Criminology - Cindy James and John Lang

Episode Date: September 28, 2019

In this episode, we're discussing two separate cases of individuals who were extremely paranoid about the events taking place around them. Both individuals were found dead in very suspicious manners. Cindy James was a woman who had reported to police over 100 suspicious events and 5 attacks. She said she was receiving threatening phone calls and letters. John Lang was a man who was convinced that police were watching his every move. He went as far as videotaping the men he witnessed outside his home and uploaded the videos to YouTube. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss these two fascinating and tragic cases. In the case of Cindy James, the big questions involve whether or not her reports were real. Was Cindy James being harassed, stalked, and attacked? Or, was she fabricating these events to make it look that way. If it was the latter, why did she end up dead? And with John Lang, was his paranoia justified or just a series of strange coincidences? You can view John's videos for yourself. And if John had a right to be paranoid, was the reason behind his paranoia the cause for his death? You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode 80 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm doing good. How about you?

I'm doing great, man. I was just thinking about episode 80. Seems like a big number. Yeah, the time that's really flies by. You start knocking these episodes out of them. Before you know it, you're approaching 100. Well, when you get to the point where you're doing one every week, it does go very quickly. There's no doubt about it.

More if a lot of people have reached out to me about, you know, me talking on the podcast about sending my daughter off to college and being sad about it and things like that. And I've got a lot of really good support. You know, a lot of parents that have said, oh, we took our sons. or daughter to college this year as well, how tough it was, it gets easier, keep your chin up. So I appreciate all that stuff. I mean, you know, I sit here and talk about it full well knowing that I'm not the only one going through it.

Parents go through it. A lot of parents are going through it right now, but it is happening to me and I'm the one talking. So I guess that's why sometimes on the podcast, I end up talking. about and so do you what we're going through right now because it's happening. Yeah, I think a lot of people out there listening, like you mentioned, can relate to it. And this is the time of year, though. The kids are back in school.

Your daughter's off at college. You can get a lot of work done if we want to, which is what I've been doing. I don't know what you've been doing. Maybe you've been riding the motorcycle a little bit here and there, but I've been trying to get some extra work done. Yeah, definitely getting work done. but riding the motorcycle as well. And my daughter is about 40 minutes away.

So it's not that far. She came home last weekend for, you know, to spend time with this. But I can ride the motorcycle down, say hi to her, see her for five minutes and then ride back. It's kind of like a twofer for me, right? I get to ride the bike, but also get to see her for just a little bit. And it's a good day. Yeah, you get that motorcycle riding in before winter.

gets here. Oh man, it's coming quick and I'm not looking forward to it. So we had a lot of good reception morph on Terry Nero. You know, it was a different type of episode for us because there was no murder. But I think a lot of people found Terry Nero to be a badass. You know, a guy that got shot in the face and battled, continues to battle. and is searching for the person or persons behind the attempt on his life. Yeah, I think any time you can hear from the person themselves, it just adds something to the story. It makes it a little bit more real. Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of people took strength or found strength in what Terry had

to say. We had some new Patreon supporters. So we love that. Let's give some shout out. We had Laura Amador, Lethearis, Jamie Silva, Emily Burning, Jeff Kirkuff, Dina Shoup, and Kelsey Eitner jumped out at our highest level. So appreciate all of that new support. Thanks to everybody for all of that great Patreon support. We can't thank you enough. And if anyone out there's thinking about supporting the show through Patreon, we'd really appreciate it, you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology.

And more, if I still get a lot of questions, emails, I know you do as well. You know, if you're a listener that has found criminology recently and you're looking for our older episodes, they are still available. In fact, there are over 50 episodes available right now. You can find them on Stitcher Premium. And what's great about Stitcher Premium is they have. a 30 day free trial that a lot of people use to catch up. Now, they may continue to use Stitcher premium because there are a lot of great podcasts and everything is ad free. But the 30 day trial,

you know, that you can use that to listen to the full season of Zodiac, the full season of the Golden State Killer, Morph, which, you know, for you and I, it was one of our favorites to do. It's a good, way to catch up on criminology. Yeah, there's a lot of great content on there, and it's not all true crime. There's lots of other podcast and premium content on it that people will like in all different genres. So definitely check that out. All right, buddy, it's time to jump into this episode.

We are talking about a couple of cases that center around the topic of paranoia. So Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines paranoia as mental illness, characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur, usually without hallucinations, and a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others. So the two separate cases that we're discussing in this week's episode, including, including, two people who acted paranoid prior to their demise. Each victim claimed that they were being harassed for years before their unusual deaths. But the question is, were they just paranoid or were they actually being stalked, harassed, and were they ultimately murdered? Remember, there is an old saying. just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. And more if I always think about old sayings or cliches or, you know, things like that,

they developed over time for a reason, right? There's some kernel of truth in all of these sayings. And I think this is one that kind of proves that out, right? A lot of people think, oh, that person's just being paranoid. Well, maybe they are. But it also doesn't mean for sure that someone's not out to get you. Our first case takes us to the Vancouver, British Columbia area. And this is a pretty famous case, more if it's a case that's talked about in a lot of true

