CHAPTER 26
I grew up with my mother telling me, ‘There is no bogeyman, there is no bogeyman,’ and one day I discovered that the bogeyman does exist.
—“Unidentified” woman overheard talking to another woman in Judge Mertz’s courtroom, 7/06/2000
On Thursday, July 6, it was hotter than Hell. Judge Mertz ordered the bailiff to find additional air-conditioning to help out where the graceful, slow-moving 1917 ceiling fans left off. It was all business that morning with Yontz and Rein, and observers could see their faces glisten in the dry desert heat as the testimony of Kelli Garrett drew closer and closer. David Ray sat in his chair with a blank look on his weathered face. Just before the morning session started, Jeff Rein turned to Cathy Love and said he thought David Ray looked a “little pooped.”
The morning proceedings started out with a bang as the obviously stressed-out Neil Mertz zeroed in on the media for a stern warning. Photographers had been moving benches so they could set up their tripods and cameras in preparation for Garrett’s testimony. Mertz looked at the Associated Press cameraman and reporter and shouted all the way to the back of the courtroom: “Turn that camera off! Put the furniture back! I’m not gonna have today what I had yesterday. Once these proceedings start, nobody is gonna leave except during a recess. If these rules are not satisfactory, then you can leave now. This public event is being staged for the jury—not the newspapers or the television stations. As best I can manage it, there are not going to be any distractions.”
Janet Murphy testified first and the guilt written across her face was obvious to everyone in the courtroom.
Next was Todd Thompson, “the guy in the red truck” whom Patrick Murphy had talked about the day before. He told Yontz what life was like for the young and the restless in T or C back in 1996.
“There was nothing to do—unless you go bowling or go out to the lake.
“I’d known Kelli for a while and on July twenty-fifth she stopped by my work with Dave Connolly. She said she was having troubles with her new husband, Patrick. I was with a group of people that hung out with her later the same night—the night she disappeared. It was me, Cassy, Dave, Clay, Sonja, Steve, Tres, Kelli and Jesse Ray. We shot pool, danced and had a few beers before me and Cassy Witt went home early, about midnight. I kept running with the same group of friends over the weekend, and when we didn’t see Kelli for the next two days, I got concerned. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, July twenty-eighth, I saw Kelli with her friend Dave Connolly. She didn’t look like the same girl at all.
“She looked scared, messy—her clothes were wrinkled, the braids in her hair were dirty. I was surprised. She usually took pride in how she looked. She seemed upset, shaky and very nervous.”
When Jeff Rein got his hands on Thompson, he tried to make quick work of him. He got Todd to admit he and Cassandra Witt had been dating during the first three weeks of July 1996 and then Rein asked Todd who he was dating by the last week of July.
“I was going out with Kelli—it only lasted about seven weeks and then she broke up with me by the end of September ’96.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thompson, I don’t have any more questions,” said Rein.
Out in the corridor, a small (five feet one inch), slender woman with long, straight blond hair falling over her shoulders clutched her stomach and talked to her older sister as she got ready to enter the Rio Arriba Courthouse and face down the man she claimed had imprisoned her for three days back when she was twenty-two years old. Kelli Garrett, now twenty-six, was taking deep breaths and crying softly just before the bailiff came out to get her and lead her into what she later told friends was “another torture chamber,” Mertz’s courtroom.
As she walked in, the female jurors, all dressed in black, watched her every move. By the time she was sworn in, she had regained her composure and was ready to tell Jim Yontz how the whole story had unfolded. She had practiced telling the story in front of Yontz many times before, so she was pretty much ready for him to take her through it step by step.
“My friends and I would all go to the bars and play pool and dance,” she began.
“Right after I met Patrick, we decided to get married. It started out as a joke. We went down and bought these two fake rings. Little silver bands. We had this mutual friend Cassandra Witt and we decided to play a trick on her. We decided to tell her we were going to get married. She’d been telling everyone she was going to take Patrick away from me, so we bought this cheap cake and these cheap wedding rings. We knew Cassy was going to come by—she always did. I knew Cassy wanted Patrick for herself, but I knew he didn’t want her. Patrick’s parents were even in on the joke.... Except, in the end, we really got married.
“Cassy even stood up for us!
