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I Spoke to the Man Closest to the Times Square Killer Here_s What We Found · Luke's English Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: The thing I've learned about serial killers is this for
0:06
Speaker 1: something we think we understand, we really don't. The reality
0:11
Speaker 1: is they live in the margins, unseen, misread, and often misunderstood.
0:17
Speaker 1: Police are asking for the public help in identifying two
0:20
Speaker 1: women found in a Times Square motel. Few cases make
0:24
Speaker 1: that clearer than Richard Cottingham.
0:27
Speaker 2: I started talking to him. He feels no remorse whatsoever.
0:33
Speaker 2: He leads these double lines. He is very deceptive.
0:39
Speaker 1: Richard Cottingham is currently incarcerated for crimes associated with the
0:43
Speaker 1: murders of twenty women between nineteen sixty seven and nineteen
0:48
Speaker 1: eighty across New York and New Jersey. But the record,
0:53
Speaker 1: the one most people know, only goes so far. Today,
0:57
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with a criminologist who's spent hundreds of hours
1:01
Speaker 1: with Cottingham.
1:02
Speaker 2: You have a prepaid call.
1:04
Speaker 1: It took him years to get close, hell years to
1:10
Speaker 1: move past the version of the story told at trial,
1:13
Speaker 1: the version repeated in the media, and towards something else entirely.
1:18
Speaker 3: The ones that I had given up.
1:22
Speaker 4: Are easy ones.
1:24
Speaker 3: I tell you many times I changed up and I
1:28
Speaker 3: did think different.
1:29
Speaker 2: It's to me, killing doesn't make you god. Knowing who
1:37
Speaker 2: lives or dies.
1:38
Speaker 1: God, it's that I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked.
1:50
Speaker 1: The challenge with interviewing a psychopath is this. They're charismatic,
1:55
Speaker 1: they're engaging, they want to talk, but you can never
1:59
Speaker 1: take them out their word. John Wayne Gacy gave multiple
2:03
Speaker 1: interviews before his execution denying his involvement with victims he
2:08
Speaker 1: buried in his home. Ted Bundy never gave a full
2:12
Speaker 1: accounting of his victims, despite having every opportunity. This is
2:18
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy speaking to a reporter after he was convicted
2:22
Speaker 1: of an attack in which the survivor gave an eyewitness account.
2:27
Speaker 5: You wish you to stay, saying you feel it, everything
2:31
Speaker 5: will turn out right, that you are and do you
2:33
Speaker 5: still feel that?
2:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, more than ever.
2:38
Speaker 1: And I've experienced this myself. Robert Picton, Charles Manson, Scott Lee, Kimball,
2:44
Speaker 1: all of them have told me things directly that were
2:47
Speaker 1: clearly untrue.
2:49
Speaker 6: So just to be clear, you you didn't kill anyone.
2:55
Speaker 1: But that's the problem. If you want to understand these men,
2:59
Speaker 1: you have to set great fact from fiction, and they
3:02
Speaker 1: are exceptionally good at blurring that line.
3:06
Speaker 2: You have a prepaid call.
3:07
Speaker 4: You will not be charged for this call.
3:09
Speaker 6: This call is from an inmate ant in New Jersey
3:12
Speaker 6: State prison.
3:14
Speaker 2: I started talking to him thirty years later, when the
3:18
Speaker 2: daughter of one of the victims contacted me.
3:22
Speaker 1: I began writing about that's the voice of doctor Peter Vonsky,
3:26
Speaker 1: a crime historian and scholar. For nearly a decade, he's
3:31
Speaker 1: been in direct contact with Richard Cottingham, who's currently incarcerated
3:36
Speaker 1: at Southwood State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
3:40
Speaker 2: We began talking and we got along, and from then
3:46
Speaker 2: on it just one thing started leading to another, and
3:51
Speaker 2: I've spent two years visiting him in prison.
3:55
Speaker 3: The problem you have, you have preconceived die fears about
4:01
Speaker 3: how things work.
4:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that, rich And then there's you know the question
4:08
Speaker 2: of how much I trust what you say right to
4:13
Speaker 2: this day, including today, I just finished talking with Cottingham
4:17
Speaker 2: about an hour ago. We talk on the phone daily,
4:22
Speaker 2: so I probably put in about seven hundred hours of
4:27
Speaker 2: conversations with with Cottingham.
4:31
Speaker 1: Before we go any further, let's establish what's been reported.
4:36
Speaker 1: Richard Cottingham is often referred to as the Times Square Killer,
4:40
Speaker 1: a name that comes from a series of highly publicized
4:44
Speaker 1: murders discovered near Times Square in nineteen seventy nine. At
4:50
Speaker 1: the time of his arrest, investigators believed he was responsible
4:54
Speaker 1: only for a relatively contained series of homicides, but that
4:58
Speaker 1: was just a fragment.
5:00
Speaker 7: Of the story.
5:01
Speaker 1: Over the years, it's become clear that Cottingham's crimes extend
5:06
Speaker 1: far beyond that initial window. By his own estimation, he
5:10
Speaker 1: may be responsible for between eighty five and one hundred murders.
5:15
Speaker 2: If you break down one hundred murders, let's say it
5:18
Speaker 2: was one hundred. You break down one hundred murders over
5:21
Speaker 2: fifteen years, that's one murder every two months in an
5:28
Speaker 2: era when there's no DNA, no cellphone evidence. It's entirely plausible.