crime circles, it's the case of Cindy James. Cynthia Elizabeth Hack was born in Oliver, British Columbia on June 12, 1944. Her father, Otto Hack, was an Air Force colonel, and her mother, Matilda Tilly Hack, was a homemaker. Cindy had five siblings, three brothers and two sisters, and she was the oldest daughter of Otto and Tilly. At the age of 19, she married a South African-born psychiatrist named Dr. Roy Makepeace, who was 18 years her senior. Cindy studied at and graduated from Vancouver Hospital's nursing school in 1966, and she worked for several years as the coordinator of Blenheim House in Vancouver, a school for special needs children. Later, she worked as a registered nurse at Richmond General Hospital. In July of 1982,

Cindy decided to end her marriage to Roy Makepeace. And when she did, her life was never the same again. Four months later, Cindy started getting threatening phone calls and she told her parents about them. She said that she didn't recognize the voice, but sometimes it would be just a whisper or the sound would change. And sometimes there was just silence on the other end. This unnerved Cindy to a degree that forced her to go to the police to report these calls, but they got worse over the next three months. In addition, someone smashed her porch lights and cut her. her phone lines. Cindy told friends about bizarre notes that began showing up on her doorstep. And if all of that wouldn't have been scary enough, things would soon escalate. One of Cindy's good friends was a woman

named Agnes Woodcock. One day in 1983, Agnes showed up at Cindy's house for a visit. There was no answer when she knocked on the door. She assumed Cindy was taking a bath like she did every night. As Agnes waited for Cindy to come to the door, she heard a thump in Cindy's yard and went to investigate. She found Cindy outside, crouched down with a nylon stocking tied tightly around her neck. Cindy told Agnes that she went to the garage to get a box when someone grabbed her from behind. All Cindy saw of these salient were white sneakers. After this incident, the harassment got so bad that Cindy did everything she could to get away from it. She moved to a new home and legally changed her name from Makepeace to James in 1986.

She even painted her car. But nothing worked, and the harassment continued. Cindy hired private investigator Ozzy Caban to find out who was behind the incidents. Ozzie gave Cindy a two-way radio so that he could stay in touch with her at all times. One night, not long after he had given Cindy this radio, Ozzie heard strange noises, coming from it. So he raced to Cindy's house. When Ozzy got there, he found that Cindy's house was locked. So he went around the home peering into windows, trying to see if he could get a glimpse of

Cindy. And through one of these windows, Ozzy spotted Cindy lying on the floor and it looked to him as though she was dead. He kicked in the door and ran to Cindy. He found a note pinned with a pairing knife through her hand. Ozzie immediately called 911. A couple of minutes later, Cindy came to and told him that she saw a man walking through her gate. The next thing she remembered was being hit on the side of her head with a hard wooden object. She also said she remembered being held down and a needle going into her arm.

In another incident, Cindy was found. dazed and semi-conscious lying in a ditch several miles from her home. She had cuts and bruises all over her body. A black nylon stocking was tied tightly around her neck, and she was suffering from hypothermia. She was also wearing a man's work boot and glove. Cindy had no memory whatsoever of what had happened to her. These frightening incidents were starting to happen more and more frequently, and Cindy was trying to figure out who was responsible. It was frustrating for her, and her friend saw the hole that it was taking on Cindy. Cindy's friend Agnes and Agnes's husband, Tom, started staying over at Cindy's house.

One night in April, 1986, while Agnes and Tom were staying over, Cindy heard a noise coming from downstairs and she ran to get Tom. He also heard the noise, which he later described as a loud thump. And when all three of them went downstairs to investigate, they found the basement in flames. Agnes ran to the phone to call for help, but she found that the line was dead. So Tom went outside to find some help. He needed to find someone to call the fire department. Once outside, Tom saw a man standing on the curb and he asked this guy to call the fire department. But the man took off running down the street. So Tom got to a neighbor's house and asked them to call the

fire department. Police once again recalled to Cindy's house to investigate. They suspected that Cindy staged the incident after determining that the fire started from inside the home. Police investigated to see if someone had climbed into the basement through the window to set the fire, but no fingerprints were found on the windowsill. After the fire, Cindy continued to be tormented. Dead cat showed up in Cindy's yard on at least four occasions. They had all been choked to death and had threatening notes attached to them, warning Cindy not to go to police and to keep quiet. This torment went on for months and even years. One night, in April 1989, Cindy's mom Tilly was staying with Cindy when one of the

home's windows was smashed, setting off the burglar alarm. By the time Tilly jumped up to investigate, there was no sign of anyone or anything out of the ordinary. So more, if I think it's pretty easy to see, right, from what we've talked about so far, This is a lot of things that are happening to Cindy in a relatively short period of time. But when you talk about the fire in particular, you really get the sense from the research that as police began to investigate, their theory was that, okay, if someone from the outside entered the home, most likely, they would have come through the basement window. Well, to do that, it's almost impossible, right, to shimmy down into the basement without leaving some kind of, I don't even have to say fingerprints, right?

