As the calendar turned to August in 1981, twenty-year-old Cindy Anderson of Lambertville, Michigan, turned in her two-week notice to her employer, the Neller and Rabbit Law Firm, just across the state border in Toledo, Ohio. A devout Christian fundamentalist, she planned to attend Bible College with her boyfriend.

Cindy, the law firm’s secretary, usually worked alone in the office during the mornings as the lawyers were either in court or meetings. The morning of August 4 was no different. Several clients stopped at the office, and Cindy handled their administrative needs. All said she was in good spirits and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Cindy was answering calls to the law firm at 9:45 a.m.: by roughly 10:00, the calls were unanswered.

When lawyers James Rabbit and Jay Feldstein arrived at the office just after noon, they found Cindy had prepared their desks, as usual, with the mail and meeting schedules, but they also found several things unusual, chiefly that Cindy was not at the office. In addition, when she left the building, she always placed the phones on hold, but she had not done so this time. Furthermore, she always left a note on the door telling her bosses where she was going and what time she would return. This time, no message was on the door.

Cindy’s car, a 1980 Chevrolet Citation, was parked in her usual spot in the firm’s parking lot. The doors were locked, but her keys and purse were missing. Forty-three years later, so is Cindy Anderson.

Cindy Anderson

On August 3, the day before Cindy disappeared, law firm client Larry Mullins was in the office paying a bill. As he did so, Cindy answered a telephone call. Larry said she reacted as though the call was a crank and quickly hung up. Several seconds later, the phone rang again. Cindy again answered and, this time, Larry said she looked scared and again quickly hung up.

Cindy told Larry she had received several crank calls within the last few days and that some of them involved obscene language. Though clearly shaken, Cindy assured him everything was fine. Larry let the matter drop as it was clear she did not want to discuss it any further.

Police never determined who made the calls.

Larry Mullins

Law Firm Client

Cindy’s disappearance was initially thought to be related to an incident that occurred ten months earlier. In October 1980, the words “I love you Cindy by G.W.” had been spray painted in large letters on the parking lot wall across the street from the law firm. The graffiti was in a direct line of vision from Cindy’s desk, and the incident spooked her. The wall writing was painted over in April 1981, but the same message was spray-painted again in larger letters a few weeks later. Afterwards, a hidden emergency buzzer was installed on her desk.

Suspicions fell on the law firm’s maintenance man, who had the initials “G.W.,” but he was cleared when police determined the message had been written by a teenage boy to his girlfriend. The youth had no connection to Cindy Anderson.

Cindy Is Spooked

In September, one month after Cindy disappeared, a woman called the Toledo Police Department, saying the missing woman was being held prisoner in the basement of a white house in northern Toledo. The caller spoke in low whispers and sounded afraid.

The woman hung up before she could be questioned but phoned again several minutes later. This time, she was more forthcoming, saying Cindy was being held in a white house that was beside another house owned by the same family. She said the family was out of town but their son was home and that it was he who was confining Cindy in the basement. When the police officer asked for the caller’s name, she again hung up.

Police were unable to determine the described adjacent houses and, despite repeated pleas, never heard from the anonymous caller again. Since then, no solid leads have surfaced in the disappearance of Cindy Anderson.

Was Cindy Forcibly Confined?

Brothers Anthony and Nathaniel Cook are persons of interest in Cindy’s disappearance. Both long-haul truck drivers, they murdered at least nine people in and around Toledo from 1973-81.

Anthony And Nathaniel Cook

Nathaniel Cook was granted parole in August 2018.  In addition to having to participate in sex offender rehabilitation programs, he must wear a GPS bracelet, and he is forbidden to approach venues crowded by children.

One Cook Brother Had Been Paroled . . . 

Anthony Cook is serving a life sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution in Ross County, Ohio. His request for parole was denied in 2015; he will be eligible again in 2025.

. . . While The Other Remains Incarcerated

Perhaps the strongest lead to Cindy Anderson’s vanishing involves the law firm for which she worked.

In 1995 drug dealer Jose Rodriguez and lawyer Richard Neller, a partner in the law firm employing Cindy, were convicted on federal drug trafficking charges. At the time of Cindy’s disappearance, Neller was Rodriguez’s lawyer.

Rodriguez’s prison cellmate, Scott Hansen, testified Rodriguez told him that, on Neller’s order, he had killed Cindy with a nine millimeter handgun because she overheard conversations between Rodriguez and Neller about their drug trafficking. Investigators could find no evidence to corroborate the claims, and a judge deemed Hansen’s testimony unreliable.

Rodriguez was convicted of conducting a criminal enterprise and five counts of unlawful use of a communications facility. He was sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison. Neller was found guilty on one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and four counts of unlawful use of a communications facility. He was given five-and-a-half years in prison.

Neither man has been charged in connection with Cindy’s disappearance, but they are considered suspects. I could not find a picture of Scott Hansen.

Neller died in May 2024, at age seventy-four.

    

                                       Jose Rodriguez    Richard Neller

An August 10, 1981 article in the (Fremont, Ohio) News Messenger mentions four young people killed within a month of Cindy’s disappearance who all worked for a supermarket chain with a store in the same Manhattan Plaza shopping center complex housing the Neller and Rabbit law firm. The article mentions nothing of police suspecting her vanishing could be related to those murders.

Toledo police received reports Cindy was seen in Texas in the months following her disappearance but found no supporting evidence.

A convicted murderer currently imprisoned in Ohio is also a person of interest, but he too has not been linked to Cindy. Authorities have not publicly identified him.

I found no source mentioning Cindy’s boyfriend ever being a suspect in her disappearance.

Other Theories

Forty-three years after her disappearance, Cindy Anderson is still missing. Below are aged-enhanced drawings showing her at approximately age thirty. I could not find any later aged-enhanced images of her.

Cindy’s bank account and her Social Security number have had no activity since her disappearance.

Aged-Progressed Drawings Of Cindy Anderson

To Approximately Age Thirty

Cynthia Jane “Cindy” Anderson was last seen in Toledo, Ohio, on August 4, 1981. At the time of her disappearance, she was twenty-years-old, stood five-feet-four-inches tall, and weighed one-hundred fifteen pounds. Her eyes and hair were brown and she had two scars, a chicken pox scar on her forehead and a one-and-a-half-inch open fishhook-shaped scar on the inside of her right knee. When last seen, Cindy was wearing a white v-neck dress with pink pinstripes, cinnamon-brown Leggs pantyhose, and beige open-toed ankle-strap sandals.

Cindy Anderson would today be sixty-three-years-old. If you have information relating her disappearance, please contact the Toledo, Ohio, Police Department at 419-245-3151 or 419-245-3111.

No Answers

SOURCES:

• The Charley Project
• The Doe Network
• News-Messenger (Fremont Ohio)
• The Toledo Blade
• Unsolved Mysteries