Self Inflicted?

40m
Story One – Who Killed Cindy James?
On a warm Vancouver day in June 1989, the bound and bruised body of a woman was found in the yard of an abandoned house. Police quickly determined that she had committed suicide, but her six-year history of receiving threatening phone calls and being the victim of abusive stalking leaves us asking: who killed Cindy James?
Story Two – The Body in Boiler Stack Nine
As it becomes more difficult for us to make our way through life without leaving behind a trail of physical and digital footprints, it has in turn become far easier for law enforcement agencies to trace the victims of fatal crimes. And yet, instances persist where human remains are discovered, which are frustratingly never identified. In this story, we examine just such an instance; that of the body found in boiler stack nine.

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Transcript

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Story one:

Who killed Cindy James?

On a warm Vancouver day in June 1989, the bound and bruised body of a woman was found in the yard of an abandoned house.

Police quickly determined that she had committed suicide, but her six-year history of receiving threatening phone calls and enduring abusive stalking leaves us asking, who killed Cindy James?

Peeling away from the rest of his team, a Vancouver road worker wandered over to an abandoned house just out of sight of his colleagues.

A sickly, putrid stench hung in the air.

He didn't dwell on it for too long.

After all, the house was well known for its clandestine parties.

The odd smell was more than likely a bag of rubbish, split open and left to fester in the summer heat.

He made his way into the long, overgrown grass behind the the property to relieve himself before getting back to work, and that's when he noticed it.

Lying on its side in the yard just a few feet away was the body of a woman, hogtied with her hands and feet bound behind her back.

There was a black nylon stocking wrapped tightly around her neck, which had begun to dig into her skin.

Her face was turning black from decomposition.

contrasting against a head of golden blonde hair.

Police already already had an inkling as to who the deceased was before they even arrived on scene, and their suspicions were confirmed shortly afterwards.

The body belonged to Cindy James, a local middle-aged woman who had disappeared two weeks beforehand.

Her car had been found abandoned in a neighborhood car park.

Inside, investigators found groceries and a wrapped gift.

They also discovered blood on the driver's side door.

and contents from her purse had been placed or dropped underneath the vehicle.

Despite all the signs pointing towards foul play, police maintained that Cindy had committed suicide.

Her blood contained high amounts of a morphine-based drug, and it was theorised that she had overdosed.

Even so, the coroner listed the cause of death as an unknown event.

This sparked controversy in the local community and split the opinions of armchair investigators all over the world.

To even begin to understand such a curious enigma, we must go back to the very beginning.

Born in 1944, Cindy Hack lived the first year of her life in Ontario, where her father Otto was stationed as an army doctor.

Shortly after the Second World War had ended, the family moved to Vancouver so that Otto could attend university in the hopes of advancing his medical career.

This proved unsuccessful, however.

and when presented with the opportunity in 1949, he rejoined the military in a training capacity, meaning he would have to work all over the country.

This would characterise much of young Cindy's childhood, uprooted regularly, never staying in one place long enough to form the connections that are so important to children of her age.

By all accounts, she was an incredibly bright child, who loved books and aspired early on to become a nurse.

However, she never really developed a social life as a child.

Her parents actively discouraged her from making friends, possibly trying to protect her from the feelings of loss she would have to endure all too often with their itinerant lifestyle.

Cindy found even less companionship in her parents.

Otto was a strict disciplinarian who treated her as a live-in housemaid rather than a daughter.

In 1962, her father's request to work overseas was granted and he intended to relocate the family to France.

Now a young, independent woman of 18, Cindy refused to go with them.

Unwilling to move abroad but unable to stay in Ottawa, Cindy instead took a nursing course at Vancouver General Hospital, moving into the nurses' dormitories on site.

She was relatively happy in her new position, maintaining a B-plus average at nursing school and visiting her family in France during the summers of 1963, 64 and 65.

Much to her parents' shock however, they later received a letter from Cindy detailing the apparent suicide of her fiancée.

Her family didn't even know she was engaged.

Even her brother Doug, who visited her regularly in Canada, had never seen or heard anything about this mystery man.

Later in 1965, Cindy met a gentleman at work by the name of Roy Makepeace, a 39-year-old married man who had taken an interest in his much younger student.

He began to tutor Cindy, and the two quickly developed a sexual relationship.

Roy divorced his wife in 1966, and in December of that year, he and Cindy were married.

The pair had kept the relationship secret from her parents up to this point, as understandably, when Cindy did inform them via letter, they were appalled.

