David Parker Ray


David Parker Ray, also known as the Toy-Box Killer, was an American kidnapper, torturer, serial rapist, and suspected serial killer. Ray kidnapped, raped, and tortured an unknown number of women over many decades at his trailer in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, occasionally assisted by accomplices including his daughter Glenda Jean Ray and partner, Cindy Hendy. Ray was suspected by authorities and accused by accomplices of murdering up to 60 of his victims; however no bodies or definitive evidence have ever been uncovered linking him to any murders.
Ray used soundproofing methods on a semi-trailer, which he called his "Toy Box", and equipped it with items used for sexual torture. He would kidnap about four or five women a year, holding each of them captive for two to three months. During this period he would sexually abuse his victims and often torture them with surgical instruments, sometimes inviting his friends, wife, or even his male dog to rape the victim. After keeping them in captivity for a couple of months, Ray would drug the victim with barbiturates in an attempt to erase their memories before abandoning them by the side of a road.
Ray was arrested in March 1999 after one of his victims escaped, and was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 2001. He received a lengthy sentence but was never tried for murder owing to lack of evidence. He died of a heart attack on May 28, 2002, shortly before a planned police interrogation.

Biography

David Parker Ray was born on November 6, 1939, in Belen, New Mexico, to father Cecil Leland Ray, a mechanic and native of Oregon, and mother Nettie Opal Parker, who had been born in Texas. During his childhood, Ray and his younger sister, Peggie Pearl Ray, lived with his mother's disciplinarian parents, Russell and Dolly Parker, on a small ranch due to their poor financial condition. He was sporadically visited by his violent, alcoholic father, who would supply him with magazines depicting sadomasochistic pornography. At Mountainair High School, in Mountainair, New Mexico, he was bullied by his peers for his shyness around girls, which resulted in his abusing alcohol and other drugs.
Ray's sexual fantasies of raping, torturing, and even murdering women developed during his teenage years. When Ray was 14 years old, his sister saw his sadomasochistic drawings and pornographic pictures of bondage practices. As a result, Ray and his sister became estranged. Based on statements made by Ray, he is believed to have begun assaulting women as an adolescent. In an advisory message that was tape recorded by Ray on July 23, 1993, he claimed: "I've been rapin' bitches ever since I was old enough to jerk off, and tie little girls' hands behind their back." He even alleged to his first wife that he had committed his first homicide sometime in 1957 when he kidnapped a woman, tied her to a tree, and tortured and murdered her. However, authorities were unable to verify his account. After completing high school, Ray received an honorable discharge from the United States Army, where his service included work as a general mechanic. Ray then worked as a maintenance man for the New Mexico Parks Department in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, for the entirety of his adulthood until his arrest. The resort town, located approximately 5 miles from Elephant Butte, contained several local bars, which Ray frequented for victims.
Ray met 37-year-old Cindy Hendy who worked at a state park in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and who was fleeing convictions on grand theft and drug charges in Washington state. They became romantically involved and bonded over their shared violent sexual fantasies. In a 1993 recorded message, Ray told his captives that they would be forced to sexually service Hendy as well. Ray was divorced four times and had two children, including his accomplice, daughter Glenda "Jesse" Jean Ray. Jesse had tried to warn the FBI about her father's criminal activity in 1986. FBI Agent Doug Beldon recalled Jesse Ray's claims: "She alleged that David Parker Ray was abducting and torturing women and selling them to buyers in Mexico." However, the allegations were too vague for the FBI to initiate an arrest.

