Criminology - The Torso Killer

Episode Date: May 16, 2021

Serial killer Richard Cottingham earned the moniker of "The Torso Killer" for his crimes. To the outside world, Richard seemed like a professional and a family man. But, he was unfaithful to his wife and he had urges deep inside that eventually resulted in a number of murders. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss serial killer Richard Cottingham. He operated in his home state of New Jersey but also ventured into New York to select his victims. Papers began calling him "The Torso Killer" when two victims were found missing their heads and hands. Richard targeted sex workers and later said that violence was the only thing that aroused him. After he was caught, he began confessing to murders that he committed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 159 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you?

Not a whole heck of a lot. How about you? What's new? I'm doing pretty good. I recently taped an episode of Snap. I'm pretty excited about that. I have no idea when it will air. But that was my first time ever doing something like that.

And it was actually pretty cool. So you're becoming a TV star. You're abandoning the podcast. No, I definitely wouldn't say TV star. But, you know, you know how it is. They'll use three, four, five minutes or whatever it is of the three hours that you spent talking about the case. But it's pretty neat. Yeah, it's very cool.

Look forward to watching it. Yeah. And when I get more information, I'll let everybody know when it is set to air. I assume it takes a while for them to put those together. We continue to see some really good Patreon support. Let's give our shoutouts. We had Beth Jones, Gracie Poppick, Melissa Foxtrot, Christine Cohen jumped out at our highest level.

We had Roy Fulton and Carlos Elver. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you to everyone that made the decision to support criminology. we can't thank you enough. If anyone out there would like to help support the show, they can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, more, if it's time to jump into this case,

and in this episode, we're talking about a killer who had a few different monikers, the Ripper, the Times Square torso killer, and I think as he was known to most, the torso killer. We're talking about serial killer Richard Cottingham, Cottingham earned the moniker the torso killer due to his MO of dismembering his victims and leaving nothing but a torso behind. For years, Cottingham has rotted in jail after being convicted of several murders, but he claims his victim count was much higher.

And very recently, he has been connected to even more. Richard Francis Cottingham was born on November 25, 1946, in the Bronwyn. amongst New York. He had two younger siblings. Cottingham was raised by both of his parents, who remained married throughout his life. His family moved to Rivervale, New Jersey, when he was 12 years old, and he graduated from Paskack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey, when he was 18. The same year, 1964, he started working at his father's insurance company, Metropolitan Life as a computer operator. He also took computer classes. When he was 20, he left Metropolitan Life and joined Blue Cross Blue Shield of Greater New York as a computer operator.

On May 3rd, 1970, Richard Cottingham married his wife, Janet, at Our Lady of Lord's Church in Queens Village, New York. They settled together in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Richard had long-term extramarital affairs, one from 1977 to 1980, with a woman named Barbara Lucas and another from early 1980 until mid May 1980 with a woman named Gene Connolly. On the surface, Cottingham seemed like a professional, but a flawed family man who was not faithful to his wife. But really, that was just the tip of the iceberg. No one knew what was simmering below the surface. And as it turned out, there were warning signs. of how dangerous Cottingham could be.

In September 1973, he was charged in New York City with robbery, sodomy, and sexual assault, but the case was dismissed. His criminal record before this event included in October 1969 DUI and a 1972 shoplifting incident. In October 1973, when he was 26 years old, Richard's first child, a son was born, but the birth of his first child didn't temper his desire to commit crimes. In February 1974, Richard was charged again in New York City, this time with unlawful imprisonment and robbery. But the case was also dismissed. A year later, Richard, Janet, and their first child

moved into a three-bedroom home in Lodai, New Jersey. In March 1975, their second child, another son was born, and in October 1976, their third and last child, a girl was born. The growing family looked like many other normal families to outsiders, but a deviant rage was still growing inside Richard Cottingham. On September 23rd, 1978, Richard met a pregnant woman named Karen Schilt in New York City at a tavern. He was using the alias John Schaefer. and while she wasn't looking, he drugged her drink. After offering Karen a ride home, because she was very dizzy, he then offered her some sort of medicine in the form of a pill to help her feel better.

As it turns out, the medicine was a barbiturate, and it caused Karen to lose consciousness. Richard then attacked and sexually assaulted her. He dumped her nude butt. alive in a sewer near the ledgewood Terrace apartments in Little Ferry, New Jersey. A police officer named Raymond Auger of the Little Ferry Police Department spotted Karen and rushed her to the hospital and she survived the attack. On October 10, 1978, Richard Cottingham met Susan Geiger, a sex worker who was also pregnant at the time. He used the alias Jim and offered her $200 for sex, but she declined because she. she had plans. She gave him her number instead. The next day on October 11th, Richard called her

for a date, and he ordered her screwdriver, which he drugged. After she started feeling sick, he took her to his car, and ultimately to the airport motel in South Hackensack, New Jersey. That's where he beat, raped, and robbed her. Susan went to police who investigated the rape. In the motel room, Richard Cottingham had left his seaman on a tail, and police were able to tell that the suspect had typo blood, which was the extent of what they could determine in the days before DNA technology? In April 1979, Janet Cottingham filed for divorce. The documents included in her petition claimed that Richard had refused to participate in marital sex for three years and also charged him with extreme cruelty. For some reason, Janet withdrew her divorce

petition in June 1980 and took their three children to live in Poughkeepsie, New York. And for me, Morph, that's something that really jumps out at me. I mean, I get it. Married couples go through patches. They go through long periods of time at points where, you know, they're not intimate. But three years is a very long time for a husband not to want to have sexual relations with his wife. It's not going to make her feel good at all. Yeah, you have to wonder if it was because he had these fantasies, these violent urges that he couldn't carry out with his wife.

