← Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
124. The Mysterious Death of Cindy James Part 2
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I told you about how Cindy James had been receiving threatening phone calls and letters for years, but the perpetrator had never been identified. Police started wondering if Cindy could be the one behind her attacks, especially after they confirmed that one of the threatening phone calls came from Cindy herself. If you haven't, make sure you go and listen to the first episode in this series, and for now, let's dive back into it. It's when your heart starts pounding in the summer of 1985, there were a series of small fires at Cindy's home. On three occasions, someone forced open the basement window, lit some sheets of newspaper on fire, and tossed them inside. None of the fires caused any real damage, as the arsonist hadn't used any accelerant or the newspapers burned quickly before anything else in the room could catch fire. And because of what they had learned about the calls Cindy had received, the responding officers were suspicious of these fire patterns. Right away they examined the scene with a little bit more of a critical eye. The grass in front of the basement window was overgrown. If someone had crouched down to force the window open, they would have had to trample the grass at least a little bit, but the long blades were seemingly untouched. Same with the basement window. There were no primarks on the frame. There were no scratches, something you would expect if it had been forced open. There weren't any finger marks in the dust on the glass. The cobwebs in the corners were still intact. There was only one the window had been opened from the inside. The responding officer believed that Cindy had started the fire herself, but when confronted with the inconsistency, Cindy completely broke down. She started crying hysterically and saying, you don't believe me? You don't believe me. She was so upset that the officer ended up backing off, though he still made a note of this in the case file. This new development put the police in a pretty uncomfortable position. They had already invested so much money and man hours into Cindy's case. If it turned out that this whole thing was a hoax, they would look ridiculous. On the other hand, if Cindy actually was in danger and they failed to prevent something from happening to her. After three years of looking for the culprit, they would look incompetent and negligent. While senior officials weighed their options on how to proceed, Cindy was attacked again in public, in broad daylight. On December 11, Cindy vanished while she was out on her lunch break. She reappeared around 6pm in a local park, stumbling and disoriented. She wasn't wearing shoes or a coat, even though it was freezing outside. She had scrapes and bruises on her legs and a swollen black eye. As always, a nylon stocking had been tied tightly around her neck, and there was a needle puncture mark in the crook of her arm. But beyond her injuries, there was no evidence of the attack, no witnesses to her abduction, and once again, Cindy had no memory of what happened to her, presumably because she had been drugged. However, a toxicology screening didn't show anything in her system that would account for confusion or memory loss. The police officer who took Cindy's statement in the hospital was familiar with her case history and the suspicions that had been raised after the latest arson incident. So they consulted with the hospital doctors to evaluate Cindy's mental state. She was less than cooperative with the psychologist, giving only clipped, guarded responses to any of his questions. I mean, probably because she was catching wind that they thought she was doing this to herself. And then at the end of their conversation, the psychologist blurted out that Cindy's injuries might have been, quote, of her own making. But he couldn't say definitively without further evaluation. The people working on Cindy's case were getting exhausted. This had been going on for four years at this point, and still they had never once communicated with the person doing this or even seen them. No one had. Not Cindy's family, not her co workers. They were really starting to believe that this might be some delusion Cindy was having, especially after the next attack that happened In April of 1986, there was another fire at Cindy's house, and this one was big, destroying her downstairs sewing room and causing major smoke damage in the rest of her house. Cindy told the responding officers that she had woken up in the middle of the night when her dog started barking, alerting her to someone outside. According to Cindy, she had heard a window shatter and then a loud thunder. When she tried to call the police, the line had been cut and her panic button wasn't responding either. Then she smelled smoke and realized her house was on fire. So she ran out and called 911 from the neighbor's house. Initially, arson investigators agreed with Cindy's version of Events. It seemed like someone had tossed an