Cindy read Roy a scathing note, apparently from her mother, claiming he was taking advantage of her, though it soon transpired that Cindy had written the letter herself.

Roy found this behaviour incredibly strange, but simply passed it off as melodrama.

Over the years, Cindy became more insular, screaming at Roy to leave her her alone, even confiding to friends that he abused her.

Roy admitted to slapping her in frustration only twice during their long relationship, but vehemently denied the level of abuse that Cindy was accusing him of.

The two divorced in 1982 after 16 years of marriage, and Cindy moved into her own place shortly afterwards.

This was a big step for the young nurse, as she had never lived alone before.

And this is when the terror began to unfold.

Cindy began to to suffer at the hands of an unseen assailant just a few months after moving in.

It first began on the 7th of October 1982.

She received a phone call that night, during which a raspy voice on the other end made obscene sexual threats towards her.

Most horrifying of all was that the caller knew her name, saying it repeatedly to taunt her during the tarade.

Over the next few days, she received more calls from the stranger.

On one occasion after hanging up, Cindy felt as though she was being watched.

She closed the curtains before the phone rang again, and this time the caller said, Don't think pulling the drapes means I don't know you're in there.

This was enough for Cindy to involve the police, and when they visited her home on the 12th of October, they found nothing out of place in or around the property.

Regardless, they advised her to keep a diary of any strange occurrences and to get an unlisted telephone number.

She did as they asked, but the calls didn't stop.

If anything, the harassment began to escalate.

Three days later on the 15th, Cindy and her friend Agnes returned to her home after dinner to find a window broken and her front door ajar.

Horrifyingly, her bedroom pillows had been violently slashed, and a front door key was found next to her bed.

In the days that followed, she began to find notes made from magazine clippings detailing violent threats against her.

As the police became more involved, Cindy met Pat McBride, an officer who had been on the force for eight years.

He made it his duty to frequently check in on Cindy and even moved into her spare room later that month.

Despite this added security, police found that Cindy's telephone wire had been cut early in November.

McBride later found a pair of wire clippers on top of his toolbox, which he did not remember using.

The following month, police found Roy, Cindy's ex-husband, parked behind her house.

He claimed that he was there to protect her, but admitted that she had not been aware of his presence.

Roy asked Cindy to move back in with him, but unable to trust him, she refused.

Instead, she planned to move away.

Just days before she was due to relocate, Agnes found Cindy collapsed on her basement stairs.

She was bleeding badly, having been cut 14 times.

Cindy Cindy was asked about the attacker and claimed she didn't see his face, but there was a sense that she was withholding information.

This was confirmed when she later confessed to her brother Doug that the attacker had told her not to look at him or else he would go after her family.

Over the next year, police would intermittently set up surveillance operations on Cindy's house, watching day and night, sometimes for weeks at a time.

At no point during any of this observation did any incident occur, yet as soon as as the surveillance ceased, the calls and notes would return.

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In 1983, Cindy moved again to a smaller house closer to work.

She took a vacation to escape the harassment, and for a time, It seemed as though she had evaded her stalker for good.

Unfortunately, this would turn out not to be the case.

Upon returning to her job after months of silence, Cindy discovered a note at her place of work reading, Welcome back.

In October that year, a cat was found on Cindy's lawn, strangled and with a note next to it reading, You're next.

Now fearing for her life, she was introduced to Ozzy Caban, a big-name security contractor who had protected royalty, statesmen and celebrities alike.

However, even he could not protect her.

One night Aussie was called to Cindy's house.

After his knocking went unanswered, he kicked the front door in to find her unconscious, with a black stocking tied tightly around her neck, and chillingly, a pairing knife stabbed through her hand, pinning a note which read, Now you must die.

By this time Cindy had reached breaking point and after threatening suicide, was committed to Lionsgate Hospital under a new surname.

After five days, doctors decided that she was no longer a suicide risk and released her into the care of her friends and family.

Even so, the harassment continued.

Again Cindy relocated, this time to Richmond, trying once more to escape her waking nightmare.

Sadly, things only took a turn for the worse.

On December 5th, 1985, Cindy was found dazed in a ditch more than 6 miles from her home.

She was near hypothermic, wearing minimal clothing, and curiously, a large men's work boot on one foot.

She also wore a rubber glove and had a stocking wrapped tightly around her throat.

She was bruised and beaten, having suffered lacerations, a black eye, abrasions, as well as a needle mark on her inner elbow.

She had no recollection of what had happened.

