Renee Ellory is one of 50 people identified by science—out of more than 15,000 tested over 20 years—as capable of detecting deception and assessing credibility at levels far above chance and far above almost all trained professionals. That finding comes from the Wizards Project (Ekman & O’Sullivan, University of California, San Francisco), one of the most rigorous and longest-running studies of its kind.

The subject pool was stacked with the people you would expect to dominate such a study: FBI and Secret Service agents, federal judges, intelligence and polygraph examiners, clinical psychologists, sheriffs and elite interrogators. Of the thousands of trained professionals screened, less than 1% reached the threshold.  The study found only 50 people in total who had an exceptional skill. From the general public, almost no one did.

Renee did—without any formal training or experience in criminal investigation. She and her mother were two of only four non–law-enforcement civilians ever identified in the 20+ year research who met the criterion for exceptional accuracy–scoring better than 99.66% of the participants in this study. She is considered to be a social-emotional genius by scientists.

Since 2006, writing as Eyes for Lies, she has analyzed thousands of real-world statements for the public while quietly consulting on active criminal investigations. Investigators brought her in on difficult cases from coast to coast. She broke open a 40-year-old cold case in three weeks, and in other cases saved innocent people in the investigational crosshairs–identifying the truth long before the truth was known.

She has delivered training to federal, state and local law enforcement across the country in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Honolulu, Milwaukee, and Las Vegas.  She trained for HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas), a federal program, filled with the nation’s top law enforcement, including but not limited to the FBI, DEA, Secret Service and ATF, to name a few.  She trained undercover operatives who risk their lives daily on their ability to read truthfulness in real-time in high risk cases.

Her method is forensic. She looks for clusters of genuine behavioral markers—shifts in emotional congruence, leaks under cognitive load, and the specific ways authentic emotion and fabricated stories diverge when real pressure is real.