The Stuff Of Nightmares | The Toy Box Killer: David Parker Ray

(David Parker Ray. Picture credit: David Parker Ray - Wikipedia)

This is one of those cases which has been requested for quite a while. I had shared a post about it a few months ago on my Instagram page just briefly going over the case. I wasn't sure about covering the case as it is really graphic and sick but as it's approaching Christmas and I promised my readers some extra content, I thought I would give you what a lot of you requested.

Please keep in mind that the details included here are disturbing and as always I have tried to be as sensitive as possible with the details. You must be 18+ to view this post.

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Let's begin...

The name David Parker Ray may ring a bell with you or perhaps 'The Toybox Killer'?. This was one of the most disturbing cases that I've covered and it really is the stuff of nightmares. Well, David Parker Ray was born on the 6th of November 1939 in Belen, New Mexico. He didn't have the greatest start in life and was brought up by his grandfather. Little is known of his relationship with his mother but he did see his father regularly which was a source of trauma and anxiety for David. His father regularly abused him. David was a quiet and timid child who was too shy to speak to girls and often endured bullying at school. As he grew into a teenager he began trying to escape from his troubles by indulging in drugs and alcohol. The addiction to drugs and alcohol continued up into adulthood but he also had another addiction...he had some extremely violent tastes for sex. It wasn't your usual kinky fetishes or a bit of rough sex. David became aroused at the thoughts of torturing and electrocuting women as well as bestiality. He was one messed up individual but what was even more sickening and frightening is that these fantasies would someday in his future be carried out. He made his sick fantasies become a reality.

David had been married and divorced a total of four times and lived in a place called 'Truth or Consequences' in New Mexico, USA. He had a daughter who he was extremely close too, so close that she would help him carry out his sickening crimes later on.

Like a lot of these psychopaths and sick individuals, they are often the pillar of their communities and David Parker Ray was no different. He was a swell guy, according to those that knew him. He would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it but what these people did not know, is that behind the ''nice, hardoworking'' David (who everybody felt they could trust) there was a sick, perverted and dangerous individual.

David Parker Ray seemed like just another guy who went to work everyday, paid his bills, had a drink at the bar and chatted with the locals, the only difference was, is that David would go home at night to his ''Toy Box'' where a woman (who he had kidnapped off of the street by posing as an undercover policeman) would be tied up in a trailer of hell which cost him $100,000 to make. His homemade ''Toy Box'' contained a gynaecologist table (which the women would be tied to with their legs up in stirrups), Leg spreader bars, straps, pulleys, handcuffs, rope, knives, syringes, drugs, saws, chains, ball gags, surgical blades as well as many other torture style items. He had electrical devices which would shock the women as well as a mirror on the ceiling as he wanted the women to see what he was doing to them, there was no escape from the pain and the horror, they could see and feel it. He would also videotape and record these gruesome sessions.

(Inside David Parker Ray's ''Toy Box''. Picture credit: thecrimemag.com)

This trailer aka ''The Toy Box'' was packed to the brim with stuff and he kept diagrams which he had drawn himself as a guide of what he wanted to do to each woman.

After being the swell guy at work and the bar, he would come home and go into the Toy Box and rape a woman, torture her and his partner Cindy Hendy would help him carry out these sickening acts, she allegedly forced some of the victims to give her oral sex as David watched.

The couple would often have sex parties at their house and a small number of David's close friends would be invited into the Toy Box to rape the victim. David would sometimes bring the victim out to his living room in his house and have his dogs have sex with her as his friends watched.

Even more horrendous that people were joining in on this was that his own daughter was involved too. His partner Cindy and his daughter Glenda would bring girls back from the bar for David to rape, humiliate and torture.

(The outside of the ''Toy Box''. Picture credit: thecrimemag.com)

David Parker Ray is not classed officially as a serial killer because no bodies have ever been found but previous acquaintances have said that some of the women were killed and their bodies thrown down land mines. Other women were drugged, washed and driven out to the middle of nowhere and thrown out of the car alive.

