Hey, weirdos, Elena here.
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Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
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i am ready whatever whatever whatever guys it's spooky season it's spooky season and our spooky season is off to the most glorious start because the other night we got to go see something motherfucking corporate guys this yeah i mean i my the first tattoo i ever got when i was 18 is the something corporate little c like copyright symbol.
Yes. On my wrist. Nobody can copy Elena.
First one. She's one of a kind.
First tattoo. I literally lived and died by something corporate.
Lived and died by Andrew McMahon. Can attest. I started listening to Andrew McMahon when I was about five years old because Elena was 15 and she said, we're listening to this.
She said, I have no choice.
She said, we're going to the grocery store.
Let's listen to Constantine.
And I said, you betcha kid.
So they obviously haven't toured in a while and I think the last I mean the last time I saw them was I've never seen something I can't even remember we used to see them all the time in high school like we went to every single they used to play in like random gymnasiums and shit we would go see them auditoriums and like we would see them all the time so I've seen them countless amounts of times in high school and then after high school they got back together we saw one I saw one with John and then they just stopped yeah and we were touring see jack's like all the time yeah but it's like something
about and jack's is amazing but just like something about something corporate just the nostalgia yeah and so they were coming back around we immediately got tickets i got tickets i'm not kidding you the day they went on sale second they went on sale within seconds yeah and it was me ash and uh my nephew aiden who's awesome shout out to aiden and and and we got to go and we we so we got into uh i'm too excited i mean i'm still like coming i'm still dealing with it it was like what was it a week ago yeah and i still feel like it's in my veins yes it oh it is it lives there it lives in me yeah their
tour manager connor shout out to fucking connor and his girlfriend molly molly and connor absolutely forever molly and connor forever guys two of the nicest people we've ever met in our lives connor reached out and was like hey do you like i'm gonna get you in and like to meet andrew because he wants to meet you and we said i'm sorry what and i said connor say it again what do you mean what the fuck does that mean and he was like oh yeah so we're walking in with connor who's a sweetheart and we i was just in shock that we were like i was like i'm sorry what and he's like oh yeah we'll like you
know we'll get you to to meet Andrew and I was like holy shit so I'm thinking after the show because we just thought we were going to our seats we're like yeah it's like a backstage like tunnel sort of yeah like to get up to this like balcony area so I thought he was taking us there he takes us into a room I wish that it was on camera the face I gave to Ash it is in my mind it's in Ash's mind because we walked into a room and I just looked over and I go oh that's Andrew fucking McMahon's back like the back of his head like that's just he's right there we walked right into a room and he was just
like oh here's andrew i had no idea that we were no i lot of like also just for everybody one of the last times that i met him was when i was i think i met him once when i was like 18 at a concert and i was very like normal and i was like oh like i love your music la la when i was 14 i was cool guys i was cool then but when i was 14 i met andrew mcmahon and i was not very cool and he had lost his voice after the show it was like the, I think it was the Guster.
Yeah. It's the one they played with Guster.
Yeah. And he lost his voice.
And we got to meet him after the show.
And he was like signing tickets.
And I walked up to this man.
And I just screamed in this man's face.
I love you. She went, I love you.
I didn't know what the fuck else to say.
He was so kind. He was so nice.
If somebody did that to me, I would probably be so nice, but I'd be so overwhelmed.
And he did not seem overwhelmed at all so this time i said you gotta play a cool bitch cool girlfriend you gotta you gotta just nod and smile he is so kind so nice he said he gets hit up constantly when we mention him or corporate or jack smanagan on the show why you guys are the fucking tit shout out to you anybody who has reached out to hinder mcmahon and told him and i mean i'm forever in your debt because when he brought that up i was like that's my motherfucking listeners right there like that yeah those are my homies right there those are the boys doing the lord's work yes getting me to
be in andrew mcmahon's orbit so that was bonkers bananas like truly bonkers bananas he was so sweet that was before the concert even started so i was already like in a place like we got to chat for a minute and he was like oh come back after the show come hang out and i was like like I'm what we said threaten us with a good time what do you mean what do you mean what are you talking about what so we went the show was fucking amazing guys if you were at that something corporate show like how fucking awesome was that when he crowd surfed oh my god it was at the Roadrunner it was so good he crouched
every single one of us in that room returned to a 16 year old and or six like and or six if you are ashen aiden uh at one point he said like I want you to like like rock out like you are whatever age you are when you heard us for the first time so I was like 16 and Ash goes I'm gonna rock out like I'm six and Aidan goes I'm gonna rock out like I'm three Alina really indoctrinated us but yeah we got to talk to him after he wants to be on the show and I lost my mind I love that he wanted to be on the show and was like I shouldn't have asked that yeah we were like I was like oh no I was gonna ask you
to be on the show he's like no I I shouldn't, I shouldn't have said that.
We're like, no, you absolutely should have. Guys, he's so nice.
He's so cool. Like, meet your heroes.
And hey. Because it was so lovely.
He might be on the show in the future.
He might be on the show.
Hit him up. That would be great.
Hit him up some more.
I want to, I feel like we could do something like fun with him.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I have some ideas.
We could do a spooky thing with him.
I think it would be a lot of fun.
Talk about the inspo for me and the moon.
I need to know what the inspo is for that.
