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Sadistic Dismembering Murderer - Serial Killer Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:00
Speaker 1: In the late seventies, a merciless serial killer began to
0:04
Speaker 1: strike in New York and New Jersey.
0:07
Speaker 2: It was a very big story because of how gruesome
0:10
Speaker 2: it was.
0:11
Speaker 1: His methods, keenness, and extreme.
0:14
Speaker 3: These were very bizarre and bloody crimes. Beheaded, burnt, chopped up.
0:20
Speaker 1: He killed with callous confidence.
0:23
Speaker 4: Some narcissists absolutely believe they are invisible, They're untouchable.
0:28
Speaker 5: It was the second case of a woman's body being
0:32
Speaker 5: found on the premises of this motel.
0:34
Speaker 1: But who was this serial sadist?
0:38
Speaker 6: What sick son of a bitch would do something like this?
0:42
Speaker 1: And was he born to kill? In nineteen seventy seven,
1:21
Speaker 1: New Jersey detective Alan Grico was about to be confronted
1:25
Speaker 1: by a mystery.
1:31
Speaker 5: We received a call that a young married woman was
1:36
Speaker 5: reported missing from her apartment complex and Little Ferry, New Jersey,
1:42
Speaker 5: under suspicious circumstances. Mary Anne was an X ray technician
1:53
Speaker 5: who had been married a short period of time. They
1:58
Speaker 5: lived in a garden of apartment. There were very strange
2:03
Speaker 5: circumstances in that the report came from her husband, who
2:08
Speaker 5: was away on a business trip.
2:10
Speaker 1: Mary Anne had failed to keep an appointment that evening
2:13
Speaker 1: with her mother in law concerned mary Anne's husband had
2:17
Speaker 1: called the police.
2:19
Speaker 5: There did not appear to be anything broken in the apartment,
2:24
Speaker 5: no broken glasses, no fourth entry on the door, and
2:29
Speaker 5: we had no indication at all as to what had
2:33
Speaker 5: happened to mary Anne.
2:34
Speaker 1: Carr despite her husband's apparent absence. There had been a
2:40
Speaker 1: suspicious sighting at the time of mary Anne's disappearance.
2:46
Speaker 3: We had a witness who lived in the same apartment
2:49
Speaker 3: building who said that as he was backing his car
2:52
Speaker 3: out of the parking lot, he saw a person in
2:56
Speaker 3: his rear view mirror that he thought was Marianne Carr's husband.
3:02
Speaker 1: Although they didn't know it at the time. Mary Anne's
3:05
Speaker 1: husband bore a likeness to a former resident of the
3:09
Speaker 1: Little Ferry Apartments, a successful New York computer operator, Richard
3:18
Speaker 1: Francis Cottingham.
3:20
Speaker 7: He worked in what I referred to as Midtown Manhattan,
3:24
Speaker 7: right in the heart of the business district the Luke
3:28
Speaker 7: Cross Blue Shield, which is a very substantial insurance company.
3:31
Speaker 1: Fellow computer operator Dominic Volpe worked with Cottingham for thirteen years.
3:38
Speaker 6: I am Richard worked on the console together, channing a lot.
3:42
Speaker 6: He was well read and he was up to date
3:45
Speaker 6: on current events. He read a lot of stuff about medicine.
3:49
Speaker 6: He was pretty smart. At the time. A console operator
3:53
Speaker 6: was a big thing. It took four floors of complete
3:56
Speaker 6: square block of a city for seventeen megs of memory. Okay,
4:03
Speaker 6: no one ever heard of a gigabyte ben. But it
4:06
Speaker 6: was the cutting edge of the tire. The thing that
4:09
Speaker 6: I knows most about him is he consists still. He
4:12
Speaker 6: was always I called him the lake shaker. He was
4:14
Speaker 6: always sitting in his office chair shaking. His lads was shaking,
4:18
Speaker 6: his back was shaking, and he would he would keep
4:21
Speaker 6: that up for the whole shift, for eight nine hours straight.
4:30
Speaker 1: Across the river in New Jersey, investigating the disappearance of
4:35
Speaker 1: X ray technician Mary Anne Carr, Detective Griico was called
4:39
Speaker 1: to a motel near the airport. In the parking lot.
4:43
Speaker 1: Her body had been discovered.
4:46
Speaker 5: He was clothed in a white nurse's uniform. Mariann Carr
4:58
Speaker 5: was no longer a missing person, but now the victim
5:01
Speaker 5: of a homicide. We could observe Mary Anne Carr's body
5:10
Speaker 5: lying in this area between the curb and the fence.
5:18
Speaker 3: Marianne Carr's body had ligature marks on the wrists and
5:25
Speaker 3: the ankles from handcuffs, so we know that we knew
5:29
Speaker 3: that handcuffs were used in Marianne Carr's murder, and she
5:33
Speaker 3: had a ligature mark along the aspect of her neck.
5:38
Speaker 1: Investigators speculated mary Anne had been dumped from the trunk
5:41
Speaker 1: of a car, but had no solid leads.
5:46
Speaker 5: We had no idea of how she had gotten to
5:50
Speaker 5: where she was found, nor why she was there, nor
5:54
Speaker 5: who would have been responsible for removing her from her
5:58
Speaker 5: apartment and taking her there.
