According to CNN, in 2017, a 15-year-old girl named Sophie disappeared in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Since then, the case has remained unsolved. Sophie’s father, Reid, recently questioned why the police repeatedly refused to allow family members to be involved in the investigation, and instead hired two spiritualists to assist in the case.
Late at night on May 19, 2017, local time, Sophie left her home. Surveillance footage from a residential building captured the girl walking on the pavement around 11:30 p.m. Another surveillance camera showed that just after 2 a.m., Sophie appeared on the main road not far from her home.
According to materials submitted by the police in 2017, records from Sophie’s phone and Google account show that her last location was near an apartment building, less than 3 kilometers from her home. At that time, the apartment was occupied by a 37-year-old convicted criminal named Jennings.
The Fort Lauderdale police said that Sofie had contact with Jennings on the night she disappeared, but Jennings is a “key person involved” in the case, not a suspect.
Police records show that at 3:07 a.m. that night, Sophie had just arrived at the apartment complex and made her last phone call, which was to Jennings. After the call ended, Sophie's mobile signal remained active at the apartment location until 9:13 a.m. Subsequently, her phone was completely disconnected from the network, possibly due to it being turned off or damaged intentionally.
This case once attracted attention across the United States, but it remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
Reid said that for nearly a decade since Sophie's disappearance, there has been little progress in the case. However, the investigation tools that the police recently employed were completely unexpected to him. “I really can’t understand why the police would turn to spiritualists.”
A spokesperson for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department said that the police did hire two "psychic profilers" to assist with the case. "According to protocol, the department does not consult individuals outside of the law enforcement system when handling criminal cases. However, in the case of Sophie, our department is willing to try novel and unique methods, simply to seize any opportunity and uncover new clues related to her disappearance."
The police revealed that since 2025, the bureau has consulted two psychic mediums regarding the case of Sophie. One of the psychics received $1,500 as a fee for 90 days of consulting services. A spokesman stated that detectives are carefully evaluating the information provided by the psychics to determine whether it can contribute to the investigation, but refused to disclose the specific details.
The psychic Taborn, hired by the police, stated that despite continuous criticism from the outside world, she still carefully handled several unsolved cases, including the Sophie case. She often assisted the police in investigating old cases.
Taborn said, “This job is of great importance to me; it has ignited my soul.” She added, “My way of working is to receive various details and intuitive perceptions. That’s the entire process by which police officers consult with me.”
Another spirit medium initially approached Sophie's family, and only then did detectives get involved. The spirit medium provided services free of charge, and under their guidance, the police conducted a search of a canal. A police spokesman said, "We immediately launched a large-scale search of the canal and its surrounding areas. Unfortunately, the search yielded no results."
This unconventional investigative strategy has raised doubts among the Reid family regarding the police’s approach to handling cases. Reid’s sister, Millhone, believes that this action constitutes a “misallocation of resources”.
Reid said that for many years after his daughter disappeared, he completely lost his normal life. However, he constantly felt that the police had “let him down.” “We tried to participate in the investigation countless times, but the detectives from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department always refused us.”
He told CNN, “If psychic mediums can actually provide clues, then of course I would be willing to accept them. But aside from that, the police have many other things they can do, such as increasing the current reward of $25,000.”
The report indicates that there is no conclusive evidence to prove that spiritual mediums can solve criminal cases. However, some law enforcement agencies in the United States turn to spiritual mediums when all traditional leads have been lost.
Critics believe that spirit mediums only waste police resources and burden the families of grieving victims, with more harm than good. Benjamin Radford is one of those critics. He works for the “Suspicuity Investigative Committee,” a non-profit organization dedicated to evaluating various supernatural and pseudoscientific claims from a scientific perspective.
Radford said, ‘After such disappearances occur, there always comes a group of people who claim to be telepaths, and they proactively offer various so-called clues.’ Based on his over twenty years of investigation, he stated that the actual success rate of telepaths in finding missing persons is almost zero.
