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Part Two: Sylvia Browne: Fake Psychic Detective - Behind the Bastards | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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Part Two: Sylvia Browne: Fake Psychic Detective

Behind the Bastards

Thu Mar 19 2026

Summary

Behind the Bastards – Part Two: Sylvia Browne: Fake Psychic Detective

Host: Robert Evans
Guest: Cal Pen
Date: March 19, 2026
Podcast: Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts
Theme: A critical look behind the life and cons of self-styled psychic Sylvia Browne, dissecting her methods, fraudulent history, TV career, infamous failed readings, and harm done to families and broader culture.

Episode Overview

This episode continues the in-depth investigation into the notorious psychic Sylvia Browne. Host Robert Evans and guest Cal Pen scrutinize her rise to fame, the realities behind her supposed “psychic detective” work, her involvement in financial fraud, and her devastatingly inaccurate predictions—especially involving missing persons cases.

The tone is sardonic, deep-diving, and often mordantly funny as Evans and Pen point out not only Browne's misdeeds and errors, but the greater enabling environment of credulity, sensationalist TV, and the harm to desperate people.

Early Career and Psychic Gimmicks

[03:26 - 06:30]

Sylvia’s Origin Story:
After escaping an abusive first marriage, young Sylvia moves to California and starts her own psychic foundation bent on becoming a new religious figure. In the mid-1970s, she’s doing local Southern California talking gigs, Elks Clubs, channeling her spirit guide “Francine,” and fielding questions about aliens and the afterlife.
Quote (Robert Evans):
“If this isn’t evil, this is just a hoot. It’s the stuff that comes later that gets to be evil.” [04:31]
Sylvia, reflecting the era, emphasizes, “Never go to a psychic before you go to a doctor,” a norm that would not be respected by modern grifters.
Analysis:
Early on, Browne is more carnival-act, but the framework is laid for more damaging fraud.

TV Fame and Psychic Cold Reading

[06:31 - 15:53]

Local TV Stardom:
Browne becomes a regular on San Francisco’s People Are Talking from the late 1970s into the 1990s.
Legendary Television Appearances:
Robert Evans shares a 1991 clip featuring Browne’s predictions:
- Advises a caller against buying an apartment. Later, the caller claims the apartment was the site of the death of Eric Clapton’s son.
  - Quote (Browne):
    “I feel all kinds of negative energy around it.” [08:45]
  - Evans’ Analysis:
    Questions the authenticity and logic of the story, noting that while tragic, it’s unrelated to Browne’s supposed foresight.
- Browne’s cold reads cover celebrity fertility and relationships (partial points for guessing Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s second child is a daughter, but notably wrong about Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s marriage lasting).
  - Quote (Browne, re: Cruise and Kidman):
    “I think that they’re fun for each other and I think they’re going to make it… because she’s a real strong woman. And I think he needs a strong woman.” [13:34]
  - Evans: “Nope, that one did not. Correct.” [13:58]
- Hosts and audience go along for entertainment; accuracy is not the metric.
Cal Pen’s Satirical Take:
“You hate IVF, right.” [15:05]

The “Science” of Past Life Regression

[15:54 - 29:13]

Browne Adopts Past Life Regression:
Browne’s hypnosis clients, originally there for smoking cessation or diet help, start “recovering” memories of their lives as ancient pyramid builders.
Evans Debunks:
- The histories Browne relays are full of factual errors—e.g., King Tut was not buried in a pyramid.
- Clients “recover” memories of building pyramids with “anti-gravitational devices” and one supposedly speaks 7th-century Assyrian, a language Evans cannot verify existed as described.
- Cal notes the lack of gender crossing in client “past lives,” and that Browne always gives herself glamorous backstories (beautiful high priestess in Africa, the “first Eskimo to use shoelaces”), satirized by Evans researching actual shoelace history.

Law Enforcement Claims and FBI Myths

[32:18 - 47:00]

Browne’s Claims:
Claims to have helped police and the FBI on many cases, specifics never provided until the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where her supposed FBI contact “Ted Gunderson” reaches out for psychic assistance.
What Actually Happened:
- Evans details that Gunderson was a retired FBI agent and subsequent crank involved in satanic panic and far-right conspiracy theories, not an active investigator ([39:54]).
- Browne uses “cold reading” to guess at the suspects’ names (e.g., “Salzamon” for “Salama”), but the information was public and her guesses extremely vague.
- FBI files, obtained by the Skeptical Inquirer, show no record of any real collaboration with Browne; the only interest was in investigating her for fraud.
  - Quote (Evans):
    “The only interest the agency had in Browne was investigating her for fraud.” [41:22]
Fraud Convictions:
In the 1980s-90s, Browne and husband are convicted of financial fraud (e.g., gold mine scam), with a trail of bankruptcy, probation, and more fraud, but Browne keeps her married name.

