Ghoulish True Crime

Author: ghoulishtruecrime

  • David Ray Parker – The ‘Toy Box’ Killer

    David Ray Parker – The ‘Toy Box’ Killer

    Okay guys and ghouls… hold on to your butts for this one because even though I haven’t gone into an incredible amount of detail, I think this is one of the worst cases I’ve come across.

    That being said, here we go…

    David Ray Parker was born on November 6th in Belen, New Mexico to his parents Cecil and Nettie Ray. He was the eldest of 2 children, his sibling being a younger sister.

    Ray was physically abused by his father and didn’t have any real contact with his mother, so he and his sister were raised by their grandparents. When their grandmother died, Ray and his sister were split up.

    He was teased in school for being unusually shy with girls, despite being described as a handsome teenager. After school, he went on to join the army, and later worked as a mechanic, a job in which he ended up being fired from.

    His personal life wasn’t much more successful; he ended up being divorced 4 times and in the process has 2 daughters, only one of which he lived with for a while. He also lived with one of his girlfriends, Cynthia Hendy, who ended up becoming one of his accomplices for a short while. They both abused drugs and alcohol, and Ray was actually diagnosed with paraphilia, which is a psycho-sexual disorder.

    His victims were prostitutes and young women, with his first kill being in the 50’s, when he was 16 or 17 years old. Ray was an organised lust killer, having spent $100,000 on a trailer kitted out with sex toys and torture devices with which he would rape, bound and sometimes blindfold his victims. He would also mutilate the bodies after stalking his victims and abducting them. There was also a mirror on the ceiling of the trailer so his victims could see themselves being raped and tortured. To make it even worse, on searching the trailer police also found surgical instruments, chains, pulleys, straps, clamps, spreader bars, syringes and diagrams of the human body. Oh, and there was also a device for electrical torture.

    One of Ray’s known accomplices was his girlfriend Cynthia ‘Cindy’ Lee Hendy who moved to New Mexico to avoid being prosecuted for forgery, theft and drug possession. She was ultimately sentenced to 36 years in prison for her involvement.

    Glenda Jean ‘Jesse’ Ray was another of his accomplices -his own daughter whom he lived with for a short while. She drugged victim Kelly Garrett’s beer in a bar as part of the kidnapping, and helped also with the murder of Marie Parker. She was sentenced to 5 years probation for second degree kidnapping.

    Dennis Roy Yancy was the last of Ray’s known accomplices. He helped Ray and Glenda kill Marie Parker, and was sentenced to 2 consecutive 15 year sentences for kidnapping and second degree murder.

    Ray had 14 confirmed victims, however it is thought that the total number of victims could be as many as 60. Some of his confirmed victims are Angelica Montano and Cynthia Vigil, both of whom luckily managed to escape. Billy Bowers and Marie Parker were also abducted and sadly didn’t survive, and Kelly Garrett who was drugged, abducted, held captive, had her throat slashed and was left to die at the side of the road. Incredibly, she was found and rescued and lived to testify against Ray.

    Garrett recalled that after she had a fight with her husband, she went to a bar to play billiards with her friends. While there, she claimed that her drink was drugged and she was kidnapped and taken to Ray’s ‘toy box’. She was held there for 2 days and during this time she was repeatedly raped and tortured. Her throat was then cut and she was dumped on the side of the road to die. When she reported this to police, they thought her story was so bizarre they actually didn’t believe her. Garrett’s husband sadly assumed she had run off with another man, so he filed for divorce before moving to Colorado.

    A previous victim known only as ‘Angelica M’ made her voice heard throughout the investigation. She explained to the police that she was abducted about a month before Cynthia Vigil. She said that she had reported the kidnapping, however for unknown reasons, the police never investigated it. While searching his trailer, they found photos of another victim and animal bones which had been buried not too far away.

    Cynthia Vigil was Ray’s final intended victim, and she amazingly managed to escape after being held captive for 3 days. She waited for Ray to go to work, and then stole the keys off his partner Cindy Hendy. Hendy then struck Vigil on the head with a lamp, trying to knock her out. Vigil, however, was able to unlock her chains and stab Hendy in the neck with an ice pick she found on the floor. She ran out of the trailer wearing only an iron slave collar and chains with the padlocks still on. She made her way to a mobile home where the owner kindly let her in, gave her a robe to cover herself and called 911. The police were already on their way to Ray’s address as they had received another 911 call but it had been cut short. Ray and Hendy claimed to have abducted Vigil in an attempt to help her with her heroine addiction. On searching the trailer, officers found a fake police badge that Ray had used to lure Vigil during the abduction, and there was also signs of the struggle with Hendy. They were both arrested on March 22nd, 1999, with 12 different charges including kidnapping and aggravated assault. He was 59 years old.

    During Ray’s first trial, he was found guilty on all 12 charges. In his second trial, he took a deal and pled guilty to spare his daughter from jail time. This is why she was only sentenced to 5 years probation. Ray faced 224 years in prison in 2001, and at the time he also admitted to having a partner, Billy Bowers, who ultimately became one of his victims.

