Psychic Says She Aided Police on Serial Cases

A well-known San Diego psychic has told The Times that she worked on the city’s two major serial murder cases--the slayings of 44 prostitutes and the murders of five women in the Clairemont and University City areas--for the San Diego Police Department.

In a written statement, psychic Kelly Roberts said she worked with Sgt. Harold E. Goudarzi and the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force as part of a consulting arrangement approved by a task force superior in 1989. The task force has been investigating the prostitute murders since 1988.

Roberts said she also worked temporarily with homicide detectives investigating the murders of five women in the Clairemont and University City areas that police say is the work of a single killer. Police have no suspects in the cases, the first of which occurred Jan. 12, 1990, and the last of which occurred eight months later.

San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen said he was not aware that Roberts was used as a consultant in either case.

In general, he said, “I would be very skeptical about using a psychic in a criminal investigation. My feeling is that, if psychics were truly psychics, they’d go down to the race track and win a million dollars every day.”

Assistant Chief Norm Stamper, who reviewed task force files for four months last year, said he doesn’t recall running across Roberts’ name. He would not comment on whether Roberts worked on the Clairemont slayings.

Stamper said, however, that it is not unusual for police agencies to use psychics because “we certainly want to take information where we can get it.”

Roberts prepared a 3 1/2-page statement about her work on the cases after an inquiry last week from The Times about her relationship with Goudarzi. Police administrators have recommended that Goudarzi, a 21-year veteran and original task force member, be fired for his alleged involvement with two informants while he was on the task force, according to three sources familiar with the report.

Initially, Roberts declined to comment about her relationship with Goudarzi. She said she wrote her statement after seeking guidance from the Police Department and being told she was free to talk with the media.

In her statement, Roberts said she was a consultant, not an informant, for police and for the task force. But she conceded that she was given an informant’s code name and was referred to as an informant in paper work used to reimburse her for expenses.

In an interview Monday, she declined to talk about her personal life or allegations of an affair with Goudarzi.

“My personal business is nobody’s concern,” she said. “Sgt. Goudarzi is a friend of mine, just as other police officers are friends of mine from the hundreds of cases I’ve worked on.”

Roberts said Goudarzi did not recruit her to work on the cases, but drove her to an area where one of the Clairemont-University City murders occurred, at her request, “because I was fearful of my own safety if I went alone. I was told by the officers I had been working with . . . that they were ‘too busy.’ ”

Roberts declined to say how she came to be involved with either investigation or what information she gathered. She said she was paid part of her expenses, but would not say how much.

For eight years, Roberts, who runs the Parapsychology Resource Center, said she has used her intuition to help with criminal investigations run by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the Escondido Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. Much of the work has been volunteered, said Roberts, who estimated she has spent more than $60,000 of her own money helping with the cases.

Some law enforcement officials say she is uncanny at coming up with descriptions of missing persons and criminal suspects, but most police agencies routinely dismiss the use of psychics to help solve crimes.

In September, 1989, Roberts shot her husband to death with a .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol as he began beating her with a baseball bat. Roberts, whose name was Linda Davis at the time, said she and her husband were discussing divorce shortly before the attack began.

The district attorney’s office did not file murder charges against Roberts, deciding that she acted in self-defense.

Roberts said Goudarzi subleased office space at her hypnotherapy business but he is not a business partner or associate. Roberts said Goudarzi was given department approval before he sublet the space, but she did not give the dates that the sublease began or expired.

Roberts said she waived her normal fee of $150 a hour to help the task force with the understanding that her name and work would be kept confidential to protect her safety. She has accused the internal affairs division of leaking information about her work to the media and, as a result, plans to bill the Police Department for all she has done.

“I am distressed to see the callous and inappropriate allegations and information that is being rumored concerning my work for any officers with SDPD,” she said. “It is my own personal opinion that either some of the people behind this investigation into Sgt. Goudarzi have not done their homework, or there are other biased motives at play that I wish no part of.”

In an advertisement Roberts ran in The Times last month, she said she would be moving to Durango, Colo., in March to open the Hesperus Foundation, which she described as a camp for handicapped, traumatized and underprivileged children.

In the ad, Roberts said she would be commuting to San Diego one week each month and is available for “psychic readings, hypnotherapy and criminal investigations.” Her ad offers half off her office fee “due to the financial stress created for many with the conflict in Saudi Arabia.”