Speaker 1: Hi, American Homicide listeners, this is your host's Loan Glass.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on our first bonus episode.
Speaker 1: I am joined by the host of the Betrayal podcast,
Speaker 1: Andrea Gunning. Hi, Andrea high Sloan, and Ben Fetterman. Ben
Speaker 1: Fetterman is a producer on American Homicide and him and
Speaker 1: Andrea host Barren Gone South Street Together. Hey, Ben, Hey,
Speaker 1: This episode is obviously going to be different because it's
Speaker 1: not our typical American homicide format where we are going
Speaker 1: through a case. We are really going to spend some
Speaker 1: time just on David Parker Ray, the Toy box Killer.
Speaker 1: So our show's American Homicide. The episodes are called Toy
Speaker 1: Box Killer, and we don't have any bodies hate same
Speaker 1: bodies because it feels like a really removed way to
Speaker 1: talk about these victims. But we're speaking about someone who
Speaker 1: could be one of the most prolific serial killers in
Speaker 1: American history, and we only know about a few of
Speaker 1: his torture victims. That estimate from Jim Yance, the DA
Speaker 1: prosecuted this case, is that there could be forty five
Speaker 1: to sixty victims of David Parker Ray. So it's well
Speaker 1: established that he was a murderer, even though it is unsolved.
Speaker 1: I think that both of you covering unsolved cases can
Speaker 1: speak to just the torment that can leave you just
Speaker 1: talking about something but not being able to give an
Speaker 1: audience any clear answers.
Speaker 2: Sloan. One of the reasons why this story was important
Speaker 2: to tell is because there are still families out there
Speaker 2: that have missing loved ones. These potential forty five to
Speaker 2: sixty individuals in New Mexico that remain on a missing
Speaker 2: person's list.
Speaker 1: A lot of the serial killers that we talk about,
Speaker 1: the actions are fast, they're horrific. But to hear about
Speaker 1: someone who got their pleasure from extended periods of time,
Speaker 1: torturing victims who, in some cases through a mixture of
Speaker 1: drugs and electric shock therapy, it's sick. It's sick in
Speaker 1: a way that there's no one else who has stayed
Speaker 1: with me the way that he has.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember exactly where I was the first time
Speaker 3: I heard those tapes of him like that that welcome
Speaker 3: greeting that he plays to his victims, and I think
Speaker 3: I was like washing my dishes and I just stopped immediately.
Speaker 3: I can't even really think about the emotion that came
Speaker 3: over me other than just fear and deep empathy for
Speaker 3: the person that was actually in that hearing that.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is on those tapes that he played
Speaker 2: for these women is horrific, and yet I think we
Speaker 2: as a production felt it was important to play those
Speaker 2: to really show how evil this man was. It was
Speaker 2: this is what it was, and what's your opinion of it?
Speaker 2: Because our opinion was, this is some of the most
Speaker 2: horrific evidence we've come across in this show.
Speaker 3: It's been a really long time since I listened to
Speaker 3: something and it's kind of stopped me in my tracks,
Speaker 3: and I felt the emotions and the fear, and I
Speaker 3: was legitimate. I left feeling terrified of David Parker Ray.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dre. I think one of the things that is
Speaker 2: most terrifying about David Parker Ray is that he is
Speaker 2: the epitome of a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is
Speaker 2: a man that was able to go and operate throughout
Speaker 2: the community because of his standing in it.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to imagine that there's a human
Speaker 1: being like him who has existed, and to see someone
Speaker 1: who is willing to make that audio tape and then
Speaker 1: also make videos of what he was doing for his
Speaker 1: own Pleasureugh, it's just such an awful one. And you
Speaker 1: can go onto the FBI's website today and you can
Speaker 1: see images of more things that they have found from
Speaker 1: inside the toy box, and it's, Oh, it's just so
Speaker 1: much that they're trying to use to identify more victims,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is clothing, so much jewelry.
Speaker 1: And what I was thinking about when I first saw
Speaker 1: all of that was how often, Drey, you can probably
Speaker 1: speak to this as women. So much of our jewelry
Speaker 1: has meaning behind it that's often about protection or sentimental reasons.
