Serial Killers

While it is a mark of camp culture to reference sadomasochism and sexuality as a game or dungeon pursuit, David Parker Ray made this a reality. His custom built $100,000 trailer full of torture devices and S & M paraphernalia gives testimony to the deeply rooted deviancy at work in his nature. The instinct to abduct, torture, and kidnap women and maintain a level of pain and continual submission has no redeeming social value. The killing was premeditated, a lust crime, and a manipulation of control and dominance over an undeserving victim.

Unlike many profiled serial killers, David Parker Ray had a clean rap sheet and few problems with others. His disturbing sex hobbies were kept under wraps and only carelessness led to his arrest. David Parker Ray derived no monetary or other profit from his crimes, such as video earnings, internet publicity, or book royalties from memoirs or movie deals. In fact, David Parker Ray did not survive long in prison although the judge afforded him 224 years, plenty of time to get the hang of incarceration.

Most human beings will luckily not have any contact with evil such as Ray inflicted and created in his “Toy Box’. the specifics of the crime scene involved a litany of unorthodox items serving as weapons or instruments of torture for the use of by Ray and his girlfriend Jessy. At trial Ray’s daughter was charged and may have been involved in “roping” or luring victims to the Toy Box or other locations where Ray secured their persons involuntarily. Kidnapping and conspiracy were just as biting offenses to the ultimate trial as the sexual abuse, as Cynthia V. Hill had been taken across state lines from Oregon.

David Parker Ray was a serial killer of the sexual sadist type, employing isolation mechanisms toward his girlfriend to encourage her participation. Ray had recorded tapes of his voice playing over sound systems in the Toy Box, while chained victims squirmed under torture and applied instruments of physical pain. The glib summation of events after the fact minimizes the chaotic worry of relatives and the panic caused in a small town aptly named Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. With each media report neighbors grew understandably more concerned.

As recently as 1999 David Ray utilized his personal torture chamber on a victim named Angela Moreno. Her pleadings to be returned to her son found a chord in Ray, who was used from then on to targeting a prostitute. Curiously Angela’s filed report of electrical shock, torture and rape was not followed up by local police, even after David Ray’s arrest. Only when the victim came forward were her reports taken seriously because her past as a prostitute “diminished” her testimony. Angela would die at 25 years of age due to accelerated post-traumatic drug use and pneumonia.

The catalog of torture and sadism paraphernalia found in the David Ray Toy Box was extensive. Electrical equipment, specialized medical devices, anatomy books, and recorded audio and video items of David Ray and his activities were all found inside the trailer. If Hendy had removed the items linking the runaway victim to the couple, prosecution might have been much more difficult. The broken lamp, confrontation weapon, and adult toys and accessories spoke volumes. As it was, prosecution despite the literal mountain of evidence proved thorny for the courts.

The ability of David Parker Ray to purchase, design, install and use such equipment on people is proof of both premeditation and lack of insanity. The absurdity of a trial was underlined by the clear lack of situational or ‘crime of passion” elements to David Ray’s killing methods. Hendy’s revised statements to police after pursuing a reduced sentence show that David Parker Ray may have murdered many more people but his under-the-radar profile left few clues and no trail for the FBI.

Just the names of the items found in David Ray’s “toolbox’ have a quality of a salacious and unappetizing lexicon of horror; metal and leather bindings, “leg spreaders”, dog collars, clamps, hooks, straps, and more. Chains, locks, handcuffs, bindings, gags, and other items were used to repeatedly subdue and rape victims and instill fear again and again.

David Ray was a lanky, 50ish man who worked a blue collar job. His aim was not for glamour or riches but concentrated escalation of sexual desire in an illicit manner. His perception of the victims was as a practical aid to his sex life, nothing more. Appreciation for human life was all but eradicated. Ray’s lack of remorse and ludicrous protestations of innocence, together with the avalanche of physical evidence brand him one of the most disturbed serial killers America has ever seen.

