Hey weirdos, it's Ash.
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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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Hey, Weirdos! I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this is Warbird!
this is motherfucking mormon bitch and that's mickey's big burp i like how that was just like oh we're feeling some type of way things are loosey goosey today we're at my house the loosiest and the gooseiest i couldn't come up with a response quick enough you just stared at me blankly and i was like oh she gone it's early my coffee hasn't hit yet i tried to go to yoga this morning i couldn't it was a whole thing she forgot her map halfway there and i fucking realized it i was like are you joking me are you joking me are you joking me mate yeah um what's up dog what what's up dog you're almost
riding a book high i am almost riding a book high it's so close by the time this comes out i think it'll be like two days ago that it came out so you'll be on the high in the future this is awesome i'm so excited for you now and in the future i'm so excited i'm excited for you guys to read the butcher game and and people have been grabbing the butcher and the wren yeah recently a lot like to start the series which is so fucking awesome well you have to guys like if you you have to if you didn't read the butcher and the wren i would read that before you read the butcher game yeah for sure because it's
like punch all up it's all chronological yeah a lot of backstory a lot of a lot of shockers you know but the butcher game is longer she she thicker yeah she'll i think she's more brutal personally she 100 percent is there's uh no doubt in my mind there's any doubt there um but yeah you can still go go get her somebody go get her she's selling like a bazaar you won't be disappointed i think I hope.
I pray. You will. I loved it.
I liked it better than Butcher and the Wren and I loved Butcher and the Wren.
I loved that. I love to hear it.
I also have seen people who got the ARC advanced reader copies reviewing it and I've seen so many great reviews.
Everybody who's reviewed it has been so sweet and so kind.
One girl, she posted a picture.
We should shout her out.
Oh, book talkers and books to grammars.
I like books to grammars.
That's fun. Always make the prettiest like displays of a book yes it always they have a way of making me want to read any book and it's like they always make it look gorgeous this one creator on instagram michelle reads thrillers yes i was just i just saw that the way that she set the book up yeah to take the picture of it i was like okay oh it's beautiful they're all like there's they're amazing that way yeah i was gorg i was i was impressed i loved it i can barely take a good male picture in my fucking car So I can't take any good photos of things.
Sorry, I said I got hair in my eye.
I have so many cats.
All the cats. And I love them.
I also love those cats.
Yeah. Franklin and I have become best friends.
So yeah, we've always been best friends, but I feel like we really solidified our relationship.
The other day, yeah.
He crawled on my lap and he snuggled into me and I almost passed away.
Because I'm like, I like cats.
Like, I like cats just fine.
You're an animal person.
I just love animals.
Yeah. Yeah, but like cats were never my favorite.
Yeah, no. Like it just wasn't my thing for a long time, but then I met your cats.
Cats were never my favorite.
And I was like, oh, bitch, these cats are cool.
That's the thing. I feel like cats like morph to their owner, and I like to personally think that I'm like wicked cool.
Yeah. So my cats are like wicked cool.
Is it still in there?
Well, I'm glad you got that cat hi - Hello.
Whoa. I'm glad you got that cat hair out of your eye.
I was going to say cat and then eye, so it just went cat.
It's still in there, but by the end of this I'm sure it'll make its way out.
I don't see anything in there.
I wonder if you got glitter in there because your face is a little bit glittery.
Did you get highlighter in your eye?
I don't think I got highlighter.
Let's get into this.
Let's go. We got part two of the strange, very mysterious death of Cindy James.
Very strange case so far.
Super strange. It's only going to get stranger, to be honest. Oh, boy.
Yeah. So at the end of part one, Detective Bowyer -Smith got involved in Cindy's case, which was really starting to ramp up.
He, in the past, had worked closely with Pat McBride, who, remember, he was like the responding officer.
Cindy started seeing him.
Detective Bowyer -Smith worked closely with him, like I said, and trusted him.
So he wanted to trust what Cindy was saying.
Of course. But something in his gut was telling him that there was just something was off about her story.
Something was missing.
His gut just didn't feel right about it.
So on a hunch, he ended up asking her to take a polygraph exam.
And unfortunately, the results did literally nothing to alleviate his suspicions whatsoever.
Her test showed signs of deception.
But instead of confronting her with the results like right off the bat, he asked her if she'd be willing to submit to another exam.
And again, the results indicated that she was being dishonest, being deceptive.
So now he's convinced that he caught her in a lie.
That's like, you know, I mean, we always say it.
Hot dog in a trench coat.
But like, it is interesting when somebody...
I don't know. It's like it really goes both ways.
I feel like polygraphs are so difficult to have any kind of stance on.
Yeah, because I know that if you're nervous, that can show a deception.
You hook me up to a polygraph right now, my anxiety level is going to be at a billion.
Yeah. Just because of the nature of being hooked up to something that can determine your physiological responses to questions.
I feel like my brain would be like, you're lying.
You're lying. Even if I was telling the truth.
That's the thing. It's like when you go through TSA at the airport and you don't have a weapon on you or like contraband of any kind.
But every time I go through, I'm like, what if I have a gun?
And I don't. Like, I don't.
I know I don't. What if I accidentally put a gun that I don't have in my carry -on?
Oh my God. What if I put a machete that I don't have in my suitcase?
And it's like, your brain will just make you go like, Oh fuck.
I like that makes sense that you do that.
I think, Oh, did I pack a full size product that they're going to throw out?
Literally. I'm worried.
I bought, I brought like a full bomb with me.
I'm just like, did I bring that new hairspray that I got?
And I, they're going to get rid of it.
And I'm going gonna be sad yeah see that and it happens all like your brain can trick you in insane ways so I feel like in a polygraph exam you hook me up to that shit I'm gonna be like have I lied about everything that I've ever known in my life like I feel like is anything real is my name even Ash like is your name Elena I'd be like I honestly don't know my mom says I can't be sure but who's she to say I don't know I don't know I was there but I don't remember that's the thing well Cindy Cindy, so Bauer Smith, Detective Bauer Smith, confronts Cindy with the results.
Because of course it means something.
Yeah. I mean, of course.
We laugh about that, but it is interesting when you have other suspicions.
Especially having two deceptive, is that a word?
Deceptive? Yeah. Tests in a row.
That makes sense. So he confronts her with the results and she immediately bursts into tears, which honestly, I probably would have done the same.
But also, it doesn't make you look great.
Very suspish, but also, yep.
Yep, but also, I burst into tears, like, at the grocery store if the wind blows the wrong way.
And just being confronted with that would be horrifying.
Oh, yeah. No, I can't handle that, and she couldn't either.
No. And according to her, the reason why the results showed deception was because, contrary to what she actually said in her statement about the attack that happened in the garage, how she was attacked by, like, multiple men, and it got really violent, she said she actually did know the identity of one of these men who had attacked her, but she was terrified that if she named him, he would return to harm her family.
Okay. And this is where I say, well, now that's suspish because you are, you have now compounded what could be interpreted as a lie on top of deceptive results of a polygraph exam to cover the deceptive results.
Yeah. And it's just like, I don't, it's just strange.
Because Because again, I can understand that you, if she's scared that this person will hurt her family or hurt her, if she names them, that is a reality.
Of course. That many people go through in these kind of situations.
It happens. But it's also like, but like this has been a big part of your life.
Right. And if you know the name of one of the people.
We might be able to end this.
This could stop. Right.
So why wouldn't you just say it?
Right. Right. And also the police would be much more likely to be able to protect you if they know who they're protecting you from.
Exactly. So it's like I to my initial feeling about that, if I was that investigator would be it kind of seems like you're you're trying to fix deception with more deception.
You're yanking my chain.
Yeah. Is what he thought.
