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You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them. Never trust the chained captive. That was one one of the rules David Parker Ray posted on the isolated property where he and his girlfriend Cynthia Hendy lived near New Mexico's
Elephant Butt Lake. They called their windowless trailer the toy Box, and over the years they lured countless young women into its chamber of unspeakable pain and horror and filmed every moment. A satanist, Ray was the center of a web of saddism, sex, slavery, and murder authorities suspect he'd murdered more than sixty women. In October twenty eleven, a flood of tips led to a renewed search for the remains of more possible victims.
This updated edition reveals all the details, along with the inside story on the controversial movie based on these unforgettable events. The book we're featuring this evening as a true crime classic, it is Slow Death by the late great Jim Fielder, with my special guest journalist and Pinnacle Offe author Sheila Johnson. Welcome back to the program, Sheila Johnson, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Oh, thank you. It's always a pleasure to come and talk to you, and I'm especially pleased to get to talk about the update on this book. This was the first Pinnacle book I ever read before my own first book was published, and I was so impressed and so just completely taken aback by what David Parker Ray had done.
I was.
It made a tremendous impression on me.
Now you say this was the first Pinnacle true crime book that you had had read, was there any influence with Again, a lot of authors sort of stay away from the more horrific stories, and David Parker Ray is one of those that not for the faint of heart at all, and one of the most horrific and the most horrifying stories. It was it a little bit of a was it any any Was this book any influence to you on the kinds of subject matters, of the kinds of stories that you chose to cover in your own books?
Well, not so much that it was a tremendous influence on me, because of the quality of work that he did. He was just a meticulous interviewer and researcher, and I was really impressed by that. From my own books, I've had to sort of deal with what was in my own backyard more than you know, more national type stories, So I didn't choose things for that reason so much. Of course I have. I have run up on some
humdingers right here in south end of the country. But I think the major influence that this book had we were just seeing that he was able to tell this story in such a thorough and detailed manner, and I felt like it was a story that really needed to be told. I think there's an awful lot of people out there that don't even realize that people like David
Parker Ray really exist until something blows up. And if he hadn't gotten caught, he would he would probably have gone on for no telling how many more victims with his torture and murdering and things. So, you know, I think, I just think this is a very worthwhile book for anybody to read that has an interest in true crime. If they have not read it, they absolutely need to.
And if they didn't read it, or if they did read it in the past, they needed to check out this update because there's just an incredible amount of things that have happened with this story since this book was written.
Right now. Yeah, I I'm very interested in myself and hearing about the movie because I had no idea this controversial movie based on the on the story itself too so, And just for those people that are listening to when did Jim Fielder pass away, I'm not.
Sure exactly when. I believe it was probably about twenty ten or eleven, because he did some investigation discovery programs in two thousand and eight. In two thousand and nine, and I didn't know that he had passed away until my editor called me and asked me if I would be interested in updating the book.
Now, tell us about that it was that Mikela Hamilton and if yeah, tell us about that conversation. And because we already know that this was this is the first Pinnacle that you read, and of course that it influenced you in terms of the investigative journalism that he practiced with this, the meticulous detail and covering all the bases and doing all the extensive interviews. Tell us about the conversation with Mikeel Hamilton from Kensington Press in Temacle Imprint.
Well, she called me one day and asked if I would be interested in writing an update for this book, because I think it was first published in two thousand and three, and she said that she knew from conversations with mister Fieldy that quite a bit had happened. And I said, well, sure, you know, let me get on the internet and look around a little bit and see what it is and see, you know about how big
this update's going to be. And I was just astounded when I saw how many different developments there had been
in this case. I mean, David Parker Ray died in two thousand and two in prison, and he was still out there or you might could consider that he was out there pulling everybody strings, just like a puppet master, because all these things kept happening to people who he had been involved with, his victims, various and southern, other people that he dealt with, and it was like he was still there and still just as sick and evil
and a bad as he ever was. And I immediately got back with her and said, oh goodness, yes, I'll write the update and I'll let you know how long it'll be as I go. And I ended up with I think over sixty pages just of updated material. There were so many different topics, but.
Uh, incredible. It s also Fielder had had continued with the investigation all.
These years, and he was planning on writing the update himself, and evidently he died before he could get it done. And mm there were some of the things that had happened that had even taken place after he died, some of the largest developments in the case. And I was just really I considered it an honor to be asked to do it because it was one of their best, biggest titles that they had ever had. It was just
such an amazing book. And then to get the privilege ab up date, and I was just really pleased.
