The data is outdated and inconclusive. What exists suggests psychic tips perform no better than chance. 

Yet the rare needle-in-a-haystack cases they appear to crack—like Douglas Brick’s—may warrant a more serious look. Advocates, families, and pro-psychic police seeking broader validation could urge academic institutions or justice agencies, such as the NIJ and IACP, to examine the issue with fresh eyes.

Yet until more robust research catches up, it’s likely psychic detection will remain on the fringe.