For years, Cindy James has to endure threats, harassment and attacks from a mysterious person. Or parties. Or what?
Cindy’s story is unique, almost like a movie. Cindy had to endure relentless attacks that made her life unbearable for several years.
Cindy contacted the police more than 100 times during this period. His complaints related to vandalism, threatening letters, burglary, arson and assault.
The lost police
The police were distraught. Who was behind the attacks on Cindy? Was she usually threatened and assaulted? Or was it a fabrication?
The bigger question, however, is still who is responsible for Cindy’s horrific death after exactly six years and four months of persecution.
Or maybe it wasn’t persecution?
Cindy a recent registered nurse
A normal life for 16 years
Cindy James was born in 1944 in Canada, one of six children born to an army officer and his housewife.
She studied nursing and during her studies she met a doctor named Roy Makepeace, who was nearly 20 years her senior. Cindy graduated in 1966 and five months later married Makepeace.
Cindy’s life seemed like a dream for the next 16 years. She worked in institutions that cared for children with behavioral problems and was highly regarded and respected in her work.
But after the couple divorced in 1982, everything changed.
The persecution begins
Three months after the divorce, Cindy started getting mysterious phone calls.
At first, the caller just whispered her name over and over, but Cindy wasn’t surprised until after she rolled down all the windows. The phone rang and he whispered that there was no point in delaying, he knew where she was in the house.
Over the next two weeks, stones were thrown at the windows of her house and broken into, and all the cushions were cut into pieces. She also received a letter, made up of cut out letters, which said; Soon Cindy.
Cindy James
She also told the police that the telephone line to her house had been cut.
Cindy was in such close contact with the police that a spark gradually formed between her and one of the officers investigating the harassment.
His name was Pat McBride and he moved in with Cindy in November 1982, around the time the letter count continued to rise.
Black nylon stockings
Shortly after McBride moved in, Cindy’s former landlord encountered a stroller in an alley behind the house. He was armed with two guns and said he was protecting his ex’s house.
The relationship did not go well, and McBride moved on after just a month.
And then things took an even worse turn.
On January 27, Cindy’s friend came to visit and found her in the garage. She had a black nylon stocking tied tightly around her neck and a knife to her body.
Cindy told police there was a knock on the back door and when she opened it two men broke in, forced her into the garage and assaulted her.
The doubt arises
By this time, the police were no longer sure what was true and what was not in Cindy’s stories. She took a polygraph test, twice in fact, and failed both times.
She eventually admitted to knowing one of the attackers but refused to name him for fear of harming her family.
In October 1983, Cindy found three dead cats hanging from the trees in her garden. Around the neck of one of them was tied a piece of paper that said: YOU’RE NEXT.
One of the threatening letters Cindy received.
You will die soon
Cindy decided to hire a private detective named Ozzie Kaban. He bought her a walkie-talkie so they could always communicate, since before the days of cell phones.
And on January 30, 1984, Kaban heard a very particular communication on the radio. Something that felt like a blow and a wound in a woman.
Kaban rushed to Cindy’s house and found her lying unconscious on the living room floor with, again, a black nylon stocking around her neck and a knife embedded in one of her hands.
On his hand was a note that said; YOU WILL DIE EASILY…. or ended the tag with an extremely derogatory adjective about women.
Kaban later said Cindy told him she saw a man walk through her yard door. The next thing she remembered was being hit on the head, probably with spit.
She also recalled being held down and having a needle in her arm.
The police weren’t so sure. There were no signs of a break-in and while there was definitely a needle mark on Cindy’s arm, no substance was found in her blood.
One million dollars
Many police officers began to suspect that everything Cindy said might not be true, but since they had no proof of this, they continued to investigate the matter.
Makepeace, Cindy’s ex-husband, was questioned and he denied the attack, but admitted to abusing Cindy during the married years.
The police began recording all calls received on Cindy’s phone and officers began patrolling her home. But months of wiretapping and surveillance came to nothing. No one seemed to be harassing Cindy, so the wiretapping and surveillance was stopped.
One million dollars had been spent on the project.
