The Bye Bye Man by Robert Damon Schneck

Author:Robert Damon Schneck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-12T10:23:05+00:00

Psychic Interlude

Psychic phenomenon may seem out of place in law enforcement but police can be among those most likely to trust instinct and hunches. They are also pragmatists whose main interest is results, and many of them are willing to try unconventional methods to get those results (a 1993 survey showed that 37 percent of urban police departments have tried psychics16). This approach, however, is usually pursued with discretion or off the official clock because there are members of the public who strongly object to dallying with what they consider the occult. Debunkers and religious fundamentalists are among the most vocal, with the former believing that psychic powers do not exist and are therefore a waste of taxpayers’ money, and the latter crediting demons with supplying the psychic’s information (who may, in fact, be possessed), and no good can come of that. Neither group is bashful about expressing their opinions, but detectives in Newark were looking for five missing teenagers, with no clues and nothing to lose.

Several newspaper accounts mention that a Ouija board was used, but details are lacking and the first psychic used in the case has not been named. He or she lived in Irvington and suggested that police investigate a garbage-covered lot south of Newark International Airport. In 1986, an abandoned oil tank was excavated but no traces of the boys were found, and it was ten years before police publicly pursued another extrasensory tip.

The tip came from the best known (and certainly best liked) of all the psychic detectives who regularly worked with police, Dorothy Allison. It’s difficult to say how many cases Allison has been involved with, but she claimed thousands and was probably not exaggerating. (My mother knew a local detective who consulted her many times.) Allison’s home in suburban Nutley, New Jersey, was stuffed with hats, badges, and citations presented to her by different police departments, and detectives even went on record with some of her successes. Nutley detective Salvatore Lubertazzi was quoted in the July 1979 issue of The Journal of Law Enforcement as saying that “she’s found twenty missing or deceased persons for us since 1968.”17

Allison had a vision about the missing teenagers in 1979 and believed they had been murdered. The bodies were burned and what was left buried near the airport. Police did not act on this and filed it away; perhaps it was too different from theories they were working on at the time (possibly involving Lee Evans).

In 1994, detectives Armandina Tahaney and Angel Ramos of the Youth Aid Bureau began a two-year review of the case and presumably developed a scenario that agreed with Allison’s. We can only guess what they thought but we do know what they did.

In the first week of May 1996, officers from the Newark Police department, the sheriff’s department, and Conrail explored a weedy area near the airport with four German Shepherds from the Ramapo Search and Rescue Dog Association. They were searching “an overgrown lot beneath overpasses for Interstate 78 and Route 22 where the two roads run parallel north of the airport.

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