David Parker Ray

David Parker Ray
Born	(1939-11-06)November 6, 1939 Belen, New Mexico, U.S.
Died	May 28, 2002(2002-05-28) (aged 62) Lea County Correctional Facility, Hobbs, New Mexico, U.S.
Other names	The Toy-Box Killer
Children	2 daughters
Criminal penalty	224 years' imprisonment
Details
Victims	0 confirmed 3 survived Up to 60–100+ murders suspected
Span of crimes	1957–1999
Country	United States
State(s)	New Mexico Arizona
Date apprehended	March 22, 1999

David Parker Ray (November 6, 1939 – May 28, 2002), also known as the Toy-Box Killer,

Ray used

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:

I get off on mind games. After we get completely through with you, you're gonna be drugged up real heavy, with a combination of

sodium pentothal and phenobarbital. They are both hypnotic drugs that will make you extremely susceptible to hypnosis, autohypnosis, and hypnotic suggestion. You're gonna be kept drugged a couple of days, while I play with your mind. By the time I get through brainwashing you, you're not gonna remember a fuckin' thing about this little adventure.^[10][14]

• Billy Ray Bowers, 53, disappeared from
  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.^[16]
• 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.^[17] 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 Glenda and Troia had an argument. Glenda 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.^[18]
• Among the possessions associated with victims was a two-page letter dated June 1990 to a young woman named Connie from an
  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.^[19]
• 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.^{[20][14][21][22]}
• At 10:30 a.m. on June 30, 1999, Ralph Tutor, a 61-year-old
  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.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent one hundred agents to examine Ray's property and surroundings, but no identifiable human remains were found.^[1] While awaiting trial, Ray spoke to FBI profilers and said that he was fascinated by the kidnapping of Colleen Stan and other sexually motivated kidnappings. The FBI had spoken to Ray as early as 1989 in connection with his business manufacturing and selling bondage-related sexual devices.^[31]

Trials and aftermath

A judge ruled that the cases for crimes against Cynthia Vigil, Angelica Montano, and Kelli Garrett would be severed, meaning that Ray would be tried for each separately. Prosecutors said this damaged their case as each woman's story would otherwise have corroborated and bolstered the others' accounts. The judge also ruled much of the evidence found in the trailer during the 1999 raid could not be admitted in the Garrett or Montano cases, including Ray's audio tape in which he gave detailed descriptions of his abducting and torturing habits. The first trial, for crimes against Kelli Garrett, resulted in a

A week into his trial for crimes against Vigil, Ray agreed to a plea bargain and was sentenced in 2001 to 224 years in prison for numerous offenses in the abduction and sexual torture of three young women at his Elephant Butte home.[1]^: 13 The plea deal was to obtain leniency for his daughter. Prosecutors stated that the surviving victims had approved of the deal.^[33] Ray's daughter, Glenda Jean "Jesse" Ray, was charged with kidnapping and criminal sexual penetration. She pled no contest and received a 30-month sentence with an additional five years to be served on probation.^[34]

In 1999, 27-year-old accomplice Dennis Roy Yancy pleaded guilty to the 1997 murder of 22-year-old Marie Parker in Elephant Butte. Yancy confessed to helping Jesse Ray lure Parker into captivity in her father's trailer. Yancy said that Parker was tortured and that Ray forced him to strangle the woman to death. Prosecutors noted that no forensic evidence was found to tie Parker to the Rays.^[35] Yancy was also charged with kidnapping, two counts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and tampering with evidence. He was sentenced to 30 years. The Rays were not charged in Parker's murder.^{[20][14][21][22]} In 2010, Yancy was paroled after serving 11 years in prison, but the release was delayed by difficulties in negotiating a plan for residence. Three months after his release in 2011, Yancy was charged with violating his parole. He was remanded to custody, where he remained until 2021, serving the rest of his original sentence.^{[20][14][21][22]}

In 2000, Cindy Hendy, an accomplice who testified against Ray, received a sentence of 36 years for her role in the crimes. She was scheduled to receive parole in 2017.^[36] She was released on July 15, 2019, after serving the two years of her parole in prison.^[37] On May 28, 2002, Ray was taken to the Lea County Correctional Facility, in Hobbs, New Mexico, to be questioned by state police. He died of a heart attack before the interrogation took place.^[38][39] Cynthia Vigil later founded Street Safe New Mexico, a volunteer harm reduction nonprofit that works with sex workers and other vulnerable people living on the street, with Christine Barber.^[40]

References