Someone recently wrote to me:

“I remember when your sister was found. I remember thinking that there was no way a person could “hog tie” themselves the way your sister had. Especially after an overdose. She would have vomited. Where was the evidence of that? To my understanding there wasn’t any which would indicate she either vomited somewhere else or she was unconscious when she was placed in her final resting place and wasn’t capable. Either way she wouldn’t have been able to achieve that on her own.”

To counter that, some people have expressed the belief that Cindy would have had enough time to tie herself up in the manner she was found even though she had massive doses of drugs in her system—they cite the fact that a so-called knot expert demonstrated it at the inquest.

Well this “expert” obviously never had drugs in his system at the time of demonstration—but uh, wouldn’t having drugs in the system have made a difference?

I was there in the courtroom when this demonstration went down and he said he was not knowledgeable about tying yourself up when under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Without having drugs in his system it took him approximately three minutes to tie the knots and loops for all four limbs, slip his feet into two loops, tie a ligature around his neck and then slip his hands into the remaining two loops, step through his hands so they would be bound behind his back, and fall over onto his side, as Cindy’s body was found.

Note: He admitted he felt lightheaded several seconds after tying the ligature around his neck but his breathing was not impaired. So add massive drugs in the system –wouldn’t a person be fumbling?

And, when the knot fellow tied himself up in the demo, a different set of knots was tightest in comparison to the set of knots that were tightest on Cindy. That seems like an important point to me, showing they were pulled or stressed for a different reason or perhaps someone else was involved.

And he was also unable to say if one person or two tied the death ligatures!

His testimony did not prove or disprove anything about her death being a murder or suicide. As with all the other testimony that was presented at the inquest, there was no proof either way. In other words, anything was possible (Cindy could have tied herself up, she could have had an accomplice, or it could have been the work of one or more malevolent strangers) but nothing concrete could be determined from the way the knots were tied.

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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