Zak Martin, Criminal Profiler

Zak Martin is famous for his psychic detection and criminal profiling skills, and he has been consulted by police forces around the world on scores of missing persons and murder cases. Every week he receives dozens of requests to assist in cases in which traditional investigative methods have failed to produce results. While he does his best to reply to as many of these as possible, he regrets he cannot reply to all of them. If you are planning to contact Zak in connection with a case of this kind, the following will give you some idea of his working methods.

Points to note:

Zak Martin uses a combination of psychic and psychological techniques in investigating crimes, disappearances etc. He achieves his best results working inco-operation with police teams, with access to police records, witnesses and evidence.

If the case is the subject of an active police investigation, Zak will only consider responding to requests for help which come from either the detective in charge of the case or from the next-of-kin of the missing or murdered person, or their legal representative, and only where the police have agreed to his involvement and have indicated that they are prepared to co-operate with him.

Zak Martin has a "no publicity" policy with regard to cases on which he is consulted. He will not, under any circumstances, reveal or discuss details of a case, either while the investigation is in progress or at a later date, to representatives of the media. The exception to this rule is in missing persons cases where publicity may be deemed advantageous inasmuch as it can provide an opportunity to re-issue photographs or a description of the missing person and so revive public interest in the case. It may also act to spur the police into redoubling their efforts to solve a case, or prompt them to take a fresh look at a case that has been consigned to the "cold cases" file. However, the decision on whether to make public his involvement in a case is entirely up to the police and the family of the missing or murdered person.

Zak Martin will not respond to requests for help in locating persons who have not actually been reported to the police as missing - for example, individuals who have merely lost contact with family members or friends, and where is no reason to suspect that they have been victims of foul play.

Zak Martin regrets that he cannot respond to requests for help in locating lost pets, missing engagement rings, etc.

Remote Detection
It is important to make a distinction between on-the-scene and remote psychic detection - that is, cases in which Zak has an opportunity to visit the location of the murder or disappearance, handle items of evidence, meet and interview witnesses etc. - and cases which he attempts to solve at a distance, working with maps, photographs and so on. While he has on occasion been able to provide crucial information working remotely, in general this is a far less satisfactory approach, and nowadays he tends only to take on cases in which it is possible for him to visit and spend some time at the scene. It should be noted that, while the media tend to focus on the psychic aspects of his work, Zak Martin is first and foremost a psychologist who relies primarily on standard psychological profiling techniques to analyse and solve cases, and he regards his psychic skills as supplementary to his knowledge and experience in the field of criminal psychology. His psychic impressions occasionally allow him to make "quantum leaps" to facts and conclusions that would be difficult or impossible to arrive at through conventional methods of detection and analysis.

Police Give Psychic Decoy in Rape Case

Working with the Police
The co-operation of the police is important because, while Zak may be able to suggest specific lines of enquiry, or recognise the significance of information that the police have overlooked (this is easily done when there are thousands of pieces of information to sift through), he cannot carry out house searches or interrogate witnesses on his own authority. A psychic profiler may be able to describe the person who has carried out a crime, and the police may be able to recognise in that description a person who is known to them - this might even be a suspect in the case - but descriptions of this kind, even if there is a high degree of confidence in them, are of limited value unless corroborative evidence can also be obtained. In fact it is often the case that the police are aware of the identity of perpetrators, but are unable to take any action because there is no direct evidence linking him or her to the crime. It may, of course, be very helpful to the police to be pointed in a particular direction, or to have their suspicions about a person confirmed; however, evidence still has to be obtained; and, in the final analysis, the impressions of a psychic cannot be presented as evidence in a court of law. It is not enough merely to know, or strongly suspect, a thing; one also has to be able to find solid, admissable evidence to support or confirm that knowledge. And, unlike in fictional depictions of psychic detection, where there is usually a single, vital piece of evidence whose discovery leads to the resolution of the case, in real life things are usually far more complex and less clear-cut than this. Successful outcomes are, in most cases, the result of an accumulation of facts which individually don't amount to much but which collectively add up to compelling circumstantial evidence, or which lead to the discovery of physical evidence.