Just disturbing dust or some type of marks. They didn't find any. Now, that doesn't mean that somebody couldn't have come in to the house another way. but I think what it shows is that from a pretty early stage in this whole thing, police had been out to Cindy's house a number of times. They started to not believe her. And I think that's the key point to make. Yeah, I think there's a little bit of an aspect of, you know,

Chicken Little or something, you know, or the boy that cried wolf people, they see something so many times and then nothing comes from it and it sort of shapes their opinion as to what's going on and they start to doubt everything she's saying. But what's interesting is there are other people with her at times that are experiencing some of the stuff that's happening. After years of Cindy dealing with all of these events, her mental and physical health deteriorated. Her family was extremely worried about her. Her psychiatrist believes Cindy to be suicidal and committed her to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital. She stayed there for about 10 weeks.

While she was hospitalized, Cindy wrote about taking her own life. Upon her release, she admitted to friends and family that she knew more about the harassment and attacks than she had told them. She said that she knew who was behind it all and that she was going after this person herself. It took some coaxing. but the police were finally able to get Cindy James to tell them that she suspected her former husband, Dr. Roy make peace, as being behind all of the harassment. Now, police had already checked this guy out.

They didn't think that he was involved at all, but just in case, the investigators got Cindy to call her ex-husband to try to get him to confess. So what they did was they wired her phone to record the call. But when Cindy called him, he denied her accusations. So it's a short part of the phone call there, Morph, but I wanted everybody to get a sense of it. It sounds to me like this guy, Dr. Roy Makepeace, he's flabbergasted, right, that his ex-wife would even insinuate that he had anything to do with all of these strange things that were going on. And he categorically denied having anything at all to do with them. Over the course of seven years, Cindy reported

around 100 incidents of harassment and five physical attacks. Police questioned Cindy numerous times, but she was always evasive, and they felt she was withholding information from them. And over time, police believed her less and less. But Cindy's parents believed that Cindy was being evasive out of fear. One time she told them that after an attack, the stalker held a knife to Cindy's throat and threatened to kill her family if she didn't keep quiet. In an effort to verify Cindy's accounts,

police even asked Cindy to take a lie detector test on more than one occasion, to which Cindy consented. But each time, the results came back inconclusive. And Morph, I think this is the central theme in this case. things are happening to Cindy James on a very regular basis. And when I say things, these are scary things that would cause any woman or any man for that matter to be extremely worried about their own safety.

The problem is the police don't believe her. They may have taken it seriously in the beginning, but it happened so many times. And each time that they investigated, they couldn't corroborate what Cindy had said. They started to believe that she was making these things up or fabricating them, right, setting them up to make it look like someone was out to get her. And I think you have to start to ask the question if she's making it up. Why is she making it up? Is it because she just wants attention or does she really have to?

have some kind of mental illness that's making her do all this stuff. But I think either way, it's frightening because to her, whether it's a real person or whether it's something in her mind, it's something that's real to her and frightening. But I think that's a question. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved.

until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know if that's 100% verifiable because why has she said that she believes that it was her ex-husband? You know, could it have been that she was trying to get back at him? This is why this case is so talked about, right? On the internet in the true crime circles. Number one, it's very perplexing.

All of the things that happened to Cindy James and some that were getting ready to talk about. To your point, Morp, it could be that she truly believed these things were happening as part of a possible. illness, it could be that they really were happening. Or I think the third option is it could be that she was setting these things up to make it look as if someone was harassing her, maybe to get back at her ex-husband. Now, I've made mention to the fact that, you know, police didn't believe her, but it still didn't mean that they weren't looking into all of these things.

at one point, they had 24-hour surveillance on Cindy's home for a period of several days. It was said they had 14 police officers involved in the stakeout, but nothing ever happened while police were there. But conveniently, as soon as they were gone, another incident would happen. Now, Cindy's mom, Tilly has had the theory that Cindy Stalker knew. police had surveillance on the house and that's why nothing ever happened while they were there. So if that's true, then the stalker or the harasser would know when police left and then they would feel comfortable to resume the stalking. Police also tried tracing some of the threatening

phone calls to Cindy, but they were too short. One call was actually recorded on Cindy's answering machine. And you listen to this call more if it's very short and you can make it out pretty well. Basically, it is someone saying dead meat, dead meat soon. I think the controversy over this call that comes up a lot of the time is that many people feel as though this is a woman's voice on the recorded call. And that leads a lot of people to theorize that it was actually Cindy calling her own answering machine to leave a threatening call, potentially disguising her voice. But it does sound a lot like this is a woman's voice to me. And we have to also consider the possibility that if it's a real person, that a woman could be doing all this stuff to Cindy. Yeah, that isn't.

excellent point. We know that it's not just men that harass, that stalk. There are women that do it as well. Maybe there was another woman that had it out for Cindy James for whatever reason. Maybe it was because of the fact that they were jealous about their significant other and Cindy. But I just don't know that anything has ever really come out morph about. a specific individual whose significant other, either boyfriend or husband, was involved with Cindy James in some way. I've never seen it. But you're right to bring it up because you can't discount that fact. You know, a lot of times we naturally assume that a killer, a stalker, a harasser is male. And I mean, let's be honest, the statistics.

bear that out in the majority of the time. But it doesn't mean that women don't do some of these same things. But that central theme keeps popping up, right? Police are hearing Cindy's accounts of being attacked and harassed. They're obviously suspicious. And I think for the most part, the police believe that she was making these things up. The other thing that seemed very odd to police was that Cindy walked her dog late at night. This was something that she had done for, you know, quite some time.

