Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Toy-Box Killer” - David Parker Ray

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

Born on November 1st, 1939, David Parker Ray would grow up to be one of the most sadistic serial killers the world has ever seen. He started abducting, sexually assaulting, and killing women when he was only 15 years old, and he continued his crimes for decades, leaving bodies all throughout the New Mexico desert. Sponsors! Zola - Go to Zola.com/KILLERS to build your free wedding website and get $50 toward your registry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. That's ZipRecruiter. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify. It's the commerce platform that can help you with literally everything, website design, marketing, shipping, and more. So start your business today with the best partner, Shopify, and get that. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash killers. That's Shopify.com slash killers. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel

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celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, graphic torture, and sexual assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. A young woman wakes up with a piercing headache, naked and cold. Her limbs are bound by leather straps and chains, and her legs are spread painfully far apart by a daunting iron bone. Her eyes are covered, but the blindfold is loose, and she peers through the open space to see that she's in a small white room.

The walls are lined with grotesque sex toys, vile-looking whips, and sharp polished surgical equipment. She begins to sweat with fear when she notices several cameras filming her from different corners of the room. She hears the static of a cassette tape start to play. A man's voice, frighteningly dispassionate. begins to speak, saying, — — manageable right now? I doubt it. Rists and ankles chained. Gagged. Probably blindfolded.

You're disoriented and scared, too, I would imagine. Perfectly normal under the circumstances. The man goes on cursing at her, deriding her. He says that she's been kidnapped to be turned into a sex slave, with no hope for escape. She's been abducted by David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer. Like most of his victims, she'll never leave this room alive. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson.

This is Serial Killers, a podcast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're going to examine the horrifying sexual sadism of David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. everyone. At Parcast, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. And if you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help. We also now have merchandise. Head to Parcast.com slash merch for more information.

David Parker Ray abducted, tortured, and murdered women from the time he was 15 years old in 1954 to the day of his capture on March 22, 1999. Across his 45-year crime spree, he likely claimed more than 60 victims in cities all throughout the United States. Many of those victims were brought to his long-term home in truth or consequences, New Mexico. David Parker Ray was meticulous in his kidnapping. He targeted vulnerable women and buried them in places so remote, many have still never been recovered. He became most known for the dramatic escape of his final victim, who ultimately revealed the full extent of his depravity, and exposed the evils of his torturous toy box to the world. This week will cover the majority of his life, from his start as a sadist, to the first criminal investigation into his

kidnappings and murders. Next week, we'll detail his most publicized crimes and the events that led to his capture. David Parker Ray was born in the small town of Belen, New Mexico on November 6, 1939. His parents were Cecil and Nettie Ray, and he had a sister named Peggy. Their childhoods were anything but pleasant. Cecil, David's father, was a violent alcoholic. He was often out of work and drifted in and out of town on a whim. He would only stop by the home once every six months or so,

but his visits were terrifying for David. Although during Cecil's rare moments of docility, he would try to bond with his son. Unfortunately, even this father-son bonding was sick and twisted. Cecil showed the young boy violent pornographic photos and drawings. While these photos were taken in the 1940s, and were likely rather tame compared to what people can find on the internet today. The violent sexual images left an indelible mark on David Parker Ray's young mind.

To make matters worse, David did not have any other adults in his life who presented a positive example for him. Not much is known about his mother, Nettie, but we do know that she moved in with her sister after Cecil's violence became too much for her. We also know that she often neglected David. Some historians speculate that Nettie may have been a drug addict or an alcoholic herself. But since information about David's mother is not widely available, we cannot know for sure one way or the other. However, some information has been made public about David's experiences with his aunt. He claimed that his aunt often watched him while his parents weren't around, but she

was hardly a motherly figure. When she was left alone with David, she would force him to have sex with her. It's not clear how young he was when the abuse first started, but it lasted for years. Things only got worse when his aunt began forcing him to partake in twisted sexual fantasies, making him hurt her for her own pleasure. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show.

