Novel Meets Evil - Season 01 Episode 06 - "Lady Liars: Cindy James Meets Gone Girl"

Novel Meets Evil - Season 01 Episode 06 - "Lady Liars: Cindy James Meets Gone Girl"

Like a good thriller, the case of Canadian nurse Cindy James will have you scratching your head, questioning your own assumptions about who, if anyone, is telling the truth. She suffered for 7 years, was not believed by authorities, and ended up drugged, strangled and hogtied in an abandoned lot. So which is worse–that she was the victim of a stalker with a dedicated long game, or… of herself?

The novel Gone Girl is the story of Amy Dunne. Amy like to tell tall tales, including detailing the misdeeds of her secretly abusive husband Nick, who wanted her gone. Then Amy went missing and blood evidence seemed to point to Nick. As it turns out, nothing is quite as it seems with psychopaths. 

Episode Notes:

• Teaser - [0:00-0:]
• Main Intro [ 01:16-02:00]
• EVIL - The Case of Cindy James [2:00-27:00] 
• NOVEL - Gone Girl [27:00 33:30]
• Mental Health Factors & Conclusion [33:30-49:03]

Links
Unsolved Mysteries Episode (Jan 30, 1991)

'The Deaths of Cindy James' book by Neal Hall

'Who Killed Cindy James' book by Ian Mulgrew

'Gone Girl' book by Gillian Flynn


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Transcript

[voicemail message] Ciiiindy...Dead meat...soooon!!!

[Music] that was the voice of Cindy James

killer like a good thriller this case will have you scratching your head questioning your own assumptions about

who if anyone is telling the truth the Curiosity of the human mind as true

crime fans know will have you seeing shapes in the dark questioning people

people's motives and reading intentions into the innocent actions of our fellows

but this little Canadian nurse suffered for 7 years was not believed by authorities and ended up drugged

strangled and hog tied in an abandoned lot in a Vancouver suburb so which is

worse that she was a victim of a stalker with a dedicated long game or of herself

we will compare the characteristics of this case to the better known fictional depiction of skull duggery and

manipulation in the 2012 novel Gone Girl by Jillian Flynn in hopes of clarifying

what disorders might be common to these scenarios and learn a little bit about the human mind as it relates to these

lady Liars novel Meets Evil is a true crime

Main Intro.]

podcast where we compare literary characters from Modern fiction to real

cases to see what we can learn about human nature you think you know know your

neighbors your co-workers your spouse but the real creeps hide in plain sight every day what's behind the curtain what

are they hiding do you really want to know and why are you so eager to look

what are you hiding I'm here to tell you that there's nothing wrong with looking just don't

stare it'll give you the creep creep creep creep

creep something that's always bugged me about unexplained cases people are quick to

EVIL - The Case of Cindy James.]

Interchange the words unexplained with unexplainable if you're claiming that

something can't be explained then you are claiming to know something special about the case and while it's true that

nothing can be explained completely down to the neuron and the nanosecond we can make models of what explanations best

account for all the evidence gravity is the most reliable explanation we have for what we see in the natural world

when we drop something when two large bodies get close to each other as a

species we want to explain things we find most compelling the stories with

answers that are just Out Of Reach the scariest villains are the ones that are hard to see hard to make out in the fog

Jaws was scary because you barely saw the shark just enough to know that he's out there they went out of their way not

to show the monster and the film was so much scared for it when you're only given a hint of

something menacing the threat is scarier than if you know exactly what you're dealing with humans fill in the blanks

with the most threatening details my dad kept his tools in the

basement at our house growing up and if I had to go to the basement to get something I was in my own little horror

movie what if there's something down there I didn't see but now it's walking right behind me now I have to climb the

steps the first step I thought I'm being ridiculous the Second Step wait did I

hear something suddenly I'm skipping steps feeling the cold hand of something terrible reaching to grab my shirt as I

dive the last few steps up and into the kitchen sliding across the floor the Menace got exponentially worse with each

bound upward the imagination is amazing and

scary in the town where I grew up there was a Peeping Tom he was described as a

tall lanky man in workman's coveralls and had been seen walking sometimes

carrying a ladder late at night through our quiet streets past the darkened bedrooms of parents and

