AS JUNE Field held a necklace belonging to a murdered 16-year-old, disturbing images flashed through her mind.
The psychic had a vision of a young woman in a blouse and skirt lying dead, callously discarded by the brute who killed her. Little did June know her vision would lead her to exposing a serial killer who had left cops stumped.
June, 65, from Dundee, who counts Royals and celebs among her clients, had not expected to be drawn into the chilling murder mystery – one that would leave her fearing for her own safety.
As she sat clutching the necklace of Katya Yatlo, 16, she says she saw visions of her body, describing the crime scene in vivid detail.
She then saw a tattooed young man with a leather jacket, and could smell motor oil, which became a key clue in the case.
Her vision led baffled police to question petrol station clerks and taxi drivers.
Nine months later, they had found the elusive “Nova Vodolaha Maniac” was taxi driver Vitaly Serdyukov, a young man with a hatred of women.
He confessed to three murders in Ukraine – including Katya’s.
The break-through came thanks to June, with detectives being convinced of her paranormal gifts.
The whole story began with – of all things – a TV show back in 2012.
The Scot psychic took part in an X-Factor-style weekly programme, beating 70,000 entrants to be crowned the winner of Ukraine’s International Battle of the Psychics.
The finalists completed challenges over 30 weeks in front of 34 million viewers, and were slowly whittled down depending on how well they did.
One such task was eerily related to the then-unsolved murder of 16-year-old Katya.
The tragic teenager’s family had turned to the producers after the police investigation into her death stalled.
Katya’s body was discovered strangled and naked following a night out in August 2011.
The alarm had been raised after she failed to return to her grandmother’s home in Nova Vodolaha near Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Police believed she had been killed by the same person who hacked to death 24-year-old Julia Mantulov months earlier in the same area.
Sitting opposite Katya’s dad, Nikolai, the psychics took it in turns to try and provide answers during the show.
I saw that she’d been thrown over a hedge, and she was lying face down, and her right hand was turned up beside her
June Field
When it was June’s turn, she quickly began to get very specific details, which shocked the desperate dad, as well as show producers and the police.
“I held onto that chain, as if it had plugged me into something,” June tells The Sun.
“I described a girl I had never seen, and the way she was lying and the way she was dumped.”
It was Katya, and June was able to describe in detail the outfit she was wearing.
Recalling what she told the cops, the psychic explains: “She looked like a waitress, with a black skirt on and a white blouse, as if she was waiting on tables – that was my description.”
June said the woman she saw was “small, just tiny”.
“I saw that she’d been thrown over a hedge, and she was lying face down, and her right hand was turned up beside her, and her bag was over to one side, and there was a mobile phone there,” she adds.
“He had just discarded her like a piece of meat.
“He had a leather jacket on, and I smelt that. It was quite precise.”
June went on to see the victim leaning into a beige Lada car, belonging to a man whom she appeared to know.
She could smell oil and saw that the man had a tattoo on his right shoulder and a scar on his left hand.
“This was all nine months before he would be caught,” June says.
The psychic even pulled the producer to one side and told him she did not believe Nikolai was the victim’s biological father.
“I said they’re not blood-related,” June tells the Sun.
It transpired that Katya was adopted at six months, but her parents had never told anyone.
Everybody’s watching it, and I’m thinking he’s going to come looking for me
Impressed, the police then liaised with June and said she’d described details of the murder scene that “would not be possible to know”, as they’d never been released.
And months later, it would transpire that June’s description of the culprit was also spot on.
After speaking to the cops, June, suddenly wary for her own safety, asked producers, “Has this guy been caught?”
She was told that he was still at large.
Having moved to Ukraine for the duration of the show, June was worried.
“I said ‘when is this airing?’ and the producer said ‘you’ll be fine’,” June recalls, laughing.
“I’m living in an apartment on my own, this has gone out on primetime TV.
“Everybody’s watching it, and I’m thinking he’s going to come looking for me.”
