🔍Ep. 2 The Cindy James Tapes · Someone’s Watching

Cindy James always said it started small.

Phone calls with no one on the line.
Notes left on her windshield.
Footsteps outside her window — when no one was there.

By the time police finally started paying attention, Cindy had documented over a hundred separate incidents. But here’s the thing: almost none of them could be verified.

Was she being hunted…
or haunted by her own mind?

In Episode 2 of The Cindy James Tapes, we rewind to the early days of Cindy’s ordeal — the first signs of surveillance, the first attacks, and the first time Cindy said the words:

“Someone is watching me.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is based on real events and verified
records.
While the case remains unsolved, all accounts have been
cross-checked against publicsources and witness testimony.
Listener discretion is advised.
Before she ended up hogtied anddead, cindy James tried to get

(00:21):
help.
For seven years.
She changed her phone number,changed her locks, changed her
address, she even changed hername, but one thing never
changed.
She kept telling people someoneis watching me, and almost no
one believed her.
It started in 1982.
Cindy had just separated fromher husband, a psychiatrist

(00:42):
named Roy Makepeace.
They'd been married for 16years.
By the fall of that year thephone calls started, silent ones
at first.
Then a man's voice, sometimeswhispering, threats, sometimes
just breathing.
She told police.
They logged the report.
A few weeks later her porchlights were smashed.
Then her phone lines were cut.

(01:04):
Then someone left a note on herwindshield, cut out letters
glued to paper, ransom style.
It showed a corpse in a coffin.
No fingerprints, no witnesses,no suspects, just Cindy Again.
Her parents were worried.

(01:25):
Her parents were worried, herfriends were worried and for a
while the police were too.
One officer, constable PatMcBride, got so involved he
actually moved into her houseTemporarily, he said, to protect
her.
Then he started dating her,which didn't exactly help
credibility later on, because afew months after he moved out

(01:47):
the attacks escalated and theygot stranger.
One night Cindy's friend, agnescame to the door, but Cindy
didn't answer.
Agnes walked around the houseand found her crouched down
barefoot with a nylon stockingtied tightly around her neck.
She was bruised, shaking, couldbarely talk.

(02:08):
She said someone had grabbedher in the garage from behind.
And again there were nowitnesses, no signs of forced
entry, no physical evidence ofanyone else being there.
The cops took a report, but youcan feel the shift starting In
their eyes.
Cindy was becoming less of avictim and more of a question

(02:30):
mark.
Now let's pause for a second,because at this point in the
story you're either thinking,wow, she's being hunted and no
one's helping, or wait, how isthere never any proof?
And that's the riddle of CindyJames.
You can pick either lane andboth have road signs.

(02:51):
Over the next 18 months, thingsgot darker.
Dead cats were found in heryard.
Threatening notes appearedagain, this time reading You're
dead bitch.
At one point, cindy's privateinvestigator gave her a two-way
radio.
At one point, cindy's privateinvestigator gave her a two-way
radio.
She used it to call for helpduring an attack.
When he arrived, she was insideher house, barely conscious,

(03:13):
with a paring knife stabbedthrough her hand, pinning
another threat note into herskin.
She told him she'd beeninjected with something.
Later tests found high levelsof morphine, but no needle.
Still no witnesses, nofingerprints, no forced entry,

(03:33):
no signs of a break-in.
After that attack, cindy movedagain.
She painted her car a differentcolor, changed her name legally
from Cindy James to Cindy Hack,her maiden name.
She was trying to disappear,but the threats kept finding her
.
Some police believed her,others didn't.

(03:56):
To test her story, theyinstalled 24-hour surveillance
around her house 14 officers,multiple shifts, and during the
entire time they were watching.
Nothing happened no phone calls, no break-ins, no threats, no
fires.
But the moment they left, thethreats came back.

(04:20):
Now, if this were a movie, you'dthink she was being set up or
haunted, or losing her mind, andthose are basically the three
theories that would follow heruntil the end Set up, haunted or
losing it.
Even her doctor wasn't sure.
At one point Cindy admitted towithholding information, saying
the person stalking her hadthreatened to kill her sister or

(04:43):
mother if she spoke out.
So she stopped cooperating,stopped talking, which of course
made her seem even lesscredible.
Classic gaslighting loop.
Damned if you speak, damned ifyou don't.
In the meantime, her formerhusband, roy Makepeace, the
psychiatrist, stayed in touchwith her, at least for a while.

(05:04):
She told friends he was weird,but also that he was the only
one who took her seriously.
He even played them a recordingonce, a voicemail on his
machine, a man's voice callinghim you bastard, you're dead.
Leave Cindy alone or you'llregret it.
So was he also being threatened?

(05:24):
Was he the stalker?
Was it someone else entirely?
Or was the whole thing an act?
At that point even the policedidn't know what to believe
anymore.
So let's recap.
A woman claims she's beingstalked.
She's found multiple times withinjuries, bruises and
strangulation marks.
Her friends witness theaftermath.

(05:47):
Her story stays consistent, butthe cops never catch anyone and
the only evidence is her word.
We say we believe women.
We say victims should be heard.
We say trauma isn't alwaysvisible.
But Cindy's case tested all ofthat, because the evidence
didn't cooperate and the storyjust kept getting weirder.

(06:10):
By 1984, cindy had become thekind of victim people started to
roll their eyes at.
Even though the threats weregetting worse, she kept saying
she was in danger, and the moreshe said it, the less people
believed her Until, eventually,not even the system could decide
if she was a woman under attackor a woman falling apart.

(06:32):
Next episode the fire, theinjection.
The night someone stabbed anote through her hand and the
moment Cindy herself started todoubt what was real.
Was she being hunted or hauntedby her own mind?
I'm Jim Detchen.

(06:52):
This is Think First the CindyJames Tapes.
And you're just getting started.