It's something that she didn't stop doing once the attacks and the harassment started. So the question became if someone was stalking Cindy, if someone was targeting her, why would she go out late at night, I think sometimes even in the early morning hours, and walk her dog by herself? I can see why the police would be skeptical when you have all of these attacks and all these things going on. If that kind of stuff was happening to me, I wouldn't be going out late at night in the dark. So I find it odd that Cindy had no problem doing that. So I can see why they would think that something's off and be suspicious of her. Yeah, I think when you look at it, it's not just one thing, right?

It's a series of things that look very suspicious that ultimately end up in, I believe, the police not believing what Cindy is telling them. And I will say this, Morf, it does seem suspicious, right, from the facts that we've laid out. And if Cindy really was putting on some type of an elaborate show, I'll call it that, then that mistrust by the police would be well-founded. But if she wasn't, that's where you get into the area of, okay, that's, it's pretty sad, right? for the police not to believe her. I also wonder what type of ramifications that would have in other cases of harassment and stalking where, you know, maybe this police department in particular, having gone

through this issue with Cindy James would look at another woman's claims and possibly discount them. I don't know if it would happen. It's just something that popped into my head. Yeah, to have a. victim come forward after they've experienced all this with Cindy James, that could possibly lead the police to put less effort into that investigation, which it would be sad. But you have to look at it from, I think, their standpoint, a hundred incidents, five attacks over all these years, and there's never any physical evidence, nothing that leads them to a person that they think

is responsible so you can understand their frustration. But at the same time, if this is a real person doing this, how scary is that to have someone that dedicated to doing off to Cindy for that long and going through these lengths to keep this up? No, yeah, don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm not bagging on the police. When you look at all of the facts in totality, it does seem as though it would be very tough for them to believe all of these things were happening.

On May 25, 1989, Cindy James disappeared. She was last seen at 7.59 p.m. at the Blundell Center on number two road in Richmond, where she stopped at a bank to deposit her paycheck. She then went grocery shopping. Cindy's car, a 1981 blue Chevy citation, was found just before midnight on the 20th. parked in front of the bank of Montreal branch at Blundell Center. Groceries and a wrapped gift were inside the car, and there was blood on the driver's side door. Some items from Cindy's wallet were found under her car. Despite Cindy's car being discovered, Cindy herself was nowhere to be found.

Two weeks later, on June 8, 1989, the body of Cindy James was found by a city worker next to an abandoned house at 8-1-1-1-Bundel, about nine miles east from where she was last seen. A black nylon stocking was tied tightly around her neck, and her hands were behind her back tied to her feet. A toxicology report later revealed the presence of morphine in her system. And when I say presence, this was much more than just a presence. It was said that it was more than 10 times the lethal amount of morphine. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police concluded that Cindy took her own life. But there's going to be a lot of questions in this case.

And I think one of those questions right off the bat is why would a woman that is planning to take her own life go through with simple everyday errands? Why would she deposit her check? Why would she go grocery shopping? I think to people that are in the camp that believe Cindy was murdered, this didn't make any sense at all. An inquest into Cindy's death began in spring of 1990 and lasted several weeks. Cindy's private investigator, Ozzy Caban, testified that Cindy told him she wanted to buy a gun.

But he told her that wasn't a good idea because she wasn't properly trained in fire arms and could be a danger to her friends and family. Cindy ended up not purchasing the gun. On the day she went missing, she was supposed to have an infrared detection system installed in her home. She already had an alarm system, but the infrared would detect movement around her house. In the wake of Cindy's death, many people considered whether or not it was possible that Cindy was indeed mentally ill and had done all of these things to herself. This included her family. Cindy's father, AutoHack, talked about some childhood trauma that Cindy endured that may have contributed to her mental health issues.

One in particular occurred when she was seven years old. Cindy had scarlet fever while her parents were out of town. Cindy and her sisters were staying with the wife of an Air Force lieutenant colonel at Sea Island Base. At one point, Cindy's temperature got so high that she became delirious. She was hospitalized and quarantined for about a week. Her parents, Otto and Tilly, received a call about 10 days after Cindy became sick. But the critical period was over. So they didn't return home until a few days later.

