On March 22, 1999, 911 dispatchers received a series of calls reporting a woman desperately trying to stop cars on a street for help in Elephant Butte, New Mexico. The woman, Cynthia Vigil, was naked except for a dog collar tied around her neck. This is how the Toy Box Killer Crime Scene Photos begin, and then David Parker Ray, who ultimately earned the moniker “Toy Box Killer,” had abducted her two days prior. Cindy Hendy, Parker’s girlfriend, participated as an accessory.
Describing her ordeal to Oxygen’s “Killer Couples,” Vigil, who was a sex worker from Albuquerque, told the “Killer Couples” producers that she went to Ray’s trailer home to go on a date. As soon as the door closed, he pulled out a badge and said he was an undercover cop.
Vigil passed out in pain but later managed to escape after Ray accidentally left a key ring on a nightstand. The vigil was hit over the head with a lamp by Ray’s girlfriend Cindy when he opened his chains and tried to run away.
I know Vigil wasn’t the only victim of David Parker Ray and Cindy Hendy. Ray had built a bunker-like cargo trailer which he parked behind his house to indulge his obsession with moving and torturing. The trailer, which one officer described as an insane “toy box”, was filled with torture devices and sadomasochistic equipment, and had not been hand-built by Ray himself.
A disturbing element: a custom-made gynecological lounge chair with electrodes to deliver electric shocks. And investigators uncovered more than material, they also found evidence.
David Parker Ray, 57, was living in the small desert town of Truth or Consequences (known as “T of C” to the locals) when he met Cindy Hendy, 20 years his junior. Ray, a mechanic, and ranger at nearby Elephant Butte State Park, has been married and divorced four times and has a 31-year-old daughter, Jesse Ray, from his third marriage, with whom he is close.
Hendy left school at 15, gave birth to a son at 16, and had two more children with two different men in their twenties. When the youngest turned 10, Cindy felt that she could no longer raise her children.
But a second woman named Angelica Montano came forward to say that Hendy had invited her to her boyfriend Ray’s house. According to Montano, the couple repeatedly raped and tortured her over four days.
As his daughter Jesse Ray is set to stand trial for helping her father kidnap Kelli Garrett, David Parker offered Ray to plead guilty to all remaining charges in exchange for Jesse’s release.
In 2001, Ray was sentenced to “223 years in connection with the kidnapping and other charges involving two women who said he sexually tortured them in his home,” according to the FBI.
Although Ray never admitted to the murder, he contacted authorities in May 2002 to let them know he was ready to talk. According to the FBI, Ray claimed to have kidnapped approximately 40 victims.