Yeah. But you can see it both ways.
I see both sides of this, because I see her not wanting to say anything because she's so scared, and I see being on the detective side of things being like, what the fuck then?
We can't protect you from someone we don't know.
If you know who it is, we can protect you from that person.
Right. We can't protect you from an unknown human.
Exactly. So the results of the polygraph exam were certainly unusual, and her response was certainly unusual, and Bowersmith wasn't ready yet to rule out the possibility that she was lying.
but he also had to admit that it was hard to believe somebody would keep up such an aggressive and pretty extreme charade for sure attention like he didn't he felt like she was lying but also he was like why would she lie about this just for attention like keep it going for so long and because and and ramp it up you know and cindy hadn't been alone in her claims and that was the other thing pat mcbride was convinced that she was telling the truth and actually he himself even answered some of the phone calls that were coming in like the weird obscene ones but in the cases where pat picked up the phone
the caller would like heavy breathe and then hang up he pat never heard the voice unless it was on the answering machine now despite the chaos and stress of the ongoing harassment the other aspects of cindy's life actually seem to be going pretty well relatively well she was well liked she was successful at work she actually got several real promotions between 75 and 83 the years not that many promotions i was like wow you're like that's a lot of fucking promotions but the after the attack in the garage she did file a worker's comp claim so that she could take time off to recover yeah and when she
was ready to intern return her employer was really happy to have her back but they requested that she attend a counseling session with a psychiatrist that way they could clear her to return to a high pressure environment because she's a nurse remember yeah she's in health care she's in health care that That makes perfect sense.
Yeah. So the request to consult with a psychiatrist was immediately rejected by Cindy.
Unfortunately, at that point, she had nothing but negative experiences with mental health professionals.
I mean, that is true.
And also remember the time period.
Mental health is still to this day stigmatized.
It's a lot better. But back then.
But then seeking help for your mental health was seen as a weakness.
Like, just that's how it was.
Yeah. And she was worried that she would be, quote, stigmatized as unbalanced if she went to see a psychiatrist. And that could have something to do with the case, too.
It could make her seem like she's admitting that maybe some of this is in her head.
And that's the thing.
You led me perfectly to my next point.
Because also, multiple officers with Vancouver police already thought she was making everything up.
So she said, well, if I go see a psychiatrist, I'm probably only validating that belief.
Yeah, they're going to be like, see.
It's exactly what you said.
I get that. Yeah. Eventually, she did reach a compromise with her boss, and she agreed to see Dr. Alex Conley, who was one of the psychiatrists associated with the clinic that she worked for.
Ah, isn't that a conflict of interest?
You think it's a conflict of interest now.
You just sit back and wait.
Like, you can't have her see someone who works at the clinic she works for.
Yeah, you sure can't.
She's got to go to an outside place.
You would think. That's bonkers.
It only gets bonkerser.
Oh, Lord. Dr. Conley saw Cindy a total of six times before clearing her to return to work, which six times I think is pretty valid.
But years later, his consultation would be seen by pretty much everybody as sus.
Yeah, I mean, right from the beginning.
Like Pat McBride, Alex Conley seemed pretty taken with Cindy.
And he didn't have any reservations when it came to believing even the most suspicious aspects of her story.
Oh my goodness, these mans.
He just thinks she's really pretty.
Which, if you look up a picture of her, she is gorgeous.
She's just beautiful.
But also, you're a professional.
You're supposed to be unbiased here.
Exactly. Now, the other thing was he only saw Cindy outside of his normal working hours.
What? He hardly ever billed for his services.
Oh. And this is my favorite part.
He kept literally virtually zero written record or notes of their meetings.
Nothing. Huh. No record of their sessions.
huh no i don't know how many of y 'all are in therapy but they do be scratching down some notes while you're talking i would imagine not alex conley gnarly yeah this was highly unusual given that the entire reason she was seeing him in the first place was so that she could be evaluated for that worker's claim which is like you need some you need records you need receipts baby so all signs pretty much pointed to an inappropriate level of familiarity between doctor and patient now that was that the threatening notes continued to arrive for cindy at home and at work throughout the fall and into the summer
but by the fall things took another alarming turn and i'm just going to give a trigger warning here like up front for the rest of the story just because otherwise i'd have to be like to pause every five seconds give like a blanket one so right here blanket for the rest of this story there is mention of animal cruelty and there is a lot of mention especially toward the end of like suicide and suicidal ideations so if that's something that you're not down to hear we'll see you next time exactly so on october 15th one year to the date after the harassment began cindy found a dead cat in her garden
with a rope tied around its neck oh a note next to the cat read you're next that's terrifying uh -huh by that point she also had already moved two times and had changed her phone number but her stalker seemed to have no trouble finding her each time which is shocking especially back then it would take a lot to keep finding someone we'll find out later how if if there was a stalker and i'm not saying there wasn't i'm just saying like i'm very much in the middle on this case i don't if she i don't know i don't know if there was a stalker yeah i don't know but we'll find out that if there was a stalker
it might not have been that difficult for them to get information okay she was a little free with information oh she was giving stuff out yeah exactly but a few weeks after the discovery of the cat she returned home to find her garden completely destroyed plants were ripped from the ground tossed around the yard like it was a wreck oh that's just cruel rule.
Yeah, it is mean. And the increased frequency and aggression led McBride to encourage Cindy to actually hire a professional bodyguard. Probably a good idea.
Yeah, not a bad idea at all.
So she took the advice and started working with Ozzie Cabin.
He was a private detective and he was actually a friend of Detective Bowyer -Smith's who had extensive experience providing security services to just private clients.
Now, hiring Cabin obviously made her feel a little bit safer in her home, but it really didn't do anything to stop the harassment.
That's wild. It is.
And remember, obviously he's not like 24 -7, you know.
But he's probably on call, right?
But yes, he is on call.
So in late November, just a few weeks after hiring this new security guard, Cindy found another dead cat in her yard. Oh my God, who is killing cats?
I can't even talk about it.
It ruins me. In the weeks that followed, the calls and letters started increasing in frequency and somebody started vandalizing the house, smashing basement windows, cutting her phone line, like serious fucking scary shit.
Fuck. Each time she reported the harassment and each time a detective was sent out to the house to investigate, but neither Vancouver PD or Ozzy Caben ever found any evidence that anyone other than Cindy had been at the house.
Oh. Just none whatsoever.
Wow. Which is weird. Yeah.
Like, if there is somebody, they're really fucking good at covering their tracks.
So a few months later, on January 30th, 1984, Cindy was actually attacked in her home for a second time.
Around 6 p .m., she called Cabin to tell him that she'd been hearing things outside the house, and she actually thought somebody was trying to break in.
Oh, that's terrifying.
So he rushed over to the house, and when he looked through the front window, he saw her lying on the kitchen floor, and it appeared that there was a knife sticking out of her head.
Her head? Her head.
H -E -A -D head. Holy shit.
Yeah. So, he kicked in the door with such force that it actually ripped the entire frame away from the wall.
Aussie. That's a man's that you want by your side.
He's kicking a whole door frame out.
Hopefully, he knows how to replace it.
So, he rushed into the kitchen where Cindy is just laying on the floor unconscious.
My God. And he expected to find the attacker probably still in the house because he rushed over there.
Yeah, he's on call.
all but there was nobody inside the house other than cindy and the house was completely silent completely still just nobody stabbed in the head well it turned out that cindy had actually not been stabbed in the head she was stabbed in the hand the angle with which she was looking like made it look like her hand was up or something yeah exactly but according this is still brutal according to the police report there was a paring knife stuck into her hand almost to the palm So I'm assuming it went, like the knife went through the front of her hand.
