S1: E7 – The Toy Box Killer, Part 2

In our last episode, we covered the story of David Parker Ray. He would later be known as the Toy box Killer. Today, we're picking up the story with David Parker Ray and his girlfriend Cindy Hendy facing more than two dozen charges for kidnapping and torturing three women. It happened in his homemade sex dungeon in the middle of the New Mexico Desert.

He wanted to pick women who he could control, who he could scare, who he could hurt.

At this time we knew of three victims, but that number would skyrocket. He kept journals and videos of his forty or so victims.

David Parker Ray, when he was finished with those victims, would kill them.

The testimony of the three women who miraculously made it out alive was the key to prosecuting him.

The victims, what they endured is just.

It's unbelievable and so unbelievable that there were so many people when they were first told, didn't believe it was true.

Not just the people who first heard it, but the jury as well. They weren't so sure what they were hearing was true either.

This is one of those cases it's like, until you did that last piece of the puzzle. There's really nothing else to do with it.

My name is Sloane Glass and this is American Homicide. You're listening to part two of The Toy Box Killer and a warning that this episode contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault and violence. Discretion is advised. At the time of his arrest in nineteen ninety nine, David Parker Ray was fifty nine years old. He was a mechanic for the New Mexico Parks Department and lived in the tiny town of Elephant Butte, New Mexico, where he was very well.

Liked, so he definitely had a sense of power of authority in that plafe.

Alex Tomlin was a local news reporter.

He's this legendary figure here for all the wrong reasons. You know, the joke all the time in the newsroom is the worst criminal you are, they give you all three names.

David Parker Ray grew up near Albuquerque. He was a bit of a loaner who was picked on at school. He was a strange from his mother and only occasionally saw his alcoholic father, but he spent a lot of time with his father's true detective magazines. They covered crime stories. It was one of the first of its kind. David said his fantasies about assaulting young women began when he was flipping through those pages. Then came his fascination with pornography.

You know, I can't imagine what it's like to be the daughter of the embodiment of Satan, so I have to imagine her life was not an easy one.

Jesse didn't see much of her Dan since he was always on the road. She grew up into a biker check who drove a motorcycle and wore blue jeans with a black leather vest. She shot a lot of pool and was a regular at the local bars in the dusty town of Truth or Consequences, which is a blip on the radar and located right next to Elephant Butte. Back in nineteen eighty six, when she was just nineteen years old, Jesse went to the FBI with a warning

Jesse Ray reported him, but it's clear after that she became an active participant.

Darren White worked for New Mexico's Department of Public Safety.

Jesse Waver she was her dad's recruiter. She would go out and she would look for targets.

So Jesse Ray went from turning her dad into the FBI to recruiting victims into the Toy Bob. So not only was David Parker Ray's girlfriend involved in kidnapping his victims, but so was his daughter. Following David's arrest in nineteen ninety nine, investigators located dozens of videotapes in the toy box. One tape showed a slender woman with long blonde hair shackled to a table with duct tape covering her eyes. This woman had a distinctive tattoo on her right ankle,

Jesse and I met. I don't remember exactly where we met. We had mutual friends, and anytime we'd see her at the bar, she would hang out with us.

When Kelly was in her early twenties. She moved to Truther Consequences, New Mexico.

We had a lot of fun back in the day. We were always going out, playing pool, going to the lake. It was a lot of fun.

The tiny town of Truther Consequences is famous both for its natural hot springs and its unusual name, which came courtesy of a radio game show.

I think I had more fun here than I have anywhere else I've lived. But I think it's the people. I had really good friends here.

Back in nineteen ninety six. Kelly was a newlywed. Really, she had just been married for less than.

A week, and we started fighting that day. I don't even know what we were fighting about, but I told him that I was leaving.

So Kelly went out to blow off some steam from that silly fight.

I was going to go hook up with some friends and go play pool, and I did. There were several of us that went out and we were bar hopping. I wasn't drinking. I was driving.

They're just a handful of bars in the area, including a small biker bar named Raymonds. When you step inside, there are pool tables in a jukebox. It's dimly lip as strings of light shapes like jalapenos along the walls. That's where Kelly bumped into Jesse Ray, David Parker raised daughter.

We weren't like close friends. We were just acquaintances kind of because we would just hang out when we see each other.

After Raymonds, the group headed to another local bar called Blue Water Saloon. That's where Kelly's night took a bad turn.

I ordered one beer and some friends of mine started fighting. They were a couple, so I took them home and came back and finished my beer.

