(NewsNation) — John Edward, celebrity psychic and author who has spent the last 40 years assisting grief-stricken people navigate loss, is opening up about his unexpected partnership with an FBI agent helping crack missing person cases. 

 The Long Island native told NewsNation how his work connecting clients with their deceased loved ones led to a two-decade working relationship with a now-retired FBI agent. Together, the law enforcement officer and the psychic solved numerous missing person cases.  

His latest book, “Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent’s Search for Hope and Justice,” is based on his unexpected and long-term partnership with former FBI agent and co-author Robert Hilland

“I’ve been helping people, regular everyday people, connect with their loved ones and friends in the spirit world, or helping them through some of the difficult moments that they may be finding obstacles or blockages. Like, what are the lessons in their lives? Like, that’s the crux of my work. I’m constantly on tour globally. That’s what I do,” Edward said.

How a radio show psychic started working with the FBI

 A single phone call led Edward to Hilland.

He said that in 1998, his office received a phone call after the FBI agent, Hilland, heard him on a local New Jersey radio show, “Scott and Todd,” on WPLJ. 

”Maybe two or three times after hearing me, he decided that he was going to, you know, take action. He was going to come check me out and try to expose me as, in his words, as a con and a fraud,” Edward said.

Edward, the son of a New York City police officer, was hesitant to assist the FBI. His father was skeptical of psychics and asked Edward not to work with law enforcement.

“My dad actually said, make sure you never work with the cops. Like, make sure, make sure you don’t disparage my name and make sure I don’t find out that you’re working with the police,” Edward said. “So I’ve always had a very, very healthy respect for law enforcement.” 

“But when Bob came in, it shifted everything. And he said, ‘You know, is this something you can do?’” He continued. 

Edward said Hilland brought nine bags of “evidence,” some items belonging to a missing woman and others belonging to the then-FBI agent’s coworkers that were “control” items as a way to test the psychic’s abilities.

Some of the evidence bags were connected to a missing woman case; the others had nothing to do with it. 

“I was able to assist him with information that day, got his attention, and I wound up reading for him, and I wound up bringing through information about his family that he did not know about.”

As a result, Edward said Hilland’s “world shifted,” and he believed in his ability to connect with the other side.

“When you are confronted with, if you are an analytical person, and you are confronted with facts and data that are not logical, like, how, how would you know that? It becomes something you want to dig deeper and that’s what happened. He wound up digging deeper, and I wound up helping him,” Edward said.

During that meeting, Edward detailed what happened to a missing woman after holding items that once belonged to her. He revealed to Hilland that she was murdered.

In an excerpt from the book, Edward tells Hilland about the missing woman:

“I’m seeing a woman.  She looks older than her actual age.  She’s crossed over.  She has two names, like Mary Anne, Barbara Anne …. but people called her by her second name… there’s an F sound like Fern or Fran … wait. It’s Fran.”

Edward went on to describe how Fran was murdered by her husband, John Smith.

“After she was hit in the head, the J-S name — let’s call him ‘Smith’ — strangled her to make sure she was dead.”

During this reading, Edward informed the cop that the murderer had killed many times before and he would not stop until he was behind bars, calling the man “Pure evil.”

Psychic’s view of crime and justice

Working closely with the FBI on heinous crimes, Edward’s view toward crime shifted, particularly around the idea of good prevailing over evil. 

He says traditional justice may leave people frustrated, thinking that an end result may be unfair or unjust. 

“What I do is I surrender my knowing that nothing happens in the universe without it being balanced out on some level. And we may not always get to see it. We may not always get to, you know, revel in it,” he said. 

‘Stochastic terrorism’ in US

Pulling from his time working with law enforcement, Edward said inflammatory speech and political violence in the United States have led to what he called “stochastic terrorism.”

“It’s basically where people are using inflammatory words to create actions, deeds and things kind of like January 6, where masses of people kind of are doing things for what they perceive as the greater good, right?” Edward said. 

“So, when someone is doing something that is abhorrent, I sit back and I just go like, I really hope that they believe that what they’re doing is for the right reasons, and they’re just not like negative evil people. But I know that there are negative, evil people because that is one of the things that I’ve witnessed and watched. So do I think that there’s going to be an uptick? I do. Do I think that we can stop it? Yes, I think that we have to be vigilant.”