6:02
Speaker 1: However, it wouldn't be the last time they would be
6:05
Speaker 1: called to that location. A tale of terror and torture
6:12
Speaker 1: had only just begun. In December of nineteen seventy seven,
6:24
Speaker 1: the body of married X ray technician mary Anne Carr
6:28
Speaker 1: had been discovered dumped in the parking lot of a
6:30
Speaker 1: New Jersey motel. With no real leads, Detective Alan Grico
6:37
Speaker 1: was facing frustration as the investigation began grinding to a standstill.
6:45
Speaker 5: You need to have the investigation lead you in a
6:51
Speaker 5: particular direction. Without that direction, it's like a shotgun blast
6:57
Speaker 5: that you're covering all of these different things that ninety
7:03
Speaker 5: nine percent of them have no connection whatsoever.
7:08
Speaker 1: While mary Ann Karr's k stalled. Police were kept busy
7:12
Speaker 1: by a series of violent attacks in the airport area.
7:16
Speaker 5: There were actually a number of incidents of sexual assaults
7:23
Speaker 5: that had taken place within that time period, in which
7:27
Speaker 5: victims were either found on the side of the roadway
7:32
Speaker 5: or reported to be in motel rooms semi conscious.
7:38
Speaker 1: The attacks were perpetrated on prostitutes that had been picked
7:41
Speaker 1: up in New York City, where New Jersey resident Richard
7:45
Speaker 1: Cottingham worked as a computer operator.
7:55
Speaker 6: He was strange. I mean most of the stuff we
7:57
Speaker 6: talked about other than the job at the time, well,
8:01
Speaker 6: stuff that he did after work, supposedly, you know, he
8:06
Speaker 6: talked about F and M clubs you'd go to. He
8:08
Speaker 6: talked about.
8:09
Speaker 1: Prostitute Cottingham made no secret of his enjoyment of New
8:14
Speaker 1: York's dark entertainments.
8:17
Speaker 3: New York City at that time was a very different
8:21
Speaker 3: place than it is now. The Times Square area was
8:26
Speaker 3: a virtual cesspool, four and oh houses up and down
8:34
Speaker 3: the block, street walkers for blocks around.
8:41
Speaker 1: Photojournalist Alan Tannenbaum captured the prostitution industry at the time
8:46
Speaker 1: whilst working for the Soho News.
8:50
Speaker 8: It was rampant. It was all over the place, but
8:54
Speaker 8: especially concentrated in the few blocks around here.
9:00
Speaker 9: It was quite funky, very CD.
9:02
Speaker 8: I can give you an example right around the corners.
9:07
Speaker 6: Right here, those together stri together.
9:10
Speaker 7: Everybody loves the stripper, Come on, all right.
9:14
Speaker 9: The girls would work on these corners by the subway entrances,
9:18
Speaker 9: in doorways close to the peep shows, and solicit asking
9:24
Speaker 9: men going out on a date, and or the men
9:29
Speaker 9: would approach them.
9:29
Speaker 8: It was pretty obvious who was a working girl.
9:32
Speaker 10: Eighth Avenue was one of the more CD parts of
9:38
Speaker 10: this strip. In fact, it used to be called the
9:42
Speaker 10: Minnesota Strip.
9:44
Speaker 8: That's because the girls would come to New York City
9:49
Speaker 8: from the Midwest, get off at the Port Authority, and
9:52
Speaker 8: they would immediately get hustled by pimps who would put
9:56
Speaker 8: them into prostitution. I think a lot of them were away,
10:00
Speaker 8: it is in a bit naive and probably not arriving
10:04
Speaker 8: with a lot of money, so that they would get
10:06
Speaker 8: trapped into this kind of situation.
10:11
Speaker 1: Now, these young women were being plucked from the city
10:14
Speaker 1: streets and brutally assaulted.
10:18
Speaker 11: Prostitutes are very very common victims. Why the hardest thing
10:23
Speaker 11: in getting a victim is the abduction. How do you
10:25
Speaker 11: get a woman to go with you, you have.
10:28
Speaker 6: To talk to her.
10:29
Speaker 11: And even if you could talk well in your somewhat
10:31
Speaker 11: articulate and charming and engaging, not all women are going
10:34
Speaker 11: to go with the stranger. The problem with the abduction
10:38
Speaker 11: is eliminated by targeting prostitutes. That's part of their job
10:41
Speaker 11: description to go with strangers, take their clothes off and
10:44
Speaker 11: have sex.
10:47
Speaker 1: The victims were being drugged, beaten, and dumped in an
10:51
Speaker 1: area just across the river in New Jersey, not far
10:56
Speaker 1: from where the body of X ray technician Mary Anne
10:58
Speaker 1: Carr had been found.
11:02
Speaker 5: There's a lot of motels in the area, and they're
11:05
Speaker 5: not high class motels. There places that he used for
11:11
Speaker 5: hour traffic, much of it from New York City.
11:16
Speaker 1: One of the patrons of those motels was computer operator
11:20
Speaker 1: Richard Cuttingham.
11:26
Speaker 6: He used to talk about how he would be able
11:29
Speaker 6: to lure a prostitute out of Manhattan, showing them he
11:31
Speaker 6: always had two pockets full of cash and tons of cash,
11:34
Speaker 6: thousands of dollars. He would show a prostitute the cash,
11:38
Speaker 6: he would take them to New Jersey.
