Death of Cindy James, murder or suicide?

2021-07-24 19:26:23 Written by Jones Jay

In June 1989, the peaceful Vancouver, British Columbia, a suburb of Richmond was stunned when a corpse was a corpse lying in the yard of an old house. The victim was a 42-year-old nurse named Cindy James. She had been drugged and strangled, and her hands and legs had been tied behind her back. The Royal Canadian Mounted Authority thought that her death was either an accident or suicide.

In the seven years before her death, Cindy reported almost a hundred experiences of harassment starting four months after she divorced her husband. Five were violent physical assaults while others were whispering to silent phone rings. This got horrible after she informed the police. At night, she listened to prowlers. Her porch lights were broken and her phone lines disconnected. According to her colleague, Agnes Woodcock, she told strange things started to happen on her doorstep. Someone was attempting to frighten her to death. She became sick and scared to give details. Over time, the police started to doubt her stories.

One night, Agnes dropped by Cindy's home for a stay and knocked on the door. There was no reply, so she thought she was taking bath. As she examined, she came across her outside, crouched down with a nylon stocking bound tightly around her neck. She'd taken it out to the garage to get a box and someone had picked her from behind. All she saw were white lurkers. Cindy shifted to a new home, colored her car, and changed her last name. She also hired a private detective, Ozzie Kaban. The police began again their inquiry and interviewed her several times. Ozzie later noted that she wouldn't inform them of the entire story. She would be secretive, would withhold evidence, and simply would not behave as a normal victim would act. Her mama, Tillie Hack, believes the reason for her daughter's hesitation was that her attacker had terrorized her sister and family. By naming him, her family would be murdered.

 

One evening, Ozzie Kaban heard weird sounds coming over a two-way radio he had given Cindy and went directly to her house. He went around the home and discovered it was locked. Looking through a window, he discovered her lying on the floor with a paring knife through her hand. She was brought to the hospital where she later remembered being assaulted and a needle going into her arm. Police never had fingerprint a suspect, and there was no free corroboration. Cindy saw this person occasionally supported by one or two others, or sometimes she told there were two or three people, but authority could never discover a suspect.

The frightening phone calls began again, but they were too short to track. There were never ones when the police had 24-hour supervision on her house for days on end with up to fourteen police officers, but when supervision was off her house, another event would happen. As police became suspicious of the harassment, her parents thought her attacker was staying away to make them suspicious of her. Finally, she was discovered dazed and semiconscious lying in a canal six miles from her residence. She was wearing a man's work boot and glove and undergoing hypothermia. Cuts and scrapes covered her body. Black nylon tights had been bound tightly around her neck. She had no memory of what occurred.

 

Agnes Woodcock and her spouse, Tom, lived with her, and one night heard sounds and awoke to the cellar in flames and the phone dead. Tom left the home to warn the neighbors. He saw a man at the curb and said him to call the fire department. Rather, he simply ran off down the road. The police believed that Cindy had staged the incident. They discovered no dust or fingerprints disturbed on the surface of the windowsill. The fire was set inside the residence. To set it, it was believed, the perpetrator would've wanted to climb through this particular window. It was also considered strange that Cindy still freely walked her dog during the assaults. Her doctor committed her to a regional psychiatric ward, thinking she was becoming suicidal. After 10 weeks, she left the hospital. Her dad, Otto Hack, told her that she eventually confessed to her family and friends that she understood more than she was explaining and would go after her perpetrator herself.

On May 25, 1989, six years and seven months after the first threatening phone ring, Cindy vanished. On the same day, her car was discovered in an area parking lot. Inside were groceries and an enclosed gift. There was blood on the driver’s side door and elements from her wallet were under the car. Two weeks later, her corpse was discovered at the old house. It looked like she had been brutally killed. Her hands and feet were tied together behind her back. A black nylon stocking was bound tightly around her neck. Yet, a postmortem disclosed that she died from an overdose of morphine and other drugs. Police believed that she had committed suicide. Otto didn't think she would have been prepared to stage the scene, but others thought it was logical. In Vancouver, the coroner judged that her death was not suicide, an accident, or a killing. They assumed that she died of an "unknown event." Cindy's parents never doubted that their daughter was killed. Otto thought the police did not examine the possibility of homicide or of somebody killing her, instead zeroing in on attempting to prove that she committed suicide. They think someone in Vancouver is getting away with killing.