The Modus Operandi of Toy Box Monster David Parker Ray

When New Mexico law enforcement arrested David Parker Ray in 1999, the police and FBI searched his remote Elephant Butte Lake, New Mexico property. What they discovered was a cargo trailer converted into a sexual torture chamber called the Toy Box and evidence of kidnapping and sadistic abuse of an unknown number of girls and young women between the 1980s and ’90s.

Any number of videos on YouTube give the basic account of his capture and trial. The criminal cases brought against David Parker Ray (1939-2002) were for kidnapping, and they were challenging to prosecute. The first trial in 1999 ended in a mistrial.

From our open-source research of this case, we come away with the sense that something massive happened here that’s still hidden. Did large numbers of women pass through the Toy Box? Ray created a so-called “advisory tape” — covered later in this post — on July 23, 1993. It was an audio recording that he would play for newly kidnapped women once they were restrained in the Toy Box. It explained that they had been kidnapped and there was no hope of escape. It then described the terrifying sexual torture to which they would soon be subjected.

It is our call that this audio tape wasn’t just used to frighten and intimidate. We believe it largely describes what went down in the Toy Box. Ray claimed he kidnapped, raped and tortured five women a year. He also said he kidnapped two women at one time, and he would imprison them for up to three months in the Toy Box.

FOUR UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

1. How many years did Ray keep up this routine?

We have found no concrete date for when the Toy Box was created, but it may be a moot point. A 1987 interview described in Ray’s FBI Vault files indicate that he had a dungeon prior to establishing the Toy Box at Elephant Butte. So based on this and statements from his accomplices, 100 women is a ball park number.

2. Were large numbers of young women murdered?

Ray’s flying-monkey and paramour Cindy Hendy told police that Ray confided he had murdered about once a year going back 40 years, to when he was a teenager. Many podcasters and wags treat Hendy’s statement as gospel, even though she was a participant and eyewitness for only the last two years.

No bodies have ever been found. This doesn’t prove that murders didn’t take place. Elephant Butte is a small town of 1,300 people located within close proximity of a state park and lake.

Investigators proposed that Ray’s crimes went under the radar for so long because he appeared to be a normal guy who had a regular job as a maintenance man for the New Mexico Parks Department. He had access to miles of abandoned land, as well as the reservoir, where police propose he could have dumped his victims’ bodies without any witnesses. Ray would brag how bodies could be bound and placed into murky Elephant Butte to feed giant catfish. All this strikes us as a little too convenient.

Another flying monkey was Dennis Yancy. Yancy admitted to strangling his former girlfriend, Marie Parker, after Ray had kidnapped and tortured her. Yancy led authorities to the dump site only to discover the body was gone. Yancy suggested Ray, ever so sly, came back and relocated it.

Consider this: The FBI released photos of about 400 pieces of jewelry discovered in their property search. Were they souvenirs of his victims? Investigators published the photos of the jewelry in the hope that it would lead to the discovery of victims. It may not bode well that none turned up at least that’s been made known to the public.

Evidence of the scale of the rape and torture operation was evident in the trove of photos that were taken, including of the key abductees during the trials. Ray obscured faces. There were photos of many others but the authorities withheld them from the public.

3. Did Ray and his flying monkey minions release women after holding, raping and abusing them?

Ray confesses in his orientation tape that he held, raped and tortured women and then let them go if they complied. He implied that it was necessary to kill some women who were too difficult in his eyes.

He said in the tape:

If I killed every bitch that we kidnapped, there’d be bodies strung all over the country. And besides, I don’t like killin’ a girl, unless it is absolutely necessary. So I’ve devised a safe, alternate method of disposal. I had plenty of bitches to practice on over the years, so I’ve pretty well got it down pat. And I enjoy doin’ it. 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. You won’t remember this place, us, or what has happened to you. There won’t be any DNA evidence, because you’ll be bathed, and both holes between your legs will be thoroughly flushed out. You’ll be dressed, sedated, and turned loose on some country road, bruised, heh, sore all over, but nothing that won’t heal up in a week or two.

The thought of being brainwashed may not be appealing to you, but we been doin’ it a long time and it works. And it’s the lesser of two evils. I’m sure that you would prefer that in lieu of being strangled or having your throat cut.

Indeed, several of the surviving women involved in Ray’s kidnapping trials had been released, including Angelica Montano and Kelli Garrett. Garrett ultimately was found in Colorado alive after police identified a tattoo on her ankle. Garrett, testified that Ray’s daughter, Jesse, drugged her while she was drinking at the Saloon. The FBI identified victim Kelli Garrett from a recovered 1996 video.

Garrett suffered from amnesia, in part because Ray had drugged her precisely like he said in the 1993 tape during her captivity. The authorities found her unconscious and injured on the side of the road. Her later account, as her memory recovered, corroborated the Toy Box Killer’s advisory tape.

4. Was the Toy Box part of a major sex trafficking operation and/or used for producing extreme fetish and snuff films? And was there a satanic cult element?