5:36
Speaker 1: Given what doctor Vronsky has uncovered about Cottingham, it seems
5:40
Speaker 1: more than plausible. His access to Cottingham is rare. Anything
5:45
Speaker 1: Cottingham is willing to admit, He's told Vronsky. But like
5:50
Speaker 1: much about Cottingham, this is just a part of the story.
5:54
Speaker 8: I never and I never went out to kill. That's
5:56
Speaker 8: why I mean. They say that I'm not really like
5:59
Speaker 8: a and that's the truth.
6:04
Speaker 1: That's the voice of Richard Cottingham himself. From a twenty
6:08
Speaker 1: fourteen police interview. Throughout this episode, you're gonna hear his words,
6:13
Speaker 1: not his explanation, but his illustration, Because understanding a man
6:19
Speaker 1: like Cottingham isn't just about what he says. It's about
6:22
Speaker 1: what he avoids, what he reshapes, what he refuses to remember.
6:29
Speaker 1: You have talked to him for seven hundred hours. Who
6:33
Speaker 1: is this guy? So my understanding is he grew up
6:37
Speaker 1: in New Jersey?
6:39
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
6:40
Speaker 1: What was he like as a child, what was his
6:42
Speaker 1: home life like?
6:44
Speaker 2: He insists he has no memory of his childhood.
6:47
Speaker 1: A convenient excuse for someone who doesn't want people looking
6:51
Speaker 1: too closely. We know Cottingham was born in the Bronx
7:01
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty six, the first of four children. His
7:06
Speaker 1: father was an insurance executive. On paper, there's no obvious
7:11
Speaker 1: warning signs, no documented mental illness, no clear history of abuse.
7:16
Speaker 1: He has siblings. Most reporting I've come across claims he
7:20
Speaker 1: grew up in a normal household. But there's one event
7:24
Speaker 1: that stands out. At four years old, Cottingham is struck
7:29
Speaker 1: by a car and suffers a significant head injury.
7:33
Speaker 2: He ran headfirst into a car when he was four
7:36
Speaker 2: years old, to a moving car, and it was family
7:41
Speaker 2: lore and the injury was severe enough that was reported
7:45
Speaker 2: in the newspapers. The headline was a boy hits car,
7:52
Speaker 2: And when I did search for that headline, I found it.
7:56
Speaker 1: Injuries to the frontal lobe, especially in early childhood, are
8:00
Speaker 1: often associated with impulse control, emotional regulation.
8:04
Speaker 7: And empathy.
8:06
Speaker 1: It's not a cause, but a sign I've come to
8:09
Speaker 1: expect neurological vulnerability. It's the kind of pattern that shows
8:15
Speaker 1: up again and again in cases like Eileen Warnos, who
8:19
Speaker 1: experience both head trauma and severe abuse, or Richard Ramirez,
8:24
Speaker 1: whose neurological damage and early exposure to violence intersected in
8:28
Speaker 1: ways that are still studied. In Cottingham's case, we can
8:33
Speaker 1: only speculate, but those who knew him describe a child
8:37
Speaker 1: who is isolated and lonely. He has few friends before
8:41
Speaker 1: high school and gravitates towards solitary pursuits, raising pigeons, spending
8:47
Speaker 1: time alone, and then there's his mother.
8:52
Speaker 2: It's not somewhere I can go with him until the end,
8:55
Speaker 2: you know, because if I go there, it's going to
8:58
Speaker 2: be war.
9:00
Speaker 1: By some accounts, Cottingham was very close to her as
9:03
Speaker 1: a child. Other accounts suggest she was critical, harsh on
9:09
Speaker 1: its face, nothing too out of the ordinary.
9:12
Speaker 2: One only thing he told me was that one thing
9:16
Speaker 2: that irritated him about his mother when he was a
9:19
Speaker 2: boy was she would send him for cigarettes all the time,
9:23
Speaker 2: and he would have to go down the road to
9:26
Speaker 2: the corner store and come back with cigarettes.
9:30
Speaker 1: And this is where the absence of memory starts to matter,
9:34
Speaker 1: because decades later Cottingham would describe murdering a woman after
9:38
Speaker 1: she asked him to go out and get her cigarettes.
9:42
Speaker 1: The autopsy indicates a cigarette found in her stomach lining
9:47
Speaker 1: ingested prior to death. That isn't random because forcing victims
9:52
Speaker 1: to ingest objects. It appears in Cottingham's other crimes, and
9:57
Speaker 1: when something like that repeats, it reflects something internal, a
10:02
Speaker 1: psychological need being expressed. He obviously learned that behavior from somewhere,
10:08
Speaker 1: whether it was a person or an experience or a book.
10:12
Speaker 1: And to say for him to say that, well, I
10:14
Speaker 1: don't recall my early fantasies and I don't recall my childhood,
10:19
Speaker 1: that's just pure manipulation.
10:21
Speaker 2: He has a need for excitement, He feels no remorse whatsoever.
10:29
Speaker 2: He leads these double lines. He is very deceptive all
10:35
Speaker 2: those things that we associate with psychopathy.
10:39
Speaker 1: How that early psychopathy becomes violent fantasy is something Cottingham.
10:44
Speaker 7: Won't fully account for, but the.
10:46
Speaker 1: Outline is there neurological vulnerability, unresolved or unspoken trauma, and
10:54
Speaker 1: a growing inner world of fantasy.
