Kidnapping case against ray was on shaky ground. the good news for investigators, was that one of his victims, kelly van cleave, was recalling more and more of what happened to her. on july, 1996, she had been abducted from this once bustling bar on the outskirts of truth or consequences, new mexico. we rounded up a bunch of friends and went bar hopping. this where is we ended up. we always ended up here. no matter where we started, this is where we quit. and at the end of the evening, it was just me and jessi. jessi ray, david s daughter. jessi ray had told kelly she would give her a lift home. instead, she drove kelly to her father s house. the fact that it was his own daughter kidnapping just shows the depth of his resolve when it came to this behavior, and also showed his lack of emotional
Can take away what those women have to love with. david took too much of me away. i feel like i m a totally different person. i don t go anywhere, i don t trust anybody. i miss the old me. the one that used to be wild and crazy and sassy and wasn t scared. i would do just about anything to get the old me back. i wish he wouldn t have died. i want him alive. i would ask him why, why me? why did he take me home? why didn t he kill me? i wish he was still alive so he could tell us what happened to all those other girls. where he buried them, how he killed them.
You ve got a living witness. she s saying something happened and it happened without her consent. so it s an entire different process. there are many prosecutors who tell you right out they would try 50 murder cases to every sexual assault case. it s a different, different kind of case. but with no bodies, prosecutors had no choice but to try ray for the kidnapping and sexual torture of kelly van cleve. the trial began june 29th, 2000. ray s fate now lay in the hands and credibility of van cleve. i didn t want to go to court. i didn t want to face him. but i did it. he couldn t be out on the streets any longer. i had to do it. because i had to do what i could to save other women. as kelly took the stand, ray
These areas. we are helicopters out looking in these areas, and still, we weren t able to recover a body. and roy s, i guess hypothesis, which seems to be credible and make sense, is that david returned to that location after the body had been disposed of and relocated it. yet again, david parker ray had been meticulous in avoiding detection. we spent a great deal of time chasing an intelligent man who was well versed in what he was doing, and certainly able to cover his tracks very effectively. we were always one step behind him. thousands upon thousands of deep narrow ravines, nooks, and crannies and where do you look? we could be standing above her right now and never know it. i often wonder how close did we actually come to her or some of the victims during the course of this. roy yancy pled guilty to second degree murder, receiving a 20-year sentence.
That were performed there without being able to locate any evidence that we could connect definitively to the parker ray investigation. david had the perfect job if he wants to hide bodies or whatever. he had access to every nook and cranny of elephant butte state park, access to areas kept under lock and key to keep the public away from, but to which he had access. despite compelling evidence, the state s rape and kidnap case against david parker ray had problems. the best witness had a patchy memory. unless bodies could be found, somehow somewhere, there was a chance that justice might be denied. coming up, an accomplice of david parker ray confesses to murder. how did you come up with the idea to kill marie? it was david ray parker s idea. i m more of an absentee plant parent. [ cellphone rings ] tuscaloosa? schenectady. des moines. ok. ok. ok.