Having been briefed by Vancouver Police, The Richmond Police Department had seemingly come to the conclusion that Cindy was fabricating the assaults.

They soon became tired of the constant call-outs, only to find no evidence to suggest the involvement of a third party.

Regardless, her friends Tom and Agnes stood by her and began staying overnight so that she could finally get some sleep, assuming that there would be no incidents whilst others were present.

Late one April night, however, Cindy woke Tom saying she had heard a noise, which incidentally, he had also noticed.

They ran downstairs to discover a fire had been started in the house.

They attempted to call the fire department, but found that both the telephone line and the panic button Aussie had installed had been disconnected.

Some witnesses claim that Cindy was calm up until the police arrived on the scene.

Only then did she begin crying and screaming, which perplexed onlookers who were caught off guard by this sudden and dramatic display.

Investigators concluded that Cindy was most likely the one who had started the fire.

However, Tom and Agnes resisted this, claiming Cindy would never endanger their lives.

Early the following month, Cindy was hospitalised for extreme depression.

She was then transferred to another facility better equipped to cater for her, where she would be psychoanalysed.

She was diagnosed with hysteria, paranoia, schizophrenia, psychopathy and hypochondrias.

She was released after 10 weeks, but the torment soon restarted.

On October the 26th, her panic button was pressed.

She was found hogtied, naked from the waist down and choked with a stocking, halfway inside her car.

She remembered nothing of how she got there.

A NOT expert claimed that she could not have restrained herself in such a way, however the police dismissed this.

Her alarm went off multiple times over the coming months, but little credence was given to her situation.

The apparent harassment continued unabated for the next three and a half years, before things finally reached a tragic and horrifying conclusion.

On the evening of May 25th, 1989, Agnes visited Cindy's house for their scheduled game of bridge.

She knocked but heard nothing from inside the house.

This instantly raised alarm bells.

A search party was sent out and soon, her car was found in a nearby supermarket car park.

Forensics were called, who went over the vehicle with a fine-toothed comb.

They discovered the freshly purchased groceries along with the gift for her friend's child and a receipt from depositing her paycheck at 7.58pm that evening.

They also detected the traces of blood on the driver's side door and found contents from Cindy's purse underneath the car.

It appeared as though a kidnapping had taken place.

Roy was the immediate suspect, but he had a strong alibi, leaving investigators with little to go on.

Cindy's body was discovered two weeks later, and according to the men who found her, there had been no effort made to conceal her body.

This time the expert claimed that the knots would have easily been replicated by Cindy, demonstrating the technique to police.

Toxicology reports showed a lethal dosage of morphine-based medicine in her bloodstream, which was unlikely to have been ingested involuntarily according to investigators.

The coroner's report listed the cause of death as an unknown event, and to this day, nobody has been charged in connection with the death of Cindy James.

Despite being listed in this way, the police are adamant that the death was in fact a suicide.

Not one shred of evidence was ever found clearly suggesting another party was involved.

Not a fingerprint, a hair or scrap of DNA.

There were several suspects however.

Roy Makepeace primarily, as he was initially accused by Cindy and her family of being her attacker.

During a hypnosis session in 1984, Cindy even recalled Roy murdering two people on a boating trip.

However, statements taken whilst under hypnosis offer very little credibility in court.

Moreover, Roy was found to have solid alibis for many of the assaults and calls.

and was ruled out as a suspect.

There was a strange man reportedly patrolling the street at the time of the fire.

A neighbour confronted him but he ran away.

Whilst this is curious, it is entirely possible that he was simply a curious onlooker out for a late stroll.

Regardless, not nearly enough is known about him to form any kind of conclusion.

The final, and arguably the most convincing suspect is Officer Pat McBride.

Over the course of the events, it became increasingly evident that he was romantically interested in Cindy, likely forming a relationship during his time as a lodger at her house.

McBride in fact proposed to Cindy, but was refused.

Despite this, the two remain good friends.

One thing that does lend credence to this theory however is the fact that McBride was a police officer.

This would give him exact knowledge of when and how the police were observing the house, thus explaining why the incident stopped during these times, and started again as soon as the police left.

Some people speculate that McBride may have been using his position of power along with others in the department to cover up his tracks.

but how credible can this really be?

Some police departments infamously have codes of silence, but surely we can assume that in light of such depravity occurring, someone would have eventually blown the whistle.

Other theories are far-reaching, but not without value, and certainly not without intrigue.

After analysis, it was claimed that the voice heard in all the recorded phone calls was female.

leading some to believe that Cindy had been involved romantically with another woman.

