Witchcraft trial for prediction

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34130, 17 April 1976, Page 15

Witchcraft trial for prediction

MORGANTON (North Carolina) April 18. Mrs Joann Denton, accused of accurately predicting a death, faces a SI S5OO tine and up to six months in gaol if convicted <<f violating North Carolina's “witchcraft law.” Mrs Denton was charged under the statute on Wednesday after a complaint by Mrs Kathrin Carpenter, aged 22, who claimed Mrs Denton told her mother. Mrs Dorothy Elizabeth Ramsey aged .38. on March 20 that she would die on April 10. When Mrs Ramsey's body was found on that day, the police said several pills and a suicide note were also found. There has been no formal ruling, however, on whether the death was suicide. "I believe it (the prediction) worked on her nerves,” Mrs Carpenter sard of her mother. “She just kept taking pills and taking pills to calm herself down. “1 think this lady should be stopped because it work' on your nerves to be told when you are going to die and when the day comes, it really gets to y ou. " she said. Sixty -five of Nort h < aro lina’s 10<J counties have the so-called “witchcraft law." which prohibits the practice of phrenology, palmistry, fortune telling, or clairvoyance or “crafts of a similar kind" but exempts “amateurs” under certain specified circumstances.