The real life Invisible Man

The case of Cindy James 

Cindy James was a Canadian nurse. She grew up in Richmond, Canada. Cindy started working as a nurse and at the age of 19 she married a doctor by the name of dr. Roy Makepeace who was 18 years older than her. They weren't on great terms so they did end up separating which Cindy was very happy about. 

This is where things started going downhill for Cindy. When she moved to a new place she started receiving some threatening calls and mails. Someone would call her and just randomly start harassing and threatening her over the phone, saying they were going to kill her. She also received these very interesting mails. 

As the threats got more and more violent, Cindy's mental health got worse. One day she found 3 dead cats hanging from her front porch. She also saw that her front porch lights had been shattered. When she tried to call the police, she couldn't because her phone lines had been cut off.

One night Cindy's friend Agnes went to visit her but she didn't answer the door. So she decided to take a look if Cindy was in the backyard. She went to the backyard and she found Cindy crouched down and there was a black nylon stocking tied around her neck. 

So after calming down, this is what Cindy told Agnes. That night when she went to her garage to find some things, someone grabbed her from the back and started strangling her. But Cindy couldn't see her attacker. However, she did notice that the attacker was wearing a pair of white sneakers. She also stated that Agnes very much saved her life because when Agnes knocked on the door the attacker ran away. Then she went to the backyard to hide. 

After that the threats started getting more violent. Sometimes she would receive threatening mails multiple times a day for a week. Then all of a sudden it would stop, leading her to think that it has finally stopped. But then it would start back again. She made a police complaint but nothing came out of it. The police didn't offer her much help and thought that she was making all this up. 

So Cindy decided to take the matter into her own hands. First she moved to a new place, then she changed her last name. She also decided to hire a private investigator by the name of Ozie Kaban. She told him what's been going on but he had this nagging feeling that she wasn't telling him the full story. Even Cindy's parents agreed with him on that. 

Regardless, Kaban started his investigation. He installed some safety devices to insure her safety. He also installed a two way radio so she can reach him if something happens. One day he heard some noises on the radio so he rushed to her place. He found her down the hallway where she was laying on the floor and there was a knife through her hand. In between the knife and her hand was a note which said "you are a dead B". 

He rushed her to the hospital and luckily she was still alive. Kaban questioned her but the only thing she remembered was a needle being pushed into her arm. 

Now even after all this the police still didn't help. They didn't take fingerprints from any of the evidence. They still believed that Cindy was the one doing all this and they even told her that she needed to come clean with them.

The police decided to set up a 24 hours surveillance watching her house and tracking her phone calls. But naturally when the police were there, there were no threats. They even gave Cindy a polygraph test to check if she was lying but when nothing came out of it they said she was too traumatized to give any proper information.    

But Kaban was determined to find what was happening to Cindy. He even took her to some psychiatrist to try hypnosis and see if she could remember anything about the attacker. But nothing came out of it. But the threats only got worse.

Once Cindy was found near a ditch which was 6 miles away from her house. She was suffering from Hypothermia and had bruises all over her body. Interestingly, she was wearing only 1 men's boot and globe and she had a nylon stocking around her neck. But she had no memory of what had happened to her. 

That night after she was discharged from the hospital, she asked her friend Agnes and her husband Tom to stay over at her place. At night they woke up because some noises were coming from the basement. Tom went ahead to check and found flames coming from the basement. They tried to call the police but the phone lines had been cut again. 

Tom ran to the neighbors house to call 911 and he saw a shadowy figure just staring at the house. And then the man ran away down the street and he couldn't see who it was because it was so dark outside.

Later the fire department arrived and they said something inside the house had started the fire. Because they couldn't find any fingerprints on the windows. And that's how they came to the conclusion that Cindy must have started the fire. Yes. 

At this point Cindy's mental state, very understandably, got worse. She was admitted at a psychiatric ward for 10 weeks. After her release, that is when she finally admitted to her family that she may have known who the attacker was. She didn't say anything before because the attacker had threatened to kill everyone she knew if she had done so. 

So she went to the police and told them that she thought her attacker was her ex husband dr. Roy Makepeace. When the police went to question him he obviously denied and instead said that he had some evidence against Cindy. He stated that she was leaving him death threats on the phone. He even diagnosed her with split personality disorder. But at the psychiatric ward her therapists never diagnosed her with the said disorder. 

 Fortunately or unfortunately for Cindy, it all came to an end on May 25th of 1989. Cindy was reported missing. She was last seen at the local shopping center. The police went to look and they found blood on the drivers' side door of her car. Items from her wallet were scattered around inside her car. 

 Finally after 2 weeks Cindy's body was found in the front yard of an old abandoned house. When her body was found, her hands and feet were both tied and there was a black nylon pantyhose around her neck. According to the autopsy, Cindy had died the day she disappeared. There was an injection mark on her arm along with multiple bruises all over her body. Heavy amount of morphine was also found in her body. 

However, the police still believed that it was Cindy who did all this to herself. According to them, she injected herself with Morphine, then walked a mile from her house, tied her own feet and hands, then somehow managed to strangle herself with the black nylon. But of course there was no evidence to prove their unrealistic theory. 