Well, if you, if you could be so kind, give us a give our audience for those that don't know this incredible story or don't know this incredible story well enough, tell us give us a synopsis of the story itself, what the David Parker Ray and the accomplices, because amazingly there's accomplices in this, and then tell us about the updates.
I think that's about the only that's the best way I think to explain this is give us the nature of the evil of David Parker Ray and his various accomplices, and then we could talk about Cynthia Vigil as well that led to the discovery of this entire hell on earth here, and then tell us about with investigation and what was uncovered, even like you say, even after Jim had passed away and these latest and greatest developments from David Parker Ray.
Okay, okay, well, slow death is his story and all the other people that were sort of operating on the fringes of his just really sick and perverted group, including his daughter. Her name was Jesse Ray, and she would get out and help him lure young girls on some occasions to come to what they called the toy box. It was this one hundred thousand dollars custom built trailer that he had fixed up in just a total torture chamber.
It had every kind of torture device you could ever imagine, hanging on the walls that had a led the covered bench that he would strap people down to well women. He never tortured a man as far as I was able to find out. It had whips and chains, pulleys and all kinds of straps and clamps and spreader bars and surgical blades and saws. And he had a camcorder that sat right there at the end of his exam table, as he referred to it, and he had it set up to make videos of his victims while he was
torturing him. And then he had a monitor up above that table so that they would have to watch what was being done to them. And there's just there's no describing the terrible things that he would do. And there's several instances here in the book where they transcribed these long, long tapes that he had made for his victims, and he would play that for them, telling them what was gonna happen to him while they were strapped down there
in the toy botts. And another thing he had in there was a like a carpet lined casket that he would put his victims in between torture sessions and have him in there in the dark and and terrified, and that I guess was as bad a torture as anything he could have come up with. And it has been estimated by what he has said in his journals that the FBI was able to get hold of. And luckily he kept journals because that helped him locate some other
things as long as they went. But he said in those journals that he had killed around forty women, and course they've never found nearly as much evidence of him doing that, but they think that it's just because he
was a very good at hiding bodies. And he was finally caught when, uh, the Cynthia that you mentioned, he had kept her for about three days and just with a dog collar around her neck and a long chain, and she managed to get hold of an ice pick and stab his girlfriend and get loose and went running down the roads dark naked except for a chain and a and a collar and managed to get help. And if it had not been for that, he would have
gone right on and wouldn't have been caught. And there was a lot of speculation that he was also using amnesia inducing drugs that he was giving to a lot of these women, and that he had a lot more victims out there that he had drugged to the point that they didn't even realize they had been assaulted and tortured like that. So, you know, there's always been a big call that's gone up for anybody that remembers anything
to please, you know, come to the authorities. But we'll never really know the truth about his victims because you know, there's nobody there to tell it. Now he's he's dead, and.
But there was videotapes. What's incredible is that right in the very beginning of the book describes this is in the prologue to the original Slow Death. If I could, I'd like to read this because this is the horror of David Parker Ray. Smoke was pouring out from between her legs the sacred place for God had intended for this young woman to give birth to a baby someday.
Eight Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI special agents watched the homemade videotape with a growing sense of horror crossing their somber faces. Their eyes follow the two people torturing the faces victims, David Parker Ray fifty nine and his girlfriend Cynthia Sincely Lee Hendy thirty nine. The criminals hovered over the naked woman and stuck a hot cattle prod inside her vagina, watching her body rith and pain. The agents
kept their eyes on Ray and Handy. The federal investigators were sitting inside in eighteen eighty twenty foot wide cargo trailer where the crime had taken place. The trailer was parked on the edge of a bass road along the shoreline of the larger lake in New Mexico, Elephant but Lake. The partners in crime lived on the outskirts of a small town called Truth or Consequences. Yeah, they go on from there. That's the kind of videotapes that were created
at this toy box as well. Now tell us a little bit about the accomplices, accomplices, because there's his daughter, Jesse Ray, his girlfriend, and then another accomplice at some other point as well.
Yeah, we had Dennis Ray Yancy, who was an accomplice of he is who actually went to prison for strangling a woman and said that Ray was watching and videotaping it. So Yancey went to prison for that, and he behaved himself well enough that he got paroled in not in twenty ten, but there was no approved place for him to go. The parole board didn't have any sort of place for him to go and live on parole that they would approve of.
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So he had to go back and stay in jail for a while longer, and then when they finally came up with a place that was approved to move to, he's still on probation til two, two thousand fifteen, and he was the the main you know, accomplished that he had that actually committed a a murder that.
They know of.