10:57
Speaker 6: A lot of his behavior is driven by sadistic fantasies
11:01
Speaker 6: that started looks like pre high school. Have you ever
11:05
Speaker 6: asked him where they came from when they first developed?
11:09
Speaker 2: You know, here's the thing. He told me that he
11:14
Speaker 2: started going to Times Square around the time he was
11:17
Speaker 2: fourteen as an adolession. His father, of course, worked in
11:21
Speaker 2: New York.
11:22
Speaker 1: According to Richard Cottingham, these fantasies, sadism, bondage, they begin early.
11:29
Speaker 1: The details are vague, but we know that his early
11:32
Speaker 1: fantasies were influenced by his experiences in Times Square. You
11:41
Speaker 1: have to imagine Times Square in the sixties. What was
11:44
Speaker 1: once the cultural center of New York, Broadway, theaters, nightlife.
11:48
Speaker 1: It gives way to something else postwar economic decline, white flight.
11:54
Speaker 7: It reshapes the city.
11:56
Speaker 1: Businesses close, property values drop, and law enforcement becomes inconsistent.
12:03
Speaker 1: To put it nicely, things like vice, prostitution, pornography, underground economies.
12:09
Speaker 1: They flourish for a psychopathic adolescent like Richard Cottingham already
12:15
Speaker 1: developing deviant fantasy. This is not neutral exposure. It's around
12:22
Speaker 1: this time that Cottingham has a sexual encounter with a
12:25
Speaker 1: sex worker.
12:26
Speaker 2: I still have not been able to get him to
12:31
Speaker 2: describe to me the first time he had paid for sex.
12:36
Speaker 4: There a lot of things I haven't told you the
12:38
Speaker 4: truth to us deliberately, but they're meaningless. At this point.
12:46
Speaker 2: He says, if you call it a thousand fish, would
12:49
Speaker 2: you remember your first fish? And I go, damn right,
12:52
Speaker 2: I would remember my first fish. So I don't know
12:57
Speaker 2: to this day whether he is natural repressing it, or
13:02
Speaker 2: he doesn't really remember, or he's hiding it. But I
13:06
Speaker 2: can't get that out of it.
13:08
Speaker 1: Once again, that absence is psychologically significant in most individuals.
13:14
Speaker 1: Early sexual experiences, especially novel ones, are strongly encoded in memory.
13:20
Speaker 7: They're formative.
13:22
Speaker 1: So when Cottingham claims he doesn't remember, there are just
13:26
Speaker 1: a few possibilities. Repression dissociation are most likely in this case,
13:32
Speaker 1: strategic omission. Doctor Peter Vroonsky believes something else. He believes
13:39
Speaker 1: Cottingham's reluctance to speak about this period isn't random. It's
13:45
Speaker 1: because this is when things change, when fantasy becomes action.
13:51
Speaker 4: I have deliberately and always kept from you the early one,
14:00
Speaker 4: the real early early ones, and the earliest.
14:04
Speaker 2: I have a murder I'm working on that I think
14:08
Speaker 2: took place in nineteen sixty three, when he was sixteen
14:12
Speaker 2: and a half, so I believe he began, and he
14:15
Speaker 2: told me he actually said that he committed his first
14:18
Speaker 2: murder when he was a junior in high school, and
14:21
Speaker 2: that would be nineteen sixty two, nineteen sixty three.
14:31
Speaker 1: On Sunday, June second, nineteen sixty three, fourteen year old
14:35
Speaker 1: Sophie Olejnik leaves her home in Hillsboro, New Jersey to
14:39
Speaker 1: attend an afternoon dance just over two miles away. She's
14:45
Speaker 1: last seen at two thirty pm. Her body is later
14:49
Speaker 1: found drowned in a creek just a few hundred yards
14:52
Speaker 1: away from where she was last seen. To date, it
14:56
Speaker 1: remains unconfirmed whether this was cottingham first victim, but there
15:02
Speaker 1: are connections. Another victim later linked to Cottingham was found
15:07
Speaker 1: in the same location, and the specific timing matters because
15:11
Speaker 1: this is the same period when Cottingham obtains his driver's license.
15:17
Speaker 2: He got his driver's license the week before, and he
15:21
Speaker 2: was a compousive driver. He would drive everywhere. He called
15:26
Speaker 2: it scouting.
15:27
Speaker 1: That word scouting. It's significant. At the time, Cottingham reports
15:34
Speaker 1: difficulty sleeping, so once he gains access to a vehicle,
15:38
Speaker 1: he starts spending hours at a time driving with no destination.
15:44
Speaker 8: I never needed that much lea. I wasn't a die.
15:47
Speaker 8: I never stopp eighty. I don't think in my life now,
15:50
Speaker 8: I don't see one in an hour at a time.
15:53
Speaker 1: On September twenty fourth, nineteen sixty five, Cottingham drives an
15:58
Speaker 1: hour southwest and follows an eighteen year old nursing student
16:02
Speaker 1: named Alice Aberhart in Bergen County, New Jersey. He breaks
16:06
Speaker 1: into her family home, where she's later found.
16:09
Speaker 7: Stabbed and bludgeoned.
16:11
Speaker 1: It's a brazen escalation, and until Cottingham confessed to this
16:15
Speaker 1: murder earlier this year, it was the only unsolved homicide
16:20
Speaker 1: in that jurisdiction.