But Ray was not foolish enough to keep bodies stacked in the basement or underneath the nearby soil. By drugging his victims and subjecting them to torture, he was breaking down any further witnesses into states of unacceptable lack of reality. Even after a conviction, the loopholes in the legal system of the courts strangely assisted his attorneys in breaking down witness and causing mistrials. Ray’s daughter had hinted years earlier to police about a white slavery ring to police, and journals tracking every victim and “lockdown” procedures in Ray’s handwriting survived to exhibit his intent.

David Parker Ray’s trailer in Elephant Butte, New Mexico would become famous as a “dungeon” where he imprisoned victims for sexually sadistic torture and death. There was a gynecologist chair, suspension rigging, belts, whips, chains and various accessories commonly found in adult stores and shops. Ray had made an instructional video of his activities and left evidence all over the trailer, with no attempt made to dispose of or destroy incriminating items.

David Parker Ray’s accomplices are equally notorious by association. Cindy Hendy was a tough woman with a past history of untenable relationships, jobs, and friends. Her assistance subduing and guarding Ray’s victims, as well as participation in the sadistic torture, earned her prosecution by state and local authorities. Laundry lists of psychological and applied torture methods, personal reminders, and detailed drawings of Ray’s sadistic plans shattered any attempt to prove lack of premeditation.

The “Toy Box” attracted notoriety in the media after Ray’s arrest. Crime scene photos displayed the medical instruments that became sadistic torture devices when applied to victims. With the erotic focus on Ray’s own narcissistic power ‘trip”, the torture and murder of innocent victims merited nothing less than the death penalty. The need to cause pain and death was exhibited by David Parker Ray throughout his serial killer career. Astonishingly, both Ray and Hendy pleaded not guilty to charges.

Conveniently, David Ray had a heart attack during the end of his trial and served only a few years in prison. The body of Billy Ray Bowers was found in 1989, a curious coincidence as this was David Parker Ray’s boss. If not for the escaped victim, and the subsequent arrest of both Glenda Jessy Ray’s involvement and David Roy Yancy for the death of Marie Parker, the string of four victims might have been much longer. Some who followed the crime coverage and the trial suspect unknown victims of David Ray’s may lie unacknowledged under the New Mexico sands, reservoir, and waterways.

Hendy was sentenced to 36 years imprisonment. Yancy’s accounts suggested both complicity and fear of David Ray when better instincts surfaced. Proof of restraint against one’s will is difficult when one party claims an S & M lifestyle is at work and all parties are consenting adults. Ray was careful not to kidnap young girls or young men, and trusted nobody he felt he could not control or intimidate with his secret. Ray’s extreme pursuit of sexual torture may have had a beginning in his adolescence, but predictably none have survived to tell the tale.

In all David Parker Ray was responsible for the deaths of anywhere from 14-60 people. He claims to have killed at least one person per year during his reign of terror, but we will never know for sure as direct evidence is lacking.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.

Why is Ted Bundy so mesmerizing a media figure? The sensation surrounding this most deadly of killers stems from his repeated and almost gleefully enthusiastic transgression of the most precious and sacred of human shibboleths, the taking of human life. But perhaps also later in his career he became enamored of his profile as a deadly serial killer, obtaining for once in his life that “specialness”, celebrity, and recognition he felt denied him elsewhere. He was executed in 1989, a Death Row “star”.

Bundy managed his media exposure and heightened his celebrity throughout his incarceration, giving manipulative interviews and only rarely revealing the real ego driving the cruelty and killing lust that drove him. In the act, Ted Bundy’s compulsion to kill was hardly a welcome one. He had to drink alcohol to prep for the murderous cruising of women, and became addicted to conducting sexual activities with the dead corpses of his prey. Bundy pursued an alien track of life at a right angle to the course of normal people.

