Allison DuBois: Don't Kiss Them Good-bye

As of today, I have worked on numerous missing person cases. I profile for law enforcement and I assist the friends and families of murdered people. I can access both the victims’ and the perpetrators’ minds. I find I’m more effective if I access the perpetrators, because they tend to run more on adrenaline, meaning that they are processing it in their minds, rather than their hearts or their souls. Tapping into what someone is thinking is easier for me than sensing what someone is feeling. I aim for the most information in the shortest amount of time, so less emotion helps to bring through more coherent information. Unfortunately, most abduction cases do not have the happy ending we’d all like them to have.

Most people don’t realize that there are plenty of competent psychic profilers (although the psychic part isn’t always acknowledged) out there who assist law enforcement every day. Understand that often we cannot take any credit for our work because it can legally hinder a case. The defense would have a field day in court with psychic intervention, and we don’t want to discredit the prosecution or do anything to weaken a case.

Law enforcement is also hesitant to acknowledge our role because of the controversy surrounding psychics. Having family in law enforcement, and having worked in the field myself, I can understand why this is the case.

Psychics are physically and emotionally drained by work on missing persons’ cases. It takes a great deal of energy to access both perpetrators and victims. It opens us up to things most people never experience. For these reasons, some psychics choose not to work missing persons cases.

Aside from being draining, the job is often thankless. Those who choose to do it want to make a difference. I was given the ability to see into criminal minds, and I won’t squander that gift. At the same time, I work on only a limited number of cases per year so that I don’t burn out. (For the record, I’ve never asked for or accepted payment for my work on any such case.)

If I cannot provide specific, helpful details I will not work a case. I prefer not to work personally with a family but rather to work with police, friends of the family, and so on. I profile to help people, not hurt them.

While working as a child advocate in a nonpsychic context, I was able to talk with some parents of missing children who had previously used psychics for help. I was dumbfounded at what they had been told by these callous opportunists. They had been given hurtful, traumatic details of their children’s abductions, but they had been led no closer to finding the children or the perpetrators. The psychics then charged money for inflicting such pain upon them.

I cannot tell you how upsetting this is to me. It makes me hot with anger for these parents and their children, because I spend my life trying to lend credibility to my gift.

I hope that by providing some guidelines for young psychics and mediums, I can help prevent them from becoming the types who injure their clients and damage our field. Nothing is more difficult than a loved one’s death, especially a child’s. If such details as “She was in excruciating pain” or “She screamed for her mother” are pertinent to a case (which is unlikely), offer them to the police, not to the family. Those who add salt to an already painful wound are not only unethical, they are without mercy or conscience.

In August 2000, I had an opportunity to work with Texas law enforcement on my first official missing-person case. This case will always be special to me, and it resulted in something that I will forever be proud of.

I had provided law enforcement with specific details about the perpetrator in the abduction and murder of a little girl; this information had not been released to the public. They were so taken aback by the information that they wanted to meet with me personally.

I was planning a trip to Virginia to do a media interview and made arrangements to catch a connecting flight in Dallas, where I was met at the airport by a group of noble-looking Rangers. They were tall, polite, and ready to go. One of my favorites was the sergeant. He was very Texan, and I mean that as a compliment. I was as amused by him as he was by me.

During our car ride, he turned to me and said, “Tell me something about myself.” He said it in a friendly way, so I didn’t mind.

“Oh, a test! Like I don’t deal with that every day of my life.” I paused, smiled, and said, “You have a serious problem with your heart; you need to pay special attention to your health.”

He and the spirited female police officer riding with us burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I just had double bypass surgery on my heart,” the sergeant said.

I told him not to cheat on his prescribed health routine. (Unfortunately, he called me a few months later to tell me that he’d had another heart attack.)

We spent a few hours driving and covered the many areas where the perpetrator claimed to have taken the little girl. The perpetrator was a compulsive liar, so I eliminated the false areas for the police. (Many serial killers like to keep the location of their victims secret; they know that it gives them power over law enforcement and society.) Incidentally, the police had already eliminated some of the areas; they just thought they’d test me. I traipsed around in the wooded areas and stepped over animal carcasses, animal skeletons, and so on. I wish I’d had my gun with me; it was straight out of a horror flick. The Rangers had a clear advantage, and they promised they wouldn’t let the tarantulas get me.

I saw the barbed-wire fence I had described, and the area where I was walking was near a major marker that I’d pointed out on a map before coming to Texas. The information I had given them earlier agreed with that provided by the killer’s accomplices, and I learned that I had correctly described the vehicle used in the child’s abduction; also I had stated correctly that the perpetrator had switched vehicles during the abduction. It’s always a little creepy to see your visions unfold.

Night fell and we were unable to cover the rest of the area. I had a morning flight and had to leave without continuing the search. My hiking boots and I would have to come back another time. I was frustrated. I had been looking for evidence of the child’s death and it seemed my efforts had been in vain. In an odd coincidence, tropical storm Allison came in and flooded the area shortly thereafter.

The Rangers and other law enforcement officers I’d worked with were brave, honorable people with tears in their eyes over this child. I left disappointed, and I asked my guides, “Why? Why did you send me there if I wasn’t supposed to find her?”

The answer to that question would come in three months. When I returned to Phoenix, I recalled that the Texas police sergeant had told me about a system called the Amber Alert, named after Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in 1996. It’s a child abduction alert system that is used to inform the public as soon as the police have determined that an abduction has occurred. Local radio and TV stations interrupt their broadcasting with a description of the suspect, vehicle, and child, giving drivers and residents a chance to save a child by notifying the police of his or her whereabouts.

I decided to write to local politicians to see if I could initiate the establishment of an Amber Alert system in Phoenix. I contacted local missing persons organizations asking for their help, but to no avail. So I did the work on my own. Of the many letters I wrote, I received a response from only one politician, but one politician was all I needed. I was asked to serve on the task force to design the alert and I was honored to do so.