true crime

Toy-box killer

---Info---

  David Parker Ray was born November 6, 1939 in Belen New Mexico.

  During his childhood, David Parker Ray and his younger sister Peggy lived with their disciplinarian grandfather. He was sporadically visited by his violent, alcoholic father, who would supply him with magazines depicting sadomasochistic pornography.[7][8] At Mountainair High School, in Mountainair, New Mexico, he was bullied by his peers for his shyness around girls.

Ray's sexual fantasies of raping, torturing, and even murdering women developed during his teenage years. Around this time, his sister discovered his sadomasochistic drawings, as well as pornographic photographs of bondage acts. After completing high school, Ray received an honorable discharge from the United States Army, where his service included work as a general mechanic.

Ray was divorced four times and had two children, including accomplice, daughter Jesse Ray.

-----Crimes----

  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, some of whom are alleged to have been several of the women he was dating. Inside the torture room, along with numerous sex toys, torture implements, syringes, and detailed diagrams showing ways of inflicting pain, there was a homemade electrical generator which was used for torture.

A mirror was mounted in the ceiling, above the obstetric table to which he strapped his victims. 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. He has been said to have wanted his victims to see everything he was doing to them. Ray often had an audio tape recording of his voice played for his victims whenever they regained consciousness.

---Arrest--

  Ray posed as an undercover police officer and approached Cynthia Vigil in a parking lot. He told her that she was under arrest, for solicitation of prostitution, and handcuffed her. He put her in his trailer and took her to Elephant Butte. After three days of captivity, Vigil escaped from the trailer at Elephant Butte on March 22, 1999.

To escape, she waited until Ray had gone to work, and then unlocked her chains. Ray's accomplice, Cindy Hendy, had left the keys on a nearby table before going to another room to speak to someone on the telephone. After Vigil got the keys, Hendy noticed Vigil's attempt to escape and a fight ensued. During the struggle, Hendy broke a lamp on the survivor's head, but Vigil unlocked her chains and stabbed Hendy in the neck with an icepick.

Hendy fell to the floor and Vigil escaped. She fled while wearing only an iron slave collar and padlocked chains. She ran down the road seeking help, which she got from a nearby homeowner, who took her in, comforted her, and called the police. Her escape led officials to the trailer and instigated the capture of Ray and his accomplices.

Police stopped Ray and Hendy, and Ray was taken to jail. After the publicity surrounding the arrest, another victim, Angelica Montano, came forward. She told a similar story and said that she had reported the incident to police, but there had been no follow-up.

Ray had a video of another victim, Kelli Garrett (also called Kelli Van Cleave), which dated from 1996. Garrett ultimately was found in Colorado alive, after police identified a tattoo on her ankle. She later testified that she had gotten in a fight with her husband, and decided to spend the night playing pool with friends. On July 24, 1996, Ray's daughter, Jesse, who knew Garrett, took her to the Blu-Water Saloon in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, and drugged the beer she was drinking. Garrett had walked to the parking lot when she suffered a blow from behind, which knocked her unconscious.