Andrew McMahon in Something Corporate is very much the only other time besides Ghost. that I felt that way about music which is so funny because very apples and oranges zebras and and apples they just they both hit the same way yeah Tobias and Andrew both both hit in similar ways it's true it's it was a it was great so Andrew McMahon's really really kind Connor and his girlfriend Molly are beautiful humans they're our favorite listeners at the moment so step it up everyone just kidding but we really really appreciate it it was just such a cool experience it was really fun to be able to be 16 again and belt
out songs about angst oh my god when they played if you see jordan oh my god felt right iconic felt right so yeah that was awesome and and again thank you guys for you know letting him know when we mention him like you're the real of the ones so we appreciate you we're so thankful for you yeah you rock it's it's a cool life walking into that room and seeing Andrew McMahon just sitting there I was unprepared yeah it's the it's an understatement it's not lost on us how lucky we are it is not lost on us no when he said Andrew wants to meet you I said that's not real I said what?
that's not real Connor use me I literally when he said I was like what the fuck are you talking about like what Connor you shut your mouth don't you laugh at me boy and he's like what?
he's like I'm not he's like he's right there and then we got to see our friend Jessica who used to like we used to we met Jessica and Kristen and Tanya at a Jack's Mannequin concert years and years and years ago it was the one when I was like 14 and I screamed I love you in Andrew McMahon's face and we went to concerts with them a bunch like Jack's Mannequin concerts like it was our thing like we would go every year to one or something like that and then we got to see our friend Jessica so it was great hi Jess hi Jess so it was just it was such a good night it really was like start to finish I'm
surprised I didn't cry yeah it I'm still I'm not over it no I don't know that we'll ever be I'm gonna be over it was a very very cool experience yeah and we just had to gush about it because we like to tell you about fun things and we wanted to say thank you because yeah because you guys are the ones that are hitting them up every time we mention them which is just fucking wild all right well I have a very very very strange case today.
It's going to take us down.
I know. It really did.
I'm sorry. But I remember hearing this case years ago for the first time on My Favorite Murder.
Shout out to Georgia and Karen.
Shout out to Georgia and Karen.
It's the mysterious slash very strange death of one Cindy James.
I know you know this one.
Yes. Yes, I do. And if you are a true crime fan, a true crime aficionado, I'm sure you've heard of this, but I haven't listened to this case in a while.
I haven't, like, looked into it in a while.
And then I decided I wanted to.
And me and Dave were just like, what the fuck happened here?
Yeah. This is a very distressing case.
Yeah. And I'm sorry.
There's no answers.
Yeah. But it's still, it fascinates me.
And I want this case to be solved.
And again. Yeah, it's very horrifying.
You always say there's always hope.
There is always hope.
We're going to do this in two parts.
Otherwise, it would be, like, mind -bogglingly long.
Yeah. um so i'm going to give you part one today and then part two will follow up uh what is it thursday friday thursday right yeah i don't know where i am what planet do we live on um who knows i'm i'm in outer space right now retweet all right well let's get into it so on june 8th oh on june 8th 1989 so i was not alive you're not here and this isn't good on june 8th 1989 a municipal worker discovered the body of 44 year old Cindy James in the backyard of an abandoned home in Richmond, British Columbia.
Her body was found hog tied and she had a woman's stocking wrapped around her neck.
Sorry. I sneezed. Everybody bless you.
Thank you. Uh, two weeks earlier, friends of Cindy had reported her missing when she failed to show up for a game of cards that they had planned.
And when authority searched her car, they found blood and other signs that indicated she probably met with some kind of foul play yeah she's found hogtied hogtied and with stockings around her neck yeah like what the how horrifying so after opening an investigation into cindy's death investigators learned that for almost 10 years leading up to her death cindy james had been repeatedly reporting to richmond police that she was a victim of harassment stalking assault even she actually even gave police threatening letters that had been sent to her and answering machine messages as evidence of what was happening
but local police could never verify her story and they never really intervened much to protect her and it's like why isn't any that like again i always say like i feel like it's better to overreact that's the thing just overreact i think it ends up being nothing yeah you've expended some time and some resources for sure that's um that's not lost on me and that's not a small thing but it i mean there's a chance that you're going to save someone's life.
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if it goes the other way, that's a lot of bad press for your agents there.
But at first, Cindy's death appeared to be the inevitable and obviously tragic conclusion of this years -long series of harassment that she'd been going through with an unknown stalker.
But when investigators started digging into her personal history, they found evidence that completely contradicted their initial assumptions and pointed toward a much stranger explanation for her death.
interesting I don't know here's the thing I know the very like and this half of the iceberg with me I know like the the generalized version of this I don't know a lot of the detailed details yeah so I'm interested to see I don't know how I think it's just like my mind trying to preserve itself I had forgot about some of the details in this case and they're there's something there's some lurid details in this case that are just like whoa You guys, I tried my mochi ice cream the other day, and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely.
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But let's back up a little bit and talk a little more about Cynthia's early life.
She was born Cynthia Elizabeth Hack on June 12, 1944 in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada.
She was the second of six children born to Otto and Tilly Hack.
Otto and Tilly. Aren't those great names?
That's adorable. And a great couple name.
Yeah, just Otto and Tilly over there.
Yeah. So So Otto grew up in a rural farming family.
His childhood was particularly hard. He didn't really grow up with a lot of opportunities.
