Louisiana Women Ask Psychic’s Help to Find Mother, Mystery Remains

Two women from Louisiana say they fear they will never know what really happened to their mother according to an investigative report by KNOE. Death and grief are horrible, and it's even tougher when it's your parent. The two women say their mother, 56-year-old Teresa Jones was reported missing on February 2, 2023.

The daughters say they immediately started looking for their mother, and they were not able to find anything.

The Union Parish Sheriff's Office did send out canines to try to locate the woman. No one was able to find Teresa Jones, so her oldest daughter, Ashley Deese, along with other family members were desperate to know the woman's location.

It was two days after her mother's disappearance when Deese decided to consult someone she had heard about who was successful in helping people find their loved ones. Deese and her sister, Brittany, called psychic medium Carolyn Clapper, a woman they say has successfully helped others.

WHAT IS A PSYCHIC MEDIUM?

Deese says Clapper gave them plenty of information, and she was able to locate the body of her mother not far from her home. Deese says the psychic, who helped them pro Bono, told her the woman would be found facedown in a creek, and Jones' body was found in Edmonds Creek.

Deese says Clapper's information gave her "step-by-step" instructions on where the body would be, and the information proved true. She pleaded with officials at the Sheriff's Office to contact Clapper to hear what else she had to say. Deese says Clapper has more to say.

Captain Mike Bryan never did contact Clapper, and Union Parish Sheriff Dusty Gates says they wouldn't have interviewed the woman as he did interview a psychic before, in another matter, who was wrong. He added he doesn't believe in psychic mediums.

Deese says she believes more should have been done in her mother's case. She says while the woman's body was found facedown with only a shirt on, no fingernail clippings or rape kit was done on Jones.

A Retired detective from Texas, Greg Lawson, who doesn't have any connection to the case, says he believes so much more could have been done with this case. He questions:

• Why a sample of the water wasn't taken to confirm the woman drowned there
• Why they didn't figure out how the woman's body got to that location
• Why was no search conducted for the rest of the woman's clothes
• Why was there no rape kit done or fingernail sample collected

Other law enforcement officials contacted by KNOE and asked about this case have questions as well:

• Why was there no estimated time of death on the autopsy report
• Why was no rape kit done?
• Why were no fingernail scrapings taken?
• Why did investigators not investigate to determine if Teresa was alone when she died?

Deese says something she really found out of character for her mother was the condition of her home after no one had seen her. Deese says her mother was meticulously neat, and the home was in complete disarray.

Other law enforcement professionals aren't the only people asking questions as the daughters have similar questions. Deese says she believes the autopsy report showing drugs in Jones' system led them to discount the outstanding issues in this case. In addition, she says her mother's drug abuse 20 years earlier impacted how the case was treated. 

She says they did not investigate the case thoroughly and dropped the ball. Deese says her mother's death was ruled an accidental drowning and her autopsy did show a large amount of methamphetamine in her body.

The case was closed last year. They had no new information and no new leads.

Deese claims the autopsy photos show her mother's body had three bruises made by fingerprints on her upper right arm which could only have happened before her death even though she says investigators told her it happened when they moved her body.

Here is the autopsy photo:

What remains for Ashley and Brittany Deese are questions along with suspicions that many more things could have been done to conclusively prove that Jones died from an accidental drowning.

To hear from Ashley Deese, Carolyn Clapper, and more, click here for a report by KNOE.