Now it's possible that uh, Cindy Hendy might have also Cynthia Hendy, and uh she was in prison. I have not been able to find out if she's still in prison at this time or not, but she was for quite a while for I think Aiden and betting his crime against uh Synthia, Oh excuse me, Cynthia Vigil. But uh, there's one victim that I would like to recognize as
a victim because technically she wasn't. But at the time when the FBI was first going in to that toy box and seeing everything that was in there and all the terrible devices he had invented, there was an FBI agent, special Agent Patricia Rust, who her job was to go in there and sketch all these different devices of his. And evidently that really really got to her because not too long after she had that assignment, she committed suicide.
And I've always felt like that was just another victim of his right there.
Absolutely I would like it because that, yeah, it must have been its very Jim captures that horror as well, that she goes home and then commits suicide just from I guess any shred of any humanity left after seeing witnessing that. So, yeah, it's a very touching part of
the book. Now you say that you ah, there was a further investigation, and I'm I'm assuming that would be about other victims and maybe the location of other bodies or or maybe maybe not so tell us about some of the other developments that had occurred since this case and since his uh imprisonment and then death shortly after well.
The major development. In two thousand eleven, the UH authorities reported that they had received some what they referred to as extremely credible information about a young girl whose name was Jill Troya and he had right had mentioned in his journal that he had UH taken an Oriental woman
for a victim and had killed her. And this girl was Oriental, and the time frame fit the age that she was fit, and she was a a friend, she was dating his daughter, Jesse Wow, And the last time anybody saw Jill alive, she and Jesse had had a fight and Jesse called her daddy supposedly to come and pick her up at the bar club where they were in Truth or Consequences, and nobody ever saw this Jill again.
She just disappeared without a trace. And that is what the tip was about that was received in twenty eleven, and as a result, there was just an enormous search effort that went on out there at Elephant b at Lake, and they worked on that for for weeks and got all sorts of other tips and information in. They found several things out there, and then they had some other
people that gave 'em further information. There was a man that had used to deliver loads of concrete there to the park at Elephant Lake State Park where where Ray worked, and he would deliver the concrete there to Ray up in and out of the way area where nobody was around. He wouldn't let the guy watch what he was doing
with it. He wouldn't let him get out of the truck up there, and what he was doing was putting it in some great, big, oversized, huge truck tires that this delivery man said were plenty big enough to hide a body in. And he got thinking after this came out about Jill Troya being missing, that uh Ray could have been hiding bodies in those tires all that time.
He told him that they was getting them done to anchor down the marina, but they never made their way down there, so if they did, they want to another section of the lake. But that was one of the
thi pieces of information that came in. And when word were spreading about the search for Jill Troy's remains or anything else can find, an Elpasso dentist called in and told him that he had been at the lake and the water was way down at that time because of the drought, further lower than it had been for a long time, and he found some human leg bones out
there turned them in to the authorities. He found a choke chain collar that was found nearby there, and he found a blue T shirt that had been left there for some time, and they said those bones were so weathered that they were not confident that they'd ever be able to get any DNA information from them. But I think at the last update I had on it that they were still attempting to and they found a fake ID in the Ray's house and with a lot of other stuff.
That he had.
He was bad to keep souvenirs, and one of the things he found was an idea of a real pretty, dark haired woman, and they just immediately panicked, thinking that was a victim, and put out all sorts of feelers about that. But the woman showed up and you know, said it wasn't her, and she didn't know when she lost that idea or how he got hold of it or anything of the sort. I myself think that she probably let it get away from her, but with it being a fake, she wouldn't want to admit that it
was not hers. And his last victim, Cynthia, the jail had overheard him and Cindy Hendy talking about other victims of his that had been given drugs and then let go, and she made a plea for people to come forward while they were conducting this search in twenty eleven. There she said, please, you know, if you have any information, or if you even think anything might have been done toe you, please come forward and and help solve these things.
Right.
She was very very cooperative and to me also one of the the most interesting things. The FBI had collected all sorts of jewelry and and accessories and things of that nature out of raised trailer after he was arrested and they put thirty four pages of pictures on the FBI's website and they probably are still there. They had hundreds of photos of of things that he had taken.
Also put it on Facebook, and I would encourage anybody that might happen to be listening that had any kind of a missing person in the Southwest back at that time, please get on there and look at those items, because some of them are just very cheapest little pieces of costume jewelry, and others are very obviously one of a kind and made pieces that could not be mistaken for
anything else. And if you get a chance, you know, go on there and look at those things, because it's it's amazing the number of things that he camped and they were all women's items.