They wondered if this illness somehow may have contributed to some. mental issues. Otto also testified that he ruled his home with an iron fist, and Cindy felt that he treated her more like one of his subordinates than his daughter. Otto said that while they did not have a great relationship, they had come to understand each other as friends and equals. He wondered if the relationship that they had when Cindy was younger played some role in any mental illness that Cindy could have had. Cindy's younger sister Marlene testified that Cindy may have felt a at a young age because of the scarlet fever episode. Cindy didn't like the woman who was taking care of her and her sisters.

Marlene called her nasty and said the woman told the girls she had talked to Otto and Tilly, but they didn't want to come home. And more if this was something that kind of jumped out at me, you know, as a parent, if you get a call, right, you're away from home, you have someone looking after your child. children, and you find out that one of them has a serious medical issue. Now, from the research, it sounds like they found out after the critical period was over, but to me, it wouldn't matter. I'm ending vacation, whatever trip I'm on, and I'm getting home as soon as possible. I did find that to be very strange. Yeah, I'm right there with you. If I was on vacation or traveling for work,

and one of my kids got that ill and had that kind of sickness, I'd be on the next plane home. There were other traumatic experiences that may have haunted Cindy later in life in 1963. When Cindy was still in nursing school, her fiance, a young intern, was killed in a car crash. And then just a year later, she almost lost one of her eyes after some medication got into it. So this woman did have a lot of things happen to her over her lifetime. Cindy's family struggled in the wake of her death to find answers. And I think specifically they struggled with the issue of whether or not Cindy was mentally ill.

But at the same time, they believed there was a real possibility that she had been stalked and harassed by a real person. Vancouver Police Constable Pat McBride also testified. He and Cindy had been in a relationship for about a year, not long after the harassment began, and he was reportedly one of the officers investigating Cindy's case. McBride had briefly lived with Cindy while in between apartments and needed a place to stay temporarily. One night, he answered the phone with no one talking on the other end, but he thought the call might have come from the airport because he could hear a woman's voiceover,

PA system in the background. McBride himself was once considered as a suspect early on in the investigation of Cindy's death before police called it a suicide. But investigators said they had no evidence against him. The coroner's inquest ended at the end of May 1990. The five-member jury ruled that Cindy had died from an unknown event. While they did find that Cindy died from an overdose of morphine and the sedative fluoresapam, there wasn't enough evidence to conclude whether it was suicide, homicide, or an accident. Caban and Cindy's parents never believed that she took her own life. They didn't think that she could have injected herself with this massive amount of morphine and then tie her hands and feet behind her back before the morphine

kicked in. At the inquest, it was determined that it took about 15 minutes to a half hour to kick in. A knot specialist recreated the same type of knots and the way that Cindy was tied up. It took him only three minutes to get this done. But there is a big difference between a specialist who has had years of training and a woman who supposedly shot herself up. with a heavy lethal dose of morphine. So there's a ton of questions here, Morph, and I think we have to dive into them. You know, number one,

does it really take 15 minutes to a half hour for morphine to kick in? I've had morphine at least three or four times in connection with kidney stones. It seems like, from what I remember, it kicks in very quickly. In a matter of no time, I was in La La Land.

Yeah, I too had morphine for kidney stone and they put that in the IV and it kicked in for me in 10 seconds. And again, that was not a lethal dose of morphine. So injecting what was described as a lethal dose of morphine, I just don't know. That one is hard for me to reconcile. And then you have to talk about the fact of whether, Cindy knew how to hogtie herself. I mean, that's basically the position that she was in. She was hogtie. Could she have done it within, you know, a certain period of time while also under this massive dose of morphine? Yeah, it really seems like, to me anyways, it seems like that would be

hard to accomplish. And I guess if she had her mind hell bent on doing this and making it look as real as possible. Maybe she had rehearsed it or practiced it. I think even like BTK, Dennis Raider, used to tie himself up and get out. So there's that possibility that she had somehow done this before and was ready for this and was able to do it somehow before the morphine kicked in. Yeah. There's a lot of what ifs. There's a lot of questions. Anytime you have a case like this, that's what fuels the internet fervor, right? How could this have happened? The armchair detectives come out because there are a lot of things to try to reconcile,

to try to solve on your own when you're looking at this case. While Cindy's death is suspicious to say the least, it still remains an unknown event. Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on Cindy's death in season three called Skisker. to death. It aired in February 1991. Cindy's father Otto Hack died on June 25, 2010, at the age of 90. His wife, Tilly, followed two years later on January 13, 2012. She was 89 years old. They never learned the truth about what happened to Cindy. Cindy's youngest sister, Melanie Hack, wrote a book titled, Who Killed My Sister, My Friend? She spent 14 years researching medical and police reports

in her sister's death. Melanie was 27 years old when Cindy died and all these years later still wonders what really happened to her sister. And Morph, I think that just goes to show you, right? Melanie spent 14 years researching as much as she possibly could on her sister's death. She still doesn't really know what happened. That's how confusing this case really is. And I don't know if we'll ever really know what happened to. And I don't know if we'll ever really know what happened to. Cindy. First of all, unless there was somebody else involved, and this is something we didn't talk about, there is a possibility that she had somebody else with her that night who either helped with the knot tying, helped with the injection. That's a possibility. It's a speculation. Unless that person comes forward and says, this is what really happened. I don't. I don't.