11:40
Speaker 1: But cutting him, it seemed, didn't like the idea of
11:43
Speaker 1: paying for his pleasure.
11:45
Speaker 6: Did he talk about not letting anybody get the best
11:49
Speaker 6: of him. One time we had a long discussion about
11:52
Speaker 6: this hotel that he went to and how he could
11:54
Speaker 6: slip out of the place, you know, when she was
11:57
Speaker 6: asleep and take her. He said. He took her clothes
12:00
Speaker 6: and her money and left her in the room. You know,
12:03
Speaker 6: when you're at work and you're talking. Some of it
12:05
Speaker 6: you believe, some of it you don't take. You take
12:08
Speaker 6: it goes in one ear at the other. You take
12:09
Speaker 6: them a grain of saw.
12:12
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the attacks on the New York working girls continued. Dumped, discarded,
12:17
Speaker 1: and left for dead.
12:20
Speaker 5: One of the girls was left in this motel on
12:24
Speaker 5: the corner here, called the Airport Motel.
12:30
Speaker 3: She had been picked up. She was brought to a
12:33
Speaker 3: bar in New York City called Flanagan's, and that's the
12:36
Speaker 3: last thing she could recall.
12:42
Speaker 1: Near a major hospital, Flanagan's bar was a popular haunt
12:47
Speaker 1: for Richard Cottingham.
12:51
Speaker 3: An analysis of her blood and urine indicated that she
12:56
Speaker 3: was drugged.
12:59
Speaker 1: The young victor him had been subjected to a horrifically
13:02
Speaker 1: violent ordeal.
13:05
Speaker 5: When she was found, she was unconscious in the room,
13:11
Speaker 5: and she was in pretty bad shape.
13:13
Speaker 3: He soodomized her. He beat her very very severely, bit
13:21
Speaker 3: her breasts very severely.
13:24
Speaker 11: Prostitutes are sexual service providers, and that offends many serial
13:30
Speaker 11: sexual murderers. As ironic as it sounds, many serial sexual
13:35
Speaker 11: murderers view themselves as highly moralistic, and they want to
13:40
Speaker 11: degrade prostitutes or are behaving in what they considered to
13:44
Speaker 11: be an unpermissible sexual conduct. They're very very mixed up sexually,
13:51
Speaker 11: and so you would think that they would understand prostitutes
13:55
Speaker 11: and relate to them and understand, but they don't. They
13:58
Speaker 11: have very very twisted sense of sexuality.
14:04
Speaker 1: In December nineteen seventy nine, someone would strike out against
14:08
Speaker 1: prostitutes in a way that would send shockwaves through the city.
14:16
Speaker 2: It was a very big story, even for Manhattan.
14:19
Speaker 6: It was very big.
14:20
Speaker 2: I clearly remember it because if only because of how
14:24
Speaker 2: gruesome it was.
14:26
Speaker 1: Emergency services had been alerted to a fire in a
14:29
Speaker 1: room at the travel In Motor Lodge near Times Square.
14:34
Speaker 1: There they found twenty three year old d D. Gudazi
14:37
Speaker 1: and another unidentified young woman.
14:40
Speaker 5: They were two alleged prostitutes that were discovered in beds
14:46
Speaker 5: in a motel room, and the bodies had been desecrated.
14:51
Speaker 1: Each woman's head and hands had been cut off before
14:55
Speaker 1: the beds were ignited.
14:57
Speaker 3: Beheaded, burnt, chopped up, and nobody knew who was responsible.
15:03
Speaker 3: It was a mystery.
15:06
Speaker 1: The dreadful nature of the crime led to the mystery
15:08
Speaker 1: perpetrator being dubbed the Times Square Ripper, and news soon
15:13
Speaker 1: hit the Manhattan computer room where Dominic Volpe and Richard
15:17
Speaker 1: Cottingham worked.
15:19
Speaker 6: This guy, his name is Rob. He came in. He said,
15:22
Speaker 6: what sick son of a bitch. We do something like this,
15:26
Speaker 6: take the heads and the hands off the grand burn
15:29
Speaker 6: them inh so look the climbing and he shook his
15:32
Speaker 6: head like this is well, Rob could have been you
15:35
Speaker 6: could have been me, I thought. I thought it was
15:38
Speaker 6: a joke.
15:45
Speaker 1: The depraved crime appeared to have no connection to the
15:48
Speaker 1: murder two and a half years earlier of X ray
15:51
Speaker 1: technician Mary Anne Carr, her body found in the parking
15:55
Speaker 1: lot of a New Jersey motel.
15:59
Speaker 5: It did nuts to have any connection to our case.
16:04
Speaker 5: It happened in New York City that the body is
16:07
Speaker 5: being desecrated the way they were in. New York City
16:10
Speaker 5: had a tremendous amount of homicides every day, so there
16:13
Speaker 5: was no direct connection made at that time.
16:16
Speaker 11: This is an important point because we found in our
16:20
Speaker 11: research that about seventy percent of serial sexual murderers will
16:24
Speaker 11: experiment at a crime scene and do something very very
16:28
Speaker 11: different with one victim that they had not done with
16:31
Speaker 11: the others, such as cut their eyes out, cut their
16:33
Speaker 11: vagina out, and so on. Now, when an investigator without
16:37
Speaker 11: extensive experience in this field looks at it, one victim
16:41
Speaker 11: looks so very different, they're led to believe, at least
16:44
Speaker 11: from their own experience, that it has to be someone
16:47
Speaker 11: else that's incorrect.
