On June 8, 1989, a 44-year old Canadian nurse named Cindy James was found dead in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. She had been drugged and strangled, with her hands and feet tied behind her back.
Cindy found dead
She was found in the yard of an abandoned home a mile and a half from a small shopping mall where her car was parked. She had been missing since May 25th, when her car was discovered in the parking lot. There was blood on the driver’s side door and items from her wallet were found under the car.
When her body was discovered at the abandoned house, it looked like Cindy James had been brutally murdered. A black nylon stocking was tied tightly around her neck and the autopsy revealed that Cindy died from an overdose of morphine and other drugs.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, however, believed her death to be an accident or a suicide. The Vancouver coroner ruled that Cindy’s death was not suicide, an accident, or a murder, claiming that she died of an ‘’unknown event.’’ This was despite the fact that in the seven years preceding her death, Cindy had reported nearly a hundred incidents of harassment beginning four months after she divorced her husband.
Melanie Hack
To this day, her death remains a mystery even after a public inquest at which 84 witnesses were called to testify. Her father Otto Hack and his wife Matilda never believed that Cindy killed herself or that she would have been able to stage the death scene.
Her sister Melanie Hack, who was 27 when Cindy died and who is now married with two children and lives in British Columbia, ended up writing a book titled Who Killed My Sister, My Friend.
It took her 14 years to conduct research into the toxicology, the autopsy, and the medical and police reports to obtain enough information into her sister’s unsolved death.
This case, which became the subject of the show Unsolved Mysteries and was discussed on some American TV talk shows including A Current Affair and Maury Povich, was not really sensationalized or kept alive to fuel anger towards a specific perpetrator. There was no villain or hero in this story; rather, it was the puzzling case of an upstanding nurse who struggled for seven years with an imagined or real threat and ended up losing her life in the most mysterious and baffling way. This story had legs and created endless speculation.
In 1989, forensics investigation was in its infancy and the technology did not exist to solve a case the CSI way, or to determine if James was creating her own drama. Instead, the investigators had to rely on basic traditional techniques to determine if her stories of attacks, kidnapping and harassment were true.
Dr. Roy Makepeace
Cindy was the eldest of six children. At age 19, she had married Dr. Roy Makepeace who was 18-years her senior. She worked as a nurse but also loved to counsel children with emotional problems. She seemed happy but when she decided to end her marriage in 1982 and move on with her life, all hell broke loose.
She had a fairly good relationship with her parents and she approached them first with stories of harassment. She ended up going to the police because she was getting death threats by phone and by mail. With each incident, this beautiful, vibrant woman took one step down physically and mentally.
Three dead cats were found hanging in her garden, her porch lights were smashed and her phone lines cut. Bizarre notes began to appear on her doorstep and five violent physical attacks were reported.
One night, Cindy’s good friend, Agnes Woodcock, dropped by and when there was no answer when she knocked on the door, she went around the back of the house and found Cindy crouched down with a nylon stocking tied around her neck. She had gone to the garage to get something and was allegedly grabbed from behind by an unidentified intruder.
Threatening note received by Cindy
Messages were left on the windshield of her car along with a picture of a covered corpse being wheeled into a morgue. Raw meat was delivered to her house and even her dog, Heidi, was found shaking with fright sitting in her own feces with a cord tied tightly around her neck.
The harassment would stop and start again, leaving Cindy feeling more and more destabilized. She expressed her despair in her private journals.
Cindy moved to a new house, painted her car and changed her last name. She finally hired Ozzie Kaban, a local private investigator. The police were investigating but as time passed, they were starting to doubt her stories. Ozzie reported later that Cindy would be evasive at times and withhold information. Her mother thought that her daughter was reluctant to tell the truth because she was threatened and feared for her sister and family.
Private eye Ozzie Kaban
Her private investigator installed lights at her residence and gave her a two-way radio and a panic button. The police would do surveillance on a regular basis.
One night, Kaban heard strange sounds coming from the radio and rushed to the house. He found Cindy on the hallway floor with a paring knife through her hand with a note on it saying ‘you are dead bitch’. He checked her pulse and thought she was dead.