don't think we'll ever know. Because if Cindy did all of this on her own, she can never tell. Now, if somebody murdered her and set it up to look like this, it's a possibility that that could come out. But I think, Morf, that's not the consensus, right? When you research this case, when you read statements from police, I think most people lean towards the idea that Cindy set this up and either wanted to die or this was something that went horribly wrong and she died. I think there is a possibility that this was one more attempt by her to set something up to look like another attack just to add to all the things that happened to her. and maybe it did go too far. And she died accidentally. And I think what's really sad is that whether this person that terrorized her was real or imagined,

those years had to be pure hell for Cindy because she was either really experiencing them or she believed she was. And I couldn't imagine living your life like that. No, I agree with you if one of those two. things is true, right? Either this was a real person who was targeting her or she believed in her mind that somebody was. But there's a third possibility. We may have already mentioned it, but there is a distinct possibility that she didn't believe any of this, but was setting it up to make others believe that it was happening to her. The thing is, we just don't know, right? We can lay out the facts.

we can lay out some possibilities, that's really all we can do. Yeah, I think that's what's so frustrating about her case. So that's it for the case of Cindy James. Our next case takes us to Fresno, California. Fresno is the fifth largest city in the state. And although this case is not as well known in true crime circles as the case of Cindy James, it's every bit as bizarre. Fresno has a population of over 500,000 residents, and it sits between Sacramento and Los Angeles and Fresno County.

It was founded by the Central Pacific Railroad Company in 1872 and has annual sales of over $3 billion in agriculture production. Now, while Fresno may mostly be known for its agriculture, some people believe it has one of the most corrupt police departments in the United States. They don't have a great track record. They've had several police chiefs abuse their power for money and or drugs. Chief Ray Wallace was sentenced to prison in 1950 for amassing more than 1,700 acres of land while in office. That's a good gig if you can get away with it. He did not. From the 50s into the 1970s, Chief Hank Morrill.

who was a former truck driver, controlled the area's brothels, and married one of Fresno's top madams. His long reign as police chief made him one of the most powerful men in the county. In 2001, Jerry Dyer became police chief and remained so today. In Dyer's 18 years as police chief, allegations of racism, sexual assault, harassment, and intimidation of Fresno residents have become an almost constant presence with the police department. Several police officers have been charged with rape, drugs, prostitution, and money laundering. One of the most bizarre stories against Fresno PD

came from a man named John Lang, who claimed Fresno law enforcement was corrupt. John Lang resided at 648 North Van Ness Avenue in Fresno. He worked at Pay Less Tires and Breaks on Blackstone Avenue. John and his wife Alma divorced in 2011. The couple had a daughter. John was a local activist who often posted on different websites, including Fresno's local newspaper, the Fresno B, and the Facebook group for the website, Fresno People's Media. John claimed he was constantly harassed by members of Fresno law enforcement over a period of several years starting in 2009. At that time, He uncovered illegal activity within Fresno law enforcement. He told a man named Macaulay that Fresno PD were running a license plate scanning scam.

This scam involved local police officers who would scan license plates of vehicles and parking lots of retail stores in low-income neighborhoods. Then, according to John, after collecting hits of violations, they would pull the unsuspecting drivers over a few blocks away from the stores in a marked police car, telling the drivers they simply came across her vehicles while patrolling. John said the motivation for doing this was money. John also claimed that an employee at the Fresno B was sharing chat log data with a sheriff sergeant of anyone who was critical of local government and law enforcement. Then police would track their IP address and harass and stalk these individuals.

This included John Lang himself. John believed that Fresno law enforcement put a GPS tracker on his car and that they bugged his phones. According to him, they always knew where to find him and often followed him throughout the city. In 2015, John filed a police harassment complaint with the Fresno Police Department Internal Affairs Division. Less than two weeks later, according to John Lang, the police department up their harassment and intimidation. and continued to do so for several months. He began keeping an online diary about the harassment. He also started a YouTube channel called Lang Marine,

after he set up cameras outside his home to record what he said was proof. Fresno law enforcement were stalking and harassing him. In all, he uploaded 17 videos to YouTube between early 2015 and January 2016. While most of the videos appear harmless, There are a few interesting ones that make you wonder if John was right. In one video uploaded May 14, 2015, several police officers in both marked and unmarked police cars park across the street from John's house, get out of their vehicles, and start chit-chatting with one another.

They're there for over five minutes, and then they get back into their cars and leave. There seems to be no real purpose to doing this, but John believed that it was simply done to intimidate him. In another video, a man dressed in plain clothes is seen walking from the south on the sidewalk in front of John's house. He stops when he gets to John's house and turns to look directly at it. He then turns around and walks south again. It looks like he's texting on a cell phone. As he walks south, he stops and chats for a brief moment with a guy walking his bicycle. As this is going on, a woman with a baby stroller crosses the street towards them.