incendiary device through the downstairs window, which then had spread to some stacks of books, newspapers, and photos that were stored in the room. For a moment, Cindy felt vindicated. But further analysis revealed the fire actually started in three different places around the sewing room, which indicated it was likely deliberate. They also found more broken window glass outside the room than inside, which suggested whoever broke it was standing inside the sewing room. After years of chasing their tails, Police felt like this was the first conclusive evidence in the Cindy James case, and it proved that she was doing this to herself. When she was confronted with this evidence, Cindy had another breakdown and started crying. She told the police that they were abandoning her, that Raymond was surely going to kill her. Now she knew that he was the mastermind behind everything. But the police had already checked to see if he had an alibi, and he wasn't even in the country at the time. From that point forward, Cindy was viewed as a pariah to the Vancouver police department. She was just the woman who cried wolf to them. It sent her spiraling into a deep depression, A near catatonic state. She stopped eating, and she even threatened suicide. Fearing for her safety, Ozzy reached out to Cindy's family for help, and they had her admitted to a mental health facility for treatment. Initially, Cindy was adamantly opposed to this treatment. She said she wasn't crazy, that she wasn't making this up, and she refused to be labeled as delusional. From Cindy's perspective, this was literally a life or death situation. She knew that if she accepted treatment, it was a tacit admission that her stalker was a hoax. No one would ever take her attack seriously ever again, meaning the attacks would never stop. She felt her fate hanging in the balance. Unfortunately, her response to this also made her seem crazy. She kept trying to run away from the facility. They eventually had to keep her in restraints, which she then managed to slip out of. So Cindy was strapped to her bed with netting. It got so bad, at one point, she was relocated to the maximum security hospital where they kept convicted criminals. Perhaps realizing that the only way out of the hospital was to submit to treatment, Cindy eventually started cooperating with the doctors. She was prescribed antidepressants and mild sedatives, which seemed to really help her overall mental state. She started to engage in her talk therapy sessions, Though even there, her therapist felt like she often held back the full truth. Still, she showed enough improvement to be released after 56 days, as long as she continued to take her medication and meet for biweekly Therapy appointments. Following her release, Cindy slowly eased back into the real world. And the next year and a half was one of quiet incremental improvements. She took a leave of absence from her job at the children's home. She moved again. It was the sixth time in four years since the attacks began. But this one would be permanent, A small testament to her new outlook. With some financial help from her parents, Cindy bought a house. It had a downstairs apartment that could be rented out to help cover the cost of the mortgage. By the summer of 1987, she was ready to go back to work. She started a new job as a nurse at a local hospital. To Cindy's family and friends, it seemed like this horrible chapter was finally behind her. She did report a few scattered hang up calls at the end of the year, and a few months later, she said someone broke a window at her house. But the constant targeted harassment had finally stopped. Cindy's life seemed to be her own again. And her doctors at the hospital claimed it was because the cocktail of medicine they had her on was really helping her think clearly. That is, until October 26, 1988. Around midnight, Cindy activated her panic button, Summoning both Ozzy and the police. They found Cindy in her garage, semi conscious, naked from the waist down, sprawled out on the driver's seat of her car. She had a black nylon stocking around her neck. Her hands and feet had been bound with a second nylon. According to Cindy, she had gotten home from work that night around 8:30pm after she parked in the garage, she waited a few minutes before getting out of her car, triple checking her surroundings, looking for signs that anything was off. Even still, as soon as she got out of the car, someone grabbed her from behind and then she lost consciousness. She didn't have any memory of what happened after that. When she finally came to hours later, she struggled against her bonds to reach the panic button in her purse. Calling Ozzie. It was a troubling development for everyone involved. After nearly two and a half years of peace. It was an escalated attack, seemingly out of nowhere. However, Cindy claimed that it wasn't out of nowhere. She said there had been small acts of harassment this whole time, but she just stopped reporting them because she knew the police didn't take her seriously, which some people believed was justified