The police also suspected her ex husband. But again they had no evidence against him. The case still goes unsolved.  

In the end, the case of Cindy James is a very tragic case of a woman who suffered in silence. But the worst part was how the system failed to serve her justice. So much so that she had to pay it with her life.

Son of Sam: The notorious American serial killer

 David Berkowitz's reign of terror

David Richard Berkowitz, AKA Son of Sam was born on June 1st, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. His birth name was Richard David Falco. After his birth his mother abandoned him but he was soon adopted by a couple by the names of Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz who were hardware store retailers. 

Pearl and Nathan really loved David and tried their best to raise him well. Growing up David was a very smart kid but that also made him uninterested in school. He didn't have many friends and always felt like he didn't fit in. So as time was passing, he was slowly becoming a wild child. He would steal things or lit things on fire and try to constantly get away with his bad deeds.

Things really took a turn in David's life when his adoptive mother, Pearl passed away. He was only 14 and really loved Pearl and he felt Pearl was the only one who cared about him and genuinely loved him. After a few years, Nathan ended up marrying another woman and that really made David angry. Things were tough in the household so at the age of 17 he ran away and joined the army, in 1971. He served in  both Fort Knox and South Korea. But he was discharged from the army in 1974.

When he returned to New York, he decided to search for his biological mother. After meeting her he felt even worse than before. He felt as if the motherly figures in his life were always leaving him and maybe he wasn't good enough. Perhaps that's what led to his reign of terrors.

CRIME SPREE:

David began his crime spree in the mid 70's. He committed his first murder on the Christmas eve of 1975. He found 2 young girls, around the ages of 15, walking underneath the Co-op bridge. David was only 22 at the time, he didn't have much direction on how to kill someone, but he knew he wanted to. So he attacked the 2 girls with his hunting knife. He stabbed them as much as he could and then just ran away. Only one of them survived but was hospitalized. She tried to give her attackers' description but it was no use. The police couldn't find any trace of David. 

But David wasn't done there. In July of 1976, he spotted 2 young women in a car of a parking lot. When one of them had opened the car door to leave, David ran towards her and shot her in the chest and she died immediately. When the other woman noticed that, she tried to run away but she got shot in her thighs. David knew he didn't have much time so he left her like that and ran away. She was able to escape but she didn't have much information on the attacker. 

David found his next victims on October 23rd of the same year. A couple, Carl and Rosemary, were sitting in their car near the residential area of Flushing, Queens. All of a sudden they heard a gunshot that smashed the car window and had shot Carl in the head. Rosemary drove as fast as she could. Luckily they both survived despite many injuries. 

Now this is where the police started putting two and two together. They noticed a pattern in these attacks.  They noticed that the shell casings found on the crime scenes were identical. Also The attacker was most likely to target women with long dark hair. Which led to a lot of women in New York changing their hair at that time.

A month later David decided to strike again. He found 2 high school girls walking home from school. Joanne(18) and Donna(16). He asked them for directions and he was in a combat uniform. But then all of a sudden he pulled out a gun and started shooting them. He shot the girls once and fired several more gunshots on Joanne's front porch. However, both of the girls survived. Joanne was shot near her spine which led her to be rendered paraplegic. Donna was shot in the neck and thankfully she was fine. 

In January of 1977, he attacked a newly engaged couple who were just sitting in their car. The man survived but unfortunately the woman had been shot twice and died that night. After this attack the police decided to release their theories to the press. Sketches of the alleged killer started circulating around. The media gave him the name "the 44 caliber killer".

On March 8th, the same year, David attacked a young girl named Virginia. She held up her books to protect herself, but regardless David shot and it pierced through the books and shot her in the head. She died right then and there. Also a few days later, David shot another couple and this time he was able to kill both of them. But interestingly enough, in this crime scene, the police found a handwritten letter from David. In this letter, David not only mocked the police for their inability to catch him but also told them about his desired nickname. He told them that he would very much like to be known as 'Son of  Sam'. 

Few months later in June, David decided to go after another couple, Sal and Judy. He shot them early in the morning in Bayside, Queens. On July 31st, David decided to strike again but in Brooklyn this time. He attacked a man and a woman by the name of Robert and Stacy, in their car. Robert lost one of his eyes and Stacy was shot in the head which led to instant death. 

Now son of Sam was really getting away with it all. But soon things started going downhill for him, when one morning a woman saw him in her neighborhood. She stated that she saw him park his car then get out of his car with an object in his hand. She said that she had a really bad feeling about it so she ran and David tried to shoot her multiple times. But one piece of information she gave to the police was enough for them to find him. She told the police that his car had a parking ticket. So the police did their research and found the owner of the car. 

On 9th August, 1977 David was finally arrested. At his arrest he said "Well you got me". Police found a ton of evidence from his car and house. It only took David 30 minutes to confess all of his crimes. But he said that the motive of his murder was, the neighbor's dog had asked him to commit all the murders. But psychiatrists had confirmed that David was mentally stable and was just looking to use the insanity plea to get away with it all. 

Regardless, in 1978 David pleaded guilty to 6 killings and over 1500 fires. He received 25 years to life for each murder. Still to this day he's one of the most notorious serial killers in America.