kids several parents had individually witnessed the man sitting at the foot of their daughter's beds while watching

them sleep on the next block from my house a teacher from my elementary school was stumbling blur eyed to the

bathroom in the middle of the night and thought he saw a shadow on his daughter's floor he pissed and then came

back and now fully awake sure enough there was this shape standing slowly and turning to the front door the teacher

hollered at the man who slowly as if he didn't even see the teacher ambled down the front steps and across the dark

summer lawn the teacher chased the man out of the yard and down the street but

couldn't keep up in his bare feet the breaking and entering aspect was obviously disturbing but as a kid I

always found it much scarier because the Peeping Tom never actually attacked anyone never even stole anything he just

watched the the people as they slept when the creep in question is hard to Define motives unclear like our small

town peeping Tom like Jaws they take on an even more menacing shape the mind

wanders much more thinking of all the potentially horrible things that are surely about to happen even if they

never do our subject today is the victim of her own personal slasher film except

unlike the lame Hollywood horror flicks this one leaves you wondering even if you can nail down what

you think happened the questions remain this is the story of Cindy James

we will be referencing interview clips from the show Unsolved Mysteries the Cindy James episode 1991 and a segment

from a current affair 1992 growing up in Ottawa Ontario Cindy

hack had a normal upbringing her dad was a military man and Cindy

claimed he was strict and Meed out corporal punishment which wasn't abnormal for Canada in the 50s and 60s

she was a middle child of six siblings all was well in the hack

household as a late teen Cindy left her family to try her hand at nursing school

in Vancouver British Columbia which fit her people pleasing nature and need to help others in 1966 six she graduated

from nursing school with a BSN for 9 years she worked at Vancouver

General Hospital as a pediatric nurse then for 12 years she worked at a home

for troubled kids where everyone said she was top-notch and a normal person

she got married to a psychiatrist named Roy makepiece who was almost twice her age and her parents did not approve they

were divorced but stayed on good terms even dating occasionally it is a at this

point she begins living on her own for the first time in her life in Richmond a

Vancouver suburb in 1982 Cindy started making

reports to the police she claimed to be the victim of stalking and torment by an

unknown as salent she described having received repeated threatening calls like

the one at the top of this episode she said it was just a voice sometimes it would change the sound and sometimes it

was just spring sometimes it was just nothing just Silence scary copy pasted

letters saying things like You're Next pictures of dead bodies under medical

sheets pinned to her car the person knew her name they used it when monster

calling her Cindy dead meet soon Cindy kept her own records of the

harassing calls broken house lights broken windows and actual break-ins it's

all her word of course a Richmond cop by the name of McBride

was convinced of her claims and tried to get a bigger police presence in her area which he did get pushed through but

whenever cops were posted outside her house the vandalism and the break-ins stopped hm that's peculiar according to

Vancouver's son reporter Neil Hall who wrote the book on Cindy James they had

24-hour surveillance on her house for like days on end with up to 14 officers

but never when surveillance was on her house never any any event would happen as soon as surveillance was taken off of

course then she'd get another instant that happened her phone line was tapped and when calls came in they hung up too

quickly to be traced interesting Cindy's mother says when the

police were watching the house we would say to them well you know if it's somebody doing that sure as heck he

knows you're there and of course nobody will do anything while you're sitting there and watching

eventually the concerned cop moved into her house to help out and soon afterward

they became romantically involved he claimed to have received a number of

weird calls while staying at the Richmond house many times the phone lines were found to be

cut Cindy's ex Roy was still very concerned and would stop by every once

in a while to shoot the breeze with housemate McBride talking about the case

both men were hooked on the story and wanted to nail the bastard ruining this poor woman's life McBride a divorce

maybe he was really lonely when he abruptly asked Cindy to marry him she said no he moved out soon afterward but

remained interested in keeping her safe maybe not as invested as Roy who was caught staking out Cindy's house to try

and catch her attack her in the ACT Roy hadn't told Cindy he was doing this possibly because he knew she liked to

put on a show when when people were watching and he wanted the Straight Dope on what was happening so Cindy was not