on the police's part. They had caught her directly in a lie after the fire. So that's the approach that they took here too. Hoping to prove that this was another hoax, the police had the nylon stocking used to bind Cindy's hands and feet, examined By a forensic knot expert. They believed that the expert would confirm that Cindy had done this to herself as well. But he said the opposite. He said the knots and the binding were actually fairly complicated, and after repeated attempts, the expert wasn't able to replicate them on himself. The report concluded that Cindy could not have tied herself in the manner described above. And on top of that, two foreign pubic hairs were found on Cindy. But because DNA evidence was still in its infancy at the time, nothing ever came of that clue. After the attack on Cindy In October of 1988, the police once again found themselves at a crossroads. Had she been telling the truth all along? What did that mean for the arson investigation which had proved she was lying? We can't be totally sure what kind of harassment Cindy faced after the attack. As we know, she stopped reporting everything to the police. She did call them when someone tried to pry open a window in her basement, but that didn't lead anywhere. We also know that a security guard at the hospital where she worked discovered a threatening note on her car stuck under the wiper. And in mid May, she asked Ozzy for a gun. She said she was finally ready to fight back. Ozzy was on his way out of town when Cindy called him, but he promised they would discuss it when he got back. That was the last conversation they ever had. On May 25, 1989, Cindy went to run some errands around town. She had the next five days off of work, and she was excited to celebrate a friend's daughter's birthday that weekend. She started the day at the Hudson Bay department store, where she got a makeover. Later in the afternoon, she dropped by the hospital to pick up a paycheck. A few of her co workers remembered chatting with her in the break room a little before 4pm they had commented on how well her new look suited her. Then she stopped by the bank and picked up some groceries. Around 10pm, two of Cindy's friends knocked on her front door. They had planned to play bridge with her that night, but there was no answer and the lights were off. Cindy's car was missing from the garage, and so they contacted the police with a sinking feeling in their stomach. Cindy's car was discovered in a nearby Safeway parking lot with both doors still locked. There was a large smear on the driver's side door that looked like dried blood. Four full bags of groceries had been left on the front passenger seat, along with Cindy's purse. And the keys to both her car and her house were still inside, as well as almost $300 in cash. So this wasn't a robbery or a carjacking. The police checked with local cab companies to see if anyone had picked up a fare in the surrounding area that night. They also checked with the bus drivers of the local routes. Nobody had seen her. Cindy had just completely vanished. A few hours after Cindy's car was discovered, officers paid a visit to her ex husband, Raymond, as he had previously been their top suspect. But he had a solid alibi for the window of time when Cindy went missing, and there were witnesses to corroborate his story. However, he was very concerned about his former wife and believed that she was in true danger. A few months earlier, someone had left a throat threatening message on his answering machine. He still had the recording, and he played it for the officers. A gravely monotone voice droned, cindy dead meat soon. Raymond hadn't shared it with anyone before now because he had been trying to stay out of Cindy's life ever since the police had spent six hours trying to compel him to confess. He'd been pretty wary of saying or doing anything that might make him look like a suspect again. So he didn't know that Cindy had been attacked again the previous October, roughly two weeks after he had gotten the voicemail. Over the next few days, the authorities launched a massive search effort. Dogs, helicopters, divers, everything. Newspapers seized on the story, especially once they learned that Cindy's disappearance had been preceded by seven years of harassment. The longer the search dragged on, the more incompetent the Vancouver police seemed. And then, on June 8, two weeks after she vanished, some city workers were repairing a stretch of road less than a mile away from the grocery store parking lot. A few hours into the shift, one of the workers went in search of a secluded spot to relieve himself. There was an abandoned house on the corner. The yard behind it was overgrown with tall grass and BlackBerry bushes. The worker followed a dirt path behind the house toward a particularly thick patch of growth. And there, tucked under the hedge, was Cindy's body. At first it looked like she might be sleeping. She was in no near perfect condition for having been outside for two weeks. But then the worker realized that her hands and feet were bound, hog