Thanks, Greg. It is clear that David's aunt can be classified as a masochist, someone who gains sexual pleasure from experiencing pain. However, the causes and motivations of masochism are largely up for debate between psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts. One theory that may apply to her case was proposed by Roy F. Baumeister in the Journal of Sex Research. He speculated that masochism may be a complex form of escape. where the participant endures pain to let themselves mentally detach from their life. The pain draws their attention from whatever problems they may be facing and forces them to focus exclusively on the temporary physical pain.

It is possible that David's aunt was abusing him for those reasons. She was financially destitute, likely addicted to drugs, as most of her family was, and was forced to take responsibility for the care of her sister's children. These circumstances can be overwhelming for many people, and they were probably too much for her to handle. Rather than seek outside help, she projected the problems within her own life onto David, only further damaging his psyche. These dark and horrid childhood experiences with his aunt, as well as his father pushing violent pornography onto him at a young age, shaped David's sexual proclivities. He would forever associate sex and pleasure with the pain and torment of others. After David turned 10, sometime in the early 1950s, he and Peggy moved in with their paternal grandmother

in the small community of Mountain Air, 25 miles southeast of Belend, New Mexico. While David's grandmother did not sexually abuse him, she was not a loving or caring figure in his life. He often described her as both overly strict, and entirely neglectful, only paying attention to him when she felt he needed scolding. Given their contentious relationship, David spent much of his time alone, wandering the ranchland near his home. His grandmother was more than happy to leave him to his own devices. Around this time, David started to express his inherent creativity. He would scrounge through scrapyards and junk piles, looking for old engines to take apart and put back together again.

He often got long broken engines running smoothly, an impressive feat for a person of any age, let alone a preteen. As he had grown up neglected and impoverished, David's first experiences with mechanics were an outlet for his resourcefulness and creativity. Unfortunately, it would not take him long to start applying that creativity to his sexual fantasies, wherein he had complete control over the women he dreamed about. He began writing his sexual desires down in journals and sketching out his ideas for perverse inventions intended to create sexual pain in whatever woman he could capture. He once said his fantasies started when he was only 10 years old

as he imagined raping and harming young girls with a broken beer bottle. His fantasies only became worse from there. For years, he went through life keeping his inner thoughts and desires hidden from the outside world. When he met a girl, he would picture what it would be like to cause her pain. By the time he was 15, his previously contained violent fantasies, became something he needed to act upon. He began looking for a victim, and it seems that at some point in 1956,

he found his first captive. Much of our knowledge about David Parker Ray's early life and early sexual crimes comes from David's meticulous journaling. He wrote these journals as an attempt to memorialize his previous activities so that he could relive them in his memories. Unfortunately, because he only wrote down the information he cared to remember, he often did not identify the names of his victims, nor disclose what he did with them once he was finished abusing them.

The journals do contain some useful information. They often identified the year the abduction took place, the length of the abduction, his estimated age of his victims, and a few notes, describing what he had done to them while he held them captive. The journals also contained a rather unhelpful ranking system, which he used to further dehumanize his captives, giving them a one if he found them pretty,

a two if he found them average, or a three if he found them unappealing. David Parker-Rae's first entry in his journals occurred in 1955, while he was only first entry. The notebook lists the location of his sexual experience as Ranch Grove, most likely a secluded grove of trees somewhere on the ranch property of his grandmother's home. He claimed his first victim was approximately 15 years old, the same age as him. The journal states that this was his first sexual experience and that they pretended it was rape.

The journal also states that he tied her, spread eagle between two trees while he played with her. In his notes, he said that this unnamed girl enjoyed the experience, so it's possible that this encounter was consensual. However, it would not take long for him to start experimenting with actual sexual violence. His second journal entry has 1956 listed as the date. He states this date as his first kidnapping and first rape, describing his victim as very pretty and approximately 16 years old. David writes that he kept his victim throughout a weekend, listing the location as Pine Shadow Tent.