16:22
Speaker 2: September sixty five, he killed Alice Eberhardt and you would
16:28
Speaker 2: have been eighteen years old. So that's statistically the average
16:33
Speaker 2: for these guys was twenty seven to twenty eight. So
16:35
Speaker 2: he's already I handed the curb.
16:38
Speaker 1: Most serial offenders don't commit confirmed homicides until their mid
16:43
Speaker 1: to late twenties. Early onset, especially before eighteen, is exceptionally rare,
16:50
Speaker 1: and in the research it's often associated with earlier and
16:54
Speaker 1: more intense violent fantasy or extreme developmental disruption. But Cottingham's
17:00
Speaker 1: motivation at this stage remains unclear.
17:04
Speaker 8: I didn't go out to kill somebody. Most anyone I
17:08
Speaker 8: killed was one I would be somehow connected to them,
17:12
Speaker 8: and I didn't want to get caught.
17:13
Speaker 2: He gives a lot of excuses why he took lives.
17:16
Speaker 2: I mean sometimes just as well. I had to kill
17:18
Speaker 2: her because she would have, you know, reported me to
17:21
Speaker 2: the police, and I know that's booth.
17:24
Speaker 1: What's clear is this, at this point Cottingham is experimenting
17:29
Speaker 1: with violence. There's no stable pattern yet, different victims, different methods,
17:35
Speaker 1: different approaches.
17:37
Speaker 8: My old thing was not the made up pattern, which
17:39
Speaker 8: I never did, and never to try to kill in
17:43
Speaker 8: the exact same way or to you know, leave a signature.
17:48
Speaker 8: I wasn't stupid, you know.
17:51
Speaker 1: On January twenty fourth, nineteen sixty seven, at around nine
17:56
Speaker 1: thirty pm, Cottingham is driving scouting, as he called when
18:00
Speaker 1: he sees eighteen year old Maryanne Della Sala, a high
18:04
Speaker 1: school senior, walking home from her job as a cashier.
18:08
Speaker 1: Her body is found in the river in Hackensack, New Jersey,
18:12
Speaker 1: less than a mile from her root home. No obvious
18:16
Speaker 1: cause of death is determined at autopsy, but Cottingham's early
18:21
Speaker 1: offenses are consistent with what's known as blitz attacks, rapid,
18:27
Speaker 1: high intensity assaults with minimal planning, and very quickly that
18:33
Speaker 1: pattern evolves. He begins using what criminologists call the con approach,
18:40
Speaker 1: engaging the victim, establishing a role and creating compliance.
18:45
Speaker 2: He would pose as a store detective, and if you
18:48
Speaker 2: saw a woman that inspired him as a target, he
18:53
Speaker 2: would see where she was shopping and then he would
18:57
Speaker 2: wait for her to get to her car and he
19:01
Speaker 2: would confront her.
19:03
Speaker 1: Remarkably, it's the exact same ruse Ted Bundy was arrested
19:07
Speaker 1: for utilizing in the attack on Carol Deranch eight years later.
19:12
Speaker 1: In Cottingham's case, he realizes he no longer needs to.
19:16
Speaker 7: Overpower a victim.
19:18
Speaker 1: He can direct them, and that's a different kind of control.
19:23
Speaker 1: So on October twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven, Cottingham stocks
19:28
Speaker 1: twenty nine year old and Nancy Vogel at a local mall.
19:32
Speaker 1: She's on her way to church Bingo when Cottingham intercepts her.
19:36
Speaker 1: He overpowers her, ties her with a nylon stocking, and
19:40
Speaker 1: kills her in her car in the parking lot. February fifteenth,
19:46
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, he repeats the same crime. He follows
19:51
Speaker 1: twenty three year old Diane Cusick at Greenacres Mall in
19:55
Speaker 1: Nassau County, New York. He impersonates a security guard or
19:59
Speaker 1: police police officer and accuses her of stealing. He then
20:03
Speaker 1: attacks her in her car. Her body is found where
20:07
Speaker 1: it happened, and then in July of nineteen sixty eight,
20:12
Speaker 1: he returns to more familiar habits. Cottingham of ducks and
20:16
Speaker 1: murders thirteen year old Jacqueline Harp. She's taken while walking
20:21
Speaker 1: home in Bergen County.
20:23
Speaker 2: He drives into this town and he's thirsty. He doesn't
20:28
Speaker 2: know what town he's in. It's just a mother town
20:31
Speaker 2: in New Jersey. He sees the Steward's root Beer. He
20:36
Speaker 2: goes in to get sits down for a root beer.
20:40
Speaker 2: And she's on our way home from marching band practice,
20:44
Speaker 2: and she walks by in front of the restaurant. He
20:49
Speaker 2: sees her. Fifteen minutes later, she's dead.
20:54
Speaker 1: These victims aren't disappearing into the margins. They're noticed, families
20:59
Speaker 1: report them allmost immediately their bodies are found, but the
21:03
Speaker 1: cases don't connect. Different towns, different methods, no shared suspect.
21:09
Speaker 1: This again is Cottingham speaking with authorities.
21:13
Speaker 8: You know, no cops ever came around me or stiffed
21:16
Speaker 8: the ring like that I used see on TV was
21:18
Speaker 8: getting away with.
