New Mexico - A former maintenance man who pleaded guilty to kidnapping two women for sexual torture in the New Mexico desert was sentenced on Thursday to 224 years in state prison.
David Parker Ray, 61, stared at the floor as state judge Kevin Sweazea pronounced the sentence following emotional statements by Ray's victims.
"I want you to burn in hell... I just wish you would live long enough to serve your full sentence," said one of the victims, a 28-year-old woman who was Ray's captive for three days in 1996.
Ray became the focus of a major FBI and state police investigation into suspicions that he was a serial torturer. Two other women were found who claimed they were taken captive for several days and sexually tortured in a specially equipped shed dubbed "the toy box".
"I've had a lot of time to reflect back on the dumb things that led to this," Ray told the court. "I've had a chance to get back with God. There's a lot of comfort in that."
The sentencing followed Ray's agreenent in July to plead guilty to over 20 counts, including kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration and conspiracy, for abusing two women in 1996 and 1999.
Ray agreed to the plea deal after being convicted by a jury in the first of three planned trials for the cases of each of the victims. The plea deal only covered two of those cases.
Part of the plea deal was an agreement that Ray's daughter, Glenda Jean "Jesse" Ray, charged with helping her father in one of the kidnappings, would not serve additional prison time. She has since pleaded no contest to kidnapping charges and was released after being sentenced to 2½ years already served.
The sex-torture case emerged in March 1999 when a 22-year-old Albuquerque woman was found running down a road, naked except for a metal collar. She told police she had escaped from Ray's home in a lake resort outside the city of Truth or Consequences. - Reuters