And he instead chose these other women that he attacked to carry that out on. Yeah, I mean, we're speculating here. But I think that's the most likely reason for it. I think there are certain people, especially some of the sadistic, violent sexual killers that we talk about that don't enjoy what most of us would consider regular sex. They just don't enjoy it because there's no violence involved. And they need the violence to really get excited and, you know, get their rocks off for a lack of a better term. I don't know what else to use.

I think we touched on it a little bit, too, to the outside world. He was a normal family man with a wife, kids, a nice job. But that seemed like a cover for what was underneath. Well, and how many times have we seen that with serial killers? You know, some of these people, they're extremely adept at basically, you know, putting out this veneer, this facade of, hey, everything's great over here at the, uh, Cottingham residents, but underneath this person has all kinds of issues going on, and they're in the midst of carrying some of these violent attacks and murders out.

Now, despite being in the middle of a divorce, Richard Cottingham was still focusing on his violent urges. In early December 1979, Richard and 22-year-old sex worker Dida Gudharian. went back to room 417 of the Travel Inn Motor Hotel in New York City. She had last been seen when she left her Trenton, New Jersey residents for New York City, where she worked on November 30, 1979, just before she met up with Richard Cottingham. On December 2nd, firefighters responded to an alarm at the New York City Travel in motel. They were responding to a fire in room 417. Firefighters were greeted by a smoke-filled room and visibility was poor.

One of the firefighters, James Rogers, spotted what appeared to be two unconscious nude women, lying on one of the room's two beds, and he picked one of them up and carried her outside. It was only after he prepared to do CPR that he realized the woman had no head. She was also missing her hands. When firefighters removed the second woman, they determined that she too was missing her head and hands. Police were called in as well as a medical examiner who determined that both women had been severely beaten and stabbed before being mutilated. Toxicology reports showed that both of the women had been sedated. Investigators were able to verify that one of the dead women was Dita Godarsie.

The other woman in the hotel room was never identified. Dita's clothes as well as Jane Doe's clothes were found folded in the hotel bathtub. Their shoes were placed on top of their folded. outfits. Dita's jewelry as well as the heads and hands of both women were never recovered. There was evidence of rape, sodomy, and torture found during both autopsies. All that is known about Jane Doe is that she was 110 pounds, about 16 to 22 years old, and she had been wearing a burgundy mohair sweater, black patent leather boots, and a pair of bonjour jeans.

Four days before Dida and Jane Doe were found in room 417, a man in his 30s with Sandy Hare had signed the hotel register as Carl Wilson of Merlin, New Jersey. Police quickly found out that there was no town in New Jersey called Merlin, and Carl Wilson was likely not the real name of the man who booked the room. The man using the name Carl Wilson put up a do not disturb sign and hotel staff never saw him again. A witness named Peter Vronsky claimed to have been getting on the hotel elevator as a sweaty, distracted man holding a large bag or suitcase got off. The man's bag bumped Bronsky's leg. Bronski made it up to the floor of his room only to smell smoke and see soot floating around in the hallway.

Fronsky later identified the man on the elevator with him as Richard Cottingham. Cottingham had fled with the heads and hands of both women after murdering them and starting the fire. It's reported that he actually was pulled over by police while fleeing the scene. Richard was asked about why he was driving at 3.30 a.m. But he wasn't asked about the large bag in his car, and police let him go. Richard had narrowly escaped and was free to continue killing. On May 12, 1980, Cottingham, picked up another sex worker Pamela Wisenfield in New York City and drove her to Teaneck, New Jersey,

where he attacked her, he drugged her, sexually assaulted her, bid her, and beat her. She was found in a parking lot the next morning and taken to a local hospital where she was treated and survived. Just 10 days later, on May 22nd in Manhattan, Richard Cottingham met Leslie Ann O'Dell, an 18-year-old sex worker who had just moved to New York from Washington State four days earlier. Richard offered to pay her $100 for sexual favors. They checked into room 117 of the quality in in Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey. Cottingham told Leslie that he would massage her. And when he rolled her onto her stomach, he threatened her with a knife and quickly handcuffed her. He began to torture her and he bid her as he raped and sodomized her.