without support in 1983 Cindy's friend Agnes came over to the house to find her

strangled and passed out in the garage I found her crunched down with a nylon

tied tightly around her neck Cindy said she'd gone out to the garage to get a box and just as she got to the garage

she turned and someone grabbed her from behind she said and uh all she saw was

white snakers the police questioned Cindy about this attack during which she failed two lie

detector tests I don't know where he came from I don't know what I thought it was

going to do but I was trying to push his night for something I don't think

remember anything else lie detectors are pseudo science but at the time they were

taken seriously as a tool it's kind of interesting that she allowed herself to be tested at all another sign that she

was either overconfident in her lying abilities or maybe she had started to believe her own stories or maybe they

were true her wellth thought-out response to the polygraph results was that she had recognized one of the men

but refused to say who it was because they had threatened to hurt her family that's not completely

unbelievable Cindy told me that uh after she was attacked the knife was held at her

throat and she was told that if you talk your sister will be next and then your mother so just keep quiet don't tell

anything Cindy hired a private investigator this big Fred Flintstone head Canadian ex cop Azie caban to find

her Tormentor and even he began skeptical of her truthfulness she wouldn't tell him the

entire story she would be evasive uh she would uh withhold

information and she simply would not act as a normal uh Vic victim would act and

I can see where uh a police officer would have a tremendous amount of problem in believing her

story one of her goals throughout her life seemed to be to get people to believe her whether she was lying or not

and only she could know this she seemed to place Supreme value on people believing she was telling the truth so

caban skepticism stung her he decided to give her a walkie-talkie to use in case

of emergency just ping me and I'll be over as soon as possible one night he heard a struggle coming through the

radio and he sped to her place when he arrived he found her almost dead drugged

and strangled outside I went around the house and uh the house was

locked I was able to look into the house through a window and I found Cindy lying

there I took a look at her and I thought she was dead there was a note that was

pinned with a pairing knife through her hand when I interviewed Cindy she told me that she noticed a man coming through

the gate uh the next thing she remembers is being hit on the side of head with a

piece of wood or something of that nature uh she then remembered being held

down on the floor and she remembered a needle going into her arm she had a

knife stabbed through her hand with a note reading now you must die

[ __ ] caban believed her after that she even moved to a new house in richment

and changed her name from Cynthia make piece to Cindy James but it didn't seem to matter as soon a note appeared at her

house reading Run Rabbit Run I'll show you how [ __ ] good I am soon bang bang

you're dead now everything up to this point leads me to believe that she was a

victim of someone either herself or her stalker and I feel immense empathy either way but then comes the most

disturbing detail to me up to this point in October 1983 a year after the

first call to the police Cindy found three dead cats hanging from trees in her yard one with a note tied to it that

read you're dead dead cats don't grow on trees so

who killed them didn't it have to be Cindy her previous lies the letter the

possibly staged attacks were all disturbing but no one but her was physically hurt now

cats that would be the moment where as a friend I'd ask myself again which is worse my friend is being harassed into

an early grave by some creep or that my friend is so mentally unwell and is both

the victim and the perpetrator as a family member both scenarios are terrible and I almost wouldn't care

which one is true especially if I can never know but what cats

Jesus Cindy is a blurry picture obviously so I want to try and sharpen

the image just a little bit here let's rewind for a second to two earlier

incidents when Cindy was in her late teens she left her parents in Ottawa and moved to Vancouver this was around the

time her dad had decided to move the family to France a young Cindy enrolled in nursing courses at University around

this time Cindy wanted to remained connected to her folks and told her family of an intern she'd met and one

thing led to another and to her parents surprise they'd gotten engaged However

unfortunately he had developed a fatal form of cancer and died before they could ever make it official none of the

family ever met this man and it is unclear whether he ever actually existed but at this point as a family member you

don't go investigating the veracity of such claims it's a minor claim after all

why would someone make that up H then right before Cindy and Roy got married

Cindy sat Roy down and read him a letter from her parents in which they expressed disapproval and suspected Roy was taking

advantage of the younger more naive Cindy Roy realized immediately she had

written the letter herself so she must have expected this transparent ploy to convince him which indicates what an

overconfidence in her deceptive abilities a disconnection from reality

and what would the ploy even have gotten her maybe she expected to play the Diplomat between Roy and her parents