She was hospitalized and only recalled that a needle was put into her arm. The police did not take fingerprints and were growing tired of the whole saga. But Kaban was adamant that nobody could have done that to themselves. Cindy subjected herself to several hypnosis sessions and polygraph tests to try to get to the bottom of this but was considered too ‘traumatized’ to be a good candidate.
The threatening phone calls continued but could never be traced because they were too short. Mind you, there were never any calls when the police was doing 24-hour surveillance so you cannot blame them for growing suspicious. The incidents always happened when they were not around.
Her parents thought her attacker was smart enough to stay away at the proper times in order to make Cindy look more and more suspicious. Nowadays, we could trace the calls and know exactly who is zooming who.
Cindy bruised
After an “attack’’, Cindy was found lying in a ditch six miles from her home, wearing a man’s work boot and glove. She was suffering from hypothermia and had cuts and bruises all over her body. She also had a black nylon stocking around her neck, a trademark of her alleged attacks.
She did not remember the event and asked her parents to stay with her. One evening, they were awakened by noises in the basement and saw flames. After realizing the phone was dead, they went outside to alert the neighbors. They saw a man at the curb and asked him to call the fire department but instead, he ran off. It was the second ‘arson.’
The police determined that the fire was started from inside the house because they saw no fingerprints on the window they think the perpetrator would have used to gain entry into the house. Therefore, they determined that Cindy had staged the incident. They also found it quite odd that Cindy would walk her little dog alone late at night when she feared being attacked. I must admit that they had a point there.
Her parents saw her condition deteriorating further and feared for her mental state. She was terrified and going downhill steadily. Believing she was suicidal, her doctor committed her to a local psychiatric ward. Ten weeks later, she was released. That’s when she admitted to friends and family that she knew more than she was saying about the perpetrator and would go after him/them herself. Was she falling deeper into delusion or was there a real person behind all this?
Cindy reminiscent of a Hitchcock’s film beauty
Cindy became very depressed because she felt that her credibility was destroyed and that no one believed that someone wanted her dead or was pushing her towards insanity. Her life was a living hell and while hospitalized, she wrote about committing suicide.
She finally told police that she believed her tormentor was her ex-husband Roy Makepeace. They encouraged her to phone him to confront him and they taped the conversation.
As a psychiatrist, Roy would have been familiar with the fine art of playing with her mind, but he totally denied any involvement during the conversation. This phone tape was played at the public inquest. In fact, Makepeace gave the police a recording from his own answering machine that contained a death threat. If the poor man had nothing to do with his former wife’s demise, imagine how awful it must have been for his reputation.
You can listen to the message received by Makepeace in this short video about the case.
Cindy going downhill
Cindy James was either confused, psychotic or totally innocent, but she was sounding more and more out of it as her despair deepened. And it all ended when they found her body two weeks after she was reported missing.
She had gone to the shopping mall to deposit her hospital paycheck and do some grocery shopping. We have to wonder why she would bother doing all this if she intended to kill herself. Plus, why not end it quietly in her bed to avoid causing her family so much pain and sorrow? After all, she loved them dearly.
Neal Hall, a Canadian journalist who wrote a book about the case now thinks she killed herself but her investigator Ozzie Kaban disagrees. He does not buy that her body took two weeks to be found when it was so close to traffic and pedestrian walks. He believes her body might have been dumped.
The fact that she had an injection mark on her arm makes it hard to believe that she could have walked a mile and a half to the spot where they found her and then tie herself up after injecting herself. They found no needle close to her car or around the crime scene. The police think she ingested the morphine and had plenty of time to do the rest. But they found no evidence to that effect and no proof of purchase of black nylons.
Cindy’s mom Tillie Hack
Cindy also had a lover named Pat McBride who happened to be a cop. The police suspected him and Makepeace but had no concrete evidence against either one of them.
The evidence in this case was quite contradictory, incomplete and very baffling, so the police opted to blame Cindy.
Her ex-husband came to believe that Cindy had multiple personalities and was unaware that she was tormenting herself. She adored her dog and her parents and would have never tortured them willingly. Her father was convinced that the investigation was never aimed at finding a perpetrator but at pinning the responsibility on his daughter.
