PUBLISHER: Seal Books, 1/1991
GENRE: Nonfiction/True Crime
SETTING: British Columbia, Canada, 1980's
PURCHASE: link and
link
AUTHOR SITE: link
WIKI: link
MY GRADE: A+
FROM PUBLISHER: On May 25, 1989, Cindy James, a former nurse and social worker, disappeared. On June 8, 1989, her body was found in a vacant lot in suburban Vancouver. Her hands and feet were bound. She had a puncture wound in her right arm. Initially police investigated the case as a murder, but later claimed it to be suicide. On May 28, 1990, a coroner's jury ruled the cause of Cindy's death "indeterminate."
For nearly seven years Cindy's life had been a nightmare. At least ninety incidents had been reported to the police, including threatening phone calls, abusive notes, cut phone lines, strangled animals left in her yard, and physical and sexual assaults. Several of these events could be substantiated by coworkers or relatives who were present when they occurred.
Was Cindy killed by a sadistic tormenter who is still free, or did the very real persecution drive her to stage horrifying incidents to gain the help and attention she so desperately needed? Why did all our social institutions fail her at every turn? Because one thing is certain: Cindy James's death was the result of systematic indifference and abuse on the part of the authorities-all men-who might have saved her. From difficult relationships at home to the indifference of psychiatrists and members of the police force, Cindy James's tragedy embodies a nightmare women everywhere share.
MY THOUGHTS: This is the true story of an incredibly sick woman who seems to have lost her mind when she separated from her husband in 1982. The separation and divorce was Cindy's decision. Her maiden name is Hack, married name is Makepeace, and she changed it to James after divorcing Roy. So to answer the book's question of who killed Cindy James, in my opinion she killed herself. All roads lead back to Cindy. There isn't one shred of evidence to support someone stalking or raping her but there
is evidence to suggest she stalked herself. She has an above average IQ, is anorexic with breast implants, and has been hospitalized for depression and suicidal thoughts multiple times.
She died from an overdose of morphine, flurazepam, and diazepam despite the fact she was found bound with a stocking around her neck. She'd been prescribed a lot of medication for depression over the years and she appears to have been stockpiling it. Police and her family found a lot of it in her house after she died. Her family got rid of a lot of it for some unknown reason.
One or two psychiatrists predicted she'd stage an elaborate suicide to make it look like murder and damn if they weren't right. She took several medications then hog-tied herself, which
can be done. All ligatures on her body when she was found- around her neck, wrists, and ankles, were all loose, so loose in fact they never even left a mark on her and she had no bruises anywhere. A knot expert, Robert Chisnall, was asked by those involved in the investigation to see if he could knot ligatures himself and he could indeed do it within a few minutes. From page 207:
"He (Robert Chisnall) tied himself up using similar strands of nylon and found several different ways of producing the knots and simulating their tightness. He even found a way to do it with his hands and feet in front, and then rearranging the knotted stocking so that the hands appeared to have been tied from behind. Self-tying could have been effected with a minimum of effort, he said." Robert, before the experiment with tying himself, didn't think Cindy could have tied herself up but he proved himself wrong.
The book is very well written and fair. He looks at it from both angles. The book includes eight pages of black and white photos of Cindy and her family. He was
"the only person given access to the personal diaries of Cindy James by her family. He has conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with her family, her ex-husband, her friends, and officials involved in the case." He also used police files and her own psychiatric files. He came to the conclusion that Cindy killed herself. Her afore mentioned diaries are unreliable. She was told by a psychiatrist to keep one as a way of expressing her feelings. When she realized they weren't going to read them, she stopped writing in them.
There's a section in the back of the book with a chronological order of all the police calls that were made by her, beginning in October 1982. She claims she was first assaulted in 1983 and she even had sticks and debris up her rectum once, page 142,
"...and there was evidence that twigs were shoved up her rectum during one attack and that a cigarette had been butted out in her vagina in another." She claims that she was raped with a knife (1/27/83) though she never actually saw the knife. And I'm assuming she means she was raped with the blade. About the knife incident, page 15:
"Cindy was vague on details and doctors found no evidence of rape or serious injury to her vagina." She claims that she's never seen her attackers, ever. She claims too that a dead cat that had been strangled to death with a stocking and was left at her door two different times but no one ever saw them, or so I assume, so I'm assuming there never were any actual dead cats. At least I hope that's the case. She came home once and her dog had been beaten and was bloody with a stocking around its neck, sitting in its own feces. It was the same type of stocking that was on the dead cats. Someone was with her when she got home,
of course, and saw it and they stupidly assume that since the dog ran over to Cindy that Cindy couldn't have been the one who abused it in the first place. And after several assaults, including the one where she died, she had 'pinpricks' on her inner arm at the elbow, at least once it was on the right arm (she's right-handed) that was from a hypodermic needle. Some say she couldn't have done that to herself with her left hand because she's right-handed. Stupid thinking.
Edit- No one actually saw the two strangled cats and one cat that had supposedly been hit by a car and was found at her door. That information came from her own diary/log she'd been keeping.
It's proven that some of the threatening phone calls to her home were made from inside her own home. It's not a coincidence that several times she was found bound by someone who was due to be at her house later that day. How convenient. There were a few house fires at her home and they were proven to have been started from inside the home. She was hellbent on framing her ex-husband for the attacks and threatening calls and letters. What she
didn't know was that when one of the fires took place not only was he out of the country, he was on
another continent. And he too got a few threatening phone calls. Let's pretend Cindy really did have a stalker/tormentor. Why would he call her ex-husband? He wouldn't. It doesn't make any sense. And at least once she claimed someone threw something through her window, breaking the glass, and it was proven that the object was thrown from the
inside of the house to the
outside. She also claimed that while on vacation in 1981 with her husband and sister Melanie, her husband murdered and dismembered a young couple.
Cindy reminds me of Joanne Chambers, a Pennsylvania school teacher who was stalking herself and trying to frame her female co-worker. You may know of Joanne from an episode of Forensic Files called
Sealed With a Kiss.
You can read more about Cindy at the following places:
Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
Cindy's
Unsolved Mysteries segment called Scared to Death originally aired 2/13/91,
season 3, episode 20 , rebroadcast
7/17/2009 on Spike.
