Laurencia Bourget laughed when asked if she’s encountered skepticism after telling people she’s a psychic.

“All the time,” she said. “It used to bother me, and I just wouldn’t engage. But I’m more confident now. I’ve seen so much.”

For two decades, Bourget has been working with Richard Moreau to help find answers about his daughter, Kimberly, who was 17 in 1986 when she left her home in Jay and never returned.

On Oct. 19, after hearing what she described as a voice in her head talking about a bowling alley, Bourget called Moreau and said there was a place she wanted to check.

About 40 feet behind the abandoned Tri-Town Bowling Center in Jay, Bourget found something. A winter jacket with what looked like a stick poking out.

It was a bone.

Many hours later, after local police officers and Maine State Police detectives surveyed the scene, they determined that the skeletal remains behind the bowling alley were those of a male. It wasn’t Kimberly Moreau.

“I felt terrible that it wasn’t her,” Bourget said. “But I’m always learning, so even though I had my attention set on this case, this was clearly someone trying to tell me something.”

Bourget’s discovery surprised local police and has sparked discussion about the practice of allowing psychics to assist in police work. Although there is no scientific evidence that suggests psychics can solve crimes or assist in police investigations, there are other examples – including in Maine – where psychics have provided information that seems too close for mere coincidence.

Richard Moreau, who is now 82, said he’s glad to have Bourget’s help, not necessarily because he’s a true believer, but because he’s adopted a no-stone-unturned approach to finding Kimberly.

“Are they all correct? No,” Moreau said in a phone interview last week. “But on the other side of it, we will not eliminate anybody from providing a piece of information to follow up on. I’ll continue to do that until the day I die.”

***

Bourget, 60, grew up in Old Town but has lived in Westbrook for the last several years. She has a cleaning business and before that was a paralegal and stay-at-home mom.

She said she’s always been intuitive but her visions became more vivid as she grew older. She took a class on something called “remote viewing,” which is essentially intense visualization. It’s also sometimes referred to as extrasensory perception, or ESP.

When she allows herself to get into a deep meditative state, images appear in her mind, she said. But the images aren’t always clear.

While she wants to help others, the Moreau case was her first.

Bourget said she remembers driving through rural Oxford County many years ago and seeing posters on utility poles with Kimberly Moreau’s smiling face. Moreau had gone out with a girlfriend the night of May 10, 1986. They met up with two men in their 20s. Moreau came home briefly, but only to tell her older sister she was going for a ride.

She never returned.

Bourget reached out to Richard Moreau in 2004 with an offer to help.

By that point, the father had watched the case turn ice cold. He was willing to accept anyone’s help.

“I’ve gone to many, many psychics over the years,” Moreau said. “I can tell you this much: If they truly believe they are trying to help you, the first thing they will say is, ‘We don’t want money.’ ”

Bourget never asked to get paid. She’s spent hours in fields and forests across western Maine without any success.

A couple of years ago, Bourget said, she heard references to a bowling alley in her mind. Then this year, when she was watching a show about psychic investigation, she heard it again. It felt like a message, she said.

The closest bowling alley to the Moreaus was in Jay, but it had closed years ago, and a “No Trespassing” sign stood guard.

It took her less than 10 minutes of searching behind the building before she discovered the remains of the unidentified male.

***

Jay Police Chief Joseph Sage and Sgt. Brandon Kelly did not respond to numerous messages seeking information for this story. Kelly, however, told a local TV station last week that getting information from a psychic that leads to a discovery was a surprise and a first for him.

“It was great to happen. It’s just not something we generally rely on,” he said.

Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss said it’s not common for detectives to follow up on tips that originate from psychics, but it does happen. She mentioned the case of Amy St. Laurent, a young woman who was beaten and then shot to death in Portland’s Old Port in 2001.

“Detectives follow up on any and all leads they receive from the public,” Moss said.

The detective in that case, Joe Loughlin, has talked openly about reaching out to a psychic. He even wrote a book about it.

Her name was Vicki Monroe, and she still works as a psychic, although not often on missing persons cases anymore. The St. Laurent case was her first.

Monroe said she saw visions of St. Laurent and knew the name of a suspect, whose identity had not been made public. Further, she saw images of a farm, which turned out to be where St. Laurent’s body was buried in a shallow grave.

Monroe said skepticism is built into the job.

“I don’t bother trying to persuade people,” she said in an interview. “I can only share what I have seen and heard since I was 4 years old. And some people find affirmation in that.”

Another Maine case, in 1971, has been linked to information shared by a psychic.

Police investigating the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl, Barbara Ann Ripley, were sent sketches of a house and barn by an old man who said he had a vision of where she might be.

The girl wasn’t found until a decade later, but police revisited those sketches and found they matched up perfectly with the location in North Yarmouth.

The man who sent them, Elmer Dougherty, died many years earlier and couldn’t be questioned.

In a piece published in Psychology Today this spring, California State University, Fresno professor Matthew Sharps wrote that it’s common for families to want to turn to the supernatural when other efforts to find answers fail

Sharps said that while it’s “not possible to demonstrate that true premonitions cannot exist,” because you can’t prove a negative, he cautioned against giving them much weight.

“In stressful periods, such as those surrounding tragic crimes, the ability to predict those futures might prove to be very comforting, but such predictions have not proven to be reliable,” he wrote. “Sadly, perhaps, we can explain many premonitions in purely psychological, non-prophetic terms.”

What isn’t clear, though, is how Bourget knew there would be remains behind the old bowling alley. Was it just a coincidence?

***

Bourget said police didn’t ask her much about how she ended up searching that spot. And she hasn’t gotten any calls from them since.

This is the first time she has ever discovered human remains. They were taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta, but no positive identification has been made so far, and the cause of death has not been released.

Richard Moreau, who was with Bourget at the site, said he was briefly hopeful, but he knows better than to get too excited.

“The letdowns are too hard,” he said. “So, you protect yourself.”

There have been many official police searches for Kimberly Moreau over the years, including a major search in 2015 of property owned by one of the two men she was with that night. Nothing was found.

Moreau is grateful that the discovery will give another family answers, but he wants his own closure, too.

“Thirty-eight years is a long time,” he said. “It’s painful. It consumes you. But I don’t feel like I have any other choice, so I’m going to do all the things I’ve got to do and hopefully we get the results.”

At this point, Moreau said he doesn’t care if anyone is charged or convicted in connection with his daughter’s death. Although police have not classified the case as a homicide, they do suspect foul play.

Moreau just wants to bury Kimberly properly, in a plot in Holy Cross Cemetery in Livermore Falls. Her headstone is there already. So is his.

Bourget, meanwhile, said she’ll continue working with Moreau as long as he’d like, at no cost. Bourget thinks it’s healthy to be skeptical and she doesn’t begrudge people who don’t believe her.

“There are people who want to rely more on detectives, and I understand that,” she said. “But I love doing this work.”

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