This article is the first in a three-part series that continues tomorrow about Cindy McKay.
As the sun rose over the Atlantic in the early hours of April 15, 2003, an Ocean City police officer pulled his squad car into the parking lot near the inlet that separates Assateague Island from the carnival rides of the boardwalk. He had been sent there to investigate a report of a suspicious car, parked facing the water with its lights on.
In the Hyundai Santa Fe, the officer saw a cell phone hooked to a charger, a handbag and an empty bottle of hydrocodone. Next to the purse, the officer wrote in his report, were a set of keys and a letter written in a gentle cursive on lined yellow notebook paper.
David,
Leaving you all in the middle of the night was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. After meeting with my lawyer today its clear that Jessup is waiting for me. I can’t and won’t go back. Please understand and try to make the kids understand why I can’t.
I feel all alone and have decided to die rather than rot in prison. I’m sorry. ... Please love and take care of the children. They’ll need you more than ever.
Let them know that I love them VERY much and couldn’t put them through years of prison too.
All my love, Cindy
[...]
“Cindy was very bright. I mean, extremely bright,” recalls Barbara Wetzell, an emergency room nurse at Physicians Memorial Hospital in La Plata, where McKay worked the busy front desk as a receptionist. “She knew exactly what was going on at all times,” and was adept at picking up on “things that other people wouldn’t even notice.” Wetzell said she couldn’t help feeling that her friend tried too hard to impress others, like the time she lavished a pregnant co-worker with one baby gift after another. “I never saw a mean streak,” Wetzell recalled, “but I would say that Cindy was devilishly clever.”
[...]
Creveling’s characterization seemed borne out in 1985 when McKay committed or was accused of committing a string of crimes. In February, she was given three years’ probation in Charles County for stealing at least $10,000 from a construction company where she had worked as a secretary and treasurer. She claimed her bills pertaining to the custody battle impelled her to steal, but a portion of that money also found its way to the installation of a hot tub at her Waldorf home, records would show.
2nd part in series: For police detective, an intriguing suspect