And as a pioneering family in the Peace River country of Alberta, the Hack family suffered some serious hardships, including the loss of several children.
Not one of the Hack girls survived infancy.
Oh, that's so tragic.
Not one of them. Holy shit.
Because of that, Cindy's birth was an especially exciting event for Otto and Tilly.
she was the first hack girl to survive infancy since the beginning of the 1900s oh my god isn't that what she went through i know it's awful it i hate to get like paranormal and like super natural here but it makes you think that there's some kind of like a curse or something that's all i could think like that's not trying like that really it's like holy shit just that many years and then the first girl to survive infancy like dies in such a tragic manner yeah That really is awful.
A years -long ordeal, too.
But after leaving the Army in November of 1945, Otto and Tilly moved to Richmond, British Columbia, where Otto attended university, and Tilly ran a small corner store.
Tilly would later describe this period of their lives as difficult, especially after the birth of two more children at the end of the 1940s.
After Otto graduated with a degree in 1948, he took a job teaching English in Vancouver.
hoover but just one year later a friend told him they pretty much convinced him to re -enlist in the military luckily during the time that he re -enlisted there weren't there was more like peacetime opportunities available because there wasn't like a ton of war going on yeah and once he re -enlisted Otto took a position teaching at military training facilities in Canada and in Europe it turned out that he really loved his position and he turned it into like pretty much lifelong career.
He'd spend the next 25 years committed to this until he retired in 1975.
Wow, Otto. Good for him.
But his career in the military meant that the Hack family usually traveled from one place to another pretty often.
And a lot of times with very little notice.
Yeah. There was probably not a lot of time to sit the kids down and explain every single time.
No, not at all. And sometimes they would only get to stay in one place for as little as one year before having to move on.
That's tough. yeah in some cases the kids would stay in one location with their mom or a nanny while otto lived somewhere else but in all cases like we were just saying it was a pretty destabilizing existence yeah that's tough for the kids and the lack of parental supervision prompted cindy to take on more responsibility than she probably would have otherwise yeah she became really really protective over her brothers and sisters and a lot of times she would take blame or she She would take on punishments for things that they did wrong so that they didn't have to face it.
Outside of the home, she was a really good student, took a lot of pride in her grades.
She was also very stubborn, very driven to succeed.
Her father said, I don't know whether it's stubborn or determined.
She always wanted to be a nurse from the time she could crawl.
She had a gentle kind of attitude, feeling, personality.
Oh, she sounds lovely.
She really does. so while otto and tilly looked back on their family's early years as you know relatively normal for a family in the 1950s 1960s cindy felt a little bit differently oh she told a psychiatrist that there was a quote strong discouragement to even have friends at all oh she said we weren't allowed to bring them home or go to their place huh and in her memory her early life was overshadowed by all that responsibility that she had to take like like constantly taking care of her younger siblings, keeping up with housework.
She was kind of like a kind of like a little mom at like a really early age.
And it wasn't low stakes chores like, you know, doing the dishes, taking out the trash.
She said my father would run his fingers along ledges to check if I had done the job well enough.
Oh, that's very military.
It feels like it's super military.
And it's like, leave that in the military.
I know you don't need to bring that home to your kids.
Like, that's a lot of pressure.
Yeah. obviously a very different time especially when they're moving around so often it's like that's added pressure yeah exactly like that all like prim and proper yeah and it's also like kids are messy man let kids be kids it's just the way of the world you gotta let them be a little messy you teach them how to clean up after themselves yeah and that's the way it is things are gonna spill accidents are gonna happen eventually you're gonna have your clean house back right you know but enjoy the messy house while you can and it shouldn't all be on like the oldest girl to clean everything no way
like that's you teach them to clean up after themselves to the best of their age's ability yeah you know but again very different time yeah but in addition to all that the transient lifestyle of growing up in the military family made it really difficult for cindy to make friends yeah so she grew up feeling really lonely especially when both or one or both of her parents were gone because sometimes it was just auto and the mom would stay back to kind of like finish out until they could go on to the next place sometimes both but sometimes the mom had to to go and then it was they were just with a nanny
and that must be tough yeah you know yeah another prominent feature of the hack household was otto's anger and occasionally explosive temper which got even worse when he was drinking heavily and he usually was here i was being like good job i know not so good not so great cindy's brothers had a little bit of a different opinion on their dad's drinking they just felt like it was one of those things that was like of the time and a part military life which i guess i can see that sort of why they thought that they just yeah they felt like it was one of those things that was just like part of it all
yeah her brother doug said it's something in the military the thing to do i didn't make a value judgment out of it but cindy on the other hand always struggled with her father's presence in their life to her it felt like he was really detached and really aloof when he was around and when he wasn't it was just like kind of more peaceful but also she missed him yeah it was one that's really that's hard yeah it's such a catch -22 it is exactly and the day her sister melanie got married cindy wrote in her diary the tension in the house was unbelievable dad put on his affable host act and everybody congratulated
him on having done such a good job oh that's really sad and she probably felt like oh yeah like he did such a good job meanwhile like i'm the one that really like raised these kids, you know?
As they grew older, Cindy and her siblings, they found ways to cope with their dad's drinking and sometimes abuse.
But it was still a big part of their lives and a frequent topic of discussion among them.