The only undeniable truth in this story is that Cindy James suffered immensely in this saga and she paid with her life. Her journals tell the heart-wrenching story of a woman tortured mentally and physically — either by her own hand and mental illness or because of an unscrupulous and sadistic perpetrator who wanted to drive her crazy and eventually killed her. If she was an innocent victim, the lack of support from the police must have caused her excruciating pain. In my opinion nurse Cindy James was a victim either way.
Otto Hack died in 2010 after a distinguished career in the military. His wife Tillie passed away in 2012. They believed till the end that their daughter did not commit suicide. Their daughter Melanie continues their search for the truth.
Rest in Peace Cindy
Lise–
What I like to call a “Fun Fact”: As far as her having ingested morphine & then “staged” her suicide, leaving the needle mark as a “false clue”–without giving identifying details, I had a case involving a similar scenario a few years back, and consulted w. several MEs & toxicologists. Ingested morphine (and sometimes even the IV version) is an extremely unreliable method of suicide, because the toxic dose can vary so incredibly widely from individual to individual. That’s especially true if one uses it either for a chronic condition or recreation, but even without that, there are so many complicating factors that it is simply not recommended for such a purpose and Cindy, as a nurse married to a doctor, would have known that. Nor do such a death come on easily: the victim usually falls into a coma until breathing eventually slows to a stop, which can take hours. The only truly reliable pharmaceuticals for suicide through ingestion are barbituates, yet they apparently did not find these.
Fentanyl, a very fast-acting opiate (available in hospitals as an IV liquid for pain relief and anaesthesia and for prescription use as lozenges, “lollipops,” and patches, would have been a safer bet, but I do not believe they were widely used in Canadian (or American) hospitals at the time and they were not approved for script use till much later. Still, an injection of fentanyl, especially if she was not opiate tolerant and possibly even if she was, would not they have left her time to do what she did.
I’ll admit I started looking at this case from the POV that it was suicide. But then–a cop ex-BF? Multiple personalities? While those do exist, I never heard of one of DID first coming to light in a woman of her 40s whose psychiatrist husband had seemingly noticed nothing amiss in 20 years of marriage. While there are certainly some oddities in the case, I do not, now, believe she killed herself. The truth really is often stranger than fiction, as I have come to learn. All evidence may point at one suspect; there may be an excellent motive; there may even be forensic science which seems like proof–only to later realise it was a random crime, or. on at least one occasion in my practice–there was no crime at all. It looked like a crime, it was investigated as a crime, a person who seemed to motive and was arrested and very nearly tried for the crime. Yet no crime had taken place, and only a fluke witness saved the defendant from a trial (and quite possibly their life.) I try not to dwell on it, but I sometimes wonder what else I might have missed.
BTW: My nickname comes from the Rolling Stones song, not the drug 🙂
I like this song also in a haunting kind of way and knowing that Marianne Faithfull was a co-writer makes it almost ominous. Great nickname.
Thank you for insight. Even if they had an ‘expert’ saying she could have ingested it, it is hard to believe, even more with the facts you just posted. She was a nurse and had to know about it. They didn’t have Fentanyl during that era in Vancouver.
They did not find any needle around her and where would she have ingested pills? She was grocery shopping and cashing her paycheck.
Some factors bother me, like the fact that she was walking her dog late at night when she was supposedly scared to death. But then again, she probably was more scared inside the house than walking in the area where people would have heard her screams. Every time the cops stopped surveillance, something else happened. She was dating a cop so it is suspicious both ways.
I find it hard to imagine that she would have killed herself. They found her body in a spot where it could not have taken days to find her.
And I agree that if she had multiple personalities, her psychiatrist husband or family would have picked up on it. Her colleagues never mentioned a personality disorder. The divorce might have sent her on an emotional spin, but to this extent? Plus, she is the one who wanted out.
I find interesting that the husband had a strange and convenient threatening message on his answering machine. This kind of crime would be resolved in no time with modern technology, but not so easy back then.
It feels like she was tortured mentally and physically, either by her own mind or a very sadistic person. Either way, what happened to Cindy is horrible.
Reality is much stranger than fiction and in this case, even if the husband was a shoe in, he might have nothing to do with this at all.
I can’t help thinking about Michael Morton whose wife was brutally killed and it was such a random crime that they threw him in jail because in their mind, who else could it have been?