coming out looking like a peacemaker he forgave her but this was an early data

point for his later suspicions about his soon to be wife's mental state Roy would

later suspect her of having multiple personality disorder if you look at her she's an

unexpected candidate for a creep a tiny pretty Canadian lady who got her Nursing degree and worked for many years to help

people including running a home for troubled youths she cared about people

she wanted to diminish suffering in the world she wanted to tell her family what was really happening who she suspected

but she was too worried that it would put them in danger Cindy's mom continues the knife was held at her throat and she

was told that if you talk your sister will be next and then your mother so just keep quiet don't tell

anything she would cry to them with them and the suffering was spread around for others to help her

bear 7 years after her divorce at approximately 4:00 p.m. May 25th 1989

Cindy picked up her paycheck from Richmond General Hospital where her co-workers had known about her ongoing

ordeal she spoke with a cooworker on that day who said she seemed to be in good spirits when she told him she had

been without incident at her home for at least two weeks that was unusual

Cindy was seen several hours later purchasing groceries at a Safeway and then visiting a Bank of Montreal a bank

customer told police they had stood in line behind James at the bank's ATM where she deposited her paycheck at

approximately $759 p.m. that same day James had scheduled to have a high-tech

security system installed at her house and had planned for her friends Agnes and Tom Woodcock to play bridge and

spend the night when they didn't hear from her the Woodcock showed up at at her house approximately 10: p.m. where

her Chevy citation was nowhere to be seen the Woodcock drove past the Safeway

Shopping Center which they knew Cindy to frequent and found her car abandoned in

the lot they contacted the Richmond RCMP to report James as a missing person a

patrol car was sent to investigate because they knew of her extensive history with the police

department blood was located inside her car on the driver's side door as well as

groceries and a wrapped birthday gift for her friend's young son her wallet was found underneath the car police

found her house orderly and clean her house plants well tended the Canadian

Coast Guard started searching the nearby Rivers several days after James was

reported missing her tenant told police that he had received a call at his office from a man claiming to be James's

father asking about her life insurance policy the man's secretary told the

caller he would need to visit the office that information couldn't be given over the phone when police asked James's

father about this he denied ever making such a call on June 8th 1989 a Workman on a

road crew steps away from his job site to relieve himself in a nearby yard he

returns a moment later as white as a sheet the hands were behind her

back strapped to her feet tied to your feet with a rope or a cord he had stumbled upon the body of a

young woman in some blackberry bushes who had been hog tied and strangled with something still around her neck the body

had been there long enough to gather flies which the workers found odd because that left enough time for it to

be seen easily from the road and should have been noticed by passers by on a

nearby building was graffiti reading some [ __ ] died here line spray painted along the ground

with the same orange paint ran from a fuel tank to the spot where her body lay

encircling it inside the abandoned home another spray painted graffiti read

devil it was the late 80s though Sheila Carlile a pathologist who examined

James's body at the scene noted that her hands had been bound so tightly that one finger had scratched another down to the

bone a pin prick consistent with a hypmic kn needle was located on the inner right elbow of the body an autopsy

determined that James had died of multiple drug intoxication from substantial amounts of morphine diazapam

and flopam her blood toxicology report showed that she had 10 times the lethal

dose of morphine in her bloodstream the toxicologist also reported that James had orally ingested approximately 20 30

MGR tablets of flopam in addition to enough diazapam to be lethal to someone of her size if she had received the

morphine via injection she would have been unconscious within minutes and dead within hours private investigator Azie

kaban remained confident there is no way that she could have been able after

ingesting that amount of drugs to tie herself up there was absolutely nothing

at the crime scene to indicate that she had used any form of syring or she had used any drinking device or anything of

that nature again Neil Hall the morphing wouldn't have taken effect for say 15 minutes half an hour uh the

not specialist who came in and recreated the same type of knots and the way she was tied up it took him 3 minutes so

basically if she took the drugs at the same time she would have had about 15 minutes in order to tie herself

up on the stand Roy makepiece made various accusations against James's

family alleging that her father had physically abused her throughout her childhood and that one of her brothers

had also molested her it was also revealed that shortly after James's death her parents found a

