Psychic Must Pay $7M Over Very Bad Prediction

She told police that a couple had mass grave on their property
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 13, 2013 5:52 PM CDT
Updated Jun 16, 2013 7:03 AM CDT
Psychic Must Pay $7M Over Very Bad Prediction
   (Shutterstock)

A psychic peering into the lives of a Houston couple a few years ago should have seen a future filled with riches. Instead, she labeled them as mass murderers—falsely, as it turns out—and now a judge has ordered her to pay them $7 million for defamation, reports the Houston Chronicle. The strange case began in 2011 when Presley "Rhonda" Gridley called police to say that she had a vision of a mass grave on the property of Joe Bankston and Gena Charlton.

At the time, police were looking for some missing kids in a high-profile Amber Alert case, notes Houston.culturemap. When the psychic told them the kids could be found in the alleged mass grave, cops acted on the tip and mounted a search. The media got wind of it and, voila, Bankston and Charlton were in the news as potential child-killers. They've now got their revenge thanks to the defamation ruling, although it's not clear how Gridley could possibly come up with the money. (More psychic stories.)

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