Speaker 1: And I look at these bracelets and I think, how
Speaker 1: many times did a woman look down see this bracelet
Speaker 1: that her husband or her boyfriend or her mother had
Speaker 1: given her with the hope that their daughter could wear
Speaker 1: it to be safe and happy, and think of them,
Speaker 1: And it's lying in this toy box, and he's keeping
Speaker 1: it for his own enjoyment.
Speaker 3: I know that a lot of people when they listen
Speaker 3: to true crime, they really want to understand the motivations
Speaker 3: of the people that are behind it. But a lot
Speaker 3: of the work that we do focuses on the people
Speaker 3: who represent those jewelry items and what they lost and
Speaker 3: what they went through. And this isn't just like a
Speaker 3: one off, hyperbolic situation. This is a person that was
Speaker 3: cloaked himself in as a normal person and was preying
Speaker 3: on individuals and people were his prey.
Speaker 1: So it's really scary, and I.
Speaker 3: Just I think the most impactful part of this whole
Speaker 3: three part series is how much you feel for the
Speaker 3: victims and understand what they went through. Because to understand
Speaker 3: this story and to hear it is to feel that fear,
Speaker 3: and you really are sitting with to some small degree
Speaker 3: that you can what some of these people went through.
Speaker 1: I really like what you said about an artifact of
Speaker 1: their time before David Parker Ray makes me think Kelly Garrett.
Speaker 1: Kelly Garrett was the victim who the FBI was able
Speaker 1: to identify from posting an image of her tattoo, and
Speaker 1: her former in laws saw that and then reached out.
Speaker 1: She continued to live after this experience and she had
Speaker 1: no memory of the specifics. That's how much he can
Speaker 1: alter a person's mind, not just you know, what he
Speaker 1: did with the drugs and the torture, but just the
Speaker 1: trauma behind this experience. And I think about her life before,
Speaker 1: and I think about her life after, it's loss after
Speaker 1: loss after loss.
Speaker 2: With Kelly, I think the hardest part is the fact
Speaker 2: that no one, including herself believed what happened to her
Speaker 2: that night, to the point that it led to her divorce,
Speaker 2: to the point that she got gas lit by her family,
Speaker 2: by herself, by the entire community by saying this isn't happening.
Speaker 2: But fundamentally, as we've said, not only did her brain
Speaker 2: get altered from the trauma that she experienced, but then
Speaker 2: also how she was drugged, but then just the path
Speaker 2: that she was on was completely changed when she was
Speaker 2: dumped on the side of the road, and you just
Speaker 2: have no idea why. It's really devastating, And part of me.
Speaker 3: Is like, oh, thank god, she doesn't remember what she
Speaker 3: went through, the trauma, the violence that she just went
Speaker 3: through for X amount of days. But then how he
Speaker 3: was able to weaponize that too for all of those years.
Speaker 3: It is astonishing to me, but it's it's one of
Speaker 3: the things are I'm like it. To have full clarity
Speaker 3: of that amount of pain for that amount of time
Speaker 3: also scares me too.
Speaker 1: Right, And so much of that has to do with
Speaker 1: the victims who he picked, women who people didn't look
Speaker 1: for when they went missing because of their work as
Speaker 1: sex workers. I think about Cynthia V. Hill and what
Speaker 1: it took for her to escape, and I think about
Speaker 1: her running with just feet of chains attached to her.
Speaker 2: Running naked with a dog collar around your neck down
Speaker 2: the street, just trying to find any sort of sanctuary.
Speaker 2: That's what it took to unravel this case.
Speaker 1: Right, and what could have continued to happen if she
Speaker 1: had not done that. We have an audio clip from
Speaker 1: Darren White, who worked for New Mexico's Department of Public Safety,
Speaker 1: and he speaks about what this case, what it did
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 4: When you do this work as long as I have,
Speaker 4: you wish there are certain aspects of it that you
Speaker 4: could just push a button and you could hit a
Speaker 4: race and you wouldn't have to see that again. But
Speaker 4: unfortunately that's not the case. Those are images, horrible images
Speaker 4: that will live with us for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: There was an FBI agent, Patty Rust. It was her
Speaker 1: job to detail everything that was found in the toy box.
Speaker 1: She's making drawings. She's been five days just going over
Speaker 1: at the evidence and when she got home after those
Speaker 1: five days she took her own life. She could be
Speaker 1: considered another victim of David Parker Rays. It's so sad,
Speaker 1: so sad to tell the story. It really it breaks
Speaker 1: my heart. You know, this is a this is an
Speaker 1: FBI agent. You can imagine what this woman had seen.
