Amelia Ray is a typical 2-year-old. She's trying to get potty trained. She can count to 10. Her favorite song is "How Much is that Doggie in the Window." And, she is learning to ride the red-and-white tricycle she got just two weeks ago for her birthday.
There were lots of smiles at Amelia's birthday party. But there was also cause for reflection and sadness: Amelia's birthday is also the day her mother died.Cindy Ray, a former Payson resident, died July 23, 1987, after she was kidnapped from a medical clinic at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where her husband, Sam, was based. Cindy, who was 81/2 months pregnant, was taken into the Manzano Mountains east of Albuquerque, and strangled into unconsciousness before her unborn daughter was cut from her womb by a woman who wanted a baby of her own. She died from strangulation and loss of blood.
Darci Kayleen Pierce, 20, was arrested and charged with Cindy's death after arriving at an Albuquerque hospital with a newborn girl she claimed was her own. Hospital personnel examined Pierce and determined she had not given birth; after several hours of questioning, Pierce told police how she had gotten the baby and led them to Cindy's body.
Cindy's husband, Sam Ray, has learned to not ask "what if?" Ray was a military police officer while in the Air Force; he had been finishing up paperwork across the street from the clinic where Cindy had gone for a prenatal checkup the day she disappeared. He was 10 minutes late in getting to the clinic to meet Cindy. When he got there Cindy's car was still in the parking lot, but his wife could not be found.
"It didn't make any sense," Ray said. "But I was a trained police officer, and I went through all the logical things at first . . . after awhile the options started making less and less sense, but they were all I had."
That night, after putting his 2-year-old son, Luke, to bed, Ray said a prayer.
"My only request was that if she was going, let her go quickly and painlessly, and if not, let us find her," Ray said. "I think both requests were answered."
The next morning, the search for Cindy continued. Cindy sold Tupperware, and Ray asked Cindy's Tupperware manager to call all the people his wife had contacts with to see if they had seen her.
"One of the ladies she talked to said she had seen a lady come into (a hospital) with a baby that wasn't hers," Ray said. "It was the first time I figured out what had happened. I was a cop. I could understand why a person would want to kidnap someone, but until then I couldn't understand why they would want to kidnap a pregnant woman."
Investigators had also learned about the woman who had shown up at the New Mexico hospital with a baby that wasn't hers. And when the investigators showed up at Ray's home, he had figured out what had happened. He had one request: he wanted to see his new baby.
"She was born under a tree up in the desert," Ray said. "By all medical standards she shouldn't have lived. It's a medical miracle." Amelia was in excellent condition and was not harmed physically during her crude birth.
A state district court in Albuquerque last year found Pierce guilty but mentally ill in convicting her of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child abuse. She is now in the state penitentiary in New Mexico. Ray has been assured that he will be informed if Pierce ever becomes eligible for parole.
"I don't really worry about it," Ray said. "I want to be notified if she is ever released, but I don't worry about it."
Ray was given a hardship discharge from the Air Force, and moved back to Payson with his son and newborn daughter.
He has spent the past two years putting his life, and the lives of his children, back together. It hasn't been easy.
"What's been hard for me is adjusting to a different way of life without the one that I had hoped to share my life with, and had worked so hard to make our life the way we wanted it," Ray said. "Cindy and I had done everything right. We didn't let it happen, we made it happen. . . . It was all jerked out from under us."
Still, Ray is determined not to be bitter. His adjustment to a new life was made easier by the support and kindness shown by people in Albuquerque and Utah County, he said.
"When really horrible things happen, the best comes out of people.
"You really get to cut through the facade and see that even though there are many evil things in the world, there is still a lot of good. It is up to us to find the good and deal with the bad."
It was difficult trying to find the right way to tell his children what happened to their mother
"In a lot of ways, Luke came to think it (his mother's disappearance) was his sister's fault," Ray said. "When she (Amelia) showed up, his mom went away. He blamed her." After working with a child psychologist, Ray concluded the truth would be a less painful way of telling his son what had happened to his mom.
"I told him that someone had hurt his mom so bad she died because they wanted his sister so bad," Ray said. "Luke's been OK since then. I'm trying to be as open as I can. With my daughter I'm trying to do it as naturally as I can. I think Luke will fill her in. I think it will be hard enough when (Amelia) realizes the magnitude of it . . . building up to it will make it easier."
Ray remarried last fall. He attends Brigham Young University, where he is studying industrial education. He hopes to be a high school teacher in the Mountain West area, and wants to work with kids who are having problems in school.
He thinks Cindy would be proud of her children.
"I think she'd be happy with the way we've done things," Ray said. "That's something I wonder about."
And, when his kids are older and want to know about their mom, Ray will tell them how she worried more about other people than herself, that she was shy, and that she was an example to him about how to treat other people and how important it was to follow the Lord.
He'll tell Amelia how her mom had picked out her name long before she was born, and how she had planned to call her Millie. And, he'll tell her she looks just like Cindy. Only taller.