The Pine Shadow Trail is a hiking path in the Manzano Mountains near Belend, New Mexico. It's likely that he abducted his victim from a small town nearby, forced her up into the mountains, then kept her imprisoned in a tent in the wilderness just off the trails. Once he got her into the mountains, he raped her, listing in his journal all the terrible things he did to her. While his notes only stated that this was his first rape, investigators also believe that this was his first murder. It's difficult to say how he might have killed this girl. We know very little about what he did to her beyond his notes,

mentioning that he practiced new sadistic techniques. Still, we can make some guesses about how the interaction played out. This was David's first kidnapping, and much like any new activity, he was still young and inexperienced. His goal was to cause pain and damage to his victim, but he likely had no knowledge about the most effective ways to hurt people while keeping them alive.

As his early techniques were unpracticed, he likely started by cutting her. The sight of blood would have been visual proof that he was hurting her. However, since he lacked medical knowledge, he would have been unable to staunch the bleeding. Over the course of two days, it seems most likely that his victim died of blood loss, and he buried her somewhere in the expansive New Mexico wilderness,

where her body was never found. For the first time, David had successfully executed his sick and sadistic kink. While the world would have hoped that his despicable daydreams would end there, this little taste of violence merely left David wanting more. It was only a matter of time before David Parker Ray claimed his name. next victim, tearing her apart with hatred and pain. We'll learn about David's accelerating violence after this. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band tease, but on Deepop, people are searching

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He had abducted a 16-year-old girl, dragged her to the mountains, held her captive over a weekend, and most likely killed her. He had gotten away with one of the most insane. assidious crimes imaginable, and he was only just getting started. Shortly after claiming his first victim, David Parker Ray and his sister Peggy moved in with their maternal grandparents, the Parker's. The timeline of this move is unclear, as different sources have conflicting dates for David's arrival at his grandparents' home. But a high school classmate of David's remembers him first attending school in 1956, the same year in which he committed his first murder.

The classmate recalled David was short for his age, only five-six, and shy. He and his sister would ride a motorized scooter down the long country roads every morning to wait at an intersection for a shuttle van that would take him and the region's other students to school in mountain air. David's other male classmates remember him being silent and refusing to look them in the eye. They also remembered his face turning red anytime a girl would speak to him, as he apparently lacked social confidence. The other boys would mock and bully him

for his small stature and shy demeanor. While waiting for the school bus, they would often push him around or steal a scooter, riding over bumps and rocks as hard as they could to damage it while he watched. David almost never stood up for himself. His meek attitude made his classmates believe he was harmless. None of them suspected that violent and awful things

were running through his mind, at all hours of the day. While this discrepancy in public and private behavior would have surprised his classmates, some evidence suggests that this type of person is not as uncommon as many would initially suspect. According to a study published by researchers Jackie Milsom, Anthony R. Beach,

and Stephen D. Webster, entitled, Emotional Loneliness in Sexual Murderers, a qualitative analysis. This outward-jointed shyness is not uncommon. Their study compared the backgrounds of convicted rapists who had murdered their victims and convicted rapists who had not murdered their victims. They found that sexual murderers, or rapists who had killed their victims, reported, quote, significantly higher levels of grievance towards females in childhood, significantly higher levels of peer group loneliness

in adolescence, and significantly higher levels of self as victim in a It is important for us to note that shyness is not an indicator as to whether or not people later become rapists. Right. The study is simply saying that among rapists, those who killed their victims were more likely to have been shy and withdrawn as children. David Parker-Rae's psychology fits perfectly within this mold, as he was a lonely and bullied child who took his sexual aggression out on women. As such, the dichotomy that surprised his peers is not that surprising after all. While David attended high school in Mountain Air, he continued acting out his darkest impulses in the wilderness of the New Mexico Desert. As he entered 1957, he started expanding his sadistic influence. David's journal entries for 1957 only included the year, so it's difficult to get a distinct timeline of the events of his crimes.

His first entry involved the abduction and rape of an unknown 16-year-old girl. He took her to a location labeled BLM Cave, Shoal, which is likely a secluded mining cave found somewhere in the wilderness outside Shoal, New Mexico, a small community only 12 miles from mountain air. This cave was so secluded that it has yet to be discovered to this day. And to make matters worse, this was the first time David included an accomplice in his crimes. His journal states, Shirley helped me.

