Miss Cleo
| Miss Cleo | |
|---|---|
Miss Cleo on The Jenny Jones Show
|
|
| Born |
Youree Dell Harris August 12, 1962 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | July 26, 2016 (aged 53) Palm Beach County, Florida, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Colon cancer |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | LaShawnda Williams, Corvette Mama, Elenore St. Julian, Desiree Canterlaw, Janet Snyder, Maria Delcampo, Christina Garcia, Cleomili Harris, Youree Perris |
| Occupation | Television personality |
| Known for | Phone/TV psychic/900 number employee |
Youree Dell Harris (August 12, 1962 – July 26, 2016) was an American television personality best known as Miss Cleo, a spokeswoman for a psychic pay-per-call service from 1997 to 2003. Harris used various aliases, including LaShawnda Williams, Corvette Mama, Elenore St. Julian, Desiree Canterlaw, Janet Snyder, Maria Delcampo, Christina Garcia, Cleomili Harris, and Youree Perris.
Harris was born in Los Angeles on August 12, 1962, and raised in a Catholic Caribbean family. She attended an all-girls boarding school. She married at age 19, gave birth to a daughter, and divorced at age 21. She had a second daughter while in her late 20s.
In 1996, Harris and her partner opened a theatrical production company in Seattle, Washington, which produced several plays written by her. She also acted in her first project, an autobiographical play entitled For Women Only.
Her last project, Supper Club Cafe in 1997, was not successful, and she "left town with a trail of debts and broken promises" according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Some of the cast of her productions claimed that they were never paid, and that Harris "told her cast members she had bone cancer" and "her medical costs would prevent her from paying people immediately", but she wrote each actor and crew member a letter telling him or her how much money she owed them.
In the late 1990s, Harris began to work for the Psychic Readers Network under the name Cleo. She appeared as a television infomercial psychic in which she claimed she was a mystical shaman from Jamaica. Her employers' website also stated that Harris had been born in Trelawny, Jamaica, and grown up there.
The Psychic Readers Network is said to have coined the title "Miss Cleo" and sent unsolicited emails, some of which stated, "[Miss Cleo has] been authorized to issue you a Special Tarot Reading!... it is vital that you call immediately!" Charges of deceptive advertising and of fraud on the part of the Psychic Readers Network began to surface around this time. Among the complaints were allegations that calls to Miss Cleo were answered by her "associates" who were actors reading from scripts, and that calls promoted as "free" were in fact charged for.
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