David and his acquaintances would pick up hitchhikers and prostitutes on the pretence that he was either a cop or had drugs. The victim would then be blindfolded and taken to the trailer where they were drugged. When the woman finally awoke, there would be a tape recorder placed next to them in which David Parker Ray described what he was going to do to them in graphic, chilling detail. Some of the transcript of the tape included as follows:

''Hello there b*tch! Are you comfortable right now? I doubt it, wrists and ankles chained, gagged, probably blind folded. You're disorientated and scared too I would imagine, perfectly normal under the circumstances. For a little while at least, you'll need to get your s*it together and listen to this tape. It is very relevant to your situation. I'm going to tell you in detail why you have been kidnapped, what's going to happen to you and how long you will be here. I don't know the details of your capture but this tape is being created July 23rd 1993 as a future advisory tape for future female captives was based on dealing with captives over a period of several years. If at a future date there are any major changes in our procedures, this tape will be upgraded. Now, you're obviously here against your will, totally helpless, don't know where you're at, don't know what's gonna happen to you. You're very scared or very pissed off. I'm sure you've already tried to get your wrists and ankles loose and no you can't. Now you're just waiting to see what's going to happen next. You probably think you're going to be raped and you're f*cking sure right about that. Our primary interest is what you have got in between your legs. You will be raped throroughly and repeatedly in every hole you've got because basically you've been snatched and brought here for us to train and use as a sex slave.'' (The original recording is not online but the transcript is. This video online has someone reading out the transcript in a light hearted way, not sure why but it's there should you wish to listen to it).

Some of the women who were captured would be held for days before either being allegedly murdered or drugged and abandoned.

Investigators believe that David Parker Ray started carrying out his sick crimes in the 1960s. The number of victims is said to be 60+, maybe more.

His final victim, Cynthia Vigil was abducted by David and Cindy as he did the usual routine of posing as an undercover cop who was arresting her for soliciting. Like many of the other victims, Cynthia had to endure having to sit through the horrifying details of the tape before being subjected to the most disgusting and horrendous ordeal which went on for 3 days.

On the 22nd of March 1999, David went to work as normal and left Cindy in charge of Cynthia. Cynthia was naked and chained up on a mattress in their living room. At some point, exhausted Cynthia, spotted a set of keys on a table whilst Cindy was in another room talking on the phone. Cynthia decided to take a shot at getting the keys and tried to escape. Cindy saw what she was doing and tried to grab hold of her and the pair struggled. Cindy broke a lamp over Cynthia's head but Cynthia would not give up and she was determined to stay alive and get out of there and she managed to unlock her chains and grabbed an icepick that she found on the floor and stabbed Cindy in the neck with it.

Cynthia ran as fast as she could, naked with only a slave collar around her neck and padlocked chains, she was exhausted, hungry and terrified but determined not to stop running. She finally found some help and the police arrived pretty swiftly. Not long afterwards David Parker Ray and Cindy Hendy were arrested.

At the trial the evidence against David was overwhelming and Cynthia together with another victim, Kelli Garret and the mother of a woman who had since passed away, testified against him. Kelli didn't want David to get the death penalty because she believed that, that would be the easy way out and she wanted him to suffer in prison for the rest of his life.

He never showed any remorse and was sentenced to 224 years in prison. It would seem that some justice had been done for these women but in a cruel twist of fate, David died of a heart attack at the age of 62 on the 28th of May 2002, having served just 8 months of his sentence. The women felt that they had been robbed of proper justice.

Cindy Hendy received 36 years for her role in the crimes and testified against David. In July of 2019 she was released.

Another of David's accomplices was Dennis Yancy. He received two 15 year terms.

David's daughter Glenda (also known as Jessie) was sentenced to two and a half years in prison with an additional 15 years to be served on probation.

If you've managed to make it this far you'll understand now why this wasn't a case that I was in a rush to cover. It's unbelievable that some of David's other accomplices have not been brought to justice or identified. It's unbelievable that people actually took part in the torture, rape and humiliation of these women and to think that David died so early into his sentence, I know he had already been in prison for two years but that is still not enough.

There's women out there who may have fallen victim to David and his accomplices but they have no recollection of what happened due to being drugged, there's some that I know have flashbacks to being tied up in that trailer, I cannot imagine what that must be like for them.

Do I think he's a serial killer? I would have to say yes. He was alleged to have killed women and dumped the bodies down abandoned mines and we know he'd been doing this for a very long time. One of his ex wives claimed that he told her that when he was a teenager, he abducted a woman, tied her to a tree, tortured and killed her.

My heart goes out to the victims.


Further reading & sources:


I hope you will join me in the next post, take care x 

4 comments:

  1. Horrifying case. I can't say I've ever heard of it, possibly because I was so young during the initial discovery.

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    1. Thank you so much for reading and commenting x x x

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  2. That is so bad and horrific for the women going Through all that torture and pain and agony. And yes I would say yes he was a Serial killer. I have not heard of him. I feel so sorry for all of his victims and all there familys. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

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    ReplyDelete