The quality and staff heard Leslie and O'Dell's scream coming from the room and they called the police. Police arrived quickly and headed to Cottingham's room and ordered him to open the door, interrupting his attack on Leslie. Richard tried to flee, but police arrested him in the hotel's hallway. He claimed that everything that happened was consensual as part of what he paid O'Dell $180 for. Authorities found handcuffs, a gag, two collars, a switchblade, replica pistols, and prescription barbiturates, and benzodiazepines, which are sedatives. When investigators searched Richard Cottingham's car, they found items belonged to multiple murder victims in the trunk, but they didn't know at the time that he was a serial killer. Police then went to the basement

apartment of the house that he lived in with his estranged wife. in Lodi, New Jersey, looking for more clues. Writing found in his room also matched the receipts from the hotel. Cottingham was charged with kidnapping, attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated rape, sodomy, and fallatio while armed, possession of a weapon, and possession of multiple controlled substances. Okay, that's a lot to be levied against you, nothing that he didn't deserve morph, but that's a lot of different charges. And they're going to add up and stack up on top of each other.

It's kind of hard to have any kind of defense of why you have all that assorted stuff that we mentioned that he had with him. You can't explain that away. You know, I think the police were pretty quick to say, hey, this guy is up to no good. Yeah, up to no good, I think, is almost a euphemism there. the one that charged that did jump out at me that I don't know I've ever heard of is fallatio while armed. I don't know in all the cases that we've ever done, I've heard of somebody being charged with that exact charge. Yeah, I think there's probably a variety of odd, seldomly used charges that in case-to-case basis, they can reach for and,

use them in certain instances. Well, and you know the police and prosecutors are looking for anything, right? They're looking for any and every charge that they can levy against this guy. Cottingham, then 33 years old, was held on a $250,000 bond. Police suspected that he was the attacker and murderer in some of the cases that we've mentioned so far. They began a full-scale investigation of him. And on August 14, 1980, Richard Cottingham was also charged with the murders of Jane Doe, Dida Gudarsie,

and another woman named Gene Rayner. 25-year-old Gene Rayner was found on May 15, 1980, in Manhattan's Hotel Seville. Gene was a high-priced sex worker and usually operated out of fancier hotels than the Seville. She had been beaten, bitten, mutilated, and strangled. Her throat was slit before she was set on fire. It was Jean's murder that earned Coddingham, then unknown, the nickname the Times Square Ripper. Richard didn't amputate her head or her hands, but he did cut off her breast and left them on the hotel bed. Detectors remarked about how thoroughly the room, which was a crime scene, had been cleaned by the killer.

And Morph, why are there so many cases of men cutting off women's breasts? I don't understand that. I understand that there are people who want to mutilate others. I mean, I understand it in the fact that it happens, not why it happens, but specifically cutting off of the breast. That has to mean something. Does it mean that the killer was upset with their mother? they had mommy issues and therefore they're drawn to that part of the body because of what it represents.

I mean, I'm just kind of speculating here. But we see it time and time again. Yeah, the mommy issue thing was what I was thinking when I first saw that. And I think we need some heavy duty experts to really weigh in and explain some of those mommy issues and why a lot of these killers seem to have them. but to me that makes the most sense that it's something along those lines that you just mentioned. While Richard Cottingham was dubbed the Times Square Ripper for the murder of Gene Rayner, it was Dita's murder, as well as the murder of a still unidentified woman in the same incident that earned Cottingham the moniker of the torso killer.

While he was waiting for trial, authorities and prosecutors were able to link Richard Cottingham to other murders and assaults based on the things he did and the tools he used, as well as the locations of the incidents. On September 15, 1980, two surviving victims, sex worker Susan Geiger, and cocktail waitress Karen Schilt, identified Cottingham in a police lineup as the man who had attacked him. Two days later, he was indicted on 21 counts. involving the murder of another woman named Valerie Street. 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street was found on May 5, 1980,

and the Quality Inn in Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey. This is the same hotel that Leslie Ann O'Dell was rescued from just 18 days later. Valerie had traveled to New York from Florida less than a week earlier. Other sex workers had last seen her around 1 a.m. on May 3rd at the corner of 32nd in Madison Avenue. Valerie was found handcuffed very tightly, and there were traces of a heise of from tape on her mouth. Her cause of death was asphyxiation, and before her death she had been bit and beaten. She was stuffed under a bed at the Quality Inn.

A maid was vacuuming under the bed when she felt the vacuum hit something. The room had been very thoroughly clean, but there was a partial fingerprint on the ratchet of the cuffs that were still on Valerie's wrist. A pair of her earrings and a stuffed quall that belonged to Valerie were forced. found in Cottingham's room when authorities searched it following Leslie O'Dell's attack. And that's what Link Cottingham to Valerie's murder. On June 6, 1980, Cottingham testified in his own defense at trial. He recounted being fascinated with bondage since he was a child, but denied getting pleasure from hurting others.

He also denied knowing any of the women. He was accused or suspected of harming or killing. other than Leslie Ann O'Dell. He must have known. There was no way around the fact that police literally caught him leaving the room. They found her handcuffed and beaten in. Leslie testified that Cottingham threatened her with a gun. And she later grabbed it and tried to use it against him only to realize that it was fake.