tied behind her with nylon stockings. Her face was black with decay. He immediately ran back to his crew, shouting for them to call the police. Based on the amount of decomposition, investigators believed that Cindy had been dead for a week before she was discovered at the minimum, but it could have been longer. Unfortunately, the amount of decay clouded several conclusions about the manner of her death, specifically whether she had Been murdered or died by suicide. Cindy was found wearing the same clothing that she was last seen wearing by her co workers at the hospital. A blue jacket, a pink blouse, and maroon pants. One of her shoes was found a few feet away in the grass. There were several slashes in the blouse, but no wounds on her skin underneath, so it was hard to say how the cuts had actually gotten there. Other than that, there wasn't any obvious sign of a struggle, and her clothes were relatively clean. That seemed odd to Ozzy Kaban if she had been laying in the grass exposed to the elements for at least a week. He also noted that two buttons were missing from her blouse but weren't found anywhere near her body. He believed that Cindy had died somewhere else, and then her body was moved to the lot after the fact. That could explain why she wasn't discovered during the initial grid search, and it proved that someone else was involved. Similar to the last attack, Cindy's arms and legs had been bound and hogtied behind her. She scratched one of her own fingers down to the bone with her pinky nail, presumably as she struggled to free herself. Meaning she was most likely alive when she was tied up. But who had tied her bonds. Investigators sent the nylon bindings to the same knot expert who had consulted on the last attack. And this time, in a shocking twist, he concluded that Cindy could have tied the bindings herself. Because the wrist loops were so close to, she could have easily slipped her hands in and out. However, that seemed to directly contradict her injuries. If it had been easy to free herself, why did she scratch through her own skin? Another nylon had been tied around Cindy's neck, and initially the coroner presumed that she had died of asphyxiation. The nylon around the throat had been a hallmark throughout Cindy's harassment, and she had lost consciousness from a lack of blood flow several times. Luckily, though, someone had always managed to discover her in time to revive her. Those who believed that Cindy was doing this to herself saw it as some sort of sick playbook. And maybe this time she just miscalculated the odds of someone finding her. When the police initially found Cindy's car the night she disappeared, they logged all the items that she left behind, including her bags of groceries. But they didn't find a receipt for what she had purchased in either of the bags or her purse. The grocery store also didn't keep itemized records, Only the total amount for each sale. And when the police totaled up everything that was in the bags, it didn't match any of the sales totals on Record that day. The police believed that this meant Cindy had paid for some items that were now missing from the bags. Perhaps a pair of nylon stockings. But just then, as they're starting to piece parts of the investigation together, the coroner came back with another huge twist in the case. Cindy actually hadn't died from asphyxiation. She had died from an overdose. She had lethal amounts of morphine, flurazepam, and diazepam in her system, none of which had been prescribed to her. Flurazepam is a sedative typically used to treat insomnia. Cindy's stomach contents indicated that she had ingested at least 2030 milligram doses of flurazepam, and possibly as many as 80. Even at the low end, that was enough to be fatal. And the diazepam in her system only sped up that process. Cindy had only taken a small amount of the diazepam, better known as Valium, but it accelerated the sedation effects. The coroner estimated that the combination would have caused Cindy to lose consciousness within 15 to 20 minutes and eventually stopped her heart after a few hours. But don't forget, there was also morphine in her system, a huge amount of it. The coroner estimated that it was five times the fatal dose. So, number one, it is overkill, because the other drugs would have already done the job on their own. But number two, morphine is a strictly controlled substance. Because of its abuse potential, it's a strong opioid. Hospitals keep track of their supplies, and only certain members of the staff have access. If any goes missing, they have to report it. In the 18 months Cindy worked at the hospital, all of the morphine was accounted for. So where did it come from? And more importantly, how was it administered? Morphine can either be injected or taken in pill form. There was a puncture mark on Cindy's right arm, likely from a needle. So it's possible that that's how the morphine got into her system. But it was such a huge dose, Cindy would have immediately lost consciousness, and she would have been dead within minutes. If that's what happened. There