Search for Ray victims yields glasses

ELEPHANT BUTTE, N.M. (KRQE) - Dozens of federal and state officers who arrived by boat scoured McRae Canyon Tuesday looking for confirmation a sexual sadist is also a murderer.

They were hoping to find the remains of women linked to David Parker Ray, a convicted kidnapper and rapist who may be a serial killer.

They didn't find any human remain, but did not go away empty-handed.

After three hours of searching on the eastern shore of Elephant Butte Lake searchers picked up a pair of glasses as they were leaving the area Tuesday afternoon.

"We wouldn't have been out here if we didn't have good idea of where we were supposed to look," FBI Special Agent Frank Fisher said. "We're in the correct area,"

When locals found out McRae's canyon was the focus of the search, they were not surprised.

"It's kind of a deep canyon back in there," Bradley Steinmiller said.  "He could have gone back in quite a ways and hidden stuff."

More than 20 FBI agents and officers from the New Mexico State Police set out from the marina on the west side of the lake earlier in afternoon with what they said was new and very credible information.

That led them to McRae Canyon where they began combing the landscape for things like clothing, glasses and bones.

Authorities suspect Ray was not only a serial rapist but also a serial murderer. He died in prison in 2002 the year after he was convicted of kidnap and rape involving three women who survived being tortured in a shed behind Ray's Elephant Butte home.

Ray claimed to have kidnapped up to 40 women, and authorities believe he may have killed some of them and dumped their bodies at the Butte.

Searchers took those glasses into evidence and also recorded satellite-based coordinates of areas still to be searched with more sophisticated equipment.

"We'll be back in the near future with a smaller team to be able to look in further depth in a few areas we have questions about," Fisher said.

The agencies involved have not said when they plan to return to those areas they marked.

Searchers say the drought has the lake at its lowest levels in years, so the can now look in areas they couldn't get to before.

Ray lived near the Butte until his arrest in 1999. While he had confessed to murdering nearly 40 women from different states, investigators have never been able to locate the bodies.

New information on the case combined with low water levels have provided conditions for authorities to search the lake bed.

Ray was arrested after a woman wearing only a dog collar and pad lock chains escaped from his house of horrors.

Ray's girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped kidnap and torture the women. She accidentally left a set of keys out, that's how the woman escaped, bringing Ray's reign of terror to an end.

Hendy is serving 36 years in prison.

Soon after, investigators discovered what Ray called his “Toy Box,” a shed filled with various torture devices including a gynecological chair, straps, hooks, chains and sex toys. Ray is said to have fondly referred to the items as his “friends.”

A man who did cement work for Ray spoke with News 13 and said he believes some of the bodies may have been encased in tires and sent to the bottom of the lake.

Ray was sentenced to more than 200 years behind bars for the sexual assault of three women but died of a heart attack behind bars less than a year later.

Investigators are hoping Tuesday’s search will turn up the remains of Jill Troia, an Albuquerque woman who was last seen at the Frontier restaurant in 1995.

Troia was the girlfriend of Ray’s daughter, Glenda “Jesse” Ray.