When Kelly returned, the rest of her friends wanted to go home, so she let them take her car.

Jesse and I were the last two and without her car, Jesse said she was going to give me a ride home, and that's when Jesse took me toward Dad. She's the one that took me to him. She knew what was going to happen.

David Parker. Ray wound up keeping Kelly in his toy box for two and a half days.

When I was captive. I don't remember him saying too much. I remember him telling me at one point that they had been watching me for years.

So what did David Parker Ray do to Kelly in the toy box.

I have no idea. I don't remember. I just remember being in his house.

She believes now that she was drugged, which affected her memory, and when she didn't turn up all weekend, Kelly's husband got concerned.

And my husband at the time put a missing persons report out on me.

A couple days later. Kelly remembers being driven in David Parker race truck.

The only thing that sticks in my memory from that ride is him stopping to get coffee.

Kelly said she felt out of it during the ride.

David dropped me off at my mother in law's house, which is where my husband was, and he told her that he found me wandering on the beach out at the Lake Elephant Boot Lake because he lives out there.

Kelly's husband had questions, most importantly, where had she been all weekend?

And I told him I didn't remember anything, and they did not believe me.

Kelly's husband was furious. The two had had an argument, and Kelly disappeared for the weekend, but returned with no memory of what happened. Her husband and his family didn't believe her. They all assumed she was with another.

Man felt horrible. But who's gonna believe me when you say I don't know where I've been all weekend. I'm not sure I would believe somebody if they told me that.

Her husband was so angry that he wouldn't even let Kelly into the house.

Like the next day, we went to the courthouse and signed an oment papers, so we were married a total of thirteen days.

Kelly never reported what happened to the police, and she tried to forget what little she remembered. Three years later, a news story would change everything. The report mentioned a woman with a tattoo on her ankle. Kelly's former sister in law was watching the news in shock. Prosecutor Jim Yance explains.

Her ex in laws were vacationing, I believe in southern California, and when they checked in to the hotel, the person at the desert, oh, you're from Truth to Consequences. That's where the story's on the news. Fun. They didn't know anything about it, but they did recall Kelly. They did recall the tattoo. When they got back, they notified the FBI.

Beginning of March, I think somebody called and said I wanted to talk to me.

Two investigators arrived with the tape they found of Kelly in the toy box.

Oh yeah, they did show me the video.

After watching it, her memories of what happened still weren't clear.

I remember bits and pieces, and if I remember enough of them, I can put them together.

Then Kelly shared some vivid nightmare she had been having. These nightmarees started after her time in the toy box.

I would have a nightmare about somebody holding a knife to my throat, or I would have a nightmare about being tied to a table. Duct tape has always been a trigger since then, but I didn't know why. It took me years before I could even say the word duct tape. I called it icky tape for a long time. And if I'm paying attention, then somebody's using it. Most of the time, I can stand there while they use it, But if they do it and I'm not paying attention, I scream and panic and run away and.

Cry investigators couldn't help but know the eerie similarities of Kelly's nightmares to what David Parker Ray did to his other victims.

He always had his keys on his belt loop, and that's a trigger, the jingling of keys.

The more Kelly talked, the more her painful memories flooded back.

That's when it all clicked.

She realized that those nightmare she had been having were actually suppressed memories, and then it started to come back to her. She remembered her friend's father threatening her with a knife and then being duct taped and handcuffed to a fitness bench.

That felt good that I could actually put things together, but it was also horrifying.

Police filed additional charges against David Parker Ray and arrested his daughter, Jesse Ray. They charged her with kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration, assault, and conspiracy. Jesse Ray was arrested thirty four days after her dad was put behind bars. With David Parker Ray, his girlfriend, Cindy Hendy, and now his daughter Jesse Ray all in custody, could prosecutors get one of them to flip. It's now late nineteen ninety nine and David Parker Ray still isn't talking, so investigators leaned

Initially, she described herself as being one of his victims, but she became involved in actually enjoying the torture part of it, and became his accomplice.

If convicted, Cindy Hendy faced more than two hundred years in prison. So prosecutors offered Cindy a deal. Plead guilty and cooperate with their investigation and they'll reduce the charges mean in a lighter sentence. So Cindy agreed to the plea deal. It required her to testify against David Parker Wray. This is where the story turns even darker and a warning. In all the cases I've covered, this is one of the darkest details I have come across. What she shared

The state police turned over every rock between Alburquirkue, and Elf and Butte Tiny to find other victims, but we were never able to find those individuals.

