What If It Was Voodoo?

November 16, 2017 4:52 PM

For years, this day had seemed inevitable. It was the predictable end to nearly a decade of well-documented and thoroughly-investigated psychological and physical torment: threatening phone calls, notes, strange encounters, vandalism, fires, animal killings, and a half-dozen violent physical attacks; all perpetrated by an unknown assailant. There were about a hundred documented incidents between 1982 and 1989. Someone was terrorizing her. After Cindy’s death, there was a thorough investigation. It culminated in the lengthiest and most expensive public inquest in British Columbia’s history. Cindy’s death was ruled a suicide. The Mysterious Death of Cindy James

Unsolved Mysteries wiki entry.

1989 A Current Affair segment.

posted by mannequito (13 comments total)

How could this woman have broken windows remotely when she was out of the house with other people or faked phone calls that other people heard? The police really wanted this woman to be lying I guess.
posted by Megafly at 5:06 PM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Misogyny is seeing a woman stalked for years and repeatedly found WITH A FUCKING STOCKING TIED AROUND HER NECK and still grasping at ways she could have brought that torture upon herself.
posted by ActionPopulated at 5:26 PM on November 16, 2017 [20 favorites]

This is horrifying. Man, what if police believed women? Fuck.
posted by corb at 5:28 PM on November 16, 2017 [9 favorites]

The police continued their investigation and questioned her several times. Ozzie later reported that she wouldn't tell them the entire story. She would be evasive, would withhold information, and simply would not act as a normal victim would act. When the police gave her a polygraph, the examiner claimed that she was withholding information. Her mother, Tillie Hack, thinks the reason for her daughter's reluctance was that her attacker had threatened her sister and family. By naming him, her family would be killed.

Emphasis mine.

This is typical bullshit that misogynist investigators use to disbelieve victims. I’d say we’ve learned in the last 30 years, but we really haven’t—cf the Jian Ghomeshi trial...
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:14 PM on November 16, 2017 [14 favorites]

Even setting aside the outrageous gender issues, it boggles my mind that police departments use polygraphs. They're debunked pseudo-scientific bullshit that tells you nothing but what the examiner wants to hear, and have been known for such for decades. There certainly was voodoo involved, it was just the police who were using it. Ugh.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:08 PM on November 16, 2017 [9 favorites]

Can we get a trigger warning on this for animal abuse or something? I read through the article and was very distraught and surprised by the sudden mention of strangled cats
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:07 PM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

Sounds like a job for Scully and Mulder, but if it was fiction, she would have been believed, and she would have lived.
posted by Grandysaur at 9:26 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

(I would have put a warning of some kind in the post but the list of incidents in the quoted text, including animal killings, seemed like enough)
posted by mannequito at 11:41 PM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

This shit shouldn't just be looked at as a women's issue. It is absolutely a women's issue that police won't take their allegations seriously but that's only part of it because certain kinds of crimes and psychological and physical abuse and mob violence almost never get taken seriously enough. I knew a guy who through an elaborate set of accidental circumstances ended up being targeted for daily harrasment at his home by bored teens from all over the local community and he reported the incidents to police for years but it was only once the situation bubbled up into real world violence that could have killed people the police ever took any action at all, only after the horse had already left the barn and the damage had been done. That situation wasn't even a fraction as terrifying and awful as this one, but law enforcement can be pretty annoyingly selective when it comes to what they'll bother taking seriously in the first place.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:39 AM on November 17, 2017

I didn’t see that in the top text for the OP because I normally look for one of those bold trigger warnings but you’re right I missed that
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:44 AM on November 17, 2017

I think what happened to Cindy James proves that what happened in this post had very little to do with the internet, and everything to do with a terrifying individual intent on ruining someone's life.
posted by twilightlost at 11:22 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

The fact that they kept finding no fingerprints and thought Geez Females instead of, idk, *gloves;* as if a doctor couldn't take basic precautions.

You know, maybe the cops were on the right track. Maybe her girl uterus got so woman hysterical that it lady wandered out of her femme body and UGH I can't continue.

No matter which way this all happened, Cindy's killer had an accomplice named systemic misogyny.
posted by wires at 1:34 PM on November 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

> I think what happened to Cindy James proves that what happened in this post had very little to do with the internet, and everything to do with a terrifying individual intent on ruining someone's life.

Yeah, the greatest and worst thing about the internet is how accessible it makes things that would previously have required fairly significant effort and resourcefulness.
posted by lucidium at 3:15 PM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]