Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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David Parker Ray (November 6, 1939 – May 28, 2002), also known as the Toy-Box Killer, was an American kidnapper, torturer, rapist and suspected serial killer. Though no bodies were found, Ray was accused by his accomplices of killing several women, and was suspected by the police to have murdered as many as sixty women from Arizona and New Mexico while living in Elephant Butte, approximately seven miles north of Truth or Consequences.

Ray soundproofed a semi-trailer, which he called his "toy box", and equipped it with items used for sexual torture. He would kidnap between five and six women a year, holding each of them captive for around three to four months. During this period he would sexually abuse his victims, sometimes involving his dog or his wife (who participated willingly in her husband's crimes), and often torture them with surgical instruments. Then Ray would drug them with barbiturates in an attempt to erase their memories of what had happened before abandoning them by the side of the road.

Ray was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 2001, for which he received a lengthy sentence, but he was never convicted of murder. He died of a heart attack about one year after his convictions in two cases (the second of which resulted in a plea deal).

In obtaining 2000 pages of documents from the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and Federal Bureau of Investigation, I discovered transcripts of other tapes the "Toy Box Killer" recorded throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This tape is a graphic tape about a prostitute Ray would do business with and abuse in Arizona. This is a reconstruction using 11.ai, as the tape is presently unavailable for listening.