I'm watching "Haunting Evidence" for the first time right now. Two psychics are in Portugal investigating the disappearance of the little girl Madelaine McCann. That's the one a while back where the parents went to dinner and left their little girl asleep in at home. Surprise, surprise, they find her missing. :o
So the team separated and went to different locations. Eventually, one of them led to a landfill. The other one broke out an EVP device and asked Madelaine questions in case she was there. Very interesting. Psychics breaking out the scientific equipment. That's the first time I've seen that.
What type of EVP device did they use? The only one I'm familiar with is a good old fashioned voice recorder.
What were the results? Did they actually find the girl? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they didn't.
I've actually done some research and have yet to find an instance where a psychic was used in a criminal investigation and able to provide any useful information. They usually provide the same vague and ambiguous information that sounds appealing but is yet, strangely enough, not able to be confirmed nor denied. I've located websites where the psychics claim to have helped law enforcement solve numerous cases yet been unable to locate any corroboration of this (other than on that psychic's own website of course).
It all seems very shady to me. Sometimes well intentioned, sometimes not so, but all very shady.
Besides, with just a few more details from this case I can probably tell you what happened to that little girl. In fact, the FBI has amassed a huge database of statistics from numerous child abduction cases and you would be surprised how accurate they can be (in terms of determining a criminal profile for the person that likely kidnapped the girl, if she was kidnapped, whether or not the parents are the suspects, how far she was likely taken from the scene, etc...). It's all very morbid, but, sadly, welcome to my world.
In many cases, investigators have a pretty good idea of what happened to the victim and who did it. Unfortunately, many times they just aren't able to come up with enough evidence to get it past a jury of 12 licensed drivers. Cases like Jaycee Dugard do occur, but those are pretty rare.