Much to June’s dismay, the show did air while she was still in Ukraine.
Going on her description of the apparent killer, and the smell of motor oil, cops began interviewing petrol station workers and taxi drivers.
And nine months later when the killer – Vitaly Serdyukov – was arrested, her description of him proved to be almost dead on.
The 23-year-old quickly confessed to three murders, including that of Katya.
His final victim was killed after the show was made – Karina Stupak, 19, had been raped before being strangled.
After seeing June’s TV appearance the killer had began to cover his tracks.
‘You realise you’re just different from people’
PSYCHIC June Field has clients across the globe and first recognised she had special gifts as a small child – when she would see ghostly figures in her bedroom.
June, 65, from Dundee, Scotland, tells The Sun: “I tune into an energy. When I do readings, I usually shake their hand, and I’m already in there. I plug myself into them.
“The minute I’m on that frequency, I start to get pictures and sounds of many different things. That’s why it’s called psychometry.”
She said her great aunt was a transfiguration medium who could take on the features of someone who’d passed on.
“You’d see the person’s face appear on hers, an energy mask,” June explains.
She says she first recalled seeing ghostly figures in her bedroom from the age of four.
“There were always people in my room looking at me – they didn’t smile, but they weren’t angry,” she recalls.
“These people used to be looking down at me, all these people, I just got used to it, they scared me a bit because I didn’t know who they were.
“I just thought everybody saw that. You realise you’re just different from people. My parents understood.”
June recalls often waking up as a child to see “someone’s eyes looking down into mine, close up”, adds: “Some call it ghost or spirit, it’s the consciousness, people are in physical bodies, that’s what dies, not what’s housed inside it.”
She says it’s not quite like the film The Sixth Sense, in which a young boy can see the ghosts of troubled dead people, and he must help them pass over – instead these spirits are just there, but she has learned to tune in and out.
“When someone comes to see me, my job is to prove the essence of people on the other side,” June explained.
“Those on spirit side, those who have passed away, they just really want their loved ones to know that they’re okay.
“They’ll draw in, because they’ll walk in with them, they just want to make sure they’re alright, because they’re on a different frequency, they’re not being seen.
“I just need to hear ‘Hi June, how are you?’ and I’m in that vibration.
“I start to be aware of their loved ones, they’re with them, they brought them in.”
Serdyukov quit his job as a taxi driver, sold his beige Lada, and bought a different car, while also attempting to get laser surgery to remove his tattoo and scar.
CCTV from his getaway following the final murder had revealed his new car, an obscure foreign make, which then helped pinpoint him as the suspect.
When he was caught Serdyukov told police he had watched the TV show and her description was “99.9 per cent accurate”, completely spooking him.
Police had also reportedly gone on to find he had attempted to kill two other women who hadn’t reported the attacks.
June says: “It was just as well he didn’t know where I lived, I was right in the centre of Kyiv.”
In August 2013, Serdyukov took his own life in his prison cell, leaving a letter retracting his triple murder confession.
The detective leading the investigation, Alla Alexeev, says cops were “amazed” at June’s predictions, Scotland’s Sunday Post reported at the time.
Describing her gifts, June says: “If you think of me like a mobile phone, sometimes you’re just in the right place to get a really good signal.
“You’ll always get a signal… I tune into an energy, if I’m doing readings, I usually shake their hands, and I’m already in there; it’s like a connection. I plug myself in.
“The minute I’m on that frequency, I start to get pictures, sounds and many different things.
“That’s why it’s called psychometry, and they gave me a chain that belonged to the girl, and I took it out of the box, and held onto it to get a feel for her vibration.”
However, unlike in Ukraine and some other countries, she said British police aren’t interested in utilising her abilities.
June says: “In this country, the police don’t really like to use you because it’s uncorroborated evidence, so they can’t use what you say.
“This psychic said this, so we’re coming into your house to look for that.
“That’s not allowed here, but abroad it is, in the States they’re allowed to use psychics.”