A few of them, like Cindy's older brother Doug, kind of found ways to justify or excuse Otto's behavior, which in and of itself is a coping mechanism.
Yeah, for sure. But Cindy and her sister kind of slowly put these emotional and eventually physical walls up between themselves and their parents.
Ann Mulgrew, who wrote Who Killed Cindy James, said, Cindy had built an emotional wall to keep her parents at bay and never demolished it.
The rift between Cindy and her parents opened in her adolescence and became unbridgeable in her adulthood.
Ooh, that is really sad.
Yeah, I wrote, so that's good.
But the biggest shift in Cindy's relationship with her parents came in 1962 during two life -changing events.
First, Otto was given the opportunity to move the family to Europe for a long period, which was something that he had actually dreamed of for a really long time.
But right before they were about to start prepping for this move, Otto got a telegram letting him know that his father, brother, and four nieces and nephews of his had been in a car accident, and not one of them survived.
Oh, that's awful. So he lost multiple incredibly important family members in an instant.
The news was obviously devastating and it made Otto pull away from his family even more.
And I'm sure, you know, drink a little bit more.
Yeah, that's awful.
Because they probably just wanted to help him through it.
Yeah, exactly. But I think the only way he knew how to deal with that was by isolating himself.
But then not long after the accident, Cindy graduated from high school and she told her parents she was not going to move to Europe with them.
She didn't want to go.
Her brother Doug, who was in college at the time, was planning to stay in Canada.
So Cindy saw no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to do the exact same thing.
Yeah. But this decision that she made caused a huge argument between her and her parents.
They absolutely refused to let her stay in Canada.
The fighting went on for months about this topic.
Until Otto and Tilly finally relented and agreed to let her stay behind on the condition that she enroll in school for the fall semester.
Okay. So she agreed.
She enrolled in the nursing program at Vancouver General Hospital's nursing program.
But by the time she enrolled, the program had filled up, so she was placed on a wait list. A little bit of a loophole there.
Oh, and you want to know, though, like would things be different if she had gone to Europe?
I wonder. Would she have liked it there?
Would she have stayed there?
Yeah. You know, would this whole thing have happened?
I know. That's honestly a really good point.
Yeah. I don't know.
I just always wonder those things.
Because I still don't know exactly what happened here.
I'm not. It's, my mind goes like back and forth to so many different possibilities of what could have happened.
But in the meantime, the hospital offered Cindy a nurse's aid job until she was able to begin classes.
So at least she would get a little bit of experience in the industry.
Yeah. It seemed like a pretty reasonable compromise for everybody involved, but Cindy still resented her parents for trying to control her life, especially when they weren't really trying to control her brothers.
Yeah. Yeah, I know that's hard. Yeah, so she started cutting off a lot of communication with them.
Despite that distance, she did still check in occasionally in the years that followed, usually through letters and through phone calls.
Tilly recalled one letter that she got in early 1965 that made her question if Cindy was actually doing as well emotionally as she said she was doing.
In the letter, Cindy said she met a young man at the hospital and they had gotten engaged, but he recently found out that he had terminal cancer tilly said the letter was just strange in its detail and went on she said there must have been 10 pages to the letter she wrote saying that one day they were skiing he went up into the mountain skiing and didn't come back what according to cindy a search party eventually found her fiancee in an abandoned cabin on the mountain where he had shot and killed himself holy shit yeah so otto and tilly found this letter not not only disturbing but remarkably
strange. First of all, they had never heard Cindy mention a fiancé before and they had just seen her a few months earlier during the holiday season.
Otto said, whether they were even engaged or not, we don't know.
Cindy's brother, Doug, visited her in Vancouver a lot and actually even hung out with her and some of her friends and he had never met or heard of this supposed fiancé.
That's interesting.
Now, years later, he would say he never met the man but he did eventually hear the story about the man's supposed suicide and all doug remembered was cindy telling him about the incident and quote discussing suicide as a legitimate option for escaping an existential crisis interesting which is important to remember yeah so if cindy had been engaged to be married in the winter of 1965 she did manage to get over the loss of this mysterious fiancee pretty quickly when she met one roy make peace in the summer of 1965 65 he was almost 20 years older than her he had come to canada from south africa where he
left behind a wife and a career as a psychiatrist oh yeah okay so that's something oh boy uh cindy roy dated for about a year before they got married in december of 1966 just after she graduated from the nursing program at vancouver general hospital when otto and tilly received cindy's letter about about the marriage, the letter, about the marriage.
Oh. They immediately disapproved of their daughter marrying someone almost twice her age.
Otto later said he took advantage of her.
He saw this pretty girl, and even though he was married with two kids, he zeroed in and made it his principal objective to get her.
Oh, that's really upsetting.
Yeah, and they were also pretty pissed about the fact that Cindy had gotten married so quickly, first of all, but hadn't even invited them to her wedding.
Yeah, just told them after.
Just told them afterwards.
They didn't know she was even dating this guy.
Wow. Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsie?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsie leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case, and we always tell you a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsey wherever you get your podcasts.
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The lack of invitation was just obviously another blow and really emphasized that growing distance between the family and Cindy.
And the family was still living in Europe at the time.
So there was physical distance and there was emotional distance.
Otto wrote in a letter to Doug, Never before in our 25 years together have I seen your mother so disturbed and heartsick.
What really hurts us is the fact that our own child decides to get married without seeking Let me tell you, when that happens, it is a blow.
