An American medium has directed searchers to the remains of a 16-year-old teenager, Austin David King (right), four weeks after he went missing. What’s more, it is just one of six cases that Norwegian-born Sonja Grace has solved, according to Guardians of the Children (GOC), a Texas-based motorcycle group that helps protect abused kids and assists in finding missing or runaway children.
Sonja, who is married to a Hopi Indian and describes herself as a “spiritual intuitive”, gave precise directions after studying a map of Morton, Austin’s small hometown in Lewis County, Washington state, whilst speaking on the phone at the end of June with Jennifer Mau, one of the founders of GOC’s Mount St Helens chapter who is also a Morton resident. Sonja lives 75 miles away, in Portland, Oregon.
Austin was last seen when he went to bed in a cabin behind his family’s trailer home in Chapman Road on 24 June. He was not there in the morning. Friends, family and the police began searching the area. On 30 June, the Lewis Sheriff’s Office sent a dive team to the Tilton River, which runs close to the cabin, after searchers reported what appeared to be a body in deep water. It turned out to be a bicycle. There were other false leads.
Jennifer Mau and the GOC chapter organised searches, gradually expanding the area covered as up to 50 people hunted for clues in the forest and along river banks. Meanwhile, there were reports that Austin had been sighted in nearby localities but they also proved to be false.
So Jennifer Mau decided to ask Sonja Grace for psychic assistance. “She worked with me on a map and came up with that point, that road.” Mau told one newspaper. “She said that’s the road where we should send searchers.” The road in question was some 10 miles from Austin’s home.
A group of four or five searchers, including family members, went to the area indicated by Sonja and the remains of a young male were found. Although there has been no verification that it is Austin King, I understand that a belt found at the scene was identified as belonging to him. Dental records or DNA will be needed to confirm that it is the teenager but his family have said they are certain it is him. No other person matching his description has been reported missing in the area.
A candlelit vigil was held in Gust Backstrom Park, Morton, on Friday 23 July, attended by family, friends and others, including Sonja Grace who drove from Portland to mourn with those who knew the teenager.
Until the results of an autopsy are revealed, the cause of death remains unknown but Sonja Grace told me confidently that it was homicide.
Sonja Grace’s success in the Austin case has resulted in calls for her to be involved with another missing youngster case, that of seven-year-old Kyron Horman. Although apparently not yet consulted by law enforcement or family, Sonja said in a TV interview that she believed the boy was taken from his school and whisked out of state. But she won’t publicise more details of what happened, she says, until the leads already provided have been investigated.
In various interviews, she made it clear that her information comes from her spiritual guides and the spirit world.
Earlier today, I spoke to a man who testified to the remarkable accuracy of Sonja’s intuitive powers in another missing child case. I’ll tell his story tomorrow. I’ll also be writing about my interview with Sonja Grace, discussing some of her other cases, very shortly.