Holy shit. And it was pinning a note, like the knife was stuck to a note then stuck into her hand.
And the note said, now you must die, cunt.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was written in cut and paste magazine letters.
Like the classic. Like a ransom note.
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When the paramedics arrived, it was determined that actually her injury was not very serious which i'm like they must have gone like there's so many fucking tendons in your hand but also she's in health care and i just want to point that out yeah just saying but it wasn't very serious and the head injury that she suffered from a supposed blow to the head was also not serious and the nylon stocking that was tied around her neck also did no lasting damage but this is the second time that there's a rope tied around yeah like a nylon stocking and remember remember unfortunately like the cat there
was a there was a rope around oh yeah too so that's a that keeps happening okay but later at the hospital doctors would find a needle mark on her arm which led them to believe that she had been injected with an unknown substance they couldn't determine what it was but she had no recollection of being injected well here's my my question yeah there's There's a note that says, now you must die, cunt.
Why didn't they kill her?
Because it sounds like they didn't really make an effort to, because the head injury is not serious.
They didn't even know if there really was a head injury.
She said that she'd been struck over the head and that she passed out.
So they're like, okay, she must have been hit.
But it was almost like it was a case we talked about a few weeks ago where somebody said they've been hit over the head and like they were only unconscious for a certain amount of time the doctors were like you would have been unconscious for much longer yeah and that's and it's like it sounds like there was really no damn like it wasn't even a serious injury to the hand but like they had up if they were in her house and she's alone and they had a knife and a stocking with them yeah why didn't they just do it i mean i guess you could say that like maybe they heard I'm just playing devil's advocate
here. Maybe they heard Caban coming and ran out the back.
But it sounds like— Exactly.
It sounds like he didn't see anybody leave. Everything was silent.
Everything was quiet.
I mean, I don't know.
It's hard to explain.
And I'm not saying this isn't somebody doing this like trying to torment her.
But it's just like, wow, you're really like you had the chance to do it.
Right. And this person is like playing with fire.
yeah she's reporting this to the police over and over and over again the dice here and if there's if they're stalking her they they know that like they're seeing detectives at the house you know like i mean this this is shocking yeah it is now like the other reports of assault and harassment the scene at cindy's house appeared to be absent of any evidence of an intruder whatsoever and that's the part that i'm like what is going on here yeah on the kitchen floor where she'd been laying there were circular smears of blood that investigators found highly unusual, like somebody tried to clean the floor.
Constable Keo Ikoma, I hope I say that right, said it appeared somebody had wiped it.
And he said in his 10 years as an investigator he had quote, never come across a crime scene where an assailant attempted to clean up the blood.
I mean, I've seen that in plenty of cases where somebody tried to clean up the blood.
Thank you, because we've covered cases where that's happened before.
Maybe not in his 10 years, but in our 6 years doing this, I've seen countless cases where people have tried to wipe up blood at a crime scene.
But I will say usually that's when the person that they have attacked is dead.
Or when they think that they're dead.
Yes, exactly. You know, at least in a, to me, it doesn't seem like there was anything done to Cindy here that.
Where they would think she died.
Would have made them think she was dead.
Agreed. Yeah. But again, I, who knows?
But that I'm like, no, people clean up blood all the time.
Yeah, agreed. And do it badly.
That's literally why luminol testing exists.
exactly. But according to Cindy, she had been in her kitchen when she saw who she thought was her neighbor come through the back gate and up her back stairs carrying something in his hand.
But by the time she realized it wasn't her neighbor, the man hit her over the head.
She said she lost consciousness.
Which would be a severe head injury.
Very severe. You don't lose consciousness from a head injury unless it's a serious one.
Right, exactly. And I mean, they also said that she may have been injected with something, so I don't know if that made her lose consciousness, but they They also couldn't determine what it was that she'd been injected with.
So it's kind of hard to say.
But given the suspicion with which her other reports had been met, investigators asked her actually to take another polygraph exam, which if she is going through this and she does have this stalker who's attacking her again and again, she's got to sit through all these polygraph tests.
Yeah, like that's shitty.
That's the thing. That's the part of this that is just awful.
And sad. As if this is really what's happening.
Holy shit. But then you can see on the other side of things why they want her to because they're like, we're trying to help you here, but there's no fucking evidence.
And there's a lot of evidence pointing to no one else doing this.
So it's like, you can't ignore that.
Yeah. You can't just be like, okay, yeah, totally.
Someone did it and we don't know who it is.
Well, this one is weird because so she consented to the polygraph test. And at first her results showed that she was telling the truth.
Okay. But then the, I don't know if it's polygrapher, polygrapher, polygraph giver, I don't know.
Polygraph man or woman.
I like polygrapher, but polygrapher sounds fun because it's like calligrapher.
Exactly. You know? Yeah.
Well, this polygrapher, Sergeant Calhood, he reviewed the results a second time several months later for some reason, and he, quote, decided they were inconclusive.
Maybe they were looking at it later as the case progressed.
Probably. But it's like you can't retroactively decide she was lying.
Right, and that's what makes people – You've got to tell that at the moment, my friend.
Yeah, and that's what makes people not believe in polygraphs, I feel like.
Because like you can just form them to fit your narrative.
Yeah. Like that's literally you just fitting the narrative that might have started spinning later.
Because it was like, no, no, no, she's good.
She passed this one.
And then I don't know if it was after she passed away that they were like, mm, she actually didn't pass that one.
She was probably lying.
I'm like, I don't know about that.
i don't know yeah but in addition to the polygraph exam hood interviewed cindy for about 45 minutes and during that interview she told him that there had been quote periods of violence during her marriage to roy make peace and that her ex -husband quote this is wild often talked about killing people with a crossbow oh which i was like i thought you weren't afraid of roy what like because she was she told people all the time that like like investigators were like could this possibly be your ex -husband and also the the stalking and everything started within a week of her leaving him yeah which is strange
so that is strange and i don't think he did anything i'll say that right at the top but you're saying you don't think it's him and then you're telling them also that like there's periods of violence and that he talked about killing people with a crossbow yeah it's like come on and then we get even further later which you're just your jaw's is going to be on the floor but damn it's like hello but again so she she tells the detective this but or the the polygrapher but then she continues to insist that roy couldn't be the attacker so it's like okay then why are you even saying this the math ain't
math no but the attack in the kitchen was followed by several more reported incidents of harassment and violence of course in july 1984 cindy claimed that while she was out walking her dog she was quote abducted and injected with drugs by two people in a van asking for directions what after the report aussie came and arranged for a hypnosis session and during that session and this is where your jaw is just gonna hit the fucking floor cindy claimed she quote saw her ex -husband chopping up the bodies of a man and woman with an axe at a log cabin somewhere in the gulf islands while they they were on vacation other
than that she couldn't provide any details um what yeah chopping up the bodies of a man and a woman with an analog cabin in the gulf islands while whilst on vacation my my this is escalating which it's like what what where the fuck did that come come from nobody knows there's no there's no evidence that this ever happened but it is a story that she that under hypnosis under yeah so it's like she believes how did your brain come out with that i mean it seems like she believes it i mean also i think there are ways that you can seem like you're under hypnosis yeah that's the thing that i was wondering
but holy shit and that That comes up again later and you're just like, what?
It doesn't come up in a way where you can really verify it.
That's a terrifying tale to spin.
Yeah. And also the like abduction, where did you go?
They just abducted you?
Yeah. And then that was it?
Yeah. Somehow she was able to get away, I guess.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I don't think people are just injecting people with drugs willy -nilly.
I don't think. Well, maybe, like, if they're being held captive.
Like, I think we've seen that happen, I guess.