21:19
Speaker 1: It back in the late nineteen sixties. There's no framework
21:23
Speaker 1: for what this is. The term serial killer isn't even
21:27
Speaker 1: in use, so each case is treated as its own event,
21:31
Speaker 1: isolated and contained.
21:33
Speaker 2: Part of the problem is the police at that point
21:36
Speaker 2: right in the game. Prior to the nineteen eighties, throughout
21:41
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, police had a very simplistic
21:45
Speaker 2: approach to multiple murders. I mean there were no that
21:52
Speaker 2: concept again of serial killer did not exist, and so
21:55
Speaker 2: if he stabbed one victim but another victim was triangled,
22:00
Speaker 2: the police immediately assumed, oh, this is not as I'm old,
22:04
Speaker 2: this is a different guy.
22:06
Speaker 1: There's a moment here where the mask slips. Cottingham is
22:10
Speaker 1: arrested for a duy. He spends ten days in jail,
22:15
Speaker 1: pays a small fine, and then he's released. In the
22:20
Speaker 1: months after, multiple young women are murdered eighteen year old
22:26
Speaker 1: Irene Blaze in Bergen County, fifteen year old Denise Flaska,
22:31
Speaker 1: who leaves her home in July nineteen sixty nine and
22:34
Speaker 1: never returns, and Lorraine McGraw in Rockland.
22:38
Speaker 7: County, New York.
22:41
Speaker 1: At the time, these cases they just are not connected.
22:45
Speaker 1: They remain unsolved for decades. Cottingham's involvement doesn't come to
22:50
Speaker 1: light until two thousand and twenty, when the families of
22:54
Speaker 1: the victims confront him directly and push him to admit
22:58
Speaker 1: what he did.
23:00
Speaker 3: Don't have the scope of what I've done.
23:06
Speaker 4: Now times had changed and they may yaw come out.
23:10
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy there's another shift. Conningham marries a
23:16
Speaker 1: woman named Janet. They settle in Little Ferry, New Jersey,
23:20
Speaker 1: and he takes a job as a computer operator at
23:23
Speaker 1: Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan. On the surface, this
23:28
Speaker 1: is stability, routine work, marriage, but underneath it nothing has stopped.
23:35
Speaker 8: And I worked from met life for two years now.
23:37
Speaker 8: I want to over to Blue Cross, but I always
23:41
Speaker 8: worked a shipwork in Blue course, and when you get
23:43
Speaker 8: out of work to limit clock. In New York City,
23:47
Speaker 8: all the nurses from all the hospitals off work at
23:49
Speaker 8: the same time. So the boss bought the empty.
23:52
Speaker 7: At ten o'clock.
23:52
Speaker 8: At eleven to twelve o'clock is still two hundred paper color.
23:57
Speaker 8: I can stay out all nights. I mean driving around,
24:00
Speaker 8: driving all over.
24:01
Speaker 1: The city during his daily commute. Women disappear. On May fifth,
24:14
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, Cottingham abducts Marybeth Hines in Nassau County.
24:20
Speaker 1: Her body is later found near a creek in Rockville Center.
24:25
Speaker 1: On July twentieth, nineteen seventy two, he murders twenty three
24:29
Speaker 1: year old Laverne moy And this is only what we
24:33
Speaker 1: can account for because part of the problem in a
24:35
Speaker 1: case like this is time. The records are incomplete, the
24:40
Speaker 1: details have been lost, connections have been missed, and Cottingham
24:46
Speaker 1: is careful.
24:47
Speaker 2: He was so forensically aware that out of the twenty
24:53
Speaker 2: confirmed cases, one latent fingerprint found one and not another one.
25:02
Speaker 3: Ever, you may see down the line things that I'd
25:08
Speaker 3: done just to protocopsule up.
25:12
Speaker 1: We know Cottingham was seeing sex workers during this time
25:16
Speaker 1: because on September fourth, nineteen seventy three, after he brutalizes
25:21
Speaker 1: a sex worker, she reports him to police. He's arrested
25:25
Speaker 1: for sodomy, assault and robbery, but talks his way out
25:29
Speaker 1: of it. Police ultimately find the victim not credible, something
25:34
Speaker 1: that happens time and again in cases like this.
25:39
Speaker 8: I always appeared innocent, naive, green. I play that like
25:46
Speaker 8: I didn't know what I was doing, but I would
25:48
Speaker 8: get them so greed by showing so much money. I
25:53
Speaker 8: would show him a wad like twelve one dollars. Their
25:58
Speaker 8: eves them go crazy. So when the inline rob both
26:01
Speaker 8: times we went out drink, I'd.
26:02
Speaker 9: Get him drink and get him drunk, get him in
26:05
Speaker 9: the room, never paid him.
26:07
Speaker 1: Conningham is able to explain the arrest to his wife,
26:10
Speaker 1: and a month later, their son is born. That same year,
26:15
Speaker 1: he follows Sheila Hyman, a mother who'd been out shopping
26:19
Speaker 1: while her children were away at summer camp. She's found
26:23
Speaker 1: on July twentieth, nineteen seventy three, in north Woodmere, and
26:27
Speaker 1: her husband is long suspected. Then, on December twenty seventh,
26:32
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, eighteen year old Marita Rosatto Nieves who's
26:37
Speaker 1: visiting from Puerto Rico, is found dead on Jones Beach.
26:41
Speaker 6: You must have asked Cottingham, why why is he doing
26:46
Speaker 6: all this?
