American Homicide - BONUS: Unpacking David Parker Ray: “The Toy Box Killer”

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Known as “The Toy Box Killer”, David Parker Ray was never charged with murder. However, he is believed to be responsible for 45-60 unsolved murders. Sloane unpacks the chilling story with Andrea Gunning (host of “Betrayal”) and Ben Fetterman (co-host of “There and Gone: South Street”).  Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us at [e-mail]. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring comes The Unborn, a shocking true story. My babies please, my babies. One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect. She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn her house down. Listen to The Unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We want to speak out and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful.

I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist, and this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a player boy, my doll. He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated.

We're an army in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join iHeart Media Chairman and CEO Bob Pitman for a special episode of the hit podcast, Math & Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, as he interviews the iconic and prolific Martha Stewart in front of a live audience in celebration of her 100th book. Did you ever think you were gonna wind up writing a hundred books?

Yeah. You did? Yeah, it's just a minor goal. Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get 100 books. Yeah. You did? Yeah. It's just a minor goal. Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, American Homicide listeners. This is your host, Sloane Glass.

Thank you for joining us on our first bonus episode. I am joined by the host of the Betrayal podcast, Andrea Dunning. Hi, Andrea. Hi, Sloan. And Ben Federman. Ben Federman is a producer on American Homicide and him and Andrea host There and Gone South Street together. Hey, Ben. Hey, Sloan. This episode is obviously going to be different because it's not our typical American homicide format where we are going through a case.

We are really going to spend some time just on David Parker Ray, the toy box killer. So our show is American Homicide. The episodes are called Toy Box Killer and we don't have any bodies. I hate saying bodies because it feels like a really removed way to talk about these victims. But we're speaking about someone who could be one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. And we only know about a few of his torture victims. The estimate from Jim Yons, the DA who prosecuted this case, is that there

could be 45 to 60 victims of David Parker Ray. So it's well established that he was a murderer even though it is unsolved. I think the both of you covering unsolved cases can speak to just the torment that that can leave you just talking about something, but not being able to give an audience any clear answers. Sloan, one of the reasons why this story was important to tell is because there are still families out there that have missing loved ones, these potential 45 to 60 individuals in New Mexico that remain on a missing persons list. A lot of the serial killers that we talk about, the actions are fast, they're horrific, but

to hear about someone who got their pleasure from extended periods of time torturing victims, who in some cases, they're a mixture of drugs and electric shock therapy It's it's sick. It's sick in a way that there's no one else who has stayed with me the way that he has Yeah, I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard those tapes of him like that that welcome greeting that he that he plays to his his victims and I Think I was like washing my dishes and I just stopped immediately. I can't even really think about the emotion

that came over me other than just fear and deep empathy for the person that was actually in that hearing that. I mean, what is on those tapes that he played for these women is horrific. And yet I think we as a production felt it was important to play those to really show how evil this man was. It was, this is what it was and what's your opinion of it? Because our opinion was,

this is some of the most horrific evidence we've come across in this show. It's been a really long time since I've listened to something and it's kind of stopped me in my tracks and I felt the emotions and the fear. And I was legitimate, I left feeling terrified of David Parker Ray. Yeah. Dre, I think one of the things that is most terrifying

about David Parker Ray is that he is the epitome of a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is a man that was able to go and operate throughout the community because of his standing in it. I think it's hard to imagine that there's a human being like him who has existed. And to see someone who is willing to make that audio tape and then also make videos of what he was doing for his own pleasure. It's just such an awful one. You can go onto the FBI's website today and you can see images of more things that they have found from inside the toy box. It's just so much that they're trying to use to identify more victims. A lot of it is clothing,

so much jewelry. What I was thinking about when I first saw all of that was how often, Dre, you can probably speak to this as women, so much of our jewelry has meaning behind it that's often about protection or sentimental reasons. And I look at these bracelets and I think, how many times did a woman look down, see this bracelet that her husband or her boyfriend or her mother had given her with the hope that their daughter could wear it to be safe and happy and think of them and it's lying in this toy box and he's keeping it for his own enjoyment?

