Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

Richard Cottingham was a sadistic psychopath who killed women around Times Square, New York, and New Jersey.

From 1967 to 1980, computer programmer Richard Francis Cottingham – a serial sexual murderer who some deemed a sadistic psychopath – brutally slew women from Times Square, New York, and across the way in New Jersey, dismembering some of his victims.

Thinking himself smarter than anyone and impervious to capture, he would boast to colleagues of his appetite for prostitutes, S&M clubs and gambling, but none knew how far to believe him or suspected his lethal level of brutality.

in 1977

in  1977 new jersey detective alan grieco was about to be confronted by a mystery

Alan former detective: ” we received a call , that  a  young  married  woman  was reported missing  from her  apartment complex  in little ferry  new jersey.under suspicious circumstances.”

 marianne  was an x-ray  techician .how had been married a short period of time .

they lived in a  garden apartment,there were strange circumstances in that the report came from her husband whos was away on buisness trip.marianne had failed to keep an appointment that evening with her mother – in – law.

concerned  , marianne’s husband had called the police.

there  did not appear to be anything, broken in the apartment.no broken glasses  no forced  entry on the door.

and the detectives had no indiciation at all as to what  had happened to marianne carr.

despite her husband’s apparent absence, there had been a suspious sighthingat the time of marianne’s disappearence.

a witness who had lived in the same apartment  building who said  that as he was backing his car out of the  parking lot, he saw a person  in his reaview mirror that he thiught was marianne carr’s  husband.

allthough they  didn´t know  it at the time marianne’s husband bore a likeness to  a former  resident of the little ferry appartments.

a successful new york computer operator.richard  frances cottingham.

he worked in what they referred  to as midtown manhattan , right in the heart of the buisness  district for luke cross blue shield which is a  very  substantial insurance company.

fellow  computer oerator  dominic volpe  worked with cottingham for 13  years he and richard  worked on the console together , chatting a lot

richard  was well read and he was  up to date on current events. he read a lot  of stuff about medicine.he was pretty smart.

at the time a console operator was  a big  thing.it took fourt floors of complete square block of the city  for 17 megs of memory.

no one ever heard of  a gigabyte then. but it was the cutting edge at the time .

the thing dominic  noticed most of about him is he couldn’t sit still, he was always  he was  always sitting in  his office   chair chaking  his leg, his back was shaking and  hw would   keep that up for the whole shift for eight mine hours.

across the river in new jersey investigating the disappearance of x- ray technician marianne carr, detective  grieco  was called to a motel near the airport.

in the parking lot. the body had been  discovered. it was clothed in a white nurse’s  uniform, marianne carr was no longer a missing person. but now the victim of a  homicide

alan  could  observe marianne  carr’s body  lying  in this  this area between the curb and the fence-

marianne carr’s body , had ligature marks on the wrist and the ankles from handcuffs so police  know that they  knew that handcuffc were used in marianne carr’s murder and she had a ligatur mark along the  ascpect of  her neck.

investigators  speculated marianne had been dumped from the trunk of the  car  , but  had no solid leads.

investigators had no idea of how  she had gotten to were she was found  nor why she was there nor  who would have been responsible for removing her  from her  apartment. and taken her there.

however   it wouldn’t be the last time  they would be  called tot hat location.

 a tale of  terror and torture had ju only just begun.

DECEMBER OF  1977

 the body  ofd married x-ray technician marianne carr

had been discovered  dumped in the parking lot of a new jersey motel . with no real lead  detecitve alan   was facing  frustation as the investigation began grinding  to a standinstill

alan: ” you need  to have the investigation lead  you in a  particular  direction,it’s like a shoot gun  blast , that  you’re covering all of these  different things that  99   of them have co connection  whatsoever”

while  marianne carr’s   case  stalled  , police were kept busy by  a series of violent attacks  in the airport area. there were actaullly a number   of  incidients of   sexual  assaults  that had  taken taken place within that time  period in

which victims  were  either  found   on the side of the roadway

   or reported  tp be  in motel rooms  ,semi- conscious   .