Rise to National TV and True Damage

[47:01 - 63:35]

National Exposure:
Despite a fraud record, Browne’s career gets a rocket-boost from appearances on Montel Williams (starting in 1990), Larry King, and bestselling books. She becomes a pop culture psychic, dishing out readings for $850 a pop and peddling metaphysics, angels, and cold comfort.
Horrific Misses:
Repeatedly and publicly, Browne gives distressing and catastrophically wrong readings to families of missing/murdered persons:
- Amanda Berry (Montel, 2004): Tells Berry’s mother her daughter is dead. Berry is later found alive. Browne later issues a tepid Facebook non-apology:
  “If there was ever a time to be grateful and relieved for being mistaken, this is that time. Only God is right all the time.” [58:05]
- Sean Hornbeck Case: Tells Hornbeck’s parents he is dead; he is found alive years later.
- Many cases cited: Always wrong about details—cause of death, perpetrator, circumstances—even when guessing crime was involved.
- On Montel, claims involvement in high-profile criminal cases, e.g., helping with the “Bundy case”—no evidence backs this.
Evans’ Core Point:
Browne’s “psychic” career offered little but harm to real people in crisis. He highlights the deep irresponsibility of media platforms enabling the grift and the emotional devastation for families given false closure. - Quote (Evans):
“You can really just be wrong constantly as long as you’ve got a fan base and it’s okay. Like, she never loses the core of her support, despite how wrong she’s… I guess it’s a prediction for where we are today.” [64:55]
- Cal Pen: “That is quite the rollercoaster. Oh, shit. I knew none of this.” [64:46]
- Cal Pen: “There is a massive desire we have to want to believe things.” [65:20]
- Both discuss how desperation and TV culture create an ecosystem where false hope sells.

Browne’s Final Years and Death

[63:36 - 67:38]

Continued to sell out readings for hundreds of dollars, maintained inflated claims (“90% accuracy”), and furiously published books, even as her predictions (from the papacy to Mars missions to U.S. elections) failed spectacularly.
Final Irony:
- Browne predicted she would die at 88; she died at 77 ([63:36]).
  - Evans: “Wrong. Right up to the end, girl.”
Postscript:
Evans and Pen contextualize Browne’s career as a paradigm of American grift, enabled by media and a culture addicted to sensational—often at the expense of real harm to individuals.

Key Moments & Quotes

On Browne’s entertainment roots:
“If this isn’t evil, this is just a hoot. It’s the stuff that comes later that gets to be evil.” (Evans, [04:31])
Evaluating psychic guesses:
“First off, this is a great situation to be a TV psychic in, because it’s a bunch of 50, 50 guesses.” (Evans, [13:58])
On her past-life “research”:
“She is like, ‘I’m Helen of Troy, but with shoelaces.’” (Evans, [27:43])
On FBI connections:
“The only interest the agency had in Browne was investigating her for fraud.” (Evans, [41:22])
On horrific readings:
“The damage she does to unsuspecting people in crisis situations is just atrocious.” (Gary Dufresne, Browne’s ex-husband, quoted by Evans, [62:04])
On Browne’s enduring fan base:
“You can really just be wrong constantly as long as you’ve got a fan base.” (Evans, [64:55])

Conclusion

This episode delivers a scathing, fact-driven profile of Sylvia Browne as a prototype of the harmful showbiz psychic. Robert Evans and Cal Pen use Browne to explore not just one woman’s failings and frauds, but America’s appetite for magical thinking, the pop culture machine that sells it, and the tragic cost to families seeking hope. The humor and thoroughness make the episode biting and essential listening for anyone curious about psychics’ real impact.

Further Listening

Guest Plug:
Cal Pen’s podcast, Here We Go Again, looks at cultural and political topics through past, present, and future lenses, offering hopeful takes and actionable insights.
[67:09]

Timestamps Quick Reference

Browne’s TV career and cold reading: [03:26-15:53]
Past life regression grift and debunking: [15:54-29:13]
FBI and Ted Gunderson myth-busting: [32:18-47:00]
Montel era: failed readings and real-world harm: [47:01-63:35]
Final years, failed prophecies, and reflections: [63:36-67:38]

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Transcript

Robert Evans (0:01)

Call Zone Media.