Ray described himself on another of his audio tapes as “The Dungeon Master” of the “box of Toys,” with an affiliation with church of Satan. His sex slaves were not just for his own use, he claimed, but for “special friends.”

On the wall of the Toy Box trailer was a sign that read “Satan’s Den.”

Here are other known photos of the Toy Box.

Our own Torchy Blane suggests, and I concur, that the Ray’s known female accomplices — such as his daughter, Glenda “Jessie” Ray, and Cindy Hendy — wouldn’t have played along with Ray’s sexual fantasies for long unless there was strong money or drug motive. How did Ray, on his maintenance man’s salary, pay for and maintain his sex-slave overhead and make a $100,000 modification to a box container?

Jessie Ray reported him to the FBI in 1987 as a sex trafficker, but authorities said there was no concrete evidence.

Ray outfitted his 22-foot toy-hauler cargo trailer with a gynecological table and BDSM devices of every kind. He used the remote location of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to hide his trailer, which he refurbished into a steel-lined sound proof torture chamber. The Toy Box was also outfitted with a massive transmission dish and a video camera that was consider state of the art for that era. Was this for filming extreme bondage — or worse, snuff films?

Reportedly, Ray constructed elaborate contraptions to confine his victims, such as a fur-lined coffin and a makeshift pillory. He also crafted devices to electrocute his victims and others to hold them in place. Medical instruments were fashioned as sex toys. Elaborate locks and pulleys prevented his captives from escaping.

We tried to get a handle on when Ray’s more extreme interest in bondage started. In the FBI Vault on his case there’s a 1987 interview and psychiatrist information. This investigation stems from his daughter Glenda Jessie Ray reporting him to the authorities for being involved in sex trafficking of young girls and women. As mentioned, Ray admitted setting up a “dungeon” in an earlier residence.

Ray’s shtick when explaining his proclivities right up to the end was that it was “fantasy” and “that family members” (namely his daughter) may have entered.

Right. You build a $100,000 toy box (his term) with huge transmission dishes and call it a fantasy. Good one for the pajama people but not for Winter Watchers and conspiracy realists. And while he was at it, he designed torture devices as mentioned in the Vault document of the 1987 interview.

His daughter only recognized that there was a serious problem with her father at the age of 19 (1987), when she witnessed a bondage torture session with a prostitute that resulted in the woman screaming for her life, fleeing naked out of David Ray’s home in terror, never to return.

She filed a complaint with the FBI and gave a sworn complaint against her father. The astonished FBI agents listened as she told tale after tale of her deviant father kidnapping and torturing women, and later transporting them to Mexico, selling them into sexual slavery.

He spent most of the 80’s in the Truth or Consequences area getting deeper and deeper into the bondage community, becoming exposed to deviancy, and networked contacts that fueled his unbridled thirst for violence and torture. He was the go-to guy.

After bringing then 47-year-old Ray in for questioning several times, not only did he not hide his behavior, he gleefully told them in graphic enthusiastic detail about his deviant lifestyle, telling them that he had been interested in bondage since the age of 13 and had been extremely active in the bondage community since the age of 28 (1967). He even told the FBI agents that it was difficult for him to ejaculate until he thought of murder.

Inside Ray’s “toy box” trailer, investigators recovered audio tapes Ray had recorded. One we consider revelatory and important was a preparation intro tape for new abductees. I don’t think he is screwing around and particularly exaggerating. This comes with a warning and is highly offensive in the real sense of the word.

The 30-minute tape was created July 23, 1993 for future female captives. He apparently got tired of repeating himself and chose to record his usual script instead. It was meant to intimidate and psychologically disarm victims. Ray tells the captives they are replaceable. Separately, there was a “Manual of Procedure” written for BDSM underground consumption in which the blowhard David Parker Ray counseled the like minded:

Psychological torture methods, including a blindfold and a deliberate slow approach, must be applied in every torture. Verbal abuse is part of every move. You have to put the slave in very uncomfortable positions and describe to her what is going to be done to her. It is important to prevent her from thinking too much. …

Servitude is a necessity, of course, and the neck collar is considered permanent. …

The importance of keeping both mind and body in a continual state of stress should be emphasized. The goal is to make her docile and willing to do what she is told. Techniques such as isolation, sexual abuse and occasional small favors must be applied, the best way to make a slave malleable. She won’t know what to expect then.

Clearly, Ray — like Gacy, Bonin, Lake-Ig, Wesley Shermantine-Loren Herzog, Dean Corll — were operating with flying monkeys. What was different was that AT LEAST two of Ray’s flying monkeys accomplices were women.

Hendy, an accomplice who testified against Ray, received a sentence of 36 years for her role in the crimes. She was parole and freed on July 15, 2019. Here is a prison interview with this piece of work.

When you listen to his advisory tape recorded for his captives, you can imagine there may be dozens and dozens of women alive today who have no idea they were victimized by this crew. But one reason more haven’t spoken after Ray’s death is they may have been sold into sex trafficking. Once broken, these women were still worth more alive than dead.