We made a lot of mistakes. The girl almost got away. And there were a lot of experiments performed on the girl. It is not known who Shirley was, how David met her, or how he convinced her to help him with his crimes. Much of that information is lost to time. We also don't know if this victim survived her abduction, but there were no complaints of sexual misconduct or kidnapping

filed with the police at the time of this crime, or at any point after. So it seems likely that this rape victim was a murder victim as well. David and Shirley continued their vile escapades later that year by abducting a 20-year-old college student and bringing her to the same unknown cave near Shoal. This time, David's journal said, Shirley set her up for kidnapping.

This means his accomplice took a proactive role in assisting his dark impulses, signaling that the duo has, had gotten more comfortable with their plans. It's unclear what she was getting out of the arrangement. Maybe she, too, was a sadist. Based on some of David's later cases, it's likely that his accomplice, Shirley,

had been friends with the victim. Shirley and the girl were probably drinking one night. And as the party started to slow down, Shirley offered to keep the night going with marijuana or even harder drugs. The girl was probably a little worried about doing these drugs in a row. relatively public space. Shirley assured her not to worry. She knew the perfect location,

a secluded cave out in the wilderness. It was the perfect place to light up, and they could stay out there all night. Shirley brought the girl to the cave, where David was waiting. David likely grabbed the girl and forced her to the ground, tying her up with ropes. The girl screamed at Shirley, crying out for help. At that point, Shirley smiled and tied the ropes even tighter. The girl realized she'd been set up, her mind filling with terror and dread. David probably told her everything that they were going to do to her. Then he brought out his tools. He showed her a box of needles and a collection of sharp, jagged fish hooks. The duo proceeded to pierce their victim's skin over and over in the most sensitive parts of her body,

reveling of the torture they were inflicting. When they were done, they likely could, killed her and buried her in the desert. This victim was never identified, and her ultimate fate is a mystery that remains unsolved. David and Shirley continued their crime spree later that same year. As a couple, they had grown thick as thieves. We don't know the precise nature of Shirley's relationship to David, other than as his accomplice. However, based on other cases of sadists working together. It does seem likely that the two were romantically involved. The nature of couples who kill together has mystified people for quite some time. People often wonder why a woman would simply help a sadistic man or vice versa, but in cases like these,

both partners are often equally sadistic in their own right. Estella Weldon, a doctor of forensic psychiatry wrote about couples who kill in a book titled The Therapeutic Milleux Under Fire. She proposes the theory that when romantically involved adults participate in abusive and sadistic acts together, it is likely due to traumas both have experienced in their past that neither are willing to address in the present. We know that David suffered abuse from his father and his aunt. It is highly likely that surely experienced similar abuse from her parents. Rather than seek help to express their past pains and work through it,

people in sadistic partnerships long to reassert control by inflicting those pains on others. When they hurt other people, it proves to them that they are now the people in control of the situation, unlike when they were children and had no control at all. As both sadists start to enjoy the torture they inflict upon others, their violence escalates and they do terrible things, much like David and Shirley were doing at their cave out in the desert. Whatever the reasons for their actions,

the couple did not slow down after harming their second victim. They found a third helpless person by accident, when they happened upon a woman who was stranded with a flat tire. They pulled over and asked if she needed assistance. The woman, eager and thankful for help, began talking to them. They found out she was 17 years old, trusting and alone. They knew she had nobody around to help her and would make a very easy target.

As soon as she let her guard down, the duo punched her, gagged her, tied her up, and threw her in their vehicle. They sped away, victim in tow, and brought her back to the same secluded cave where they had already harmed two other women. Once there, they participated in the same sick tortures they had enacted upon their prior victims.

