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I contacted spirit of victim, psychic says
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The Rev. Mary Ellen Rodrigues, who does spiritual healing and prophecy readings full-time, said visiting the site at Mosquito Lake where the skeletal remains were found gave her insight into what happened to the man.
By ED RUNYAN
BAZETTA TOWNSHIP
A Masury woman says she made contact with the spirit of the dead man found in Bazetta Township in 2006.
The Rev. Mary Ellen Rodrigues, who says she tapped into her psychic powers in 1997 when the son-in-law of a friend was murdered, does spiritual healing and prophecy readings full time.
She said her visit in May to the site at the south end of Mosquito Lake where the skeletal remains were found gave her insight into what happened to the man.
Two to three people were involved in putting the man’s body into the swampy, high grass near the Mosquito Lake Dam, Rodrigues said.
Her interaction with the man’s spirit also suggested that he wore eye glasses, Rodrigues said.
But more than anything, the man’s spirit communicated to her a great deal of concern over his shoes at the time of his death.
“One of the first impressions I got from him was concern that his shoes were missing,” she said. “I heard, ‘Where are my shoes?’” Rodrigues said Monday at a press conference at the Bazetta Township Police Department to unveil an FBI reconstruction of the man’s head.
Rodrigues said she believes the man came from Detroit or somewhere in Canada, she said.
Bazetta Township Police Detective Joe Sofchek, who has investigated the case since the day the skeleton was found, said he doesn’t personally believe that a medium can solve a murder.
“Do I believe in this stuff? No,” Sofchek said. “Will I consider this? Yes.”
Sofchek said he takes what Rodrigues says seriously because Rodrigues has demonstrated to him that she knows things that other people don’t.
“It’s an extra, added resource we can use,” Sofchek said.
Rodrigues said her psychic abilities became more keen when Darryl Cozart of Sharpsville, Pa., went missing in March 1997, and Cozart’s mother-in-law came into the R&S Newsroom in Sharon, where Rodrigues worked, and told her about it.
In a later conversation with Cozart’s wife, Jeanette, Rodrigues relayed to her that Cozart kept saying “fickle, fickle,” which didn’t mean anything to Cozart’s wife at the time, Rodrigues said.
Frank Fickle of Hermitage was later charged with murdering Cozart and was found guilty in 1998. Fickle is serving a life sentence.
The episode was later part of a segment aired on the Biography Channel.