What could a psychic tell us about the strange case of Nancy Guthrie? |
The strange case of Nancy Guthrie, who was kidnapped in Arizona at the start of February, brings to mind the tragic tale from 2023 of Nicola Bulley, which was resolved with the help of a psychic. Leading criminologist David Wilson reflects on both dramas.
I follow a social scientific method in my applied work as a criminologist. I look at what evidence might exist about an unexplained disappearance or, more usually, a crime that’s been committed, whether in the past or more recently, and then apply reason and logic to form a tentative conclusion. I do this in such a way that anyone could follow the process that I’d used and so, if they wanted to, try to replicate my findings as a way of testing what I’ve suggested. It’s what my old primary school teacher used to call showing everyone my “workings out”.
I don’t claim to have any special gifts, or an Holmesian “elementary my dear Watson”, top-down approach to the work that I do. Of course, I have experience of working with different types of offenders and can claim to understand how they might behave in some situations and I build that experience into forming my conclusions. However, if a hypothesis is to be tested it needs to be disproven – to be falsified rather than verified, and so is capable of being wrong.
All of this seems far removed from what I usually write about in my column, but it’s important to set out my stall because of what I now want to describe.
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