By: BIRIDIANA LOPEZ-RODRIGUEZ
Staff Writer
Warning: This crime case/article contains animal cruelty and harm towards them, harrassment towards a person, etc..
We’ve all heard of the movie, The Invisible Man, that has recently come out. But what if I told you that there was an actual crime case about it? Cindy James was 19 when she married a man by the name of Dr. Roy Makepeace. In this marriage there was an 18 year age gap. Cindy worked as a nurse and really enjoyed working with children. And her husband worked as a psychiatrist. In 1982, Cindy and her husband ended their marriage. Cindy was very overjoyed about it, but what she didn’t expect is that her life would go very downhill from that moment on. As she was trying to adjust to her new life, she would always get strange phone calls. These phone calls always ended up with someone wishing death, or harm upon her. Sometimes the person would say that they were going to kill her. And the phone calls will always last only a couple of seconds.
When Cindy would go out and check her mail, she would start getting these weird letters. These letters would mainly look like ransom letters and they would say, “I SEE YOU” with pictures of someone getting choked, and one of someone holding a knife. As phone calls and letters continued, she eventually went to her parents house and told them what had been going on. Her parents end up suggesting that she goes to the police, and when she does she files a report. As time goes on the phone calls and letters begin to get more graphic. Her family and friends would often describe Cindy as a beautiful, and very vibrant person, and because of that people wanted to be around her. But they soon started to notice that she was slowly losing that light. She appeared to physically be more tired, frazzled, a little afraid. And when she would go to work she wasn’t fully there.
As time continued, the threats kept escalating. One day, she would soon see three dead cats hanging on her porch. On the same night that she found the three dead cats, she noticed that her porch lights were smashed. As she tries calling the police she notices that her phone line has been cut. When Cindy received the letters they would always end up in her mailbox, but they soon started ending up in front of her door instead of being mailed or put in her mailbox. Cindy’s friend named Agnes goes to visit her. When she knocks on the door there isn’t a response, which makes her confused since her car was in the driveway. Agnes walks to the backward to see if she is there instead. When she got to the back she saw someone crouched down almost as if they were hiding from someone. At first Agnes was scared, but she soon realized that it was Agnes. She calls out to Cindy and she then notices that there is a black nylon stocking around Cindy’s neck. Agnes goes and helps Cindy get the nylon stocking off her neck and Cindy tries to explain to Agnes what had just happened.
Cindy tells Agness that she went to the garage to go look for something, and while she’s in the garage she goes looking through different boxes. And she said that someone came up from behind her and grabbed her. They then wrapped the stalking around her neck and started strangling her. Agness asked if Cindy was able to get a good look at what the person looked like. And Cindy said that she didn’t see who it was since they came up from behind her and started strangling her. She said that she was able to get a look at the attacker’s shoes, and that they were white sneakers. Cindy then went on to explain that as she was being strangled she heard a knock at the door and she believed that it scared her attacker off. And that’s when Cindy ran to the backyard and went to hide. And that’s why when Agnes came into the backyard, she found her there. Cindy stayed at the house and the notes became more dark and threatening. One day she found a picture on her windshield which was of a corpse being pushed into a morgue. But whoever was sending her stuff started doing weird things such as, sending raw meat to her house.
Cindy also had a dog, so when she came home from work one night, she found that her dog was shaking in fear. As well as dead animal bodies. Her dog was sitting on her feces with a cord tied tight around her neck. Luckily her dog was still alive, but she would report that she would be getting threats daily, and sometimes a couple of days.Then out of nowhere they would stop for long periods of time making her believe it was finally over, only for it to start back up again. Cindy soon kept a journal and wrote how this was affecting her, investigators soon noticed that Cindy’s mental health was worsing. This was due to how she started off positive and watched her go down. When Cindy went to the police they didn’t believe her at all, they told her that no one was harassing her and that she was making it all up.
She knew no one was going to help her and she was going to have to take it into her own hands. So she decided to move and as soon as she does the only person she tells is her parents. She also decided to change her last name and hire a private investigator, his name was Ozzie Kaban. She tells him everything in hopes of him being able to do stuff that the police aren’t going to do for her. When he started her case, he had a feeling that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth and that she was holding back some stuff. When Ozzie talked to Cindy’s parents, they agreed as well that she wasn’t telling the whole truth. They felt as if she knew who was doing this to her but that she was afraid to do something. He thought it was a good idea to instal lights so she can be able to see who comes up to her front door. Ozzie then gave her a two way radio with a panic button so she could easily reach him if her phone line was cut again.
