Ohio : Cynthia Anderson
Ohio is one of those states that have a lot of crazy things going on, just like Florida, Texas, and California. Today’s episode is about the missing person case of Cynthia Anderson, but she didn't live in Ohio. However, every day, she would make the short drive from her home in Michigan, where she lived with her parents, over the bridge into Toledo, Ohio, for work, and this is where Cynthia, more commonly known as Cindy, vanished. What makes this disappearance so unusual is the various events that occurred in the months prior to Cindy going missing. Join us as we navigate through what is known about this 42-year-old cold case and get the community talking about Cynthia Anderson.
Toledo is a fairly decent size city, with around 270,000 people living there. It is nicknamed the Glass City because of all the glass manufacturing companies that were there at one time. Toledo has an impressive art and music scene. However, in 2018, the city was ranked 43rd in the Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities in America. Notable people from the area are the voice actor for yogi bear and huckleberry hound, a few Playboy playmates and actress Katie Holmes. I thought about saying ex-wife of Tom Cruise, but then I was like, she can hold her own without his name associated with hers. As I said before, This Ohio city has been ranked among some of the most dangerous places in America. It is rated a 5 out of 100 for safety on Neighborhood scout.com. The violent crime rate is 2.5 times higher in Toledo than in the rest of Ohio. This state as a whole is less dangerous than the country's average, so that is good. Property crime is still high but not nearly as bad as violent crimes.
This is a very old cold case, so I think this was one of the reasons why I could not get in contact with Cindy’s family, but I have read previous interviews with them over the years and added those into today’s episode.
Cynthia Jane Anderson was born on February 4th, 1961, to parents Margaret and Michael Anderson. She had three siblings a sister, Christine, and two brothers, Mark and James. This was a close-knit Christian fundamentalist family. Cindy was described as a well-behaved and religious young woman. Her father’s exact words about Cindy were, “She was a very quiet, obedient type of a girl. She never made waves with either myself or her mother. And she had lots of friends. She was the type of daughter that you just enjoy. I mean, just a beautiful young girl.” Cindy had a boyfriend named Jeff, whom she met at church, and he was already in Bible College Cindy planned to join him shortly after she disappeared, and when I say shortly, I mean within two weeks. She had already put in her two-week notice to her employer and just had a small amount of time before she was about to get her first taste of freedom. Cindy was excited about the future and had no signs of wanting to run away, so her disappearance seemed unreal to her family.
In the months leading up to Cindy's vanishing, she started to have nightmares. These bad dreams were all about her getting abducted and then murdered. These were so concerning for her that she actually spoke to her mother about them. Her sister Christine overheard these conversations and stated in an interview, “I do believe that the dreams could’ve been a premonition of fears that Cindy actually had in her subconscious at the time.” end quote. Once you hear about the details of her disappearance, it doesn't seem like a coincidence. Not only was Cindy experiencing these horrible nightmares, but she started to change her thinking about her appearance and put herself on a strict diet. She was skipping meals to spend more time getting ready and putting extra care and attention on how she looked. Was this just a young woman finding herself, was there a new mystery man, or could this have been nothing and Cindy just not being hungry and wanting to look a bit nicer… that is one question I am not sure we will ever know?
Another possible connection to her disappearance was the fact that someone was harassing and possibly stalking Cindy. She was receiving calls at her workplace there in Toledo that would leave her terrified. On August 3rd, 1981, which is the day before she went missing, a client of the law office Cindy worked at was in the office when she answered the phone. This man could see that Cindy was visibly shaken and she was so scared, he asked her about the call, and she brushed him off, but he was so concerned he actually made a report to the police about it. He wanted local authorities to do drive-bys of the office just to check on Cindy.
These calls were so frequent that her bosses at the law office where she was a legal secretary, advised her to keep the doors locked when she was in the office by herself, and they got her a panic button she could press to alert the next-door business if anything was wrong. Remember this was before *69 or the last call return which is the official name. According to the New York Times, this feature was not widely introduced until 1992. I could not determine if Cindy or anyone else besides the one client spoke to the police about these harassing calls. Other than Cindy being noticeably frightened, she did not tell others about the contents of the phone calls. She never said if it was a male or female, what they said, if she recognized the voice, so even though these events were happening, it didn't help the police once Cindy actually went missing.
A few more strange things that were happening in the months leading up was someone wrote a huge I love you, Cindy on the side of a building directly across from where Cindy would sit at the law office. Let me paint a picture here, the law office where Cindy worked as a legal secretary was in a shopping center, so there were very big windows right in front of the office, and her desk was right behind the windows to give her a perfect view straight out into the parking lot of the shopping center. Across the way, on a building directly in line sight of her desk, written in red paint in huge letters was I love you Cindy signed with the initial GW. This scared Cindy even more, and she didn't know anyone with those initials that would do something like this. The first time this graffiti was painted on the wall was about ten months before Cindy went missing. It took about six months for it to be covered up, only to be repainted by an unknown person a few weeks later. I couldn't even imagine the amount of stress and terror this young woman was under, not only with the vivid nightmare but the harassing calls. Someone painting that on a building but never coming forward is downright terrifying.
Speaking of terrifying, there were four murders in the Toledo area that summer and even more scary the majority of them were in a shopping center that had this one particular store in it which just so happened to be in Cindy’s shopping center.