stash of medications in her home sedatives antipsychotics and more that she had been prescribed by her

psychiatrists which they disposed of by flushing down the toilet Dr Paul Tanson

testified that he believed James suffered from hysterical personality disorder while Dr Wesley Fen atime

psychiatrist of James stated he suspected she had Borderline Personality Disorder with ele ments of

post-traumatic stress disorder Dr Fen said Cindy had tremendous amounts of

Rage toward her father and based on their session together he believed that it was a strong likelihood that her

father sexually abused her when she was a child though she had never made these claims herself Cindy's psychiatrist says

and I saw her not just in conversational States I saw her in deep hypnotic States as well uh there was never any evidence

that there was another there are other personalities there so the psychiatrists that were speculating

about that were looking for an explanation for things that can't be explained and who can argue against uh

multiple personality disorder the inquest concluded exactly one year after James had disappeared the

jury was unable to determine whether James's cause of death was suicide homicide or

accidental it was ultimately ruled that James had died of an unknown ownn event

and the case was formally closed Cynthia Elizabeth James born June

12th 1944 died between June 2nd and June 8th

1989 her life was a thriller and it ended no differently she claimed to be

on the receiving end of hundreds of Acts of stalking harassment vandalism home

invasions and physical attacks perpetrated by an unknown as salent no one would claim to be part of a

marginalized community and subject themselves to bullying and harassment if it weren't true no one is going to

choose the Hard Road people say this like it's self-evident and while it does seem like

common sense to most of us it doesn't account for The Uncommon Sense of a person with unseen problems

unfortunately there are people who feel they deserve to be treated badly for one reason or another self-hate maybe

battered spouses go back to their abusers it's fortunate that the wires are crossed in someone's head and it

leads them to this but it happens in the case of Richmond British

Columbia nurse Cindy James many people said no one would subject themselves to that kind of torture on purpose it makes

no sense that she would commit these acts of abuse and suffering on herself for all these years for what but suicide

is still the most believed scenario let me be clear she is a victim anyway you

slice it and deserves all the empathy in the world what scares me the most about

this case well just like the Peeping Tom of my childhood it's unclear why someone

commits such acts I'm forced to draw the irest assumptions based on my own insecurities those are the scariest

stories we know she had been spinning fantasies around herself since early adulthood probably earlier without

obvious motives while many of the lies were innocent in retrospect some may be

seen as indicative of a growing problem of course no one could have known How

deep the problem would become so I'm left wondering about things people hide from each other most

of us are not hiding anything truly horrible from friends and family but out in public most of us knowingly create an

external Persona to show others yeah it's a little ingenuine but you can't show everyone everything we avoid using

bad language at work we play politically neutral to fit in with our Co workers are we hiding things about ourselves

because we're planning on doing something horrible I don't think so I think we hide things we worry others

would misunderstand but we don't always know which of our own issues people will and will not understand we have to be

open with people if we want to connect and be part of the human race so which do you find scarier if Cindy James

claims of being stalked and attacked for years are true or if she'd been doing it to herself the whole

time

NOVEL - Gone Girl.]

I worked at a library when the book Gone Girl was really big in 2012 2013 when it

first came out I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the scenario in Gone Girl with the real life

case of lacy Peterson's disappearance and what would later be revealed as her murder at the hands of her scumbag

husband Scott I don't want to get deeply into that case right now but the similarities are pretty obvious

for now we will reference the novel which veers off from the Peterson case

pretty extremely at a certain point Nick and Amy Dunn dated for 2

years and then got married they lived happily together as writers in a Brooklyn

Brownstone Amy wasn't a proper writer as she created personality quizzes for

magazines and newspapers however the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 left them out of work