Yeah, but I mean, like, just, like, in an attack scenario.
Yeah, and then just leaving them.
like I like I don't I feel like that's a rare occurrence is someone like it's like because it reminds me of like Dexter yeah people use it as like a submission thing yeah like in the middle of an attack that is rare I think yeah if we looked really hard into the research of that I'm sure and this has already happened possibly three different times yeah maybe even more but in three different occasions like that's and also it's like okay so what happened and it's like Like, unknown substances, too.
That's the thing. I mean, we're getting to the point where, like, things are more advanced in this time period.
Like, they would have been able to identify most things, I would think.
This is bananas. Oh, it only gets more bananas.
Wow. I don't know why I said bananas like that.
Bananas. It gets more bananas, dear.
It gets bananas, dear.
That was a good one.
So a year later, in July 1985, Cindy made more claims of abuse and violence against Roy.
and this time investigators actually convinced her to agree to a wiretap in order to try to get him to confess to something because they're like holy shit is he a murderer yeah at this point you'd be like what the fuck is going on here but rather than capture any kind of confession the recorded conversation actually depicted roy makepiece as a very concerned and at the same time very frustrated partner or ex -partner on the tape he can be heard saying i'm certainly certainly prepared to listen to anything because I'm very, very, very curious about what the hell has been going on, but it's affected me
badly and it damn near cost me my job.
Yeah, I can imagine.
So I think he's saying like, yeah, I want to hear what's going on because I care about you, but also what the fuck is going on because you're putting me in precarious situations here.
You're eventually Cindy tried to elicit some kind of incriminating information.
She told him she she quote couldn't understand what he had been doing to her and his response was just straight up at wilderman he said incredulously what i've been doing to you for the last couple years like being like what like what and then he laid out all the ways where cindy's ongoing harassment claims negatively affected his life and he's like i'm not doing anything to you what the fuck are you doing to me which it's like why would he be lying obviously you've seen like deception like this before but it's harder to understand how someone would lie in a private setting to the person they
are lying about and to feign that much like yeah frustration and bewilderment exactly so ultimately the call produced zero confession or really any indication of roy make pieces involvement just one month later cindy called police to report that somebody had actually broken into her basement this time and set her bathroom on fire what the fuck however when detective gary foster searched outside of the house he determined that quote james was was responsible because the cobwebs and dust were undisturbed on the windowsills outside.
Oh, shit. So nobody had gotten into the basement.
Oh, damn. In April 1986, she again reported that somebody broke into the basement and set yet another fire.
But as in all the other reports, investigators found no evidence of a break -in and concluded that she had to have set the fire herself.
Why is she doing this?
Now, you could say that this, I mean, this one, these two incidents with the fire i believe that she may have yeah it seems like the evidence points to that i'm not saying that means that none of the other things happened like in the beginning yeah i maybe they did maybe they didn't the this these two sets of things i think she did and i don't know if it was maybe because thing she felt like things were ramping down and she for some reason wanted to ramp them back up again or or maybe just capture the attention of the investigators to, like...
To make something happen, like, in the case?
To make it, like...
To make them feel like it was more urgent.
Yeah. Maybe. Maybe.
Or maybe this whole thing was something she thought was happening.
Maybe she was disassociating during some of these things.
This is tragic no matter what way it goes, and it's so sad no matter what way it goes.
Well, that's the moral of the story.
Because it's like, if this is in her head, and this is something she's doing, then she is very mentally ill.
Absolutely. And very sick.
and this is that's and she's still living yeah in a place where she thinks this is happening her fear seemed real and her you know panic seemed real so it's like she's living in a horrible panic -induced state of her own making right without her even realizing it right or she's being tormented by a person or unknown people and no one's believing her right either Either way, it's a fucking nightmare.
This is awful. Yeah.
No matter what. Or it's a combination of both which is somehow even worse.
Yeah, honestly. Like there's no better outcome here.
This is all awful and she's – I don't – this is no kind of life to live.
No, it's really not.
It's really not. Well, and honestly, it seems like the police agreed that like this was awful and they felt bad for her.
According to the press, quote, police wanted to charge James but didn't because they felt she was suicidal.
And that feeling was correct.
a few days later cindy was actually admitted to the psychiatric ward of saint paul's hospital where she was evaluated and eventually transferred to riverview hospital which was another um like mental hospital for inpatient treatment and that was after her brother doug signed a petition to have her committed so even family was starting to wonder like is something going on here and they they felt she needed help either way he does so throughout her hospitalization the doctors at riverview consulted regularly with cindy's therapist quote unquote dr alex comley that guy who said that he had been treating
her since the first attack in her home and he believed that she was quote and this kind of comes out of nowhere anorexic and suicidal oh which i was like okay helpful yeah but he attributed cindy's anxiety and depression to investigators failure to catch her stalker but as author ann mulgrew points out he did not tell them that the police were of the firm opinion she was staging these events which what the fuck are you doing not giving them the full picture and they need like even if you disagree with it you can say like I don't personally agree but the police don't think this is actually yeah
you have to give the full picture because that's going to inform how they approach though yeah and how they treat her like that's pertinent information so while she was at Riverview she was assessed by the hospital staff staff at various points, including her initial assessment, which was performed by Dr. Wesley Friesen.
Among other things, he described her as, quote, histrionic, suicidal, and requiring close observation because of her impulsive behavior.
Wow. Now, and this is like from research. Yeah.
Somebody who's diagnosed as histrionic does sometimes like repeat behaviors for attention.
Yeah. So this he was of the mind, like in this moment, it seems that he was of the mind that this may have been her doing these things.
Yeah. At the time of her admission, she was diagnosed with a paranoid disorder and major affective disorder with psychotic symptoms that caused her to become, quote, increasingly hypervigilant and knows herself that she has misinterpreted events because of this agitated state.
date see that that makes sense to me yeah now regardless of conley's biased reporting dr freezing quickly became suspicious of cindy's frequent reports of harassment and attacks but he also acknowledged at the same time that it was difficult to get an accurate history from cindy because of her agitation and her resistance to being treated yeah it's a total double -edged sword on every front it is so before she was discharged from riverside she would be evaluated again this time by dr soon mo chay who described her as quote negativistic and conforming with unpredictable moods pessimism sullenness
vacillating with social agreement and friendliness wow in other words basically cindy responded to a given individual depending on whether she saw them to be a friend or an adversary who kind of didn't believe her no uh dr choy was more direct than dr freeson noting that cindy appeared to be caught in a psychological cycle of engaging in this extreme behavior in order to escape feelings of being upset and feelings of instability but these events never provided any lasting relief and that's why they continue she ramps them up it was a cycle it's like when you have when you take medication yes too
much and you need more and more yes to get the the feeling that you need to like yeah it's it is like an addiction exactly dr chay wrote it is a picture of a paranoid schizophrenic patient with high levels of anxiety and depression the psychotic features are evident that's really sad it is sad now although the harassing phone calls and letters did continue in the in the years that followed her hospitalization at riverside there was only one more report of an assault and that was in october of 1988 and during this assault she was or after it happened she was found unconscious outside of her home
according to her report she claimed that she'd been assaulted strangled injected yet again with a drug but once again there was no physical evidence of this attack yeah it's just sad really sad now the next notable incident occurred on april 8th 1989 when a security guard at richmond general hospital where cindy was working he discovered a note consisting of again those those cut and paste magazine letters so spooky i fucking hate it and he found this letter and it said soon cindy in those cut and paste letters now when she left work that afternoon she reported to the same security guard that somebody
had written sleep well on the dew in her windshield which is just chilling yeah she appeared obviously disturbed by the discoveries but she didn't reply with the same level of alarm that she demonstrated in the past i think which she She could just be at this point used to it.