Speaker 1: You can't discount what it would do to a person
Speaker 1: in the timing of events that after being so immersed
Speaker 1: in his toy box, she couldn't go on. I think
Speaker 1: it has to just change the way that you view
Speaker 1: the world. And it's just devastating that it ended up
Speaker 1: the way that it did with Agent Rust and I God,
Speaker 1: I wish that, you know, she had been able to
Speaker 1: get some help in some way.
Speaker 3: When Ben and I were investigating there and Gone and
Speaker 3: we didn't know exactly what happened to two people, Richard
Speaker 3: Patron and Danielle Embo, they went missing and they haven't
Speaker 3: been found twenty years later, and so we kind of
Speaker 3: an idea of what happened and who was involved, but
Speaker 3: we don't know the manner of death. And that was
Speaker 3: something that you have to play different scenarios when you're
Speaker 3: doing an investigation. You have to think through you know,
Speaker 3: did this happen or did that happen? Like was this
Speaker 3: how they were killed? You know, I'm not in the FBI.
Speaker 3: I've just worked on a few cases, but it is
Speaker 3: extremely difficult, especially when you're tasked to find justice. You
Speaker 3: can't help but feel bought in, and then this other
Speaker 3: level of reality can really be jarring, emotionally jarring. I
Speaker 3: don't know how you felt about it, Ben, but I
Speaker 3: would often find myself finding it too hard to think
Speaker 3: too deep on what happened to Danielle and Richard.
Speaker 2: I think what comes to mind for me about this
Speaker 2: part of our conversation and comparing it to There and
Speaker 2: Gone is FBI agents are just they're humans too, and
Speaker 2: there's a level of feeling, seeing, experiencing something. You can
Speaker 2: try to be as detached from the job as you
Speaker 2: want to be, but at some point you are a
Speaker 2: human being and can't completely be devoid of emotion. And
Speaker 2: for this female agent that took her own life, I
Speaker 2: obviously can't imagine, but I know as a human being
Speaker 2: that there are things that impact us that we just
Speaker 2: can't turn away from, and it affects us in different ways.
Speaker 2: And that's where my mind went for There and Gone,
Speaker 2: You and I got very close to Agent Vito Verselling.
Speaker 2: I mean he is a tenured, you know, decades long
Speaker 2: special agent on the force. He did not necessarily see
Speaker 2: any crime scene photos or results of what happened to
Speaker 2: them that could have that type of impact. But how
Speaker 2: it did impact him, Dre is the relationships with the families,
Speaker 2: that pursuit of wanting to get them answers, and his
Speaker 2: inability to let go of that case and move on
Speaker 2: that case will always continue to be with him, just
Speaker 2: like for the agents in New Mexico around toy Box,
Speaker 2: this case will always loom over that field office.
Speaker 1: I mean, he invested one hundred thousand dollars in create
Speaker 1: the toy box, this torture tamer one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And one thing that I find remarkable as well is
Speaker 2: that the toy box, this physical trailer, still sits in
Speaker 2: the parking lot of the field office, the FBI field
Speaker 2: office that investigated this, And I think the only reason
Speaker 2: it is still there is that hope that these forty
Speaker 2: five to sixty bodies may eventually turn up, that there
Speaker 2: may be evidence in the toy box to be able
Speaker 2: to say, hey, David Parker, Ray was responsible for this
Speaker 2: and to bring justice for those families to know what
Speaker 2: happened to their loved one. There's one piece of this
Speaker 2: story that is really the open ended piece to it
Speaker 2: that bothers me outside of everything that we've talked about,
Speaker 2: which is this map that was recovered on his property
Speaker 2: that had you know, pins in this lake just randomly
Speaker 2: scattered about. And we cover the fact that there was
Speaker 2: this drought that occurs, and everyone expected because of that drought,
Speaker 2: this is how we're going to find all these missing people.
Speaker 2: And yet when that event occurs, that drought occurs, the
Speaker 2: reservoir runs dry, there are no bodies. And it left
Speaker 2: me with the question was this just another token that
Speaker 2: he held onto of where he committed all these crimes
Speaker 2: or was this another part of his manipulation to lead
Speaker 2: law enforcement towards an empty search. And I just don't
Speaker 2: know that bothers me about this case.
