When John Oliver receives psychic impressions from people who have been murdered, it does not seem to matter how long ago their deaths occurred.

He went to Villisca, Iowa, the site of the notorious 1912 Villisca Axe Murders, in which a person who is still unknown bludgeoned eight people in their beds as they slept. Even though nearly 100 years have passed, he had no trouble picking up psychic vibrations from the location -- which he then described to a national audience on television.

Oliver is a professional psychic, one of three featured on the show "Haunting Evidence" airing Saturdays on what is now called truTV (the channel was formerly called Court TV). Along with Carla Baron and paranormal investigator Patrick Burns, he goes to crime scenes to try to provide psychically gathered information to law-enforcement personnel and television viewers. "Haunting Evidence" is one of the top-rated shows on the channel.

Though he was born in Texas, Oliver was raised in Charlottesville. Even as a child he realized he had a gift; he claims that when he was 5 he was already seeing the spirits of people who had recently died. His powers increased until, at age 16, he worked on his first case with law-enforcement officials.

Speaking this week at the Aquarian Bookshop in Carytown, which he owns, Oliver said that he was at first hesitant to work with the police. But a detective from another state was a friend of a friend, and they prevailed on him to see what he could do to help find a missing person. Oliver gave the detective information that helped him solve the case.

Oliver eventually moved to New York, where word of his abilities spread. He was tapped to appear in an episode of a Court TV show called "Psychic Detectives," and the company that produced that show later called to recommend him to be one of the hosts of "Haunting Evidence."

That show is now in its third season on truTV. The first episode of the first year took the psychics and their cameras to the Appalachian Trail to explore the 1996 murders of Julianne Williams and Laura Winans. For the first episode of Season Two, they went to Aruba to try to make sense of the still-baffling disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

And for the first episode of Season Three, which aired last week, they hit the jackpot: the JonBenet Ramsey case.

"We did a reading of the home, drawing impressions. The other thing I did was I drove around Boulder to see if I could feel anything," Oliver said.

The episode was filmed in February, when suspicion was still directed heavily toward JonBenet's parents (they would later be exonerated by DNA evidence). Oliver and Baron instantly intuited that the parents were innocent.

"I felt it was someone the child recognized, based on the reaction I felt. I felt it was someone waiting for the family in the house. I felt he was hiding in the closet. I felt he was a serial pedophile," Oliver said.

He and Baron gave their descriptions of what they perceived the killer to look like to a sketch artist, who created a composite image. This has been given to the police, but Oliver does not know what has come of their help.

"Once the files are turned over to the police, you don't hear anything about it," he said.

Sometimes, the information they give is not helpful. The person they suggested was responsible for the Villisca Axe Murders, according to some experts, was 400 miles away at the time of the killings.

With his fame has come greater call for his services, but Oliver refuses to take cases from lay citizens or a victim's family members. He explained that family members do not have the legal authority to do anything with the information, the family is emotionally involved in the case, the perpetrator is often a family member, and unless the police are involved Oliver does not have the jurisdiction to conduct an investigation.

The work Oliver does in New York and on the road keeps him busy, he said, but he still finds time to come back to Virginia about once a month, if just to watch over his businesses. Along with the Aquarian Bookshop, he owns the International Black Belt Center of Virginia, a tae kwon do studio in Charlottesville, and a smaller satellite facility over The Shops at Willow Lawn shopping center.