Very informative comment.
The parents were (like a lot of parents whose children commit suicide) in denial. “My child wouldn’t do this, my daughter couldn’t possibly be this depressed, she’s fine, she intelligent, she wouldn’t make up something like this.” But most likely she was a drug addict and abusing all sorts of opioids and narcotics (she was a nurse afterall and had access to them) and that fueled her mental illnesses. Shame on her for wasting so many police manpower hours and dollars.
I know that your comment was directed at Sister Morphine, but sadly, this great attorney and soul sister has passed.
The last thing I would want to do is shame her. If she suffered from mental illness from the beginning and it went untreated, it is pretty sad and she had a pretty miserable existence until the day she died. The police doubted her but they investigated because this is what they were required to do. If it was a waste, it is unfortunate, but considering the circumstances, it was not malicious.
She was prescribed Valium and obviously had access to meds, but when she was hospitalized, they found no trace of addictions. If it was the case, she would not have been able to stop cold turkey.
Isn’t the name of the song and the drug one and the same?
SisterMorphine who was a great friend of the site has passed and is greatly missed. It was all about music to her.
Her dog Heidi since the person did this to her dog why not have her dog be shown or get around her ex-husband to see how it would react? If it acted scared around him then there would be your answer. It was either her ex-husband or if he had a mistress or lover. I don’t think she did this herself even though she did mention of committing suicide. Not only that she cashed & deposited her check at the bank. Why do that, leave her car there & kill herself to where she couldn’t be found. Yet she supposedly was attacking herself in her own home, & setting 2 fires. The person on her ex-husbands answering machine kind of sounds like his voice.
Ms. Melany Hack.I previously posted a memorandum to you but you did not respond. I know who killed Cindy and there was more than three men and one woman. I don’t know if your Mom and Dad stated I had supported who meaning only one individual at that time. I will say I am bringing out a book called MURDER NO-ONE GETS AWAY WITH. IF you answer I would support, if not I will still do what I said I would do. God willing.
Did you try to post your comment on Melanie’s site at http://www.melaniehack.com/
@ SisterMorphine: What do you think the Rolling Stones song was about?
Lise Lasalle, Madam. Previously I did try to engage Ms. Hack in regards to what I know, and what I have been told. I did not fabricate nor did anyone else. There is no theory only facts that indicate certainty. It doesn’t matter what Ms. Hack does at this late date as obviously her book has set up some mystery guy and or blame it on the ex boyfriend or policeman, so I believe. Whatever the case, I have never been able to buy her book, and no response. I have finished my 21 year old book called, MURDERERS WITHOUT A CONSCIOUS: I believe this will lay to rest any mystery that has come from the newspapers June 8th, 1989. Thank you Madam.
I hope you hire a proofreader before publishing your book….
So where can we find your books? And are you THE Ivan William Mervin Henry the exonerated man?
Just to point out something: despite the statement regarding her love of Family, Cindy actually harboured quite a lot of repressed anger toward her Father, for sleights either real or imagined.
The fact she married a much older man, then turned on him so venomously (especially her accusation of his ‘murders’) is to me the key aspect of the entire case. Many have hinted that abuse may have been present in her childhood; however, this will always remain an unknown, if crucial, factor in her psyche. It would certainly explain much.
The evidence works against her story, with ‘attackers’ who were not only incredibly patient and focused over 7-8 years, but were also incredibly lucky, surprisingly skilled and managed to be both amazingly effective and completely ineffectual at the same time whilst assaulting her.
Interestingly, one of the above posters makes the important observation of the difficulty of orally overdosing on morphine.
What if Cindy was depending on this? She hides away for a while, staging the abandoned car, and positions herself, loosely tied as demonstrated, near to a main roadway and in a spot known for impromptu parties (again, showing some cunning).
Except it goes wrong- she is weaker than she realises and no-one goes to the area in that time period. The large scale search she also probably expected never transpires as the Police have heard ‘Cry Wolf’ too many times by now.
Ultimately Cindy seems like a tragic victim of rage. A rage against her Father and her life, perhaps justified, but like all rages ultimately consuming its host.