“A few days later, we started fighting. We fought quite a bit. It was over sex. I have ‘female problems’ and sex hurts. He got real mad at me because I wouldn’t ‘give him any.’
“We were staying at his parents’ house and one night I got mad at him and went out and slept on the couch. The night before, he’d told me he was tired of not getting enough sex. He said when I did give it to him, I cried too much. So the next morning I decided to go for a walk. It was about ten o’clock and I didn’t have a driver’s license or a car, so I knew I couldn’t go far. I was wearing my wedding ring, a watch, a necklace and earrings. I had my hair in little bitty braids all over my head.
“I walked over to this girl Becky’s house and we walked over to Cassy’s place. She had a pickup truck and we drove over and got Dave and we went to Rocky’s bar in downtown T or C. Jesse Ray showed up and we spent a few hours there. I didn’t drink because I was the designated driver.
“Around four o’clock we drove over to Raymond’s bar and met up with Todd Thompson. Everyone drank, except me. I was still the designated driver.
“Around nine o’clock we went over to the Blue Waters Saloon in Elephant Butte and met up with everyone else. I had one beer. People started to go home just before midnight. I drove Dave Connolly home in his car and Todd left Cassy and Jesse alone in the bar and came and got me and brought me back to the Blue Waters. He was driving his red truck. Right away him and Cassy got in a fight, so they just up and left. I didn’t have a ride home, so Jesse said she’d take me home on her motorcycle.
“I think she took me to her dad’s house.”
Jim Yontz stopped Kelli and asked her if Jesse’s dad was in the courtroom today. Cool as a cucumber, she looked David Parker Ray right in the eye and pointed him out, then she went on with her story.
“We were sitting on the living-room couch, and suddenly David and Jesse went into the back room for about ten minutes. When they came out, one of them put a knife to my throat. I can’t remember which one. They took me outside to another trailer.
“I remember being tied to a bench. It was like a weight bench—I had my arms up over my head. I had my legs spread apart. Every time I moved, I thought I was gonna fall off of it.
“Right away he started using the dildos on me. He tried to force them inside me and they wouldn’t go—they’d go partways inside me, that’s all. The dildos felt like they were the size of a can of Copenhagen snuff. I had duct tape over my eyes and mouth, but I knew it was David. I could hear him talking and one time the duct tape came off my cheek and I leaned back and I saw David. Before he could adjust it, I looked up at the walls and ceiling for a minute. He had all kinds of ‘things’ on top of a medicine cabinet and more ‘things’ hanging on the walls.
“He was putting his fingers in me, trying to find out why the dildos didn’t work.
“It was like he was trying to play doctor.
“He came back to the toy box six different times. He tried to force the dildos inside of me at least thirty different times. He would leave me tied to the table, and then when he came back, he would start all over again. I kept telling him I didn’t want him to do it. I kept saying, ‘No! No!’ and I kept telling him I didn’t want to be there, I just wanted to go home. I was trying to tell him to quit. I was crying.
“When he let me go, he drove me over to Earl’s Diamond Gas station for a cup of coffee, and on the way there, he told me why I had been taken and why I was going to be released. He told me he was in some kind of satanic group and they’d been watching me for a long time and they wanted me for a sex toy. He said when the dildos wouldn’t go in, I’d be no use to them—so he decided to let me go.
“He took me to Janet Murphy’s to release me and he told the two of them he found me on the beach. I was confused. Patrick and his mother wouldn’t let me in the house, not even to get my toothbrush. They wanted to know where I’d been and at the time I couldn’t remember anything. They made me go away with David and he drove me down to the Dam Site Tavern and my friend Dave Connolly took care of me for the next two days.
“Ray hurt me so bad, I bled for three or four days afterward.”
Yontz stopped Kelli Garrett again and showed her a picture of the swan tattoo the police used to help identify her. He asked her if she could identify the person in the picture. She looked at the photograph of her leg and ankle, and what she called her “tribal swan” tattoo, and pointed to it.
“That’s my leg!” she said. “I’ve had memories off and on over the last four years. I didn’t know if it was true. I thought it was a nightmare and most of the time I didn’t want to believe it.
“Then Carrie Parbs came up from the New Mexcio State Police and showed me pictures taken from the videotape. After she showed me the photographs, I realized it wasn’t a dream anymore. It was reality, and at first I couldn’t deal with it. . . .”