16:50
Speaker 1: However, detectives were about to be called to a scene
16:53
Speaker 1: with a similarity that couldn't be ignored. At the same
17:01
Speaker 1: location that Mary Anne Carr had been found two and
17:04
Speaker 1: a half years earlier, a chilling discovery had been made.
17:09
Speaker 5: A chambermaid was cleaning the room and thought she detected
17:15
Speaker 5: what was a foul odor coming from the bed area.
17:22
Speaker 5: Lifting the mattress from the frame, she was startled to
17:29
Speaker 5: see the naked, handcuffed body of a female deceased female
17:36
Speaker 5: lying there. It was extremely frightening and disturbing to the chambermaid,
17:44
Speaker 5: to say the least.
17:48
Speaker 3: Of that woman, who we sometime later learned was Valerie
17:52
Speaker 3: and Street, who had been a prostitute in New York City.
17:58
Speaker 3: On her lower back, there was an abrasion which had
18:02
Speaker 3: been made by a sharp object. We thought at the
18:05
Speaker 3: time it was a knife.
18:07
Speaker 11: That was torture marks. It's eroticized the power and control
18:13
Speaker 11: that the offender has over the victim, to make the
18:16
Speaker 11: victim realize that he, the offender, is in control of
18:20
Speaker 11: life and death, and so very often the offender will
18:23
Speaker 11: prolong her agony to kill her in a very very
18:27
Speaker 11: slow and deliberate way, so that she's aware that he's
18:31
Speaker 11: going to kill her.
18:34
Speaker 1: A monster was on the loose, and it was clear
18:37
Speaker 1: he wasn't afraid to return to the scene of his crimes.
18:42
Speaker 5: That was the second case of a woman's body being
18:46
Speaker 5: found on the premises of this particular motel.
18:51
Speaker 4: I think that the fact that he'd us the same
18:53
Speaker 4: hotel is narcissism, and that brings us to the concept
18:58
Speaker 4: of narcissistic immunity. Some narcissists absolutely believe they are invisible,
19:03
Speaker 4: they're untouchable, they're so superior to everybody else that there's
19:07
Speaker 4: no chance that they're ever going to get caught.
19:11
Speaker 1: As if to prove the killer right identifying a suspect
19:15
Speaker 1: was proving impossible.
19:17
Speaker 3: We had no idea who the perpetrator of the murder
19:20
Speaker 3: of Valerie in Street was.
19:23
Speaker 1: In just a matter of days, the Times Square ripper
19:26
Speaker 1: would strike again across the river in New York. During
19:38
Speaker 1: May nineteen eighty, two and a half years after the
19:41
Speaker 1: murder of X ray technician Mary Anne Carr, a New
19:45
Speaker 1: Jersey motel had become the scene of a second brutal
19:48
Speaker 1: killing with the discovery of prostitute Valerie Anne Street. Meanwhile,
19:55
Speaker 1: in the computer room of a large New York insurance firm,
19:59
Speaker 1: Dominic Volt, he would listen in disbelief to fellow operator
20:03
Speaker 1: and family man Richard Cottingham, as he openly discussed his
20:07
Speaker 1: desires for the city's dark entertainments.
20:15
Speaker 6: He was very upfront about it. He bragged about prostitutes,
20:20
Speaker 6: s and m gambling, all those vices that he had.
20:24
Speaker 6: He bragged about.
20:26
Speaker 1: Cottingham claimed to be a regular visitor to Sato masochistic clubs.
20:32
Speaker 6: He would describe things that went on there. He talked
20:34
Speaker 6: about a woman that was walking around with a guy
20:37
Speaker 6: on a leash. He was on his knees. He would
20:39
Speaker 6: walk into the bathroom cunning it would follow them and
20:41
Speaker 6: watch this. The girl made him lock the urinals with
20:45
Speaker 6: his tongue. He liked the slave thing, you know, hair
20:50
Speaker 6: cloths and treating people, you know that had no way
20:53
Speaker 6: of helping themselves.
20:57
Speaker 1: It seems from an early age Richard had liked being
21:01
Speaker 1: in control. Back in Pascack Valley, New Jersey, Richard Newman
21:10
Speaker 1: was on the same high school track team.
21:14
Speaker 2: I met Richard on the athletic field. Richard stood apart
21:21
Speaker 2: in the sense that he wasn't always at practice, as
21:23
Speaker 2: I remember. He wasn't a joiner, he didn't have a nickname.
21:28
Speaker 2: He wasn't part of our little clique. He had a
21:32
Speaker 2: kind of wise guy attitude about him, dismissive of teachers
21:36
Speaker 2: and of school in general. I don't think he was
21:39
Speaker 2: crazy about authority.
21:42
Speaker 4: He would stand out from groups. It's common for narcissists
21:46
Speaker 4: who believe they're better than others, and obviously they're at
21:50
Speaker 4: heart insecure, but he just has disdain for what of
21:55
Speaker 4: the people are doing and doesn't really want to be
21:57
Speaker 4: invested in it. He thinks he's superior to everybody else.
