Chamber of Horrors

In March 1999 a bruised and bloodied 22-year-old girl, naked apart from a padlocked metal collar around her neck, burst into a house in the small city of Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, screaming for help and shaking with fear. Cyndi Vigil’s heroic escape and chilling tale of a three-day ordeal of rape and torture led to the arrest of David Parker Pay, 59, and his 39-year-old girlfriend Cynthia Hendy. Another of their victims came forward, Angie Montano, who told of her similarly harrowing experience at their hands less than a nonth before…but it emerged that these two girls were lucky to have escaped with their lives. Police soon discovered Ray and Hendy’s ‘toybox’, a windowless trailer beside Elephant Butte Lake. This was the $100,000 homemade torture chamber - complete with a black, leather-clad medical table, chains, pulleys and surgical saws - where Ray and Hendy had filmed their depraved ‘snuff movies’. Further evidence emerged implicating numerous of Ray’s ‘disciples’ in the horrific string of crimes. Although Cynthia Hendy eventually told police that Ray had killed 14 women, police believe that the true figure might be over 60.In this terrifying book, top true-crime author Jim Fielder gives us an insight into one of the most shocking cases in American history.