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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781526781741 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pen and Sword |
| Publication date: | 08/06/2021 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.70(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
David Parker Ray
Is this man the most evil serial killer of modern times?
The monster named 'officially' as the most evil killer in recent history has never been convicted of murder. He is David Parker Ray, who was charged with kidnapping, raping and torturing women in and around a small American town with the strange name of Truth or Consequences.
Ray drugged his victims to erase their memories and kept them chained up in a horrifying backyard torture chamber which he referred to as 'Satan's Den' or 'The Toy Box'. But because this vile but intelligent man successfully hid the bodies of as many as sixty victims, he literally got away with murder. He was never convicted of the ultimate crime–nor was his daughter, who helped him procure his victims, or his girlfriend who assisted him. Ray himself escaped a lengthy term in prison–by dying in 2002 of heart failure only eight months into his sentence.
David Parker Ray's forty-year reign of terror had ended three years earlier when one of his would-be victims escaped. Dark-haired beauty Cynthia Vigil ran screaming through the streets of Elephant Butte, New Mexico, on 22 March 1999, naked, with a metal dog collar around her neck and trailing a chain. Sobbing, almost incoherently, 21-year-old Cynthia claimed she had been held captive for three days and subjected to a terrifying ordeal of rape and torture. She named her kidnapper as 59-year-old David Parker Ray, a loner with four failed marriages, who lived on the borders of Elephant Butte Lake State Park, where he worked for the park authorities and as a mechanic.
Police arrested Ray and searched his home, where they found evidence of a struggle in his living room which supported Cynthia's claims. But a greater shock was in store when officers opened a white trailer parked in his backyard and discovered a horrifying torture chamber. The centrepiece of the room was a gynaecological chair fitted with straps, surrounded by an array of torture instruments and twisted sex toys. This was Ray's 'Toy Box' or 'Satan's Den', as he named it.
There seemed little doubt that Cynthia Vigil's story of sexual degradation was true. 'She was his sex slave when they entered this trailer,' said Norman Rhoades of the state police. 'The first thing my eyes focussed on was the black chair–a gynaecological chair. A feeling of sickness came over me. Everything around me–sadistic pictures on the walls, straps and chains, a bar he'd labelled "ankle stretcher", sex toys attached to power drills, dildos with nails embedded in them–everything in that trailer denoted pain and destruction. Once he'd drugged them, he could get a woman in any position he wanted. They were his sex slaves.'
Fellow officer Captain Rich Libicer said: 'Trinkets hidden in the room raised the likelihood that other women had suffered a similar fate. It was pretty clear that there were going to be more victims. Once that Pandora's Box was opened, I never doubted that we'd found a serial killer.'
The policemen found two fixed video cameras and a tape containing footage of another of Ray's victims strapped to the chair. The woman, apparently drugged or unconscious, could only be identified by an unusual tattoo on her leg. When the tattoo was shown in the press and on TV, a woman came forward to identify herself. She was 25-year-old Kelly Van Cleave, then living in Colorado, but previously a child minder and friend of Ray's 34-year-old daughter, Glenda Jean, known as 'Jessy'.
Kelly had been drugged and chained inside the 'Toy Box' as Ray's tortured sex slave. Astonishingly, she had no memory of being abducted or held captive–but said she had been tormented by nightmares of being tied down and tortured. 'My nightmares were about being tied to a table, handcuffed, restrained with tape,' she later recalled. 'But when the FBI called, then I knew they weren't just dreams.'
Under police questioning, Kelly found some of her memories returning. It was clear that she had been drugged to prevent her from remembering the trauma. The use of sedatives also explained why more women had not come forward.
More chilling evidence soon emerged–a tape recording in which Ray explained to his victims what he was about to do to them. Coolly but cruelly, he told them: 'You'll be (he explains the forms of sexual abuse) thoroughly and repeatedly. You'll be drugged up real heavy with Phenobarbital and Sodium Pentothal (to numb pain and induce amnesia). You're not going to remember a f****** thing about this little adventure.' He added that he had 'no qualms about slitting your throat' because 'you're a piece of meat to me'.
On the tape, Ray claimed to have abducted over thirty-seven women, leading police to believe that many of them were dead. A massive search of the area and the surrounding desert was conducted, including Elephant Butte Lake, 200 yards deep, in the state park where Ray was warden and had a sailing boat. Not a single body was found, however, and prosecutors decided a murder charge was impossible.