Right, you pronounced the Cindy visual? How did you pronounce? Sorry, Vagil? Yes, you know what's interesting is how is the escape is described. I know you talked about it, but it was interesting is that that the David Parker Ray had left and he entrusted the uh Cindy Henry to to take care of of the captive. And there was some keys that were left and so she said that she she sort
of maneuvered the table over with the keys. And then Henry came back into the room and was enraged that she was trying to escape and star beating her with a lamp. So she said she was still fighting for her life, but she still was trying the keys and finally got the key unlocked or the lock undone, and then continued to fight. And and then a box fell down and an ice pick fell out of the box. Very stab Yeah, and then escaped and then and then it was amazing what he captured was that, you know,
this woman running through the trailer. Parker first to try to get into a car, but the woman was so frightened that would not let her get in the vehicle. And then she finally made it to this double white trailer and then a sympathetic woman and a man and and they listened to her pleas and uh and and and David Parker ran. His accomplice were about a block away, driving in a vehicle looking for.
So they were looking. If she hadn't already gotten inside by the end, they would have picked her back up. Yeah, it's awful to think about.
Yeah, and the scores of victims that this woman, with her brave effort saved not only in her own life, but other people's lives, certainly, because there's no reason for him to stop. One thing that we haven't mentioned, and this is sort of rare in true crime, it really is that people allude to it in some stories. But this person claimed to be a Satanist and to operate sort of a coven, if that's the term, but with other a Satanist the members. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.
Well. I think that he was doing that, not so much because he himself believed that he was a Satanist. I think he was doing that to lure people in, like this Dennis roy Nancy that was just a drifter and had nothing going for him. And I think when Ray saw that he was interested in that sort of thing, I think he capitalized on it in order to to
lure him and maybe a few other people in. But Uh, they had found a a site out near one of the places where they were searching earlier that had a lot of red and black candles sitting around, and it had names of Ray and all his friends, especially Dennis Rore Nancy, written all over the rocks around where that was. And that was evidently where they had had a little
ceremony of some type. And I think the the woman Marie that uh that Yancy was convicted of killing, I think she had maybe been taken there to that area to uh serve as a sacrificial victim. And that's that's why he strangled her while Ray was filming it. That and the whole thing is just so sick and warped it's it's still amazing.
Yeah, he had a thing as well too that there was a major, of course sexual component to this, because the torture and saddism is part of the and then they abuse sexually with these monstrous things that he inserted into the women. This is the words of David Parker Ray on what captive captured women will do to be freed. Remember, women will do or say anything to get loose. They will scratch off her money, yell bag, scream, run off her sex excuses, and sob stories, menstruating, pregnant, v D,
sick kids with babysitter, sick baby, a sick parent. She must be subjected to hypnosis before the woman can be safely released. Never trust a chained captive. So he had a whole list. He inserted a cassette and told the women to shut up and then listen, and warned them that maybe a little bit whimpering was allowed, but any kind of uncontrollable crying, any type of attempt to escape, would be So it was just a horrifying sort of
manifest though. Here is the rules of the sex slavery and the torture and the satanism that he said he was going to subject these women to. And like you say that, he set up a monitor so they had to watch their own torture and it was prolonged torture. And then now there was sort of different estimates on how many murders that occurred on this and people were buried.
Where do you think where were the people buried? And how many victims do you think accurately would be safe to say that David Parker and has accomplices were responsible for killing.
Well, I think if you combine the ones that they might have killed were the ones that they also might have tortured. And then because you know they were they were given its hypnotic drugs and several of them that that worked for they would just release. But I think it could reach up into the forties, like it's been estimated I have seen one estimate, the estimate that said it might have run up as high as sixty, but I think there were probably over forty. And in his
journals he had claimed over forty. And he also had a lot of information in there about good ideas that he'd had on ways to hide bodies, and one of them was to find a road that was under construction and being paved and buried the bodies before the pavement went down there on the roadway. And then another thing, when the guy found out about his concrete and the tires, he thought that was, you know, just a definite thing
that he probably was doing. And h this was a former policeman from uh there and I think in Albert Herky that had worked at a jail for a while and raised girlfriend Cindy Handy had talked in the jail a lot that they had dumped bodies up in a place called the pit at Kabaya Lake, which is near that area.
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She said that somebody had pictures of the pit and you could see heads and legs and everything else floating in the water.
Wow.