Criminal history

Ray sexually tortured and presumably killed his victims using whips, chains, pulleys, straps, clamps, leg spreader bars, surgical blades, electric shock machines, and saws. It is thought that he terrorized many women with these tools for many years with the help of accomplices, who are alleged to have included several of the women he was dating. Ray's torture room was a re-purposed, soundproofed cargo trailer located immediately outside his Elephant Butte property. Ray stocked the trailer, which he called the "Toy Box", with numerous sex toys, torture implements, syringes, and detailed diagrams showing ways of inflicting pain, as well as a homemade electrical generator to deliver electrical shocks to his victims. In total, Ray is believed to have spent $100,000 on the trailer, fitting it with sex toys and torture devices.
Reportedly, Ray constructed elaborate contraptions to confine his victims, such as a fur-lined coffin and a makeshift pillory. In addition, there were also elaborate locks and pulleys to prevent his captives from escaping. A mirror was mounted in the ceiling, above the obstetric table to which he strapped his victims so that they would be able to see themselves be raped and tortured. He has been said to have wanted his victims to see everything he was doing to them. Ray also put his victims in wooden contraptions that bent them over and immobilized them while he had his dogs and sometimes other friends rape them. Ray often had an audio tape recording of his voice played for his victims whenever they regained consciousness.
In the transcripts of his tapes, Ray detailed how he would occasionally release his captives, abandoning them by the side of a country road after severely drugging them with barbiturates to induce amnesia, which would prevent them from reporting the assaults:
He would kidnap about four or five women a year, holding each of them captive for around two to three months. Exactly how many murder victims Ray claimed over the years is uncertain; investigators believe that he raped, tortured, and killed up to sixty individuals throughout his life but they have not been able to locate any of their remains. A diary that Ray kept detailed what he did to each victim, but it did not disclose where he buried their bodies. According to accomplice Cindy Hendy, Ray's fatal victims were dismembered and buried, dumped in the Elephant Butte Lake or nearby ravines. After his arrest, Ray agreed to show authorities where he had buried his victims, but he died before he could do so and Hendy was unable to assist investigators in recovering any possible bodies.
The Albuquerque FBI in 2011 released hundreds of images of items that were collected during the investigation of Ray. The FBI believes some of the items, which included jewelry and clothes, may have been taken from victims. "The FBI, along with its law enforcement partners in New Mexico, is aggressively pursuing several leads in the search for remains of any possible victims of David Parker Ray," said Frank Fisher of the Albuquerque Field Office. "We are asking family and friends of missing people to look over these photographs and contact us if they recognize any of these items."

Suspected victims

  • Billy Ray Bowers, 53, disappeared from Phoenix, Arizona, on September 25, 1988. On September 28, 1989, the body of an unknown man wrapped in a blue tarp was found by a fisherman at McCrea Cove at Elephant Butte Lake in Elephant Butte, New Mexico. No identification was found on him, and it was determined that he had been shot in the back of the head. The unidentified decedent was ultimately identified as Bowers in March 1999 when authorities made dental record comparisons. In 1986, Bowers was a co-owner of Canal Motors, a used car business that was on North Van Buren Street in Phoenix, Arizona. The owners employed Ray, who worked as a mechanic and was described as "very talented," but was also often in conflict with Bowers. While incarcerated, Hendy stated that Ray told her he had killed Bowers and dumped his body in the Elephant Butte River.
  • 22-year-old Jill Suzanne Troia was last seen at the Frontier Restaurant in the 2400 block of east Central in Albuquerque, New Mexico, during the late evening of September 30, 1995. She had gone to a bar with friends earlier, then went with her girlfriend Glenda Jean "Jesse" Ray when they left to go to the restaurant. Witnesses reported Jesse and Troia argued. Jesse later told police she left Troia at the Frontier Restaurant and left with her father, Ray, and that she and David went to the Elephant Butte Reservoir in southern New Mexico. Troia has never been heard from again. Ray wrote detailed accounts of sexual tortures and burials of victims, including one in which he described an Asian woman who fit Troia's description.
  • Among the possessions associated with victims was a two-page letter dated June 1990 to a young woman named Connie from an Australian man named Mark. According to Ray's journal, Connie was a woman of European descent that he abducted and murdered in December 1995. She was 18 years old, had long blonde hair, a birthmark on her chest, and was 160 cm tall. The Australian Federal Police and FBI conducted an investigation, hoping to locate Mark so that he would be able to identify Connie and her family and friends, but were unable to do so. Her remains have not been located or linked to an existing unidentified or missing person case.
  • Sylvia Marie Parker, 22, was a homeless woman living on the shores of Elephant Butte Lake who was an acquaintance of Ray's via his daughter, who supplied her with methamphetamine and cocaine. Parker was also the mother of two children and was living with them in a tent she had borrowed from David. The police later discovered that Parker's boyfriend at the time was Dennis Yancy—one of Ray's "playmates." Parker disappeared on July 5, 1997, when she was abducted and subjected to several days of torture before accomplice Yancy strangled her to death under orders by Ray. Yancy took police to where he disposed of the body with David Parker Ray and Jesse Ray, but the body had been moved. Yancy suspected and the police support the theory that Ray came back to move the body later in case Yancy ever had a softening of his conscience and confessed.
  • At 10:30 a.m. on June 30, 1999, Ralph Tutor, a 61-year-old El Paso resident, was fishing in the Elephant Butte Lake. Caught on Tutor's fishing line was an 80-pound "gunnysack" filled with what he thought was "animal flesh". The sack was "split along its seam". He then suspected it was human body parts and alerted the authorities. The gunnysack was determined to contain human flesh, but no organs or bones. This meant that the unidentified victim was mutilated and dismembered before being dumped in the lake. Allegedly, Ray said, "The thing to do is cut them down the belly, scoop out their guts, fill the chest cavity with cement weights, and then use baling wire to wrap them up." Furthermore, state police found bone fragments in Elephant Butte Lake belonging to a human leg in 2011. The DNA identified the victim as a female but she was not linked to any reported missing women.