In 1987, the grieving family of a murdered woman turn to a psychic for help solving the case. Police are skeptical… until the psychic’s visions illuminate new evidence that no one else could have possibly known.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What happened to Elizabeth Cornish?
When her parents are notified of her death later that evening, they're told as Officer Swigert assumed that she was shot. But upon closer inspection, the Belvedere police realized that they were mistaken. There are no bullet wounds on Cornish's body and no evidence of a firearm. The autopsy quickly reveals that Cornish died of blunt force injuries. At least 21 hits to the head with a hammer.
And even worse, the claw end of it. Cornish was beaten so badly that her skull was punctured and bone was exposed. There's also evidence that she was sexually assaulted and that the time of death was midnight. Swigert and the Belvedere Police Department are in over their heads. They never get cases this gruesome, this violent. This is the first murder in their town in nearly 100 years.
To help them wrap their heads around this case, they call in the team from the Warren County Prosecutor's Office, led by a Captain Dave Heater. Heeder drives his car from the prosecutor's office over to the apartment complex on Prospect Street. It's a quiet neighborhood, shockingly so.
He parks and ducks under the crime scene tape, striding across the lawn with the confidence of a man who's investigated his fair share of murder cases. And yet, when he glances into the apartment, the sheer amount of blood catches him slightly by surprise. He asks an officer already on the scene whether the murder weapon has been found.
The answer comes back no, they haven't found a hammer or anything of the sort. Heater and his officers make the rounds to other tenants in the apartment complex. No one can remember hearing any screams or disturbances around midnight on August 8th. These people seem sincere and honest, but just to be sure, Heater gives them all polygraph tests, and everyone, as expected, passes.
Following this, Heater turns his eye towards Cornish's boyfriend, Paul McCarran, the man who initially called 911. McCarron claims that he was out fishing all day Saturday and found Cornish's body that afternoon when he came back. As soon as McCarron mentions fishing, Heater perks up.
Because on the grass just beneath Cornish's bedroom window, they had just found a pair of clippers used by fishermen to trim their lines. And that's not all they found either. Cornish's bedroom window had been removed and was leaning against the exterior wall of the building. At first glance, it would seem that the killer removed the window in order to access Cornish's apartment.
However, upon inspection, Heeter's men find a fingerprint on the inside of the window pane. Because of this, Heeter draws the conclusion that the killer must have taken the window out after Cornish was murdered.
He further concludes that this was done to trick the police into thinking that a stranger came in from the outside, when, in fact, it was someone Cornish knew who entered her apartment through the front door. At least, that's the theory Heater's working with.
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Chapter 2: How did the police investigate the murder?
No details about the situation whatsoever. Weber's done this enough times to know that she must piece together the mystery in her own mind and not be clouded by outside information. She can't explain exactly how she does it. It's something that Weber's been able to do for as long as she can recall. Her first vision came to her when she was only two and a half years old.
She looked through the belly of one of her mother's friends and saw something inside. And then thereafter, a voice told her, baby. Her mother's friend had not told anyone that she was pregnant yet, not even her husband. But Weber saw and heard the truth on her very own. As a kid, Weber didn't think that she was any different from anyone else.
It was only when she got older that she realized that she had a talent. And so, as word got out about her abilities, people began coming out of the woodwork to ask her for help. And the most desperate of these people were the family members of killed and missing persons. It was here that Weber found her niche. She found it endlessly rewarding to help these people find closure and justice.
By this time, she'd already aided a number of grieving families in police investigations, including a particularly high-profile case in 1982 involving the abduction and murder of two young women from the area. When the police's trail ran cold, they reached out to Weber, who had a full-time psychic, medium, and medical intuitive practice.
With her strange abilities, Weber was able to envision things that the police could have otherwise never discovered, including a green sedan with the name James. Two clues that would ultimately lead the police straight to the murderer, James J. Kodatek, who drove a green Chevy sedan. When inspected, the interior of the vehicle contained damning physical evidence linking him to both murders.
Whatever closure or justice Peggy Goebel is seeking today, Weber hopes that she'll be able to provide it. She gives Goebel her address. Come by, and together they'll see what can be done. When Goebel arrives, Weber ushers her inside. She reminds Goebel that she should tell her no details, because they would only interfere with her work. Goebel abides.
