David Parker Ray and his Toy Box

David Parker Ray was a serial torturer and suspected serial killer caught in 1999. David tortured and abused his victims in a soundproofed trailer he called the “Toy Box”.

He was only discovered thanks to one of his victims, who miraculously managed to escape what would almost certainly have been her death.

David Parker Ray

David was born on 6 November 1939 in Belen, New Mexico. As a child, because of his family’s financial difficulties, he grew up with his younger sister on the small ranch of his maternal grandparents, who were very strict. His father was a violent alcoholic who rarely showed up and who, when he did visit, brought him bondage and sadomasochistic porn magazines, with photos of women tied up and tortured.

In high school, in Mountainair, he was often bullied for his extreme shyness around girls, and he began abusing alcohol and drugs.

His fantasies of rape and torture were already taking shape in his teens. At 14 his sister found his sadomasochistic drawings and bondage photos, and from then on the two drifted apart.

Otherwise David led a fairly normal life. He joined the army, where he worked as a mechanic, and after his honourable discharge he found a job as a maintenance man for the New Mexico state parks in Truth or Consequences, a small town a few kilometres from Elephant Butte. He married 4 times and divorced 4 times, and had two children, including Glenda, known as “Jesse”, who would become his accomplice.

We do not know exactly when he started kidnapping and torturing women. He himself, in a 1993 recording, boasted of doing it since he was a boy, and he told his first wife he had committed his first murder in 1957, but the authorities were never able to verify it. What is certain is that by the time he was caught in 1999, David had had years to carry out and perfect his tortures.

He even soundproofed a cargo trailer and filled it with sex objects and torture instruments, spending a total of 100,000 dollars.

The last victim

David was caught thanks to Cynthia Vigil, who miraculously managed to escape from the house where her torturer lived with his girlfriend and accomplice Cindy Hendy, more than twenty years younger than him.

In March 1999 the young woman, who was 22 at the time, was approached by David in an Albuquerque parking lot and taken into his camper. There he showed her a fake badge and ID and told her she was under arrest. He tried to handcuff her, but Cynthia resisted. At that point Cindy stepped in and gave her an electric shock, knocking her out.

When she came to, she was on the floor, handcuffed to the handle of a cabinet. She could hear her attackers, driving, making comments about her body. Cynthia was terrified, but she noticed the handle was loose and managed to pull it off. She stayed lying on the floor anyway, waiting for the camper to stop so she could run.

Unfortunately her captors found out. They stripped her completely, gagged her and handcuffed her again.

David’s house

Once they reached the house, a trailer home, they took her out of the camper and inside. Cynthia was amazed to see that they did not live somewhere isolated. On the contrary, there were plenty of other homes around, and she wondered why nobody could see a naked, chained woman being taken into a neighbour’s house. What she did not know is that the area fills up with tourists in summer, but in March it is practically deserted.

Inside it looked like a normal home, but then she began to notice upside-down crucifixes on the walls and hooks hanging from the ceiling. There were also books on Satanism and very specific medical manuals, which David used to torture his victims better.

They put a mattress in the middle of the living room, sat Cynthia on it and put a metal collar around her neck, locked with a big padlock and attached to a chain. Then they tied the chain to a metal railing fixed to the wall.

The tortures

At this point David put an audio cassette into a tape recorder and pressed play. It was his voice explaining to the victim why she was there and what would be done to her. David had recorded that tape long before, so he could play it to all his victims without having to explain every time. He enjoyed seeing the terror on the women’s faces as they listened to the tortures they were about to suffer. On the tape he also explained that, at the end, he would drug them heavily so they would not remember anything.

When the tape ended, David brought a car battery with cables attached into the room. He applied the ends of the cables to Cynthia’s breasts and started giving her electric shocks. The shocks were followed by hours of other tortures, then suddenly the couple got tired and left her on the mattress. They sat on the couch, had dinner and watched TV as if nothing had happened.

The next day they took her into a room full of tools and torture instruments. There were:

• hooks and pulleys
• pliers
• straps and belts
• whips
• scalpels and needles
• handcuffs
• chains
• electric prods

And many other homemade instruments, built by David over years of kidnappings and torture. On the walls hung detailed diagrams of how to inflict pain.

