1939 is known as the year World War II started which is still the deadliest conflict in history with an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities and the involvement of a vast majority of the world’s countries.
Let’s pull back a little closer to home. In New Mexico, the city of Belen is located near the center of the state. Due to its location, it is a significant transportation hub for the state with rail stations, major highways and airports all servicing the rest of the area.
In the city, Cecil and Nettie Ray give birth to their son David on November 6th. 1939. His parents divorced when he was 10. From this point, David lived with his mother, sister, and grandfather. His mother was not around very often, choosing drugs and alcohol over her own children. His father would occasionally visit, but was an abusive alcoholic. For some reason, he would bring David the present of graphic BDSM pornography.
David was very shy around girls in school and actually was bullied for it. He was very awkward and didn’t seem to really fit in. During his teenage years, he started to develop fantasies of raping, torturing and killing women. He also started to experiment with drugs and alcohol at the same time.. When he was 14 his sister found his stash of porn. She was alarmed at the graphic violence depicted but didn’t tell anyone.
After high school, David worked as a mechanic. He served in the US army and was honorably discharged. Co-workers and friends said he was really good at his job. He would weld and craft his own tools and teach others how to fix things.
Over the years, David would marry and divorce four times and had two children throughout his marriages. At some point during his first marriage, he confided in his wife that as a teen he had kidnapped a woman, tied her to a tree, and killed her. She didn’t believe him. However, she later stated that throughout the marriage, he had increasingly disturbing behavior.
One of his daughters does not want to have the public eye shown on her, but the other was Glenda Jean, also known as Jessie. We’ll talk about her more a bit later.
As David aged into his fifties, he moved to Elephant Butte, New Mexico. This town is near another called Truth or Consequences. In the late 90s, the crime rate in the area containing these two cities was incredibly high. Drugs, violent crime and sex work had increased dramatically, especially near the man-made lake and reservoir.
In March of 1999, David disguised himself as an undercover cop and approached a sex worker named Cynthia. He told her that she was under arrest, handcuffed her, and put her in the car. He took her back to his home in a nearby trailer park. There, he handcuffed and chained her to a bed in the living room before locking a dog collar with spikes around her neck. She was left there for 3 days. David would get up and go to work on a regular routine while his girlfriend Cindy Henoy would watch over Cynthia.
On the third day, Cindy got a phone call and wasn’t paying complete attention to their victim. Cynthia noticed that the keys to the cuffs were accidentally left on a table not far from where she was being held. Cindy noticed that Cynthia was trying to unlock herself and tried to knock her unconscious. During the struggle, Cynthia grabbed a weapon of opportunity (in this case, an ice pick) and stabbed her. The wound was not lethal but it gave her the opportunity to run out of the house. She was completely naked and screaming for help. Police came out to the trailer park, but at first didn’t believe her due to her criminal past and profession.
While Cynthia was in the hospital, she saw Cindy and freaked out. Police checked out the home and found the evidence that the crime was very much true. Behind the trailer, they also found a small building. When they found it, and entered, they got an incredible shock.
David had transitioned from working on cars and helping people fix things to creating his own sadistic “Toy Box” filled with homemade devices of pain and perversion. In one corner was a tripod and video camera. Additionally, the area was filled with contraptions, torture devices, and other tools to severely abuse the victims.
There was a list of victims kept between the years of 1993 and 1997. On a bulletin board, there were Polaroids and photographs of the victims bound, abused and in pain. There was also a notice of the guidelines for his “Toy Box”. These guidelines talked about not believing all of the excuses women had to avoid intimacy with him.
David and his girlfriend Cindy spent over $100,000 on soundproofing and filling the Toy Box. The elements of torture in the building ranged from a gynecologist’s chair complete with stirrups, homemade sex toys with protruding nails and spikes to rip the victim’s flesh, knives, surgical tools and electrocution clamps attached to a homemade generator. There was a full size coffin that he would lock victims inside of as well as a wooden box made to fit over and lock around their head, keeping the victim in total darkness. The walls were decorated with graphic BDSM imagery, and there was a mirror attached to the ceiling so the victims could watch the torture.
Police recovered 237 pieces of evidence from the Toy Box in the form of victim’s personal affects. Purses, jewelry, jackets and even used underwear were found and cataloged in the investigation.
As police reviewed the tape inside of the video camera, they found footage of a woman who was obviously drugged. David then played an audio tape of himself speaking. This 40 minute tape addressed the victim and explained how the torture would proceed in great detail.
While the footage and victim’s position made it hard to identity the victim’s by face, they had a clear image of a unique tattoo on her body. This image was sent to the FBI who shared with the public in efforts to identify the victim.
In this photograph, police identify a young woman named Kelli Garrett. In July 24th, 1996, Kelli got in an argument with her husband. She left the house with friends and went to a local bar, the Blu-Water Saloon, to shoot pool and have a few drinks. While here she ran into an old friend named Jessie who she knew for a few years and felt very comfortable around. After only one beer, she got very dizzy and sick. Since her other friends were having a ton of fun and Jessie was about to leave herself, Kelli asked for a ride home. At this point, she blacked out.
As it turns out, Jessie drugged the beer that Kelly was drinking. And yes, this is the Jessie who is David Parker Ray’s daughter. After Kelli was unconscious, Jessie took her to her father’s house. A collar was attached to her, and she was locked up in the Toy Box. For two days, she was drugged on and off and tortured. Once David thought she was dead, he dumped her body on the side of the road. A kind citizen found her and took her home.
Unfortunately, her husband didn’t believe the story that she didn’t remember those few days, and he filed for divorce. Kelli constantly had nightmares about what happened, but no actual memories due to the drugs administered and psychological trauma. Once police tracked her down, they showed her the video tape and the horrific memories returned.
At this point the media released the story to the public. Another woman named Angelica came forward. Right before Cynthia’s abducted, Angelica was kidnapped and tortured. She had gone to police when she was first assaulted, but police never followed up. When the media released the story, she made public statements and followed up with police who actually investigated this time.
During this investigation, police talked to David’s girlfriend Cindy who admitted in helping with multiple assaults and offered to give info on David for a lesser sentence. She told them that he was selling women to sex traffickers. She also said that he viewed women simply as objects that he owned. When describing the women he killed in conversation, he would call them “packages”.
He took photos of all of his victims but after a period of time he would burn them. Cindy said that he killed at least 30 women. She told police that the first body he tried to dump in the lake but it resurfaced, so he then learned to cut them open so they would submerge easier and stay down. About 7 bodies were disposed of in the lake, but the lake is too big and too deep to properly search. The area around their trailer and the Toy Box as well as other remote places in the area have been searched, but the remains have yet to be found.
Cindy was charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping, accessory to kidnapping, and accessory to criminal penetration. She was sentences to 36 years in prison.
David denied everything, and said it was all consensual. He showed no remorse, and said that he was actually the victim. Based on his journals, the FBI believe he had at least 40 victims. Even without bodies, the FBI thought they had a good case. In 2001, David accepted a plea deal for 224 years in prison so that his daughter could get a lesser sentence.
Jessie was charged with kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration and conspiracy, but due to her father’s plea deal, only served 2 1/2 years in prison.
It is believed that David raped, tortured, and killed up to 60 victims. However, with no bodies or hard evidence this has been impossible to prove. On May 28th 2002, David suffered a major heart attack and died right after he told police he would show them where the bodies were buried. He claimed to have killed one person per year from the age of 14, but this has not been proven.