Speaker 1: I want you to hear something from Darren White, who
Speaker 1: worked on this case.
Speaker 4: I think still at this point, your hope is, with
Speaker 4: like any case that you are asked about that's unsolved,
Speaker 4: your hope is that bringing it back there'll be a
Speaker 4: tension that comes with this airing and you hope that
Speaker 4: with what Cynthia is doing and others talking about it,
Speaker 4: that maybe it just sparks something in somebody to do
Speaker 4: the right thing. And so I see it as an
Speaker 4: opportunity to raise awareness about the case. And the only
Speaker 4: thing that's going to make me feel good about this case,
Speaker 4: if that's even possible, is solving some of these homicides
Speaker 4: and finding some.
Speaker 1: Of these women. Well can you imagine being the FBI
Speaker 1: agent who had a meeting set up with David Parker
Speaker 1: Ray where he says he's going to talk and he
Speaker 1: dies from a heart attack. It's just so frustrating, and
Speaker 1: it's particularly frustrating because a heart attack is just so
Speaker 1: not what he deserved. I mean this, it's such a
Speaker 1: get out of jail free card really after what he did,
Speaker 1: for there to be no accountability, for him to get
Speaker 1: to die suddenly when his victims had been tortured endlessly,
Speaker 1: it just feels so unjust.
Speaker 3: You know, when I was listening to this show that
Speaker 3: you guys put together, it was just like one thing
Speaker 3: after another, but it just kind of goes to show
Speaker 3: just like the wake and how expansive his destruction is
Speaker 3: and it doesn't stop at just the investigation. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's like a black cloud that hangs over this whole
Speaker 3: entire story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the judge who died.
Speaker 3: It's just when the judge had the heart attack, I
Speaker 3: was like, you gotta be kidding.
Speaker 1: May you gotta be kidding?
Speaker 2: Made Oh no? Yeah. A victim passes away right before
Speaker 2: one of the trial commences, which put a ton of
Speaker 2: pressure on the other two women who go into the
Speaker 2: trial thinking I'm just going to be experiencing what I've
Speaker 2: experienced all these years, which is no one's going to
Speaker 2: believe me.
Speaker 1: He feels like an extension of the underworld that so
Speaker 1: many people around him could kind of get that curse.
Speaker 2: I mean, you look back, he got pretty damn close
Speaker 2: to not having to face what he was responsible for.
Speaker 1: It really is as if you made a deal with
Speaker 1: the devil.
Speaker 3: In what you guys put together for the Toy Box Killer,
Speaker 3: you really get the impact of how terrifying and violent
Speaker 3: and bad of a person David Parker Ray was.
Speaker 1: You did a really great job.
Speaker 3: And then so you guys are done with New Mexico
Speaker 3: and then the next up is we're heading to my
Speaker 3: neck of the woods in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, we're in New Jersey. For people listening who
Speaker 1: don't know this, which would be anyone listening, We're based
Speaker 1: out of Philadelphia, so the New Jersey story, we're really
Speaker 1: familiar with these areas, you know, particularly Cherry Hill. Cherry
Speaker 1: Hill's what forty five minutes away, you know. We want
Speaker 1: to keep those lines open between us and the American
Speaker 1: Homicide listeners in our email, in our Instagram because a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories take place in communities that you
Speaker 1: all know well and have insights, and we want to
Speaker 1: hear those things. And we also want to hear what
Speaker 1: you want to hear more of. So if there's questions
Speaker 1: or anything that comes up, or cases that you believe
Speaker 1: deserve more attention, reach out. Let us know. You can
Speaker 1: email us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I just love being joined by you guys.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm excited for New Jersey. Thanks dre Ben, thank you
Speaker 1: both so much. You can contact the American Homicide Team
Speaker 1: by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
Speaker 1: is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass and is
Speaker 1: a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Speaker 1: Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gams. The series is
Speaker 1: also written and produced by Todd Gams, with additional writing
Speaker 1: by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Kristin Melcurrie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crimecheck.
Speaker 1: Audio editing, mixing and mastering by Nico Aaruka. American Homicide's
Speaker 1: theme song was composed by Oliver Bains of Neiser Music
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Speaker 2: MHM