PAUL PEIRCE  Pittsburgh  Tribune Friday, Nov. 16, 2007 12:00 a.m.

Despite the arrest of a state trooper in the 2006 slaying of Blairsville dentist John J. Yelenic, family and friends are continuing to search for answers about his death.

On Thursday, two psychics from Butler -- sisters Suzanne Vincent Kelley and Jean McKenzie Vincent -- were invited by friends of Yelenic into his South Spring Street home to see if they could "read" whether any others were involved in his April 13, 2006 death.

Trooper Kevin Foley, of Indiana, was held for trial on a murder charge at a preliminary hearing Nov. 7, accused of cutting Yelenic with a knife and forcing his head through a pane of glass in the front doorway, which severely lacerated his neck. Foley was the boyfriend of Yelenic's estranged wife, Michele.

At the hearing, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who performed the autopsy, reported that Yelenic died from blood loss and that more than one person may have been involved in the death. State Attorney General Tom Corbett said the case is still under investigation and others could be charged, but he declined to name any suspects.

Kelley and Vincent claimed yesterday that there may have been two additional people, a male and female, involved.

"I feel in this spot, where John died, just rage and blood. It's almost like small pictures coming to me," Kelley said.

While Kelley felt the woman was not directly involved in the incident, her sister disagreed.

"I think she may have been inside here and then went back outside ... maybe to watch," Vincent said.

Kelley claimed that a short, dark-haired man "with an aggressive personality ... possibly in the same profession (as Foley) may have been waiting watch outside or knew what was going on."

"I don't think he was involved with the blood," she added.

Yesterday was not the first time the psychics had been involved in the case, but it was the first time they had met personally with Yelenic's cousin, Mary Ann Clark. Kelley and Vincent reported that they met last July with Blairsville police investigators and Indiana County District Attorney Robert Bell at the home for three hours.

The sisters said they had not even heard about the case when Yelenic's neighbor Melissa Uss and her mother Diane Hershberger went to a psychic event in Indiana.

Uss reported the women immediately could tell she had been through a "very tragic" and "bloody" event and someone close in her family, possibly a child, may have made a discovery in the case. Uss's young son discovered Yelenic's body.

"I felt I had to bring them down here," Uss said.

Clark said any information obtained yesterday will be forwarded to investigators.

Clark said the psychics told authorities in July that they thought the bloody knife used in the attack and clothes are buried near a silo.

"We're willing to try everything to move the case forward," Clark said.

The psychics told Clark and Uss yesterday that they feel the case will eventually be solved.

During last week's hearing, Deputy Attorney General Anthony Krastek connected Foley, 42, to the slaying through DNA evidence, bloody shoe prints at the scene and testimony of several of Foley's co-workers. The state troopers testified at the hearing that Foley would often say to them that he wished Yelenic would die.

District Judge Guy Haberl ruled there was sufficient evidence for Foley to stand trial for murder. He is being held without bond in the county jail.

The April 2006 murder of Blairsville dentist Dr. John Yelenic has inspired books and television episodes since former State Trooper Kevin Foley was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison in 2009.

Now a Japanese production company is focusing on an aspect of the case — the investigative involvement of Butler sisters Suzanne and Jean Vincent, who claim psychic abilities — for a documentary television show intended for an overseas audience.

The former Yelenic home in Blairsville and other area sites were visited this month by a film crew from Japanese TV network Asahi, which plans to air the documentary under a title that loosely translates as “Scoop Video.”

“This is actually going to be Episode 1, like a pilot,” director Takuya Hara said through an interpreter. “We hope that it's going to be popular, but we don't know yet... It's already picked up by a network, but we hope that it will make the series.”

Hara said the company's research team found the story in A&E Biography channel's “Psychic Investigators” series, which filmed an episode about the Vincent sisters' involvement in the Yelenic homicide investigation in the spring of 2009.

“Psychic Investigators” isn't aired in Japan, Hara said, and psychic involvement in criminal investigations there is very uncommon.

“There are no official cases where they say that psychics were involved,” he said. “Because it's so unfamiliar in Japan that psychics would be involved in criminal investigations, and also the law-enforcement side would admit it, it's something that most Japanese people don't know about. That's why we want to do a story on that.”

The film crew interviewed the Vincent sisters, as well as law-enforcement officers involved in the investigation and Yelenic's neighbor, Melissa Uss.

Uss initially requested the sisters' help after meeting them at a “psychic tea party” in Indiana hosted by a family member of Donald Liscsak, whose 2005 disappearance the sisters investigated.

The Vincent sisters told Donald's mother, Sandra Kozar Liscsak, her son would be found dead, just off a busy street, near a tree with a split trunk, she told the Tribune-Review in 2008.

State police found Donald Liscsak dead in his sport-utility vehicle, which had crashed into a tree in the median of Route 119 in Indiana County. Passing cars did not notice the SUV, because the impact had splintered the tree's base and knocked it over, camouflaging it from passing cars, police said.

“My mom had called me about a month after the murder, asked if I wanted to go to a psychic tea party, and I thought, ‘Oh, that'd be great, maybe that would be a way to get in contact with John to find out some answers,'” Uss told The Dispatch during filming of the “Psychic Investigators” episode.

At the tea party, the sisters say they immediately sensed a “grief cloud” around Uss.

The sisters' spirit guides and Yelenic's spirit “showed us visual pictures of (Uss') sons finding a body,” Suzanne said. She said that, during the sisters' psychic reading, Uss asked, “‘Well, who do you think did it?' And right away the spirit guide yelled out to us, ‘Law enforcement.'”