On June 11, 1981, Richard Cottingham was convinced. on 15 of the 21 felony counts in the murder of Valerie Street and the assaults on Karen Schilt, Pamela Wisenfield, Susan Geiger, and Leslie O'Dell. On June 14, 1980, while at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, Richard Cottingham tried to take his own life by drinking six ounces of liquid antidepressant. The attempt was unsuccessful, and on July 25th he was sentenced to 173. to 197 years in prison for the murder of Valerie Street and the assaults of Karen, Pamela, Susan, and Leslie. The actual prison sentence for this time-wise worked out to 63 to 95 years

when the sentences ran concurrently rather than consecutively. Despite Cottingham being convicted of all these attacks, police felt that there were still other victims of his out there. It's interesting, Morph, because, you know, we've been doing a, number of cases on criminology and some of my other podcasts where sometimes we rail against these sentences that we consider to be very light, right, for what the crimes were and how serious they were. This is a sentence that I really can't argue with, you know, 63 to 95 years in jail most likely means that a person is going to die there. Now, you could make the argument that these should have been consecutive rather than concurrent,

and that would ensure that Cottingham would never get out. But, you know, all in all, I've seen way too many cases where someone murdered someone and, you know, they got let out in seven years. Okay. I have a serious problem with that. This one, I can't argue with. it all that much. Yeah, I think we've covered cases in the past where you come across dangerous men like this guy was that have this arm long record of assaults and sexual attacks, and somehow

they're still walking free, and we question that here it seems like they did punish this guy pretty hard. I would like to see them really stack these things so that he is guaranteed to never get out, as you mentioned. And I don't know legally what the process is for deciding which way to run these sentences. You know, maybe one of our listeners out there has some answers on that. Oh, I'm sure they do. We have a lot of very intelligent listeners. We have a lot of listeners who have very impressive backgrounds related to the criminal justice system. And we hear from them all the time. My thought is there's probably some variances by state and obviously over the years things change. And maybe some of that is up to the discretion of the judge whether things are.

In the suburbs of D.C. A woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until New technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Run concurrently or consecutively. But again, I think the bottom line for me is I'm not outraged by the sentence, as I am in many of the cases that you and I talk about because it never fails that, at least with the killers that we're discussing, they're allowed out very early, and they go on to commit additional very heinous crimes. And that really bugs me. As we mentioned, police suspected that Cottingham had other victims and was responsible for

additional crimes. 27-year-old Mary Ann Carr, an X-ray technician. vanished in December 97. She was last seen just before 8 p.m. on December 15th in the parking lot of the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments

in Little Ferry, New Jersey, where she lived with her husband. This was the same apartment complex where Karen Schilt was discarded by Cottingham in 1978 after he attacked her. Witnesses saw Marianne Carr

standing near her car with a white male described to be between 28 and 32 years old. At the time, Cottingham was 31 years old and also lived in the ledgewood Terrace Apartments with his family. Family members searching for Mary found that her apartment door had been left unlocked. They had a feeling that something bad had happened to her and they wouldn't have to wait long to find out exactly what had. happened. The next day, on the morning of December 16th, Mary Ann Carr's body was found next to a fence

in the parking lot next to the Quality Inn in Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey, the very same hotel where Valerie Street had been murdered and that Leslie Ann O'Dell had been rescued from. Cars' shoes, purse, and coat were missing. She was wearing a white nurse's uniform. consisting of pants and a short-sleeved shirt, her wrist and ankles bore signs of having been bound with handcuffs. Marianne had been beaten very badly, and there was adhesive from some type of tape found on her face and mouth. She had been killed by asphyxiation due to the tape on her mouth, as well as having something, either a wire or a cord or perhaps a nylon stocking, tightly wrapped around her neck. The mark from this was still on her body. But the weapon was not found

with her. There was a slit in the thigh of her pant leg above the knee. The key to Carr's apartment was found when authority searched Cottingham's home after he attacked Leslie O'Dell. So officials charged Cottingham with Marianne Carr's murder, and they took him to trial. While being escorted to a cell in February 1982, Richard Cottingham collapsed and was later diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. But sick or not, Richard Cottingham wasn't content to sit in jail. He actually tried to escape in early October 1982, but he was unsuccessful and was apprehended before he made his way outside. On October 12, 1982, just eight days after he tried to escape,

Richard Cottingham was convicted for the second-degree murder of Marianne Carr in a non-jury trial. Days later, he was sentenced to 25 years to life, with a minimum of 30 years to be served consecutively, with the 1980 sentence. This would bring his total of actual years to be served to 93 to 125. On March 30, 1983, Richard Cottingham was moved to the Manhattan House of Detention, for men while he waited trial for the murders of Dita Godarsie and Jane Doe. On July 5, 1983, Richard Cottingham tried again to take his own life, this time in front of jurors, by slitting his wrist. Some reports say that he used a razor, but others, and this is more likely,

state that he smashed his glasses and used a jagged lens. This second attempt was also unsuccessful. Three days later, on July 8, 1983, he was convicted for the murders of Dita Gudarsi, Jane Doe, and Gene Rayner. Jewelry belonging to both women was found when authority searched his apartment after he was arrested for attacking Leslie O'Dell. On August 28, 1984, Cottingham was sentenced to another 75 years to life for the murders of Gudarsie, Doe, and Rainer. His cumulative prison time to this point was now 168 to 200 years in prison. Okay, I'm feeling even better about that. You know, now you're getting into the range where it's virtually impossible unless you find

some type of evidence to appeal that you're getting out. You're just, you're going to die in prison. Years went by. Then in August 2010, another victim. of Cottingham's was revealed out of the blue. Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to the murder of 29-year-old Nancy Shiava Vogel. Nancy is Cottingham's earliest known victim, placing his first recorded killing when he was 20 years old. Nancy Vogel was a 29-year-old mother of two.

