CHAPTER 20
“I think he had no respect for women—that’s for sure.”
Frank Jackson, talking about his best buddy at Hot Springs High School.
November 9, 1999.
Frank Jackson was bowling alone at the Chili Bowl Lanes in Truth or Consequences. It was the night before Dennis Roy Yancy was due to be sentenced by Judge Mertz up in Socorro. The next morning was going to be the worst morning of Yancy’s life. Jackson finished his 222 game and walked up to the bartender and ordered a beer. Then he unloaded some pent-up feelings about a person he knew only too well.
“Roy Yancy was my best friend in high school,” he admitted.
“We used to sneak into Raymond’s Lounge and drink and listen to rock and roll. Roy liked to listen to heavy metal—he was into a heavy-metal band called King Diamond. And in this town anyone who listens to that stuff—well, they think you’re into Satanism. I guess Roy diddled a little bit in devil worship, but I know it was all an act. Roy just didn’t give a fuck. Anything he could do to fuck with other people’s heads he’d do, because that was what people expected from him. Roy liked being the crazy man.
“He joined the navy right after high school, and when he used to come home from San Diego, he’d go out to Hot Springs High School and try to recruit kids. The teachers didn’t like him because of all that shit that happened back in 1987, and they’d ask him to leave.
“He was serving on the USS Texas, and after a couple of years, he got in a lot of trouble with the navy. I guess he was making illegal weapons, like machetes and big ole knives, and they found all this stuff hidden under his bunk. Anyway, they asked him to leave before his time was up. I heard that the government gave him a dishonorable discharge, and after he came back from the navy, I stayed away from him for a couple of years. He was just too goddamn crazy.
“One night I was in Raymond’s Lounge and a guy named Pablo Nunez was in there tryin’ to cash a bad check. He was drunk and he asked me for a ride home and I was ready to give him a lift back to his place, when suddenly Roy Yancy comes up and gives Pablo a big kiss—right on the lips, for Christ’s sake! It really grossed me out.”
Frank Jackson was divorced now and the single life was taking a toll on him. Life had gone downhill since the glory days when he used to hang out with Dennis Yancy and Sidd Dodds and sneak into Raymond’s for free beer.
“Sidd Dodds is now the town drunk. A few years ago, he got pissed off at his mother and slugged her in the face and now she won’t let him sleep on her floor no more. The last time I saw him he was over at the cowboy bar, the Pine Knot, with a lesbian friend of his. A third of the people in this town are gay and most of the men go over there. I guess it’s easier to pick up a cowboy than it is a rocker.
“The rest of the people here are old farts. Dating in this town is very much a problem. I don’t go out much anymore, and when I do, I just dance and come home. There aren’t any more women to date—they’ve all been used up. After this winter I’m leavin’ and never comin’ back.”
Frank Jackson was trying to make sense out of the fact that his old friend Roy killed Marie Parker, a woman he was once engaged to marry. He was trying to forget that one of her orphan daughters, Kathleen, was actually his child. Thinking about it too much made him really depressed.
“I never had a paternity test done—there just wasn’t enough time, you know,” he told the bartender. “If I’d known Roy was going to kill her mother . . .
“Heck, my wife and I used to go over and play spades with Roy and his wife. That was only two years ago and he seemed fine to me, but then . . .”
Frank put down his beer and looked out at the bowling lanes.
“Roy was a . . . really good bullshitter.
“I think it all started with his mom. When he was a little kid, she’d pick on him. Every time he tried to impress her, she’d put him down, big time. She’d call him worthless. I guess he looked too much like his real dad and she didn’t like that at all. Roy told me one time his old man went to prison for murder when Roy was just a little boy.
“I think Roy had no respect for women, that’s for sure.”
On December 2, 1999, Judge Neil Mertz sentenced Dennis Roy Yancy, twenty-eight, to twenty years in the New Mexico State prison system, to be served at the penitentiary in Los Lunas. Yancy was convicted of second-degree murder and first-degree conspiracy to commit murder, in the murder of Marie Parker, twenty-two, during a wild drug orgy at the home of David Parker Ray. Court records said it was “on, about or between” the fifth day of July 1997 and the ninth day of July 1997.
Jim Yontz had done all the dirty work on the Yancy case, but when the newspapers and television stations showed up to get answers for the public, his boss, DA Ron Lopez, took over and passed out the official story.
“After a drug deal gone bad,” Lopez told the press, “Mr. David Ray tortured Ms. Parker while Jesse Ray held a gun on Marie. When David turned to Roy Yancy and said, ‘You have to get rid of her,’ Yancy took that to mean he had to kill her.