Robert Evans (0:05)

Oh, my gosh, look at the time. It's behind the bastards. 45. It's actually 2:11pm Otherwise known as 8:00am in the morning for me because I let my sleep schedule get disastrously disordered and it is slowly destroying me and my life. But you know who it's not destroying is our wonderful guest for these episodes, Cal Pen. Calm. How are you doing?

Cal Pen (0:29)

I'm doing well. I was going to make a joke about just perpetually being awake, but I had no good punchline. I'm good. I am awake. More of a morning person, but very excited to be here. I was just telling you before we came on what a fan I am. And so especially remember, can we talk about Sylvia's voice? Sorry, I'm just jumping the gun a little bit.

Robert Evans (0:52)

And we'll be hearing more of it, don't you worry.

Cal Pen (0:54)

Okay?

Robert Evans (0:54)

Okay. Okay.

Cal Pen (0:55)

Okay.

Robert Evans (0:56)

All right.

Cal Pen (0:56)

Yeah. But no, I'm excited to be here, so thank you for. Thank you for having me.

Robert Evans (1:00)

Yeah. Let's put it. Because I do want to hear what you have to say about her voice, but let's give the listeners, like, a minute or two of it, which they're going to get in a minute, and then we can really. We'll have something to sink our collective teeth into.

Robert Evans (1:11)

We'll dive in. Yeah.

iHeart Podcast Announcer (1:15)

This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.

Robert Evans (1:20)

Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son? And I'm like, who is this person?

Boys and Girls Podcast Host (1:25)

Welcome to the boys and girls podcast. Arranged marriage is basically reality show. And you're auditioning for your soulmate. And who's judging? Only your entire family. I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition hoping to find love the right way. And instead I found chaos, comedy and a lot of cringe. Listen to boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Robert Evans (10:59)

No, no. And I don't know that they would. But also, this is like a show. Like, it's about entertainment. They're not. So I don't actually know what's going on here. That said, as we established last episode, Sylvia has a history of deciding homes are cursed and not wanting to be in them. So I can believe this just happened to be the same apartment Eric Clapton lived in. Right, yeah. Um, so the next question here, they go to break, and when they come back, the hosts note that they're having weird electrical issues with the broadcast, which always seems to happen when Sylvia comes by and she's like, oh, every time I'm on tv, there's. There's electrical issues somewhere. You know, it's the spirits, the ghosts messed with the equipment. The recording and the video looks pretty clear to me from, you know, recording from 1991. But who knows? Next they take questions from the audience. So she's being asked now, this is a series of questions about celebrity marriages and celebrities trying to have kids and whether or not they're, they're relationships work out and she gets a couple, right? She's first asked if Maury Povich and Connie Chung are going to have a child together. And she says no, which we will call partially correct. The couple had fertility issues and were not able to conceive together. But they did adopt a child not long after this broadcast. So partially. We'll give her like a half score on that one. Right after that, they ask about Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's second child. Now, she does correctly predict that their second child will be a daughter, which is like a 50, 50 guess. But okay, we'll give her that one, right? She's, she's, she's right about this. The next one she's asked about is Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold. And they were at the time attempting to have a child through artificial insemination. And she goes on a real rant here. Her whole mood changes because she thinks God hates artificial insemination. I can't think of anything worse. She is so angry at the fact that they're getting, having artificial insemination. And there's also some weird, like, fat shaming parts of it, too, because when they, they talk about, do you think they'll have a kid? Like, the audience starts to laugh as they show pictures of Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr. And I think they're just like, laughing at the fact that they're like, heavier people, right?