This perhaps explains why she was reluctant to open up to her friends and family.

She may have secretly been gay and struggling to come to terms with her sexuality.

The theory is that shortly after separating from Roy, she had a short-lived relationship with a female associate, and that this associate was the one that went on to stalk her.

This explanation, as with so many others, falls victim to the fact that the investigation failed to identify a single perpetrator, male or female.

Two final theories both suggest that Cindy's mental instability played a crucial role in her death.

There is the suggestion that she suffered from a disorder known as Munchausen syndrome.

People with this affliction compulsively create situations around themselves, often featuring physical and psychological distress in order to generate sympathy or gain attention.

Some claim that Cindy was fabricating the harassment all along, and that at the time of her death, she was attempting to stage another abduction.

However, this time it went too far, and she accidentally overdosed.

Finally, there is the very chilling possibility that Cindy unwittingly stalked and killed herself.

It has been suggested that she suffered with dissociative identity disorder or DID.

DID is more commonly known as multiple personality disorder, where a person's psyche may contain two or more completely different and independent personalities, who each take turns in controlling the physical body.

During episodes where a recessive personality takes over, the sufferer may black out, completely unaware of what they are doing whilst not in control.

In Cindy's case, her recessive personality may have been the product of her loneliness as a child, which developed an unnatural detachment and self-loathing of the body it inhabited, ultimately wanting to destroy itself.

In this way, the recessive personality may have tormented and even attacked Cindy's dominant personality.

and this goes some way to explaining Cindy's blackouts and the fact that nobody else was ever witnessed assaulting her.

So, is there a depraved murderer walking free in British Columbia to this day?

Was Cindy James in fact stalking herself, knowingly or otherwise?

Or does the answer lie somewhere else entirely?

This is one of the most talked about and divisive cases in recent memory, with new theories coming to light even now.

But despite this, the question of who killed Cindy James remains unanswered.

And sadly, it seems that this will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.

Often when a case such as this receives such exposure, there can be a tendency to fictionalise and trivialise events for entertainment.

However, it is important to remember that none of us knew Cindy as a human being, and cannot so rashly pass judgment upon her.

Cindy James was a living breathing person, with friends and family who still mourn her death and love her to this day.

To those closest to her, we hope that all the questions surrounding this case will one day be answered.

May Cindy rest in peace.

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Story 2: The Body in Boiler Stack 9.

As it becomes more difficult for us to make our way through life without leaving behind a trail of physical and digital footprints, it has in turn become far easier for law enforcement agencies to trace the victims of fatal crimes.

And yet, instances persist where human remains are discovered which are frustratingly never identified.

This week, we examine just such an instance: that of the body found in Boiler Stack 9.

The faint persistent buzz of the alarm signal emanating from the control panel situated not far from where he was dozing was sufficient to wake Roy Harris from the brief nap he had been enjoying.

Glancing down at his wristwatch, the technician was dismayed to see it was only 5.15, which meant his night shift still had a good 90 minutes left to run before he could even consider heading home to bed.

Rising from his chair, Harris stretched out for a moment before sauntering across to the sprawling array of buttons and switches to see what the mill's safety control systems had detected.

In addition to the sharp buzzing sound, a solitary tiny red light was now illuminated.

indicating that whatever the fault was, it related to boiler number 9 over on the far side of the facility.

Cancelling the alarm, Roy paused to consider his options.

Number 9 was a backup boiler stack, which meant it could easily be taken offline and left with a note for his replacement to have a look at after he came on duty.

But at the same time, Harris had precious little else to do at this hour of the morning, so a trip across the mill to diagnose the problem and then back again would successfully kill off the remainder of his shift.

After a quick diversion to tell his shift supervisor where he was going, the bleary-eyed technician started to walk through the mill to the opposite side where the boiler stacks were all located.

He exchanged pleasantries with some of the other workers as he passed by, sharing the usual observations and jokes that came with the dying hours of their night shift.

Having eventually made his way to the mill's steam plant, he passed a series of elevated metal boxes until he finally arrived at boiler number nine.

From the outside, all appeared in working order, with no obvious steam or water leaks.

A quick check of the service hatch at the base of the structure confirmed it was still rusted firmly shut, and so with a shrug of the shoulders, Roy began to climb the metal steps welded to the exterior.

Fishing a torch from his pocket, he stepped onto the top of the boiler and opened up the main hatch.

