The Pickton trial started today and I find myself concerned for the families of the victims. To read how one couple left the courtroom sobbing, breaks my heart. Then when I saw the mother of one of the murdered women exclaim on TV how you can never be prepared for the gruesome details that are presented at trial, I thought how true that is.

When my sister, Cindy James, died and I saw the pictures of her decomposing body, I thought the photos were horrific and her death seemed unreal. Her face was black and her mouth was open with the teeth on the right side of her head exposed. In another photo, I saw her trussed body. I saw her naked and partially mummified body. The photos were so cold, so impersonal, and my heart was clutched in an icy grip and my brain went numb from grief.

Then when I read her autopsy report – that was worse. I thought I had been catapulted into Hell because the written words were chilling and gruesome and such a violation of my beloved sister.

But, in court, watching a police video of the death scene showing Cindy’s body from several angles as well as the abandoned house and the general area where she was found, and more video showing Cindy’s uncovered body lying on a gurney, on her stomach with her arms and legs still tied behind her and the stocking still around her neck while Dr. Sheila Carslile, an expert forensic pathologist in the Coroner’s Service in the Fraser Region of B.C. was talking on the video as she examined the ligatures during this post mortem, I was in shock. I wanted to escape that room and run and never look back, but as surely as my heart was bleeding from pain, I wanted an answer to her death, so I felt compelled to endure the horror. I listened to people talk about Cindy as if she was a body and not a real person, and many times I felt like screaming, “That is Cindy you are talking about—not Cindy James! She was more than just a name!”

So I empathize with the families of the victims who have to endure the horror of the gruesome details of a loved one’s death and remains being broadcast in the courtroom as they sit in anguish, helpless, deep in despair and grief. It is absolutely horrifying!

Thank God counselors have been made available to them! Even so, such an experience never leaves your heart – never leaves your soul!

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
The unsolved mystery of the death of Cindy James