So there's there's no telling. We'll never know for sure how many victims that he had, cause some of 'em that are still living can't remember it, and and there may be so many dead already. Now, there was a letter that when they were getting the jewelry lined up ready to photograph, that came across a letter that was out of an envelope, so there was no address or
return address on it. And it was written to a girl named Connie, and it had been written from Australia by a guy named Mark that had evidently met this Connie when he came over for a vacation and then wrote her after he got back home. And the uh FBI, the agent Frank Fisher, who was instrumental in all of
this renewed search and all the jewelry information. Frank Fisher went to Australia and gave all the details was that they had gotten about this man from the letter, and uh went on Australian television news trying to locate him with somebody who knew him, so they could find out maybe a last name for this Connie, because she was described just exactly in his journal as she she was by what they had been able to find out from
the letter. The d high h the hair color, everything was just perfect description, and they were afraid she might be a victim that they just didn't know anything about. And another victim of his Jim Yannce was the prosecutor in his trial, and he had worked really hard on the case and then got the conviction. And his wife, Karen, was an investigator in the Attorney General's office there in Albuquerque, and very well known, well respect tod, helpful to everybody,
excellent investigator with a great reputation. And during the time of raised trial and and then afterwards, they were really stressed at home and she started going to the Indian casinos out there and gambling just for something to do. You know, for recreation, and that pretty much overtook her life. She began going more and more often and being real secretive about it and not telling her friends what she
was doing. And debts were piling up and credit cards were getting cut off, and she was about to get to put on temporary relief from her job for a while. Her husband, Jim, told the press that she owed over a hundred thousand dollars at the casinos, and so she went out and started robbing banks.
Wow.
She would take her work vehicle and put on a ball cap, you know, some sunglasses and disguise like that and go and rob banks. And one day the police got there before she could leave the scene, and she managed to jump in that car and get down the road to a fast food restaurant and in the parking lot, they had a long standoff and they didn't have a clue, you know, at the time who they were dealing with, and she finally raised the gun and pointed at them,
and they had no choice but to shoot. And when they ran the tag, it came back to the Attorney General's office and then they checked the idea and discovered who it was and she was shot and killed in May of two thousand and three because of the stress that David Parker Ray had brought onto her family. And there's another role that things like that just astounded me when I started finding all that, I.
Was just right, how much evidence is there that they let any woman go hypnotized or on amnesia inducing drugs? Was there any evidence that this occurred?
Yes, there was definitely one. I think her name was Kelly Van Cleeve, and they had videotapes of her being tortured, and she had a real distinctive tattoo on her leg and they identified her from that, and she had she had no memories of it for a while, and then it started coming back to her and she ended up being one of the people that he was convicted of kidnapping,
that they id'd her from a tattoo. She and Cynthia both had gone on to have, you know, nice, normal, well adjusted, happy lives, and I don't see how in the world they managed. They must have been really strong young women to have been able to overcome that, But I think they're both doing quite well now.
Yeah, that's it's some good news in these kinds of stories that there isn't very much good news at all TAUS now about this controversial movie based on the story of David Parker Ray.
Okay, the movie is going to be called The Toy Box. And a man named Michael Coburn had read Slow Death and got interested in the story and started researching it and working up a film from that, and from all accounts it I think if it gets released, it's it's gonna be Okay. It's very low budget. Then they spent about twenty thousand dollars on it, which for most you know,
that's extreme low budget. But they had some pretty talented people working with them, and they had the gist of everything that had gone on, and it's had several release dates and then they'd get pushed back and it'd be in post production or something of that nature. And the last release date that's that's been that it's been pushed back to at this point that I know of, is August twenty thirteen, and I'm figuring it's gonna be one
of these things that goes straight to video. Sure, but I believe there's a lot of people that are still going to enjoy it, quite a lot, you know, because there's so many people that have followed this case for such a long time, but I think it's I think it's pretty well done from everything I've been able to
get it. They found in Arizona and in Texas and several other places in the Southwest when they could find good locations, and some of the actors would also be people who had helped write, and some of the crew would help act, and you know, they had a lot of overlapping deities there to get it made for that much money. But I'm really in hopes that it will get released.
Yes, absolutely. Now you've been on the program before three times. Actually we had the pleasure of having you on the Blood Highway was the last time, Blood Ambush and blood Lust, and you have another book called Blood Betrayal, so a lot of blood going on.
I was told by very successful writer that if you wanted your book to get picked up office, tell for y'all to always work blood into the title somewhere. So I've always tried to do that.
That's probably a good strategy for sure. And it's not like these books aren't the titles aren't appropriate. They definitely are. That Blood Highway was the last one that was a wild story. Absolutely, tell us what projects that you're interested in now where you are considering for that you're considering writing now if any tell us about.
