When Carol Pate was a child, schoolmates sometimes called her a witch.
Today, she is Arkansas’s premier psychic, known nationwide for her numerous television appearances and her investigative work with law enforcement agencies as a consultant on many of their most baffling cases. She worked on the Alice McArthur/Mary Lee Orsini case that made headlines in the early 1980s. Pate, however, was not part of those headlines. At that time, she was working behind the spotlight.
“I worked anonymously,” she said. “I never put it out there — what I did — because I was trying to be normal, fit into society.”
Though the public did not know her, through police departments word spread about Pate’s reputation for having special insight into a victim’s plight and a criminal’s mind.
In 1977, T.J. Farley was the lead homicide detective investigating the murder of Myrtle Lee Hoggard, an elderly widow, who was slain in her North Little Rock home. Authorities had a suspect, Gary Norton Black, but not enough evidence to arrest him. “Somebody recommended Carol,” Farley said, “And we decided to let her go over some things we had. What was more helpful than anything else was her reconstruction of the crime.”
After being handed a piece of Hoggard’s clothing, Pate proceeded to describe in detail the last terrifying moments of Hoggard’s life, how she crawled down the hallway, gasping for breath. Farley recalled Pate seemed to be experiencing the murder, talking as if she were Hoggard, at one point asking, “Where are my teeth? Where are my teeth?” Hoggard’s dentures had been knocked out during the attack.
“We gave Carol a six-picture line-up of people, including our suspect. When the pictures were laid out in front of her,” Farley said, “She put her hand on the suspect’s photo.”
Though investigators were unable to gather enough evidence to file charges, they and Pate were vindicated this April after acquaintances of Black came forward and said he had confessed the murder to them before his death in 2009.
Pate has been amazing people with her psychic abilities since she was a child growing up in the San Jose neighborhood of Almaden, California. She remembers an event that occurred when she was only 4 years old.
“We lived in the country, and it was all rolling hills and oak trees and cattle and wineries. I loved nature, and I was running around a hillside close to where we lived when I got thirsty, I went up to a redwood house and asked the lady who lived there if I could have a drink of water, and she said, ‘Yes, you can go to the spigot on the side of the house.’”
Pate got her drink of water and thanked the woman and went back home. When she told her father about the encounter, he scolded her for lying — the redwood house had burned down 10 years before, and the lady was long since dead.
School was difficult for Pate — knowing things about her teachers’ private lives didn’t help. But it was while she was in school that she first assisted police. When she was 12 years old, one of her classmates, Harry Lance, disappeared. Local authorities had heard about Pate’s reputation as a psychic prodigy and came to her for help in finding Harry. When they handed her something that belonged to him, she had a vision of Harry and another boy hunting, and she saw the other boy’s gun accidentally discharge and strike Harry in the back. She told the police in which direction they should search, and when they found Harry, he had, indeed, been shot just as Pate had described.
As an adult, Pate became a dancer with the USO and was part of a group scheduled to go to Vietnam. The hotel where they were to stay, however, was blown up, and before new arrangements could be made, Pate was called away on family business. En route to her father’s home in Tennessee, she made a side trip to a friend’s house in Little Rock. During that time, she was seriously injured in a car wreck and subsequently suffered a bout of equine encephalitis. After a lengthy recuperation, she decided to stay in Little Rock.
Jerry Agnew was with the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office when he met Pate at a crime scene. She had been called in to consult, and he was there to observe.
“It was a double homicide, a wife and husband,” Agnew said, recalling. “I had never interacted with a psychic before, but there are some things that occurred during that particular session that impressed me. She had some good information.” Agnew, who is now the chief of police in Bogalusa, La., also remembered the case of a missing Alzheimer’s patient. “Carol was able to tell the police where to go, and sure enough, the person was right where she had zeroed in on.”
Pate continued to assist behind the scenes of investigations after the Orsini case until, as she put it, “I got busted out of my closet.”
It was the Wanda Isbell case. Isbell was a Sherwood resident who went missing May 13, 1983. Pate said she saw what happened to Isbell in a psychic vision. “I’m passing by Wildwood Road in Sherwood,” she said, “And I hear a woman screaming, and all of a sudden, I see her. I see a car and the license plate, and I see the man who’s with her, tormenting her, choking her, and he has on a jumpsuit from a Texaco station. I see ‘Texaco’ written across here [indicating the upper left chest] and his name, Ronnie Swann. I was flashing in and out of this while I’m driving.”
When she got home, Pate called officials, but they had no reports of a missing person. Then about two days later, she saw a TV news story about the disappearance of Wanda Isbell, who was from Sherwood. Isbell was last seen at a service station in Hot Springs. Pate called the Sherwood Police Department and recounted her experience and gave them the license plate information.
“The next day,” Pate said, “The television stations, AP reporters, Arkansas Democrat, everybody is on my doorstep.”
Pate told authorities Isbell’s body was at Jones Mill, a community near Malvern. On Jan. 6, 1985, hunters found the remains at Jones Mill. Before the month was out Ronnie Lee Swann was charged with the murder.
After the Isbell case broke, Pate became a very busy psychic celebrity. She was given her own radio show and was featured on Psychic Detectives and Psychic Investigators. She worked more than 500 cases in one year. She has since limited the number of murder cases she works on.
“I had to, because they just nearly killed me,” she said, explaining that she can literally feel what the victims feel. “It hurts physically,” she said. “One put me in bed for a week.”
And in the Isbell case, she felt what the killer felt. “I felt his sickness, his thoughts, what he was feeling as he tortured her, and I threw up until there was nothing left to throw up. It was like landing on the dark side of the moon. That part of my gift I don’t like, but I appreciate it. I’m grateful for my gift, even though it comes with a lot of pain. I do something worthwhile. I think I make a difference. I can help change people’s lives.”
