Slow Death:. James Fielder
“It was over in minutes.
“Cindy’s youngest kid is Muffy. She’s twelve now and she’s the one who really hates her mother. When Cindy got arrested, Muffy only had one thing to say.
“ ‘Good.’
“Her dad—his name was Doug—was a drug dealer who died when she was a kid. Cindy used to fire up coke a little bit, but Muffy’s dad was a real ‘banger.’ Can you imagine how that kid feels when she realizes that her father died of a drug overdose when she was only four years old?
“She’ll never see him again.
“Around Cindy, Muffy had to watch everything she said, or she’d get slapped. Muffy would always leave the room when her mother was around. Cindy would always have guys over and she’d tell Muffy, ‘You squeal on me and I’ll beat you.’ Her number one rule was that Muffy not rat on her.
“One time I went over to Cindy’s trailer and I knew that she hadn’t been feeding Muffy. There was almost no food in the refrigerator. Cindy was determined that she herself was not going to get over one hundred five pounds. She was real thin and fairly good-looking, and that was all she cared about.
“I’ll tell you a weird story about Muffy. Cindy used to live in this blue trailer up by the small town of Snohomish. One time Muffy was walking through the woods and she found one of her ‘blankies’ laying on the ground. There were four big butcher knives sticking in the ground and one of Muffy’s stuffed animals in the middle of the blanket, with a note.
“It said, ‘If you come back, I’ll kill you.’
“Muffy ran home, hysterical. Cindy claimed she didn’t know anything about it and moved out of the trailer the next day.
“Cindy took Muffy to New Mexico with her in 1997, when Muffy was only ten. She broke up with Youngblood and moved in with some guy named Arrey, and at night they would go out and party and leave Muffy locked in the trailer. One other time she ran off and left Muffy with the Mexicans. I think Cindy might have sold Muffy to the Mexicans for sex and that’s why Muffy hates her so much. When Cindy met David Ray, she told Muffy not to go near the torture trailer, but I think Muffy knew what was going on in there—and I think it scared the hell out of her.
“Muffy’s seen a lot. She doesn’t even act like a little girl anymore.
“Cindy always wanted animals as pets, but she never took care of them. She had a five-hundred-dollar German shepherd dog she wouldn’t feed and a three-hundred-dollar Persian cat that died. She was never satisfied with a mutt dog or a mutt cat.
“Her biggest problem in life, though, was violence.”
At this point in the conversation the man had switched to drinking straight shots of Captain Morgan’s rum. His tongue was loose.
“Let me tell you about her and violence!” he snorted.
“She liked to drink and she’d be fine until she had three or four drinks. Then she’d black out after that. Some girls have a button once they’ve had enough alcohol—they just go off. She’s still like that to this day—she’s a real Jekyll and Hyde. She’ll come after you with almost anything—even an ashtray. People have seen Cindy pick up boards and hit guys over the head and knock ’em out. I warned other girls not to fight with her—that girl was one hundred five pounds of pure muscle.
“She can take on a two-hundred-fifty-pound girl and take her out.
“She could get anything she wanted—all she had to do was talk away. But she’d interpret stuff wrong. She thought everybody was sayin’ something bad about her and then she would pick fights because she wanted to get rid of somebody.
“One time in a bar she got pretty violent. She was jumping on guys and beating on them. They were throwing her off. Then she started beating on women. She didn’t like fuckin’ women much; most of her friends were men. She left a lot of blood on the floor that night.
“Cindy is also a real jealous bitch. She was going out with my friend Kris, and one night Cindy was in the living room masturbating and Kris was in the bedroom screwing this big inflatable doll. Cindy finishes up and comes in the bedroom and sees what Kris is doin’ and freaks out. She runs in the kitchen and gets this big butcher knife and comes back into the bedroom and attacks the doll, screaming at Kris, ‘You love that thing more than you love me!’ Not long after that, she tried to poison him with rat poison. A little while later, she busted Kris over the head with a beer bottle and split his whole head wide open.
“I’m positive she doesn’t feel bad about anything she’s done. She doesn’t know right from wrong. All you gotta do is whip out a twenty-dollar bill and she’s yours. If you were hard up, you could always go to the store with her. You could always be straight up with her. You’d just have to give her a little ‘warm-up’ and she’d pull her pants down and then tell you to hurry up. She’s still that way, to this day.
“They got her dead to rights down in Truth or Consequences and she’s probably going to hang. She’s been in trouble all her life and she finally got caught. She played a little game of hopscotch with the law and the law won. I’m tellin’ ya—it’s the straight-up truth. The girl is a no-good bitch.
“David Ray better be careful, though. She’s the dumbest blonde you ever seen, but she’ll sell his ass out in a heartbeat.
“She’ll turn on him like a vicious dog.”
CHAPTER 7
I love reading books about serial killers, and now I’m living with one!
—Cindy Hendy, talking to a close friend,
February 1999
At 4:44 P.M., on the afternoon of April 6, Cindy Hendy cut a deal with Assistant DA Jim Yontz and cut all her ties to David Parker Ray.
She had been charged with twenty-five felony counts and was looking at 197 years in prison if convicted, so she figured it was time to save herself. After accepting the plea bargain in return for valuable testimony against Ray and Dennis Roy Yancy, she was only charged with five felony counts and was facing a sentence ranging from a high of fifty-four years to a low of only twelve years.
She pleaded guilty in the Seventh District Court of New Mexico and the court papers indicated she pleaded guilty to two counts of Kidnapping in the First Degree for helping David Ray kidnap Angie Montano and Cyndy Vigil during February and March 1999. Montano was nabbed on February 17 and held until February 21; Vigil was nabbed on March 20 and held until March 22. The walls came crumbling down around Cindy Hendy on the afternoon of March 22 when Vigil stabbed her in the neck and ran down Bass Road buck naked, blowing the lid off the case once and for all.
Hendy also got nailed for two counts of Sexual Penetration (Rape) in the Second Degree for helping Ray illegally enter the bodies of both victims. The court documents specifically note that Hendy pleaded guilty to helping Ray penetrate the anal opening of Angie Montano and the vaginal opening of Cyndy Vigil.
And, last of all, she pleaded guilty to one count of Conspiracy to Commit Kidnapping in the Second Degree. That was the one that probably proved to be the ultimate undoing of Ray and Hendy. In the springtime of 1999, Cindy Hendy was excited about becoming a grandmother for the first time and made plans to sneak home to Everett, Washington, sometime before April 11, when her daughter Heather was due to give birth. David Ray didn’t want her to go and told her if she wasn’t careful, he’d be “looking for love in all the wrong places,” according to Hendy’s friend John Ashbaugh. Ray demanded that she help him round up a “little play thing” he could torture while Hendy was back home in Washington State. Hendy agreed and the two drove to Albuquerque on March 20 and found a pimp to introduce them to a hooker along Highway 66. Her name was Cyndy Vigil.
The day after Cindy Hendy was arrested on March 22, she was interviewed by two NMSP officers: Sergeant K. C. Rogers and Agent Wesley LaCuesta. Hendy seemed relaxed during her conversations with the two male cops,