I guess it is an interesting theory but I would need more direct evidence or accounts to go there. It was never reported that Cindy had a bad relationship with her father. Her parents were very supportive and her sister never mentioned anything of the kind.
After their separation, Cindy and Roy remained on good terms and saw each other occasionally. She mentioned his name later on, but I wonder what her mental health was like by then. They drove her crazy or she drove herself crazy, but on thing for sure, it was a slow descent to hell.
Every time, I think of suicide, I see problems with these arguments, but I feel the same way when I try to piece together the elements of her murder. There is too much we do not know. No one was ever caught harassing her, but she was never caught staging the attacks either.
Her private investigator is highly respected and is convinced that she was murdered. And he must know more about the case than we do. Rage is not something that came up in any of the accounts I read.
You should check this older thread because her sister is on it and has interesting comments about something her sister might have witnessed. And on how psychiatrists have the tools, the medications and the power to drive someone crazy.
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=210645&page=7
She was not working at the hospital anymore so where would she have obtained the morphine? And one interesting fact is that she had not bought her groceries where her car was found. She also had received hang up calls.
I see Damon has a theory that is fit for a movie play. Cindy James the lead with play with a dozen actors especially the persons who eventually kill her. There is one sick puppy that has a final twist that must be addressed eventually if anyone listens but, it’s like that all over with knowledge being the kicker so to speak. Everyone has a theory yet one must watch this diversion has been used against Cindy in the first place. The newspapers are the ones who started this suicide deal and everybody runs with it. It reminds me of John Dillinger who gave a punk his identification as the boy wanted to be Dillinger. When they shot this boy in the alley the woman in the red dress had set the boy up. When they opened fire without the warning shot killing the boy, everybody started running up and down the streets yelling “they shot Dillinger.” Truth has it that Florence the Native American had taken him to the the Native reservation where he died. Now you know the rest of the story.
What are you talking about, Ivan? That WAS John Dillinger that was killed in that alley. I don’t know where you get your facts, but they are just crazy. Your claims are so outlandish, that they make no sense whatsoever.
This is so very sad. She suffered which ever way it went. Has anyone suggested she may have enlisted another person to assist in her demise?
Good question Izzie. They did investigate this case thoroughly and the inquest was extensive, but I don’t think that they ever came up with a person who would have assisted her. What would be the motivation?
Well I wonder if she was very depressed and intent on taking her life, if she would have taken a “ contract” on herself to finally prove her suffering. So disturbing. Reminds me a bit of the Rebecca Zahau case where she clearly did not hang herself nude from a balcony with her hands tied behind her back. The police were quick to close the case as suicide.
I almost forgot about Zahau’s case. That’s how fast it came and went. It smelled like a cover up to me. It was difficult to believe that she could have been hanging herself naked from the balcony; especially considering the dramatic circumstances concerning the death of her boyfriend’s son.
I believe that in Cindy’s case, there was police fatigue. They investigated for years and when she passed, had a public inquest that appeared to lead nowhere. They stuck to their theory that she was orchestrating her attacks and final demise.
The investigation in Zahau’s demise did not seem to be a high priority at the time.
I wonder if somebody assisted her also. I just find it hard to believe that somebody murdered her. Something would have shown up. Some clue, witness, etc. I just sometimes think that this poor soul was mentally disturbed and her own mind was creating these situations and she was reacting to them. I don’t know if this will ever be solved. Very sad.
There was a lot of money and crazy around Zahau case. She and her family did not get a fair shake. I looked at the evidence online and she could not have taken her life in that way.
Lise- it’s pretty much stated in the book ‘The Deaths of Cindy James’ that she held resentment toward her Father, possibly as the originator of her youthful ‘night terrors’, and she admitted as much herself to her therapists.
It was noted by many that she was one to repress feelings, and this whole affair may have been the boiling over of contained emotions.
Interestingly, her rather ambivalent attitude of love and anger toward the two father figures in her life again points toward the possibility of childhood abuse.
Perhaps her inability to confront this (all her therapists and even family felt she continued to hide/avoid crucial information) may have led to the creation in her mind of an all powerful yet ever elusive attacker.
She did go out of her way to accuse her ex, and there was a suggestion the PI would be paid if he could prove this.
