Authorities confirmed Friday that the volunteer citizen who located the body of a missing Menifee boy was Pam Ragland, a woman who says she found the child using her “intuition.”

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department received a call just before 1 a.m. Wednesday from Ragland, 50, who said she had found human remains near the boy’s home.

The family allowed volunteers and officials to search their property throughout the process, said Sgt. Lisa McConnell, a sheriff’s spokeswoman. McConnell believed the area where the body was found had been searched before, but could not say how many times or by whom.

PHOTOS: Search for missing Menifee boy


Ragland said she experienced a vision of the location earlier that day: She saw a boy lying on his side with his eyes closed. He was in the dirt near a tree, with an unpaved road nearby. A building was to the right and a city was in the distance.

Ragland said that this and other visions Tuesday ultimately led to the discovery of a child’s body that authorities say matched the description of Terry Dewayne Smith Jr., an 11-year-old who had been missing for several days.

Ragland said she and her children, who have trained themselves to rely on “sixth sense” or “intuition” abilities, drove to Menifee from their home in Rancho Santa Margarita on Tuesday night.

Volunteers told her they planned to look for the boy around Menifee, but she felt he might be closer to home, she said.


An off-duty firefighter drove her around the property Tuesday night, she said. She didn’t know exactly where she was going but kept looking for landmarks that matched her vision.

She recognized a building, but kept searching. Then she arrived at a tree.

“I smelled something, and it smelled like something dead,” she said.

Her children found a lump, and they called out to her: “Mommy, here’s a dead animal.”


But when she looked at the lump, she realized: “That is not an animal. That’s a head.”

As Ragland described it, a blackened, bloated head was sticking up about 6 or 8 inches. Half of the nose and an eye were missing.

She immediately alerted authorities.

Ragland does not call herself a psychic. She said she is a “healer,” who believes that people can hone their intuition. On her website, Ragland said she has pioneered “Quantum Thought Shifting,” an “entirely new form of energy technology on this planet.”


Ragland said she has not always embraced her abilities. She said she once dreamed that President Reagan was going to be shot. The next day, he was. Worried she might have accidentally caused the attack, she said she tried to turn her abilities off.

Over the years, she said, she has learned to accept it.

“I believe that we all have abilities and we learn not to use them. I think that’s what happened -- I learned to use mine again,” she said.

ALSO:


Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Chief, to head UC

Lawsuit accuses L.A. County deputies of torturing, killing dog

Detectives investigate body found in bag in Manhattan Beach

Twitter: @emfoxhall



emily.foxhall@latimes.com