Yeah. We had that happen in our family.
Something very similar happened in our family.
It's fucked up. I don't know how you do that to your parents.
I mean, I didn't invite my mom to my wedding, but that's very different.
Well, that's a very different.
But when you have like actual, like an actual relationship with your parents.
You have a communicative relationship.
Yeah. I mean, we are only seeing this from what we can gather and from a side where she cannot say all the details.
So I will take it with a grain of salt that way and say I don't know all the ins and outs of their relationship.
So perhaps there was something that is valid there.
I can only speak from the experience of being on the other side of it when there wasn't a valid reason for it.
And when it was like, holy shit.
That's actually funny.
Not funny, but you know, that you've experienced it one way and I've sort of experienced it the other.
With the same person.
So that's even funnier.
Wow, imagine that. History repeats itself.
But while Cindy's parents may have been excluded from her life at that point, Doug, her brother, still lived close by and he saw Cindy pretty often.
He actually got a good impression from Roy Makepeace and he said he was a quote, real neat guy.
He was easy to talk to.
he really enjoyed life he had a curious mind and was into everything I was into we hit it off right from the beginning well that's nice that her brother liked him yeah at least there was that you know so to Doug Roy seemed like a pretty good match for Cindy too he was stable he seemed happy and most importantly he wasn't at all like their father that was one of the things that they noted like he wasn't like aloof or detached wasn't aloof yeah exactly he didn't seem to have any kind of like issue with alcohol I think that was a big thing that Cindy didn't want to get get involved in cindy only
had a few close friends so a lot of nights she and roy spent together were also like she would play cards with doug and his wife barb like that was kind of their friendship yeah or they'd have a quiet night alone at home so she didn't they didn't have like a lot of social friends group or anything like that exactly when roy talked about the early years of their marriage he said we were tramping around cloud nine together all right that's adorable i I know.
I mean, I'm having trouble.
I know. Because of how this all began.
But like, that's a cute statement.
It's kind of like a roller coaster that's like, whoo, whoo, whoo.
Oh, okay, yeah. Because I was like, ooh, and now I'm like, oh.
And then I feel like I'm going to go, but like, ooh, again.
Ooh, but like, ooh.
Because unfortunately, that happiness that they had early on in their relationship didn't last very long.
Roy said eventually that, quote, we were grossly in debt at that stage of the game.
and obviously that took a toll on their relationship.
When things did start to improve for them financially it was when Roy found work as an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia.
But it also seemed that the financial security didn't do a lot to improve their relationship.
He said when we only had each other we had a wonderful life.
As we started to get solvent and acquire some possessions and things we had time and money for recreation and our interests, unfortunately, were slowly shown to be 180 degrees apart.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah. That, like, when they were only the two of them, everything was fine, but as soon as, like—and it's like, you never discussed your interests?
Yeah. Well, I mean, they only dated for one year before they got married.
That's the thing, though.
Like, what were you— Which, like, I mean, that happens and it works out, but— I feel like that's the time to, like, discuss what you like, what you don't like, what you're into, what you're not into.
too like but even the amount of stories that we've covered where like a couple gets married and one of them wants children and the other doesn't yeah and you're like why didn't you discuss that i feel like that's a that's a big thing before you get married but again everybody's different yeah exactly but cindy and roy's social life had always like i said been limited by cindy's inability to make close friends because remember she didn't really grow up learning how to make friends because it's a skill yeah it is a skill it really is and it's one thing she wasn't encouraged to in fact she was kind
of discouraged yeah and like we know she was always moving from place to place before she really even had a chance to make friends and was taking on more of like a caretaker role yeah at a young age like a little woman you know like yeah it's important yeah definitely so roy hoped that that wouldn't be a problem once they were able to get out into the world and enjoy the money that he was making he thought it might come a little easier but cindy didn't really seem interested in outdoor activities or any of the other things roy liked like skiing and swimming.
Yeah. And the conflict in their social priorities only increased the tension that was growing in their marriage.
Anytime Roy would comment or criticize Cindy's housekeeping, she would literally just walk out of the house and disappear for hours instead of actually communicating why she felt so criticized and probably triggered to when she lived at home.
I was going to say, and I think she was also, it sounds like that that was kind of like her her parents' way of dealing with things is very aloof, very detached, very, if I'm mad about it, I'm just not going to tell you why.
I'm going to move on.
Or I'm going to remove myself from the situation.
So it sounds like that's just what she knew.
Exactly. But never leave during a fight.
Never leave mad. That's my motto.
Never go to bed angry.
Never leave angry. Because you never know what can happen.
Yeah, you really don't.
You get hit by a car and then the last thing you have with somebody that you love so much and they love you is a fight.
Yeah. And I know there's some people that fucking hate when I give advice, like life advice.
They hate it. Really?
But if that life advice bums you out, you're the problem.
I feel like that's pretty good life advice.
You're the problem.
Also, that's life advice from both of us.
It is. That's from Ash, too.
You're the problem.
It's you. But we love you anyway.
Exactly. But I think that's pretty decent, generalized life advice.
Don't go to bed angry.
I feel like a lot of people live by that advice.
Right? People have shit that says that over their bed, don't they?