was no. No way she hogtied herself. And even if she had somehow managed to tie herself up first, then inject the morphine, police didn't find any needles or vials by her body. Where did they go? Even with this mystery, though, given her history, the lead investigator felt strongly that Cindy had done this to herself, just as she had been behind all of the attacks over the last seven years. At a certain point, the police decided that Cindy had been doing all of this for attention. But let's just play devil's advocate for a second. Let's go back to the very first incidents in 1982. The first officer on the case, Constable Pat mcbride. Almost immediately, he started a romantic relationship with Cindy, which continued for at least a year. She was later accused of seducing McBride and using her, quote, feminine wiles to make him overlook the discrepancies in the facts at hand. But he still swore he was present for some of those threatening phone calls that took place and that it wasn't Cindy doing it to herself. And then there's private investigator Ozzy Caban. He was an experienced investigator and was involved in Cindy's case for years. He admitted that there had been times when he questioned Cindy's sincerity, But he had also done his due diligence. He checked her house, her office, and her garbage repeatedly for indicators that she was doing this to herself. Like the threatening notes, many of them used letters and pictures cut out for magazines. He never found any cut up magazines in the trash. And the same kind of rope that had been used on the strangled cats and to tie up Cindy's dog. There was nothing like it found in her house. He even compared every shoe she owned to any tracks that they ever found outside of her house, and none were a match. After Cindy's death, her family cleaned out and packed up her house and tucked away in various hiding places. They found an IV kit, a catheter, some syringes. Now, this is definitely a little strange, but we have to also remember that Cindy was a practicing nurse, so it's not like it was totally strange for her to have this equipment. But it seems suspicious in the context of the repeated needle marks. After her attacks, her family also found a huge stockpile of medication, Most of which had been prescribed by her therapist over the years. Some of it included strong sedatives and antipsychotics. And again, it seems suspicious in the context of everything else. Some of these medicines can cause memory loss and disorientation when taken in large doses. But here is a curious counterpoint. If Cindy already had a stockpile of sedatives at home, why did the coroner only find drugs in her system that she did not have a prescription for? If Cindy died from suicide, why did she go out of her way to acquire fatal doses of different drugs, Morphine especially, which would have been really difficult for her to get her hands on without a paper trail? Every new detail I read about this case makes me change my mind about what happened to me. This case is kind of like, one of those fine line drawings where if you look at it one way, it's a picture of an old woman, and if you look at it another way, it's a picture of a young woman. It seems like whichever answer you hold in your head as you hear about this case is what you end up believing happened. If you believe she did this to herself, you, can find all of the evidence that's true. And if you don't, well, same thing. And if it makes you feel any better, the Canadian rcmp couldn't make up their minds either. The coroner didn't feel like he could definitely rule out murder or suicide. Instead, he requested a public inquest to thoroughly examine the Cindy James case from top to bottom. It lasted nearly 40 days and included testimony from 80 people. But ultimately, it was little more than just a recap of the case files. There were no new revelations that came to light. And at the end, the five jurors concluded that Cindy's cause of death was undetermined. In the years since Cindy's death, there have been several theories offered as to what really happened to her. The first one actually comes from her ex husband, raymond. He believed that Cindy's job working with children with behavioral issues had put her in someone's crosshairs. Some of her cases involved custody suits, and some of the children had been placed in the home after their parents had been convicted of serious crimes. Raymond believed that one of the parents who had lost custody was taking revenge on Cindy. Now, police did examine this angle at one point, but Cindy worked at the home for 12 years. But it's possible that they overlooked a potential suspect, especially if it was from earlier on in her career. But other than Raymond's suspicions, the police never found anything to vindicate this. The second theory comes from ozzy. All throughout the investigation, multiple people said they felt like Cindy was hiding something, holding back the full truth. The police, her therapist, and ozzy all said something along those lines. They felt like Cindy had a bigger story to tell, but for