David Parker Ray and Cindy Lee Hendy are being held on $1 million bail after being charged with kidnapping, rape and torture

March 31, 1999
Web posted at: 2:50 p.m. EST (1950 GMT)

ELEPHANT BUTTE, New Mexico (CNN) -- New Mexico authorities said Wednesday they have received several hundred calls about missing women since the arrest of a man and a woman on charges of sexually torturing two women.

New Mexico Department of Public Safety secretary Darren White said authorities have not ruled out that the suspects might have been involved in homicides, but stressed that no bodies had been found.

"We recognize that this is not a behavior that sprung up overnight," White said, "that we need to be very careful and recognize the possibility does exist that there might be more victims."

David Parker Ray, 59, and Cindy Lea Hendy, 39, were charged Tuesday with kidnapping, rape and torture involving two women. Ray and Hendy are each being held on $1 million bail.

The case came to light March 22 when an Albuquerque woman escaped from Ray's lakeside trailer wearing only a padlocked metal collar hooked to a chain, authorities said. According to an affidavit the woman filed Tuesday, she was kidnapped and tortured for three days by the couple.

Investigators said they found at Ray's home a picture of the woman restrained and stretched with "torture instruments."

After her escape, a second woman, from nearby Truth or Consequences, said she was taken captive and molested by the couple last month. She said she persuaded her captors, whom she apparently knew, to release her February 21.

Investigators found evidence in Ray's home that led to other cities

John Branaugh, an acquaintance of Hendy's, said Monday that the woman told him Ray had killed and mutilated four to six people and dumped their bodies into Elephant Butte Lake. More bodies are supposedly buried in the desert, he said.

Branaugh said Hendy told him she participated with Ray for the "adrenaline rush."

Albert Costales, Ray's attorney, said his client is innocent.

"I do not believe any of it is founded on anything more than rumors, sensationalism," he said.

Hendy's attorney, X.E. Javier Acosta, said his client had not been clearly implicated in the charges filed against her.

Both are expected to plead not guilty.

More than 40 FBI agents, including psychological profilers, have joined the investigation. Evidence found in the couple's trailer has led investigators to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; El Paso and Victoria, Texas; and Juarez, Mexico.

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