I stand by the rage part; if, as they say, depression is simply anger turned inward then Cindy long passed the point of everyday grievance.
It’s a fascinating tale, but one more suited to the field of psychology rather than criminology.
Criminology studies a variety of factors to determine why a crime occurred. Psychological and social concerns are important as well as researching data and studying the background of the criminal or victim in this instance, to determine if any biological situations led him or her to commit the crime.
So strange that Cindy might have been the victim and the criminal. I guess I did not equate anger with rage. Her family was supportive that’s for sure but what she carried into adulthood is another story. Her sister admits having seen her only once during the last year of her life and I am not sure that family members are always forthcoming about facts that could be perceived as strange or embarrassing.
Even if depression can be turning anger inward, I do not know enough about her relationship with Roy or her dad to reach any conclusion. Sometimes it is plainly a chemical imbalance. Mental illness can also be caused by hereditary factors and activate during stressful time.
The first signs of ‘stalking’ happened after her separation from her husband and they seemingly remained friendly. No one around her saw signs of delusions or paranoia. Mind you, were they really looking? But a divorce and a move definitely count as an emotional upset that could have triggered an episode of a latent condition.
Her private investigator has the reputation of being honorable and other people witnessed incidents she could not have engineered, so this is why it is so hard to know for sure.
I am troubled by the fact that she did not move with people or in an apartment building where she would have been safer. Or that she walked her dog alone late at night.
But her friend found a dead cat in her yard when Cindy had not budged from inside the house and there are definitely stories of witnessing some shady situations.
I appreciate your comment. We have to look at this from every angle and you are certainly entitled to your own conclusions. I am still on the fence.
There are a few things that bothered me about this story after seeing it on Unsolved Mysteries. The first one was when the fire was started in the basement of her home, it was determined that those fires must have been started from the inside. Also, she was out walking her dog at 3 a.m. If someone is trying to kill you, why would you be walking your dog at 3:00 a.m.?? After the first attack, why didn’t Cindy start carrying a firearm, or some pepper spray, or a taser?? I know the Canadian gun laws are more restrictive than in the States, but there are still about 30 guns per 100 people in the country. She couldn’t but a Remington 870 and keep it loaded in her house? There were no signs of forced entry, right? Change the locks and sleep with a shotgun by the bed. Cindy did none of these things. Very fishy story….
You raise the inconsistencies that bother many people who have commented on this story through the years. In Canada, most people do not want to carry a firearm, unless it is for hunting or collecting and Cindy was a very troubled lady who would not have had a rifle by her bed. Very different mentality than in the US. People who live in remote locations are more into gun ownership.
Some calls happened when she was not alone and she was with friends when they found a dead cat. Her investigator is convinced that she was stalked and tortured, and he witnessed some very strange events. The location where she was found dead makes it difficult to believe that she could have been there for so long without being noticed. But I agree that not moving with other people or in a secure apartment building and walking her dog late at night is very strange. She said that they would not force her to change her lifestyle, but better safe than dead.
One more thing about home safety – I understand that Canada isn’t as “pro-gun” as the States…but then couldn’t she have gotten a home security system? Hidden cameras? I’m surprised the P.I. didn’t suggest them or install them without her knowing….
Her private investigator installed lights at her residence and gave her a two-way radio and a panic button. The police would do surveillance on a regular basis, but you are right, it would have been a good investment to have a full security system if they installed them at the time. She moved a few times and painted her car but to no avail. I don’t think that she owned a home.
This was the early ‘80’s. Not do easy or cheap to get a security camera system installed then.
To Matthew Fitch and Mary G
It is a good point. She died in 1989 and when I researched camera surveillance in Canada in the 80s, it seems that stores and cities were installing them in public areas and only the people with money used them at their homes. Cindy was always a tenant and they were quite expensive. I always wondered what her landlords had to say about the incidents that happened at their properties. I am sure investigators talked to them, but what was their opinion or participation in making the place safer? Her private investigator had installed a panic button and some lights that turn on when someone walks by. We know that she pressed that button once and he came over.
I also wondered why she did not move in a building apartment with a manager on the premises if she was that scared. It is great to live in a home and have a yard for your dog, but after these attacks, I would have found a place where I am surrounded with people. She painted her car and moved but always to a single house.