Late one evening, Ozzie begins to hear some noises from the radio that he left with Cindy. Some cracking as well as some shuffling. He begins to get worried and rushes over to her house. When he enters her house he sees Cindy laying on the floor at the end of the hallway. When he goes over to her he notices a knife through her hand. Attached to the knife and her hand was a handwritten note that read, “You are a dead b*tch”. Since Cindy wasn’t moving he thought that she was dead so he tried to find a pulse. He finds a faint pulse and quickly calls 911, she ends up being hospitalized and is alive. While in the hospital, Ozzie was there waiting for Cindy to wake up. When she wakes up he begins to ask her questions. And she said that the only thing she could remember is a needle being put into her arm when she was sleeping. Cindy then begins to explain that she doesn’t really remember anything. And when that happened, the police didn’t take any fingerprints at her home, on the knife, or the handwritten note. When the police go to the hospital they tell Cindy that they are starting to get tired and annoyed of Cindy’s whole saga. They wanted her to confess and tell them that she was doing it to herself, but Ozzie was odiment that no one can do that to themselves. He believes that Cindy would not have been able to inject the needle, or stab herself at the angles that both entered her body. He strongly believed that someone had attacked her. The police give Cindy a polygraph test in which they said they were trying to help her, but in reality they just wanted to see if she was lying. The polygraph test came back as truthful, but police considered her to be too ‘traumatized’ to be able to give useful information. Police began a 24 hour surveillance around her home, but of course since the police were there, there would be nothing happening. So the police used that as ‘proof’ to show that Cindy was faking it.
Cindy’s parents thought that whoever was doing this to Cindy was very smart and knew when to stop at certain times. Just like them the police are there, they also believed that whoever was doing was trying to make Cindy look like she was the one to blame. When the police were gone and some time had passed the calls had picked back up again, but could never be traced due to them only being a couple seconds long. The next attack was horrible and left Cindy hospitalized. Cindy was found near a ditch six miles away from her home, she was wearing a man’s work boot, and a glove, she was also suffering from hypothermia. She had cuts and bruises all over her body and also had a black nylon stocking around her neck.
Cindy didn’t have any memory of what happened that night, and when she was released from the hospital she asked her friend Agnes and her husband to stay the night since she doesn’t want to be alone. It was said that they were woken in the middle of the night by noises coming from the basement. Tom got up and went to go look, he soon saw that there were flames coming from the basement. Tom yells for someone to call 911, and that’s then they realized that the phone line had been cut. Tom ran outside and asked a neighbor to call 911, he said that when he ran outside he saw a man standing staring at the front of the house. Since it was dark he could see who it was, but he yells at the man to call 911. He said that this man went running away down the street without saying a word. Tom made it to the neighbors house and called 911. The police determined that the fire had started from within the house, they looked at couple windows, saw no fingerprints, and put the blame on someone inside the house.Since they found no fingerprints that determined that Cindy had staged the enter thing.They also pointed to the fact that they saw Cindy walking her dog alone that night.
Cindy’s parents were worrying about her mental state. She was very terrified and going downhill quickly. They believed that she was becoming suicidal and Cindy’s doctor took her to a local psychiatric ward that she was in for 10 weeks. Once she was let out, she admitted that she was holding back information about who her attacker may be. She told them that the attacker threatened to kill her family and friends if she told them who they were. Cindy was falling into a deeper depression because she felt as though her credibility was destroyed, and that no one believes anything she would say. Cindy writes in her journal that she wants to kill herself because her life is a living hell. She goes to the police and tells them who she believes was attacking her, she believed it was her ex-husband Roy Makepeace. Police went to question Roy, and he denied all the allegations. He gave police his answering machine, suggesting that Cindy was leaving him death threats. He goes on to tell police that he believes she is suffering from a split personality. But while she was at the psychiatric ward, the medical staff never diagnosed her with any type of disorder.
One day Cindy goes to a local shopping center to deposit her work paycheck, as well as to pick up a few things. But she would never make it home. Her car would be found at the shopping center parking lot on May 25, 1989, after she was reported missing. When investigators went over to her car they found blood on the drivers side door, and items from her wallet were scattered around inside her car. When they open the trunk of the car, they see the groceries she had bought, as well as a gift that was wrapped. Her family was left in the dark for two weeks with no answers. Cindy’s body would soon be found in the front yard of an abandoned house, which was said to be a very busy area with tons of people walking on foot. This led many to believe that her body was just dumped there. Investigators believed that she was taken somewhere and killed the day that they had found her body. But when the autopsy came back, it showed that she had most likely died the day she disappeared. Her body showed numerous wounds as well as an injection mark, but the investigators didn’t see a needle anywhere near her. It would soon be found that she was injected (or injected herself) with a high dose of morphine. Her body was found with both her hands tied behind her back, her feet were tied up as well, and around her neck was a black nylon pantyhose that was used to strangle her. It was hard for many people to believe that she walked a mile tying her feet, her hands, and strangling herself, or doing any of those things after injecting herself with morphine.
The police ended up saying that she injected herself somewhere else, threw away the needle, walked a mile and a half, tied herself up and strangled herself. Her death was ruled as both an accident or suicide. Many people still don’t believe the policy’s explanation. Her parents sadly passed without knowing what really happened to her daughter. Cindy’s sister ended up writing a book and continues to look for answers. There are many theories about what had happened to her, but there are many who believe that it was her ex-husband. This was the sad case of Cindy James.