She left her home on October 28, 1967, to play bingo at St. Margaret's Church in Little Ferry, and was never seen alive again. On October 30th, she was found dead in the backseat of her own Rambler. in Ridfield Park. Receipts and purchases found in the car showed that she stopped and went shopping at the Valley Fair apartment store before she would have presumably headed to church. She was nude, tied up, and she'd been strangled. Police originally believed Nancy knew her killer and had engaged in consensual sex with him because her clothes were neatly folded on the seat beneath her body. As it turned out, Richard Cottingham and Nancy Vogel did know each other, but the extent of their

relationship is unknown, and it's unclear whether they had consensual sex. At the time of Nancy's murder, she and Richard both resided in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Cottingham received another life sentence for killing Nancy Volga. In March 2017, Richard Cottingham received a letter from a woman named Jennifer Weiss. She was offering him her friendship. Now, usually when we talk about serial killers from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, there are women on the outside, romantically interested in these men that are in prison for multiple murders. People like Ted Bundy were married after they were known to be or suspected of being a serial killer. And more, if you and I may have talked about this before, this is something I just cannot wrap my head around. I don't get it. Why?

Why women on the outside look at some of these men as potential mates, pen pals, or even sexual partners, I don't understand that. When you look at their rap sheets and see the propensity they have for harming women, how sexually sadistic some of these men are, and the fact that. fact that they're known killers, it's kind of hard to understand why women would take an interest romantically in some of these individuals. I get it. You want to write to this person because you're curious of why they did what they did. That part, I understand. But to start a full-blown relationship and to ultimately marry someone on death row, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't

get it. I don't know that I ever will. Yeah, I've always wondered the same thing. To me, it just seems very, very strange. We could probably spend an episode with various experts trying to figure out why that happens so frequently. I think we've only heard about the high-profile killers that wind up having relationships with different women. And I think it's probably something that happens more frequently. We just don't hear about it because they're not as high profile of somebody like a Ted Bundy. Yeah, I'm sure you're absolutely right in that it happens more often than we even think it does. Now, in Jennifer Weiss's case, she just wanted information from Richard Cottingham. Jennifer's mother had given her up for adoption just over a week after

she was born, but after reaching out to many adoption agencies and trying many different avenues to find her mother, the Children's Home Society in Trenton, New Jersey, offered her some documents in 2002. Contained in these documents was her birth name Ghaniah. Her father is still unknown to this day, but also in these documents was her mother's name, Dida Gudarsie. All Jennifer could find about Dita was that she was an immigrant from Kuwait when she started to search for her mother's mother's name in newspapers, she learned the shocking news that Dita was killed just 18 months after she had been given up for adoption. Just across and down the street on the same block as the Children's Home Society is New Jersey State Prison. And inside was her mother's murderer,

Richard Cottingham. And, you know, more if to be honest with you, I don't know a lot about adoption. I was not adopted, but I know many people were, have been. And my assumption is, is that there is a lot of curiosity at some point in a person's life to try to figure out who their birth parents were and maybe try to answer some questions about why they were giving up for adoption, things like that. To me, that just seems natural. And it's got to come as quite a shock when you do that research and you find out that someone back in your family line is the victim of a killer or even a killer themselves.

It's got to come as quite a shock. Yeah. I mean, in this case, she finds out that her mother was the victim of this serial killer. That can't be what you thought you were going to find when you start. this search for information on your birth parents. Had to come as quite a shock. In June 2017, Jennifer Weiss received a response from Richard Cottingham. He apologized in a three-page letter for all the pain he had caused in Jennifer's life.

In August, Cottingham added Jennifer to his visitors list. She did visit him, and she made it clear that she just wanted information from him, and that she only did this for her mother's sake and her own. own, and as part of her own quest to learn more about her life. Jennifer did learn a few things from Cottingham. He claimed that he buried her mother, Dita Gudarses, skull at the base of the George Washington Bridge. Investigators have never found anything to prove he was being truthful, though. It also turns out that he didn't meet Dita right before he murdered her. Cottingham actually had been inclined of Ditas for two years before he killed her. Like Gene Rayner, Dita was known to be a high-class

escort and was usually working classier, fancier hotels than the travel-in motor hotel. She may have settled for the motel because she had known Cottingham for so long. It was a lot for Jennifer to take in, and hopefully she's been able to process all of this information. Well, yeah, I mean, let's face it. It's a lot to find out. I don't know when she learned that she was adopted, but obviously in a pretty short period of time. She found out the news that her mother was murdered. She was a sex worker who was murdered by

