What would you like to tell me?
~Ken MacQuees, Maclean’s magazine (question to Melanie Hack)

When I flew to the lower mainland after Cindy’s body had been found on June 8th, some of my siblings and I piled into Cindy’s car and headed to the place where her body was found in the residential area of #3 Road and Blundell Avenue. I needed to see where she was found. I think even then I was subconsciously starting to put some of the pieces together of her life and death puzzle so I could understand what happened and why. I needed her death to make sense. And I needed to make it real. I needed something concrete. We were oblivious to the existence of an RCMP report stating, “The body was decomposing and is believed to have been at that location since 89-05-25 when she went missing.” Without having any evidence at that point, the RMCP had already assumed that this vacant and trashed-out site was where Cindy had died, rather than having been brought here, which would mean someone else had killed her. Already, they had decided her death was a suicide. Searching through the abandoned brown and white house near where her body was found, we were dumbfounded to see the destruction around us: broken windows and doors, destroyed furniture, trash and plaster everywhere, holes in the walls and floors, discarded syringes, and what appear to be satanic graffiti on the walls alongside swastikas and obscenities. Someone had spray painted “Devil,” “666,” a pentagram and a naked woman on the walls. What a shock to realize Cindy was found near here. Later I wondered why police hadn’t grabbed the syringes as evidence. Maybe one was used to kill Cindy.

Coming soon… “What has been missed in the reporting?”
~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