Slow Death:. James Fielder

      CHAPTER 5

      Grabbing a hooker is easier than grabbing a housewife.

      —David Parker Ray audiotape, recorded in 1993 and seized by the FBI in 1999

      By early April 1999, over one hundred FBI and NMSP agents were swarming all over the David Ray property at 513 Bass Road. Many of them were wearing white jump-suits and masks and digging in the yard. Others wore surgical gloves and concentrated on what evidence they could find inside the white cargo trailer and the brown-and-white mobile home Ray used as a house.

      Eleven days after he was arrested, Ray claimed another victim when Patty Rust killed herself after spending four days inside the toy box making detailed drawings for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

      The day after Rust killed herself, Jim Yontz took a stroll through the toy box. He wondered why the FBI sent a woman into a torture chamber when everybody working the case suspected that other women had been literally “frightened to death” by the tall, skinny mechanic with a reputation for being “good with his hands.”

      When Yontz walked up to the rear end of the $100,000 handmade chamber of horrors, he first noticed the 7259-TRJ New Mexico license plate. There was an Arizona Highway Patrol Association decal right next to it that said I SUPPORT THE BEST. The trailer was jacked up on wooden blocks and Yontz noticed it didn’t have any windows. He walked up the four steps and opened what had previously been a double dead-bolted, steel-reinforced door.

      He immediately spotted a can of Folgers coffee. The Charles Manson Family had killed Abigail Folger in 1969 and Yontz wondered if David Ray was paying his respects in some sicko kind of way. Next to the coffee can was a box of Kellogg’s corn flakes and a small refrigerator. Hanging on the wall was a roll of paper towels that said HOME-SWEET-HOME.

      After that, it got ugly.

      On the left wall, Jim noticed a large white sign with big red block letters that identified David Ray’s name for his little private hideaway: SATAN’S DEN. Next to the big sign was a smaller white sign with black underlined letters that identified what Yontz was about to see: THE BONDAGE ROOM. Down at the other end of the trailer was a hand-lettered sign that said I AM RATHER BUSY—WOULD YOU PISS OFF!

      Standing right next to the Satan’s Den sign was a tall tripod with a very expensive RCA Victor camcorder pointing toward a large black leather table/chair rigged up with metal stirrups, electrodes and dozens of red plastic straps. Hanging from the ceiling next to what looked like the gynecology table was an RCA Victor television set, positioned so the female victims could see what Ray was doing to them.

      Walking up the left side of the chamber, Yontz saw a coat hanger with a long black robe hanging from it. The robe had a red cape. There was a bussinesslike clipboard hanging next to the robe and Yontz noticed that Ray had what looked like a “roll call” list of victims he’d kidnapped between 1993 and 1997. Yontz knew that was the period of time after his fourth wife, Joannie Lee, divorced him and before the time he met his last live-in lover, Cindy Hendy. He read the list and tried not to let his emotions get in the way. It wasn’t easy. Each nameless woman on the list had cowboylike “notch marks” after their date of capture.

      Halfway down the left-hand wall, Yontz walked up to a large cork bulletin board covered with color and black-and-white photographs and black-and-white drawings of women—all being tortured. A sign above the bulletin board seemed to sum up the driving force behind David Ray: THE LURE OF SATANISM.

      The photographs showed women in various stages of bondage. Yontz’s attention was first drawn to a young redheaded woman, naked, with her hands tied behind her back. She was gagged with a red bandanna and looking the camera right in the eye. Her eyes seemed to be smiling. Another picture showed a woman in obvious pain. Her naked breasts were hog-tied at the base with circles of constricting white rope, making them bulge. Old-fashioned wooden clothespins were attached to each nipple and her face seemed smothered in fear. A third picture showed a faceless woman tied down to a bench press with her legs forced wide apart. Bruises covered her body, especially the inside of her thighs.

      Posted next were a series of “drawings” showing the stages in which Ray liked to torture women. One showed a table with a woman arching her back in pain, her wrists and ankles tied together behind her back. A handwritten sign above her body read NEW TABLE FOR CHURCH RITUALS. The drawing below showed how to hog-tie a woman to the “gynecology table,” one step at a time. Another drawing showed a woman down on her hands and knees attached to something Ray called his “doggie frame.” Still another showed a woman hanging from the ceiling by her ankles and hands with a man below her inserting two dildos into the two openings between her legs. The man playing doctor wore a satanic pentangle around his neck and resembled a much younger version of David Parker Ray, mustache and all.

      Stapled next to the photographs and drawings was a detailed warning list prepared by Ray. Yontz copied the wicked list from top to bottom and noticed Ray hadn’t forgotten a single detail.