That's right. Always kiss goodnight.
oh okay you know don't go to bed angry that's the subtext don't go to bed pissed that's what it says over my bed when you're still mad anyway before long tensions turned into arguments obviously arguments turned into yelling fights shit was getting bleak Roy realized that Cindy was triggered but when he said in her mind I was being like Otto I thought I was arguing my with my otherwise rational provident wife my other adult but actually I was arguing with an irrational little girl who had been terrified and I simply couldn't get her to listen to any reason at all.
That's really sad. It is.
After almost 10 years of marriage the tensions finally spilled over between them one evening after Cindy had been antagonizing Roy.
He recalled that he probably said you stupid bitch shut up.
Oh fuck you. And then hit her.
Yeah fuck you Roy. Yeah like straight up fuck you Roy.
I can see why things spoiled over at that point.
That's so fucked up.
Yeah. You stupid bitch shut shut up.
I can't imagine. Are you kidding me?
Hearing either of those things.
People, I don't know if I've talked about this before.
People say shut up so flippantly.
I think shut up is like one of the meanest things you can say to somebody.
Although like if you're being like, oh my God, shut up.
Like in Mean Girls, that's one thing.
But when you're in a fight or like you don't want to hear what someone is saying and you say, shut up.
Oh, I think it's so so degrading.
It is. It's such a nasty way to shut someone down.
Yeah. And I grew up hearing shut up, so I think I specifically have like a, like my nervous system has a response where I like want to fight immediately.
Yeah, that's fucked up.
But then to add you stupid bitch onto that.
Like what? I can't imagine my husband ever calling me stupid or a bitch and definitely can't imagine the combination of both.
The earth would swallow me.
Like I. The earth would swallow someone.
one. Yeah, like that's, I can't imagine that.
Yeah. How awful that would be to hear.
No, I can't either.
And really, that was when Cindy was pretty much done with the marriage.
That's the thing, when he hit her, she never forgave him for hitting her, which I wouldn't either.
I wouldn't either. And from that point forward, their relationship was just in a downward spiral of accusations and anger and finger pointing.
It was toxic. Throughout the late 70s, Cindy wrote about her rapidly evolving feelings toward her husband in her diary one day she wrote woke up with a pounding headache and feeling very listless i hate roy for destroying that for me too he destroyed everything that was important to me just like he said he would if i left oh in that same diary cindy accused him of violent abuse and actually sexual assaults accusations she would later repeat to the police among other claims that she would make against him including murder holy shit yeah by 1980 any love between cindy and roy had completely evaporated
at least as far as cindy was concerned she wrote for some reason images of roy's face contorted in anger keep intruding on my thoughts by then she had come to see him as this like domineering force that was actually even worse than her father yeah and that perception of him would only twist and degrade as time went on damn that's horrible now it should be said that despite what what cindy ended up writing in her in her diary about Roy and what she told police and her family about them it's hard to know what's based in 100 % truth okay he did hit her like he he admits that he admits that which you're done
in my book yeah but there are some things that seem to have been exaggerated okay based on some people's beliefs I don't know necessarily if that's my belief because I don't know enough about their relationship yeah but some people felt that way okay according to Ian Milgrew there's no doubt out that Roy loved Cindy very much. He said, but Roy carried emotional baggage that weighed him down and made normal relationships difficult throughout his life.
I mean, he left a wife and two children.
Yeah. In a completely separate country.
He's got some emotional baggage that we don't even know about.
Exactly. He also was an enthusiastic gun collector and was paranoid sometimes to the point of being delusional.
And his interest in like fringe psychology and bizarre bizarre beliefs tended to make him an outsider, not only in his personal life, but in his professional life too.
And like we were just saying, he also had a lot of guilt and regret for leaving his ex -wife and children back in South Africa.
And those feelings would only get worse once his relationship with Cindy started to disintegrate.
Because then it's like he left them and what for?
For what this situation?
Exactly. Obviously not saying he was a great guy, not saying he was innocent when it came to the abuse because he literally admitted hitting her but just highlighting that Roy's history and sometimes bizarre behavior would make it easy to believe everything that Cindy said about him and eventually it would muddy the facts with what happened next.
Yeah, I can see that.
So in the summer of 1982 after an especially bad fight between Roy and Cindy they decided to separate temporarily with the hope and intention of working to repair the marriage.
Just a few months after separating though Cindy became pre -occupied because she started getting these obscene phone calls right around early october i just want to like trigger warning ahead of time some of these get like very sexual in nature and kind of like upsetting disturbing yeah disturbing upsetting definitely so just be forewarned she told the police sometimes the caller breathed heavily sometimes he spoke of sex sometimes of mutilation and the caller who always sounded like a man always referred to her by her first name and and spoke like he knew her.
So Cindy reported these calls to Vancouver police on October 12th, but there wasn't really a lot they could do.
Remember, this is the 80s.
So the phone calls just persisted.
In one call she received after she reported the harassment, the caller said, So you think the police will keep you safe?
You wait. I've got my zipper open.
Ew. Yeah, like I told you, obscene.
But Cindy hung up before he could go any further.
On October 13th, just one day after reporting the obscene phone call, she called the police again, and she reported that she had gotten even more of these phone calls since the previous night, and now she actually believed that there was a prowler outside of her house.
Holy shit. According to Cindy, she woke up when her dog started barking, and she heard the knob on the back door rattling.
Oh, fuck that. Like somebody was trying to get into the house.
