Daddy dearest part 2 #murdermysTerymonday

Alright so we made it through another week! I know I promised you part two of the toy box killer last week, but it was the day after Easter and I had to bring a Christ loving killer into the fold. Buuuuuuttttt! Back to our scheduled programming welcome to another edition of #MurderMysteryMonday.

In his Toy box David Parker Ray had a video of a woman who was hard to identify. Investigators sent the video to the FBI who were able to blow up tattoo found on the victims ankle. (I don’t know how the hell they did it but shout out to the FBI!) They made posters asking that if it was their tattoo to please contact police and Kelli Garrett came forward. It turned out that on July 24, 1996 (yes, two days before I was born… not that you asked but it’s important to know )

Jesse (Ray’s daughter) knew Garrett and took her to the a saloon in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (yes it’s actually called truth or consequences.) Jesse drugged her beer and hit her on the back of the head as she walked to the parking lot. This knocked her unconscious, soon after Ray took Garrett to his trailer and attached a dog collar to her neck. Garrett was drugged and tortured for days and couldn’t stay awake. She blacked out multiple times. During this time, Ray slashed her throat open and dumped her near a road in Caballo. He thought she was dead but she wasn’t, and neither her husband or police believed her story. (Shame on them!!) Her husband filed for a divorce because he believed she was cheating on him the night she was attacked.

Ray was drugging women with agents to induce amnesia. He admitted on tape that the drugs were (you know what… I won’t name them… I don’t want you folks trying anything!) Some women believed their memories were just nightmares until contacted by the FBI.

Thanks to Cynthia his sick crimes were brought to the forefront. Ray had a total of three trials and in 2001 he was sentenced to 224 years in prison (AFTER taking a plea!) His daddy issues having baby girl served two and a half years. (She definitely deserved more!)

On May 28 2002. Ray died in Hobbs, New Mexico while on his way to be questioned by police. He suffered a heart attack (is it bad that I wished he suffered more??? He didn’t even serve 10 full years! This upsetting!!! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next. Tell me what you think down below!

Wine

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.