    Ray confessed to sexually abusing 2 women at the trailer near Elephant Butte Lake. A number of searches have been conducted over the years as Ray claimed to have at least 40 victims throughout his active years, from many different states. No bodies have ever been found.

    Ray would make either video or audio recordings of the tortures, and take trophies of the women’s jewellery and clothing. Few of the victims were released after the ordeal, with Ray claiming to have drugged them to make them forget what happened. Hendy claimed that the victims that were killed were dismembered and buried or dumped in the Elephant Butte Lake or dumped into ravines.

    Ray later died of a heart attack on May 28th 2002 while imprisoned at Lea County Correctional Facility at Hobbs Prison in New Mexico. He was 62 years old.

  • Ed Gein – The Butcher of Plainfield

    Ed Gein – The Butcher of Plainfield

    With the Netflix ‘Monsters’ season 3 coming out on October 3rd with Charlie Hunnam playing our main man Ed Gein, I thought this would be the perfect timing to cover this case.

    Edward Theodore Gein was born to George Philip Gein and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein on August 27th 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

    His early years weren’t exactly happy, to say the least. His father was an abusive alcoholic and his mother was extremely overbearing and verbally abusive. Augusta wanted Ed to be a girl, so when he was born she was more than disappointed. It is reported that she would often dress Ed in girls clothing, despite the ridicule he received for this.

    His mother would often tell Ed and his older brother Henry of the immorality of women, and supposedly even made them promise to stay virgins for the rest of their lives for their mother. It is unknown whether Augusta sexually abused Gein, however given the evidence… you’ll have to come to that conclusion on your own. She would also discourage her sons from having any friendships, including anyone they went to school with, girls or boys. This meant that their isolated life, living on a farm where the nearest neighbour was literally miles away, became even more isolated for the young boys.

    Gein always wanted to please his mother, whereas his brother Henry wasn’t afraid to confront their mother in front of Ed, even though he knew how he felt about her. Augusta was a very neat and tidy woman, and liked everything to be ‘just so’. This fact is made more apparent when the police searched Ed’s house, and his mother’s room is pretty much in pristine condition even though the rest of the house had fallen into disarray. But we’ll get into that in a sec…

    In 1940 his father George died of heart failure. This meant that Augusta was left as the head of the household, even more so than she was before. Just 4 years after the death of his father, Ed’s brother Henry was killed ‘by a fire on the farm’. His death was suspicious as his body was found quite a way from the fire and had no signs of skin damage a fire would cause or smoke inhalation and had bruising and other marks on his head. Ed reported his brother missing to police and claimed he didn’t know what happened, however when they arrived he was able to take them directly to where Henry’s body was. Although they were suspicious of Ed, the death was ruled as an accident.

    In 1945, Augusta passed from a stroke, leaving Ed on the farm all alone and pretty much a hermit. As I mentioned before, Augusta’s room was untouched since her death, and some think it was left like this as a shrine to her. After his mother’s death, Ed made a living being a general handyman around the town, and babysat the local children.

    Gein went on to inspire multiple books and movies, including Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence Of The Lambs, and with nicknames such as ‘Grandfather of Gore’, ‘The Ghoul of Plainfield’, ‘The Plainfield Butcher’ and ‘The Plainfield Ghoul’, its not hard to see why.

    Ed first came to the attention of the authorities in the 1950’s, when he was found to be robbing graves at Plainfield Cemetery. It was later found the he was using body parts of the graves he dug up as well as women he murdered to create household items and other objects.

    The first murder Ed confessed to was that of Bernice Worden, the owner of a local hardware store. It was the beginning of the hunting season so almost all the men were out hunting, except for Ed as he said he didn’t enjoy it, so he was reported as being seen in town. It was also reported that a man matching Gein’s description was seen driving Bernice’s truck away from the hardware store earlier that morning. When police searched Gein’s farm, they found Bernice’s decapitated body hanging by her feet in a shed. She had been shot and also eviscerated. Her head was later found in a burlap sack.

    The second murder Gein confessed to was of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner who had disappeared in 1954. When they searched the farm, her skull was found in a box.

    Throughout searching the farm, they came across clothing and household items that Gein had made using the things stolen from the graves and the body parts, including a belt of nipples, a chair upholstered with human skin, face masks and a shoe box that was filled with 9 vulvas, one of which was covered in salt. They also found a head to toe skin suit that could actually be worn.

    Although Gein confessed to the two murders, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. In 1957 he was deemed unfit for trial, after he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and so he was confined to various psychiatric institutions. In 1968 he was found sane enough to participate in his own defence, so his trial commenced. He was found guilty of the murder of Bernice Worden, however he was deemed insane at the time of the murder.

    After his trial he was returned to Mendota Mental Health Institute where he remained until he died from cancer in 1984, passing in his sleep.