The two women sit across the kitchen table from each other. Weber focuses on the aura surrounding Goebel, and she can sense an overwhelming feeling of grief. She can tell that there's been a great loss. Weber then closes her eyes. And there, in her mind, she sees a woman. The woman is tied up in her bed. She's covered in blood. Weber opens her eyes and asks Goebel if this woman is her sister.
Goebel nods, the tears streaming down her face. Yes, it's her sister, Elizabeth Cornish. Weber asks if the boyfriend is the chief suspect in her case. Again, Goebel nods. And that's when Weber looks Goebel directly in her eyes and states, he is not the killer.
Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
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Chapter 3: Who is Nancy Weber and what is her role?
She walks into the building and stops at the base of the interior staircase that leads up to the second floor apartments. For some reason, she seems fixated on these stairs. Suddenly, her eyes widen. She points to the landing at the top of the stairs. She says she just saw a shadow climb the stairs and disappear. She's getting an overwhelming feeling that this shadow belongs to the killer.
Traynor isn't ready to buy Weber's theory. He was standing right there next to her, looking at the same set of stairs, and he did not see a shadow. Traynor remains skeptical as they move along to Cornish's apartment. Inside, the bedroom is still as it was on the day her body was found.
Traynor looks at all the bloodstains on the walls, ceiling, and floor and is reminded of the brutality of the crime. Weber, meanwhile, seems to be looking at something else entirely. She tells Traynor and Heater that she sees another man in the room. He's about 5'10". He has a scar on his right cheek, and he's wearing a western belt buckle around his waist. She closes her eyes.
She's having another vision. This one is more of a feeling than an image, though. It's about when the murder took place. Their timeline is all wrong. This did not happen at midnight. Cornish was murdered much, much later, closer to 3 a.m. or so. Traynor pushes back. The medical examiner already concluded that Cornish died around midnight. Weber, however, is insistent that she's right.
Captain Heater shoots Traynor a glance. Let the woman do her work. Another vision is coming to Weber now. This time, it's not a person or a feeling, but a name. First name John, last initial R. She recalls the shadow she saw go up the stairs only a few minutes ago. She asks the name of the tenant who lives in the apartment above Cornish.
Traynor looks at his notes and is surprised by what he sees. The man upstairs is named John Reese Jr. He lives with his fiancée and her two daughters and works manual labor at a local sod farm. But as he explains to Weber, they've already ruled out Reese as a suspect along with the other neighbors. Reese has an alibi for where he was that night around midnight, and he passed a polygraph test.
Now it's Weber's turn to push back. If she's right and the murder happened three hours later than they think, then Reese, of course, could have passed the polygraph test. He was asked, after all, about his whereabouts at midnight, not at three in the morning. Weber implores Heeter and the others to take another look at Reese. And so, Heater turns to Traynor and tells him to get up there.
He heard the lady. Annoyed and sweating, Traynor takes the stairs up to the second floor. He knocks on the door of the unit directly above Cornish's, and a man answers. It's John Rhys. The first thing Traynor sees is the scar on Rhys' right cheek. And then the next, just as Nancy Weber described, a western belt buckle. Three days later, August 19th.
Sergeant Traynor is sitting at his desk, wondering if it's too late in the afternoon for another cup of coffee, still trying to make sense of the things Nancy Weber said she saw. It goes against his nature to blindly believe the things she sees, but he can't deny that what she's seen so far has been eerily accurate. His phone rings.
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Chapter 4: What were Weber's first impressions during the investigation?
Then Traynor mentions that the time of death has been changed. It's now believed to have happened around 3 a.m. And that's a time that Reese does not have an alibi for. Suddenly, Reese's crossed arms tense up. The expression on his face begins to shift. Next, Traynor brings up the latest piece of psychic evidence, the small pond where the murder weapon was dumped.
He doesn't tell Reese that the location of the pond has yet to be found, but he doesn't have to. When he mentions the pond and the hammer, the final shreds of confidence fall from Reese's face. It's not even 30 minutes before he cracks. John Reese confesses to the murder of Elizabeth Cornish. In his videotaped confession, Reese says that he was drunk that night.
In his version of events, the reason he went inside her apartment in the first place was because he saw that her bedroom window had been removed. He entered the apartment and woke up Cornish. He tied her up and she violently kicked him in the groin. It was then that Reese picked up a hammer that he says just so happened to be there on the floor and hit her on the head with it to make her quiet.