As with most of David's, victims, this girl has never been identified, and it's unknown as to whether she survived. She wasn't the only woman the couple abducted in 1957. Later that year, David and Shirley found another victim at a bus stop. She was an 18-year-old girl, and much like their prior victims, they pretended to befriend her, and instead took her hostage. They took her to the same cave they had taken their victims thrice before. They escalated their violence. They escalated their violence, and, quote, kept the woman tied to the table with her legs folded back most of the weekend. David practiced breast bondage, a technique involving cutting off blood flow to a woman's breasts,

and Shirley pulled out most of the victim's pubic hair. They performed various other torments on their victim, and the pain they inflicted was so great that the victim passed out several times. In total, David and Shirley abducted and likely killed. four different women in 1957. David had become an accomplished torturer and serial killer at just 17 years old. In 1958, David graduated from high school.

With little opportunity in his hometown, he moved to nearby Albuquerque, where he got a job as a general mechanic. He found a place where he could put his skills to good use during the day, and at night he would hit the bars, drinking and partying. Oddly, while he was used to abducting and torturing women, he also longed for a romantic connection that he could have in public. Perhaps he missed having a partner, since he and Shirley had seemingly split up.

He began meeting women, and it wasn't long before he struck up his first publicly known consensual romance with a 17-year-old girl whose name has been kept hidden for her privacy. We don't know if his girlfriend was aware of all the dark deeds, David had committed, but if she did know, she did not seem to care. The connection between the two was fiery and passionate, and after only a few months of dating, David and this girl married in April 1959. During this time, David also experienced a growth spurt. He went from being 5'6 at graduation to his full adult height of 6 foot 2.

His exceptional increase in size only made it that much easier for his first year. him to overpower and abduct women. He joined the military a few months after his wedding day and got a job as a military mechanic. Within that same year, he was stationed in Korea. He did not see armed conflict, but investigators suspect his sadistic raping behaviors did not stop while he was overseas, even though his journals lack entries during this time period. At the time, South Korea was still in the process of rebuilding, only five years after the ceasefire that had halted the Korean War. The area was largely lawless and undeveloped, and it would

have been much easier for David to select and torture victims than it would have been in the United States. During brief moments of leave in the U.S., David managed to get his wife pregnant. In the early months of 1960, she gave birth to David's firstborn child, a baby boy, who they named David Elvin Ray. David returned to Korea shortly after his son's birth. but his long absences did not bode well for his marriage. After only a few months of David being overseas, his wife gave their months-old son up to the New Mexico State Department of Public Welfare, likely due to drug problems.

David promptly returned to the U.S. and filed for divorce in 1961. He gained custody of his son without any contest from his ex-wife. He stayed in Albuquerque for a short time. then left his son with his mother before being redeployed to Fort Hood, Texas. Near the end of 1961, while David was on leave in Albuquerque, he met another young woman whose name is also not publicly known. They were married in the winter of 1962. But David's second marriage failed as quickly as his first.

They filed for divorce after only three months. Shortly after the divorce, he was honorably discharged from the army. He moved back to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he got a job driving a cement truck. He continued abducting, torturing, and raping women, claiming at least two victims a year, sometimes more. These victims are all unidentified, as they were either murdered and cleanly disposed of, or too terrified to talk to the police about their harrowing experience. Throughout this time, David continued to escalate his terrors. During that same year, he was a lot of the same year, he was a lot of year in 1963, he abducted two girls with a specific goal of testing out a new torture technique.

He brought them to Hamas, New Mexico, a small town with plenty of wilderness, located only 47 miles north of Albuquerque. One of his victims was a 22-year-old woman he picked up at a bar. The other was a 25-year-old hitchhiker. David truly showed his sadistic side when he began experimenting with electroshock therapy. With this particular torture, he would clamp electrical wiring, like jumper cables,

to his victim's breasts. He would then send electricity coursing through her body. His goal was to inflict as much pain as possible, so he would never use enough electricity to kill his captive. He only used enough power

to make her feel like her body was burning from the inside out. As he perfected the technique, David would learn how to cause maximum electrical pain without doing any externally perceivable damage. However, as these were his earliest electrical guinea pigs, they likely suffered severe internal and external burns. It is highly unlikely that these two women survived,