He instinctively moved back as a cloud of superheated steam blasted out from the opening before turning turning on his torch and directing its beam down into the stack.

To his horror, a pair of charred and empty eye sockets leered back up at him from the darkness, forcing the hapless technician to immediately stumble backwards, crying out in fear.

As he ran to find help, he could not shake the image of the badly burned and broken body he had just glimpsed.

a sight that would haunt his dreams for many years to come.

The Bellingham police officers who responded to Roy Harris' frantic emergency call from the Georgia Pacific watermill on the morning of September 20th, 1987 immediately sealed off the building and called for detectives to attend the scene.

Upon their arrival, the investigators were led through a maze of machinery rooms and corridors until they arrived at the mill's steam plant.

Each of the facility's steam boilers consisted of a 20-foot-tall metal box raised up from the ground on metal stilts and then secured to the adjoining wall.

They had all been turned off prior to police arrival, but the ambient temperature in the room still remained at a balmy 100 degrees Fahrenheit or 38 degrees C as the investigators stripped off their suit jackets and climbed up the metal rungs to reach the roof of one of these structures.

The insides of the boilers were crammed full of high pressure steampipes of varying lengths and thicknesses, all of which criss-crossed one another to form a series of lattice configurations.

At the base of the enclosed space, reclined across a collection of pipes that were raised just off the floor, lay the carbonised and skeletal remains of a human body.

As the uniformed officers at the base of the boiler began to try and force open the service hatch, a task that would frustratingly take a further two hours, the detectives began to make notes on what they could see down below.

The dimensions of the body suggested it was an adult male of slim build, who had clearly sustained multiple fractures to both his upper and lower limbs.

The dead man was wearing the tattered remains of a denim jacket, jeans and a pair of trainers, in sharp contrast to the safety overalls and the steel toe-cap boots of the workers that stood nearby watching what was taking place.

Several strips of material had been torn from various points across the clothes, which appeared to have then been used to bind injuries and to act as heat shielding over the man's palms in an apparent failed attempt to maneuver around or climb out of the boiler.

The realization that the deceased must have been alive for some time, lying wounded before being burned alive by the searing temperatures of the pipes he was resting on, turned the stomach of more than one of the assembled witnesses.

When the body was finally recovered and sent on its way to the Whatcom County Medical Examiner, the investigators then turned their attention to the boiler room's access points.

When the mill had initially been constructed during the 1930s, it had only needed two boilers, but as the site gradually expanded over the following decades, this number had subsequently been increased to 10.

Under normal operating conditions, temperatures inside these structures could increase up to over 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 177 degrees Celsius, a factor which meant that employees rarely attended the room unless absolutely necessary.

There were only two possible ways to gain access to each boiler, through a small service entry point situated at the base or a larger hatch which was built into the roof.

This was no mean feat, accessible only by climbing up vertical rungs welded to the side of the structure or dropping down from a narrow metal catwalk which ran the length of the boiler room.

With the service hatch clearly rusted shut due to lack of use, it was evident that the victim must have entered the boiler via the main hatch.

But this in itself would have been problematic.

Having been targeted in the past by environmental saboteurs, the mill was surrounded by metal fencing with security guards employed.

The workers on the site were all long-term employees who knew each other well.

and any new face would have been instantly recognisable.

Due to the severely burned and degraded condition of the remains, it proved impossible for the coroner to determine the presence of drugs or alcohol within the body or to recover any viable DNA.

In his report, he estimated that the deceased was aged between 25 to 35 years old, of average height and weight with evidence of having undergone extensive dental work in the past.

Though unable to determine an exact time of death, it was believed that the victim had died at some point during the week prior to his discovery.

The boiler was only occasionally in use, having last been fired up on the morning of the 17th of September for several hours, which was three days before the internal alarm signal had been triggered.

In addition to broken bones in both of his legs, there was significant damage to the man's right arm, prompting investigators to speculate that he had sustained these injuries as a result of falling into the boiler's interior.

The deceased had no personal possessions on him other than the remains of what appeared to be an airline ticket.

However, this was so badly burned that it proved impossible for officers to conduct any further inquiries into it.

Searches of the streets near to the mill did not locate any unattended or suspicious vehicles that could be linked to the victim, and as the days turned into weeks, the missing persons report which officers had been waiting for never materialized.

Despite numerous press appeals, including the use of facial reconstruction, not one witness ever came forward to identify the body, leaving its presence a complete mystery to this day.

With the watermill having closed down in 2006 and since fallen into a state of complete disrepair, Further evidence relating to the identity of the body that was found in Boiler Stack 9 is unlikely to be forthcoming.