Amy had been the subject of her parents children's book series Amazing Amy which allowed her to grow up in

money the series declined in sales but Amy's parents spent money like things

were still great which brought them into debt with these problems they asked Amy

for money from her trust fund which pissed off Nick Nick's mother fell ill and the

couple moved to his hometown of Carthage Missouri to take care of her with permission Nick uses Amy's

trust fund to open a bar in town with his twin sister Margo Nick also teaches journalism at a

local College Amy hates that Nick dragged her to live in the suburbs isolated from the life she really wanted

her diary begins painting a picture of Nick as an aggressive Moody loafing loser and she's often afraid of

him from his point of view we learn that he sees her as basically a ball and

chain but they are both unreliable narrators in this book Nick has been

secretly dating a former student Andy Amy had found out and in usual fashion

felt betrayed because she had invested so much of herself into becoming the cool chick Nick wanted and felt that all

the work she had done on this facade was under appreciated she was clearly a victim of

his indiscretions but chose to be offended at the wrong thing if you've been cheated on that's what you're angry

at your partner has betrayed the trust that you've established but Amy was mad

that all of the masterful manipulative effort she'd put into becoming a new kind of Amy wasn't

valued what about all the work I put into this what the relationship no the

appearance of the relationship that's hard work for a psychopath Nick was planning on

divorcing Amy but then she goes missing and he's actually concerned Amy now in present tense

reveals that she is still alive having staged her disappearance to go into hiding for fear of

Nick she learned of his affair and began planning a complex faked death and

getaway she framed Nick out of Revenge for his wasting of her life her

pregnancy had been fake her diary entries were carefully cured ated to incriminate Nick Amy uses their yearly

anniversary scavenger hunt to leave Clues you see she had bought a bunch of expensive things she stashed in Margo's

shed including a pair of Punch and Judy puppets as an anniversary gift one missing a

handle now in hiding Amy assumes she can sit back and watch the whole ordeal

while hold up at a remote hotel with a pile of cash and then drown herself in the Gulf of Mexico as has the last nail

in Nick's coffin that's some plan but you see she is robbed at the hotel and

now has nothing no means of funding her Hideout so Amy goes on to a plan B she

contacts an old flame from her youth the well-to-do Desi with whom she has a

complex history of manipulation he lets her hide in his

Lakehouse but becomes possessive and overbearing she feels

trapped it's around this time that Nick goes on TV as planned by his lawyer in

order to humanize His Image in the public he admits to wrongdoing and says

he's sorry about the cheating and dishonesty Amy having seen and been

impressed by the TV interview hearing him admit that he was wrong and she was innocent decides that she and Nick

actually do understand each other and should be together

then the police discover the shed of purchased items including the Punch and Judy dolls they find the missing

puppet's handle covered in Amy's blood at this time she decides to make

it seem like Desi had been holding her hostage by staging injuries consistent

with rape she seduces and murders Desi making

it look like self-defense she's just a victim Amy turns to North Carthage with

her story and although Margo Nick and the lead detective think she is lying

they can't prove it public pressure is such that Nick is basically forced to

take her back so it won't look bad Amy's Diaries resume detailing her

misunderstood ordeal with her as the victim but Nick secretly writes his own

tell all book about Amy's lies then Amy brilliantly impregnates herself with

Nick's stored seamen from a fertility clinic and she forces Nick to delete his book over penalty of never being allowed

to see their child blackmailed into complying Nick

dedicates himself to the phony role of good husband and Dad it seems that the image of the

perfect couple is just as good as the real thing for Amy if she can't be seen

as the perfect wife then her second choice seems to be arranging herself in the role of poor innocent

victim so what can we learn from the personality of a fictional character like

Mental Health Factors & Conclusion.]

Amy well you see even though they're both lady Liars Amy is a psychopath

Cindy James is just psychotic so what is a psychopath a

sociopath and how does this relate to Cindy James and gone girl's character

Amy now I will as quickly and as dumb down for myself as possible try to draw

some distinctions between psychopathy antisocial personality disorder and sociopathy which are commonly confused

but are not the same things the psychopath is compelled to

engage in violating Norms without caring and as such is more active the

psychopath is more dangerous committing observable violations and crimes in the

real world you'll tend to see antisocial Behavior lack of empathy and remorse

disinhibition and impulsivity this is Key by the way and overblown sense of

self the sociopath is more passive less dangerous in the sense that they only

have affective deficits particularly not knowing right from wrong and not

understanding the bounds of social norms they're not driven to violate rules and

expectations the terms psychopathy and sociopathy

aren't really used as diagnoses anymore the medical field prefers the terms

antisocial personality disorder aspd and dissocial personality disorder

dpd respectively and even though they're no longer used by psychiatric or

psychological organizations references to Psychopathic traits are alive and well in the criminal justice world the