In the tape, Ray made clear how to stay smart and survive and how to end up dead. Refusing to comply, acting rebellious or inflecting harm on Ray or his accomplices was a death sentence, his victims were advised. That behavior would get them tossed in a ravine somewhere or in the lake with the catfish. Ray made it clear killing wasn’t his preference but added that he plenty of experience with “difficult bitches” over his long reign as a rapist, pimp, trafficker and BDSM film producer.

Ray starts the tape to the captive, “Hello there, bitch. … I’m going to tell you in detail why you have been kidnapped, what’s going to happen to you. … You are obviously here against your will. You’re going to be kept chained in a variety of different positions, usually with your legs or knees forced wide apart. You will be raped thoroughly and repeatedly in every hole you’ve got. [Laughs] You’re gonna be drugged up real heavy with a combination of sodium pentothal and phenobarbital. You’re not gonna remember a fuckin’ thing about this little adventure, or what has happened to you.”

At minute 00:03:00 of the 1993 recording, he explains that he and his “lady friend” had been “keeping sex slaves for years.” He goes to state that “they” had found it convenient to constantly keep one or two female captives on hand for a couple months at a time. At 00:06:00, he admits to raping and abusing a long time “since he learned to jerk off and tie girls hands behind their backs.” He was 53 at the time of this recording and had six more years to run with these crimes.

Important takeaway: Note that Ray didn’t meet flying monkey Hendy until 1997, near the end of his reign of horror. It is unclear who this other woman is that he references in the ’93 tape. Is it his daughter Glenda? She pleaded no contest to kidnapping charges in 2001 and was sentenced to 30 months jail time plus five years probation in connection to her father’s sex-torture case.

Another unsettling statement in the audio tape: “Any time that we go on a hunting trip, if we can’t find a little teenager, we usually start hittin’ the gay bars … Occasionally, some sweet little thing will be broke down on the side of the road, walkin’, bicyclin’, joggin’. Anytime an opportunity like that presents itself, and it’s not too risky, we’ll grab her.”

Transcript of 1993 tape available here.

Prior to their arrests, the Albuquerque Police Department had suspected Ray and his daughter in the 1995 disappearance of Jesse Ray’s former girlfriend, 22-year-old Jill Troia. The 22-year-old woman was last seen in October 1995 at Albuquerque’s Frontier Restaurant with Ray’s daughter.

And Marie Parker, ex-girlfriend of Ray’s accomplice Dennis Roy Yancy, was also last seen at Blue Waters which comes up in other disappearances.

Authorities say Ray had up to 40 more victims, many of whom could have been murdered. That figure comes from Ray’s own diaries. And it correlates with what he told flying monkey Hendy.

From the tape:

For our purposes, we prefer to snatch girls in the early to mid teens, sexually developed, but still small bodied, scared shitless, easy to handle and easy to train. We very seldom come back empty handed, cause there’s plenty of bitches out there to choose from. And, with a little practice in deception, most if em’ is very easy to get, with little risk.

I make it a point never to like a slave and I fuckin’ sure don’t have any respect for you. Here, your status is no more than that of one of the dogs, or of one of the animals out in the barn. Your only value to us is the fact that you have an attractive, usable body. And, like the rest of our animals, you will be fed and watered, kept in good physical condition, kept reasonably clean and allowed to use the toilet when necessary. In return, you’re gonna be used hard …

The 1993 audio, which Ray used throughout the early ‘90s, concluded with an implicit threat:

Be smart and be a survivor. Don’t ever scream. Don’t talk without permission. Be very quiet. Be docile and obedient and, by all means, show proper respect. Have a nice day.

After Ray’s conviction in 2001, he contacted authorities to make himself available to talk. A meeting was scheduled, but Ray died of a massive heart attack before the meeting, on the first day of his prison sentence. In his final few years — although about 60 years old — he looked like death warmed over.

Winter Watch Takeaway

Ray and his minions operated for decades — not just in a small town, but in a lake resort area — as a very bizarre freak without so much as a criminal record at least until he was nearly 60. This shows hyper-tolerance.

Apparently, the region was meth central in the 1990s. Couple this with a breakdown in minimal societal norms and you end up with too many zombies and people like Ray. He and his flying monkeys loved zombies around them and pajama people. And the “Jerry Springer Show”-like authorities gravitate towards installation of sub-zeros, a fundamental Winter Watch theme. Ray’s accomplices spent a rather token amount of time in prison and are all now out. The fates of victims are largely still unknown.

I believe there were surviving victims who were compliant. There must have been for this to go on. Did they not trust the police because of incompetence, zombification or corruption? By not coming forward, the survivors show no responsibility toward other victims, especially considering the magnitude involved. Ray was able to prey on this mentality.

One brave woman — like Cynthia Jaramillio, who escaped her tormentors — ultimately could have ended this much earlier. She is the heroine in this tawdry tale. Only one.