David Parker RAY and Cindy HENDY have at least six skeletons in the closet that could be dredged from Elephant Butte Lake or dug from shallow graves in the desert. As of March 22, 1999, numerous FBI agents, including psychological "profilers," converged on a trailer home in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, to gather evidence in a case of sexual torture and possible multiple murder. The case began to unfold when a woman escaped from the home of David Ray and Cindy Hendy wearing only a padlocked metal collar attached to a chain.
After the news broke another woman from Truth or Consequence came forward and said she, too, had been kidnapped and tortured by the sadist couple. John Branaugh,a friend of the couple, told KOB-TV that after a night of serious drinking, Cindy told him: "Ray has put four to six bodies in this lake (Elephant Butte Lake) and others buried in the desert. When he's done, he gets his surgical tool or whatever, splits them right down the middle and that's why they wouldn't have no buoyancy."
Investigators have been searching the dusty half-acre lot around Ray's double-wide trailer home for several days. Some bone fragments were found, but these proved to be animal bones. Authorities also found a sound-proof trailer owned by Ray with books on serial killings, videotapes of Ray explaining various types of torture, books on the human anatomy, scalpels, crocodile clamps and other torture instruments, and a steel gynecological examination table with stirrups.
Ray, 59, is charged with kidnapping and criminal sexual penetration. Ms. Hendy, 39, is charged with kidnapping and accessory to criminal sexual penetration. Both are charged with conspiracy and assault. Ray allegedly showed a badge to the padlocked-metal-collar-wearing victim in Albuquerque and told her she was under arrest for prostitution. She was then taken to their trailer home and sexually tortured and shocked with electricity over three days before escaping March 22.
The couple allegedly kept their torture instruments in a wood and glass case they called "the toy box," and Cindy -- who left Seattle-area to avoid arrest over a 1995 equipment theft -- participated in the torturing for the "adrenalin rush." She also been charged previously with forgery, drug possession and posession of stolen property.
On April 12, an associate of Ray and Hendy, Dennis Roy Yancy, 27, was charged with murder, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit both murder and kidnapping and evidence tampering. Allegedly Yancy confessed to law enforcement officials to strangling Marie Parker in July 1997. Parker, a single mother whose two daughters are now living with her mother in Albuquerque, was last seen at the Blue Water Saloon in the town of Elephant Butte. It is unclear what's the nature of the relationships between him and the torture couple.