whatever reason, could never confide in anyone. The suspicion was only made worse by her amnesia. After the attacks. Did she really not remember? Or was she holding something back? So trying to break her out of her shell, Ozzie suggested that she try hypnosis. And with the okay from her therapist at the time, Cindy sat for a handful of sessions during which she uncovered a repressed memory of watching Raymond kill two people and dismember their bodies. It had allegedly occurred when they were on a boat trip in the summer of 1981. Shortly after this trip, Cindy's family first noticed tensions between the couple. And then Cindy announced her intentions to divorce Raymond. In her journal entries, Cindy claimed that she stayed with Raymond for another year because she was terrified of him. She was certain he was going to kill her, presumably because she knew too much. This theory ended up being pretty appealing to the police, who had thought for a while that Raymond was behind all of this. They wanted it to be him. There just wasn't any evidence. After Cindy remembered the boat trip, investigators went to the alleged dump site, but they didn't find any signs of the murder. There also weren't any missing persons reports in the area that match the description of what Cindy saw. And we know that Raymond had solid alibis during some of the attacks on Cindy, including her death. We also know a lot more about hypnosis and recovered memories today. Those were treated like gospel in the 1980s, but time and time again, they have been proven unreliable. The final theory comes from one of the psychiatrists that treated Cindy when she was hospitalized. He believed that Cindy had a form of dissociative identity disorder, which at the time was called multiple personality disorder. It could explain how Cindy was able to do some of these things to herself, some of them truly horrible and gruesome, but also have no memory of it, and therefore be living in true fear of an unknown attacker. This theory says that Cindy would fully dissociate to commit the attacks on herself. Now, there's one piece of evidence that really puts me into this camp. One of the threatening messages that was left on Raymond's machine. He kept the recording and gave it to the police. I played it for you earlier, but I want to play it for you again, because, remember, Raymond had a thick South African accent. And this voice doesn't seem to. But some people also feel like the voice sounds like a woman trying to sound like a man. Listen again. So maybe Cindy did leave this message for Raymond. But does that mean she left all of the threatening messages? We know that some other people witnessed these calls. They actually would pick up the phone when Cindy wasn't home. People also witnessed strange noises and occurrences while visiting Cindy. What sounded like a prowler outside. How could Cindy have staged that? Also, Cindy's therapist credited her recovery to the medication she was taking. He believed that it controlled her anxiety and her delusions of persecution, which is why the attack stopped for such a long time after her hospitalization. However, we know now that she wasn't actually taking her meds for some time. Her family did find a stockpile going back years. Some have suggested that when the attack started again could have lined up with when she stopped taking her medicine. So where does this leave us today? And where does it leave Cindy? In all of the research that I've done on this case, it seems like there are two things that that investigators believe to be true. One is that Cindy did at least some of the harassment to herself, and two, that another person did at least some of the harassment. But when you put those two things together, they can't both be true at the same time. At least to me. They just can't. Is it possible that Cindy was both a victim and her own perpetrator? To me, there's two answers, and I don't know which is more terrifying, honestly. Either Cindy entered a fugue state and was harassing herself with such planning and precision that police were never able to find firm enough evidence that it was her, or there was someone out there, someone who was essentially invisible, almost like they were a ghost who was able to stalk Cindy without ever being seen by anyone but her. But what do you guys think? Is there something I'm missing in this case? Well, that is all I have for you today. I'm going to continue to think about this case for the rest of my life. It's been haunting me for weeks now, and I don't see that ending anytime soon. Next week, you can join me here. We'll be back with another morbid Mission medicine episode, this time about illnesses that cause people and animals to behave like zombies. You're not going to want to miss that one. So until then, stay curious. O heartstarts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heartst Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Sound design a mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe have a heart pounding story or a case request. Check out heartstarts pounding dot com.