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.