On August 4th, 1981, legal secretary Cynthia “Cindy” Anderson, 20, was alone in the office, as she typically was in the mornings. She prepared the desks of her bosses, turned on the radio and was answering phone calls from clients. She was spotted through the window sitting at her desk by multiple passersby that morning, but by 10 a.m. no one was answering the phone at the law office anymore.
The two attorneys she worked for arrived later to find the door locked and no sign of Cindy inside the building, despite the fact that her vehicle was still in the parking lot. Eerily, the novel she had been reading was left open on her desk—to a passage in which the main character was being abducted.
In the months leading up to her disappearance, Cindy had been troubled by a series of nightmares in which she herself was kidnapped. The bad dreams were unrelenting, though Cindy couldn’t explain what might have been the catalyst for them. Those around her noticed the difference in her at times, noting that she had become uncharacteristically fearful.
Then she began receiving mysterious calls at work, which clearly unsettled her, but she refused to tell anyone what the caller had said to upset her.
Ultimately, the investigation would turn up no solid evidence whatsoever for what had become of the missing legal secretary. Theories ranged from abduction and murder by a stalker to a staged and willful disappearance carried out by the missing woman herself. Some even speculated that she had been killed for knowing too much about an illegal operation.
Still, with a lack of physical evidence or viable leads, her case grew cold.
As one detective would put it:
“It’s a complete mystery how and why Cindy disappeared.”
What happened to Cindy Anderson?
Cynthia “Cindy” Jane Anderson
One of four children, Cynthia Jane Anderson was born on February 4th, 1961, in Toledo, Ohio, to parents Margaret and Michael. The Anderson family was devoutly Christian. Cindy, as her friends and family called her, was described as a friendly, religious, and reliable young woman.
“She was a very quiet, obedient type of a girl,” remembered Michael Anderson. “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.”
She was employed as a legal secretary at the law offices of Jay Feldstein and James Rabbitt in Toledo. Cindy was planning to leave her job soon to attend Bible school with her boyfriend Jeff. Those closest to her said that the 20-year-old was excited for the next chapter of her life.
Michael also recalled that his daughter had become more concerned with her appearance and weight shortly before her disappearance.
Nightmares & Disturbing Calls
Around a year before she vanished, Cindy began having nightmares about being abducted by an unknown man.
“I do believe that the dreams could’ve been a premonition of fears that Cindy actually had in her subconscious at the time,” said her sister Christine.
Why she suddenly—and frequently—started having bad dreams of this nature remains a mystery, as she hadn’t been plagued with nightmares of this sort before. The strange phone calls that she would go on to receive at work appear to have begun after the nightmares.
A client, Larry Mullins, witnessed her receive one of these disturbing calls.
“The day before Cynthia Anderson disappeared, I had been in the law offices to pay off a legal fee. She got a phone call. She kind of reacted like maybe it was obscene or something and hung up real quick. And the look on her face, still, I can picture it today. She was scared. She was honestly and sincerely scared. It gives me shivers to think of the look on her face.”
But no one knew who was bothering Cindy or what this person was saying to her. She never reported the phone calls to the police either. And whether or not they are relevant to her disappearance is still unknown.
Concerned for her safety while working alone, Cindy implored her bosses to install a special buzzer in the office that would enable her with the touch of a button to notify the employees at the business next door that she was in trouble, if necessary. They complied with her wishes, hoping to make her feel safer at work.
Cindy’s Last Day at Work
On August 4th, Cindy Anderson arrived at work on time as usual. A maintenance worker saw her enter the office at 8:50 a.m. Around 9:45 a.m., a woman passing by saw her seated at her desk. No one reported having witnessed Cindy with another person that morning.
She was still answering phone calls until 10 a.m. As authorities and the attorneys would later learn from clients, calls went unanswered after this.
A couple of hours later, Jay Feldstein and James Rabbitt returned.
“Jay and I came back from downtown, got to the door and the lights were on, the door was locked. We unlocked the door, went inside, yelled for Cindy and there was no answer. I started to look around out front. Cindy, when she would leave, would place the phones on hold and that wasn’t done either.”
Furthermore, the reliable Cindy always left a note on the door when she stepped out of the office, but that hadn’t been done this time.
Along with Cindy Anderson herself, her purse and keys were missing as well. Her 1980 Chevrolet Citation still sat in the parking lot, although it contained no useful clues. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry in the building. It was as if Cindy had been interrupted by something while reading her book.
They discovered that her novel had been left open at a troubling passage, in which the heroine is kidnapped at knifepoint.
“It wasn’t until really looking at the book, particularly reading the passage in the novel, that I had a sickening feeling that something was wrong,” Rabbitt told Unsolved Mysteries.
Cindy Anderson was reported missing at 2:30 p.m.
Search Yields No Clues
Multiple searches would be carried out by law enforcement. In addition to police officers and detectives, family members, volunteers, off-duty National Guardsmen, and Explorer Scouts participated in the efforts to locate Cindy. They combed the area in and around the law offices, as well as Cindy’s home and other locations around the city, to no avail.
No clues as to Cindy’s whereabouts materialized, nor did they ever find her purse or keys.
Did She Leave Willingly?