They hoisted her up with a rope attached to one of the ceiling hooks and tortured her again. They gave her electric shocks and whipped her. Then they tied her to a table and carried on. Nobody could hear her screams because the house was soundproofed. When they got tired they chained her to the railing and went to have dinner, giving her a few leftovers too. Then they went to sleep.

Before going to bed Cindy told her that the next day they would take her to the “Toy Box”. She did not know what it was, but she was terrified.

The next morning David went to work. Before leaving he freed her wrists and ankles, but left the collar chained to the railing.

The escape

While David was out the phone rang: Cindy answered and went into another room. Cynthia could not believe her eyes when she saw the keys to the chains left on the living room coffee table.

Knowing this might be her only chance, she stretched as far as she could through the bars until she reached the table with one foot and dragged it towards her. She grabbed the keys and started trying them all on the padlock that held the chain to the railing.

At that moment, though, Cindy came back and caught her. She tried to snatch the keys, but Cynthia was determined: if Cindy wanted the keys she would have to kill her, because she was not going to throw away her only chance.

Cindy grabbed a lamp and smashed it on her head. For a second Cynthia saw black, then she recovered and kept trying the keys. There were so many and none of them seemed to work. Her captor kept hitting her, but Cynthia did not give up, and suddenly she heard a click. The padlock was open.

The young woman got up and fought with Cindy. She saw the phone on the mattress and called 911, but could not manage to ask for help. The call was recorded, though, and police knew which address it came from. Then Cynthia saw an ice pick on the floor, grabbed it, stabbed Cindy in the neck and ran.

The arrest of David and Cindy

Cynthia ran down the road barefoot, bleeding and completely naked, still wearing the iron collar and the padlocked chains. She found an occupied house and went in, asking for help. The people who lived there took her in, calmed her down and called the police, who linked that call with the earlier one from David’s house.

David and Cindy were arrested shortly afterwards. When officers searched the property they found a huge number of sexual torture instruments and a soundproofed trailer with an obstetric table inside, with a mirror mounted above it so the victims could see everything being done to them, plus a homemade electric generator for the shocks. That was the infamous “Toy Box” where they had wanted to take Cynthia.

The FBI sent a hundred agents to search the property and its surroundings, but found no identifiable human remains.

The other victims

After the arrest other women came forward. Angelica Montano said she had been lured to the house by Cindy, then tortured and finally left by the side of a road. Kelli Garrett was identified from a 1996 videotape showing one of her tattoos: she had been drugged in a bar by Jesse, David’s daughter, and had endured two days of torture, unable afterwards to remember where she had been.

According to investigators David kidnapped 4 or 5 women a year, held them captive for two or three months and then, if he let them go, drugged them with barbiturates to wipe their memory. He even kept a diary noting what he had done to each victim, but not where he had buried them. According to Cindy, the victims he killed were dismembered and buried or dumped in Elephant Butte Lake.

An accomplice, Dennis Yancy, confessed in 1999 to strangling, on David’s orders, a 22-year-old woman, Marie Parker, who had disappeared in 1997. In 2011 the FBI released hundreds of photos of jewellery and clothes found in David’s possession, asking for help to identify other possible victims.

Convictions and death

The first trial, for Kelli Garrett, ended in a mistrial because two jurors did not believe her. The defence argued that the trailer was just part of David’s fantasy life and that the sex was consensual. At the retrial David was convicted on all 12 counts.

In 2001, a week into the trial for Cynthia’s case, David accepted a plea deal (partly to get leniency for his daughter) and was sentenced to 224 years in prison for the kidnapping and torture of three young women. Jesse, who pleaded no contest, got 30 months plus five years of probation.

The authorities and his own accomplices suspected him of killing up to 60 women, but no body was ever found and he was never tried for murder. On 28 May 2002, shortly before a police interrogation about the other cases, David died of a heart attack in prison, taking all his secrets with him.

Cindy, who testified against him, was sentenced to 36 years and was released on 15 July 2019.

Cynthia Vigil, for her part, co-founded with Christine Barber Street Safe New Mexico, a volunteer organisation that helps the most vulnerable people living on the street.

Sources

• David Parker Ray, Wikipedia