So this time, two patrol cars were dispatched to the house, and officers searched the area, but they didn't find anything unusual and didn't find any sign of a prowler whatsoever.
whatsoever but cindy was still terrified so that night she packed a small bag and went to stay with her friends she was like fuck that i'm not staying here now there were several more reported incidents of harassment in the days that followed on october 15th she reported to vancouver police that somebody had thrown a rock through her kitchen window holy shit on the 19th officers were again dispatched to cindy's home this time for a report of somebody actually having broken into the house Okay, let's take a poll.
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Happy wedding. They searched the house, and the only evidence they found was a pillowcase of some sentimental value that had been slashed with either a knife or scissors, which is so bizarre.
When officers asked if there was anybody she could think of that would be targeting her for this harassment she mentioned that she just separated from her husband but she did say she couldn't imagine roy breaking in just to do something that trivial like and petty as destroying a pillowcase in the report the responding officer noted there was no indication of forced entry and no dust has been disturbed on windowsills apparently the only possible entry would be with a key or by slipping the front lock nothing disturbed or taken which i wouldn't say I'm going to say nothing's disturbed because the pillowcase
is hella disturbed.
Yeah, it's just very weird. It's also very chilling.
Yeah. And that it's like a sentimental one.
It's like somebody knows that.
Yeah, exactly. That's somebody who knows you.
Right. And knows that that pillowcase is sentimental to you.
That's so specific.
Yeah. So according to Ian Mulgrew, the responding officer on the break -in call, Pat McBride, was, quote, smitten by the shy, timid woman who was obviously shattered by the break -in.
In fact, a few days later, McBride returned to Cindy's house, this time on a social visit, where he installed new deadbolts on the doors for her.
He returned to check on Cindy several times in the days that followed, and in no time they started dating.
McBride was careful to keep a low profile, obviously given the circumstances of their first meeting.
But one week after the alleged break -in, Cindy found the first of many notes waiting for her on her back porch when she got home from work one night.
The note read, and it doesn't really make any sense, but it's gross.
It says, us, you, love, want, rotten, love, silence, hot, sex. Whoa.
Yeah. That's a lot of different feelings all at once.
The rotten part of it is...
Rotten and silence.
Huh. Rotten and silence stick out to me a lot.
Yeah. Forensic investigators checked the note and the envelope for fingerprints, but there were none to be found.
After discovering the note, Pat McBride asked Cindy if he could, quote, stay a few days with her until he found a place.
And she agreed. They had only been seeing each other for a few weeks at that point, but things had been going well between them.
And if nothing else, she figured she'd have somebody there to protect her if the prowler was going to return and a cop at that.
So yeah, I get it. It's probably good.
But it turned out that Cindy and Pat McBride wouldn't have to wait very long for another suspicious event.
Just a few nights after he had moved in, McBride found Roy Makepeace sitting in his car in an alley behind Cindy's house with two loaded guns.
What? Cindy had told Roy about the harassment that she was going through, so he had come by in the hope that he might catch whoever was harassing her.
This wasn't the first time that he had tried to catch whoever was doing this to Cindy.
A couple weeks earlier, she woke up in the middle of the night to find Roy knocking at her bedroom window, armed with a rifle and a large hunting knife.
According to him, he was quote -unquote on guard yard and planned to protect her should anybody be lurking around the house.
McBride told Roy to go home and to not come around with guns anymore, but the incident actually just made him think that it was Roy who was responsible for the notes and phone calls.
Yeah, I mean, I can see why that would be a little concerning.
Yeah, absolutely. Me too.
Yeah. So, for the first few weeks, Cindy alone experienced the harassment, but eventually there were, I guess you could say, like witnesses this is to her ordeal at various times in late 1982 and early 1983 neighbors were called seeing unfamiliar men in the neighborhood and one neighbor saw a man enter cindy's yard but none of them reported seeing the men do anything like suspicious beyond lurking men like several yeah several several unfamiliar men in the neighborhood and one man enter her yard weird and they said like Like they didn't see them doing anything suspicious, but lurking is suspicious
in my opinion. Pretty suspicious.
Now, similarly, Pat McBride was at home when one of those harassing no talk calls came in.
Later, he suggested that, quote, the call may have come from the airport since he heard a woman's voice on a public address system in the background.
Oh, interesting. But the caller never said a word. Huh.
The calls and notes continued for about a year while Cindy and Pat were continuing dating.
until that point it hadn't occurred to him that dating a woman who was regularly making reports of crimes to the police um might be a conflict of interest could be but eventually it became impossible to ignore and it became impossible to ignore the ways where his personal and professional lives were having a negative effect on one another yeah for example every time cindy would report a harassing phone call or a new obscene or threatening letter he couldn't help but notice the lack of evidence or specificity in the harassment.
According to Ian Mulgrew whenever McBride would point out the lack of evidence to support her claims Cindy quote acted like a petulant little girl at the slightest insinuation he didn't believe her.