Some have speculated that Cindy might have staged her own disappearance, especially given the fact that the novel happened to be left open at a part in the story wherein a character is being kidnapped. That was a coincidence that seemed a little too incredible to some. Could her mentions of nightmares about being abducted in the preceding months been an act of intentional foreshadowing?
However, there was nothing substantial to suggest that she willingly vanished. Her bank account, said to contain a “substantial” amount of money, remained untouched following her disappearance. She didn’t make any major withdrawals beforehand either. Additionally, there has been no further activity on her Social Security number.
“I love you Cindy – By GW”
Months before she went missing, the message “I love you Cindy – By GW” was painted on a concrete wall that was visible from the law office. In discussions about this case, much has been made of this graffiti, with some theorizing that a stalker of hers was responsible for it.
There were similar messages painted in the area, including “CJ+GW.” As Cindy’s middle name was Jane, she allegedly wondered if the declarations of love were meant for her, which, according to some sources, caused her distress as well.
Interestingly, the maintenance man who was among the last people to see her had the initials “GW.” He also possessed a key to the office, since he performed maintenance work there (although he was working at the nearby shopping center that day).
He was reportedly questioned and regarded as a person of interest early in the investigation, but was never charged. While he was never officially ruled out as a suspect, there was no concrete evidence of any wrongdoing on his part.
Eventually, another explanation for the graffiti was forthcoming. A woman, also named Cindy, came forward, explaining that her boyfriend GW liked to paint sweet messages for her in areas that they frequented.
There was a pizza place close to Cindy Anderson’s workplace that this woman and her boyfriend liked to visit. She explained that her GW—Greg Wiczynski—never actually knew Cindy Anderson, nor was the graffiti meant for the missing 20-year-old.
Nothing has been conclusively proven regarding the graffiti, but it’s generally believed now to have no relevance to Cindy Anderson’s case.
(Side note: Greg Wiczynski died in a motorcycle accident in 1983, so he couldn’t be questioned about this.)
A Disturbing Tip
A month after Cindy vanished, investigators received a phone call from an unknown woman who had an alarming story to tell. According to her, Cindy was being held captive in a local man’s basement.
“She said that she was scared and she was talking in low whispers. She kept saying she had to go. I kept begging her to stay on the line, give me more information, give me an exact address, something that we could act on. A short while later, she again called. The lady mentioned that there were two houses side by side owned by the same family and that the family was out of town. But their son was home and he was the party that was holding Cindy in the basement.”
They looked into this tip, trying to locate two homes side by side in Toledo that were owned by the same people, but had no luck. This lead ultimately went nowhere.
Was Her Assailant Someone She Knew?
If Cindy was abducted, it seems likely that it was directly from her workplace. She didn’t leave a note indicating that she had stepped out that day, as she normally would.
Furthermore, Cindy had become increasingly cautious and always kept the door locked when she was alone. Did she unlock the door for someone she trusted that day? Or did this person have a key of their own to the business? And why did they bother to lock up after abducting her?
It’s unclear if law enforcement pulled any fingerprints from the door knob or around the office.
Interestingly, her emergency buzzer was never used, which might indicate that whatever happened occurred quickly and that she never had a chance to alert anyone. Had her abductor—if she in fact had one—brandished a weapon? This could explain why there were no signs of a struggle anywhere.
Other Developments & Suspects
In 1995, the police announced that they had two new suspects in Cindy’s case: An attorney named Richard Neller—who also worked at the law offices—and his client, Jose Rodriguez. Both went to prison on drug convictions. An informant told investigators that Rodriguez had confessed to murdering Cindy, saying that she knew too much about Neller and Rodriguez’s drug deals.
For his part, Michael Anderson never put much stock in the theory that his daughter had been killed due to knowledge of criminal activity.
He said that she was the type of person who would have gone to the police immediately if she knew anything about an illegal operation. And since she never had notified the police of anything, he thought it unlikely that she’d overheard something she shouldn’t have.
In fact, he believed it was possible that she was actually still alive and suffering from amnesia.
“If she herself is out there, we want her to know we love her and we certainly want her to come back, whatever the case may be. The door is open, we certainly want anybody and everybody that can possibly help in this situation to do so.”
Detectives came to doubt the word of the informant—who was a career criminal himself—and had no evidence to link either Neller or Rodriguez to the disappearance of Cindy Anderson. Both denied any involvement and were never charged in connection with her case.
Brothers and serial killers Nathaniel and Anthony Cook were also looked at as persons of interest. The two men murdered at least nine people in Ohio in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They mostly targeted couples—often raping the woman before murdering her and her boyfriend.
They, too, denied any involvement in Cindy’s disappearance and there was no evidence to suggest their culpability.Subscribe
Current State of the Investigation
Sadly, Margaret and Michael Anderson have since passed away, never having learned of their daughter’s fate.
“Every so often new information comes in and we follow up on it,” said Toledo Police Chief Mike Navarre in 2011.
Her case is still open, but there have been no significant leads or updates for years.
And so the mysterious disappearance of Cindy Anderson, the legal secretary who vanished without a trace, remains unsolved.
If you have any information regarding her case, you are encouraged to contact the Toledo Police Department at (419) 245-3340.