“Yancy told the police he strangled Marie Parker using a rope or a cord on orders from David Parker Ray. He indicated she was killed in the trailer—what you would call the sex/torture chamber—of Mr. Ray. They placed the body in Mr. Ray’s truck, wrapped the body in a blanket or some type of tarp, and took her out to some type of remote area and that’s where they buried her.
“We wanted to get Mr. Yancy for first-degree murder, but without a body and without any evidence, you can’t try and convict a person in the state of New Mexico.
“You can’t prosecute a person on a confession alone.
“There were also mitigating circumstances, including extensive drug use by Roy Yancy and Marie Parker, and because Roy cooperated with the police and helped us tie together other loose ends in the David Ray case, we cut him a deal and recommended a lighter sentence.”
After Yancy was led away in chains, Frances Baird was waiting outside the courthouse and caught up with Marie Parker’s mother, Kate. She was holding hands with two little girls, four years old and five years old, and she was very bitter about Yancy slipping away on a plea bargain.
“I don’t feel it’s fair for Dennis Roy Yancy to serve twenty years when both my granddaughters have been given a life sentence.
“Because of this mean young man, my grandchildren will never have their mother home to read them a book at night or go to an afternoon dance recital at school.”
Jim Yontz walked back to work that morning feeling both good and bad at the same time. He knew too well that there were always secondhand victims no matter how well the American justice system worked, and he tried not to let those people rattle his emotions. But he still felt sorry for Kate Parker and the girls. He had a fourteen-year-old daughter himself from his first marriage and she was his only child, living up in Canada with her mother. Yontz only saw her in the summers. He knew how much the smile of a child can make your life come alive all over again after it seems like you’re all washed up.
Even so, he felt like he’d hammered out a small victory.
When he got back to his office after lunch, there was a message from Frances Baird, so he gave her a call at the Sentinel. He noticed she had not been in the courtroom, but he told her he’d do his best to fill her in on the proceedings. Her first questions were about the sentencing.
“Why did Dennis plead guilty when he could have told a big pack of lies like all the rest of them?” asked a puzzled Baird.
“I think he truly felt guilty about what he did,” Yontz answered calmly.
“Poor Marie, she was just four years older than me.”
“She had a tough life,” added Yontz. “A lot of people don’t know this, but when she was a young girl, she turned her older brother in to the police on a murder charge. He’s serving life in a Nevada prison right now. I don’t think at the time Kate Parker could forgive her daughter for that, and that’s why she kicked Marie out of the house when she was only fourteen years old. Now Kate hates herself for that, and she can’t find it in her own heart to forgive herself.”
“What was Roy like in court?” asked Baird.
“He wept,” Yontz said.
“He got a pretty good deal, didn’t he?”
“It was the best we could do, Frances,” said a weary Yontz.
“But doesn’t he get out in a measly ten years with good behavior?”
“Unfortunately, that’s the law in New Mexico.”
“Some law . . . ”
“Remember, Frances, the law cuts both ways.”
“What do you mean?” asked Baird.
“If we’d gone to a jury trial without a body and without any evidence at all, Mertz might have let a killer walk. I’ve seen that happen before.”
“I guess Roy has to live with his own nightmares now,” said Baird.
“Without Marie Parker’s body, our hands were tied.”
“Do you think you’ll ever find Marie’s body,” asked Baird.
“No.”
“Too bad.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever find any bodies,” added Yontz.
“I hope your case against David isn’t crumbling,” Baird said, in her own blunt way.
“David Parker Ray was a pretty smart cookie,” Yontz told her. “He fooled a lot of people.”
“Yeah, he sure did. Runnin’ around in his little Ranger Rick outfit with that little Howdy Doody badge and all,” Baird muttered.
Yontz smiled to himself as he listened to her comments.
“Jeez, one woman in town kept saying she talked to him every day, and as far as she was concerned, he was just ‘normal, normal, normal,’ ” Baird added sarcastically.
“Nobody knows what a real killer looks like,” Yontz noted.
“Well, I know one thing,” Baird said with authority.
“What’s that?” asked an amused Jim Yontz.
“He sure wasn’t the Mr. Goody Two-Shoes people seemed to think he was.”
Yontz shook his head and laughed a big hearty laugh. His first real laugh in quite some time.
“No, he wasn’t, that’s for darn sure.”
He and Frances Baird finished talking and she thanked him for the time. He was cordial, as always.
“No problem. Call anytime you need to know something.”
He said good-bye, hung up and leaned back in his chair, letting out a deep breath. A minute later, he got up and grabbed his briefcase and headed for the door and the drive home. He figured he owed it to himself to take the afternoon off. On his way out of his office, he stopped and gave Bernie a pat on top of the head.
“Well, big fella, one bad guy down—three to go.”