Then, in late nineteen ninety nine, David's accomplice and girlfriend, Cindy Hendy, had a change of heart. She stopped cooperating in the investigation. Cindy told the court that she was still in love with David, so she fired her attorney and asked to withdraw her plea. Cindy's new lawyer argued that Cindy had an eighth grade education and a mental disability that made it difficult for her to understand the

He knew the type of woman he wanted to pick up.

TV reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story.

He wanted them to probably have a history of going out and maybe drinking too much, of going home with people that they didn't know on the first night. He wanted to pick women who no one was going to cost too much of a fuss if they didn't come home in three days.

They had video of him torturing and raping, and investigators believed he was a killer, but without any bodies or other evidence, they couldn't charge him with any other crimes.

They used to open the toy box for reporters to come in, just to stir up people's memories.

As you can imagine, all of this affected tourism. No one wanted to go in or around the lake.

It's one of those situations where you get around it and it's almost like you can physically feel evil. It's a thickness, the sensation. It's the way your skin crawls, the way the wind hits you. It's just so uncomfortable. Somebody out there saw something, somebody knows something, and it's just gonna be a matter of time until they say something.

Cadaver dogs also searched David Parker Rai's property, but the only bones they found belonged to animals.

Keep was strategic. I mean, that's why you got away with it for so long. That was his game.

Then another tragedy three became two when one of the victims mysteriously died. Angela Montana was held in the toy box a few weeks before Cynthia V. Hill, but just before the trial, she reportedly died of a drug overdose. She was only twenty eight years old. Suddenly, the first case, which was to find David Parker Ray guilty for his crimes against Kelly Garrett. One that seemed like a slam dung for prosecutors was crumbling. They needed Kelly Garrett to

I told him, No, I knew how much it was going to bring up. I knew howpset it was going to make me, and I changed.

My mind ultimately and bravely. She agreed to testify.

People needed to hear, people needed to know that he was bad.

The trial, schedule to kick off in the spring of two thousand, faced delay after delay. The defense wanted the case tried outside of Elephant Butte in order to find an impartial jury, so the judge moved the case some two hundred and fifty miles north to the tiny town of Tierra Maria. Then, in between four long weeks of jury selection, David Parker Array was hospitalized twice with hard issues. More delays came when David's lawyer had to deal with

Hill.

Now prosecutors had to prove that each piece of evidence was also present three years earlier. This led to dozens of pieces of evidence being excluded from the trial. The most heated debate over evidence involved the audio tapes found that described the crimes in the toy box.

He played a tape that, in chilling detail, told them exactly what was going to happen to them.

The judge did not allow it to be played at Kelly Garrett's trial because Kelly couldn't remember hearing it, but the judge did allow the jury to see a videotape of Kelly Garrett that was recorded in the toy box. When the trial began in the summer of two thousand, that videotape became the prosecution's key piece of evidence. Durs heard hours of testimony from law enforcement and first responders before prosecutors finally played that videotape. As the six minute

A long time. I don't think I was reliable because I couldn't compose myself enough sometimes to get out of bed.

For two long hours, Kelly sat on the witness stand and recounted what she could remember happened that weekend in July nineteen ninety six. She said she had a beard a local bar and then felt light headed. Jesse Ray offered to drive her home, but instead she took her to her father's place. Kelly remembered that David claimed to be a part of a Satanic group that wanted to use her as a sex toy. Then they tied her

I used to be fun and outgoing, and I could go places alone, and and now I stay home very seldom ever go out. I can't even go to the grocery store by myself.

Prosecutor Jim Yons then warned the jurors of the graphic nature of what came next. They would see the inside of the toy box. As jurors nervously shuffled in their seats, Jim held up photos.

We had cheers that asked for breaks. We had chers that were just shaking their heads. Now, we actually had chors sometimes that would put their head down or sobbing. It was incredibly difficult for them to hear it.

The quarter appointed public defender never called any witnesses to the stand, but simply used his cross examination of the prosecution's witnesses to cast down in the minds of the jurors. He asked Kelly why she never told the police or even her friends or family what happened to her in the toy box. With her hands trembling, Kelly locked eyes with the lawyer explained she thought that these memories were nightmares.

We couldn't prove that I was drugged because those drugs were found three years later.