Much has been made of Ted Bundy’s love of the good life and his theft habits as a lifeline to luxury and status. But whereas a smarter man might have used his brutal temperament to leverage a fortune from killing for profit, Ted Bundy succumbed again and again to his lust to kill to substantiate participation in his necrophiliac sexual exploits. Bundy studied law in college and put a lot of effort into fooling the people he met about who he really was. In the 1970’s, American social attitudes and class barriers still existed enough to make Ted Bundy look like a great “catch” to the newcomer to his orbit.

Society is fortunate that Bundy was too attracted to his sexual lusts and killing to pursue a criminal cursus honorum that might seriously have jeopardized even more lives. The type of crime Bundy committed did not appreciate or devolve to a fatal killing spree, but was an unending pattern. Experts surmise ted Bundy was caught because he got sloppy about avoiding likely situations to get caught in. Stealing cars, especially Volkswagens, was a trademark that painted a target on his back during his two escapes.

Ted Bundy is not only one of the most recognized serial killers ever, but even within the category of crazed sadomasochists which comprise the murderers of all time, Bundy is known for his unrepentant and vicious attitude toward his victims. While Ted Bundy is constantly classified as a smart, good looking law student, his real pathology may be as the incestuous offspring of his own grandfather with his aunt/sister. Much is made of the stepfather relationship, yet Ted withdrew from family life early on.

Born Theodore Robert Cowell, Ted Bundy adopted his stepfather’s surname yet became eclipsed by the younger four children and “second family” dynamic in the Bundy household. His loner years in high school and avoidance of normal social interaction established a personality living on a moral island, stealing and murdering to suit his whim. Ted Bundy’s sharp temper, weird upbringing, and unwarranted aggression against the dozens of victims he claimed make him one of the most fearsome and loathed serial killers in American history.

Ted Bundy was a successful serial killer simply because he focused on success as a serial killer. He targeted young, single women who would likely respond in a friendly manner to an attractive young man like Ted appeared to be. Ted Bundy seemed to want to cut off young women in the first bud of a career, choosing upmarket sorority girls and ambitious college women. His sexual motif was to enjoy sexual “liaisons” with the bodies after death, for much longer than it is appetizing to consider.

Ted Bundy posed as a helpless, sometimes injured man needing help moving something into his car or getting something bulky out of it. Picking up women in bars, clubs, university or college campuses, even liquor stores could be easy for a practiced predator with a deadly smile. Bundy seemed to almost concentrate on bright, pretty girls with beautiful eyes and engaging smiles, and then proceed to strangle their futures away from them. Attending the University of Puget Sound and the University of Washington gave him this opportunity.

Drawing women to where he could force them into the car, Ted’s modus operandi changed a casual come-on to a deadly snare. Bundy would target women too young to have enough experience to be wary, and avoided looking or dressing like the high school nerd and loner he once was. Up until the moment he outright killed his victims, Bundy might be accused of being no more than arrogantly aggressive, in an era when date rape and self-defense were almost strictly the badge of extremely assertive women. Society and American culture was still trusting enough and innocent enough that woman might interact with a young man and not expect death at the end of the conversation.

Ted Bundy may have appeared as a charming and attractive law student to the many women who fell for his predatory come-ons, but it was all an act. To the women and girls he made away with and killed, their bodies were sexual playthings he toyed with after death, applying makeup to the corpses and performing sexual acts until decomposition stayed even his jaded sensibilities from further abuse. Bundy ended the lives of dozens of young women, attractive females with bright smiles and bright futures. Bundy derived sexual satisfaction and deviant psychological glee from outsmarting police. Ted Bundy actually escaped police twice, being re-apprehended due to driving a stolen car.

Bundy’s success at luring women to their doom is an awful testimony to the concentration and skill Bundy applied to his cause. Faking a broken arm, broken leg, or some physical ailment that rendered him both nonthreatening and appealing, Bundy would ask for help that would lure the victim to his car or vehicle. Taken by surprise, the victim would soon be a mere corpse for Bundy’s necrophilia fun. The lexicon of victims for Ted Bundy is nauseatingly long, and reveals how many women were completely unsuspecting that a nice young man could have designs on them other than mere socialization.