In December 1985, Cindy wakes up in a ditch, about a thousand kilometers from her home. She had needle marks on her arms and a black nylon stocking around her neck, just like before.
Friends to help
Soon after, Cindy’s friend, Agnes Woodcock, and her husband, Tom, began staying at Cindy’s house to protect her.
One night in April 1986, Cindy bursts into their bedroom and says she heard something. Agnes and Tom also heard a rustling and ran to investigate. Cindy’s basement was found to be engulfed in flames, but firefighters managed to put out the fire before it did much damage to the house.
Tom told police he saw a man standing outside the house watching.
But the police didn’t believe a word of it. They were certain that Cindy had set the fire herself.
There were no fingerprints on the windows of the house, but the fire started inside the house.
Cindy and her husband before the divorce
Cindy James was then sent to a psychiatric ward on the orders of a judge. She stayed there for ten weeks and in the report of two psychiatrists who attended her treatment it was stated that Cindy had lied about everything, written the threatening letters herself, killed the cats, tied the nylons around her neck and stabbed herself with needles. as well as setting the house on fire.
Cindy kept a diary during her stay in the psychiatric ward, and she wrote there, among other things, that she saw no other way out of this unbearable situation than to commit suicide as soon as possible.
another attack
When Cindy was finally released, she was fired. She then officially changed her last name from Makepeace to James, sold her house and bought a new one. She regularly saw a psychologist who said her recovery was nothing short of amazing.
And so a whole year passed in peace and contentment, without any incident.
In October 1988, Cindy was found unconscious in her car in the driveway. Naked below the waist, hands and feet bound and of course with a black nylon stocking around the neck.
Cindy told police there was little else to consider her ex-husband was behind the attacks, but Roy Makepeace vehemently denied all the allegations. It turns out he was also out of town when one of the attacks took place.
Disappearance
On May 25, 1989, Cindy disappeared without a trace.
The day had been very ordinary. She had deposited her salary in the bank, but Cindy had a new job as a nurse. After that, she bought a birthday present for her friend’s son, went to a beauty salon, and bought some food.
But when Agnes Woodstock knocked on the door that night, to attend their friends’ regular game night, Cindy was nowhere to be found.
His car was found in a supermarket parking lot. Several shopping bags filled with food were in the back seat along with the birthday present. There was blood inside the driver’s door as well as around and behind the car.
But Cindy was nowhere to be found.
The autopsy
Two weeks later, on June 8, 1989, his body was found in the courtyard of an abandoned house slated for demolition. Her face was jet black, as if she had been beaten in vain. Her hands were tied behind her back with a strong rope, and her legs were also tied tightly.
A pathologist confirmed that Cindy had been severely beaten. It was also discovered that she had a potentially fatal dose of morphine in her blood.
However, his death was ruled a suicide, even though his hands were tied tightly behind his back.
Cindy’s family and friends were furious, claiming that the police had failed to protect Cindy from her or her enemies for seven years, and that the culmination of their inaction was to blame Cindy herself for her death.
But the police held firm. Cindy had tied herself up and killed herself by injecting herself with morphine.
However, there was no consensus on the decision. Many thought it impossible that Cindy could have tied her hands so completely behind her back, let alone under the influence of strong morphine.
The police replied that the morphine had taken a quarter of an hour to work, and during that time Cindy had easily managed to hold herself back.
A knot expert said it was possible for Cindy to tie herself if she practiced hard enough, even in just three minutes.
dissatisfied family
Cindy’s father, Otto, was very upset and told police they botched the investigation into the attacks and treated Cindy badly. They would have even dropped her into death blaming herself.
He said there was no way Cindy could have tied him in complicated knots, and Otto pointed out that no syringes were found near Cindy’s body. If Cindy injected herself, where was the injection?
Cindy’s body
But the police closed the case and have since refused to reopen it.
The case of Cindy James is still debated to this day.
Was she mentally ill and had she invented harassment and attacks? Or was she actually persecuted and abandoned by the police, which resulted in her murder?
Over the years, more and more people have leaned towards the latter theory.
But we’ll probably never get answers to the CIndy James riddle.