The defense attorney used that same strategy to pick away at the contents of the toy box. The public defender set out to make each of the prosecution's witnesses unreliable. He asked the same question to each investigator who testified, do you know if these items were in the toy box back in nineteen ninety six. One by one, they each answered, I don't know. As for the defendant, David Parker, ray He Warwick became dugged. His uniform a striped cowboy

My greatest fear was David being released.

Prosecutor Jim Yarns knew his case was strong, but he was afraid of what the jury would come back with. Yance was frustrated that the judge didn't allow some key evidence, specifically the initiation tape that David Parker Ray played for his victims. Although jurors didn't see all of the evidence, the investigators and lawyers did.

We saw all of the imagers. Now, some of them were hand drawings of David's. Some of were actual photographs. But no, I'd never seen anything like them before, nor do I hope to again.

While jury deliberations continued into their second day, the tiny town of Tierra Maria was packed with journalists awaiting for a verdict. Prosecutors worried that the longer the jury deliberated, the greater chance of an acquittal.

On day one of this investigation, everybody worked together for one purpose, and that was to stop the nightmare David Parker Ray.

Then on Thursday, July fourteenth, two thousand, the judge called everyone back into the courtroom. By that point, the jury had spent days deliberating for all twelve counts. They couldn't agree on a unanimous verdict.

That trial ended up in a misstoial.

The hung jury was a major victory for David Parker Ray, who back in the courtroom, showed no emotion. The prosecutors were stunned. They learned from reporters that two twenty somethingter female durers who were the holdouts for securing a conviction. The two said they didn't believe Kelly Garrett's testimony, and one even believed the sex was consensual.

I was there willingly, That's what that was said in court. They found over one hundred videos but only found three of us alive. But I was there willingly because most of the people that he took were either into drugs or prostitutes, and I was neither.

It's true at the time, these women were not seen as believable, and we know that this is still a problem today. I know this from my own experience covering the Long Island serial killer. It's valid to question if that case where multiple women's bodies were found along the shoreline would have been taken more seriously and solved years earlier if the women hadn't been sex workers. Even with her credibility being questioned, what was more painful for Kelly is what she heard from a juror.

Some people like it rough. It was one of the jurors that said that some people like it Rod. I'll never forget her saying That's about the only thing I remember about that trial.

A man with a homemade torture chamber, who had journals and videos detailing what he did to dozens of victims, somehow managed to escape being convicted.

I was scared when Kelly's came back a hungry I was really scared.

Cynthia Viha was preparing for her own trial. She didn't testify in the first case because she was the star witness in Parker Ray's upcoming second trial.

I don't understand how a woman could not believe her. There's a whole video of her being tortured, there's drawings, there's rules. He had never trust the chain captive. What does that say? A chained captive that tells you right there there because they're not willing. So I don't know how anybody could believe it he was innocent. That's when I got really scared that they weren't going.

To believe me. For this trial, David Parker Ray would have to find a new lawyer. His previous attorney, a twelve year veteran of the Public Defender's Office, announced that he was taking a new job in Antarctica. That's right, he was moving to a new continent. But before leaving, he stopped at a colleague's office with a message.

Hey, look, I'm leaving the Public Defender's Office and I've got a case I want you to take. Will you take it? I said, well, sure, what is it? And he says it's that case? And I said that case And he said, yes, that one.

That case now belonged to Lee McMillan.

They basically threw me to the wolves. David Parker Ray was one of those cases that every attorney hopes he'll get once in a lifetime and then finally gets one and never wants another one.

But then things took another strange turn one weekend when a giant black bear broke through a plexiglass window and rummaged through the courthouse. The bear wound up, chewing on some cans before leaving, along with a broken window in charge of glass. The bear left behind a bloody trail of Paul prints. One courthouse worker joked that the case couldn't get any weirder, but it did. Before the retrial began, the judge, who was just fifty five years old at

This is his first major trial after he was appointed to the bench.

A new judge and a complete redo of the trial meant anything was possible.

He had just told the police that he was ready to talk.

To them, but prosecutors kept running into the same rule blox.

It almost goes back to that hole. This is so outrageous. It's hard for people to believe.

What lengths would investigators go to to get David Parker Ray to reveal his secrets.

There was some talk that David Parker Why would plead guilty to everything as long as the state would make a deal.

But would they run out of time?

Probably the one thing that irritates the hell out of me about this case.

In the final episode of The Toy Box Killer, prosecutors get another chance to convict David Parker Ray, and this time they'll get some help from an unlikely source. What happened in the end was something that shocked David Parker Ray's own lawyer.

I did not trust if he would not start his own hard walk out, that's.

Next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with