How clairvoyants and hypnotists help intelligence agencies solve high-profile crimes
In the middle of the week, representatives of the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation for the Omsk Region announced that they were going to involve clairvoyants in the search for 11-year-old schoolgirl Daria Nekrasova, who disappeared on April 9. What is noteworthy: this news did not particularly surprise anyone. After all, a month ago it was officially recognized that Russian investigators use unconventional, if not to say, paranormal methods in their work
Then the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, said that the hypnotists helped in solving the case of the Nevsky Express train bombing. This is the first time representatives of the Russian special services have made such a sensational confession. However, according to "NI", over the past fifty years, the security forces have actively, but secretly cooperated with people with hypnotic and psychic abilities. To solve what crimes the investigators "mobilized" people with supernatural abilities, tried to find out "Novye Izvestia".
Parapsychology, the possibilities of hypnotic influence on a person have been of interest to representatives of special services and security forces since the beginning of the last century. In the Soviet Union, there was a real hunt for people with psychic abilities. So, for example, it is known that Stalin had special laboratories, and astrologers and hypnologists were sought out for him all over the country. But even after the death of the tyrant, the special services did not forget about people with unique capabilities.
Under the hypnosis of recruiting
“It was 1982. I have just served in the army, - Gennady Goncharov, head of the Moscow School of Hypnosis, recalls in an interview with NI. - People from the KGB strongly recommended me to cooperate with them. They promised an apartment in Moscow and a promotion. I was told that I would be part of the delegation to participate in negotiations or attend conferences, recognizing people susceptible to hypnosis, and influencing them. I think it was about intelligence activities. Goncharov then preferred the stage to this work, where for many years he performed with psychological experiments.
The fate of the psychiatrist-criminalist Mikhail Vinogradov, who linked his life with the special services, was different. He studied the possibilities of predicting personality at the Department of Psychiatry of the First Medical Institute. After his works on this topic were published, people in gray gabardine raincoats came to Vinogradov and asked: "Can you really make a prediction of a person's reliability?" He replied that he could. “We have a request for you,” the men got down to business. - Soon there will be a buffet table at the embassy, which will discuss the purchase of new drugs in the Soviet Union. Could you look at some of the embassy staff and determine who is a scout and who is not. " “I agreed,” Mr. Vinogradov admits to NO. - Looked - said. Coincided. Then they invited me to another embassy."
During his career in government agencies, our interlocutor met colleagues who could make even more surprising predictions. “A psychic worked in one of the closed research institutes forty years ago, who was engaged in forecasting the development of US weapons,” says Mikhail Vinogradov. - He gave tips for military intelligence. I sat in my office, worked, then went to the management and told. When he made a prediction for the first time, the director of the institute summoned me to him and asked if it was worth listening to the words of the psychic or maybe sending him to Kashchenko? I advised giving the clairvoyant a chance. He said that he knew that a new type of weapon was being developed in one of the countries. He explained that he saw a picture on this topic. The agents checked the information and confirmed it."
See through the ground
Psychics are still being recruited today. According to experts, the information system works like a clock: as soon as a person appears on the horizon who really has supernatural abilities, he is invited for an interview. Then the abilities of such people are tested in practice. Candidates are brought, for example, to a forest where a plane once fell. They ask: "What happened here?" Someone begins to tell stories: there was rape, murder. Those who have the ability get to the point: they say, here the sky converged to the ground, the plane fell.
Experts are sure: in each country there are no more than twenty strong psychics of interest to security officials. The state resorts to the help of this twenty when it is impossible to cope with any problem using traditional methods. So, according to Gennady Goncharov, the special services turned to psychics to solve a terrorist attack at the Avtozavodskaya metro station in Moscow in 2004. “All the information received from them was analyzed, and I know that in this way it was possible to figure out one of the criminals who was involved in this terrorist attack,” the hypnotist explains.
One of the promising areas that psychics could be engaged in, Mr. Goncharov calls … the search for mineral deposits and underground water sources. Supersensitive people work on the map and allow you to narrow the search area. Then, according to their information, you can conduct detailed exploration of the subsoil.
Experts note that psychics successfully manage to find missing people, and during earthquakes to show whether there are still alive under the rubble. In addition, they help the police in calculating the maniacs. For example, the famous announcer Viktor Balashov had psychic abilities, and he was often asked to find missing loved ones. “I remember how after one of the concerts a woman came up to Balashov and told about her misfortune,” recalls Gennady Goncharov. - Her daughter is missing. Balashov advised her to go to a neighboring town. There her daughter was found."
Mikhail Vinogradov, who also has extrasensory abilities, has repeatedly managed to help the investigation in catching criminals. He told "NI" that he had recently indicated the approximate whereabouts of the Zlatoust maniac, who had been wanted since April 2. Then the bodies of two murdered schoolgirls were found in the cemetery. The maniac was arrested on April 12. On a tip from Vinogradov, the Barnaul maniac was also detained and the bodies of six girls killed by him were found.
However, one cannot say that psychics work miracles. For example, the same Mikhail Vinogradov has been searching for boys abducted by sectarians near Ufa for eight years. The grandmothers took the children to the sports camp, and the grandchildren have since disappeared. Only recently have psychics helped to trace the disappeared.
On the investigator's couch
If the search by psychics of missing and fugitive criminals is a controversial measure, but relatively safe, then using hypnosis during the investigation is a completely different story.
