Slow Death

The black mask in the storage shed appears from the description given to be the mask or similar mask which (David) Ray has been observed wearing in video tapes which were seized from his residence and which were viewed by officers pursuant to previous search warrants.
—Police search warrant, 4/13/1999
Smoke was pouring out from between her legs, the sacred place where God had intended for this young woman to give birth to a baby someday.
Eight Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents watched the homemade videotape with a growing sense of horror crossing their somber faces. Their eyes followed the two people torturing the faceless victim—David Parker Ray, fifty-nine, and his girlfriend, Cynthia Lea Hendy, thirty-nine. The criminals hovered over the naked woman and stuck a hot cattle prod inside her vagina, watching her body writhe in pain. The agents kept their eyes on Ray and Hendy.
The federal investigators were sitting inside an eight-by twenty-five-foot white cargo trailer where the crime had taken place. The trailer was parked on the edge of Bass Road, along the shoreline of the largest lake in New Mexico—Elephant Butte Lake. The partners in crime lived on the outskirts of a small town cradled in the high, dry desert country of southern New Mexico—a strange place called Truth or Consequences.
The cops couldn’t take their eyes off the torture unfolding in front of them. The naked woman, spreadeagled on her back, was anchored to a black leather medical table by the red nylon straps on her wrists and her ankles. Her eyes and mouth were covered with silver duct tape. She could barely move.
David Ray was wearing a long black robe and his face was covered by a black leather mask sprinkled with gold glitter. He looked out through two large eyeholes. He laughed as he rammed the cattle prod inside the terrified woman. Cindy Hendy was waving a small handgun, threatening to kill the woman if she didn’t let the couple have their way with her.
Patty Rust and her fellow FBI agents watched the dying girl struggle to get free. It was clear to all of them that she’d