Yancy in 1989  MESSAGE BOARD New Mexico sex/torture

April 12, 1999
Web posted at: 12:57 a.m. EDT (0457 GMT)

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, New Mexico (CNN) -- A man arrested in the case of a kidnapped woman whose body still has not been found told police he strangled her, according to a source close to the investigation.

Dennis Roy Yancy, 27, has been charged with murder, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit both murder and kidnapping and evidence tampering. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday or Tuesday, authorities in New Mexico told CNN.

Yancy is being held without bond.

The 1997 disappearance of Marie Parker, then 22, of Truth or Consequences, has become part of the investigation into the kidnappings of two other women who were raped and tortured while held prisoner in a trailer.

Parker, a single mother whose two daughters are now living with her mother in Albuquerque, was last seen at the Blue Water Saloon in the town of Elephant Butte, in July 1997.

A source close to the investigation told CNN Yancy was leading law enforcement authorities to locations around Elephant Butte Lake, a body of water touched where Parker's body may have been dumped that runs adjacent to both Truth and Consequences and the small town that bears its name.

But investigators searched the area on ground and from the air Saturday and were unable to find it.

But, the source said, " Yancy confessed to law enforcement officials to strangling Marie Parker."

Following his arrest Friday, the FBI identified him as a known associate of David Parker Ray , 59, who was arrested last month with Cynthia Lea Hendy, 39, on several offenses, including the rapes and torture of two women.

The arrests followed an investigation that began after one of Ray's neighbors saw a bloodied woman on the road -- naked except for a padlocked collar around her neck.

The couple, who lived together in a trailer home in the town of Elephant Butte, faces preliminary examination scheduled to begin Thursday.

Authorities searched a smaller sound-proof trailer owned by Ray and found books on serial killings, videotapes of Ray explaining various types of torture, books on the human anatomy, scalpels and a gynecological examination table with stirrups.

Yancy and Ray were being held in the Sierra County Jail here. Hendy was moved to the Dona Ana County Jail in Las Cruces.