general public popular press and media still frequently use these terms along with crazy insane and mentally ill

synonymously people will also say things like this guy's psychotic as if it's the same thing is calling someone a

psychopath it's an easy mistake to make the words are practically the same thing but they're

not psychosis is a thing and it has nothing to do with the identifiers we see of psychopathy

that lack of understanding and empathy for other people not caring if others are harmed in order to benefit

yourself rather psychosis is when someone has difficulty determining what is real and what is not real it often

includes delusions and hallucinations incoherent speech and behavior that is

inappropriate for the given situation look the guy at the subway station screaming at the garbage

can you will also o see sleep problems social withdrawal lack of motivation and

difficulty carrying out daily activities you can experience temporary psychosis and get better with therapy

unfortunately aspd and dpd seem to be baked in they are part of who you are

and you'll have to basically deal with that for the rest of your life not to say that it can't be improved but you

can come out of [Music] psychosis let me give a personal

example psychosis it sounds like something scary

that other people will have to deal with and luckily we will not we dodged a

bullet because now men are allowed to express emotion and admit to weaknesses

I'll tell you about my own experience of depressive psychosis that came on due to

lack of sleep and severe depression the best way I can illustrate it is with a couple of anecdotes bear with me

here if you have mental illness in the family you may recognize some of this from your own

life in college I had nothing better to do than to hang out at the hippie food

co-op located in the Student Union where I discovered also a periodic blood drive

so while UGL girls with dreads and pachuli I would give

blood part of the procedure the technician explained was a standard blood test for different STDs and other

diseases cool whatever well around this time I stopped sleeping this accumulated and began

breaking me down and eventually I sat at the bottom of a well in this life sucking depression nothing mattered all

the color was drained out of daily life and I began experiencing depressive psychosis essentially delusions beliefs

that were not grounded in reality but felt very real

I remember one day I was sitting on the floor of my group house and I got a phone call on the landline it was my

mom she kind of knew what was going on with my health and was worried about

me she asked what I was doing I said I wasn't doing anything and she said well

walk me through what you are doing just anything put it into words she was just trying to get me

talking so I said I was trying trying to clean my room and I had papers and lyric

sheets and [ __ ] all over my floor I pulled out a piece of opened mail from

the Red Cross I told her I vaguely remembered getting this about a week or two ago it

was the result of some blood tests following my giving blood she said oh okay what were the

results and I said the sheet says hiva test positive HIV B test also so

positive mom was speechless for a second she said wait you got that a week ago

and you didn't say anything I said I remember reading it and then chuckling and throwing it on my bed somehow it

fell on the floor and that was that I said there wasn't much I can do

anyway and it's probably for the best well of course she was very upset and begged me to get retested at a medical

clinic at that time I was working at this uh artsy foreign film store in DC

and I would ride my bike from College Park Maryland down to Adams Morgan in DC and on my way I had seen a health clinic

down there called the Whitman Walker Clinic I guess I could leave early one day and go to the clinic for another

test my mom said yes I should do this so I did now it was 1998 or 99 so the tests

took a couple of weeks to process during these weeks my parents were on pins and

needles waiting for the results I forgot all about the test

until I got this call saying that I could come in and sit with the counselor to review my

results I sat in the waiting room with a bunch of nervously sweating guys and gals until my code number was called it

was all Anonymous obviously so the counselor read the results and they came back negative on

all HIV strains the counselor asked if I had any questions if these were the results I

was expecting I said I wasn't expecting anything really but my mom would be

[Music]

happy I called her afterward and she tearfully thanked me her baby

boy now obviously when I think about it now it's a very disturbing and sad image

mom talking to her youngest son who tells her he is not dying and clearly

doesn't care and she's upset but she can't show him she's upset so she just says thank you and hangs up and probably

starts sobbing so I got back on my bike and went to

work this is the story I use to describe the extent to which a depressive episode

can take over to make it seem like this is how things are from now on deal with

it right around this time another student in one of my classes pulled me aside after class to express concern

he'd seen me on multiple occasions walking into busy Baltimore Avenue traffic in College Park with no care for