the attacks were perpetrated on on the prostitutes

that had had been picked up in  new york, where new jersey resident  richard  cottingham worked a computer operator.

he was strange  most of the stuff dominic  and him talked about  other than the job ,was stuff that he  did after work, supposedly  he talked about SM clubs he´d go to. he’d talked about  prostitutes

cuttingham  made no secret of   his enjoyment of new york’s dark enterainments.

new york city at that time was a very different place then  it is now , the times Square  area was a virtual cesspool.

houses up and down  the  block, street walkers.

the girls   would work  on these corners  , the subway entrance , indooways, close the peep shows and colicit asking men going out on a date  and or the men  would approach them.

it was  ovicous who was a working  girl. 8th avenue was one of the more  seedy parts of this strip in fact  it used to be called the minnesota strip. that because  girls would come to new  york  city from the midwest.get of the port authority and they  would immediately get hustled by pimps who would p ut them into prostitution.

a lot of them were runaways   and a bit naive. and probably not arriving with a lot of money so that they would  get trapped into this kind of situation.

now these young women were being plucked from the city streets and brutally assaulted.

prostitutets are very very common victims, why  the hardest thing in getting a victim is theabduction,how do you get  a woman to with you, you have to talk to her.and even  if he could talk well and you’re somewhat articulate and charming ,not all women are goint to go with the stranger.

the prbolmen with abduction  is eliminated by targting prostitutes. thats part of their job describtiang to go with strangers.  take their clothes off    and  have sex.

the victims were being drugged,beaten and  dumped in an area just across the river  in new  jersey.not for  from where the body of the x-ray  technician marianne carr had been found

there is a lot of motels  in the area.and they’re not high-class motels. they’re plcades that much of it from new york ciry.

one of the patrons of those motels was coomputer operator richard cottingham.
he used to talk about,how he would be able to lure a prostitute out of manhattan.

showing two pockets full of cash,ons of cash thousands of dollars. he would show prostitute the cash he would take them to new jersey

but cottingham it seemed didn’t like the idea of paying for his pleasure.

meanwhile the attacks on the new yorks working girls continued dumped ,discarded and left for dead.

one of the girls was left in this motel on the corner here called the airport motel.she had been picked up
she was brought to a bar in new york city , called flanagan’s and that’s the last thing she could recall.

near a major hospital, flanagan´s bar Wass a popular horn for richard cottingham.
an analys of her blood and urin indicated that she was drugged, the young victim hadvbeen subjected.
the young victim had been subjected to her horrifically violent ordeal. when she was found,she was unconscious in the room and she was in pretty bad shape .

he sodomized her,he beat her,very severely bit her breasts very severely

prostitutes are sexual service providers and that offends many serial sexual murderers as ironic as it sounds,many serial sexual murderers view themselves as highly moralistic and they want to degrade prostitutes or behaving in what they consider to be .

an upermissible sexual conduct they´re very ,very mixed up sexually and so you would think thatthey would understand prostitutes and relate to them and understand,but they don’t they have very very twisted sense of sexuality

 

december 1979

someone would strike out against prostitutes in a way would send shock waves through the city.

it was a very big stroy even for manhattan it was very big. because how gruesome it was.

emergency services had been alerted to a fire in a room at the travel inn motor lodge near time square

there they found 23 year old  deedeh-goodarzi and another unidentified young women.
they were two alleged prostitutes that were discovered in beds in a motel room and the bodies had been desecrated.

each woman’s head and hands had been cut off.

before the beds were ignited.

