There’s no point in piling upon the sordid, awful, pointless death of Jacquelyn Kotarac, a respected 49-year-old doctor who apparently got stuck in the chimney of her estranged boyfriend’s home while trying to break in, and where she was found dead after her body decomposed.

But this small related detail in the Bakersfield Californian follow-up was absurd enough on its own.

Following the missing person report, the doctor’s family consulted a psychic who couldn’t feel the doctor’s presence, according to Wayne Wallace, a private investigator. He said he was consulted by the family Saturday to look into Kotarac’s disappearance.

I don’t fault the family doing whatever it could out of desperation. But this psychic’s credentials should be reevaluated, if he/she didn’t help in cracking the case. It’s not clear what “couldn’t feel the doctor’s presence” means. Did the psychic rightly detect that Dr. Kotarac was no longer with the living? Or was the psychic just giving an untestable answer, which would cover everything from Kotarac’s death to her taking a spontaneous trip to Malibu or being kidnapped by Bigfoot.

Psychic-patronizing friends of mine tell me that a psychic can’t be bothered with predicting concrete yet unknown facts…or else, why would a good psychic be begging for $2 a palm read when he/she could win the Powerball? It’s about feeling “energy” (even so, it seems that at least some facts should be basic for a psychic to predict: one of my friends had her session recorded, and the psychic asked if she was an only child…something that just about any dolt could divine after a 30-second Q&A of non-direct questions about her childhood).

OK, but if you’re a psychic who can’t detect the “energy” from the sheer horror of someone dying in a chimney (as a result of a fit of jealous love and rage)…what would you say, you do here?