the cars coming toward me I tried to explain to her that I had figured out a system that they couldn't hit me traffic

will adjust to me it's all been worked out another thing I remember from this

little snapshot of life was why watching the ball drop on TV marking the passage

from 1999 to 2000 the image was all warped and warbly and distorted because

I was viewing it through tears crying at the thought of another day let alone another

year and that's how I remember it bent and warped through a prism of

Tears this destruction of myself kind of destroyed my ability to see myself in

the future I literally couldn't picture myself doing anything in the future I

wasn't suicidal but I was convinced I knew that I would be dead soon it was

just a matter of when and how I pictured a gargoyle falling from a skyscraper and

smashing me like a bug or maybe my heart would just stop I lay in bed often listening to my

heart expecting to just hear it stop and everything Fade Out it's part of why I have so much trouble

setting goals and planning now the part of me that saw myself doing

things in the future was like a hand seared on a hot stove damaged for future

use now all of this is as described above crazy insane and mentally ill but

at least I wasn't Psychopathic this I could come back

from and I did I use these examples to show that mental

illness can creep up on you especially if you're predisposed to it like I am and you can lose touch with your

previously normal sense of self-preservation after a lot of therapy and support you can climb out of that

hole as impossible as it seems at the time I have only experienced aftershocks

of this over the years as hard as it is for me to believe it now all these crazy

thoughts made sense to me at one point and that was because of

psychosis here's a helpful hint don't go weeks without sleeping talk to your

doctor experiences like this makes it easier for me to believe that people like Cindy James May really believe the

stories they're telling it's delusional and it's just as convincing as

reality so theories on Cindy James games Theory one Cindy knew she was

lying that she staged the whole seven years of attack on herself for reasons

unknown we know this is possible she had been caught lying before and the police

and public still believe this this also explains the most

evidence Theory 2 delusional she was delusional and really

thought she was being stalked and attacked if those Whispering threatening

voices on her voicemail were really her then the only way she could make sense of all of this in one brain would be if

she had multiple personality disorder did Theory 3

attacked this Theory says Cindy was the victim of an outside

attacker the lack of evidence where there should have been evidence implies this is almost

impossible there are anomalies at the scene of her death true things we would expect to see but don't however there

are always anomalies in everything that happens at this point the only people who believe this are family and friends

and who can blame them I guess it's better than thinking she was crazy all those years I think that one of the

defense mechanisms that people have is denial and I think it must be very hard for them to believe that you know they

were taken into the drawn into this whole thing year after year after year here and that it was all delusional and

you can feel Sympathy for the family and friends and colleagues were all close to her and trying to help her and protect her and only they went through hell

themselves regardless of where you fall on these theories Cindy knew right from wrong she

cared for people outside of herself if she was experiencing cycles of delusion and didn't know that her stories were

false she still understood social norms like all good books Gone Girl

isn't just a story about Amy and Nick it's based in something that actually happens just

dramatized people screw over others to get what they want in the real world human cost be damned this happens all

the time of course it's not usually as dramatic as Gone Girl think about some

of the people you know some of them would be fine asking why shouldn't I run that red light why shouldn't I fire

these employees to increase my bonus why shouldn't I just take what I want a

sociopath doesn't understand that violating these common mores that cause harm is

wrong a psychopath like Amy sees no reason not to do what's best for

her Amy isn't delusional about her claims of abuse at the hands of her husband and her ex-lover but it doesn't

compute that hurting Nick Margo or other family members isn't worth whatever harm

it might cost she isn't concerned with with anyone's lives she may ruin in the process of telling her Tall

Tales this ladies and gentlemen is a psychopath over the nearly 7-year period

Cindy James reported disturbing incidents the RCMP allocated an

estimated 1 to $1.5 million in funds to investigate her claims marking one of

the longest and most costly police investigations in British Columbia

history if this case creeps you out as much as it does me you should totally check out

this movie called The Night Listener Tony Colette Robin Williams and I don't remember which one of the Cen

Brothers it was but it was one of them doesn't really matter they're all the same just [Music]

kidding don't go weeks without sleeping talk to your doctor don't be scared subscribe to

season 1 for free in your podcast app then be

scared

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