That, Well, what I'm going to be doing next, I am going to be writing some ebook materials for the company. They want to move over into ebooks and ebook shorts, and I'm going to be working on that, probably in conjunction with William Phelps's another one of their writers. He's a very good researcher and where he's a good interviewer and I'm a good researcher and transcriber. And We're going to kind of throw in together on some projects, I think.
And uh, the first week of February, I have a film crew that's coming over to meet me in Rome, Georgia from Investigation Discoveries program Behind Mansion Walls, and they're going to do the segment that's based on the case that I wrote about in Blood Ambush. And actually I'm very pleased about that because I'm gonna get an opportunity to say yet again that I do not believe Barbara Roberts was the killer in that case. I think she's spending her life in prison for something that she didn't do.
That part of the crime she was a participant but I don't think she fired those three fatal shots, right. And the doctor her boyfriend, has since committed suicide. He got off with a slap on the wrist and practically time served, and then he moved home to live with his mother, and not too long after that he hung himself in the closet.
Uh.
And I think that was a combination of guilt and the fact that he couldn't practice nearer surgery anymore. Was they had had a automobile accident and he was not able to hold his hands steady after then. So it's a it's a mess. But no way of getting Barbara out that I can see, because she she pretty much chose to put herself in that position.
I'd like to see her out, Yeah, she'd She doesn't even have the opportunity of any more appeals, does she.
I don't think so. And m her attorney for the trial, who was also my attorney for some civil things, unfortunately got dis barred.
So uh.
I think that the fact of her having inadequate representation during the trial was was pretty much self evident by the But I don't I've I've spoken to her appeal attorney, and I don't think she's got too many more opportunities coming up. In some of the states, they can just go back and forth and back and forth from state to federal for just interminable amounts of time. But I don't think here in Alabama they have that many shots.
Right, And so there'll be this will be interesting for you to shoot some film for uh AN investigation discovery.
Yeah, it will be. I'm looking forward to it absolutely.
And then good for you for for maintaining that this woman is innocent too, because I I mean that if there is anything going to happen, it's because people will stand up for them. And you never know what kind of momentum that will lead to investigation discovery is of course millions of years. So all you can do is try.
I guess I will certainly try loud and long as as long as it takes me to ever get anybody to pay ten to that. I saw a letter in her attorney's files, who he let me go through them and get what I wanted out for the book, and there was a letter in there that he had received from a shooting range over in Georgia where she and the doctor went to learn to shoot, supposedly, and they said in that letter in their very reputable places. They
wouldn't just lie about it for no reason. But they said in that letter that she after her car accident, she had had a lot of trouble with her arms and nerves and her arms and the muscles. They said she could not hold up a shotgun to shoot it, and she barely could hold up a pistol. And she's not gonna run a hundred yards across the fields through high weeds carrying the shotgun and then met up with her victim at the lake and then shoot the woman
three times. I the the doctor was in the process of driving down there in the woman's car through the lake, and I think he got Barbara, took the shotgun and went on down there and did the last three shots. That's just my opinion. And the men that prosecuted her are all good, decent, honorable men, fine gentlemen that I've known all of them for years, And they would not have tried for the death penalty if they if they had been given any choice. But I don't believe that
they were. Because she refused to testify, she wouldn't cooperate, and she was offered several deals and turned them down consistently. So it's, like I said, while ago, she's put herself in that position. But that doesn't make it any any the less disturbing for me to think about her living her life out in prison for something that she that I think she obviously didn't do.
Yeah, well, at least you're you're an advocate for her innocence. And I mean, even if she didn't, uh induct herself to wisely for the record, I guess that's all you can really ever do, is just And that's why these books are important. I mean, for the record, all the valuable, relevant, important information is there for the record. And with slow Death, with this book that you've been asked to write a forward for, this is another book that's gone on to have a life of its own. Like you say, it's
been published in two thousand and three. The story was an arrest was around nineteen ninety nine. These crimes happened before that, before the turn of the century. And then there's still developments in twenty eleven after Jim Fielder dies, after he's planning an update. These stories just go on and on, and almost from Jim, almost from David Parker raised Evil from the Grave, is still casting Mayhew and disaster right from the FBI agent that committed suicide to
the prosecutor went on to raw Banks. So it's an amazing evil legacy that this slow death has become.