26:47
Speaker 2: And what does he say? Sometimes there is no why.
26:53
Speaker 1: That's a convenient answer, yeah, but there is an answer.
27:00
Speaker 7: At this point.
27:01
Speaker 1: Cottingham is a violent psychopath operating within a geography that
27:05
Speaker 1: allows him to disappear. He's constantly in motion New York,
27:12
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Hubok and Long Island Hell's Kitchen. He's not
27:16
Speaker 1: returning to the same locations, not establishing a pattern that
27:20
Speaker 1: can be easily tracked. On August fourteenth, nineteen seventy four,
27:26
Speaker 1: he's driving to work in Manhattan when he passes two
27:29
Speaker 1: girls walking in the opposite direction, Mary Anne Pryor seventeen
27:34
Speaker 1: and Lorraine Kelly, sixteen. They're hitchhiking to a mall in Montvale,
27:39
Speaker 1: New Jersey. He offers them a ride. He takes them
27:43
Speaker 1: to a motel, holds them captive, and eventually drowns them
27:47
Speaker 1: in a bathtub before leaving their bodies in the woods.
27:51
Speaker 1: It's a crime unlike the others, and that difference is
27:55
Speaker 1: exactly what protects him. And this is when Cottingham's.
27:59
Speaker 7: Movement become murky.
28:02
Speaker 1: We know that on October twenty first, nineteen seventy five,
28:05
Speaker 1: he murders Rosalie Risberg in New York City. Two years later,
28:10
Speaker 1: December nineteen seventy seven, he abducts Marianne Carr from her
28:14
Speaker 1: apartment in New Jersey. Her body later found near a
28:18
Speaker 1: chain link fence in the parking lot of a quality
28:21
Speaker 1: in and it's at some point in this time period
28:25
Speaker 1: when Cottingham begins to consolidate, he moves his hunting ground
28:29
Speaker 1: into Times Square, the environment that will ultimately define him.
28:34
Speaker 4: Times Square has changed out well now that big an
28:38
Speaker 4: If you get a gun in Time Square any.
28:40
Speaker 2: Day of the week, he would park car on the
28:45
Speaker 2: other side of Times Square towards tenth Avenue, and then
28:49
Speaker 2: he would walk across forty second Street through along the
28:54
Speaker 2: forty Deuce, through the porn area.
28:58
Speaker 1: By this point, Cottingham is rent an apartment in Midtown.
29:02
Speaker 1: He's working nights three to eleven, which gives him both
29:06
Speaker 1: access and anonymity. Times Square, and more specifically, an area
29:12
Speaker 1: known as the Deuce in the nineteen seventies, is dense
29:16
Speaker 1: with pornography, sex clubs, and street level sex work. It's
29:21
Speaker 1: an environment built for transience, where people move in and
29:24
Speaker 1: out without record, and where certain populations, especially sex workers,
29:29
Speaker 1: exist in a space that is both visible and unprotected.
29:35
Speaker 1: Cottingham's interactions with women during this period is difficult to fathom.
29:40
Speaker 1: He's married, he frequents sex clubs, he hires sex workers regularly.
29:45
Speaker 2: He tells me that he killed maybe one out of
29:48
Speaker 2: ten to twelve girls that he abducts. That most of them,
29:53
Speaker 2: he said, I let them go because I knew that
29:57
Speaker 2: they wouldn't report to me. Killing doesn't make you god.
30:05
Speaker 2: Knowing who lives or dies.
30:08
Speaker 9: That's that you might just think the number eight tout
30:11
Speaker 9: eighties of being lie. But for everyone that I killed,
30:18
Speaker 9: I'd done it the thirty other girl for every one hundred.
30:22
Speaker 7: I would go there every night like an at home.
30:26
Speaker 1: And he even maintains multiple mistresses in the city.
30:30
Speaker 8: Edward a girlfriends. You know, I was juggling a girlfriend here,
30:36
Speaker 8: my wife here, girlfriend here.
30:38
Speaker 7: You know, I go from one.
30:40
Speaker 8: I mean it was a comedy.
30:42
Speaker 2: He had two mistresses. You would go see one girlfriend,
30:48
Speaker 2: then you would go see another girlfriend, and then he
30:51
Speaker 2: would make sure he's home in time. So the neighbors
30:56
Speaker 2: wake up and don't see that he's been away all night.
30:59
Speaker 2: That he parks his car and he see his kids
31:01
Speaker 2: off to school and then he goes to sleep. So
31:04
Speaker 2: he has a secret life inside a secret life, inside
31:08
Speaker 2: a secret life.
31:09
Speaker 1: This is compartmentalization on a high level. Cottingham describes many
31:15
Speaker 1: nights spent scouting sex workers, robbing them or in some cases,
31:19
Speaker 1: committing a murder before going to see one of his
31:22
Speaker 1: mistresses and then going to see the other.
31:25
Speaker 8: Hive when scouting hook is every day, seven days a week,
31:31
Speaker 8: ten years, fifteen years, every day. But I was always
31:36
Speaker 8: looking for an opportunity or like, that's why I said
31:41
Speaker 8: it was so I just had the knack I could
31:45
Speaker 8: pick up woman.
