Television has popularized the notion of psychics who help the police to solve mysteries, disappearances and murders. Most police department spokesmen will deny that their department works with psychics and some even go so far as to say that most psychics are a waste of police resources. One exception is Elizabeth Baron, a Tennessee native who has helped police in hundreds of cases. In 1992, Baron even received a letter of commendation from the Sheriff of a community that she had helped in locating a downed helicopter.

Baron is, technically speaking, a 'trance medium'. She believes that she has a spirit guide who helps her to "see" things that help other people. For over three decades, Baron and her spirit guide, St. Catherine of Siena, have helped police and detectives locate missing persons and identify rapists and murderers. In the 1970s, Baron developed what may be a unique talent in the world of psychic detecting - psychic drawing. In many cases, Baron has drawn sketches of suspects during the early stages of the case that are remarkably accurate.

In 1988, a young woman contacted Baron asking her help in locating the murderer of a close friend. Upon seeing a photograph of the victim, Baron had a very clear picture of a man in her mind. She called the Baltimore police, who sent over a sketch artist to record Baron's impressions of the rapist. Those connected with the case recognized a boyfriend of the victim, who was eventually charged and tried for the rape.

Since then, Baron has sketched numerous other suspects that she has seen in her mind. In one of the most famous cases, Baron sketched a young man whom she said was one of the Beltway Snipers that had been terrorizing the Washington D.C. area. Her sketch was of a young black man, and her notes on the drawing included the words, "young, very young". In a radio show aired days before the arrest of two men for the Beltway shootings, Baron told host Phil Paleologos that the police had it all wrong - that they should be looking for two men, not one, and that they were driving a blue car, not the white van that most authorities believed the men were driving. On October 24, 2002, police arrested John Allen Mohammed, 41, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, for the murders. The men were in a blue sedan. The sketch that Baron drew bears a remarkable likeness to Malvo.