Let’s talk about the day Cynthia vanished. She arrived at work at the normal time, at 8:30 am. She turned on the lights, the air conditioner, and the radio just as she did every morning. She then laid the day's agenda on the two lawyers' desks. Cindy was known to read romance novels and paint her nails when work was slow. There isn't much that describes a 20-year-old more than this. The office janitor saw Cindy at her desk around 9:30, and then some patrons passing by noticed Cindy through the window at about 9:45 am. However, by 10 am, the office phone would go unanswered. Meaning sometime between 9:45 am and 10 am, Cindy would go missing. The lawyers would arrive around noon to a locked office door, and no Cindy. Typically if Cindy had to run an errand, she would leave a note on the door for the clients and her bosses, but today, there was nothing. They knew she was there because the AC, music, and lights were all on. One of the lawyers smelled fingernail polish remover and noticed a romance novel flipped over on her desk. They also realized the answering machine was not turned on, which is something Cindy always made sure to enable before leaving. They waited for a bit to see if she would turn up and that they were overreacting about her not being there, but by noon and that didn't happen they phoned the police.
Cindy’s purse and keys were gone, but her car was still out in front of the office. Another disturbing possible piece of evidence found was that the romance novel was flipped open to a scene of a woman being abducted. This was the only violent abduction scene in the whole book. It was one of the lawyers that discovered this weird coincidence. Zero sign of a struggle, the front door locked like it always was, and no eyewitnesses made this case a difficult one from the start. Cindy was about to start her life. She was moving out of her parent's house and moving closer to her boyfriend to go to college with him. Not one person close to Cindy said she was having difficulties with life or wanted to leave it all behind.
With the lack of evidence, the police didn't know what direction to go. But once they found out about the dreams, the harassing phone calls, and the graffiti, police grew concerned. Still, every possible lead dried up quickly, that is, until about a month after Cindy vanished, and police received not one but two anonymous calls at the station. These calls came from a woman whispering, stating she knew where Cindy was taken and being held. The woman said that Cindy was in the basement of a white house but then quickly hung up. She did call back and said it was two houses next to each other and that one family owned both properties. She also told police that the family was out of town at that time, but the son was the one that had Cindy, and he was at the property. She stated she couldn't give the address or her name because she was scared as well. Police would urge this woman to come forward with what she knows however, this would never happen.
Cindy’s bank account had quite a bit of money in it, but it was never touched. Her social security number would never be used in all of these years. Now a few of the possible theories I think the first one, which was the most coincidental, was the janitor of the office. This man had the initials GW this was the initials of the person who painted I love you Cindy, on the side of the building. This janitor also had a key to the building, therefore, could lock the door back after leaving, allowing more time in the getaway because customers wouldn't report her missing right away. He was one of the last people to see Cindy alive. He reported that he saw her at about 9 am that morning. I believe I mentioned the fact that this specific area of Toledo had a serial killer roaming the streets around this time. These murders would be tied to brothers Anthony and Nathaniel Cook. The duo committed at least nine rapes and murders in the Toledo area during 1973-1981. The brothers would typically kill couples, but honestly, looking through their victims, the victimology is all over the place. They have denied having anything to do with Cindy’s disappearance.
This next part is a bit confusing, or well, I thought it was confusing and needed a chart of some sort. One of the lawyers that Cindy worked for his name was Richard Neller. Well, before Cindy went missing, he had a client named Jose Rodriguez Jr. This guy was not on the up and up, to say the least. Jose was upset at Richard because, apparently, Richard didn't get him the deal he wanted in his last drug trafficking case. He apparently fired Richard Neller, and you think that would be the end of that, but no. This Jose guy was arrested again for drug trafficking in 1995, so, years after Cindy’s disappearance. So what does this have to do with the 20-year-old woman that went missing well, a witness came forward and told authorities that Jose confessed to killing Cindy to get back at Richard for not handling his drug case adequately and then to keep adding to this crap show Richard Neller was arrested along with Jose for drug trafficking.
Now, there had been rumors that Cindy overheard something she shouldn't have, and she was killed by this client to make sure she didn't talk. So were the two in on something together, and then Jose maybe started to pull away from Richard, but somehow the guys ended up in business together.
Authorities stated they looked into the validity of this witness and Jose’s confession, but they said they didn't have enough evidence to pursue anything then.
Now, of course, we have to add in the possibility that Cindy ran away on her own. Was the book being left open to a violent scene, the dreams she had all an elaborate set up to look like she had been abducted when in reality, she just wanted to start a new life? I don't know if I can get on board with that theory. I don't know if Cindy could have faked being terrified after the phone calls she received. I don't think she would have planned for months and months and started with telling her mom about these nightmares she was having and why not take some money from her bank account. She could have pulled out a little here and a little there in order to have some cash stockpiled for her running away. So many changes were coming up for her. She was about to go out on her own for the first time I don't see her throwing all of that away to start a new life when she was about to do that anyways.
Cindy’s mother passed away just a few years after Cindy vanished, and then up until the day Cindy’s father died, he was adamant that his phone number would not change and that he would not leave the family home just in case Cindy came back one day. He often said that he hoped she had amnesia and one day she would remember, but that never happened during his lifetime.
Cindy was 20 years old when she went missing in 1981. She was 5'4, 115 pounds. She was wearing A white v-neck dress with pink pinstripes, cinnamon-brown Legg's pantyhose, and beige open-toed ankle-strap sandals. Cindy is a white female. Brown hair, brown eyes. She went by the name Cindy. She has a chicken pox scar on her forehead and a one-and-a-half-inch scar on the inside of her right knee, shaped like an open fishhook.
Cynthia Anderson has been missing for so many years, and there are obviously people out there that know something. If you have any information about what happened to Cindy, please contact the Toledo Police Department at 419-245-3151