The man in plain clothes then continues walking south, while it appears he's texting on the cell phone again, before putting it in his pants pocket. He then briefly passes a parked black Toyota sedan, turns around, gets into the car, and drives off. Again, there seems to be no real purpose here, but it's interesting to say the least. In a third video, and perhaps this is the most compelling video of all, a dark minivan parked across the street. A guy wearing a hat and blue puffer coat opens the side door.

He's holding a large device that looks like a camera and is aiming the device at John's house. John thought it may have been a thermal imaging device. The driver has a cell phone in his hand and he's talking to someone on speaker. The guy with the device occasionally turns his head towards the driver. as if he's waiting instruction. This lasts for a few seconds before the guy in the hat shuts the van door. The men continue sitting in the parked van and the driver is still talking to someone on his

cell phone. There may have been a third man in the front passenger seat or it could be the guy with the device without his hat. The whole video is only a minute and 38 seconds long, but there are a ton of questions. What is this device? Who were these men? And what were they doing in front of John's house? And if anyone wants to watch these videos, they're very bizarre and they are available on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and search John Lang, Fresno, and you can see some of these videos and try and decide for yourself what's going on. After collecting all of this video, John also took to Facebook and Twitter and posted several times about the alleged harassment.

It was clear he felt something bad was going to happen to him. And a January 14th, 2016 Facebook post, John wrote, Just wanted to give you guys a heads up. If anything happens to me in the next day or two, it will be the result of the Fresno PD, my neighbor, and an employee at my job, payless breaks, and tires on Blackstone. Four days later, John Lang was dead. On January 20th, 2016, the Fresno Fire Department responded to a

house fire at 648 Ness Avenue. This was John Lang's home. Inside, firefighters found John lying on the floor in the back of the home. He had been stabbed multiple times and was pronounced dead a short time later at Fresno Community Regional Medical Center. Lieutenant Joe Gomez, the police department's public information officer, told the media that John had been stabbed multiple times in the abdomen and the back. And his house set on fire. But that story changed when Tony Boddy, a spokesperson for the Fresno County Sheriff and Coroner, said Lang had three superficial, self-inflicted stab wounds to his chest and no cuts on his back.

When asked by the local press why the original story had changed, Fresno Police Lieutenant Burke Farah, head of the hunt, Homicide Unit said the confusion was the result of incorrect information, released at the scene by Gomez, and blamed Gomez for making a mistake. In May of 2016, the Fresno County Sheriff Coroner's Office released the final coroner's report. Manor of death was ruled to be suicide. Cause of death was inhalation of smoke and soot due to fire with multiple stab wounds as a contributing factor.

Fresno police confiscated two kitchen knives from John's home, a bread knife and a Japanese kitchen knife. The report said it was possible John used the bread knife to stab himself. However, the coroner ruled out the Japanese knife, saying it was too small. The report also mentioned that John barricaded himself in his own home, making it difficult for firefighters to get to him. It also said John had cameras inside the home. On the day of his death, the report claimed that John walked in front of the cameras twice with a knife. in his hand before shutting the cameras off. So Morph, what police basically said was that John barricaded himself in his home,

walked around his house with a knife for whatever reason, stabbed himself three times in the chest, and then set his house on fire to make his death look like a murder. Interestingly enough, if John did have cameras inside his home, he never uploaded any of that video to YouTube as far as we can tell. John had a number of social media followers who pretty quickly called BS on this suicide ruling. They believed that he was murdered. Now, there are other people that believe he was paranoid, he was delusional, and he took his own life. And more if I think, what makes this case so interesting are the videos uploaded by John Lank? And they're on YouTube.

You can still watch them today, you know, getting back to what people believe, right? Some believe he was murdered. Others believe he was paranoid and that that caused him to take his own life. When you look at the videos, I don't know that they prove anything, but they're very strange. There's no doubt about it to have, you know, a number of people essentially kind of at stopping by your house, doing strange things in front of your house. Could that all be a coincidence? Well, maybe. Could it have made John Lang extremely paranoid? Maybe. Could it also have been people trying to mess with him? I think possibly it could. Yeah, and whether he's paranoid or not,

you can't make up the stuff he recorded it with his camera. And they're all, you know, depending on your opinion after watching them, they all seem interesting to say the least. But the one that really stands out to me, especially, is the minivan that pulls up in front of his house. And the sliding door comes open. And here's this guy that looks like he has a big movie camera that's just sitting there rolling film. Well, two people that look like spotters almost are in the front. And he's just filming this man's house, John Lang's house. It's just very bizarre.

I don't know why that would happen in normal everyday life, but for some reason, that appears to be what happened here. So you can imagine how something like that would really mess with John Lang's psyche. Well, I think of all the videos, for sure, that is the one that you would look at and say, there's no doubt that that was someone aiming something at John's house. That wasn't a coincidence.

That wasn't a utility worker or some other person out doing something that, and it just happened to look like they were messing with John. That one's pretty clear in the fact that someone was shooting something at John's house, whatever that thing was. And if that was me and I saw that, I'd be a little paranoid. I got to be honest with you. John Lang's death wasn't the only suspicious death in Fresno that was ruled a suicide, when many people believed it was clearly a case of murder.