22:02
Speaker 2: He was kind of a big guy, several inches taller
22:05
Speaker 2: than me. I'm sure broad shoulders. I don't remember him
22:08
Speaker 2: menacing students in general. I do remember that the two
22:13
Speaker 2: or three friends of his, that he seemed to lord
22:18
Speaker 2: it over them a bit like he was the leader
22:21
Speaker 2: of the pack, so to speak. He was certainly attracted
22:24
Speaker 2: to women, but my recollection is that he did not
22:27
Speaker 2: have a girlfriend. When he spoke about women, it was
22:30
Speaker 2: kind of in a negative way.
22:37
Speaker 6: Being in the.
22:37
Speaker 2: Locker room reminds you of the expression locker room talk.
22:41
Speaker 2: I certainly remember him talking among his friends and perhaps
22:46
Speaker 2: in gym class if I remember about what girls were
22:49
Speaker 2: attractive to him, And the only ankling you would have
22:52
Speaker 2: of the way his mind works is that he would
22:56
Speaker 2: talk about the girls in class, or I guess the
23:02
Speaker 2: girls out on the street too, who were perhaps were
23:06
Speaker 2: better endowed, you know, larger breasted.
23:12
Speaker 1: That just seemed to be.
23:14
Speaker 2: Sort of a key attraction for him.
23:21
Speaker 4: It's one thing to have an interest in large breasted
23:25
Speaker 4: women because you think they're attractive. It's another to have
23:29
Speaker 4: an obsession with the breasts, not the women, the breasts,
23:33
Speaker 4: and that then becomes what we call it paraphilia, or
23:36
Speaker 4: an abnormal sexual interest that is needed for arousal.
23:43
Speaker 1: Now in his mid thirties, Richard Cottingham would brag to
23:47
Speaker 1: his coworkers about his use of prostitutes, but it seems
23:51
Speaker 1: Cottingham didn't enjoy all aspects of the vice trade.
23:56
Speaker 6: I heard one conversation about you had a venereal? Did
24:00
Speaker 6: he contracted through a prostitute? And at that point he
24:06
Speaker 6: was Luckily he sounded angry when he mentioned the hookers.
24:12
Speaker 1: Less than two weeks after the discovery of the second
24:15
Speaker 1: body of the New Jersey hotel, the Times Square ripper
24:19
Speaker 1: struck again in New York. In a burning hotel bedroom,
24:32
Speaker 1: the body of another young working girl was found. Both
24:36
Speaker 1: breasts had been sliced off and taken away.
24:41
Speaker 11: In almost all serial sexual murder cases, they will go
24:45
Speaker 11: above and beyond killing the individual and engage in post
24:48
Speaker 11: mortem activity that to them is sexually gratifying. This type
24:55
Speaker 11: of ritualistic behavior grows out of the offender's fantasy life,
25:00
Speaker 11: and very often, as a series of murders occurs, the
25:04
Speaker 11: individual's behavior becomes much more elaborate. As the offender gains
25:09
Speaker 11: much more comfort and killing. Their ritualistic behavior is apt
25:13
Speaker 11: to become more personalized and more embellished.
25:18
Speaker 1: With a depraved killer on the loose. Police in New
25:21
Speaker 1: York and New Jersey were in a state of frustration.
25:25
Speaker 1: But then one week later, the killer would make an
25:27
Speaker 1: uncharacteristic mistake and reveal himself for the first time. Yet
25:33
Speaker 1: again the motel in New Jersey would be the focus.
25:40
Speaker 5: There was a great deal of excitement when we got
25:43
Speaker 5: the call from the Hazrakit's police department, which said that
25:47
Speaker 5: they had just apprehended a suspect attempting the flee from
25:51
Speaker 5: the motel. The motel front desk was alerted to a
25:56
Speaker 5: disturbance in one of the rooms. They decided to send
26:03
Speaker 5: one of their representatives to make sure that the occupants
26:06
Speaker 5: were okay. It took several minutes for someone to be
26:12
Speaker 5: coaxed to the door. Verbally, she said, yes, everything is okay,
26:19
Speaker 5: but with her eyes gave the impression that everything was
26:23
Speaker 5: not okay.
26:24
Speaker 1: The motel staff immediately called the police and an officer
26:28
Speaker 1: was dispatched.
26:30
Speaker 5: And when he responded, he responded to that area of
26:35
Speaker 5: the motel, towards the farthest corner where there was an entrance.
26:41
Speaker 5: A man was observed running out of the building in
26:47
Speaker 5: a suspicious manner, carrying a bag in his hand and at.
26:52
Speaker 7: The time of his arrest, he had the handcuffs tape.
26:56
Speaker 7: It was to either place over the mouths of the women,
26:59
Speaker 7: or mind her hands and feet, or what have you.
27:01
Speaker 7: So all of these items were incriminating and he had
27:05
Speaker 7: no real explanation for it.
27:08
Speaker 1: The fleeing man was identified as Richard Francis Cottingham of Lodye,
27:13
Speaker 1: New Jersey.
27:18
Speaker 3: He had a wife and children. It's a computer operator
27:21
Speaker 3: in New York City.
27:23
Speaker 7: He was in his mid thirties. He was kind of stocky.
27:26
Speaker 7: He was at least average looking, except again, as I say,
27:31
Speaker 7: he was kind of stocky, well built, you might say.