Well, it's become a really unpleasant legacy for his daughter, Jesse, who tried her best, I think, to straighten out and want to live with her mother and her daughter in Kentucky. And everything was quiet for a little while, and then the people in this little small town there where they were living got wind of her being there and who she was, and they started looking up what she had
done and finding out details about the story. And there was just this little internet war that went on for months between the people in that town, posting and answering and posting and answering, and some thought she was trying to live a good life and others thought she was just tiding out there, waiting to commit Mayhem again. And I was really sad for her daughter. She has a
teenage daughter. And the daughter went online finally after this had been going on for a long time, and then said that she felt really bad that people were persecuting her mother like that, and that she just hoped that her granddaddy had repented of the things that he had done before he died, and that's that's sad for a teenager to be dragged into a situation like that.
Sure, well, she's an innocent person. Jesse Jesse Ree to this day claims her father is innocent, doesn't she Well.
She does, but I think she knows better. She has to have known better because she was around too much for too long a time, and it was an often owned situation. She'd leave awhile and then he'd get sick and call her to come back home, and she has to have known what was going on. There's no waved that anybody could could fail to see that, and I
think she just wants to. She hopes that people will believe that, but I don't think she really expects that anybody will because there is too much proof of what was done. Now, she claims that she had no part in getting victims there, but there were quite a few other people that said she did have. So I don't know. I just I hope that the woman is really doing what her daughter and her defenders up there in Kentucky think that she's doing, and you know, doing her best to have a good life.
Now, was there any rhyme or reason why all these I mean, you talked about that David Parker Ray sort of manipulated this Yancey guy with the satanism and the power. I guess tell us a little bit about what you sort of got from the book itself, from the Why these other people would be involved.
Well, there's always people out there that are looking for something, and it's like Dennish roy Yancy. He had absolutely nothing or nobody and he showed up in Truth to Consequences, which by the way, seems to be a really strange little town from everything I got from the book and the other information that I was able to find. And I think that people would just get involved because they had, you know, they had nothing else in their life. It's
the only thing I can think of. I'm I'm stumped as to why they would, But that's that's the only reason I can think of, is that their lives were just empty and here was somebody that was real charismatic and seemed to have a lot of power and was paying attention to them and making them feel maybe important to be a mains to the end for him. He probably he was using them. I think to help toll victims for a large for large part.
But if they're videotaping, and he videotaped with his girlfriend these assaults, and he videotaped some of this stuff, including at least one murder with Yancey, isn't it safe to say that these people enjoyed tortures and and killing and involve everything that was involved. That they must have enjoyed it, regardless of someone introducing them.
To it, you know what I'm saying, Like they would have to enjoy it in order to continue taking part. And some of them probably lit a shut pretty fast when they saw what was going on to keep from becoming victims themselves if they didn't want to be part of it. So I think that, uh, I know that, uh,
they must have enjoyed what they were doing. Now, he made the statement that he could not get any kind of enjoyment out of sex unless there was pain involved for the for the victim, that right, they said there had to be pain involved. And and then he would brag to the victims about how his girlfriend there would be so much rougher on 'em than than he was gonna be because that was just the way she was so yeah, I don't know. The the whole thing is,
it's an amazing story, and it just keeps developing. I'm not at all gonna be surprised if another five years from now this still information cropping up about some of the missing persons, and and some of the victims might remember more at some point, and those leg bones finally may be identified. They surely they can. If they can get DNA out of a mammoth, surely the goodness they can get.
Dead leg bones, I would think so.
I think that's you know, a human leg bone, a set of leg bones is not going to get into a lake unless a dead person has been in there, you know. And they've got to id those leg bones. If there's any way they might belong to Jill Troy that they got the credible tips about, they might belong to any number of the other victims. They just they got to keep trying, and I think they will.
This is what David Parker read had some instructions for the sexually that they had captured. This is a tape that started with religious instrumental music and raised a soft voice. Hello, bitch, I'm sure you're wondering why even kidnapped and what's going to happen to you. That's why this tape has been made. It saves a lot of talking. It's brief, blunt, and to the point. I'm a dungeon master for a local chapter of the Church of Satan Lucifer or the Devil
to you. You have been abducted so that your body can be used during rituals and for sexual purposes for the congregation after the meetings. Our membership is pretty small, but all about twenty people, mixed male and female. Our meetings are pretty much what most people imagine the way it is depicted in the movies. A hidden church, black robes, pentagrams, rituals, chanting, a lot of nakedness, animals, sacrifices, chicken blood, and the hell of a lot of sex. Afterward, the meetings get
interesting and exciting, to say the least. Trying to raise the demons is important, but it is the sex that keeps the church financially afloat. The high Priest lives to keep everybody fixed up up on sex, and for that we like fresh meat. Every couple of months, we kidnapped some good looking little bitch to use during the rituals and to be kept available for everyone to use during
the orgy, and so he goes on like that. So part of it is the terrifying his subject as well and telling them what will happen if they don't listen to every single detail in order.