The Vincent sisters said they volunteer their psychic investigative services to assist in cases involving homicides or missing persons, but the investigations are so mentally and physically taxing that they can only focus on a few cases at a time.

In addition to the “Psychic Investigators” episode, the sisters have appeared on local news broadcasts and will be guests on a Travel Channel show airing later this year. Filming for the Japanese documentary, though, was a unique experience for both sisters.

“Tokyo, that's a long flight. I was just honored and feeling blessed that someone would take an interest in highlighting (us),” Jean said.

“Generally when we're doing a documentary, we're using English,” Suzanne noted. “After every single scene, they had to convert everything into Japanese and then they spoke Japanese to convert the scene over during videoing. It was very interesting. They would translate it immediately and we'd go from scene to scene.”

On March 19, the Japanese crew and the Vincent sisters visited the former Yelenic home so the psychics could describe and reenact readings they conducted at the crime scene during the investigation.

“The information that we brought in literally stunned them,” Suzanne said of the sisters' June 2006 walk-through at the house accompanied by police investigators. “They kept us there for three and a half hours as we went room to room and received flashes of pictures, like moving pictures, scenes and Polaroids of a man stabbing and cutting up Dr. Yelenic.”

The sisters claimed they had visions and sensed spirits at the former Yelenic house during their most recent filming — nearly eight years after Foley, the boyfriend of Yelenic's estranged wife, Michele, stabbed the dentist and forced his head through a pane of glass in the front doorway of the South Spring Street home, severely lacerating his neck.

“When we pulled up to the house, I could see all of a sudden a man's face in the upstairs window on the right,” Suzanne said. “As we headed onto the porch and around, this huge wind picked up, it was just a huge wind and you could feel the energy as though he came back from a dimension to check on it. As we walked into the house, you could feel this heavy, pulling energy of sadness.

“It has changed in a lot of ways, but it also has remained the same,” she said of the house. “We could feel this sad energy and we could feel some chilly spots when we were in it.”

Hara and his crew aim to interview many sources to keep the documentary objective and let viewers draw their own conclusions regarding the validity of the sisters' extrasensory intuition.

“This is a documentary, and as journalists we have to be unbiased,” he said. “We have to be skeptical and at the same time we have to kind of see what's happening. We try to be unbiased and as objective as possible.”

 By Jill King Greenwood and Chris Togneri
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review Focus Magazine
PSYCHICS SAY THEY WANT TO HELP

Suzanne Vincent and Jean McKenzie Vincent, sisters in Butler who claim psychic abilities, say they have been involved in investigations for decades. The family of Indiana County dentist John J. Yelenic consulted them about his 2006 slaying.
Mary Ann Clark, Yelenic's cousin, says the sisters immediately sensed that the murderer was in law enforcement. Trooper Kevin J. Foley, 42, of White, Indiana County, later was arrested and accused in the slaying.
The sisters say they do not charge for their services, but try to help because they can.
"This is not something I wanted to do," Suzanne Vincent says. "We were afraid for our safety because we we're pointing fingers at killers. (Plus), it's like driving overnight to Florida -- it's very exhausting."
Adds Jean McKenzie Vincent: "You don't want to be a psychic. You don't want to be getting this stuff. You don't choose this. I wouldn't do this if it didn't help people."
When visiting a crime scene, they said, spiritual guides bring them mental images, sometimes in the form of rolling film in their minds, like a movie, and other times as mental snapshots.
"It's like a transparent Polaroid," Suzanne Vincent says. "You can see it, but not all of it."
In 2005, when Donald Liscsak, 27, of Blairsville went missing, his mother, Sandra Kozar Liscsak, contacted the Vincent sisters, she says. They told her the missing man would be found dead, just off a busy street, near a tree with a split trunk, Liscsak says.
Eleven days after Liscsak went missing, state police found him dead in his sport-utility vehicle, which had crashed into a tree in the median of Route 119 in Indiana County. Passing cars did not notice the SUV, because the impact had splintered the tree's base and knocked it over, camouflaging it from passing cars, police said.
That sold Sandra Kozar Liscsak on the sisters' psychic abilities.
"They're the best people in the world at what they do, and they can help anybody," she says. "I would have been in the mental hospital if it weren't for them. I just wish more of the police departments and everyone else would realize they're willing to help people."
The Vincent sisters want to find out what happened to Cherrie Mahan, who was 8 years old when she disappeared in February 1985 in Winfield, Butler County. She has never been found.
Janice McKinney, Cherrie's mother, says a friend introduced her to the Vincent sisters.She says she was skeptical about their abilities, but the sisters knew about specific medical problems ailing her husband.
McKinney hopes they can lead her to her missing daughter.
"I've always had a strong feeling that Cherrie is OK, but I just didn't know if she was alive or dead," McKinney says. "It's a heartache to me. The 23 years of not knowing, or to never know, is terrible. All I want is an answer. Whether she's dead or alive, I just need to know.
"I'm not a firm believer, but if they can give me an answer ..."
McKinney and the Vincent sisters plan to visit Cornplanter Road, where Mahan was last seen, later this year in hope that they will divine clues.
State Police Trooper Frank Jendesky, who is in charge of Mahan's case, says psychics have offered tips, but none have panned out.
Yet, he is willing to listen.
"We'll sit down and talk with them when they feel they can help the case," he says. "We don't want to be misled. But we have to see what they say."