and David's hunger for flesh was far from sated. We'll learn more about David's continued sadistic rampage after this. And now, back to the story. By 1963, David Parker Ray was only 23, but he had already abducted, raped, tortured, and possibly even murdered at least 10 women. His methods of torment were graphic and ranged from the use of fish hooks to the use of electricity. All intended to cause as much pain and suffering as possible. By this point, David had also been married and divorced. twice. He even had a son who he abandoned. And yet, despite his failed relationships and sadistic

sexual practices, David was not yet done with pursuing romance. In the early months of 1966, David met Glenda Burdine, an 18-year-old girl who had a toddler named Ron. Glenda was a quiet girl looking for someone to help raise her child, and David was a tall 26-year-old man looking for a young lover. The couple dated for a short time, then quickly married in a shotgun wedding. On May 2, 1967, David and Glenda saw the birth of their first child together, a baby girl they named Glenda Jean Ray. For a few short months, David lived with his family, wife, son, stepson, and newborn daughter. But he bristled under the pressure of a family lifestyle and soon abandoned his wife and kids as he had before.

By the fall of 1967, David became a drifter and began moving from place to place all across New Mexico and Arizona. As he traveled, he would use his mechanic skills to perform odd jobs, making enough to get by. Those who met him at the time thought he was charismatic and intelligent, and none suspected his darker side as he traveled the road. Eventually, he grew tired of the nomadic, In the fall of 1969, he moved back home to Albuquerque.

Once there, he began courting Glenda a second time, and as far as we can tell, his wife welcomed him back with open arms. Shortly after moving back home, David began taking courses in airplane repair mechanics. He passed his courses with flying colors and became a certified aircraft mechanic. With this new credibility, he was also offered a job as an instructor in Airbus, instructor in aircraft mechanics at the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So in 1970, he moved his family to Tulsa. In public, David Parker Ray was a respected instructor and laid-back father. His children remember him rarely showing any signs of anger,

and he never lashed out at them. However, even while he treated his own children well, he was still stalking the night, snatching at least two women a year to fulfill his sadistic sexual fantasies. His sick behavior spiked in 1973 when he was 33 years old. Throughout that year he kidnapped five different women. Two were teenage sisters he picked up as they were hitchhiking. He tortured them for five days. Two he picked up at a bar before torturing them for a weekend.

The fifth woman he abducted was a 30-year-old mother who happened to have her infant son with her when she hitched her. a ride with David Parker Ray. He took the woman and her son to a location labeled E.B. Tent. E. Side. Many investigators suspect this cryptic label stands for the east side of Elephant Butte Lake in New Mexico. This was likely the first or second time Ray had taken someone to the location that would later become his primary hunting and disposal grounds. In his notes, he describes the infant boy as a pain. But he states, he states,

that Mama wasn't bad. He likely killed this woman and her child, then dumped their bodies in the lake. Elephant Butte Lake is particularly well-suited to hiding bodies. As the shore recedes into the lake, the bottom drops off steeply. At its deepest, the lake is 157 feet deep, and the bottom of the lake is filled with silt. That swallows any solid object unlucky enough to reach the bottom.

David had been so meticulous in covering up his crimes that police had never even suspected him of partaking in any criminal activity. But even if they had been looking for the victims at Elephant Butte Lake, the search would have been nearly impossible. David was aware of the benefits of disposing of a body in this lake, and it's reasonable to suspect that this drew him back to Elephant Butte Lake time and again. Through the rest of the 1970s, David moved his family to Victoria, Texas, where he ran a gas station, then moved his family back to Albuquerque, where he got a job working for the railroad. During all this time, his killings never stopped, as he maintained his usual pace of killing at least two girls a year. He also spent this period of time forming a particularly close bond with his daughter, Glenda Jr., who had taken to calling herself, Jesse in order to distinguish herself from her mother. From a very young age, Jesse knew about her father's vile sexual activities.

