Darlene listened to Vigil tell her that the man and the woman who hurt her were probably driving around the neighborhood looking for her, and Darlene told the young girl not to worry—Darlene Breech had a shotgun. What she didn’t tell Vigil was the shotgun probably hadn’t been fired in over fifty years.
“My husband, Donald, come in the back door and I explained what was going on. I told him to go to the closet and get my pink robe. Cyndy is just a little bitty thing and that pink bathrobe just swallowed her up. Right after she put it on, she hugged herself and went over and sat in the corner, cuddling herself, kinda like a little kid.
“She was real quiet, just whimpering.
“I called nine-one-one again and told them we lived next to Elephant Butte Lake, and a few minutes later, the deputies drove down Hot Springs Landing Road and the fools drove right past the house! Don went outside and waved them down. When Vigil saw the police, she just went outside and threw herself at them. They never came inside the house.
“They took her away and I went inside the house and started shaking all over. Right away I called my oldest daughter, who works as a nurse at the local Sierra Vista County Hospital. She told me to clean everything with Clorox.
“I must have cleaned the house for three hours, nonstop.
“I found out later the police picked up the kidnappers, Ray and Hendy, driving around less than a block from my house. If I had waited any longer to call back to the nine-one-one operator, they would have been at my door. . . .”
Sierra County sheriff’s deputy Lucas Alvarez picked up Cyndy Vigil in front of Don and Darlene’s double-wide and rushed her to the Sierra Vista County Hospital, where the dog collar and chain were cut off in the emergency room and doctors and nurses began to care for her banged-up body. His partner, David Elston, drove the three blocks to Ray’s mobile home to search it.
The rutted wood sign out in front read DAVID P. RAY. There was a six-foot-high chain-link fence surrounding the entire piece of lakeside rental property. Ray’s long brown-and-white mobile home was set far back from the dirt road and it was surrounded by two sheds, a bait trailer and a large white cargo trailer just off the northern end of the front porch. There were two sailboats and a car garage in the front yard.
Elston stepped through the open sliding glass door in the back of the building and “cleared” the house for any other persons. It was deserted.
He walked through a hallway into a middle bedroom and the first thing he saw was broken shards of green glass on the floor, next to a broken lamp, next to a broken window. There were smears of blood on the tangled sheets of the bed. A large dildo stood on a counter nearby. There was a long coffinlike box next to one wall, and when he looked up at the ceiling, he saw a pulley device with hooks and chains that slid along half-inch steel rods attached to the ceiling.
In the meantime, police from Elephant Butte State Park arrested David Parker Ray and Cynthia Lea Hendy driving down Springfield Road in his red camper—not far from where Vigil had found her refuge. The police housed the two suspects in the Cooper Police Training Center on the edge of the nearby town, Truth or Consequences.
Prior to 1950, the town had been called Hot Springs, New Mexico, but Ralph Edwards, popular host of a radio game show called Truth or Consequences, said he would broadcast a segment of the show from any town that changed its name to honor his program. The locals took the bait and ever since then the town has been called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, or as the locals call it, T or C. The name change officially took place on April 1, 1950.
Control of the David Parker Ray case quickly jumped from local T or C hands into the more experienced hands of the New Mexico State Police (NMSP). Agent Wesley LaCuesta was a five-year veteran of the Criminal Assault and Violent Crimes Investigation Section when he first got the call to help on the case. When he heard the news out of T or C, he left his office in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and hurried north on Interstate 25, arriving in Truth or Consequences at 5:55 P.M.
Within hours he was briefed, and later that Monday night, he started interviewing Cyndy Vigil at the local Sierra Vista County Hospital. His report on the victim, as filed in the early arrest warrant issued for David Parker Ray, is chilling. It reads:
I observed small cuts on both her legs, bruising on her right arm and bruising and abrasions on both her wrists. I also observed welt marks on her back and small puncture wounds and light bruising on her breasts.
She indicated that on Saturday, March 20, 1999, between 10:00 and 11:00 A.M., she was street-walking on Central Avenue (Highway 66) in Albuquerque and she was introduced to the two suspects by a local pimp. She met Ray and Hendy in a recreational vehicle owned by Ray. When she stepped inside the RV, Ray showed her a small police badge and told her she was under arrest for solicitation. Hendy then came out of the vehicle restroom and handcuffed her. She was restrained to a fixture in the camper and the suspects stripped her of all her clothing and threatened to shock her if she resisted.
Ms. Vigil stated that she was then taken to an unknown location where she was restrained by her arms and her legs. She said Ray placed dildos into her vagina and rectum simultaneously while Hendy watched on. She described receiving “shock therapy” in which Ray attached electrical connections to her breasts, which would send electrical shocks through her body. Both times, Hendy would wave a small revolver, threatening to shoot her if she tried to escape.
Ms. Vigil recounted how on Sunday, March 21, 1999, Ray and Hendy hung her from the ceiling in one bedroom by her arms and legs. She was then whipped on the back with a leather whip. After the whipping, Ray inserted a large metal dildo into her vagina.
Ms. Vigil also stated that an introductory audiotape recording was played to her, detailing what David Ray was going to do to her. She was also shown photographs of other naked women who had been tied up. Ms. Vigil stated that Ray took photographs of her while she was restrained from the ceiling of one of his rooms.
She referred to this room as “the dirty room.”
CHAPTER 2
They say before this thing is over, the Charles Manson family will look like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
—Mary Jo Montgomery, chief clerk, magistrate court (T or C), 6/13/1999
Before David Ray attracted national attention, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, was just another small, sleepy community. Population 6,000. Most of the residents were “snowbirds,” folks who moved there for the spectacular weather (355 days of sunshine a year, according to the Sierra County Sentinel). The average age of residents was fifty-eight years old. Six months before Ray put T or C on the map, Andrew Alexander, president of the chamber of commerce, made a few off-the-cuff comments on the local state of mind.
“Before 1998, there was a sentiment that nothing’s going to happen around here, which troubled some, but pleased those who wanted it to stay small and quiet,” said Alexander. “Now there’s a sentiment that something is going to happen, and that troubles people, too, but I think it brings them together.”
It took only two days in the spring of 1999 for David Parker Ray to bring the community together.
Local leaders had declared 1998 to be “the Year of the Bible,” and by Tuesday night, March 23, many elderly people in the retirement community felt like 1999 was truly going to be called “the Year of the Devil.” They were in a state of panic over the allegations that the nearby city of Elephant Butte might be home to a group of crazed sexual sadists. People were up in arms.
The state’s “top cop” quickly called a town hall meeting to allow people to express their fear and anger.
Darren White, head of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, dropped his busy schedule in Albuquerque and hurriedly flew into the tiny Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport. He was picked up by state police and rushed to the meeting. He sat at a small table in front of several hundred worried people and calmly tried to answer as many questions