'The fact that we couldn't prosecute him for murder made it all the more important that we successfully prosecute him for the rape, torture and kidnapping,' said the chief prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Jim Yontz.
Yet the case against Ray rested on two potentially unreliable witnesses. Cynthia Vigil was a heroin-addicted prostitute, while Kelly Van Cleave had only partial memories of her experience. Moreover, at Ray's trial in July 2000, the judge ruled that the tape recording of Ray was inadmissible. To the shock and horror of his surviving victims, the trial ended in a hung jury, and it looked as if the monster would walk free.
However, at a retrial nine months later, another judge allowed the jury to hear the horrific tape. Said Kelly Van Cleave: 'The voice sent shivers down me. It cut through the air like a knife.'
Once again, everything rested on Kelly's evidence. Unless her testimony was believed by every jury member, the charges against Parker Ray could be dropped. As she later recalled: 'I was vulnerable. I was scared. But I was angry that he got away with the first one. Was he going to get away with the second one?'
Kelly bravely relived her courtroom ordeal for a 2008 TV documentary, in which she revealed her feelings for the first time. She said: 'It's very difficult to tell people you don't know intimate things, sexual things about your life. I think it was harder the second time than it was the first time, because I had already been there. I already had to tell my story to thousands of people I didn't know. And that first jury didn't believe me. At the end of the case, I was sweating. I didn't know what the jury were going to say. I had no idea. But we got "Guilty". And then we partied.'
By the time the unanimous verdict was announced, following a week-long trial on 16 April 2001, David Parker Ray was suspected of killing as many as sixty women. But the numerous charges on which he was convicted did not include any of murder. The offences all involved his crimes against Kelly Van Cleave in July 1996. He later pleaded guilty to charges involving the abduction and sexual torture of two other victims, the 1999 attack on Cynthia Vigil, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an assault on the late Angie Montano, of Truth or Consequences.
His defence attorney, Lee McMillan, unsuccessfully argued for withdrawal of Ray's plea on the grounds that his client was incompetent to make informed decisions in prison while under the influence of numerous medications. But Judge Kevin Sweazea ruled that Ray had been alert, responsive, conversant and able to assist in his own defence.
McMillan also pleaded that the term 'paraphilia' (psycho-sexual disorder) applied to Ray did not do justice to the disease his client had suffered. He argued that Ray, 61, had 'successfully resisted' his disease for almost fifty years and had made efforts to reform himself while in protective custody.
But Mary Ellen O'Toole, an FBI agent expert in sexual sadism, testified that paraphilia was precisely Ray's condition, that he was a 'criminal sexual sadist' of the most dangerous sort, that there was no known therapy for his paraphilia and that its corresponding behaviour could be stopped only by incarceration.
McMillan was equally unsuccessful in his attempt to have Ray's sentence reduced to 173 years suspended, with only ten years actual prison time, which he said was in itself a 'death sentence'. But the lawyer later conceded that his efforts were 'like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic'.
Before his sentencing, New Mexico's Attorney General, Patricia Madrid, pleaded with the court to impose the maximum penalty, saying the community could not risk any chance of his freedom. She said Ray's plans and his illustrated manual made it clear that he would capture and torture again. He had reduced his victims to abject terror and had thought of them not as human beings but as 'packages'. His behaviour was 'worse than that of any animal'.
Ray's victims were also able to make their statements before the judge pronounced sentence. Kelly Van Cleave, who had earlier been crying and holding hands with Cynthia Vigil in the courtroom, said she wanted Ray to live a long life and to suffer in prison. She said the sick pervert would find no friends in prison and she hoped he would be controlled and used in the same manner as his victims.
Angie Montano's mother, Loretta Romero, said she was in court for her late daughter and her two young sons, whose lives Ray had wrecked. She told how her daughter had lost 'all respect, lost her smile, lost everything' because of Ray. Remarkably, Mrs Romero said she felt sorrow for Ray and forgave him–and was certain her dead daughter would have felt the same way. But, said the anguished mother, 'I can never forget'.
