Who Killed Cindy James?

This blog post is connected to a video on the case, found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0hTyDY__BU&t=6s

This was another case I first learned about from Unsolved Mysteries that stuck with me. It’s the case of nurse Cindy James, who either was stalked for years and tortured, finally to death, or she fabricated the entire thing and staged an elaborate suicide. I did a ton of research on this and the main thing I learned is that the internet is completely divided on this case. Some people are firmly convinced that she faked the entire thing, others think there is no way she could have done all those things to herself, and others think it’s a combination of both of those. So let’s get into some of the facts about the case.

Cindy was born on June 12, 1944, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to parents Otto and Tilly Hack. Cindy was the oldest of 6 children and moved around constantly as a child since her father, Otto, was a Canadian Air Force Colonel. I wasn’t able to learn that much about her childhood except that she moved a lot and that she was regarded as a sincere, warm person with a great sense of humor. Later Cindy revealed that she never felt good enough for her father and was never able to please him and she also had some kind of off putting memories like having to eat dinner in the dark at the bottom of the basement stairs which she said absolutely terrified her. That kind of stuff is a little strange, but there wasn’t all that much about her upbringing so I have no context to that. Originally Cindy wanted to go to college but her father was old fashioned and didn’t think that girls should go to college, but he did approve of her being a nurse so she ultimately decided to go to nursing school and graduated in 1966. She got married at 19 to a man who was 18 years her senior, psychiatrist Dr. Roy Makepeace who was born in South Africa. Roy is an interesting figure in this case and we will come back to him.