Dear Primetime Thursday:
I was severely disappointed in your paranormal stories from April 15 about the boy who is allegedly reincarnated, and the "Psychic Sherlock" Carla Baron. I had seen your teaser commercial a couple of days before, which said something like "if you're a skeptic, we dare you to watch," so I was expecting something quite a bit better.
It took me about ten minutes of researching on the Internet to conclude that the reporters either didn't check their facts, or they intentionally left out key details which would cast doubt on the stories as presented. What happened to the maxim "if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out"? The PT reporters didn't even find basic evidence to question their stories.
For example, the story about the reincarnated boy differed from the account offered in the Pittsburgh Daily Courier from April 15. That article specifically said that the boy was taken to the Cavanaugh Flight Museum when he was 18 months old, and that his fantasies and nightmares started *after* that time. I don't recall your TV show clearly stating this timeline - I had the impression after watching the show that the "memories" happened by themselves, without an incident to prompt them.
Then in the interview with the mother, she tells the astonishing story about how her son knew what a "drop tank" is, and she had never heard of one. It didn't take me too long to visit the web site of the Cavanaugh Flight Museum and see, among the few items exhibited that are not actual airplanes, a drop tank! This isn't some obscure museum piece that wouldn't be noticed, there are not that many of them there, others being an ejection seat and some guns. Why did you not mention this in your program? Was it because the reporter didn't even do very basic research, or was it intentionally hidden?
In the segment about Carla Baron's psychic detective work, you mentioned two of the other cases which she claims demonstrate her ability. The first was the case of Rafael Tello, who killed his wife and daughter. Your story said that Ms. Baron's psychic predictions about an incinerator led the police to find some victim body parts near an industrial building almost 40 miles away, right? However, according to articles in The Desert Sun by Christine Mahr, these body parts were found by hikers, not by police. Also, you tried to make it appear that Ms. Baron got a "hit" by describing the smokestacks and saying that the body parts were incinerated. In the pictures you showed, the building didn't appear to have incinerator smokestacks, but things on the roof that looked like they could be ventilation, or possibly chimneys. And you glossed over the fact that the body parts weren't incinerated. So in light of this, how does this case support her abilities?
In her second case that she supposedly got right, teenage boy Lloyd Israel disappeared and Ms. Baron correctly predicted where the body would be found - in some corn fields. What your reporter neglected to tell the audience in this case was that his car was discovered at the time of his disappearance, abandoned on a road among corn fields, and his body was discovered not far from where his car was found. This little fact would completely destroy any claim to a psychic "hit" of Ms. Baron, yet you conveniently left it out.
The case she was trying to solve during the segment was the disappearance of Cindy Song. Even though she completely struck out, you close with the frustratingly vague "a source tells Primetime that an informant has given details possibly linking Song's disappearance and the area where Baron says she got the strongest vibes." I've never taken a journalism course, but I can't imagine this kind of work would receive passing grades in any of them.
Then of course you had Michael Shermer and Paul Kurtz as skeptics, for "balance." Both of these guys are quite capable of debunking what you're peddling, but they would have needed more than the four or five seconds that you gave them.
ABC's own John Stossel has recently made the claim that no psychic has ever actually helped solve a missing persons case (using psychic ability). As far as I'm aware, this is true. Do you think your cases here show how he's wrong?
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Curtis Cameron
That would be funny. I don't think so, though.
