Nearly 20 years ago, Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman went missing in Oklahoma. The 16-year-old girls’ disappearance remained a mystery until last year when police learned about some Polaroids taken of the girls, bound and gagged. One of the suspects allegedly told his then-girlfriend that she would end up “in a pit,” just like those two girls.

There’s little doubt they were murdered. Their remains, however, haven’t been located. That also means the girls’ families still can’t get that last bit of closure.

It’s a horrific story in so many ways. Yet station KTUL in Tulsa just exploited the tragedy for mindless clicks.

In a segment yesterday, reporter Bart Mummolo covered “psychic” medium Natasha Brock who claimed to know the location of the girls’ bones. His cameras followed Lauria’s mother, Lorene Bible, as she went to that location… only to discover that the bones the medium found weren’t even human.

The segment suggested the “psychic” knew something, gave a dead girl’s mother false hope, showed the prediction was false (as if we didn’t know that already), then just ended the bit without any accountability. The medium isn’t even questioned about her utter wrongness and toying with someone’s emotions.

There’s literally no reason to air a segment like this unless you’re telling the public that psychics should never be trusted. And even then, you wouldn’t need to give the mother false hope and capture her on camera visiting a pile of dirt.

“I just want this mother to finally get the peace that she deserves after 20 years,” said [liar Natasha] Brock. Hope from those doing what they can, welcomed by the unwavering persistence of a mom. “Well when you know this is your child, and you’re trying everything you can do to bring your child home, whether they be alive or dead, you’ll do whatever it takes,” [Lorene Bible] said.

What an awful segment. What a disservice to the public. What a cruel way to use a mother’s grief to get ratings.