He had normalized sadistic sexual practices by exposing her to violent sexual images at a young age, much like his father had done to him. And he also made no effort to hide his victims from his daughter. But as she was just a child at the time, she had no way of knowing that his actions were wrong and gruesome. His violence did not stand between their relationship. While David was growing closer to his daughter, he was growing further apart from his wife, Glenda. For unknown reasons, David and Glenda divorced in 1981, when David was 41. By 1982, David had moved to Phoenix, Arizona. He got a job at an up-and-coming auto shop, working under a man named Billy Stone, alongside

business partner Billy Ray Bowers. Billy recognized David's skill and with both men working together, the business started to grow quite large. David was making more money than he ever had before, and he decided to spend that money on a second home. In 1983, 43-year-old David leased a plot of land in truth or consequences and began spending most of his time in Phoenix and his weekends near Elephant Butte Lake. Around that same time, David began to making connections within the underground BDSM community in Phoenix. Through that community, he met a woman named Joni Lee. With this relationship, David had found himself more of a match.

Joni Lee was also into the same kind of BDSM and kinky sex as David. In a very similar pattern to his previous relationships, he and Joni Lee got married, making this David's fourth marriage. While we don't know if Joni Lee participated in David's kidnappings, her relative comfort with his sexual fetishes allowed him the freedom to begin designing and constructing his own bondage and sexual torture devices on his property. David would likely experiment with these devices on his wife consensually

and use her responses to inform his designs. He stored many of these devices in his home near Elephant Butte Lake, and she thought there was nothing strange about it. While Joni Lee may or may not have known about David's criminal activities, his daughter, Jesse, knew all about his crimes. By the time she was 19 in 1986, she had personally taken part in some of his darker exploits. Because she had been raised by David Parker Ray, Jesse believed that his sexual fetishes and criminal behavior were rather normal. She knew that what he did was illegal, but she believed that nothing was particularly. wrong with it. While her lack of awareness may seem baffling, this particular mental phenomenon

is not especially rare. It has long been noted that bad behavior is often learned and reinforced by our peers, and even more so by our parents. Kevin P. Conway, a doctor of behavioral health science, and Joan McCord, a doctor of criminology, published a study in a scientific journal titled Aggressive Behavior. This study found that not a non-corder, nonviolent offenders are more likely to commit violent crimes if they do so with another person who had committed violent crimes before. The study also found that nonviolent offenders who are introduced to violence through an accomplice are far more likely to commit acts of violence in the future than those nonviolent criminals who are not introduced to violence by their peers. Jesse had been introduced to violence at a very young age, so her participation in her father's crimes

was bound to escalate with time. Though Jessie was comfortable with her father's crimes, she still butted heads with him from time to time. One day in 1986, she and David got into a massive fight. We don't know what caused the fight, but we do know that in June of 1986, Jesse had become so infuriated with her father that she decided she would get him sent to prison.

Purely out of spite, Jesse got in touch with the FBI office in Albuquerque. She told the FBI all about her father over the phone. She spoke for quite a long time about David's fetishes. She told them all about how David had regularly abducted dozens of women and brought them to secluded areas for days on end. She then told them that once David was through with his victims, he would either kill them or transport them south of the border to Mexico or he would sell them into sexual slavery. Naturally, the FBI agents were stunned to hear what Jesse had to say. They were confident they had a solid lead, and in 1986, for the first time, David Parker Ray was going to come under the scrutiny of the law.

Unfortunately, David Parker Ray would not be discovered as a criminal until 1999. 13 years later. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. will be back Monday with a new episode. Next week, we'll cover the failure of the first investigation into David Parker Ray's activities in 1986, his escalating violence, and the dramatic discovery and bloody road

that led to his eventual capture. You can find more episodes of serial killers, as well as all of podcasts, other shows on Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Several of you have asked how to help the show, And if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time.

Have a killer week. Cereal Killers was created by Max Cutler. It's a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Dick Schroeder, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler. Additional production assistance by Maggie Admiyer and Freddie Beckley. This episode of serial killers was written by Giles Hofsef and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed.

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