Richard Cottingham. And then she actually began talking to him, communicating with him, and found out even more information. It's a lot to process. In January 2020, Richard Cottingham made even more confessions. He claimed he had killed Jacqueline. Harp, Irene Blase, and Denise Falaska. He was not tried for their murders, but their cases were, quote, exceptionally cleared and closed as police believe he was being honest. On July 17, 1968, Cottingham saw 13-year-old Jacqueline Harp, walking home from band practice late at night in Midland Park, New Jersey. She was last seen around 9.50 p.m. on her way home. Cottingham tried to convince her to get into his car, but she refused. So he drove up in front of her,

and when she ran, he chased her. After he caught up with her, he dragged her into the bushes and strangled her. Her body was found the next morning, July 18th. Jacqueline's case was heartbreaking to detectives, because as they put it, she did everything right by not accepting his run. And so, she was a lot. and by running in the opposite direction when she felt threatened. But sadly, it didn't matter for her that night. She could not outrun her killer. On April 7, 1969, 18-year-old Irene Blaze was shopping in Hackensack, New Jersey, when Richard Cottingham met her and invited her to have a drink with him.

They took a bus together to another place where they drank and chatted. Irene was last seen on April 7th around 840s. at the Hackensack Bus Station with a white male. On April 8, 1969, her body was found in the Saddle River and four feet of water. She had been strangled with the chain of the crucifix she was wearing and stabbed in the back through the lung. On July 14, 1969, 15-year-old Denise Falaska accepted a ride from Richard Cottingham as she was walking through from Closter to Westwood, New Jersey. Jersey. She was last seen walking through Emerson, New Jersey, toward Westwood, where her best friend lived around 9 p.m. Her body was found the next day. July 15th, near a cemetery in

Saddlebrook, New Jersey. She had been strangled to death. She was found nude from the waist up, and her bra was around her neck. On April 14th, 2021, over a year after Richard Cottingham, confessed to these three murders. He confessed to another double murder and waived his right to a trial and pleaded guilty to the murders of Marianne Pryor and Lorraine Marie Kelly in 1974. Lorraine was 16 and Marianne was 17 years old when they left their North Bergen, New Jersey homes on foot. On August 9, 1974, the pair headed to the mall in Paramus, New Jersey. They wanted to buy new bathing suits. The girls were last seen on Broad Avenue in Ridgefield. which is about 13 miles away from Paramus.

They told their families they were going to take the bus, but it's highly likely that they really planned hitchhike, which they thought would be safe since there were two of them using the buddy system, and traveling together. Witnesses told police that the two girls were seen getting into a car with a white male. Their parents were panicked when they didn't return home on the 9th, but around midnight, the North Bergen Police Department told Marianne's family they had to wait 24 hours before filing a report.

On August 15th, 1974, the two girls were found in a wooded area in Montvale, New Jersey, about 13 miles north of Paramus. Both had been tied up, sexually assaulted, beaten, and ultimately drowned. Their bodies were nude, but still wearing their jewelry. And each girl still had a rope tied around her neck. In his confession, Cottingham admitted that he abducted the two girls and used their friendship to his advantage. He threatened to harm Lorraine Kelly if Marianne didn't go into the hotel room. To save her friend, she did. And once inside, he tied them both up and sexually assaulted them, leaving them tied up overnight while he slept. On August 11th, two days, two days, after they were last seen, Cottingham drowned them in the hotel's bathtub and then dumped their

bodies in the woods. Investigators determined that one of the girls lived longer than the other, but that they had been held captive for at least 24 hours. And I think this is where you and I always have the problem of, okay, going back to the 60s and 70s, parents being told, you have to wait to file a missing person's report, especially on, you know, two teenagers. That's tough, morph, and even more so when you find out that they were alive or police believe they were alive for at least 24 hours.

And you and I have always said it, right? And I think it's widely known by most that it's really those, first so many hours, whether you want to say 24, 48, 72, that are the most crucial. So, you know, waiting that period before you even file the report and before police even start to take action, that was really rough back then. And not only rough on the family, but I think it led to, and I'll just say it, murders taking place. that there was a chance that they could have been prevented if police had acted right away. Now, obviously, that's not true in every situation, but you can't tell me that there weren't

a number and probably quite a few across the country back during those time periods where police would have caught a break and they could have saved some of the, people. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And just recently in the Delphi area, Indiana, there's a suspect who kidnapped a little girl and was trying to assault her and neighbors and people in the community, police, they didn't wait. They went knocking door to door. And they actually rescued this little girl while she was in the middle of being assaulted. And who knows what this guy would have done to her had police not come there. So I think it just shows that early on, the earlier you can get there, the better chance there is to make a difference and save someone.

