Slow Death:. James Fielder
I was going to aircraft mechanics school in Tulsa and we didn’t have much money. One day, out of the clear blue sky, my wife decided she was going to bring home the bacon for us by . . . becoming a whore. I didn’t like it at all, but it sure paid the bills. I still thought about the fantasy sometimes and she let me tie her up a couple of times, but that was it. I had this dungeon downstairs in our house and most of the time she didn’t have the slightest idea what I was up to. By the late 1970s, I was designing custom-made torture equipment and selling the stuff in Screw magazine.
“I left her in 1981 when I found her in my bed with another man. It was her day off, so I knew it didn’t have anything to do with money. I walked out the next day with Joannie Lee, her sister-in-law.
“We drove to California and for the next year we lived in Grass Valley, up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We grew marijuana up in the hills for a year and lived out of our trailer, and then one day we just decided to leave. We wanted to get regular jobs. We drove down to the turnoff at Death Valley—the spot where the road forks one way to Las Vegas and the other way to Phoenix. We flipped a coin and I won, so we went to Phoenix.
“I got a job as a mechanic at Canal Motors, a used-car dealership in Phoenix. We got married in 1983 and I changed my name back to my mother’s maiden name, Parker. We were David and Joanie Lee Parker. I still had the fantasy, and about every six or eight months, I would get the urge. I can’t tell you what it felt like working around all that temptation—anytime of day you could see them—hookers—four or five of them walking by, night and day. I started hiring girls to help relieve the pressure of my fantasy. I’d hire a hooker to do the dirty deed and pay her three hundred dollars an hour.
“I’d whip them, but I’d never break the skin—never. We had a code word we would use when it got too rough. When it got too painful for one of them, all they had to do was say the code word out loud.”
“And what was that word?” asked Special Agent Schum.
“Raspberry,” answered Ray.
“That’s all?” asked Schum.
“Yeah, raspberry, that’s all.
“There was no way Joannie Lee would take part in the fantasy. She knew what I liked, but she wouldn’t let me use her. She was jealous of the fantasy. We kind of drifted apart. Over the years she just got more and more crazy. She was having epilepsy attacks and she started drinking real heavy, and one time she held a pistol up to my head. I couldn’t take it anymore. Finally I had to send her home to her mother in Pennsylvania. That was 1994, and after she left, I changed my name back to David Ray.
“For the next three years, it was just me and the fantasy.
“I’m past the point where therapists can help me. One year I had six different shrinks. I tried to change, but it didn’t do no good. Anyway, it didn’t seem like some of ’em was too bright in the head. They didn’t understand my problem, I guess you could say.
“By 1994 I was getting the urge every two or three months. After that, it really got worse, especially after I started taking Viagra. I even started taking other pills to suppress my sex drive. Nothing worked. I have this master sketch notebook of drawings—some of them are real frightening. The sketches kind of track the progress of the fantasy. If the FBI would like, I’ll give you the drawings. Maybe you could help other people with the same problem. If I can help other people, I’d be glad to—it’s a curse that destroys your life.”
Agent Schum thanked Ray for the offer.
“I also read a lot of true-crime books,” added David. “They kinda fuel the fantasy. I’ve been collecting books on serial killers for the last fifteen years. I’ve read all twelve of the Ted Bundy books and, of course, I really like Stephen King. I also like Dean Koontz. I read a book by Christine McGuire called Perfect Victim in 1989, and after that, I changed the way I did things. The killer in the book used to put a woman’s head inside a box so she couldn’t see what was going on around her and that really turned me on. I’ve got a library of about seventy-five true-crime books and the FBI can have those, too.”
Again, John Schum thanked David Ray for his generosity.
“I was real lonely before I met Cindy Hendy. She moved here in 1997 and I met her after she got into trouble for fighting with one of her boyfriends—I think his last name was Arrey. Judge Fitch sentenced her to do community service work at Elephant Butte State Park, where I work. The first day I met her, she told me in a real matter-of-fact voice, ‘I don’t like women, and I don’t like men much, either.’
“It didn’t take long until I fell madly in love with her—even right now, I love her dearly.
“I did not discuss this thing from my past with Cindy. . . . I’m a very private person and I’m very ashamed of this hang-up. Slowly I manipulated her to my fantasy. She allowed me to do anything to her body, even though she didn’t like it. I softened my fantasies for her because I didn’t want to alienate her. Once I showed her my album of drawings and it scared her.”
Special Agent Schum and David Ray did their dance for several more hours. Schum used the same mellow, easygoing approach that worked so well for him so many other times when he was facing down a difficult and intelligent criminal. At one point Ray reminded Schum that he knew Schum was a profiler and he realized Schum was just doing his job. Finally, when it looked safe, Ray gave Schum his best shot. And Agent Schum listened with professional respect for what he thought David was trying to say.
“I am potentially dangerous,” said Ray. “I’m like a time bomb—and one way or the other, the problem stops here. I’m fantasizing about ten- and eleven-year-old girls, so if it takes a sterilization, that’s what I’ll do, you know. I’m serious about that. I like to cause pain, but I don’t like to physically, actually hurt a girl. I’m old and I’m tired and there’s not going to be any more incidents.
“I get the urge every two or three months now,” said Ray. “This thing is ruining my life. I’ve been having the fantasy since I was ten years old, and gradually it has gotten worse and worse. The fantasy is a curse for everyone around me, but somehow I’m going to beat it, one way or the other.”
CHAPTER 9
Roy’s not a violent person at all. He can’t even spank my kid, much less murder anybody.
—Christina Yancy, before visiting her husband, Roy, in the Truth or Consequences Jail, 4/11/1999
On April 9, 1999, agents from the FBI and the New Mexico State Police arrested twenty-seven-year-old Dennis Roy Yancy, a close friend of David Ray’s, Jesse Ray’s and Cindy Hendy’s. He was arrested at the Black Range Restaurant in T or C, where he had just started a job as a fry cook only ninety minutes before police hauled him away. Doug Beldon, tight-lipped agent in charge of the FBI investigation, issued a brief press release on the arrest of the third suspect in the David Parker Ray case.
“We arrested Dennis Roy Yancy, charging him with the July ’97 kidnapping and murder of Marie Parker.”
Jackie Williams, owner of the Black Range Restaurant and Motel, was there when the police rushed in and handcuffed Yancy. “He was a clean, good-looking guy,” she said. “I thought he was going to be a good cook. He made real good biscuits. He was staying in room eighteen of the motel and the FBI agents investigating him were staying just three doors down in room fifteen. It was crazy! I think he knew they were hot on his heels. Roy was staying with his wife and her little girl and, I swear, he was constantly on the phone, tying up our only phone line in the office. When they arrested him, he went quietly.”
On Saturday, April 10, Roy Yancy took the police out to an isolated stretch of Highway 195, north of T or C and west of Elephant Butte Lake. They were hoping to dig up the body of Marie Parker. The rolling hills were covered with creosote bushes and stretched for miles in all directions. After digging all day, the authorities came up empty-handed. By this time, Yancy had not pleaded guilty, but he was completely cooperating with the police. On the drive back to town, Roy turned to a police investigator from the NMSP