Beheaded, burnt, chopped up and nobody knew who was responsible. it was a mystery

the dreadful nature ofthe crime led to the mystery perpetrator being dubbed the times square ripper.

and  news soon hit the manhattan computer room where  dominic

  and  richard cottingham worked.

the depraved crime appeared  to have no connection to the murder two  and  a half years earlier of x-ray technician marianne carr,her body found in the parking lot

of a new jersey  motel.

it did not seem to have any connection to the mariann carr case.

it happened in new york city

but the bodies being  desecrated the way they were  new york city had a tremendous amount of homicides every day so there was no direct connection made at that time.

this is an  important pint because we found in our research that about 70 % of serial sexual murderers will experiment at a a crime scene and do something very ,very different with one victim that thy had not done with  the other .

such as cut their eyes out ,cut their vagina out and so on.

now when an investigator without extensive experience in this field looks at  that one victim looks so very different they’re led to believe at least from their own experience that it has to be someone else.that’s incorrect.

however ,alan  were about to be  called to a scene with a similarity that couldn´t be ignored.

at the same location that  marianne carr had been found two and half years earlier

a chiling discovery had been made.a chambermaid was cleaning the room and thought she detected what was a foul odor coming from the bed area.

lifting the mattress  from the frame she was  startled to see the naked handcuffed vody of a female, deceased female lying there.it was extremely frighting and distrubing to the chambermaid to say the least.

of that women who detectives sometimes later learned was valerie ann street.

sometime later learned was  valerie ann street who had been a prostitute in new york city.

on lower back there was an abrasion which had been made by a sharp  object detectives thought at the time  it was a knife. that was torture marks.

it’s eroticized the power and control that the  offender has over the victim  to make the victim realize that he – the offender is in control of life and death and so very often the offender will prolong her agony to kill her in a very, very  slow and  delibereate way so that she’saware that he’s going to kill her.

a monster was on the loose and it  was clear he wasn’t afraid to returne to  the scene of his crimes.

that was the second case of a woman’s body being found   on the premises of this particular motel .

the fact that  he´d use the same hotel is narcissism and that brings us to the concept narcissistic immunity,some narcissists absolutely believe they are invisible, they’re untouchable they’re so superior to everybody else  that there’s no chance  that  they’re ever going to get caught.

as if to prove the killer right, identifying the suspect was proving impossible. the police had no idea who the perpertator of the murder of  valerie ann street was.

in just a matter of days the times ,the time square ripper would strike  again.across the river in  new york.

during may 1980  two and a half years after the  murder of x-ray technician marianne carr.

a new jersey motel had become of the second brutal killing with the discovery of prostitute valerie ann  street.

meanwhile in the computer room of a large new york  insurance firm, dominic  would listen in disbelief to fellow operator.

and family man richard cottingham as he openly discussed his desires for the city’s dark entertainments.

richard  was very upfront about it, bragged about prostitutes SM,gambling, all those vices that he had  he bragged about.

cottingham  claimed to be a regular visistor to  masochistic clubs. he would describe things that went on there. talked about a woman that was walking around with a guy on  a leash he was on his knees.he would  walk into the bathroom .

xunningham would follow him and and watch this. the girl made him lick the urinals with his tongue. he liked the slave thing , handcuffs and treating people that had no way of helping, themselves.

it seems from an early age, richard cottingham had liked being in control.

back n pascak valley new jersey.richard  newman was on the same high school track team

newman :” i met richard on the athletic field,richard stood a apart in  the sense that  he wasn’t always at  practice as i remember, he wasn’t a joiner ,he didn’t have a nickname. he wasn’t part of our little  clique.”

he had a kind of wise guy attitute about him dismissive of teachers and of  school in general and he wasn´t  crazy about  authority .

he would stand out from groups,it’s common for narcissists who believe they’re better than others and obviously they’re at heart  insecure.

but he just has disdain for  what other people are doing  and doesn’t really want to be invested in it. he thinks he’s superior to everybody else.

richard  was  kind of a big guy , several inches taller than  newman .  and he  don’t remember him menacing student in general . he does rembember that the two or three friends of his that he seemed to lord it over them. a bit  like  he was the leader of the pack   so to speak .

he was certainly attracted to women  but  newman’s recollection is that he  did not have a girlfriend and when he spoke about women it was kind of in a negative way.

