David Parker Ray, The Toy Box Killer
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David Parker Ray, awful even among serial killers, was known as the “Toy Box Killer” for his practice of torturing victims in his homemade “toy box” dungeon.
After placing his young female victims on their backs in a terrifying apparatus with stirrups and straps, he would play an audiotape for them, detailing the “instructions” for being his slave.
After playing the tape, Ray and a few accomplices, including his daughter and his girlfriend, would torture the victim for days. Based on his diary and the records he kept, police assume Ray killed as many as 50 women this way — but their bodies have never been found.
Ray’s operation was uncovered when one victim, Cynthia Vigil, was able to escape. Ray’s girlfriend, Cindy Hendy, had inadvertently left the keys to Vigil’s restraints nearby when she left the room, and Vigil took advantage of the rare lapse in her captors’ attention.
She made a run for it, naked and handcuffed, and finally arrived at a neighbor’s residence, urging them to contact the police.
Her story led another woman to come forward, one whose memories, though muddled by date-rape drugs, tallied with Cynthia Vigil’s experiences.
Although the police search turned up no bodies, their continued pressure on Ray’s allies, notably his girlfriend Cindy Hendy and his friend Dennis Roy Yancy, bore fruit.
Hendy and Yancy cooperated, and Ray was charged in three cases, eventually accepting a plea bargain of 224 years in prison.
Estimates place his total number of victims near 60. Before the police were able to question Ray about further crimes, he died of a heart attack in 2002. Investigators continue to search for answers about the women whose deaths Ray chronicled in his diary — but so far without success.