This case is historically important because of the confusion that has been caused by it. If anyone needed society’s protection it was surely Cindy James.
I would like to ascertain if her ex-husband had diagnosed Multiple Personality Disorder in 1981 before the persecution had begun. Coming from a psychiatric doctor it would protect him from suspicion and cause the confusion of the police while exacerbating her persecution. She must have felt completely alienated by the society that should have protected her.
The evidence leaves no doubt that she was murdered and the method of killing was medical drugs.
fabricated evidence.i am a victim of fabricated evidence.what a coincidense.even more baffling the police are not interested in my story as well about the confidential informant and his twin brother.Don Stanleyan Donny Stanley.they lived with me under the guise of only on Don Stanley,my personal effects ,some pricless eirhlooms ,sentimental value were stolen.My house was violated when i was out with don stanley he gave a key to his twin brother.Don Stanley had a lady over the same night when i came in he left,putting his arm around her.coddling.trying to block my veiw of her facei got a side veiw which looks exactly like one of the pics on the posted.in later years Don Stanley still working for the police was a prospect for the hells angels and took a hit out on me.it is obvious the police .i have no doubts the confidential informant Don Stanley and his twin murdered her,and then supplied false evidence to blame someone else
I honestly don’t think this case will ever be solved. It’s been so long now and they just didn’t have the technology for crime solving then as they do now. Wasn’t any DNA kept, that could now be tested? It’s a very sad story, but I think she was a very troubled young woman.
The public tends to trust doctors but this trust can be betrayed by people within the profession.
I do not get one thing here, maybe I’m too dumb, but… How on earth can you tie your own hands behind your back? There are many strange things in the story, but this one I’ve never seen mentioned.
Tying your own hands behind your back seems a very complex operation, I imagine much more after a drug overdose. To me that fact rules out suicide easily.
I try not to make binary decisions when it comes to misteries of real life: she might have been mentally unstable (which would explain moments of overconfidence, like going out at night), she might have even staged many of the attacks against herself, and still being killed by someone else. Both things are not exclusive.
Yes, it is difficult to imagine Cindy tying her own hands behind her back after ingesting drugs and walking to the spot where she was found. She had groceries in the car, had cashed her check and there was blood left behind. What bothers me a lot also is the fact that she was found in the front side yard of an abandoned house, but one that was not, really uninhabited. A squatter, living in a van just five meters from the body, never noticed it, for over a week, even though Cindy was wearing a white top and a jogger had spotted her from the roadway. And that jogger said they did that same route twice before and never saw a body in that location.
Furthermore, teens used to use the abandoned house as a hangout spot. They indicated they would knock on the squatters windows and rock his van to get kicks. They also indicated that they had two small parties that week at the abandoned house, yet, despite all the traffic and reveling, had not noticed a body laying in the yard wearing a bright white top and bound up. And nobody smelled it?
If she was not mentally disturbed to start with, the attacks would have made sure that she was. It is hard to explain her overconfidence. Walking the dog at night and only moving in a single home. I also question the relationship with Pat McBride. “He moved into Cindy’s house to protect her and find out what was really going on. It is also suspected he was romantically involved with Cindy. While Pat was living at the house, no calls were made in his presence. And notes or other strange incidents only occurred when police were not on surveillance duties making some arm-chair detectives doubt Pat McBride’s intentions and making some to believe that he was perhaps the stalker and eventually the murderer.”
I agree that someone could have been pushing her on the verge of insanity and it could have made her unstable and she could have staged some of the attacks. Either way, that poor woman went through hell.
To Samurai Mike.
I agree. Tying her hands behind her back is no easy feat. I looked online though, and there are ways to actually do it. But still, I’m not convinced that this was suicide.
To Diane Lindsay
just wondering. did anybody ever look at the cop, pat mcbride?
That’s what I didn’t understand either, How could someone tie their arms behind their back and then strangle themselves with the black nylon? It just doesn’t make sense. Let’s say she was mentally sick, even so, again there’s no way that it is possible.