being in the locker room reminds you of the expression locker room talk. 

 newman  certainly remember  richard talking among his friends and perhaps  gym class  about what girls were attractive to him  and the onli inkling you would have of the way his mind works

is that  ,he would talk about, the girls in class or the girls on the street too , who were perhaps were better endowed.l arger breasted . that seemed to be sort of a key attraction for him.

it’s one thing to have an interest in large breasted  woemen because you think you they’re attractive.it’s another to have an obsession with the breast.not the women ,the breast. and that then becomes what we call paraphilia or an abnormal sexual interest that is needed for arousal.

now in his mid -30s ricard cuttingham would brag to his  co -workers about his  use of prostitutes, but it seems cottingham didn’t enjoy all aspcets of the vice trade.

 one conversation  about he had a veneral disease that he contracted to a prostitute and at that point he was sounded angry when he mentioned the hookers.

less then two weeks after the discovery of the second body of the new york jersy motel. the time  square ripper in new york

In a burning hotel bedroom, the body of another young working girl was found.

both breasts had been sliced off and taken away.

in almost all serial  sexual murder cases they wil lgo above and beyond killing the individual .

and  engage in post – mortem activity  that to them is sexually gratifying. this type of ritualistic behavior grows out of the offender’s fantasy life and  very often as a series of  murders occurs.

the individual’s behavior becomes  much more elaborate as the offender gains much more confort in kiling.

the ritualistic behavior is apt to become personlaized and more embellished

with the depraved killer on the loose,police in new york and new jersey were in a state of frustration.

but then one week later.the killer  would make an  uncharacteristic mistake  and reveal him  self for the first time.

yet again the motel in new jersey  would be the focus

Alan:”there was a great deal ofexciterment.when we got the call from the hazrakites police departement which said that they had just apprehended a suspect attempting ro flee from the motel.”

the  motell front  desk was alerted to a disturbiance in one of the rooms.

they decided to send one of their representatives to make  sure that the occupants were okay.it took

it took several minutes for someone  to be coaxed to the door.verballt she said :yes everything is okay , but with her eyes gave the impression that everything was not okay.
the motel stuff immediately called the police and a officer was dispatched.

when the police officer responded.he responded to that area of the motel.

towards the fartherst corfner where thre is an entrance. a man was observed running out of the building in a suspicious manner.Carrying a bag in his hand.

and at the time of his arrest he had the handcuffs ,tape,used to either place over the mouths of the women or bying their hands or feet or what.
all of these items were incriminating and he had no real explanation for it.

the fleeing man was identified as richardc frandes cottingham of lodie new jersey.
he had a wife and children he’s a computer operator in new york city.
he was in the -30s he was.kind of stocky ,he was at least average looking .well buolt you might say. his wife deescribed him as a devoted husband, she said that he was very atttentive to his children.

despite being virtually caught in the act, richard cottingham  professed his innocence. he just flat out denied it. sort of caught him red -handed as one might  say.

he was somewhat smug in his attitude and his answers ,allthough at one point indicated “the only thing i’ll say is that  i have a problem with women “

investigatiors immediately moved to search cottingham’s new jersey’s home.

Alan:” we prepared  a search warrant to look  or any evidence that might be  associated with femal abduction.rape , murder.”

this is the street that richar cottingham  lived on.

cottingham resided with his wife and children in a two -family  home in a pleasant suburban setting. there’s a middle class neighborhood.working -class people ,nothing would stand out of the ordinary.

he seemed to be a normal dad and  husband.it’s what detectives  didn’t kown was hidden underneath. he truly was a monster.

inside the family home,detectives discovered evidence of a man who reveled in in sadistic murder.

 in the lower basement of his home ,he had a large room which was locked which his wife or children  did not have access to.

this guy, married with three children.but he has in this room, i suppose one we could refer  to them as souvenirs or memorabilia whatever you want to call it , items that  he took from these women after he tortured them and murdered them.

