Читать книгу Slow Death: - James Fielder - Страница 10

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 as he knew the answers to (there still had not been charges filed) . One eighty-eight-year-old lady asked him what he was going to do about the “evil nightmare” that threatened the peace and quiet of her beloved desert home. White looked back at her, shaken.

“ The nightmare is behind bars,” he told her. “This is a safe community.”

The next day, Wednesday, March 24, David Ray and Cindy Hendy were brought to the magistrate court in T or C to face separate arraignment hearings in front of Magistrate Judge Thomas Pestak. They were both in chains and shackles. Hendy walked into the courtroom in her orange jail jumpsuit; the dour dishwater blonde told the swarming media in a hushed voice, “I’m innocent.... I’m afraid to talk.” David Ray, his face rough and wrinkled from years of working in the sun, shook his head and spoke softly after a reporter asked him if he “did it.”

“It didn’t happen that way,” he said.

Inside the courtroom, both suspects told Pestak they were too poor to pay for an attorney and each one asked for a public defender. Ray worked, but Hendy told the judge she was trying to get by on only $331 a month from her welfare check. Pestak listened to Socorro, New Mexico, prosecutor Jim Yontz present a list of twenty-five felony charges against each defendant. The charges included kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration (rape with dildos), aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy. If convicted of all charges, Ray and Hendy would each be sentenced to 197 years behind bars. Judge Pestak was concerned that Ray and Hendy might flee, so he set their bail high enough so that neither would try to make a run for it.

“One million dollars each,” he told them. “Cash.”

There was a true media feeding frenzy when the case broke. The New York Times and People magazine were on the scene. The Albuquerque Journal sent down several reporters. The supermarket tabloid the Globe had a reporter up in Everett, Washington, digging up the dirt on Cindy Hendy, and a reporter in T or C looking into David Ray’s past. CBS, NBC and ABC all had lead stories on the evening news that week. Television stations from all over New Mexico filled the twenty-two town motels. The Associated Press reporter and cameraman were everywhere, as were the three local T or C weeklies, the Sentinel, the Herald and the Desert Journal.

Local county sheriff Terry Byers watched the media mobs take over the two neighboring towns during those first few days of the investigation: “The first night we only had one television news truck and after Wednesday we had ten trucks here within hours.”

Major Bob Barnes of Elephant Butte complained that noisy helicopters were disrupting his traditional afternoon nap. He told a news conference that most of the people in town didn’t even lock their doors at night and now Elephant Butte was becoming famous as a haven for white-trash sadists.

“We feel violated,” he said.

When the Rio Grande was dammed in 1916 to create Elephant Butte Lake and more irrigation water for the farmers and ranchers of southern New Mexico, thousands of rattlesnakes congregated on an island that later became known as Rattlesnake Island. The island is right across the lake from where David Ray lived on his lease lot property at Hot Springs Landing.

Frances Baird was only seventeen years old when Ray was arrested, and she didn’t have any idea how nasty the story would be, but she was the only crime reporter for the Sentinel. When the story broke, she already had an inside scoop on what was going on “with that snake in the grass, David Ray.”

Her boyfriend, Byron Wilson, twenty-seven, was the park cop who arrested Ray and Hendy on the first afternoon.

During the first week of the investigation, the New Mexico State Police spearheaded the effort to collect evidence from Ray’s property, including—what Frances heard described as—shocking videotapes, possible “snuff” videos, and a bunch of audiotapes David had made to try to “freak out” the victims. She also heard that David used to call the cargo trailer his “play box”; that is, until Cindy Hendy talked him into renaming it the “toy box.”

It wasn’t long before the FBI started snooping around, sensing a blockbuster case. Frances nicknamed the New Mexico State Police “the Indians” and the man in charge of the FBI special agents “the Chief.” When Doug Beldon moved down from Albuquerque and set up a field office in T or C to supposedly help the NMSP gather more evidence, Frances used her connections to find out about the expanding case.

One afternoon Frances asked Beldon what was going to happen next.

“Are there any more suspects?” she asked him.

“I do expect more arrests,” he told her.

“What about victims?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “We think there might be many more.”