The civil trial would reopen the strange events of December 1980.
This time, Etta was not sitting across from homicide detectives.
She was sitting in court.
And the people who arrested her had to explain why.
Detective Ryan Returns
Lee Ryan, the original detective who spoke with Etta at the station, had retired by the time of the civil case.
He testified for Etta.
His position was remarkable.
He believed other detectives had committed an injustice by arresting her.
Ryan remembered Etta voluntarily entering the station.
He considered her a potentially valuable witness.
He had told her police would investigate her information.
He had arranged further searching.
He did not believe the information available justified treating her as Melanie's murderer.
In court, Ryan called what happened to her a miscarriage of justice.
This complicates the popular story considerably.
It was not simply:
Etta versus the police.
One police detective actually supported her years later.
The disagreement existed within law enforcement itself.
Why Police Defended the Arrest
Los Angeles did not concede that detectives had acted irrationally.
City attorneys argued that the circumstances were extraordinary.
A stranger walked into a station.
She appeared to possess detailed information about a hidden body.
Then she physically located the body herself.
Her claimed source was a psychic vision.
Investigators believed a more conventional explanation was likely.
Perhaps someone in the neighborhood knew.
Perhaps Etta had heard gossip.
Perhaps she was hiding the source.
Perhaps she had some connection police had not yet discovered.
Assistant City Attorney Michael Fox argued that reasonable officers faced with those facts could suspect involvement.
The city did not need to prove Etta was guilty.
It needed to defend whether the arrest had been legally reasonable at the time.
Etta's Lawyer Asked a Simpler Question
James Blatt represented Etta.
His argument cut through the paranormal debate.
Suppose the vision was fake.
Suppose she heard a rumor.
Suppose someone secretly told her where the body was.
Would that automatically make her a murderer?
No.
Finding a body is not murder.
Knowing where a body is located does not, by itself, establish participation in the killing.
Police already had evidence pointing toward male abductors.
They had a witness who had seen Melanie's truck being taken.
And investigators ultimately found no connection between Etta and the actual perpetrators.
The court did not need to decide whether psychic phenomena exist.
It needed to decide whether police had probable cause to put this particular woman in jail for murder.
Judge Joel Rudof ruled they did not.
The Judge Rules Against Los Angeles
March 26, 1987.
Judge Rudof ruled Etta's arrest unlawful.
The question of legal justification was no longer for the jury.
The judge concluded probable cause had not been established.
The jury's remaining job was to decide damages.
For Etta, the ruling was a form of public vindication she had waited more than six years to receive.
$750,000?
Etta's attorney asked the jury for $750,000.
He argued the arrest had humiliated her.
She had been jailed for one of the most serious crimes imaginable.
She had undergone a strip search.
Her reputation had been damaged.
The city responded aggressively.
Los Angeles attorneys suggested Etta had exaggerated the emotional consequences and might be interested in turning the story into a book or film.
An undercover policewoman who had been placed in Etta's cell claimed Etta had talked about making a movie.
Etta remembered the conversation differently.
She said she had remarked that the bizarre situation sounded like a bad movie.
Whatever the truth of that conversation, the case really did sound like a film.
A missing nurse.
A mysterious vision.
A canyon.
A wrong arrest.
Three real killers talking in the neighborhood.
And a woman suing the police years later because helping them had put her in jail.
The Verdict
The jury awarded Etta $26,184.
$25,000 for pain and suffering.
Another $1,184 for lost wages and legal expenses.
It was nowhere near the $750,000 her attorney requested.
But the symbolic victory was larger than the money.
Etta had been officially vindicated on the wrongful-arrest question.
One juror later said most members of the panel believed Etta's account that she really had experienced what she described as a vision.
But the civil verdict did not scientifically prove psychic ability.
That distinction is critical.
The court ruled that the police lacked probable cause to arrest her.
The jury decided damages.
Neither proceeding established a paranormal mechanism explaining how Etta found Melanie.
That question remained outside what a courtroom could prove.
What Exactly Did Etta Claim?
Over the years, retellings became more dramatic.
Some describe Etta as a professional psychic.
Others imply she routinely solved cases.
The original story is more restrained.
Etta said she had experienced an unusually powerful mental image.
Her attorney emphasized in 1987 that she did not regard herself as a psychic.
On later television programs, producers routinely labeled her one because that was the easiest way to explain the story.
In a 2004 television interview, Etta again described the sequence:
She heard that police were searching houses.
The thought entered her mind that Melanie was not in a house.
Then she saw the canyon scene almost like a movie.
A road.
Curve.
Path.
White object.
She could not explain why.
That is the claim.
Anything beyond it becomes interpretation.
The Psychic Explanation
The most dramatic explanation is also the one the story became famous for.
Etta somehow perceived the location of Melanie's body through an anomalous psychic experience.
Supporters point to the specificity.
The canyon.
The curved road.
The dirt path.
The white object.
Then the actual discovery.
They also point out that investigators found no connection between Etta and Melanie or the killers.
A civil jury years later reportedly found Etta's story believable.
But belief is not scientific verification.
There was no controlled test.
The event cannot be reproduced.
There is no objective record of the original mental image independent of Etta's later description, although Detective Ryan's contemporaneous mapping and photographs provide some documentation that she indicated the area before personally finding the body.
The Coincidence Explanation
Another possibility is coincidence combined with local knowledge.
Etta lived in Pacoima.
Lopez Canyon was in the broader area.
She knew the local terrain.
The radio report told her Melanie's truck had been found and police were searching nearby.
Perhaps Etta unconsciously constructed a plausible disposal location.