Less forgiving was Cynthia Vigil and her grandmother, who both addressed the court. Cynthia said that no punishment could ever equal the agony she had suffered. In tears, she said she was afraid of the dark and of going out alone, and was perpetually terrified of being tied down and rendered helpless. She hoped Ray would spend the rest of his life in prison and suffer as she had. Turning to Ray, she added: 'I bear scars outside and inside that will never heal.'
Cynthia's grandmother, Mrs Bertha Vigil, told the court her granddaughter had nightmares every night and that Ray had ruined not only her life but her whole family's. Addressing Ray, she called him 'a poor excuse for a human being' and asked him how he would like it if she did to his daughter what he had done to Cynthia. Finally, she said she prayed Ray would suffer every day for the rest of his life, adding: 'Satan has a place for you. I hope you burn in hell forever.'
Summing up, prosecutor Jim Yontz praised the courage of Cynthia and Kelly for their courage in coming to court to relive their horrific experiences. He warned the judge that if Ray was ever released, he would offend before he even got home. 'This monster should never be allowed to walk the streets again,' Yontz said. 'There should be no light at the end of the tunnel and he should realise that a cell will be his home for the rest of his life and that he will leave only in a box.'
While the court listened to these emotional appeals in silent awe, David Parker Ray appeared to be in the best of spirits. He was unmoved when his victims wept while giving their statements.
Acknowledging the presence of his daughter Jessy, who sat in court alongside spectators and press, Ray claimed that he had entered into a plea bargain only for the purpose of obtaining her release from prison on charges of being an accomplice in the abduction of Kelly Van Cleave.
Seeking sympathy, the monster complained he had lost everything: his home, his belongings, his health. But during his two and a half years in confinement, he had had time to reflect, read his Bible and 'get right with God'. He was sorry but could not change the past and had now put his life in the hands of the Almighty.
Showing defiance towards Judge Sweazea, Ray accused him of moving the trial to a venue convenient to the judge's home. By contrast, he praised the original trial judge, Neil Mertz, who had moved the hearing from a local court. That first trial, of course, had resulted in a hung jury.
Predictably, Judge Sweazea was less than swayed. Having heard the testimony of Kelly Van Cleave and Cynthia Vigil, he said he could only imagine the horrors they had suffered. He indicated that the possibility of rehabilitation would not be a consideration in Ray's case. The prime concern would be 'incapacitation'.
For his crimes against Kelly Van Cleave, David Parker Ray was sentenced to nine years for kidnapping, three years for conspiracy to commit kidnapping, eighteen years for each of six counts of criminal sexual penetration, eighteen months for criminal sexual contact, and eighteen months for conspiracy to commit criminal sexual contact.
For his crimes against Cynthia Vigil, Sweazea sentenced Ray to eighteen years for kidnapping, nine years for criminal sexual penetration and nine years for conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
Finding Ray's planning and preparation and the horrific nature of his crimes sufficient to constitute aggravation, the judge imposed an additional one third of the total of the forgoing sentences. All sentences were to be served consecutively–making a total of 224 years, less two and a half years time already served.
Ray's punitive sentence of more than two centuries was in contrast to the course of justice in the case of the other shadowy characters in this horrific case.
Cynthia Hendy, Ray's live-in girlfriend, known to the victims as 'mistress', confessed to being an accessory in the three kidnappings. She supplied testimony against Ray for a reduced sentence of thirty-six years' jail after having the fourteen charges against her cut to just five.
A drifter named Dennis Roy Yancy, described in court as Ray's 'disciple', confessed to strangling to death another kidnap victim, 22-year-old Marie Parker, while Ray took photos. Her body was never found. After a plea deal, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Ray's daughter Jessy was convicted of helping her father kidnap and torture Kelly Van Cleave, yet she was released from custody with five years' probation under a deal with prosecutors conditional upon her father giving up his right to appeal. The deal caused some predictable dismay. Jessy Ray had faced 150 years in prison before multiple counts of 'criminal sexual penetration' and other charges were dropped. But sympathetic observers have since described her not as a fellow monster but as 'a victim'.
The extraordinary background to her involvement in the crimes came to light after her father's arrest when it was revealed that Jessy had reported some of his perversions to the FBI at least thirteen years earlier. David Parker Ray's prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Jim Yontz, said: 'Jessy Ray actually reported to the FBI her father's activities in 1986. The case of the alleged sexual abuse and slavery of young women and girls was investigated by the FBI in 1986 and 1987 and closed because of insufficient evidence and because they found no victim.'