On November 29, 2004, 30-year Fresno police veteran, Lieutenant Jose Morales, was found dead, about 200 yards from Cheat Jerry Dyer's home. Dyer had suspended Jose for allegedly violating department policy and took his badge and firearm from him. Jose told his department-appointed psychologist that, that he was going to physically confront Dyer. Later that night, Jose received a mysterious phone call and then headed to Dyer's home to confront him. That was the last time anyone saw Jose alive. Jose's children said that their father was visibly troubled after this phone call.

And shortly after Jose left, he called his wife Yolanda and asked if Dyer lived on American Avenue. This was very confusing to Yolanda because she knew that Jose was well aware that Dyer lived on that street. Not long after he made the phone call to Yolanda, Jose's body was found with a gunshot wound to the chest across the street from Dyer's home. He was lying face down on the side of the road outside of his truck with a gun at his left side. He had a large gash above his right eye, which he didn't have when he left home. A passerby allegedly found the body and reported it to the authorities. This person has never been identified. After Jose's death was ruled as suicide, the ruling didn't sit well with his family.

Jose was right-handed. The gun was found on his left side. Also, no gun residue was found on Jose's hands. And there was an obvious error on the autopsy report. the coroner listed Jose as being circumcised when he wasn't. Jose's family believes Dyer killed Jose when Jose confronted him, and Dyer then moved his body to the location where it was found. Dyer then staged a suicide with the help of the Fresno County Sheriff and Coroner.

And just like in John Lang's case, the local media barely covered Jose's death. So there's a lot to unpack here, Morph. And I think all of these deaths that we're talking about in this episode, are strange. You know, when you talk about Jose's death, it was pretty obvious that he was going to confront Dyer. I think the question comes in, where did the gun come from? Right. If Dyer took his gun and badge, now it doesn't mean that Jose didn't have another gun at home that he could have brought with him. That's where the reporting gets a little fuzzy, right? Was it ever identified as being Jose's gun.

I don't know. Because like you said, this wasn't a case that was reported on extensively. It was almost as if it was kind of swept under the rug a little bit. It could have been that Dyer was concerned that Jose was going to come after him. And he decided he wasn't going to take that chance. There's a lot of what ifs in this one. The hacker group Anonymous publicly targeted Fresno City representative.

and they threatened to take down the city's website as they declared that John Lang will not be forgotten. John's online diary was taken down immediately after his death. You won't find a picture of John Lang on the internet. You won't even find an obituary. In a Reddit thread, a user called Osiris, who's from the Fresno area, was able to get a high school picture of John and posted it. on the site. But there's not really much information at all on John. It just doesn't exist online. It's almost morph as if the guy never existed at all. Aside from the YouTube videos that he posted, there's just not that much out there on him. And again, I think it's just a very strange,

fascinating case. There's no doubt that John Lang thought he was being targeted by police. I think that's pretty obvious. My assumption is that's the reason he was posting the videos. He was definitely outspoken in his criticism of the police department. But the question I have is, would that be enough for authorities to want John Lang dead? What would they have been so scared about? Was he planning on exposing something that was such a bombshell it would have shaken up the whole system? I don't know. You'd think if they wanted to discredit him, they could have just made him look crazy and put things in emotion to create a narrative to make him look mentally ill or paranoid. But to go the extra mile and kill him seems like a stretch. But depending if he really

had information that might be damaging to certain people, you have to consider that possibility. Well, and it's definitely a motive for murder. We've seen it before. People in power want to keep that power. So if there is something out there that could potentially threaten that power, it's not out of the question that they would go to whatever links that they felt they needed to to make sure that that didn't come to light. I'm not saying it happened in this case. I really don't know. But it's not outside of the realm of possibility. It has happened throughout time. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance with this episode. As always, if you haven't done so, take just a minute, go out, give us a rating, you can leave a review if you want to, it goes a long way.

Also, please keep telling your friends. We are getting a lot of new listeners just from fans of the show telling their friends that they enjoy it. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology. Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. Additionally, you can join our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, discussion, and fans. So that's it for this episode, Morf. Some interesting cases, to say the least, I think this is an episode especially that will leave people with a lot of questions. It might even prompt people to do some of their own digging.

in the case of John Lang, there's not a lot to find. I'll be honest about that. There's a lot out there about Cindy James. It's a much more well-known case. But these are some of the cases that tend to really fascinate me. And I think fascinate a lot of people because there's a lot of different avenues to explore. There's a lot of different ways that some of these things could have gone down. from very simple explanations, which sometimes is the case, to potential cover-ups and conspiracies and who doesn't like a good conspiracy story. And one thing's for sure. If you look into these cases, be sure to go down some rabbit holes.

Yeah, you definitely will end up in some rabbit holes. There's no doubt. But we'll be back with you next Saturday night with an all-new episode of criminology. So for Mike and Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of everyone.