Okay which I mean I get because if you're dating me and I'm telling you this is happening and I'm terrified and I don't really have any answer as to why there's no evidence but I still feel like it's happening and you're telling me it's not or it's weird what the fuck are you doing to help the situation other than just making me feel bad about it that's the thing like i feel like it's i feel like sexism is a is a theme in this story like calling like like calling her a petulant little girl i don't think that's fair i don't think that's it i think she's pissed that you don't believe her and i think
she's a woman who's scared yeah and if you're dating her especially especially yeah you should be like you know what i believe you first and foremost until there's reason not to and i'm sorry but you signed up for this knowing full well what the fuck was going on you were called there for that yeah so you know what yeah like you knew what you were getting into that's shitty so in december 1982 a little over two months after meeting cindy asked pat to move out telling him the relationship was quote unquote becoming more than she was ready to deal with he was heartbroken but he respected her decision and he
moved to his own apartment but he did keep a key to the house so that he could he could check the mail when she was out of town or working or something even though they weren't living together they did keep dating and at the same time cindy did also carry out a casual relationship with her husband roy make peace oh boy because they were still married yeah forgot about that it's complicated so the obscene calls and letters continued into the new year when according to cindy the harassment escalated to violence oh um this is very dark and trigger warning okay in her statement to the police she had
been at home on the night of january 27th when there was a knock at the door she thought it was pat coming by for a visit so she opened the front door and was immediately grabbed by a man who dragged her into the garage where there was a second man waiting she said that she struggled with both men during which her hand was slashed with the knife once they knocked her to the floor one of the men wrapped a black stocking oh around cindy's neck and started choking her she said until she passed out she told police she really couldn't remember what happened because she was kind of slipping in and out
of consciousness oh shit and this is specifically rough so just so you know she remembered quote one of the men inserted what she thought was a knife into her vagina and threatened to slice open her abdomen holy shit yeah and she passed out after that That happened, and when she came to, they were gone, and she was just lying alone on her garage floor.
Was there evidence that that's what happened?
Oh my God, that's...
Yeah. Dark. Incredibly dark and awful.
When the report was made to police, Cindy was asked to be evaluated by a physician to collect any evidence of sexual assault, like you were just asking.
But the doctor later reported finding no evidence of assault or injury at all to her vagina Oh.
But still, the escalation in the harassment gave the case more priority within the Vancouver Police Department and the assault case was assigned to Detective David Bowyer Smith, a veteran detective with the force.
He was immediately suspicious of Cindy's reports, including the assault, due to the fact that they all lacked evidence and none of them could be verified.
yeah it's very interesting that there's no evidence no evidence whatsoever especially i mean when when somebody is violated in that way when they when she said a knife yeah what she believed to be a knife that's i it's hard because it's like well was it something else yeah but then it looks like there was no evidence but then there's no evidence of anything and i don't really know like what other thing you could not leave evidence with no injury you know well no injury right if you're yeah it's just awful it's like oh that is awful but that's the thing and even the violent assault which should have left
more than a superficial scratch on her hand was missing any physical evidence of having occurred so bowyer smith trusted pat mcbride who vouched for cindy so he was willing to set aside his own skepticism and proceed like the reports were all genuine claims which is i guess how you should go about it definitely i think so There was also the matter, though, of Cindy's very believable fear of another attack.
In fact, she was actually so terrified of anything else happening that she refused to return to the house.
And she actually moved back home to where she lived with Roy, where they shared their house together.
And he moved into the basement.
Oh. So unfortunately, the move to Roy's house didn't improve the situation.
Within a few weeks, the threatening notes began again.
They said all kinds of fucked up things.
And Cindy reported this new batch of notes, because there was more than one.
They were coming like every every couple of days, it sounds like.
So she reported the new batch of notes to Bowyer Smith, who was again suspicious and unable to shake the feeling that something about Cindy's story just wasn't quite right.
The thing that he couldn't get past was her unwillingness to even consider that Roy Makepeace could be the perpetrator, because to him and nearly everybody else she talked to about the harassment.
assessment cindy's ex -husband wasn't just the most likely suspect but he also had the means and he knew her schedule well enough to perpetrate these crimes without being seen and he wouldn't have been like like it wouldn't his presence wouldn't have been alarming to the neighbors he they know him yeah the alternative though was that cindy had been targeted by an obsessed psychotic stranger which even in 1983 law enforcement's knew was unusual yeah so they They didn't really know where to go with this.
Oh my God. And that's where we're going to wrap up for part one.
Part two gets absolutely fucking bonkers.
Please hold on to your butts.
This is already like, what the hell's going on here?
And I still don't know.
It's a case, I remember the first time I heard it, I was listening to My Favorite Murder.
It was like, it was years ago.
It was like when I first started listening to them.
And this case has just stuck in the back of my mind for so long i was like oh my god we've never covered that one yeah it's just interesting and i'm i'm i'm interested to see like what people have to say about it listening to our coverage i want to i want to i wonder what people think yeah i just want to know what the weirdos like what their theories are because i am just flabbergasted i'm flabbergasted i have no idea what to think i'm horrified and i remember when i first when i first heard about this i was like well it's probably your ex -husband but then i remember at a certain point i was like
i don't know yeah I don't know it's just it's too weird yeah this is a strange one and a very upsetting one it is very upsetting I'm sorry luckily um I think this one is going to be followed by a fun guest collab and then a listener tale so yeah so there you go yeah it'll be a nice little you'll be able to breathe for a minute yeah so with that being said we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you don't believe somebody when they tell you that you're being attacked or that they're being attacked?
Yeah. Just believe them.
Yeah. And don't hate your life.
Yeah. Don't do that.
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