27:34
Speaker 3: His wife, she described him to my recollection as a
27:37
Speaker 3: devoted husband. She said that he was very attentive to
27:42
Speaker 3: his children.
27:44
Speaker 1: Despite being virtually caught in the act, Richard Cottingham professed
27:48
Speaker 1: his innocence.
27:50
Speaker 7: He just flat out denied it, and I know I
27:56
Speaker 7: found it very difficult to accept. They sort of caught
27:59
Speaker 7: him red handed. That's one might say.
28:02
Speaker 5: He was somewhat smug in his attitude and his answers,
28:07
Speaker 5: although at one point he indicated the only thing I'll
28:11
Speaker 5: say is that I have a problem with women.
28:21
Speaker 1: Investigators immediately moved to search Cottingham's New Jersey home.
28:27
Speaker 5: We prepared a search warrant to look for any evidence
28:32
Speaker 5: that might be associated with a female abduction, rape murder.
28:38
Speaker 5: This is the street that Richard Cunningham lived on.
28:43
Speaker 1: Cottingham resided with his wife and children in a two
28:46
Speaker 1: family home in a pleasant suburban setting.
28:49
Speaker 5: There's a middle class neighborhood. I would describe it as
28:52
Speaker 5: a working class people. Nothing would stand out of the ordinary.
28:57
Speaker 5: He seemed to be a normal dad, husband. It's what
29:02
Speaker 5: we didn't know was hidden underneath. He truly was a monster.
29:10
Speaker 1: Inside the family home, detectives would discover evidence of a
29:14
Speaker 1: man who reveled in sadistic murder.
29:17
Speaker 3: In the lower basement of his home. He had a
29:20
Speaker 3: large room which was locked, which his wife first children
29:23
Speaker 3: did not have access to.
29:25
Speaker 7: Now this guy married with three children, but he has
29:29
Speaker 7: in this room. I suppose one could refer him as
29:32
Speaker 7: souvenirs or memorabilia or whatever you want to call it,
29:35
Speaker 7: items that he took from these women after he tortured
29:37
Speaker 7: them and murdered them.
29:43
Speaker 4: People that we call organized seria killers often take trophies.
29:46
Speaker 4: They will take something from victims like an earring or
29:50
Speaker 4: shoe or piece of clothing a purse. Now, Like big
29:54
Speaker 4: game hunters, the trophy room helps them to relive those
29:58
Speaker 4: moments where they felt most in control. The trapper room
30:03
Speaker 4: is a nice metaphor for this compartmentalized life. This is
30:06
Speaker 4: a place where they go to just completely fully indulge
30:10
Speaker 4: in their narcissistic fantasies of what they've done to other people.
30:15
Speaker 1: Now, the successful computer operator husband and father was identified
30:20
Speaker 1: as the Times Square ripper and murderer of the women
30:24
Speaker 1: at the New Jersey Motel. His capture stunned those that
30:28
Speaker 1: had known him.
30:30
Speaker 6: It was like he was unbelievable. No one talked about
30:33
Speaker 6: anything else. He hit, eon, got arrested, and blah blah blah,
30:37
Speaker 6: And it was articles in the newspaper being copied every day,
30:40
Speaker 6: and he talked about crazy things where we never thought
30:43
Speaker 6: he would do crazy things. You know, I got children
30:47
Speaker 6: on my way. I'm just thinking about it now thirty
30:49
Speaker 6: five years later, So I mean, it was a complete.
30:53
Speaker 1: Shock amongst his co workers. Gottingham had never made any
30:59
Speaker 1: secret of hiss of prostitution, sayto masochism and gambling.
31:05
Speaker 6: He was a gambler. He was not afraid to take
31:09
Speaker 6: chances on anything. He usually won. I would say ninety
31:13
Speaker 6: five percent at a time. He was a winner. He
31:15
Speaker 6: always said that he can get at him anything. There
31:19
Speaker 6: was nothing to take him over another. He would always win.
31:22
Speaker 6: He used that gambling thing in his head for everything
31:25
Speaker 6: that he did. He was a winner.
31:34
Speaker 1: Now, Richard Cuttingham was about to gamble on being able
31:37
Speaker 1: to outwit his accusers and beat the legal system.
31:41
Speaker 5: During his trial, he seemed to be a very conscious
31:46
Speaker 5: participant along with his attorney, taking notes, paying very close
31:52
Speaker 5: attention to the testimony of the victims and of the
31:56
Speaker 5: witnesses against him.
31:59
Speaker 7: You could sense that he was calculating all the time.
32:02
Speaker 7: I came the conclusion that he was devious at best.
32:07
Speaker 7: After several weeks and court. Everybody, of course, the jury,
32:12
Speaker 7: the judge, court offices, everybody sort of had the same impression.
32:18
Speaker 3: Mister Cattingham was a very intelligent man. He was not
32:21
Speaker 3: as intelligent as he thought he was. He thought he
32:24
Speaker 3: was more intelligent than everybody else. That was part of
32:28
Speaker 3: his personality.
32:31
Speaker 1: Cottingham denied all the crimes and claimed that on the
32:34
Speaker 1: one occasion that he had been caught at the motel
32:37
Speaker 1: with prostitute Leslian O'Dell, the activities had been consenting. What's more,
32:43
Speaker 1: despite the advice of his lawyers, Cottingham insisted he wanted
32:47
Speaker 1: to personally take the stand.