Robert Evans (15:54)

So this is kind of her at her most public facing, like, media. This is like the most digestible Sylvia tends to get. She is a hit, though. She starts doing fairly well Enough that she's able to rent a larger office and start hiring employees to handle her correspondence. She brings in two full time researchers for the Nirvana foundation and even an early computer system because they're, they're trying to map out all of the realities of the other side and, you know, how they're ranking angels and how angels work and trying to figure out the science of all of this stuff that she believes. Sylvia starts hosting regular hypnosis sessions and psychic readings and begins advertising that she can help clients quit smoking, lose weight, or fix their life in any number of ways. Sylvia says that at first these sessions were just a way for her to fund her foundation for Psychic Research. Quote, it never occurred to me that these hypnosis sessions would contribute far more than money to the foundation and its efforts to prove the spirit survives death. So the way these sessions prove that life exists after death is that she starts having clients who start telling her about their past lives. This begins with a guy named Frank who just. He comes in because he wants to lose weight. But wouldn't you know it, when she puts him down and hypnotizes him, he starts talking about, quote, his life in Egypt as a pyramid builder. We're going to talk about Frank and the pyramids in a second. But before we continue with Frank, we need to make a quick detour to the history of past life. Regression therapy. This starts like the origins of this kind of shit are in like the late, the end of the 1800s, early 1900s. You get these occultists and scientists in London who are kind of like, like Sylvia says she's doing, they're trying to, they set up foundations to try to find evidence of life after death. And it'll be a mix at this point of like spiritualists and scientists, because they're not that different in 1890. You know, like, there's not a real strong reason to be like, well, ghosts don't exist based on the science of 1890. It's like a, an arguable point really to a lot of scientists at that time, as opposed to, I mean, it's still an arg. I guess you could say an arguable point now. But a lot of mainstream scientists are willing to explore the idea that, well, maybe there's spirits, right? And maybe there's a way that we can like, like figure out scientifically how spirits work. That's very much the. In vogue at the time, in the 1930s. A researcher at Duke University tries to systematically study the experiences of people with past lives and start documenting them. And then in the mid-1950s, Maury Bernstein writes a book titled the Search for Brittie Murphy. This is a fiction book inspired by a real story of a woman named Virgin Tighe, an American lady who came to believe she was the reincarnation of a 19th century Irish woman. The book was made into a movie that was fairly popular. And this, obviously reincarnation is like a major aspect of a number of world religions, but this is, this book helps popularize the idea in a secular sense for Westerners. Reincarnation not as part of an existent belief system, but as something you can take all a cartoon. And if you're a Christian, you can stick it in your Christianity. If you believe in psychic powers and something, you know, weirder than that, if you're, if you're an occultist or a pagan or a Wiccan, you can, you can stick some, like Americans start seeing reincarnation as something. I can just grab this, take this out of the grad bag of world beliefs and stick it into whatever I already believe. Right. That, that, that kind of starts to really hit in the 60s and 70s and part is a result of this book. So by the 70s you get a number of psychologists and psychiatrists offering what they call past life regression services where they'll hypnotize or otherwise, like put people down and to try to bring up their past lives with the idea that a lot of psychosomatic illnesses and ailments are really caused by. If your foot hurts a lot and the scientists can't figure out why, the doctor can't figure out why, it's probably because in a past life you like, lost your leg to a mortar in World War I or something like that, or got hit by a horse or, you know, back on the prairie in the cowboy days. And so you gotta, if you can access that past life and that past life can explain what happened to it, you can fix the ailment. That's the idea that a lot of these people are going into in the 70s. And in 1991, the practice is pretty close to the peak of its popularity in the late 80s. So Sylvia's heading down very well trod ground when she starts doing this question.

Robert Evans (32:18)

And we're back. So Sylvia claims that her relationship with law enforcement began in the 1970s. Like her professional relationship, but she doesn't give any detail. She doesn't talk about cases solved. She doesn't say that. Talk about specific interactions. She just says that she'd been helping and you know, the police valued her, but she, she gives us nothing else to go on. And so we don't really get any details about how she used her so called psychic powers to help solve crimes. Until one day in 1993, her friend Ted Gunderson, who she describes as an FBI agent. Keep that in mind, Cal. She calls Ted Gunderson. An FBI agent gives her a call. A writer truck filled with explosives had just been detonated under the World Trade center, killing six people. And you know what happens a few years later as a result of that? It's that attack. It's the 93 World Trade center bombing. And so Ted Gunderson, FBI, calls Sylvia and is like, we got. We need your help tracking down the terrorists who did this. You know, the FBI can't do this without Sylvia. She writes, quote, I'd worked with Ted on other cases and my respect for him wasn't as unparalleled. Whatever I could do to help him, if I could help at all, no matter what, all he had to do was ask. By the time he called me, I had read that three of the Islamic terrorist bombers had been arrested. And Ted wanted my psychic input on any others who might be involved. I told her there were five, maybe six men involved, including the three in custody. Now I gotta dig into this, Cal, because since. And we'll talk about Ted in a second. But since a total of six terrorists were arrested, Sylvia claims victory. Right. I knew there were gonna be five or six. They arrested six. I'm right. Look at how psychic I am. But that's not quite accurate. That's not quite an accurate picture of how many people were involved in making that bomb. Right? There were six guys arrested, but there was a seventh person involved. One of the government's key witnesses when they bring these guys to trial was an FBI informant, former Egyptian army officer Imad salem. With the FBI's help and direction, Salem infiltrated the group that bombed the World Trade Center. And he built bombs for them and taught them how to build bombs using bomb building techniques the FBI gave him. We don't talk about this a lot. We probably should. It's a pretty big fuck up.