He then hit her again and again and again. He looked down and saw blood everywhere. He knew she was dead. He quietly made his way back upstairs to his apartment. He put the hammer in a garbage bag. He had a beer and then went to bed. The next morning, he went to work at the San farm like any other day and dumped the hammer in a muddy pond there. Trainer goes to visit the sod farm.
As he drives up the road leading to the facility, he sees a small wooded area off to the side. He walks through the woods and soon comes out to a clearing. In the middle of it, a muddy pond. And at the bottom of that pond, a hammer, exactly like Weber drew on that piece of paper.
On August 26th, just 10 days after Weber was contacted by Peggy Goebel, the neighbor upstairs, John Reese Jr., is placed under arrest and officially charged with murder. Despite his initial confession, however, Reese pleads not guilty. In court, his lawyers argue that his videotaped confession was coerced by the police.
They then develop a theory that Cornish was actually murdered by the police's initial suspect, her boyfriend Paul McCarran, who was enraged when he found out that Cornish went on a date with his best friend. But the judge does not allow this theory to be presented to the jury, because it's entirely based on rumor and gossip.
There's something else that the jury doesn't hear either, and it ties in with what Nancy Weber saw when she first visualized Reese in Cornish's apartment, specifically with how Cornish's hands were bound behind her back with an extension cord. Prosecutors want to be allowed to put some of Reese's former girlfriends on the stand.
Doing so, they say, will show that this is not the first time that Reese has engaged in bondage, sexual assault, and torture. But none of these girlfriends ever press charges. And in the judge's eyes, what happened in the past has no bearing in the case and would only create undue prejudice.
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Chapter 5: What evidence contradicted the initial suspect?
Chapter 6: How did the family react to the investigation?
She's having another vision. This one is more of a feeling than an image, though. It's about when the murder took place. Their timeline is all wrong. This did not happen at midnight. Cornish was murdered much, much later, closer to 3 a.m. or so. Traynor pushes back. The medical examiner already concluded that Cornish died around midnight. Weber, however, is insistent that she's right.
Captain Heater shoots Traynor a glance. Let the woman do her work. Another vision is coming to Weber now. This time, it's not a person or a feeling, but a name. First name John, last initial R. She recalls the shadow she saw go up the stairs only a few minutes ago. She asks the name of the tenant who lives in the apartment above Cornish.
Traynor looks at his notes and is surprised by what he sees. The man upstairs is named John Reese Jr. He lives with his fiancée and her two daughters and works manual labor at a local sod farm. But as he explains to Weber, they've already ruled out Reese as a suspect along with the other neighbors. Reese has an alibi for where he was that night around midnight, and he passed a polygraph test.
Now it's Weber's turn to push back. If she's right and the murder happened three hours later than they think, then Reese, of course, could have passed the polygraph test. He was asked, after all, about his whereabouts at midnight, not at three in the morning. Weber implores Heeter and the others to take another look at Reese. And so, Heater turns to Traynor and tells him to get up there.
He heard the lady. Annoyed and sweating, Traynor takes the stairs up to the second floor. He knocks on the door of the unit directly above Cornish's, and a man answers. It's John Rhys. The first thing Traynor sees is the scar on Rhys' right cheek. And then the next, just as Nancy Weber described, a western belt buckle. Three days later, August 19th.
Sergeant Traynor is sitting at his desk, wondering if it's too late in the afternoon for another cup of coffee, still trying to make sense of the things Nancy Weber said she saw. It goes against his nature to blindly believe the things she sees, but he can't deny that what she's seen so far has been eerily accurate. His phone rings.
He picks it up immediately, hoping it's the call he's been waiting for. And it is. Captain Heater's on the line, and he's got good news. The fingerprint from Elizabeth Cornish's bedroom window finally came back from the lab, and it's a direct match for John Rhys. Trainer stands up out of his chair, coursing with excitement. He shoots a glance at the clock on the wall.
He knows Reese is getting off work at the sod farm right now. And so, wasting no time, he drives straight over to the Blair house apartments. Minutes later, he's parking his squad car outside the apartment complex. His pulse is pounding, so he takes a deep breath. He wants to be composed for this. He's actually developed a nice rapport with Reese since they first spoke.
Emboldened by Weber's visions, Traynor's gone back to the upstairs neighborhood a few times to ask more questions about the night of Cornish's murder. Reese hadn't gotten squirrely at all. In fact, he's fielded all of Traynor's questions easily and comfortably. Just like an innocent person would. Traynor walks up the stairs to Reese's apartment and knocks on the door. Reese answers.
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