'Psychic reading' part of investigation targeting murder suspect


Amare leaves Superior Court building in Newmarket, Ont., where she is testifying at the trial of Richard Wills, accused of killing his lover Linda Mariani in February 2002.

NEWMARKET, Ont. — Three months after a 40-year-old Toronto-area bookkeeper vanished, she purportedly told a psychic she wanted to warn her killer to move her body so he would not be arrested.

The “psychic reading” was actually part of an undercover police investigation targeting Richard Wills in connection with the disappearance of his long-time lover Linda Mariani in February 2002.

Wills, a veteran police officer who had been having an affair with Mariani for several years, was known to believe in psychics and the York Regional Police investigation did not have enough evidence to make an arrest.

Janet Amare, Mariani’s best friend, offered to be the liaison between Wills and a California-based psychic called “Yousef,” who was actually an undercover officer in the police operation dubbed Project Willpower.

Several taped calls between Amare and Wills in the spring of 2002, were played Wednesday at his first-degree murder trial.

"He said there is going to be something that is found, some link or evidence,” Amare told Wills. “It’s going to identify the person responsible,” added Amare, who is an “intuitive healer” and the director of the Centre for Vibrational Healing in Toronto.

During the reading Mariani "told" Yousef she was “worried” about the person who hurt her.

"Linda wants to connect to this person that harmed her and tell them to move the body. She is trying to warn them,” said Amare.

Wills responded Amare should contact police and pass on the information from the psychic.

“It would be nice to find out who did it, but there is a part of me that does not want to believe it is all true,” Amare said to Wills.

The jury has heard Mariani died on Feb. 15, 2002 and Wills encased her body in a plastic garbage container that was hidden in a false wall in the basement of his home in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto.

During the trial his lawyer has argued Mariani died as a result of an accidental fall and Wills hid her body because he planned to bury her near his family cottage.

Wills surrendered to police on June 7, 2002, a few hours before he was supposed to meet Yousef, who was actually a London, Ont. officer, at a Toronto donut shop to help the “psychic” find out more about what happened to Mariani.

Wills has since retired from the Toronto police.

The trial continues Thursday.