I don't believe that he ever had as many as twenty people. I think that was and I don't think he conducted rituals that much either. I think he was, you know, just more or less making that up as he went. But those tapes just go on and own
and own. They're so lengthy and detailed and horrifying, and they're all transcribed in the book and it's just it's just mind blowing to read and imagine what those women must have felt like having to listen something like that and them all trust up in a torture chamber at the time.
Yeah, And as we spoke earlier before the interview tonight, this seemed to really affect Jim Fielder too, and he never went on to write any more books. And this one, just from my personal conversations with him, it seemed to be play heavy on him having gone through this thing.
And that's I think imaginable too. When you brush near or get so close to something such so evil that it is hard not to just brush yourself off and continue, you know, And it must have been a big effect, a heavy effect on him.
Well, if your listeners would like to see him and hear more details about this story and see some actual footage of the people that were involved. There are a bunch of videos posted on YouTube, some that mister Fielder had made parts of and some that featured the victims that escape talking about it. That might be something that people might want to check out.
Absolutely, so they just be able to go and sort of type in slow death and Jim Fielder and they would.
Be able to find some things, right, Yeah, or David Parker.
Ray or David Parker Ray.
I think that's how I searched. And there's just there's lots and lots of videos on there from that time of him.
Yeah, I've seen all the other people. I've seen some things too. It's amazing. You know. The thing is that always disturbs me more than just the single act of some of these heinous monsters that we discuss on this program, that you've written about, that I've written about it, other people have written about, all the authors I've written about.
Is the phenomena of the accomplice, the daughter, the girlfriend, and the friend, especially doing something like this, because this is not murder for robbery or murder clean and simple, or you know, this is this is some of the you know, the worst types of crime, a murder imaginable. And yet the three accomplices, including your daughter, girlfriend and friend. It's to me that's that's the most horrifying part of this is that it is the accomplice other people in the same evil mindset.
Right, Well, it horrifies me that those people could be so dependent on being made to feel important by somebody that they could find themselves sucked into a situation like that. I think that's a large part of it. Either they want their love or their approval or their friendship, or they just just want to want the thrill of feeling important.
Yeah.
And I think what's what we didn't really discuss tonight too is and what it's really captured in the book is the the charismatic appeal of David Parker. Why, you're right, this is this manipulation here as well. It's not.
That same power to get your followers to do what you say, It's very similar. Yeah, yeahs.
And the thing is with a with a daughter. I mean, what what what kind of life did this this young woman? What kind of chance did she stand with this type of father and these type of activities going on in a girlfriend twenty years or or more, his his junior and so the influence that the daughter had, she didn't have much of a chance to turn out at all.
No, she certainly didn't. It's a it's a miracle that she seems to have at least part why pulled her life together a little bit now.
So yeah, like you said, it's pretty hard to hide. It's pretty hard to hide from this kind of horror because eventually people find out. It's it's uh, you know, it's going to be following her around for the rest of her life unless she moved from the United States basically, but as long as she's in America, somebody will find her eventually.
Well, that's right. I guess in a very very small Kentucky town, she thought she was maybe gonna get to lay low for a little while, but it didn't work out that way.
Yes, So that's that's incredible. Well, she I want to thank you very much. I want to thank you very much for coming onto the program. Once again and talking about the Slow Death by Jim Fielder, now a true crime classic by Kensington Press Pinnacle, and you are a Pinnacle author as well, and she where you were asked and you thought of a privilege to write an update
and af forward for Slow Death by Jim Fielder. And so I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about that, and please get a hold of me as soon as you have another project in the works, and we'll get you back on and talk about another fine book that you've written.
Well, I certainly will. I appreciate it, and everybody if you haven't read this book, read it. If you have read it, get it and read the update, because it's an important book I think in true crime, one of the most absolutely absolutely.
And the reminder audience too about your appearance on the Investigation Discovery. What program is that against It's.
Going to be on behind matching walls. I'm not sure when it will. I are probably a while in the future because they're just getting to the point of working on it now, but it's gonna be behind matching.
Walls and that's gonna be out in February, right think so, or you're you're filming on.
I'm filming in February. I'm not sure when when the work is going to get done on it, but it should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, we'll look forward to that. Is there's just people that are just addicted to that program.
Yes, well, I'll be sure to let you know when it's going to be on.
Great. Well, thank you very much, Sheila. You have a great night, and thank you very much for coming back on to the program.
Well, thank you. I always appreciate you having me.
Thank you, thank you, Bye bye.