Talk:Criticism of Sylvia Browne/Sandbox

Current version:

The Montel Williams Show controversies

Browne has been a weekly guest on The Montel Williams Show for many years. In the episodes she appears in, known as "Sylvia Wednesdays," she takes questions from audience members asking for advice about health, love, and finance, as well as information she may have about deceased or missing loved ones. Recently her predictions have come under tremendous scrutiny after the high profile missing person's case of Shawn Hornbeck made headlines and revealed that Browne had given a reading to Hornbeck's mother and step-father four years prior on the show where she told them their son was dead, knew where he was buried and the person who had abducted him had murdered him, which turned out to be all wrong. Since then other readings by Browne have been claimed to be incorrect.

Missing persons

Holly Krewson

In April 1995, 23-year-old Holly Krewson was reported missing by her family. In 2002, Gwendolyn Krewson, Holly's mother, appeared on an episode of The Montel Williams Show featuring Sylvia Browne for information that might lead to the whereabouts of her daughter. Sylvia Browne told Krewson her daughter was living in Hollywood, California and working as an exotic dancer in a nightclub. Following the reading, Holly's family went to Hollywood and canvassed a number of nightclubs but yielded no results. A body found in 1996 by the San Diego police went unidentified for 10 years, but a break in the case came in February 2006 when dental records were used to positively identify the body to that of Holly Krewson.

Opal Jo Jennings

Six-year-old Opal Jo Jennings was abducted in March 1999 from her grandparents' front yard in Tarrant County, Texas, USA. Jennings' grandmother, Audrey Sanderford, appeared on the Montel show to ask Browne for information in the episode first broadcast on April 29, 1999. Browne told Sanderford her granddaughter was not dead but that she had been forced into prostitution and taken to Japan, in a town called either "Kukouro" or "Kukoura." No such town exists. In August of that same year, convicted child molester Richard Lee Franks was arrested and charged with Jennings' abduction and murder. He was convicted of the crimes in September 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.

In December 2003 the skeletal remains of a small child were found 13 miles away from Jennings' home. DNA determined it was the remains of Opal Jo Jennings and an autopsy showed she had been killed due to trauma to the head within hours after being abducted.

Lynda McClelland

On July 27, 2000, 44-year-old Lynda McClelland was reported missing from her home in Forrest Hills, Pennsylvania, but subsequent searches turned up nothing. On March 13, 2002 McClelland's two daughters and son-in-law appeared on The Montel Williams Show seeking information regarding McClelland.

Browne told McClelland's daughters, Marci and Amanda, that their mother was alive and was abducted by a man with the initials "MJ" and taken to Orlando, Florida. McClelland's body was found buried less than two miles from her home in Pennsylvania. The man charged and convicted for the murder was David Repasky, McClelland's son-in-law.

Shawn Hornbeck

On October 6, 2002, 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck was reported missing from his Missouri home. On February 6, 2003, Browne appeared on The Montel Williams Show with the boy's parents during which Browne told Pam and Craig Akers their son "is no longer with us" but she had the impression his body was in a wooded area about 20 miles southwest of Richwoods. She said it would be near two large, jagged boulders that seem out of place in that area. She also described the man as being very tall, having long black dreadlocks, and being not "black, more like Hispanic" as well as describing his vehicle as an older model blue sedan with fins. Her claims led to a refocusing of search efforts of numerous people calling in with tips regarding possible spottings of the rock formations Browne had mentioned.

In January 2006 Anderson Cooper reported on Browne's 2003 claims and interviewed the Hornbeck parents, Randi, and Browne critic Robert Lancaster (Browne declined to be interviewed). The Hornbeck parents reported that Browne offered to "tell them more" if they booked a private meeting at $700 for 20 minutes. Browne denied having ever asked such a thing.

Hornbeck was found alive four years later, having been abducted by a white man with short brown hair who drove a small white Toyota pickup. Browne told the the New York Daily News, "I'm terribly sorry that this happened, but I think my body of work stands by itself. I've broken case after case." She was scheduled to be a guest on Larry King Live show to further address the issue. However, she was replaced at the last minute by fellow psychic Rosemary Altea and Randi. King, a long-time supporter and promoter of Browne's work, was somewhat critical of the absent Browne, but he also remarked that Browne had described Devlin "pretty well". Randi disputed this, comparing her description (that mentioned dreadlocks on a Hispanic man) with an arrest photograph of Devlin (a white man, average height, with no dreadlocks).

On January 30, 2007 Browne's business manager for 35 years, Linda Rossi, appeared with Randi on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. In a 15-minute interview, Randi proposed that Browne undergo a test consisting of doing "...readings for ten people, ten people that would be chosen because they believe Sylvia Browne and they believe she has powers, and they believe in psychic powers of that sort. ... We would then shuffle those ten readings and give them all to the people who had the readings done for them and ask them to sort them out, which one is your reading? It should be pretty evident that you could take the reading that was made for you, and you could single that out." Rossi replied, "Absolutely not" with Randi noting Browne previously agreed to undergo a test.

Other missing persons

During one Montel appearance that has since been widely distributed on Internet video sites, a woman in the audience asked Sylvia about her boyfriend, whom she said they had lost and never found his body. Browne then predicted that the reason they hadn't found his body was because he was in water. The grieving woman then informed Browne that her boyfriend had been a New York City firefighter that had been caught in one of the collapsing building during the September 11th terrorist attacks, openly refuting Browne's prediction.