Elephant Butte Serial Killer: David Parker Ray’s Trial and Accomplices

The Elephant Butte serial killer was David Parker Ray, a New Mexico man known as the “Toy Box Killer” who kidnapped and tortured women inside a soundproofed cargo trailer parked behind his mobile home near Elephant Butte State Park. Ray was arrested in March 1999 after one of his captives escaped, was convicted and later pleaded to charges that carried a combined sentence of 224 consecutive years, and died of a heart attack in prison on May 28, 2002, at age 62.¹² He claimed in his own journals to have taken roughly 40 victims. No bodies have ever been recovered, and he was never charged with murder.³

How Ray Was Caught

On March 22, 1999, a 22-year-old woman named Cynthia Vigil Jaramillo was found running down an unpaved road near Elephant Butte State Park. She was naked and wearing a padlocked metal collar around her neck.⁴ She told police she had been abducted three days earlier in Albuquerque by Ray and his girlfriend, Cynthia Lea Hendy, and held at their property. While Ray was away at his job at the state park, Jaramillo clawed free of her restraints, struck Hendy with an ice pick during a struggle, and ran.¹

Her account led officers to the property, where they found the trailer investigators would call the “Toy Box.”³

Inside the Trailer

The trailer was a 22-foot white cargo box, soundproofed and methodically outfitted. Investigators recovered a gynecological examination table, surgical tools, clamps, saws, whips, knives, handcuffs, and chains. A mirror was mounted on the ceiling above the table so a restrained captive could not look away. Video cameras were positioned throughout.³¹

Ray had pre-recorded audio tapes to play for victims once they came to after being drugged. One of the recordings began: “You’re here against your will… You’re going to be kept chained in a variety of different positions… You will be raped thoroughly and repeatedly.” Sedatives found on the property included sodium pentothal and phenobarbital, which investigators believed he used to disorient captives and induce amnesia.¹ Ray also kept blueprints, supply logs, and journals. In those journals, he claimed as many as 40 victims.³

The Victims

The scale of what Ray did is still not known with certainty. His own writings pointed to about 40 people. One academic database lists 14 confirmed victims and possibly as many as 60 suspected.² No remains have ever been recovered.

The victim linked most directly to a suspected killing is Marie Parker, a 22-year-old woman who disappeared on July 5, 1997, after being last seen at a saloon near Ray’s home. Parker was a former girlfriend of Ray’s. Investigators said Ray kidnapped and tortured her, then instructed accomplice Dennis Yancy to kill her. Yancy confessed to strangling her.⁵⁶

Another suspected victim is Jill Suzanne Troia, a 22-year-old former U.S. Air Force servicewoman last seen on the night of September 30 or the early hours of October 1, 1995, at the Frontier Restaurant in Albuquerque. She had ended the evening there with Ray’s daughter, Glenda Jean “Jesse” Ray, and witnesses reported an argument between them. Glenda told investigators she left Troia at the restaurant and then traveled to Elephant Butte with her father. Troia was never seen again.⁷ Authorities suspect she is one of Ray’s victims because he wrote about the torture and burial of an Asian woman matching her description. Neither Ray nor his daughter was ever charged in connection with Troia’s disappearance, and her case remains the Albuquerque Police Department’s only known cold case tied to him.⁸

Many of the women Ray targeted were vulnerable and marginalized. When Cynthia Jaramillo herself disappeared, no search parties were organized.⁹

Trial, Plea, and Sentence

Ray was convicted on all 12 counts at his first trial, which centered on the abduction and torture of Cynthia Vigil Jaramillo.⁶ In 2001, he entered a plea agreement covering a second victim. The combined sentence came to 224 consecutive years. The plea was reportedly meant in part to keep Hendy from facing a possible capital sentence.¹

He was never charged with murder. The FBI believed he had killed some of his captives, but without bodies or other direct evidence of death, prosecutors could not bring homicide counts. FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said at the time, “We suspect that he could have killed some. We don’t know how many.”³

Ray died of a heart attack on May 28, 2002, at the Hobbs Prison facility run by the New Mexico Department of Corrections.²

The Accomplices

Three people were charged as accomplices, and each took a different path through the courts.

Cynthia Hendy

Ray’s live-in girlfriend pleaded guilty to kidnapping and criminal sexual penetration and was sentenced to 36 years.¹⁰ Her plea was finalized three months before New Mexico enacted a law requiring violent offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences, so she qualified for good-time credits and served roughly half her term. She was released on July 15, 2019, at age 59. Because she had already served her two years of parole time while incarcerated, she left prison without state supervision and without any duty to report her residence to authorities.⁶ As of February 2024, she was living in Kent, Washington, classified as a Level 2 sex offender.¹¹

Glenda Jean “Jesse” Ray

Ray’s daughter was arrested in April 1999 and charged in Sierra County Magistrate Court with kidnapping and six counts of criminal sexual penetration tied to the abduction and assault of a woman over four days in July 1996.¹² Prosecutors alleged she drugged and gathered victims for her father. Under a plea deal negotiated in part by David Parker Ray himself, she received two and a half years in prison and five years of probation.⁶

Dennis Yancy

Yancy, 27, of Truth or Consequences, was arrested on April 9, 1999, for the murder of Marie Parker.⁵ He was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and sentenced to two 15-year terms.⁶

Where the Case Stands

In October 2011, the FBI, the New Mexico State Police, and the Albuquerque Police Department launched a joint search of the area around Elephant Butte Lake after receiving new information. The FBI declined to describe the tip.¹³ That year, the FBI’s Albuquerque Field Office also released hundreds of photographs of items pulled from Ray’s property, including jewelry, clothing, and personal effects believed to have been taken from victims. The catalog totaled 401 items, and the agency asked the public to help identify the owners.¹⁴ The gallery remains online, and no bodies have been found.

Cynthia Vigil Jaramillo went on to found Street Safe New Mexico, a nonprofit that provides hotel rooms so women living on the streets can shower and sleep safely, distributes clothing and essentials, and offers court testimony support for rape victims.¹⁵

1
People. Toy Box Killer Tortured Women in Soundproof Trailer
2
Radford University Serial Killer Database. David Parker Ray Case Profile
3
ABC News. FBI Searches New Mexico Lake for Toy Box Killer’s 40 Victims
4
History.com. Evidence of Murder Is Uncovered in New Mexico
5
Los Angeles Times. Missing Albuquerque Woman in NM Sex Torture Search
6
DGO Magazine. The Fall of Satan’s Den
7
The Charley Project. Jill Suzanne Troia
8
The Seattle Times. Missing Albuquerque Woman in NM Sex Torture Search
9
KRQE. Survivor Helps Women on the Street After Escaping From Toy Box Killer
10
KRQE. Suspected Killer David Parker Ray’s Girlfriend to Be Released Without Parole
11
Fox 13 Seattle. Neighbors Shocked and Terrified Toy Box Killer Accomplice Lives Feet Away
12
The New York Times. Suspect’s Daughter Is Arrested in Sex and Torture Case
13
FBI. FBI, Other Law Enforcement to Search for Possible Victims of David Parker Ray
14
FBI. Items – David Parker Ray
15
KRQE. Surviving the Toy Box Killer