The Bellingham Police have long since discontinued their investigations into the case, with the man's remains having been cremated and buried in a local memorial park alongside the bodies of others for whom a traditional burial could not be provided.

Over the decades that have passed, the enigma of the unidentified body found lying in a secured boiler stack has occasionally been revisited by media outlets and internet forums.

There are several working hypotheses for how the dead man came to die in such an inaccessible place.

And yet, even though these are both realistic and viable in their assertions, the question remains as to why no friends or relatives have ever come forward to identify the cadaver or to report their loved one missing.

The first and perhaps arguably the most likely explanation is that the dead man was an environmental protester.

Having managed to jump the fence and avoid the patrol and guards, and with no security cameras on sight to worry about, the man had made his way to the boilers in the hope of sabotaging them.

Not only would this have brought operations at the mill to a halt, but would also attract media attention to the waste products being jettisoned into the nearby waterfront area.

Unfortunately for the saboteur, his mission would ultimately prove not only unsuccessful, but also fatal.

Whether falling into the boiler due to his own misadventure or potentially being encountered on site and deliberately pushed in by an employee, any initial concerns he may have had about his discovery may soon have been replaced by the horror of a gruesome and inevitable fate.

In this scenario, it is possible that any associates of the victim would have been reluctant to come forward due to fear of prosecution from the authorities.

They may have been keen to avoid their organization and the identities of its members from becoming public knowledge, remaining silent in order to keep their secret from their friends and families.

Whilst extensive efforts were made locally to try and clarify the victim's identity, if he was a member of a national protest group and from another state, then it's possible that any filed missing persons report would not have come to the attention of the investigating officers.

His relatives, therefore, may also have never learned of the tragic and mysterious incident which had taken place far away in Bellingham.

The mystery around how the male came to be inside the premises carrying no form of identification on his person does strongly suggest that he was there of his own volition, with some form of deliberate intent.

If this was not sabotage, then the possibility remains that this was an act of suicide, with the victim fully aware of how dangerous the internal workings of the boiler could prove to be.

The fact that the searing conditions inside the boiler stack could ravage the man's remains to the point where they were impossible to identify may have been a very deliberate part of his plan, meaning that his loved ones would most likely never know the painful details surrounding his demise.

However, it does seem like a terrible way to go, and this also means that the victim must have been in possession of some form of detailed knowledge of the plant's layout.

as well as the internal workings of the boiler.

The identities of all current and former employees at the site were checked by the investigating officers working on the case, and so any potential disappearance amongst the workforce should therefore have been picked up on.

Consequently, this opens up the possibility that the body was that of a victim of serious crime and that they had been disposed of by someone with intimate knowledge of the facility.

Had an employee of the watermill either committed a murder or suddenly needed to dispose of a witness to a crime they had perpetrated.

Did they manage to smuggle the victim onto the site, throwing them into the boiler knowing they could not survive and that the heat would destroy their identity?

Another alternative is that this was some sort of prank or urban exploration gone wrong.

During a search of the boiler, the carbonised remains of tools were found lying on the floor, but these were discounted from the investigation as their age could not be dated.

Potentially, the male was part of a larger group which panicked and fled when he fell, their guilt never allowing them to come forward and reveal the truth about the tragedy.

This scenario was examined by local papers in 2006 when an employee of a neighbouring factory unit revealed that youths from out of the area would visit the location in order to clamber up onto the roofs of the facilities where they would hold running and climbing races.

Sometimes they would persuade or bribe the guards to allow them to do this, and he had heard that the dead man was a teenager from New York who had been left to die by his friends.

The final theory about how the man may have voluntarily come to die inside the boiler is that they were suffering from mental health issues.

In 2006, a steam engineer at the nearby Western Washington University named Richard Severson came forward to describe how in the same year that the incident took place, he had been guiding a tour around the university when one of the guests had become fixated by the boilers.

This visitor, a female in her 30s, had pushed past him and clambered into an inactive boiler.

After several efforts to remove her, eventually security guards had to be called for and she was ejected from the campus.

It was believed she had been suffering from some form of breakdown and may have been the victim of Boiler Stack No.

9, only for authorities to discount the incident as the body was clearly that of a male.

The possibility remains that after nearly 40 years, there is somebody still alive who knows the identity of the unknown man.

By keeping this story in the public eye, we hope that this may prompt them to come forward before it's too late for them to do so and to give the victim's family the closure they deserve.

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