I know that a lot of people, when they listen to true crime, they really want to understand the motivations of the people that are behind it. But a lot of the work that we do focuses on the people who represent those jewelry items and what they lost and what they went through. This isn't just a one-off hyperbolic situation. This is a person that cloaked himself in as a normal person and was preying on individuals and people were his prey. So it's really scary and I just, I think that the most impactful part of this whole three-part series is how much you feel for the victims and understand what they went through because to understand the story

and to hear it is to feel that fear. And you really are sitting with, to some small degree that you can, what some of these people went through. I really like what you said about an artifact of their time before David Parker Ray. Makes me think Kelly Garrett. Kelly Garrett was the victim who the FBI was able to identify from posting an image of her tattoo and her former in-laws saw that and then reached out. She continued to live after this experience and she had no memory of the specifics. That's how much he can alter a person's mind. Not just what he did with the drugs and the torture, but just the trauma behind this experience. And I think about her life before and I think about her life after. It's loss after loss after loss

with Kelly. I think the hardest part is the fact that no one, including herself, believed what happened to her that night to the point that it led to her divorce, to the point that she got gaslit by her family, by herself, by the entire community, by saying this isn't happening. But fundamentally, as we've said, not only did her brain get altered

from the trauma that she experienced, but then also how she was drugged. But then just the path that she was on was completely changed when she was dumped on the side of the road and you just have no idea why. It's really devastating. And part of me is like, thank God she doesn't remember what she went through.

The trauma, the violence that she just went through for X amount of days, but then how he was able to weaponize that too for all of those years, it is astonishing to me. But it's one of those things where I'm like, to have full clarity of that amount of pain for that amount of time also scares me too. Right.

And so much of that has to do with the victims who he picked, women who people didn't look for when they went missing because of their work as sex workers. I think about Cynthia Vigil and what it took for her to escape. And I think about her running with just feet of chains attached to her. Sgt. Mike Harkness, Jr. Running naked with a dog collar around your neck down the street, to her. Running naked with a dog collar around your neck down the street, just trying to find any sort of sanctuary. That's what it took to unravel this case.

Right. And what could have continued to happen if she had not done that? We have an audio clip from Darren White, who worked for New Mexico's Department of Public Safety, and he speaks about what this case would have did to him. When you do this work as long as I have, you wish there are certain aspects of it that you could just push a button and you could hit erase, and you wouldn't have to see that again.

But unfortunately, that's not the case. Those are images, horrible images that will live with us for the rest of our lives. There was an FBI agent, Patty Russ. It was her job to detail everything that was found in the toy box. She's making drawings. She spent five days just going over the evidence. And when she got home after those five days, she took her own life. She could be considered another victim of David Parker raise. It's so sad. So sad to tell this story. It really, it breaks my heart. This is an FBI agent. You can imagine what this woman

had seen. You can't discount what it would do to a person in the timing of events that after being so immersed in his toy box, she couldn't go on. I think it has to just change the way that you view the world. And it's just devastating that it ended up the way that it did with Agent Rust. And I, God, I wish that she had been able to get some help in some way. When Ben and I were investigating there and gone, and we didn't know exactly what happened to two people, Richard, Patron, and Danielle Embo, they went missing and they haven't been found 20 years later.

And so we kind of have an idea of what happened and who was involved, but we don't know the manner of death. And that was something that you have to play different scenarios. When you're doing an investigation, you have to think through, you know, did this happen or did that happen? Like, was this how they were killed?

You know, I'm not in the FBI, I've just worked on a few cases, but it is extremely difficult, especially when you're tasked to find justice. You can't help but feel bought in. And then this other level of reality can really be jarring, emotionally jarring. I don't know how you felt about it, Ben,

but I would often find myself finding it too hard to think too deep on what happened to Danielle and Richard. I think what comes to mind for me about this part of our conversation and comparing it to there and gone is FBI agents are just, they're humans too. And there's a level of feeling, seeing, experiencing something. You can try to be as detached from the job as you want to be, but at some point, you are a human being and can't completely be devoid of emotion. And for this female agent that took her own life, I obviously can't imagine, but I know as a human being

that there are things that impact us that we just can't turn away from, and it affects us in different ways. And that's where my mind went for there and gone. You and I got very close to Agent Vito Russelli. I mean, he is a tenured, you know, decades long special agent on the force. He did not necessarily see any crime scene photos or results of what happened to them that could have that type of impact. But how it did impact him, Dre, is the relationships with the families, that pursuit of wanting to get them answers, and

his inability to let go of that case and move on. That case will always continue to be with him, just like for the agents in New Mexico or around Toybox. This case will always loom over that field office. I mean, he invested $100,000 in creating the toy box, this torture chamber. $100,000. And one thing that I find remarkable as well is that the toy box, this physical trailer still sits in the parking lot of the field office, the FBI field office that investigated this.