 

people that we call organized serial killers often take trophies will take something from victims

like a earing  or a shoe or a piece of clothing a purse.like  big game  hunters the trophy room helps them to relive those moments where they felt most  in control.

the trophy room is  a nice  metaphor for this compartmentalized life . this is a place  where they  go to ,just completely fully indulge in their narcissistic fantasies of what they’ve done to other people.

now the successful computer operator,husband and father was identified as the time Square ripper and murderer of the women of the new jersey motel.

his caputre sutnned those that had known him, at work , no one talked about anything else, they hated him , got arrested and blah, blah blah .

 

and in the newspaper being copied  every day . he talked about  crazy things but co-workers never thought he would do crazy things.  35  years later it was a complete shock .

amongst his co- workers cottingham had never made any  secret of his vice of  prostitution sadistic masochism and gambling.

he was a gamler, he was not a fraid to take chances on  anything, he usually won ,95% at a time he was a winner .

he always  said that he can get out of  anything , there was nothing to take him over in other words  he would  always  win.he used that gambling thing in his head  for everything  that he did ,he was a winner.

now richard cottingham was about to gamble on being able to outwit his accusers. and beat the legal system,during his trial.

he seemed to be a very conscious particpiant along with his attorney,taken notes paying very  close attention to the testimony of  the victims and  one of the witnesses against him , you could sense that he was calculating all the time .

the conclusion that he was devious at best  after several weeks in court  ,everybody of course the  jury,the  judge, court officers ,everybody sort had  the same impresssion

mr cottingham was a very intelligent man , he was not as inteligent  as he thought he was . he  thought he was more intelligent than everybodyelse , that was that part of his personality.

cuttingham  denied all the crimes. and claimed that on the one occasion that he had  been caught at the motel with leslie ann o’dell.the activities had  been  consenting

whats’ more despite the advice  of his lawyers, cuttingham insisted he wanted to personally take the stand.

they lawers’ explained that he would be cross -examined and there are lot of holes in his story that probably will be exposed but  richard wanted to testify.

a guy like cottingham  enjoys being smarter than other people , particularly the law enforcement. he thinks he´s the smartest person in the room  no matter where he  is. he wants to show everyone his brilliance and how  smart he is.

the cross -examination started by getting richard  to admit the things that he could not deny. as any good prosecutor would do. he could not deny that he was arrested with  multiple pairs of handcuffs.

were used in the murders of valerie street.

and  marianne carr

Dennis Calo -Prosecuting Attorney

 

they were used in the assault on leslie ann’odell. he could not deny that he mouth suppessants. he could not deny that he had a  knife. 

and the knife was  used against valerie to  torture her on the lower back.could not  deny that , he could not deny that he  had the barbiturate pills in his satchel .

barbiturates were used on one of the victims  that he had sexually assaulted  and trown on the roadside. he could not deny that he bit leslie anne o’dell’s breasts.

he could not deny it because it was in the photographs parts of the assault on valerie anne street.

on the stand cottingham was forced to admit that he  had a fascination

with bondage.

but as the presure intensified no one could have predicted the extent to which he would go to avoid imprisonment.

after taking the stand in his own defense for multiple assaults and murders , new york  computer operator richard cottingham was faced with intense cross-examination.

under increasing pressure the defendant had revelealed a fascination with bondage  since his childhood.

Dennis calo:“from everything that we were able to piece, he had a typical upbringing  a middle class lower family, very  close to his mother.

cuttingham had bveen  born in new york’s Bronx  neighborhood ,before moving with his family to the leafy pascake valley  in new jersey.

richard  newimann:”his home was about two miles from where i lived . it was a great area to grow up in there was plenty of parks and open space.”

a modest home  set back from the road , i didnt’ go in the house  but i remember that this is where he lived.  i know his mother was devoted to him.

these individuals are in very dark and perverse sexually sadistic fantasies from the very early on on the fantasy driven crimes like serial  sexual  murder ,begins 10,15,20  years earlier in the offender’s mind.cottingham  would claim that his deviant desires had grown  out of the use of pornography.

it ‘s a common trajectory with sadistic sexual serial murders is to begin with ordinary pornography, even jsut erotic literature, even just catalogs  that show women in underwear.

some people stop at various stages because they don’t really like the rest  they’re fine with the tame stuff others want  more and if that is what appeals to them and exites them and arouses them  they will continue to get more   and more extrerme with it.

not  all serial killers are sadistic, sexual murderers, those who are ,tend to become very extreme with what they do to their victims.