There was one further instance in this horrific case of justice not being seen to be done. Eight months after David Parker Ray began his jail sentence of 224 years, the monster again cheated justice–by dying, on 28 May 2002, having been locked up for a total of only three years.
Kelly Van Cleave spoke out in anger about his peaceful passing, saying: 'I wish he wouldn't have died. He could have told us what happened to all those other girls, so those other families could have some closure. And I wanted to ask him, Why me? Why pick me? And then, why didn't you kill me?
'My life has gone because of what he did to me. Now I don't go anywhere, don't trust anyone. I miss the old me. I used to be wild, sassy, crazy, scared of nothing. I'd do just about anything to get the old me back.'
David Parker Ray's forty-year reign of terror has earned him the title of 'the world's most evil' in a study by Dr Michael Stone, America's top forensic psychiatrist. Dr Stone (as explained at the start of this book) is the expert who has spent a lifetime delving into the minds of serial killers to devise a 'Scale of Evil', which is used as a sentencing guide by courts in the United States of America and elsewhere. He says: 'Those at the top of the scale are there because they subjected their victims to the most prolonged torture in the most diabolical and physically and psychologically agonising way, with the total absence of remorse and the greatest glee. But David Parker Ray is the "worst of the worst". My Scale of Evil goes from 1 to 22–but if I had to do it all over, I'd put David Parker Ray in a special Category 23.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Serial Killers: The World's Most Evil"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Nigel Blundell.
Excerpted by permission of Pen and Sword Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Dr Michael Stone vii
Introduction ix
1 David Parker Ray 1
Is this man the most evil serial killer of modern times?
2 Fred & Rosemary West 11
'House of Horrors' where children were tortured to death
3 Ted Bundy 19
'Hi, I'm Ted,' was chat-up line of the slick, sick charmer
4 Ivan Milat 29
Executions in the Australian Bush by the 'Backpack Killer'
5 John Wayne Gacy 39
Smell of death led police to morgue of the 'Killer Clown'
6 Marc Dutroux 45
Young girls starved to death in killer's secret dungeon
7 Michel Fourniret & Monique Olivier 51
Sick lust of the vile couple who went hunting for virgins
8 Lawrence Bittaker & Roy Norris 57
Kidnappers who garrotted teen victims with wire and pliers
9 Monster(s) of Florence 65
Five men wrongly jailed for murders that are still a mystery
10 Herman Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes 69
'America's first serial killer' could have claimed 200 victims
11 Sante & Kenny Kimes 75
Mother and son 'grifters' were partners in countless crimes
12 Graham Young 81
Poisoner watched as family and friends writhed in agony
13 Angelo Buono & Kenneth Bianchi 87
Mysterious 'Hillside Stranglers' were vicious cousins in crime
14 Theresa Knorr 93
Mother who ordered her sons to burn their sister alive
15 Dennis Rader 99
'Bind, Torture, Kill' taunt of killer who bragged of his crimes
16 Alexander Pichushkin 105
'Chessboard Killer' disposed of his victims in a city's sewers
117 Gerald Gallego & Charlene Williams 113
Couple who kidnapped 'slaves' and buried victim alive
118 Gary Heidnik 117
Kidnap killer collected a harem he kept chained in basement
119 Gary Taylor 123
Blunders that freed 'woman hater' to become a serial slayer
120 Ian Brady & Myra Hindley 127
'Moors Murders': crimes against children sickened a nation
121 Randy Kraft 133
Sexual mutilation was sick trademark of the 'Scorecard Killer'
122 Leonard Lake & Charles Ng 139
'Snuff movies' sideline of the killers who filmed victims' agony
123 Robert Pickton 149
Girls lured to parties at pig farm that became a charnel house
124 David Berkowitz 155
'I prowl the streets for tasty meat,' wrote 'Son of Sam'
125 Danny Rolling 165
Students stalked by knife-wielding campus killer
126 Angels of Death 171
Cover-ups and foul-ups hid an epidemic of hospital slayings
127 Doctors of Death 181
Britain's most prolific serial killer left 24-year trail of corpses