Bundy had two phases to his murder career. His primary phase stemmed from his upbringing and took the form of an experimental abduction of an 8-year old neighbor girl, although Bundy never formally confessed to this. Bundy, like many incarcerated serial killers, adopted a strange attitude after initial prosecution and sentencing. Due to the backlog of unsolved cases, Bundy obtained plea bargaining and reduction in sentence after confessing to many other deaths, abductions, and disappearances of young women.

Bundy wore one face for criminal prosecution interviews, and another during “private life”. A series of quotes reveal how partitioned his personality was from a normal, well-adjusted human being. The ego attached to this killer belied contempt for human life not his own rarely paralleled even in the annals of serial killer summaries. Bundy would have gone on killing endlessly, a fact noted by many legal experts. His impersonation of police officers and other figures, together with his enthusiasm for disguises, showed the analysis of a law student towards escaping justice for his crimes.

His trail of terror began in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1970’s (and possibly the late 1960’s). There is some dispute as to whether Bundy killed in his teens. He cruised high schools and colleges, and drew onward through Utah, Colorado, and Idaho through the late 1970’s. Caught and put on trial, Bundy escaped the Aspen, Colorado proceedings by jumping out of the jail window via the law library. Even after being caught, Bundy escaped again from Glenwood Springs jail.

Bundy’s insatiable appetite for killing eventuated in the Chi Omega murders, in a rampage at Florida State University shortly after his second escape. Possibly Bundy felt he had to make up for lost time, or perhaps felt he only had a short window in which to kill before being apprehended again. Bundy violently assaulted and killed a half dozen young sorority girls, then moved on to murder a 12 year old girl days later. The trail of evidence from these crimes would electrify the court into a death sentence verdict.

Bundy never expressed real remorse for his deeds, simply adopted whatever pose of the moment suited him after sentencing to stay his electrocution or negotiate a deal. When asked about the body location of the 12-year old girl he’d killed, he reacted by saying “But I’m the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet”. Bundy. At the end, seemed to make his law education pay off. Bundy attempted to utilize his celebrity as a means to curry favor to open new channels and possible delays in his sentenced death.

While today forensics might forestall the scope of another Ted Bundy killer, this individual was an unwelcome example of how a murderer at large can end the lives of so many before being caught.

In total Ted Bundy confessed to over 30 killings but the total number may be as high as 100. Only he knows for sure but he isn’t telling as he was put to death in 1989 in the U.S. state of Florida.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.

How does a boy born in Washington D. C. in the 1870’s grow up into one of the most unspeakable serial killers of all time? The Werewolf of Wisteria earned this and many other epithets as his normal demeanor belied a demented child molester, abductor and murderer. Hamilton Howard Fish – aka – Albert Fish, and The Gray Man, presented as a grandfatherly old-timer with genteel leanings, yet his hidden true self was a saturated prism of unspeakable lusts and forbidden practices.

The nature of the killings of Albert Fish are more gruesome and detached from a human sensitivity than maybe any other serial killer. Trophy “recipes” prepared by Fish from the bodies of victims display the power politics whereby he enjoyed sexual pleasure. The playfulness of emotion is stomach-turning. Albert Fish admitted to some killings but may have been guilty of a hundred murders.

The times would ordinarily not produce such a psychotic misfit. But Fish had a father who was over forty years older than his mother when he was born. The man was 75 years old when Albert Fish was born and suffered a heart attack shortly after. His mother had to give him up for adoption due to financial hardship. A history of mental illness ran in the character of almost every relative he had. Yet ironically he was first imprisoned for embezzlement!