Everyone I’ve ever seen/heard of doing that specific drug usually zones out, and isn’t much aware of their surroundings until much later; (before the high even wares off) I will say, I don’t know how potent amounts were back in the day, the ones I see now are normally snapping in and out of conscious the entire time until they come completely out of it (not personally, I’m terrified of ingesting any drug). I’m trying to make it make sense but my brain isn’t grasping anything. The police failed her so much, they just didn’t care about her case at all.
Cindy’s situation was very disheartening and I hope no one else endures what she experienced. The question to ask ourselves is why weren’t the police able to find any forensic evidence throughout her 7-year-ordeal, despite spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to find her killer? Also, why would she want to commit suicide when there was not a minuscule of evidence (based on the ongoing distress, nature of the crimes, and medical reports of her mental health condition) to prove her mental state preceded the self-inflicting acts. Well, the hard truth is a human being was not responsible for her demise and neither were they self-inflicting; these were paranormal occurrences with an unknown source. Let me explain briefly. Based on the recordings, what she explained to others she saw (e.g. only seeing white sneakers while attacked), along with the other egregious acts committed without a trace of fingerprints demonstrate her dilemma was paranormal. This case is similar to the axeman massacres of the early 20th century. Police officials in that era tirelessly sought to find out who was responsible but their efforts were of no avail. The entity responsible wrote a note saying it would never be caught because it was a demon, not a human being. Police tactics of any sort cannot prevail against paranormal activity. So, that’s why authorities then and in the context of Cindy’s case were perplexed and unsuccessful, despite much effort. Let me conclude by saying this. Many then and many now rule out the possibility of the paranormal; which is even more sad than Cindy’s case. I’m not saying that all massacres or killings of any sort are perpetrated by a demonic entity. To reiterate, the source of how this started is unknown, but based on the nature of her ordeal, that entity knew no one would believe Cindy, and till this day people are perplexed between two potential causes of her demise that neither Cindy herself, nor another human being is responsible for.
My name is Nicole I Believe that Cindy James was Murdered By someone she Knows I know she didn’t kill herself ok
I Believe that it was Cindy’s Ex Husband Doctor Roy Markepeace that killed her he was Jealus so he killed Her okay Doctor Roy Markespece was the one who Killed his Ex wife Cindy James He wanted her out of his Life for Good
In reply to Nicole
You seem very positive about this. Did you know them personally?
are you on drugs ?
she was mentally ill and killed herself .
end of mystery .
The problem with the theory that Cindy James might have been staging the harassment herself is this- how could her remains have lain outside for about 2 weeks or more WITHOUT starting to attract attention due to the sight and smell of her decomposing body? I don’t know if such a thing can be explained away.
Cindy James was SURELY murdered by whoever was apparently harassing her. I really don’t know if someone could commit suicide in such a manner, HOWEVER, I can’t think of a possible explanation for how her harasser was never apprehended in the act NOR how her body could have lain in the elements undetected for so long.
This is fascinating. I read a lot of true crime and I was actually googling a different case (Teresita Basa) when I just stumbled across this. I don’t recall ever hearing about Ms. James before. What a tragic story. This woman suffered horribly–and for years!–regardless whether the attacker was her ex-husband, an obsessed stalker, or Cindy James herself. No one deserves to endure the hell she went through. It sounds like she did have some emotional problems, but a totally “healthy” person under that kind of stress would eventually break, so I don’t think saying she might have been a bit unbalanced does much to explain her behavior. It’s so easy to say “Obviously she had mental problems” and shrug off the whole thing. I wonder about the ex-husband myself. No wonder her sister has tried so hard to get people to take this case seriously, it sounds like someone has gotten away with murder.
Great comment Patti! The Teresita Basa case is interesting but I never really researched it. Superficially, I read that they found the perpetrator because the doctor’s wife got the name of the murderer through channeling. Worth another look.
The voice recording on her ex-husbands voice mail sounds like him. Also her dog Heidi he attacked her so why not take the dog near him & see how the dog acts around him. If it’s scared then more than likely he did it. I don’t think Cindy killed herself. Why would she go cash her check, leave her car with a blood stain on it then go off & kill herself? If she was going to kill herself I would think she would have done this at home. Also why would she tie herself up? She wanted the divorce. It’s either her ex-husband or his lover that did this to her.