Robert Evans (34:34)

For an interview with him in history.com, ibrahim Elga Brownie invited me and this is. Sorry, this is Imad Salem talking about his time infiltrating this group. Ibrahim Elga Brownie invited me into his house and blasted the radio loud because he was thinking the FBI was monitoring his apartment. And he asked me, can you build big bombs? I Said, yes, I can. He asked, what do you need to build big bombs? Because 12 bombs he built 12 pipe bombs for these guys already are not really making me happy. I wanted something big. I said, I need a detonator. And then I gave him some demands. So they switched gears from 12 small pipe bombs into a big, massive bomb, similar to the Oklahoma City bomb. So first, that's a Mads, the guy the FBI sent into this group, saying, well, they got the idea to do one big bomb because I told them it would work better than 12 pipe bombs, which already I would say, if I'm a psychic, that makes him involved in the creation of this bomb. Now, what happens next is a little unclear to me, but per a 1993 New York Times article by Ralph Blumenthal, it looks like the FBI found out that there was a cell of terrorists in New York who were working to build a bomb to attack the World Trade Center. So they come up with an initial plan to infiltrate am into the group and have him basically provide them with fake ingredients. So they're going to build a real bomb, but the explosives inside it are fake. So the mechanics of the bomb would be real, but there'd be fake stuff inside of it. So the bomb doesn't work when they set it off, and then they arrest everybody. Right. That's how you'd think something like this should go, right, if you're going to do this. However, that plan was called off at the last minute by an FBI supervisor who had a different plan about how to use Mr. Salem, and it's unclear what his plans were. A lot of this is very murky because it's the FBI. Lam may have had a feud with his supervisor. Ultimately, he's pulled off the case, and when he's not in the group, they succeed in finishing the bomb that he'd helped them start building, and they detonated in the World Trade Center. It is unclear how much Sillim actually helped them and how much of what the bomb they used he had had a hand in. We really don't know. But the evidence we have does suggest that he helped them figure out some aspects of bomb making. Either way, Sylvia's psychic powers gave her no hint that this guy existed whatsoever. For her part, Sylvia takes a lot of pride in the fact that during her recorded interview, which is a real interview, she told her friend, Agent Gunderson, quote, one of the men you need to. And I'm doing the psychic hand thing here. If you can't see one of the men, you need to look for Has a short bill, wiry black hair, black eyebrows. There's an M on there. An S, S, A L, Z, E, M, something. Salzion. Salzamon. Mon. Okay, Salzamon. And she predicts one of the men is named Salzaman. Now, one of the men who had already been arrested at that point was named Muhammad A. Salama, which isn't really all that similar to Salzaman. They start with an S. Otherwise, very different names. I would say you got it wrong. It's like if it was like, I'm going to have a guest for a podcast I'm reading a K. Kevin Calvin. Oh, Cal, I got it right. Perfect. Like, no, I didn't. I didn't foresee anything. And this is cold reading, right? That's the technique she's using, right? That's where it's a very old psychic fraud. You start with, I'm hearing A. And you start going through a couple of different. And someone in the adults who'd be like, oh, I had an aunt who was. If you said IM was Mary or my cousin Mike, you know, and then you kind of. You zero in from there and you kind of refine the grift a little bit. This is cold reading. That's what she's doing in this interview. She writes about getting this wrong. No doubt about it. I was off by a few letters. But when Ted told me they had arrested someone named Salama, it was as close enough that I screamed, you got him. Now, obviously she accomplished nothing at all. But she carts this around as a. Again, he was. They had him in custody. When she's interviewed, she doesn't do shit. That said, I need to point out here, it's not accurate for her to say you got him to Ted Gunderson. Because, and here's the fun part, Ted Gunderson wasn't an FBI agent in 1993 and had nothing to do with arresting the men who bombed the World Trade Center.