She's been living it.
She's like, oh, great, another one.
Yeah. On May 25th, 1989, she went for some kind of cosmetic makeover in Vancouver, and then she went to Richmond General to pick up her paycheck.
Friends and coworkers who saw her that day recalled her being upbeat and happier than she'd been in years.
That was the last anybody saw of Cindy.
The very last time anybody saw her that day was when she deposited her paycheck at the bank.
After that, she got into her car, drove off, and disappeared.
Wow. Hey there, my weird weirdos.
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so on the evening of may 25th 1989 she actually had plans with her neighbors to play bridge her neighbors were tom and agnes woodcock and around 10 p .m they still hadn't heard from her so they knocked on her door but nobody answered this was strange because they saw her earlier that day and also because her car was in the driveway they finally became really alarmed when they peered into her car and they saw several bags of groceries on the passenger side seat and on the floor.
And on the floor in the back, there was a Sears bag from her shopping trip that afternoon.
And they became even more concerned when they looked down at the driver's side door and saw a quote unquote rust colored smear on the handle that they thought looked a lot like dried blood.
Oh boy. So this is fucking spooky.
Not good. Now after discovering the groceries in the car they drove to the nearest department of the royal canadian mounted police who i'm going to call the rcmp from this point forward because damn that's a fucking mouthful yeah it is but they reported to the rcmp what they found being pretty familiar with cindy's frequent reports the rcmp dispatched officers to her house and within a half hour the entire scene had been cordoned off with police tape and crime scene technicians immediately got to work processing this entire scene they took swabs of the rust colored substance on the door which which did
ultimately turn out to be blood.
And underneath the car, they discovered an ATM receipt showing that a deposit had been made into Cindy's bank account in the amount of $1 ,173.
And that was at 7 .58 p .m. Inside the car, they found those four bags of groceries from the local Safeway.
They found Cindy's purse, which was just sitting on the front seat.
And inside her purse, they found two sets of keys to the house and to the car.
So the car keys were literally right there.
they found $277 in cash and her checkbook with every single check accounted for wow once the car was completely processed it was towed to the police impound yard but it just looked like she pulled up to go inside and then just disappeared just like completely vanished yeah now given that her purse and her keys were completely undisturbed investigators were pretty much able to rule out robbery as the motive they also contacted all the local cab companies to see if maybe Maybe she had, like, hopped in a cab and gone somewhere.
Just didn't take anything with her.
But none had been called.
So that was strange.
So they were like, okay, if she did leave, she had to have left with a friend or a possible abductor.
Maybe we're wrong here.
Maybe this is really ramped up now.
Now, believing they were searching for a missing person, the RCMP contacted the Canadian Coast Guard to conduct a search of the river while they handled the ground search. inside her house nothing looked unusual nothing seemed out of place it literally just looked like she pulled into the driveway and like we just said disappeared into thin air yeah the next day she still hadn't been found so the rcmp officers started making the notifications to friends and family and really started their formal investigation and of course they started with the most likely suspect her ex roy make peace yes throughout
the years of this repeated harassment and assault claims made by Cindy, his name was the only constant factor.
They didn't have any other suspect whatsoever, and he wasn't even really a suspect.
Even if he wasn't always accused of anything specific, they still wanted to talk to him.
And by that point, he was so used, he was like accustomed to being interviewed, so he was pretty unbothered by the intrusion.
He said since his divorce from Cindy, he had become increasingly drawn into her life of just constant drama, trauma but he maintained he wasn't responsible for any of it and in the cases where he was present he was only there to make sure she was safe like when uh pat mcbride found him in the car with a gun it was just to scare off an attacker if he saw one which again like and i don't believe he had anything to do with this after see like hearing everything but it's sus but you can understand them checking in on it because you're like well that is what an attacker would say yeah exactly i was just
there with guns because i wanted to protect her and this is literally the only place you have to go right now so you might as well start there yeah but he explained also to officers that he actually hadn't spoken to cindy since that wired tapped phone call nearly four years earlier oh damn yeah um and more importantly he was also able to account for his whereabouts for the entire previous day it would have been impossible for him to object cindy now during their interviews with roy investigators noted he didn't seem suspicious at all and they genuinely believed that he didn't have anything to
do with this yeah in fact despite everything that he'd been through with cindy like all of the her saying that he chopped up bodies yeah and exactly through all of that he still believed that somebody had been harassing her and genuinely thought she was in real danger wow he even told police that as recently as that fall he had gotten strange messages on his own answering machine alluding to a previous V .S.
arranged hit on Cindy, and he believed the mafia could have been involved.
Okay. That comes out of nowhere.
I was going to say, does that pan out?
It doesn't go anywhere.
I don't think. Yeah, I don't know about that.
This isn't saying mafia to me.
I don't know about that.
And I'm also, like, it doesn't ever sound like she, like, borrowed a ton of money or got caught up in that anymore.
It would be a very, I'm like, why?
Yeah. He seemed like a real heady kind of guy.
Yeah. You know? Yeah.
That's a good way of putting it.
Yeah. But ultimately he was ruled out as a suspect.
Now, within a few days, the news about Cindy's disappearance broke in all the local papers and journalists focused on what they described as, quote, dozens of complaints of harassment and threats.
In fact, at that point, there was nearly 100 in total.
I believe it. Yeah.
In an interview with a reporter, Cindy's father, Otto, said on the day of his daughter's disappearance that, quote, Cindy called her friend and indicated, some people may think I'm paranoid but I have a feeling I'm being I have been being followed all week huh which is strange yeah he told reporters it was possible that Cindy maybe lost her memory and just couldn't find her way home but he admitted it was quote more likely she has been abducted and held against her will or possibly even dead he said we have to hope she's still alive but I fear she will be in very poor shape when she is found it's
strange that he was like maybe she lost her memory and just couldn't find her way home.
It's like, is that a normal occurrence?
Yeah. Like that wouldn't be my first thought.
That wouldn't be my first thought either.
If you weren't missing, I wouldn't be like, well, maybe she just completely lost her memory and can't find her way home.
I thought that was odd too.
That wouldn't be a thought.
I don't know if it was just because weird shit was happening all the time in Zendee's life.
Well, and also I'm like, do you have an idea that maybe there's some mental illness happening that you're not really opening up about?
Right. But that's a a pretty good indicator of it that's kind of what i thought yeah and or maybe i mean she's claiming in the past that she's been injected with things maybe they had phone conversations with her where she sounded loopy or she just was telling them like i've been injected i've been hit over the head so yeah they're like she's got trauma i mean they knew about the ordeals that she was going through so there's that yeah it's strange but on june 8th just a few days after auto gave his interview his fears were completely realized when a municipal works crew who was patching pavement
discovered cindy's body in this yard of an abandoned house what a sad ending to this it is she was found about a mile from where she'd last been seen at the atm according to a neighbor who lived across the street from the house an old man lived in a van behind that house but otherwise it had been unoccupied for months the neighbor said god knows what else is in there kind of indicating that it was like a popular spot with like kids and vagrants, that kind of thing.
Ne 'er dwells. Ne 'er dwells.
Partying kids, you know?
Yeah. Now, her body was discovered in the bushes along the edge of the property.
She was fully clothed with her hands and feet tied behind her back with black nylon stocking.
Like, hard -tied. Keep using the stocking.
Yes, stocking again.
There were signs of advanced decomp indicating that she'd been in the location for at least a few days.