The programming in the orphanage caused erections during whippings and his lifelong tendency toward the unsavory sexual or behavioral escapade was set. A fascination with the consumption of feces, drinking urine, and castrating other men and boys happened early. Fish molested many small boys when working as a house painter. The sheer volume of Fish’s victims leaves an uneasy trail of wariness, since abused children tend to become abusive parents and adults later on.

The abduction and rape episodes reveal how crafty Fish was premeditating his crimes. He believed mentally retarded men and African Americans at that time would not be pursued or valued as highly as white normal victims. Small children and unwitting acquaintances became dinner menu items in the company of Albert Fish. Fish never acquainted himself with companion murderers, peers, friends, or any kind of social network within his evil mindset and alter ego.

The transition from religious orphanage survivor to explicitly deranged erotic adventurer, Fish seemed to arrive directly at the mature stage of his sexual exploits without a “rehearsal’ or debut period common to serial killers. Sexual extremism from the homosexual tinge may have laid some groundwork, but the actual consumption of human flesh identifies the enjoyment of the taboo, the illicit, the most distasteful and unsound of pursuits.

The unbroken record of his victims is a sad testimony to law enforcement technology and practices of the times. Like many serial killers, Fish exploited a naïve civilization where a pleasant appearance and deprecating manner could allow unthinkable risks to innocent children and other victims.

Albert Fish lived in his own world, without achievement, social redemption, or moral judgment. His religious commitments and beliefs seem less like orthodox Christianity and more like a dogma he could upend to create perverted pleasure against. Fish referred to the pain of his upcoming electrocution as a new thrill. The motif of a mature, bowler-hatted gentleman in that era who practiced the most vicious and deviant homicide acts defies acceptable reason.

Answering newspaper advertisements for young men and widows yielded his victims. The extremes of the Albert Fish personality set against the façade of the natty silver-haired oldster is a terrifying last image for any murder victim. One can imagine the terror of an unsuspecting child or youth when the eyes of lust and manic perversion were suddenly and fatally revealed. The language of the Albert Fish letters is both deranged and lurid, detailed and erratically graphic.

Tricking a young girl into her doom when supposedly en route to a party, writing obscene letters, or pursuing sexual practices lurid even in the early 1930’s, Albert Fish was a monster with no qualification unearned. His modus operandi included stripping himself to deflect evidence and gore, and stewing the fruits of his deadly labor at his rooming house. His steady career of abduction, killing, and cannibalistic cuisine is a horror show to even the most leaden sensibilities.

By 1928, Hamilton Howard (Albert) Fish the family man had become an almost anachronistic serial killer whose tendencies were starting to flower into real abductions and targeting unsuspecting victims. A stint serving as a male prostitute in Europe briefly had trained Fish’ appetites. But Albert Fish had evolved beyond mere sexual deviancy. Fish’ benign manner belied his predatory traits.

Born in 1870, the crimes of alcoholism or mental problems were not always excesses. Yet Albert Fish was a young painter and decorator, whose orphanage upbringing whetted an appetite for S & M. The father of six children encouraged the kids to spank him with a nail studded paddles. Sadomasochistic homosexuality in his private life foreshadowed dangerous proclivities.

Hamilton Fish was the kind of serial killer who wrote the parents of his victim (Grace Budd) describing her murder and then the cooking habits of preparing the dead flesh for consumption. Fish dissected his victims and enjoyed a sexual thrill consuming their flesh. The morbid “afterlife” influence may have been somewhat vampire induced as a fantasy role.

A deep rooted belief in religion may have colored the dark edges of Fish’s imagination without limit. Fish’s death at Sing Sing killed that infamous appetite although not without difficulty. The masochistic insertion of needles into his body was shown by an x-ray revealing twenty seven needles in his pelvic area. The metal short circuited the electric chair and the effort had to be adjusted before Albert Fish was ended.

In all Albert Fish was tagged with the murder of only three people, though Fish suggested he may have murdered as many as 100. We may never know just how many people Albert Fish killed.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.