Well, you always hear that term time is of the essence. A lot of times that's thrown around in the business world having to do with contracts and things like that. I think it definitely applies in these scenarios. When a young person is missing. And, And I'll focus in on young people just because that's who we're talking about. But when young people go missing, time is of the essence. There's no doubt about it. The quicker that the police get moving, the quicker that friends and family and volunteers get to work, the greater the likelihood that someone is going to be found alive.

I just, I don't think there's any way to dispute that. Richard Cottingham will be sentenced for the murders of Lorraine Kelly and Marianne Pryor on July 9, 2021. The state is seeking two concurrent life sentences to be added onto his multiple existing sentences. Bergen County Prosecutor's Office Chief of Detectives, Robert Anzalati, stated that Cottingham had information about the crimes that only the killer could know. His attorney, John Bruno, claims that Cottingham confessed because his crimes, quote, weighed heavily on him. and that he didn't understand why he did such terrible things. Cottingham apparently wanted to finally give his victim's family's closure.

This description of Cottingham, however, is at odds with the picture drawn from the man who corresponds with Jennifer Wyss. The Richard Cottingham that was revealed through Jennifer Wice's correspondence with him is one who simply didn't care about other people or their pain. This version of Cottingham would never feel like a murder. weighed heavily on his mind, nor would he care at all about bringing closure to a victim's family. During his 1980 trial, instead of pleading guilty, he allowed the victim's family members to have to see the crime scene photos of their family members to help testify to the identity

of his victims. In 2011, long before Jennifer wrote to him, he told journalists, Nadia Fazzani, that he, quote, wanted to be the best serial killer and that he enjoyed terrifying and torturing his victims. For him, what created sexual gratification was not the sexual acts themselves, but it was holding someone's fate in his hands. That was what actually aroused him. He even admitted that the only reason he cut off Valerie's breasts and left them in the room for the police to find was he wanted to do something different. It was as if he had gotten bored with quote unquote regular old killing. The only thing it seemed he was actually compelled to do was to focus on the breasts through biting and later stabbing and cutting. Another way police were able to link his cases

together was that all of the victims had been beaten in the same areas, including their shins. This may not be the final chapter on Richard Cottingham, and we may not have named all of his victims. There may be more. To be discovered or identified, he even claims to have killed before he murdered Nancy Vogel, dating back to 1965 when he was 18 or 19 years old. Like many incarcerated serial killers with nothing to lose and perhaps out of boredom, Cottingham has made some spectacular claims, including a victim count of about 85 victims. Right now, the FBI recognizes Samuel Little as the most prolific serial killer in the United States with 93 confessions and 50 verified murders. This is kind of timely morph because I've been re-watching the Henry Lee Lucas confession tapes on Netflix

and, you know, it's something that really fascinates me. Obviously, we're talking about people who are, they're bad people. They're killers. They've committed a number of crimes, sexual assaults, murder, kidnapping, all of that. But at a certain point, when the media frenzy has died down, they've had all their trials, they've been convicted. they've got either a bunch of life sentences or the death penalty. They know they're never getting out.

It's almost as if they do get bored or they're missing that spotlight that shown so brightly on them during the time that they were captured and they had their trials and they want to relive some of that. So, okay, what's a great way to do? that, I'll start confessing to murders. Maybe murders that I committed, maybe murders that I just knew about. Maybe murders that other people I'm incarcerated with committed. They gave me all the details and I'm going to use those. In the case of Henry Lee Lucas, it's almost comical. And I hate to use that word because obviously we're talking about murder victims here.

But it's comical in the way that he was able to kind of play detectives. I mean, these detectives from all around the country, they were chomping at the bit to talk to Henry Lee Lucas because they wanted to close their cases. And it's almost as if they were willing to overlook a lot of different things to get those cases closed. and as long as Henry Lee Lucas would say that he did it, okay, we're okay with that. Now, from a victim's family member standpoint, I think some of these are very sad because many of them know, especially in the case of Henry Lee Lucas, that he couldn't have killed their loved one.

Yet prosecutors and investigators, they were okay with, his confession and saying that he was the killer. Meanwhile, the family's upset because they don't want that. They want the police to find the real killer. Yeah, I think that's the dangerous thing when you take someone like Henry Lee Lucas for their word on these things. It's easy to close your case. But if you're the family member, do you want someone who's determined to be the killer

on paper just to close a case? or do you want someone held accountable that actually is the person that took your loved one's life? I think family members want the real killer identified. And in Cottingham's case, some of the things here he's linked himself to, according to, according to police, he did have information that only the killer would know. So hopefully, in this instance, he is the real person and not just copping to something that he wants attention for.

Yeah, and I'm sure it goes both ways, right? there's really no reason for him not to come out and admit to other murders he's not going to get any more time nothing else can really happen to him so why not you know maybe there is some truth to the statement that he wants to give some peace to the families i normally don't believe a lot of that when it comes out of the mouths of serial killers but there are times when I'm sure it's actually real and genuine. I think as law enforcement, though, when someone comes forward and says, I did this, it's incumbent on those individuals to vet that out, right?

