David Parker Ray was born on November 6, 1939, in Belen, New Mexico. Ray would later become a gifted mechanic, but his early days were not kind to him, as he was often a victim of bullying for his shyness around girls, which resulted in Ray abusing alcohol and other drugs.
During his teenage years, Ray often had sexual fantasies, and even his desire to kill women developed during the same years. When Ray was 14 years old, his sister saw his sadomasochistic drawings and pornographic pictures of bondage practices, resulting in an estranged relationship between the two. It is also believed that Ray took it a step further and began assaulting women around the same time.
Not much is known about David Parker Ray after his adolescent years, but later, he did meet 37-year-old Cindy Hendy, who worked at a state park in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. At the time, Ray was fleeing convictions on grand theft and drug charges in Washington State. The two would become romantically involved, and soon, Ray would spin out of control even more. The monster within his private “Toy-Box” could no longer be contained, and soon he would become by his infamous nickname, the “Toy-Box Killer”…
Cindy Hendy and Ray bonded over their shared, sick, twisted, and violent sexual fantasies. The pair began scouring the countryside for female victims. Even Ray’s daughter assisted him with finding women that he could torture, rape, and eventually kill. Behind the couple’s house sat a soundproofed cargo trailer that he infamously called his “Toy-Box.” Inside the repurposed torture trailer were homemade torture devices, whips, chains, pulleys, clamps, leg spreader bars, electric shock machines, and even saws. Before a victim was escorted to the “Toy-Box” that sat behind the residence, he would keep them captive inside, chained. Often, the victims were so heavily drugged that the only sounds they would hear, once they regained consciousness, would be a forty-five-minute recording that Ray had prerecorded. The recording was so graphic in nature that Ray told them precisely what he was going to do with them, as they were now a prisoner.
After an estimated three days of being tortured, drugged, and raped, the women who made it through would be introduced to the “Toy-Box” behind the house. Usually, it ended with death, but Ray drugged some of his victims and released them on desolate roads in the nearby desert.
In all, it is believed that Ray spent $100,000 on the trailer, fitting it with sex toys and torture devices. But Ray wasn’t new to this game. After years, he was finally captured when a courageous woman fought off Cindy Hendy while David Parker Ray was at work. Hendy was on the phone while the victim lay chained on a bed. The woman worked herself free, as Hendy was on the phone. A fight broke out between the two women, and Hendy smashed her over the head with the phone, but the woman’s desire to live on that day would lead to the killer couple’s downfall.
The victim, Cynthia Vigil, was able to run from the residence after freeing herself from the chains and reaching a neighbor’s house down the street. At the time, the woman was naked, but the neighbor brought her inside and called law enforcement. Ray received a call from Hendy, and the two loaded their RV to make a fast getaway, but were soon surrounded.
It was revealed that many of the victims would be bent over in wooden contraptions, and he would allow his friends to join in.
“In an advisory message that was tape recorded by Ray on July 23, 1993, he claimed: “I’ve been rapin’ bitches ever since I was old enough to jerk off, and tie little girls’ hands behind their back.” He even alleged to his first wife that he had committed his first homicide sometime in 1957 when he kidnapped a woman, tied her to a tree, and tortured and murdered her. However, authorities were unable to verify his account.”
Ray was divorced four times and had two children, including his accomplice, daughter Glenda “Jesse” Jean Ray.” The two mended their relationship years after she tried to warn the FBI about her father in 1986. She had alleged that David Parker Ray was abducting and torturing women and selling them to buyers in Mexico. Still, the allegations were too vague to initiate an arrest at that time.
“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.”
After Cynthia Vigil escaped from the trailer on March 22, 1999, David Parker Ray and Cindy Hendy were arrested. Soon after, two other victims came forward. The first case against Ray ended in a retrial after his attorneys argued that the “Toy-Box” that sat behind his house was for his pleasure, and everything was consensual.
“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.” Ray was convicted on all 12 counts.
“In 1999, 27-year-old accomplice Dennis Roy Yancy pleaded guilty to the 1997 murder of 22-year-old Marie Parker in Elephant Butte.”
David Ray Parker died in 2002 from a reported heart attack. Cindy Hendy received 36 years for her part in the crimes; she was released on July 15, 2019.
Written By: John G. Clark Jr.