Melanie Hack shares healing thoughts

The title of your book, Who Killed, implies that you are convinced this was a murder. Is this an accurate portrayal of your belief?
~Ken MacQueen, Maclean’s magazine (question to Melanie Hack)

I do believe there is no possible way that Cindy ended her life on her own.
Not one of her friends or acquaintances indicated there was a hint of suicide in her actions or conversations during the period leading up to the disappearance.
Her psychiatrist said there was no hint of a multiple personality.
She had massive doses of drugs in her body (including Flurazepam and morphine) …10x the amount necessary to kill her. And although Flurazepam pill residue was in her stomach, there was an injection site on her right arm at the elbow, making it possible that she could have been injected with the morphine. BUT it was never determined how the morphine got in her system—only a trace amount of morphine (from pills? or from diffusion back into the stomach via the blood stream from oral ingestion or injection?) was found in her stomach along with 3.3 milligrams of Flurazepam (an estimate of twenty 30mg capsules of Flurazepam). Shouldn’t there have been more morphine residue in her stomach if she swallowed morphine pills? And if she had done this to herself and swallowed liquid morphine wouldn’t there have been a container having liquid morphine residue near her body since she would have been sedated too soon to dispose of it nearby and tie herself up? And if she was injected, someone else had to have killed her because she would have been comatose before the end of injection (1½ ounces). And there were no traces of drugs found in her abandoned car or at the death scene. No containers with drug residue (not even of the Flurazepam), showing she would have carried them there – not in the pockets of the jacket she was partially laying on nor in the McDonald’s paper cup found nearby. Did an accomplice or unknown perpetrator take it away? And either of the levels of morphine and Flurazepam found in her system would have killed her (something she would have known as a nurse), so why would she have taken both? Or been given both?
Even if we suppose Cindy only swallowed the Flurazepam pills, someone else had to have injected her with the morphine. And in that case, according to the evidence, there is no way Cindy could have done the death scene alone!

Coming soon… “Have you reached what you believe is a resolution of the mystery?
~Ken MacQueen, Maclean’s magazine

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

February 13th, 2014 at 6:10 am