A portait developed of  a monster with a devious method of operation

he would go out on the street   meet these  girls ,say to them “i want  to take you out.not just to have sex in the car or some such thing.but i like to take you to  a resturant ,i just won a lot of money.”

  in a card game or gambling and he would show them a lot of money with a hundred dollar bill around it . of course these girl were impressed , thhey would go to dinner with him and at some point  he would drug them. and then he was able to lead them out of the place into his car and take them to a motel 

and sexual assult them plus cut them and try to torture them.

as the evidence mounted ,cottingham  face the prospect of spending rest of his life in prison.

still by hook or by crook the the killer was determined to avoid incarceration

Alan former detective:”  i had briefly left the court room and gone downstairs to my office and as i came back into the  courtroom i immediately saw the matron in a frenzy running from the area of the holding cell and without her saying a word, i knew  that he escaped.”

during a break in proceedings cottingham had decided to make an audacious bid for freedom.

Dennis cole:” took a jacket and threw it against  the sheriff’s officer’s face  befuddled the  sheriff’s officer ,and went about  one of the back stairways.

Alan former detective:” i could see him running from the courthouse across the street

Dennis Cole:we chased him across the street.

Alan former detective:another officer had spotted him as well and we  both tackled him on the street and put him in handcuffs and restrained him and brought him back to the courthouse.

 richard cottingham would not elude authorities again, he was found guilty and condamned to spend the rest of  his life in prison.

but was  this serial sadist . mad, bad, or born to kill.

what makes them think the’te going to get away with it. what makes them think they can continue to do it and have this smug attitude and exercise this  awful power over people.

there’s lots of things insid our mentality inside our personality that tell us not to do it that that’s if only that  a fellow human being and that they   have loved ones at home

those  who are psychopathic absolutely have no remorse for  what they´re  doing they don’t really care about  people being in pain.unless  they’re a sadist then they care because they want them to  be in pain.

so they’re a psychopath and a sadist they’re not one of the same,but if you get the two in combination you very  dangerous person.

some people might have trophies  for their exploits in baseball or basketball or golf or  awards that they get for or awards that they get for community service.

these was his trophies ,these were his Qonquests ,these were his criminal activities, which he had gotten away with. and these was  his  trophies of how  intelligent he was.how charming he was and how smarter then everyone else  he was.

cottingham is  pretty much a very classic serial  sexual murderer.

the best way to understand serial sexual  murderer is to view it as a deviant sexual arousal pattern where sex and aggression become fused and the aggressive act  itself  is eroticized.

wheter it’s choking or cutting or stabbing in regular  sexual intercourse.in normal  conditions there is some level of pain inflicted and received and  there’s some level of biting and this sort of things .

in serial  sexual murder  those particular behaviors are  exaggerated enourmously and really take a life on of their own.

their is something in their genetic makeup, a twisted mind that associates sex with harm hurt , injury, and death.

 someone who’s a psychopath already starts at a disadvantage as he  then gets exposed to things that lure him into wanting power over other people and people and  in particulr being a sadistic type of  person .

the idea of being born to kill comes  pretty close to him

In 2010, the incarcereated cottingham addmitted to the murder by strangling of  29 year old mother of two.

Nancy Vogel . in 1967.

when  he was just 20 years old. and cottingham is suspected of several other possible slayingsone thing is for certain, that those  that met him and were lucky enough to survive. 

 

Richard cottingham torturer ,  murderer, mutilator will never  be forgotten.

 

 

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