32:51
Speaker 7: That was explained to him, You're going to be cross
32:53
Speaker 7: examined and there are a lot of holes in your
32:58
Speaker 7: story that probably will be exposed, but he wanted to testify.
33:07
Speaker 11: A guy like Cottingham enjoys being smarter than other people,
33:11
Speaker 11: particularly the law enforcement. He thinks he's the smartest person.
33:14
Speaker 6: In the room.
33:15
Speaker 11: No matter where he is, he wants to show everyone
33:18
Speaker 11: his brilliance and how smart he is.
33:22
Speaker 3: I started my cross examination by getting him to admit
33:25
Speaker 3: the things that he could not deny, as any good
33:27
Speaker 3: prosecutor would do. He could not deny that he was
33:30
Speaker 3: arrested with multiple pairs of handcuffs. Handcuffs were used in
33:37
Speaker 3: the murders of Valerieanne Street and Marianne Carr. They were
33:41
Speaker 3: used in the assault on Leslian O'Dell. He could not
33:47
Speaker 3: deny that he had mouth suppressants. He could not deny
33:51
Speaker 3: that he had a knife, and a knife was used
33:53
Speaker 3: against Valerie Ane Street to torture her on the lower back.
33:56
Speaker 3: Could not deny that. He could not deny that he
33:59
Speaker 3: had the barbiturate pills in his satchel. Barbiturates were used
34:04
Speaker 3: on one of the victims that he had sexually assaulted
34:09
Speaker 3: and thrown on the roadside. He could not deny that
34:12
Speaker 3: he bit Leslian O'Dell's breasts. He could not deny because
34:18
Speaker 3: it was in the photographs part of the assault on
34:21
Speaker 3: Valerie An Street.
34:23
Speaker 1: Understand, Cottingham was forced to admit that he had a
34:26
Speaker 1: fascination with bondage, But as the pressure intensified, no one
34:31
Speaker 1: could have predicted the extent to which he would go
34:34
Speaker 1: to avoid imprisonment. After taking the stand in his own
34:44
Speaker 1: defense for multiple assaults and murders, New York computer operator
34:48
Speaker 1: Richard Cottingham was faced with intense cross examination under increasing pressure.
34:53
Speaker 1: The defendant had revealed a fascination with bondage since his childhood.
35:00
Speaker 3: Everything that we were able to piece together, he had
35:03
Speaker 3: a typical upbringing, middle class, lower middle class family, very close.
35:08
Speaker 1: To his mother. Cottingham had been born in New York's
35:12
Speaker 1: Bronx neighborhood before moving with his family to the leafy
35:15
Speaker 1: Pascack Valley in New Jersey.
35:19
Speaker 2: His home was about two miles from where I lived,
35:25
Speaker 2: was a great area to grow up in there was
35:28
Speaker 2: plenty of parks and open space.
35:32
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is it here.
35:35
Speaker 2: This is where he lived, a modest home, set back
35:38
Speaker 2: from the road. I didn't go in the house, but
35:43
Speaker 2: I remember that this is where he lived. I know
35:47
Speaker 2: his mother was devoted to him.
35:50
Speaker 11: These individuals are in very dark and perverse sexually sadistic
35:56
Speaker 11: fantasies from very very early on. The fantasy driven crimes
36:00
Speaker 11: like serial sexual murder begins ten fifteen, twenty years earlier
36:05
Speaker 11: in the offender's.
36:06
Speaker 1: Mind, Cottingham would claim that his deviant desires had grown
36:11
Speaker 1: out of the use of pornography.
36:15
Speaker 4: It's a common trajectory with sadistic sexual serial murders is
36:21
Speaker 4: to begin with ordinary pornography, even just erotic literature, even
36:27
Speaker 4: just catalogs that show women in underwear. Some people stop
36:30
Speaker 4: at various stages because they don't really like the rest.
36:34
Speaker 4: They they're fine with the tame stuff. Others want more,
36:39
Speaker 4: and if that is what appeals to them and excites
36:43
Speaker 4: them and arouses them, they will continue to get more
36:46
Speaker 4: and more extreme with it. Not all serial killers are
36:49
Speaker 4: sadistic sexual murderers. Those who are tend to become very
36:56
Speaker 4: extreme with what they do to their victims.
37:01
Speaker 1: A portrait developed of a monster with a devious method
37:05
Speaker 1: of operation.
37:06
Speaker 7: He would go out on the street, meet these girls,
37:10
Speaker 7: say to them, I want to take you out, not
37:13
Speaker 7: just to have sex in the car or some such thing,
37:16
Speaker 7: but I'd like to take you to a restaurant. I
37:18
Speaker 7: just won a lot of money, uh, in a card
37:21
Speaker 7: game or gambling. And he would show them a lot
37:23
Speaker 7: of money with a hundred dollar bill around it. Of course,
37:27
Speaker 7: I guess these girls were impressed. They would go to
37:28
Speaker 7: dinner with him. At some point he would drug them,
37:32
Speaker 7: and then he was able to lead them out of
37:33
Speaker 7: the place into his car and take them to a
37:35
Speaker 7: motel and sexually assault them, plus cut them and try
37:41
Speaker 7: to torture them. That's the kind of person he is.