Her blouse was torn and certain places but they said there was no other evidence of a struggle at the scene i disagree her clothes they also said her clothes didn't seem to have been disturbed but i'm like her blouse is torn yeah i would call that disturbed personally maybe they're thinking about maybe the way it looks is like it doesn't really look like it was disturbed it's just like ripped yeah yeah it's like a weird way of putting it and um there was no foreign material on her body so that's a good thing but despite the lack of evidence of a struggle the pathologist noted that one of her fingers
had scratched another and this is a quote down to the bone fuck I'm like how is that even possible like one of her fingers had scratched the other one down to the bone huh which I'm like is it possible that she scratched like a lot and then because of decomp it yeah maybe it just sped up the decomp to the bone she's scratching to get out of the the bindings but i don't know because we'll get there but it led her to theorize that cindy had been alive when she was left in the yard otherwise there was no signs of violence and at that point no obvious cause of death the fuck the autopsy was performed
later that day by dr sheila carlisle at the royal columbian hospital and the first thing dr car dr carlisle noticed was when she removed the binding she said quote the ligature around one wrist was loose enough to be easily slipped off over the hand.
Oh, shut up. And none of the binds on the wrists and ankles were tight enough to indent the skin.
What? Yeah, that's very loose.
Because immediately I was thinking, like what you said, was she scratching to get the bindings loose?
But they were loose.
And they had to have been loose for quite some time because there was no indentation anywhere.
That's bizarre. Bizarre.
Right? Bizarre. In fact, there was no bruising or injury on any part of her skin, except for a small pinprick on the inner right arm just below the elbow, and that was determined to be consistent with an injection from a hypodermic needle.
What the fuck? Based on the insect activity, the pathologists believe that Cindy's body had been in the lot since probably at least June 2nd, but it was possible she'd been there ever since she disappeared, so earlier than June.
But initially, the cause of death was listed as asphyxiation.
But when the toxicology report came back, Dr. Carlisle changed the cause of death to an overdose of morphine, florazepam, and diazepam.
Oh. Based on the examination of the stomach contents, Dr. Carlisle concluded Cindy had ingested the florazepam and the diazepam, which are both sedatives, in pill form.
She was able to determine that.
but cindy didn't have a prescription for either of those things so that was strange that is weird and then the morphine was also believed to have been ingested orally in liquid form and although it was impossible to know for sure dr carlisle did theorize that the most likely cause of death was the florazepam in cindy's system and she suspected that cindy had ingested anywhere from 20 to 80 tablets of that holy shit under those circumstances she would have had about 30 minutes before losing consciousness and that would have been quickly followed by coma and then death so it's unclear just how it
happened but within a day of the body being identified as cindy james the press started reporting that rcmp officers were investigating the death as a quote unquote elaborate suicide whoa which given how she had been found was very hard to swallow for the public because of course nobody believed that she could have possibly hogtied herself But when you, with the bindings being so loose.
Yeah. And, I mean, the medical examiner said she could slip a hand out.
Mm -hmm. And they were so loose that they didn't leave indentations.
Exactly. She's also a healthcare worker, and those were sedatives.
Uh -huh. Which I'm sure she had access to.
I mean, it's an awful thing to think about that, like, she took an enormous amount of sedatives to basically pass out, fall asleep, and then die there, overdose.
Mm -hmm. where she couldn't move basically it's hard to believe it is it really is even when you lay it out logically and say like sure absolutely it could have been because the the evidence leads you up to it right it's hard to believe it really is i mean well there's no other case that i've heard of quite like this because then you think of the other side of it where you're like if if someone forced medication down her throat yeah to make her pass out an overdose and left her bound and made it did it loose on purpose because they knew she was going to die anyway and she but it's like where did
that finger thing come in where she was like scratching her finger down to a bone like that part is that's the part that's hard to i don't know i just i can't make heads or tails of any i can't either i can't either but either way the The reports of the suicide theory seemed completely preposterous to anybody who knew anything about Cindy's ordeal over the previous decade.
And even the work crew who found her flatly rejected that idea.
One of the workers told a reporter, this definitely wasn't a suicide.
You couldn't possibly put yourself in that position.
Which I can see why he would think that.
I mean, I can't imagine finding somebody like that and then somebody being like, oh yeah, they did that to themselves.
I'd be like, no, they didn't.
No way. But when you think about the loose bindings, she very much could have. Now, in the absence of an official story from the RCMP, the press took complete control of the narrative and they shifted their attention to what they perceived as a complete failure on the part of law enforcement to protect Cindy, despite the years and years of complaints that she was filing.
One friend told a reporter the cops just never believed her.
And in an op -ed for the province, Vancouver reporter Patricia Graham wrote, I feel disgust and anger, sadness and regret that we let Cindy down so badly.
Sadly, Cindy James tried everything possible to protect herself.
She went to Vancouver and Richmond RCMP repeatedly.
She did her best, but she still lived in terror for eight years.
Worse, she had to live through her personal hell knowing that she was doubted.
That she was suspected of inflicting this on herself.
That her terror was not recognized or validated.
I mean, yeah. You bounce back and forth between how fucking terrible both sides of this coin are.
matter what the outcome is or what the process and journey of this whole thing was yeah it's fucking awful it is it's no matter what she was living in a state of terror of either her own minds making or reality and no matter what she was being doubted the entire time it's like we said it's just no way horrible no way to live horrible but while the press continued their outpouring of sympathy for cindy and the considerable criticism of the rcmp investigators were learning a little little bit more about Cindy's life in the weeks leading up to her death.
The medical examiner's report strongly indicated that she could have staged the entire scene herself.
Loose bindings, those drugs could have been voluntarily ingested, and the pinprick on her arm was believed to have been the result of Cindy actually withdrawing blood from herself to wipe it on the driver's side door.
Whoa. Which is wild to think of anybody doing, but it is possible.
Especially when they're saying that the drugs in her system were ingested not injected especially orally that's yeah exactly moreover in their interview with dr freezing they learned that cindy had spoken frequently of suicide in recent sessions and she had been hoarding quote -unquote huge amounts of medication that he had been prescribing her in the months before her death yes and two months before her death she had actually stopped taking her medication and this is so sad according to freezing she stopped taking it because the mortgage rate was going to go up and she She couldn't afford the prescription cost. How
fucked up is that? It's fucked up that that's – I mean, this was like 20 -something years ago or 40 actually.
And it's still happening.
And it's still happening.
You choose to keep a roof over your head or to take the medication that you need.
That you need. You have to choose.
Right. Like that should not be a choice.
That should just – you should be able to have both.
Yeah. But the hacks when they got to Cindy's house actually flushed all the pills that they discovered there.
Why? I'm not sure. Sure.
That's, that's weird. It's weird. I don't know.
It's strange behavior.
I don't know. I don't want to speculate.
I just don't know. Yeah.
I mean, it's people do strange things when they're grieving.
People do things to make sure that somebody does not look a certain way in a certain way and be perceived.
Yeah. So like, yes, but no, like you can't do that.
Like, especially when you you think she was possibly being like i don't know you just don't get rid of anything i know but i don't know again people do do odd things when they're grieving that's the thing but the medication was not the only discouraging discovery that they made when they searched her home while going through cindy's belongings a family member found a glass cutter a kit containing a ivy equipment a urinary catheter uh and saline solution and then in one of her sewing kits they they found an unopened needle and syringe.
Oh, no. Yeah. I mean, that's concerning, all of that.
It's strange. A glass cutter?
That's the thing. I was just going to say.
The syringe? She works in health care, so, like, I guess you could have some of these things.
I don't know why they're on your person.
I mean, not on your person, but I don't know why they're in your house.
But a glass cutter?
What? I mean, what's more important is she has access to these things.
Exactly. Okay, let's take a poll.