You can't dismiss it when somebody says, I murdered this person. I guess I went to the Henry Lee Lucas because it's so far to the extreme. I mean, when you sit and watch the videos of him and learn that pretty easily people were able to find that he was at work. He was here. He was there. He was in different states. Well, investigators could have found that out too. They just didn't care.

They were happy to close their case. Before he confessed to the murders of Lorraine Kelly and Marianne Pryor, Richard Cottingham would have been eligible for parole in August. 2005. Now, that's a little hard to believe, right? At one point, we talked about the fact that he had 168 years minimum. Somehow that later turned into 44 years before he would be eligible for parole. His 1980 sentence alone should have guaranteed 63 years in prison. So, you know, you kind of have to look at it and wonder why. However remote, there would be some chance of this guy getting out of prison. With the two newest confessions last month, it's now basically certain that with his age, he's going to be 75 this year, that he will never make it out of prison a lot. Now, my thought about

that is, okay, yeah, technically would he have been eligible for parole? Yes. Would they have have let him out, no way in hell. And I think a guy like Richard Cottingham would have known that and would have factored that in in deciding to confess to more murders. He would have known that he would go before the parole board. They would look at the totality of what this guy had done and say, there's no way in hell we're letting this guy out. I think from his point of view, I doubt that he thought he was jeopardizing his chance to be a free man. I really do. Yeah, it seems like he had nothing to lose by admitting to these other crimes. On the other hand, I wonder if he had anything to gain from it. Any, you know, extra brownie on

his lunch plate or something like that, you know, was there something else offered? We don't know that. Yeah, I think, you know, that's not always publicized. It was heavily in, um, the case of Henry Lee Lucas, they made a big deal about the fact that that sheriff was giving him a strawberry milkshake for every case that he closed. Okay. Well, at one point, you know, he was closing like six cases a day. That's six strawberry milkshakes. That's a real incentive.

Morph, if you're in prison and you're going to be there for the rest of your life, and somebody says, every time you close a case, I'll get you a strawberry milkshakes. I'll get you all the cigarettes you can smoke. We'll get you lunch out. Those are real incentives to make up things, to please the people that are giving you these incentives. And when you only have like three teeth in your whole mouth, strawberry milkshake, that's the way to go, I guess.

You're not going to be chewing up any ribbyes, I don't think, with those three teeth. You're going to be doing a lot of gumming. Let's put it that way. But as we wrap up this episode on Richard Cottingham, there's no doubt this was a very bad guy. I think he had some extremely sadistic things that boiled up inside him. Right? Just go back to his marriage.

And I pointed out that, you know, at one point his wife said that they didn't have sex for three years. Now, there could be many reasons for that, but my explanation was, and I think he backed this up later on, saying that, you know, sex wasn't enough for him. He needed the violence. He needed to feel the fate of someone's life in his hands. That's what aroused him. That's what sexually satisfied him. And ultimately, that's where he obtained his hands. his sexual gratification.

And it seems like what easier type of victim to take that kind of stuff out on than a sex worker, you know, a lot of times they're putting themselves out there in harm's way due to their line of work, and it's easier for someone like Richard Cottingham and other predators to target them. And because of how easy it can sometimes be to target those kind of victims, I have to wonder if there's more out there that have not been linked to Cottingham yet. Well, and I always wonder that in every case we do. Okay, so someone is going to confess to certain things.

And it seems as though over the years, Richard decided he wanted to confess to more and more. I always wonder what some of these killers hold back, you know, because they may be okay with saying, I murdered a 16, 17, 17, 18 year old. But what if some of their victims were much younger? To me, that's something that they may not want to share because it could have ramifications for them in prison, right? When you're talking about someone very young that you harmed, well, other prisoners don't like that.

We know that. We've learned that over the years. So I think there are situations like that where some of these people have victims that they don't want anyone to know about. And I'm not saying it's because they feel bad about what they did. To me, it's more self-preservation. It's more it's in their best interest not to give out this information. Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head because most of these guys that are in prison for that kind of stuff. they don't care, they don't have empathy for others. They only have the need to protect themselves.

Well, it seems like over the years, in different intervals, Richard Cottingham has decided to cop to different crimes, some that he wasn't even connected to. So it'll be interesting going forward to see if there's any other cases that he either confesses to or linked to him some way by a DNA or something. Yeah, yeah, definitely the DNA. angle is there. Now, I will say if he's going to keep confessing, he should not wait too long. We mentioned it. He's going to turn 75 this year and who knows how long he will live in prison.

If he is serious about giving the families of some of his victims some closure and some justice and some peace, I say do it. don't wait around and drop names every couple years because at some point you're going to die, man. Don't take those secrets with you to the point where families never know. They never find out what actually happened to their loved ones. Because to me, that's an extremely sad part of many of these cases. Yeah, he shed light on quite a few of them. But like you mentioned, more of how many more are out there, how many more families are sitting around year after year wondering what happened to their loved ones?

They know they're gone. And maybe he could shed some light on a few more. Thanks, because of the Sunny Landon for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so, take a minute. Go out, give us a five-star rating. keep telling your friends that word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcasts

or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcasts, Discussion and Fans. So more if that's it for our episode on Richard Cottingham. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all-new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.