31:46
Speaker 1: Pay attention to what Richard Cottingham says. He calls it
31:50
Speaker 1: a quote knack, as if this is charm instinct, something natural,
31:56
Speaker 1: it isn't. What he's describing is adation, deception, manipulation, the
32:03
Speaker 1: use of authority, pressure and when needed force. Case in point.
32:09
Speaker 1: On September twenty third, nineteen seventy eight, Cottingham meets Karen
32:13
Speaker 1: Schildt in a bar on Third Avenue. After she rebuffs
32:18
Speaker 1: his advances, he drugs her and lures her into his car.
32:23
Speaker 1: She wakes up in a drainage ditch, assaulted but alive
32:27
Speaker 1: and unable to identify him.
32:29
Speaker 2: I found three victims who survived that nobody knew about,
32:36
Speaker 2: and when he went on trial, four victims I had
32:40
Speaker 2: testified against them who survived.
32:43
Speaker 1: Another survivor is on October eleventh, nineteen seventy eight, when
32:47
Speaker 1: Cottingham meets sex worker Susan Geiger. He drugs her at
32:51
Speaker 1: a bar and takes her to the Airport motel in Hackensack.
32:56
Speaker 1: She wakes up the next day and calls police, but
32:59
Speaker 1: again and she cannot identify him. He wears wigs, uses
33:04
Speaker 1: a false name, drives a secondary car. Fragments of a
33:09
Speaker 1: man who at this point understands exactly how much of
33:13
Speaker 1: himself to reveal and how much to keep hidden. Cottingham's
33:24
Speaker 1: downfall begins on December second, nineteen seventy nine. He picks
33:29
Speaker 1: up twenty two year old Dida Godarzi, a sex worker,
33:33
Speaker 1: as well as another female who remains unidentified to this day.
33:39
Speaker 1: He takes them both to the travel in on West
33:42
Speaker 1: forty second Street.
33:43
Speaker 2: He held those girls in that hotel room, not by fours,
33:50
Speaker 2: but by not paying them. They had to wait to
33:55
Speaker 2: be paid and kept saying, well, stay with me a
33:58
Speaker 2: few hours more, I'll give you more money.
34:01
Speaker 1: Cottingham ultimately murders both women. The details are graphic and unclear,
34:09
Speaker 1: and that's because of what he does next. After the murders,
34:12
Speaker 1: he removes the victims heads and hands. He'll later claim
34:18
Speaker 1: this was to avoid identification. He then sets the room
34:22
Speaker 1: on fire. As Cottingham leaves Room four seventeen, he runs
34:27
Speaker 1: into doctor Peter Vonsky.
34:30
Speaker 5: I had a brief encounter with him when I was
34:36
Speaker 5: a young man in nineteen seventy nine, when he was
34:42
Speaker 5: fleeing the scene. I was trying to check in through
34:46
Speaker 5: the hotel and we had a maybe what with a
34:51
Speaker 5: twelve second encounter in the elevator doors.
34:56
Speaker 2: He was going out, I was going in.
34:58
Speaker 1: Cottingham continue on his way, though he stopped by a
35:02
Speaker 1: police officer en route to his car. At the time,
35:06
Speaker 1: he's carrying a duffel bag full of the victim's remains,
35:10
Speaker 1: but Cottingham stays composed and after a few questions, the
35:14
Speaker 1: officer lets him go. At the same time, doctor Vronsky
35:19
Speaker 1: is still at the scene.
35:21
Speaker 10: The moment I got off on the elevator, up on
35:24
Speaker 10: his floor, I could right away. I smell something like
35:28
Speaker 10: something burning, but I figured that's what the hotel smells like.
35:33
Speaker 10: And I see hotel staff knocking on doors.
35:38
Speaker 2: Telling people to leave right and and real I realize
35:42
Speaker 2: right away, because you know, now, I know when I'm smelling,
35:44
Speaker 2: it's a fire.
35:45
Speaker 1: Cottingham buries the remains in a vinyl suitcase. To date,
35:50
Speaker 1: they've never been recovered, though Cottingham himself has told doctor
35:54
Speaker 1: Vronsky of their approximate whereabouts. The search continues because this
36:00
Speaker 1: recovery would allow authorities to identify the unknown victim left
36:04
Speaker 1: in that motel room.
36:06
Speaker 2: The second victim, a teenage girl, has not been identified.
36:11
Speaker 2: If we can recover the head, we can still get
36:14
Speaker 2: the DNA off the head, and we can do now
36:17
Speaker 2: a facial reconstruction.
36:20
Speaker 1: In May of nineteen eighty, Cottingham kills three women. On
36:25
Speaker 1: May fifth, he leaves the body of sex worker Valerie
36:28
Speaker 1: Street in a motel room. He commits a nearly identical
36:32
Speaker 1: crime ten days later, on May fifteenth, abandoning the body
36:36
Speaker 1: of Jeen Rainier in a motel near Times Square. One
36:42
Speaker 1: week later, on May twenty second, nineteen eighty, Cottingham checks
36:46
Speaker 1: into a motel in New Jersey with eighteen year old
36:49
Speaker 1: Leslie Ann O'Dell, another sex worker inside the room. The
36:55
Speaker 1: pattern continues, but this time something breaks.
37:00
Speaker 7: In the early morning hours.
37:01
Speaker 1: Her screams are heard by hotel staff. Police are called,
37:06
Speaker 1: and when officers arrive, they force entry into the room.