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Happy wedding. But despite all the newly discovered evidence, actually, and this was surprising to me, dr friesen still had a hard time believing that cindy had actually taken her own life he told investigators i saw her the week before she disappeared and she was the best i've ever seen her the most positive the most optimistic i've ever seen her i mean that happens that's that's a that happens a lot it happens like it's horrible to think about and it's chilling to think about but there's like sometimes this moment of clarity and peace that comes before something really tragic yes he said that she
had renewed her interest and commitment to reporting the incidents of harassment that she was going through he said she felt confident that everything was actually going to be resolved soon which that's chilling thinking that yeah that was a discussion that was had right before that and given her mood her mood and her future orientation he just couldn't accept the theory that the rcmp was putting forth he said cindy would not kill herself, unless it was accidental.
You know, if it was an accidental suicide, I could understand that.
I don't know if, you can't really say that with definitive.
No. You're not in someone's head, you can't say they absolutely would not have done that.
You can say I'm finding it hard to believe that.
Yes. She would have, but I'm not in her brain.
I think he cared about her on like a deep level.
And I'm not saying on an inappropriate level.
Yeah. You mean like just cared about her well -being.
I think he really cared about her and it was a shock that this had happened.
And, I mean, her doctor who's treating her, that hurts that, you know, he didn't, like, I'm sure he felt like he didn't see the signs properly.
Yeah, like he wanted to help and he felt like he didn't.
Or that he would have seen the signs, so there's no way he could have missed it.
Yeah. But on July 12th, after more than a month of investigation, the RCMP reported that they were officially ruling out foul play and that Cindy's death was going to be labeled a suicide.
side according to dr tony marcus who actually evaluated cindy several times and consulted with the investigators cindy james was a quote and this is a quote a borderline personality who weaved a tremendous plot to be the center of attention that's a quote quote quote quote i'm not saying that he said that i'm a doctor a quote yes he also allowed for the possibility that she was telling the truth but he said based on his experiences with her he's a doctor who's treating her and the abject lack of evidence he felt it was just highly unlikely that she was telling the truth although the rcmp ordered
a coroner's inquest to determine the circumstances of cindy's death the investigator's official conclusion was a disappointment to the hack of course it was auto hack told the reporters the rcmp's explanation didn't satisfy me at all there's a murderer out there somewhere and i can totally understand that too i mean that's her father no one is and who's even sure of this i'm not you know initially the inquest was scheduled for october 12th 1989 but of course it got pushed back several times and it didn't begin until late february 1990 in his opening remarks coroner gerald tilly told the jury that the inquest
would cover the 90 reported incidents of harassment between 82 and 89 so this is literally what's that six years seven years this um and they said there would be special attention paid to the circumstances circumstances obviously of cindy's death in may of 1989 and this inquest was only scheduled to last for 15 days keep that in mind the first witness to testify was cindy's one -time boyfriend pat mcbride and he told the jury that she quote hinted to him that her former husband may have been responsible for a series of strange incidents involving harassing phone calls letters various incidents
of vandalism he said she led me to believe that a certain person may be involved her husband dr roy make peace he also explained that he had caught roy make peace lurking in the area around her house on more than one occasion but he could also at the same time never establish any evidence that roy was responsible for this harassment and it's like and she's telling everyone else that he couldn't be the person but yeah she's telling pat mcbride maybe it is him right like what's going on yeah now pat mcbride's testimony established the onset of the incidents and who Cindy suspected may have been
to blame, but it also highlighted the extent that law enforcement questioned these claims pretty much from the beginning.
He was one of several witnesses who acknowledged that Cindy seemed thoroughly resistant to taking any steps to protect or remove herself from the situation, especially after, like I said, she started giving her unlisted phone number out to multiple people within weeks of having it changed.
McBride said the advice was coming from someone with a vested interest trust and making sure she was secure i didn't like the idea she was turning my ideas to not so he's saying like i was telling her don't do that don't be giving out this information you don't know who this person is and she still was his partner andy richards also testified telling the jury that he believed cindy had used a set of pat mcbride's wire cutters to cut the phone line while he was living in the house holy shit yeah so she again she had access to things that could could have done that.
Partner, like another cop.
Yeah. Now, although the RCMP and other agencies were obviously prohibited from speaking publicly while this inquest was going on, it didn't take a formal statement to figure out that there were several very valid reasons for believing that Cindy could have been responsible for staging all of this.
A lot of the investigators who testified noted that there was an almost near absolute lack of evidence to support these claims. and despite the countless hours of formal and informal surveillance i can never say surveillance i always say surveillance but none of the investigators ever saw anybody suspicious on or near her property that's that's wild and like like in part one i said of constant surveillance and years this person's just a ghost yeah people and like if you remember in part one i I said that I think it was like neighbors had seen.
Unstrange, unknown men.
Yeah, like unidentified men in the neighborhood.
How many times have you seen somebody you don't recognize in your neighborhood?
Yeah. And been like, who the fuck is that?
But it's just like a guy.
But it's just like some dude walking his dog.
So it's like it absolutely could be something or it could be nothing.
Could be nothing, exactly.
But there was also the matter of the failed polygraph.
Oh, my God. I can't say polygraph and I can't say surveillance.
Palliants. See, couldn't do a third either.
I always say yants.
I don't know what that's about.
But there was the matter of the failed polygraph examinations when, here we go again, polygrapher.
Polygrapher. Vic Farmer testified.
He told the jury that the results indicated that she was, Cindy was lying, or lying in part about the attack in January 1983.
And he said when she was confronted with these results, she responded by grabbing his arm and saying, Vic, I'm sorry, And he said when she finally, yeah, he said when she finally collected herself, she changed various parts of her story, but then refused to take a third polygraph exam.
Sergeant Cal Hood, who administered a polygraph exam after the incident in 1984, reported a similar outcome where he suspected Cindy of being deceitful.
Also included on the witness list were a number of doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists who had treated Cindy over the years, including Dr. Choi, excuse me, Dr. Marcus, Dr. Friesen, and Dr. Terminson.
He was a psychiatrist from Riverview.
And in his testimony, Dr. Terminson told the jury that Cindy was, quote, capable of intense attraction and intense rage at rejection.
and that could have caused her to lash out in strange and irrational ways to try to garner sympathy and attention while also getting back at whoever she felt like had wronged her no matter how irrational that belief might be wow like she might see it that somebody wronged her like and this is just an example like roy wronged her i mean yeah he did he hit her yeah so she may have done something like this to get back at him and or garner sympathy was this doctor's belief okay now the rcmp and medical examiner's case for suicide was a strong one but the authorities were hardly unanimous in their
opinion among those who were not in favor of the suicide theory was dr joseph noon a forensic psychiatrist who was hired to review cindy's medical record he heavily criticized several of the medical providers including dr conley me too which i'm sure you can imagine why but he called them arm armchair psychiatrists and he said their meddling in cindy's treatment had potentially compromised the case to the point that they might never find the truth i mean some of them were treating her though what's that some of them were treating her like in riverview yeah but it's like i don't know if they were meddling
they were treating her i don't think he was like he wasn't criticizing all of them he was criticizing some of them yeah okay because i was like dr connelly sure yeah exactly but i'm like i don't know like the place when she She was being treated in a place that's like, they're just treating her.
And Dr. Friesen seemed like he was doing a good job.
Dr. Che seemed a little more intense than Dr. Friesen, but still seemed like he was in it.
Yeah, exactly. Interesting.
But while Noon clearly disagreed with several of Cindy's supporters, it didn't mean he agreed with authorities.