And I think the only reason it is still there is that hope that these 45 to 60 bodies may eventually turn up that there may be evidence in the toy box to be able to say, hey, David Parker Ray was responsible for this and to bring justice for those families to know what happened. Skylight frame is more than just a photo frame. It's the perfect way to keep loved ones close, no matter the distance. With Skylight, you can share the joy of a special moment, a silly snapshot, or a treasured memory instantly,

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killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn I'm Ellie Flynn and I'm an investigative journalist. When a group of models from the UK wanted my help, I went on a journey deep into the heart of the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a playboy, my dog. Lingerie, topless. I said, yes, please. Because at the centre of this murky world is an alleged predator. You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior?

He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated. Together, we're going to expose him and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To their loved one.

There's one piece of this story that is really the open-ended piece to it that bothers me outside of everything that we've talked about, which is this map that was recovered on his property that had pins in this lake just randomly scattered about. And we cover the fact that there was this drought that occurs and everyone expected because of that drought, this is how we're going to find all these missing people. And yet when that event occurs, that drought occurs, the reservoir runs dry, there are no bodies.

And it left me with the question, was this just another token that he held onto of where he committed all these crimes, or was this another part of his manipulation to lead law enforcement towards an empty search? And I just don't know. That bothers me about this case. I want you to hear something from Darren White who worked on this case. I think still at this point, your hope is with like any case that you are asked about that's unsolved. Your hope is that bringing it back, there'll be a tension that comes

with this airing. And you hope that with what Cynthia's doing and others talking about it, that maybe it just sparks something in somebody to do the right thing. And so I see it as an opportunity to raise awareness about the case. And the only thing that's going to make me feel good about this case, if that's even possible, is solving some of these homicides and finding some of these women. Well, can you imagine being the FBI agent who had a meeting set up with David Parker Ray where he says he's going to talk and he dies from a heart attack.

It's just so frustrating. It's particularly frustrating because a heart attack is just so not what he deserved. It's such a get out of jail free card, really, after what he did for there to be no accountability for him to get to die suddenly when his victims had been tortured endlessly. It just feels so unjust. Nicole Zichal-Bendis You know, when I was listening to the show that you guys put together, it was just like one thing after another. But it just kind of goes to show just like the wake and how expansive his destruction is. And it doesn't stop at just the investigation.

I mean, there's like a black cloud that hangs over this whole entire story. Yeah, I mean, the judge who died, it's just when the judge had the heart attack, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. You gotta be kidding me. You gotta be kidding me Oh, no Yeah, a victim passes away right before one of the trial commences

Which put a ton of pressure on? The other two women who go into the trial thinking I'm just going to be experiencing what I've experienced all these years Which is no one's going to believe me. He feels like an extension of the underworld, that so many people around him could kind of get that curse. I mean, you look back, he got pretty damn close to not having to face what he was responsible for. It really is as if he made a deal with the devil.

In what you guys put together for the Toy Box Killer, you really get the impact of how terrifying and violent and bad of a person David Parker Ray was. You did a really great job. And then, so you guys are done with New Mexico and then the next up is we're heading to my neck of the woods in New Jersey. Yeah. Now we're in New Jersey for people listening who don't know this, which would be anyone listening.

We're based out of Philadelphia. So the New Jersey stories, we're really familiar with these areas, particularly Cherry Hill. Cherry Hill is what, 45 minutes away. We want to keep those lines open between us and the American Homicide listeners in our email, in our Instagram, because a lot of these stories take place in communities that you all know well and have insights, and we want to hear those things.

And we also want to hear what you want to hear more of. So if there's questions or anything that comes up or cases that you believe deserve more attention, reach out. Let us know. You can email us at americanhomicidepod at gmail.com. I just love being joined by you guys. Thank you. I'm excited for New Jersey. Thanks, Dre, Ben. Thank you both so much. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at americanhomicidepod at gmail.com. That's americanhomicidepod at gmail.com.

American Homicide is hosted and written by me, Sloane Glass, and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with additional writing by Ben Federman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer is Kristin Malkuri. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing, mixing and mastering by Nico Oruka. American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Noiser. Music library provided by MyMusic.

Follow American Homicide on Apple podcasts and please rate and review American Homicide. Your five-star review goes a long way towards helping others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring comes The Unborn, a shocking true story. One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect. She went crazy.

We shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn their house down. Listen to The Unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We want to speak out and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist, and this is my journey deep into

the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a playerboy, my doll. He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated. We're an army in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join iHeartMedia chairman and CEO Bob Pittman for a special episode of the hit podcast, Math & Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, as he interviews the iconic and prolific Martha Stewart in front of a live audience in celebration of her 100th book. Did you ever think you were going gonna wind up writing 100 books? Yeah. You did? Yeah, it's just a minor goal. Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.