Did Psychics Help To Find Caylee Anthony's Body?

I was living in Orlando at the time young Caylee Anthony went missing, only about a dozen miles from where the body was discovered by the side of the road less than half a mile from her home. Hundreds of people, amateurs and professionals alike, scoured the open fields and swamps of our city turning up nothing for the longest time. All manners of search techniques were utilized, including psychics. I realize that desperate families will try anything to try to locate their missing loved ones, so I am not surprised that they looked to the paranormal for help.

Back in the Fall of 2008, Nancy Grace, a supposedly mainstream talking head from CNN Headline News, urged the public to let "the professionals, the psychics and police" do their jobs. One of the psychics contacted by the Anthony family at that time wasGinette Matacia Lucas of Matacia Global Services. Lucas explained during an interview with Grace how she utilized the technique of "remote dowsing" to find missing persons. I have to admit that upon hearing the phrase "remote dowsing" I prepared to be hit with a double blast of woo. Lucas explained that she received a stuffed animal that once belonged to Caylee from the Anthony family. Lucas slept with the toy by her side and allegedly somehow divined the location of the toddler's body.

Lucas passed her "tip" on to a private detective by the name of Dominic Casey who was at the time working for the Anthonys. This was in November of 2008, approximately one month before the remains were found. According to the testimony of Detective Casey, the directions given to him by Lucas put him in close proximity to where the body was later found. Casey admitted he did not search as thoroughly as he could have because snakes were active in the area. Those of the facts of the matter, and they are undisputed.

Cindy Anthony must have forgotten sending the stuffed animal to Lucas, because she testified that a psychic was not retained by the family to help search for Caylee. Lee Anthony took the stand and contradicted his mother’s testimony as he said that Cindy Anthony had indeed received a tip from a psychic and then advised Dominic Casey to search the area based on that tip.

To sum up my case, dear Skeptoid reader, I submit to you that the psychic prediction of Ginette Matacia Lucas was no more than an educated guess. And it did not even help at all in the actual location of the body. The "prediction" was generic enough (the baby would be found in the woods by the side of the road not too far from home) to allow it to be considered a direct hit in retrospect. Anyone with any familiarity of that section of Orlando could predict that the body might be found by the road in the woods. That's all there is in that part of town, housing developments, strip malls and roads with wooded areas beside them. If hindsight is truly 20/20, interviews with reporters like Nancy Grace, after the body was found, make it seem like Lucas was spot on. In reality, nothing was really found and she took advantage of a very distressed family to make a buck and further her psychic business. Guilty as charged.