He said that her medical records actually read very clean.
but he was in agreement with dr friesen believing that cindy was likely being harassed by an unknown party and that resulted in depression anxiety and paranoia not the other way around interest not that she was paranoid and therefore making this all up in her head she was yeah but he believed actually this was happening and that's why she was feeling this way okay among cindy's most vocal defenders was her private security guard ozzy caben who just really seems like a sweetheart heart he's very out there but he seems like a sweetheart oh he's out there a little bit we'll see he told the jury he
just couldn't believe that she had staged every incident of stalking and harassment not only because she seemed super genuine but also because of what he believed was strong evidence that supported her claims uh specifically with regard to the alleged 1984 kidnapping where she was abducted by those two people in the van and like injected with something yeah he told the jury that he investigated the area where she said everything went down where she got abducted and he found that quote the ground was disturbed and there were dragging marks okay which is interesting yeah you could make that yourself
he's a private security guard so i'm like it doesn't hold a lot of weight exactly now after two weeks the inquiry shifted its attention to cindy's relationship of course with her ex -husband roy make peace like i think i said at the top of this the harassment began within weeks of her separation from roy and he'd been a regular feature in the reports from an early phase of the investigation in name if not in presence while many witnesses steered clear of accusing him of any wrongdoing there was a strong inference that he was involved in fact the jury heard about that hypnosis session where she
accused an explosive one yeah where she accused him of chopping up bodies with an axe though the hypnotist acknowledged that it was possible she just believed the incident was real in her mind which is also scary yeah absolutely but also that sucks for him if it was just like a scenario that her mind created real or not though her sister actually added credibility to that story when she testified that cindy had also told her about this alleged murder in 1984 where roy allegedly used a hatchet to, quote, cut off a limb and spread blood on Cindy's face, warning her, I could easily do this to you
too. I'm sorry, what, Melanie?
It should be noted that this was the first time any member of law enforcement had heard Melanie Hack's story about this, and it was completely unverified.
Yeah, because where were you?
What is going on? Like, you're literally just bringing this up?
It was just something that Cindy may have reiterated to her and she just you know said you know now's the time to share that now's the time to share that now after she's like she's been going through all this harassment and stalking and like attacks and everything and it's like you got to tell the police yeah wow i mean i think the hypnotist told the police and they investigated it but there was no evidence yeah this occurred but it's like what why aren't you saying anything melanie wild boy now surprisingly roy never actually testified during the inquest but his words did make it into the record
in the form of that recorded phone call oh yeah the wiretap yeah um he also had a nearly six hour interview with belize which was also recorded and that was after the attack in 1984 and in his interview with detective ballier smith he could be heard expressing his fears that he actually believed cindy was trying to frame him and he was disappointed that he was suspected of all of this he told the detective firstly i could now in the end he actually received i mean like no sympathy from the investigators i mean on fair counts because i mean they thought he was strange first of all which it sounds
like he was a strange character but also he had admitted to spousal abuse yeah so exactly so it's like i don't know you've lost it for me that's the thing but then at the same time but it makes you a shit person Yeah, exactly.
But at the same time, they did see that he seemed unwaveringly committed to protecting Cindy, at least especially in the early years before they cut off contact.
But regardless of how they felt about him personally, there was just no evidence connecting him to the crimes.
And by the time Cindy recorded their phone call in 1985, it was clear that he just wanted nothing to do with this anymore.
more. Now, like I said, initially the coroner's request was scheduled for 15 days, but by the time it concluded on May 25th, 1990, it dragged on for more than three months and at this point became the most expensive inquest in Canadians' history.
Damn. Yeah. In the course of hearing testimony from almost 75 witnesses and reviewing countless documents, the jurors were told two versions of events.
One that strongly supported the belief that Cindy had taken her own life and another other where the evidence was a great deal more ambiguous and at least gestured toward the possibility that you know maybe she was telling the truth about having a stalker and an attacker some of the testimony like i said ozzy caben is a little out there um he believed that cindy was murdered in a satanic ritualistic sacrifice oh come on ozzy he lost me there he lost me man yeah that testimony wavering there that lost me yeah that testimony was given very little credence That's really good.
But other witnesses, including the various doctors who testified that she may have taken her life, obviously that was taken very seriously.
But in the end, the jury could not determine what had led to the end of Cindy James's life.
And the official circumstances of her death was revised from suicide to undetermined.
Wow. Yeah. For the jury, the inquest was particularly stressful.
successful juror shirley glaholt said i not only cried myself to sleep but i cried in the courtroom too i can't imagine because they had to see tons of graphic photographs i mean they saw the position that she was found in all these like crazy descriptions of violence and they also spent months listening to conflicting opinions and testimony that at times became really really heated oh yeah i'm sure and then you know this woman died tragically either way so they felt felt this task to figure out what happened but it was an emotional roller coaster it's such a sad life yeah another juror said there
were all shades of grays no black and white in the end you felt you knew Cindy your heart just ached for the girl yeah when it came time to deliberate they spent more than three hours just arguing with one another there was two uh jurors in favor of suicide and then there was three in favor of undetermined okay jury foreman Len Rogers said it boils down to nothing.
Nothing firm pointed to suicide.
So many things were just speculation.
That's the thing. You can just – it's a double -sided coin here.
Yeah, I could – I don't think I could have ever made a decision.
And in the end, they were right.
There was no evidence to prove that Cindy had taken her life, and there was no evidence that she had been murdered.
Just like the 90 reports of harassment in her past, the truth seemed to just elude everybody.
But what we do know is that no matter what, it's like we've been saying this entire time, This was a fucking nightmare life.
Whether it was mental illness or stalking – She was a victim.
Yeah. She was absolutely a victim of something, whether it be mental illness or a deranged fucking stalker that – it's just – I mean, it's possible.
Like I'm not saying it's not.
Absolutely. It's just so hard to imagine like this level of planning and commitment and – an ability to just never be seen or detected in any physical way ever like there was never one shred of evidence left but i mean that happens you know like it's very few and far between but it happens yeah but i think it's still an important story to tell because who knows she could have been murdered and if she was then this person completely got away with it yeah because no matter what she was a victim of something hopefully i just want somebody to like Like, find a box with all the documents and comb through
them and just find one thing that points to the actual answer.
It can point to either way.
Yeah. Just give them something because you feel bad.
It's just, it's an awful tragic tale no matter what way it spins.
Right. But it would be nice to have some answers.
I'm sure everybody who loved her goes back and forth all the time in their own heads, you know, like, what the fuck happened here?
Neither outcome is a good one.
So it's like, no. How awful.
It is. It's an awful case.
but a very, very interesting one.
It is. I've never, like I said, I think I said it earlier.
I've never heard of a case quite like this.
No, it's very, very unique and very bizarre.
If you know of one, let us know, because I found this fascinating.
Tragic, but fascinating.
Yeah, if you know of another one like this, it would be interesting to look into.
Yeah, definitely suggest it.
I also looked up the pronunciation for...
Polygrapher? Polygrapher.
Polygrapher. Polygrapher.
Polygrapher. I mean, that could just be the robot.
Doesn't that just feel wrong?
It does feel wrong.
It just feels like when I'm reading and I accidentally read photographer instead of photographer.
Do you ever do that?
Yep. But then this person says polygrapher.
I guess you could probably say both.
I like polygrapher.
I like polygrapher.
Yeah, it's fun. Yeah.
Well, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that we ever find the difference between polygrapher and polygrapher.
Never. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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Hey, weirdos! You know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's going to blow your minds because this one is happening right now.
And get this, it's hosted by our friends Hannah and Saruti from Red Handed.
Meet Travis. He falls head over heels for Lily Rose.
She's gorgeous. She's understanding and she's literally perfect.
And she's not human.
That's right. Lily Rose is an AI companion, a computer program designed to be Travis's dream woman.
And at first, it seems like a perfect relationship.
But when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange, this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming.
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