Yontz interrupted her one more time and handed her two more pictures, each showing her naked and tied down “spread-eagle” on the weight bench. The first picture showed only her, blindfolded, and the second showed her and David Ray in the same frame. Yontz asked her if she could identify the woman in the photographs. She clutched her stomach and a sick look crossed her face. Her pale cheeks were suddenly red and flushed. She held her head in her hands and small tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
She reached for a Kleenex.
“Yes, that’s me,” she said in a faint whisper.
“Did you ever see the video?” asked Yontz.
“Nope,” she said, sounding more confident.
“Who is the other person in this picture?” asked Yontz. Kelli Garrett’s lips narrowed down to a thin white line as she struggled to hold back her rage. She pointed to the defendant sitting by himself, legs straddling his green oxygen canister.
“David,” she said as David Parker Ray looked away.
“I got divorced the day after I came back from the trailer. I used to be called ‘Sassy’ and now I don’t like to be around other people. I used to be outgoing and I’m not anymore. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t sleep with my husband, Mike, anymore—and we fight about sex. If I’m alone in the house, I always have a pistol sitting right beside me. If I look out the window and see a car or a truck with a New Mexico license plate, I freak out.”
When it was time for cross-examination by the defense attorney, Garrett tightened up.
Jeff Rein was soft-spoken and used a very gentle style to question Kelli Garrett. He relied on his yellow legal pads to make sure he didn’t forget anything and he always treated the witness with respect, attempting to disarm her. He approached Garrett with kid gloves, but it was clear from the start he was going to attack her memory, thereby making it the prosecution of Kelli Garrett rather than the defense of David Parker Ray.
“Where did you buy the wedding cake?” he asked right off the bat.
“I can’t remember—I think it was Bullocks Grocery store.”
“You thought Patrick was twenty-four years old, right?”
“Right,” she says.
“But he was only twenty years old, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Can you describe the wedding rings?”
“Just a couple of silver bands.”
“When you left the Blue Waters Saloon, do you remember going?”
“No, I don’t remember leaving the bar.”
“You said he used thirty dildos—do you remember any single one of those situations?”
“No, I do not.”
“If you can’t recall one individual incident, how can you remember six sessions?”
“He just came and went, came and went.... I could hear his keys jingling every time he unlocked the door of the toy box.”
“You said when he brought you back to Janet Murphy’s house, you were missing your watch and your wedding ring—what do you remember about them?”
“My watch was gold and my wedding ring was silver.”
For nearly an hour, it went back and forth between the public defender and the young woman. Jim Yontz had been building his case on the assumption that the trauma from Kelli Garrett’s experience with David Ray had thrown a monkey wrench into her emotional life; Rein wanted to prove her trauma might have been caused by other factors. He waited until he thought he’d worn Garrett down to hit her with his best shot. He pointed out that she got married to a man named Clay in September 1997 and then went through a messy divorce a year later. Then he reminded her that she fell for another man named Jim Hibbard in 1998 and in October of that year, tragedy struck her life one more time.
“You said after David kidnapped you, nothing else could have caused your fear of being alone,” Rein began. “But isn’t it true that your fiancé Jim drowned right in front of you six months before David Ray was arrested?”
“Yes.”
“Jim had just proposed to you on the day he died, right?”
“Yes.”
“The boat swamped and Jim didn’t make it to shore, right?”
“Yes.”
“Has that been traumatic?”
“Yes.”
“You told your friends what happened, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you wait for over three years to tell anybody about David Parker Ray kidnapping and torturing you?”
Kelli Garrett paused a long time before answering the question. She was looking down at her trembling hands, and finally she raised her eyes and looked at Jeff Rein.
“I thought if I didn’t tell anybody about the nightmares, they would go away,” she said.
Rein sat down and Jim Yontz got a chance to ask one more question on redirect. He walked over next to the jury box and turned to Kelli Garrett and in a calm voice asked her about the nightmares going away.
“Is that why you are here today, Kelli, because they didn’t go away?”
“Yes.”
Kelli Garrett stepped down and slowly walked out of the courtroom. Every female juror seemed to be fixated on Garrett as they watched her shaking all over, clutching her stomach and looking down at the floor.
Mertz called it a day at 4:14 P.M. on Thursday, July 6.