A woman recently wrote to me and shared the story of her younger sister’s death…a sister 16 years younger than herself. The police have one theory of what happened to her sister—suicide, an overdose. She has another theory. The FBI is investigating. She asks me, “How did you do it?” Because many of you who […]

June 11, 1989, my siblings and I go to the funeral home to see our sister’s body…Cindy’s body. A few years ago I wrote a Blog post about that experience…about how important it was, especially for my sister Marlene and I, to see Cindy’s body to make the reality begin…about some of what happened in […]

When Cindy’s body was found on this day in 1989, I went into deep shock. It was my friend Susan who told me that Cindy’s body had been found…when she saw the news on TV, exactly two weeks after Cindy’s disappearance: At 7:30pm on June 8, 1989, my friend Susan phoned me when I got […]

Twenty years ago, during those two weeks starting May 25th when my sister Cindy James was missing, I continued with the motions of working and was constantly thinking about whether she would be found alive, or if she would even be found—ever. I told my boss about Cindy’s disappearance and asked him not to say […]

Twenty years ago, as the days passed with no sign of my sister Cindy James’s whereabouts after she disappeared, I realized the passage of time meant her chances of being alive were diminishing. I kept hoping she was alive but I also thought if somebody had her, she was probably being tortured somehow. As much […]

Missing persons cases present an unusual problem for police—it’s not a crime to disappear. And without concrete evidence of a crime or reasonable indication a person has been abducted or harmed (evidence of foul play), police can’t get a search warrant. And without a search warrant they don’t have the opportunity to gather potentially helpful […]

Despite trying hard to live as I did before I was given the news of Cindy’s disappearance in May 1989, I was constantly thinking about Cindy and kept saying to myself, “Cindy, where are you? Are you O.K? Are you hurt? Where are you?” On this 29th day in May of that year, I purchased […]

Twenty years ago, on the day after first hearing Cindy was missing, I made my first entry in my journal relating to her disappearance and ultimate death: Sunday, May 28/89: Yesterday Dad contacted me to say Cindy has been missing since Thursday. Agnes [Cindy’s friend and bus driver at Blenheim House] and Tom [Agnes’s husband] […]

For those of you who read my Blog posts every day, how did it feel yesterday when you checked my Blog postings…and found nothing new for the day? Disappointing? Frustrating? Sad? Did you wonder if I was simply too busy to write? Did you think I was taking time off? What if, like Cindy, I […]

Shortly after 8pm on May 24th, 1989, Richard Johnston (Cindy James’s downstairs border) spent about an hour talking with Cindy about the heat sensor and the impending nurses’ strike. It was the last conversation he ever had with her. Cindy told him she had five glorious days off with four of those days planned. He […]