37:46
Speaker 1: As the evidence mounted, Cottingham faced the prospect of spending
37:50
Speaker 1: the rest of his life in prison. Still by hook
37:53
Speaker 1: or by crook, the killer was determined to avoid incarceration.
37:58
Speaker 5: I had briefly left the courtroom and gone downstairs to
38:03
Speaker 5: my office, and as I came back into the courtroom,
38:08
Speaker 5: I immediately saw the matron in a frenzy running from
38:17
Speaker 5: the area of the holding cell, and without her saying
38:20
Speaker 5: a word, I knew that he escaped.
38:27
Speaker 1: During a break in proceedings, Cottingham had decided to make
38:31
Speaker 1: an audacious bid for freedom.
38:34
Speaker 3: Took a jacket and threw it against the sheriff's officer's face.
38:38
Speaker 3: He followed the sheriff's officer and went about one of
38:42
Speaker 3: the back stairways.
38:43
Speaker 5: I could see him running from the courthouse across the street.
38:48
Speaker 3: We chased him across the street.
38:51
Speaker 5: Another sheriff's officer had spotted him as well, and we
38:56
Speaker 5: both tackled him on the street and put them in
39:02
Speaker 5: handcuffs and restrained them and brought them back to the courthouse.
39:07
Speaker 1: Richard Cuttingham would not elude authorities again. He was found
39:11
Speaker 1: guilty and condemned to spend the rest of his life
39:14
Speaker 1: in prison. But was this serial sadist, mad bad or
39:21
Speaker 1: born to kill?
39:24
Speaker 2: What makes them think they're going to get away with it?
39:26
Speaker 2: That's what I dwell on more than anything else. What
39:28
Speaker 2: makes them think they can continue to do it and
39:32
Speaker 2: have this smug attitude and exercise this awful power over people.
39:37
Speaker 2: There's lots of things inside our mentality, inside our personality
39:44
Speaker 2: that tell us not to do it. If only that
39:47
Speaker 2: that's a fellow human being and that they have loved
39:49
Speaker 2: ones at home.
39:51
Speaker 4: Those who are psychopathic absolutely have no remorse for what
39:55
Speaker 4: they're doing. They don't really care about people being in
39:58
Speaker 4: pain unless they're and they care because they want them
40:01
Speaker 4: to be in pain. So the psychopath and the sadas,
40:06
Speaker 4: they're not one of the same. But if you get
40:08
Speaker 4: the two in combination, you have a very very dangerous person.
40:12
Speaker 3: Some people might have trophies for their exploits in baseball
40:17
Speaker 3: or basketball or golf, or awards that they get for
40:22
Speaker 3: community service. These were his trophies.
40:25
Speaker 6: These were his.
40:26
Speaker 3: Conquests, These were his criminal activities which he had gotten
40:32
Speaker 3: away with, and these were his trophies of how intelligent
40:37
Speaker 3: he was, how charming he was, and how smarter than
40:42
Speaker 3: everyone else he was.
40:43
Speaker 11: Cottingham is pretty much a very classic serial sexual murderer.
40:51
Speaker 11: The best way to understand serial sexual murder is to
40:54
Speaker 11: view it as a deviant sexual arousal pattern where sex
40:58
Speaker 11: and aggression become fused and the aggressive act of self
41:02
Speaker 11: is eroticized, whether it's choking or cutting or stabbing in
41:08
Speaker 11: regular sexual intercourse. In normal conditions, there is some level
41:12
Speaker 11: of pain inflicted and received, and there's some level of biting,
41:17
Speaker 11: and these sorts of things. In serial sexual murder, those
41:21
Speaker 11: particular behaviors are exaggerated enormously and really take a life
41:27
Speaker 11: of their own.
41:30
Speaker 5: I think there is something in their genetic makeup. I
41:33
Speaker 5: think it is a twisted mind that associates sex with harm, hurt, injury,
41:43
Speaker 5: and death.
41:45
Speaker 4: I think someone who's a psychopath already starts at a
41:49
Speaker 4: disadvantage as he then gets exposed to things that lure
41:55
Speaker 4: him into wanting power over other people and in particular
41:59
Speaker 4: being sadistic type of person, the idea of being born
42:04
Speaker 4: to kill comes pretty close to him.
42:09
Speaker 1: In twenty ten, the incarcerated Cottingham admitted to the murder
42:14
Speaker 1: by strangling of twenty nine year old mother of two,
42:18
Speaker 1: Nancy Vogel in nineteen sixty seven, when he was just
42:22
Speaker 1: twenty years old, and Cottingham is suspected of several other
42:26
Speaker 1: possible slayings. One thing is for certain for those that
42:32
Speaker 1: met him and be lucky enough to survive, Richard Cottingham, torturer, murderer, mutilator,
42:40
Speaker 1: will never be forgotten.
42:42
Speaker 7: He was far different than people that I've met, and
42:45
Speaker 7: I've met some people from all kinds of bad backgrounds
42:50
Speaker 7: or bad situations. But I think is intrinsically evil.
42:56
Speaker 6: You know, you fool around. How goes you fool around
43:00
Speaker 6: with nurses? You fool around with this, You fool around.
43:02
Speaker 6: That's fine. A lot of people do that. Nobody kills people,
43:06
Speaker 6: Nobody decapitates people, Nobody rips people's hands off. I think
43:10
Speaker 6: it's a six son of a bitch.