Robert Evans (42:21)

In her book, Sylvia claimed that the interview I quoted from had been conducted by the FBI, but no FBI record exists that she ever spoke with him about the World Trade center bombings. The Inquirer then filed a FOIA request for any documents or video the agency had about Brown's interviews regarding the attack. And the Bureau responded. We conducted a search of the central record system. We were unable to identify the main records responsive to foia. Ultimately, the Inquirer concluded there is no documentation released by the FBI to support the claim that Brown conducted any psychic readings for the FBI, either directly or indirectly. Moreover, Gunderson's name appears nowhere in her FBI file, and the topics in the FBI release do not discuss working with the FBI. Thus, there is no evidence from the records that Brown was involved with the agency. That said she has a criminal record herself. There's a criminal complaint that get filed against her in Santa Clara county, California on May 26th of 1992. And it alleges that Sylvia and her husband at the time, I think this is husband number three, had been selling securities under false pretenses. And I. This is really good. I want to quote from the Santa Clara Chronicle here. Although telling a couple their $20,000 investment was to be used for immediate operating costs, the complaint stated the Browns transferred the money to an account for the Nirvana foundation for psychic research just one month later in April of 1988, the complaint stated they declared bankruptcy in the venture. So the idea is this is like a gold mine that they're selling shares in, basically. So it's like a securities fraud scam. And they're just taking the money and instead of investing it into this mine, they're putting it directly into the foundation and just robbing people per. Like. During the. Like the pair's arraignment, the San Francisco or the Chronicle noted, quote, sylvia Brown claimed to have strong psychic feelings that the mind would pay off. But it doesn't and she and her husband, Kinzel Dalzel Brown, and that's where she gets the last name Brown, plead no contest to a felony charge and are made to pay back their victims. Right. So they each get a year of probation and now they're felons. So that's good. We got a little gold con in here. You know, this is kind of a law. She does a lot of conning of people in banks to fund her foundation, which kind of. I had just said she was starting to see success and that's how she writes it. And most of the articles on her will say that like, yeah, in the 70s and 80s she builds a larger and larger business. The Skeptical Inquirer's reporting makes it look like she probably wasn't ever very successful prior to the late 90s. She's just stealing money to fund her foundation. People aren't paying her for her psychic. She's a total fraud in that regard. Right. We'll talk a little bit more of that. I do want to note, Sylvia and Kinsel are estranged at the time that they get charged with felonies. But she keeps his name and adds an E to it. I don't know why. I just kind of think that's funny.

Robert Evans (60:11)

In 2005, she gave her reading on Montel to Tamara Ivy, the mother of a murder victim named Dustin. She blamed a teenage boy and a young dark haired woman, one of whom was a sexual predator and had used a rock to kill Ivy. Then she promised the case would be solved soon. There is no evidence that Dustin was sexually abused. Police ultimately charged his brother for the murder, although his brother was found not guilty at trial. So the case is still unsolved and she says it would be Solved quickly. So again, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. That same year, per the Skeptical inquirer, Sylvia Brown's November 30, 2005 reading for Samantha Mater, mother of Christopher Mater, had a much clearer outcome. Brown gave the mother a name which was again censored and claimed Christopher's murder stemmed from the killer not liking the food at the bar he worked in at. Then later, the killer saw him passing by and shot him. Brown also told the mother to start looking where he ate breakfast. Matthew Corell and Sean Meyers were charged with the murder and Coral was found guilty and Myers pled guilty. In 2012, the two had attempted to rob Mater. Again, totally fucking wrong. Perhaps her most devastating fuck up was in 2002, an 11 year old boy, Sean Hornbeck, went missing while riding his bike. Sean's parents went on the Montel Williams show and Sylvia told them their son was dead dead and that his body would be found buried beneath two boulders, per an article on grunge. Fortunately, not everyone believed her. When a boy named Ben Ownby went missing in 2007, journalist Michelle McNamara, who would later be credited for helping to identify the Golden State Killer, connected Hornbeck and Ownby based on physical similarities and their ages when abducted. Sure enough, it was McNamara who was right. When Ownby was found by law enforcement four days after his disappearance, they were shocked to find Hornbeck was still 2. He was still fucking alive. She did it again. She was wrong about another person that she declared dead to their family.