There is still no unequivocal opinion among experts why, at his recent press conference, the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, said that during the investigation of the bombing of the Nevsky Express, witnesses were refreshed with the help of hypnosis. Some believe that the head of the RF IC simply revealed the Punchinel's secret, made public what many had known for a long time. Others suspect that Bastrykin wanted to show how "cool" his department is and how it can solve complex crimes. Moreover, according to the estimates of the Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliyev, in recent years the number of unsolved crimes has exceeded 16 million. And in 2007 more than half of all crimes committed remained unsolved. These numbers had to be contrasted with something really "extraordinary".
In any case, the official admission that the investigation is using the services of hypnologists has caused a real scandal. The problem is that there is still no legal basis for this practice. Moreover, as Nikolai Kitaev, Ph. D. in Law, writes, "Russian legislation contains an explicit prohibition on the use of hypnosis for any purpose other than medical."
Meanwhile, at the disposal of "NI" was published in 1999, a brochure entitled "A guide for investigators.
Investigation of crimes of increased public danger ", a separate chapter of which is devoted to" obtaining information through hypnosis. " “This method does not in the least humiliate human dignity,” says the manual. “Moreover, it is used exclusively with the consent of the subject. According to the All-Russian Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, out of 237 employees interviewed using a special questionnaire, 183 employees from 14 regions of Russia answered positively to the question about the admissibility of hypnosis, 38 respondents found it difficult to answer. And 16 expressed skepticism towards the specified method."
Yuri Lekanov, head of the Main Department of Criminalistics of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, also told NI that hypnosis is used quite effectively. “For example, police colonel Alexei Skrypnikov, who knows the art of hypnosis, provided great assistance to our investigators in the Perm region. For several years, a serial killer has been operating in various cities. It seemed that the criminal's handwriting was similar, but the appearance, according to the testimony of witnesses, did not match, - says Yuri Lekanov. - Skrypnikov conducted hypnoreproduction sessions. He managed to detail the memories of each of the witnesses and compose a portrait of the killer. Soon the criminal was detained."
Promotional video:
A three-life mistake
Experts compare the mechanism of hypnosis (hypnoreproduction) to how the hostess peels the bulb. By introducing the witness into a light trance, the hypnologist "layer by layer" makes him remember those details that have gone into the subconscious. The hypnoreproduction session is filmed on audio and video tape. The doctor asks the witness about all his diseases, and if there are contraindications to hypnosis, then it is not performed. This is, of course, the ideal. And how everything really happens, no one, except the investigators and the hypnotist, knows. And the latter, no matter what the representatives of the prosecutor's office say, is not independent of the investigation: he either works in these structures, or is constantly invited from outside. So, it's all the same "my own". However, hypnotists are reluctant to go to the prosecutor's office: employees' salaries are incommensurate with the income from private practice.
The information obtained by the hypnologist is formalized as information obtained in an operative way. And it cannot be evidence in the case. This is also stated in the mentioned "Manual": "Hypnoreproduction can be wrong. Therefore, it is possible to put it in the basis of any decision in a criminal case only if it is confirmed by other evidence”.
Independent experts are convinced: it is not necessary to widely apply hypnosis in the practice of investigation and to base conclusions on the data obtained - the probability of error is too high. “There are people who take on other people's crimes for the sake of glory. In addition, work with the accused may be complicated by the hypnologist's bias, his desire to instill in the subject the need to solve the crime,”notes Mikhail Vinogradov. For his part, retired Moscow City Court judge Sergei Pashin clarified in an interview with NI: “No investigative actions using hypnosis can be considered legal. No one can guarantee that there will be no changes in the consciousness of the subject. In addition, a person after hypnosis treatment can sincerely believe in what he said under his influence."
As a senior investigator for particularly important cases at the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, lawyer Vladimir Kalinichenko was investigating the murder case in Moscow, at the Zhdanovskaya (now Vykhino) metro station of KGB Major Afanasyev. “Then there was a suspicion that the persons involved in this case - three policemen - were also involved in the disappearance in 1980 of the family of the head of the KGB encryption department, Viktor Sheinov,” says Mr. Kalinichenko. - They confessed to this crime. But the bodies were not found. And the three were sentenced to death. The day before the execution, Yuri Andropov gave instructions to inject them with psychotropic drugs and interrogate them under hypnosis. They again confirmed their testimony … And in 1990, Viktor Sheinov appeared in the United States. It turned out that he was a CIA agent. Knowing that he was suspected of treason, Sheinov and his family fled to America. They saythat they took him out on the plane of the ambassador …"
A WAR OF HYPNOTISERS RISES IN GERMANY
German intelligence services assure that since the end of World War II they have not used the services of psychics. However, the situation may change in the near future. The fact is that all over Western Europe there are more and more cases of theft of money and valuables using hypnotic effects on victims. In all police stations in Germany there is a not quite clear television image of either an Indian or a North African who managed to clear several banks, first in Italy, and then in Germany. According to operational information, the robber convinces the cashier to give him the money with one pass, while the ladies could not remember how the robbery took place. It was possible to restore the memory of the victims only when another medium was invited for interrogation. In connection with a new dangerous trend, the best police forces of Germany,Italy and France recently conducted an experiment to stage a "hypnotic robbery" of several bars and shops in these countries. In all cases, except one, the cashiers silently gave the proceeds, and then could not confirm it. Now the legislators of the European Union are faced with the question of more active than before, the involvement of specialists with psychic abilities in the investigation of certain types of crimes.