    He is buried next to his mother, Augusta, in Plainfield Cemetery, which is ironically the cemetery where he did the majority of his grave robbing.

  • Harold Shipman – England’s most prolific serial killer.

    Harold Shipman – England’s most prolific serial killer.

    Harold Shipman was the middle of 3 children born to Vera Shipman and Harold Shipman Sr on January 14th 1946 in Nottingham, England.

    When Shipman was 17 years old, he witnessed his mother, Vera, dying of lung cancer. There was nothing the doctors could do other than make her comfortable in her final days and she was given large doses of morphine to help with the pain. Soon after his mothers’ death, he enrolled in Leeds University Medical School with hopes of becoming a doctor. While there he married his wife Primrose, and over the course of their marriage they had 4 children together.

    On graduation from the University, Shipman got a job at Pontefract General Infirmary in West Yorkshire. This is where he is thought to have committed his first murder of a 4 year old girl. Susie Garfitt had pneumonia triggered by quadriplegia and cerebral palsy. Shipman told Susie’s mother to go to the hospital cafeteria to get a cup of tea while he cared for the girl. When her mother returned 10 minutes later, Susie was dead.

    He went on to complete his internship with no suspicion in regards to Susie’s death and no further complications. He then went to work at a private practice in West Yorkshire where his new colleagues noticed copious amounts of Pethidine going missing. It was then found that Shipman was addicted to the drug, injecting himself daily with up to 600-700mg a day; so much that his veins were beginning to collapse. He was fined for obtaining drugs by deception and was found guilty on seven counts of forgery. Shipman agreed to start counselling and to go to rehab to avoid being struck off the medical register. Due to this, he was then able to join a medical practice in Hyde where he soon became a pillar of the community.

    Hyde is a town on the outskirts of Manchester, and is likely most famous for the case of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley who committed the Moors murders.

    Shipman set up his practice on Market Street which quickly gained over 3000 patients. He was known to be rude and arrogant to his colleagues, and his house was somewhat ‘spooky’, covered in ivy and weeds. His patients, however, adored him. They praised his bedside manner, and the relatives of his patients appreciated his candour. An example of his abrupt nature would be in February 1998, when the son-in-law of a 77 year old man asked him how long his father-in-law had left, and Shipman replied “I wouldn’t buy him any Easter eggs”.

    Shipman was also appreciated by the community for his willingness to make house calls. It took locals decades to notice the correlation between the house calls and the sudden deaths. He would wait until the relatives left the room and then inject the patient with diamorphine hydrochloride. He even gave one patient 12000mg ; enough to kill 360 people. Because Shipman was already at the scene, he would offer to fill out the death certificate and advise the family against requesting a post mortem.

    Shipman did have cooling off periods, although they never lasted too long. These would usually be when a patient didn’t die as he expected or if a nurse became suspicious of his activities. When he did begin to kill again, it would be gradual, usually with a terminally ill patient who was suspected to pass soon.

    By 1997, Shipman was struggling with his restraint; that year he had killed 37 people which works out to 1 person every 10 or so days. He was reported to the police and the local coroner, however they deemed there wasn’t enough evidence to do anything at that time.

    In 1998 he set his sights on who would become his final victim: Kathleen Grundy. It is unknown why but with this victim he made so many mistakes that everything finally came to light.

    Like with 79.5% of Shipman’s victims, Kathleen Grundy was an older woman. At 81 years old, she enjoyed doing charity work in the town of Hyde and had a wide social circle. On June 23rd 1998, she went to have her ears syringed at her local GP practice, and Shipman offered a house call the following day to check up on her. 4 hours after the house call the next day, Kathleen’s friends found her sitting on the sofa, dead. The friends called Shipman back to the house and he concluded that she may have died of cardiac arrest. He called the coroner and wrote out the death certificate where he stated the official cause of death as ‘old age’.

    Weeks before her death, Kathleen had supposedly rewritten her will, leaving everything to her doctor, Shipman, and writing out her daughter Angela Woodruff. On finding out this information, Angela went straight to the police and didn’t give up until they opened an investigation. Grundy’s estate was worth around $780,000. The mistake Shipman made was that he had written the will himself, on a typewriter that was found in the surgery, and he had left a fingerprint on the document.

    The bodies of Shipman’s victims that were buried and not cremated were exhumed, and they were all found to have trace amounts of morphine in their systems. Kathleen was found to have a lethal amount of morphine in her liver.

    Psychiatrists still don’t know why he forged the will. One theory is that he had lost touch with reality and thought himself to be untouchable. Another theory is that he wanted to be caught. By 1998 he was killing one patient a week and he may not have known how to stop.

    He insisted he was innocent all the way through his trial, however in January 2000, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The day before his 58th birthday, Shipman hanged himself in his prison cell.

    Shipman was convicted of 15 murders, however it is thought that he could have committed around 250 murders. By the time of his death he had been dubbed ‘the angel of death’.