37:10
Speaker 1: They find Cottingham half dressed, Odell bound to the bed,
37:14
Speaker 1: severely injured, but alive, and for the first time, Cottingham
37:19
Speaker 1: isn't moving between jurisdictions. He isn't hiding behind an alias,
37:24
Speaker 1: he isn't disappearing into the city. He's caught in the act,
37:29
Speaker 1: and just like that, the pattern that allowed him to
37:32
Speaker 1: operate for decades has stopped. What follows is Cottingham's first
37:42
Speaker 1: real confrontation with a system he spent years slipping through.
37:47
Speaker 7: After his arrest in May.
37:49
Speaker 1: Of nineteen eighty, the case against him begins to take shape,
37:53
Speaker 1: not as a single crime, but as a pattern. Investigators
37:58
Speaker 1: start connecting motel rooms, victims, timelines, survivors come forward, and
38:04
Speaker 1: for the first time, Richard Cottingham faces accountability At trial,
38:10
Speaker 1: the focus is immediate and contained. Leslieanne O'Dell is alive.
38:15
Speaker 1: She can testify, and that matters because so much of
38:19
Speaker 1: Cottingham's violence leaves no voices behind it.
38:23
Speaker 2: When he went on trial, he pled not guilty and
38:28
Speaker 2: went all the way to prison, insisting that he was framed.
38:32
Speaker 2: He didn't admit that he actually committed those murders until
38:37
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine.
38:39
Speaker 1: Cottingham is convicted and sentenced to a lengthy term in prison.
38:44
Speaker 1: He receives a sentence of one hundred and seventy three
38:47
Speaker 1: to one hundred and ninety seven years for all intents
38:51
Speaker 1: and purposes, a life sentence, But that number only reflects
38:56
Speaker 1: what the court could prove at the time, not the
38:59
Speaker 1: full skip of what he'd already done.
39:02
Speaker 2: In the process of these conversations and visits, I've managed
39:10
Speaker 2: to assist law enforcement in eleven code case closures.
39:16
Speaker 1: And that's the reality of this case. There isn't a
39:20
Speaker 1: clean ending. There's no single trial that closes the book.
39:24
Speaker 1: It's a slow, deliberate, and incomplete process that's still ongoing
39:30
Speaker 1: because with Richard Cottingham, the story doesn't end with his arrest,
39:35
Speaker 1: it doesn't end with his sentence. It unfolds over decades,
39:39
Speaker 1: one admission at a time, one name at a time,
39:43
Speaker 1: because even now there are still victims without names.
39:47
Speaker 2: We did now three searches, and we're getting closer, but
39:53
Speaker 2: you know, we need a little bit more technology. It's
39:56
Speaker 2: a very difficult terrain, so we need that ground rate
40:00
Speaker 2: are and and we need the time. But like I said,
40:04
Speaker 2: Ordinarian YPD cops on their days off showed up to
40:09
Speaker 2: help us do the third search and the second search
40:12
Speaker 2: that was that was done, and we're gonna go back.
40:14
Speaker 1: We're gonna keep looking that search for a head, for
40:17
Speaker 1: a name, for an identity. It says more than anything else,
40:22
Speaker 1: because this isn't just about what Cottingham did. It's about
40:26
Speaker 1: what's still missing. But what you're hearing now, what doctor
40:30
Speaker 1: Vronsky has uncovered, this is what happens when those gaps
40:35
Speaker 1: start to close, not all at once, not cleanly, but
40:38
Speaker 1: peace by peace. And maybe that's the real ending here,
40:42
Speaker 1: not justice in a single moment, but the slow, methodical
40:46
Speaker 1: recovery of the truth, one victim at a time.
40:51
Speaker 4: I might sound like I'm proud of that, but I'm
40:54
Speaker 4: proud of the way I got away with some of
40:57
Speaker 4: the things, because logical, somebody somewhere should have said, you know,
41:04
Speaker 4: something's going on here.
41:10
Speaker 1: Before we wrap a few notes, the twenty fourteen interrogation
41:14
Speaker 1: with Richard Cottingham is a fascinating watch, so I'm going
41:18
Speaker 1: to post it inside Unmarked case Files, our research portal
41:21
Speaker 1: where you can examine the evidence for yourself. And if
41:24
Speaker 1: you're like me, an obsess about these cases and want
41:27
Speaker 1: to leave no stone unturned, then my research on the
41:30
Speaker 1: Charles Manson case is available in my book Charles Manson
41:35
Speaker 1: The Last Words on Kindle and Amazon. On a personal note,
41:39
Speaker 1: I just released my first novel. It's called a Plague
41:43
Speaker 1: of Steel. It's a grim, dark fantasy about what war
41:47
Speaker 1: leaves behind. It's available now on Kindle, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited,
41:53
Speaker 1: and if you do dive in, please leave a review,
41:55
Speaker 1: which is the lifeblood for indie authors like myself. Big
42:00
Speaker 1: thank you from all of us here at Unmarked, we
42:02
Speaker 1: spend weeks researching, going through documents, conducting interviews, and as
42:06
Speaker 1: this series grows, we've started to work with advertisers to
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42:19
Speaker 1: subscribing your support is what keeps this going. This episode
42:25
Speaker 1: of Unmarked was produced by John De Doe and edited
42:27
Speaker 1: by Dave Alderson. Our additional producer is Jesse Demery until
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Speaker 1: next week.
42:33
Speaker 7: This is unmarked