Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Torso Killer” Richard Francis Cottingham Pt. 1

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

He had an idyllic childhood in the 1940s and ‘50s, but as Richard Francis Cottingham grew, he began having dark, dehumanizing sexual fantasies about women. When he started working in New York City, he took those violent, twisted dreams and made them a reality.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, rape, and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. The Cottingham family mostly kept to themselves. Richard Cottingham seemed like a doting father. He took his children trick-or-treating. He brought them to and from school. To the neighbors, they were a normal, albeit cloistered, family.

But secretly, Janet Cottingham suspected that something was amiss. Her husband was hiding something. He'd become withdrawn, locking himself in the basement for hours on end. There was a hollowness to him. A vacancy Janet didn't recognize. Richard seemed less and less like the man she married. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew he was hiding it downstairs. In the cellar, he called his study. One afternoon, while Richard was at work, she crept down the dusty stairs to the basement. She stepped into a room filled with women's clothing, shoes, purses, and costume jewelry. Mysterious sets of house keys were strewn across a desk.

Janet found bondage equipment, gags and restraints that made her stomach drop. Something was deeply wrong. That night, when Richard walked through the front door, door, Janet played it cool. She hit her terror behind a charming smile. Her husband smiled back before making his way to his study. Janet didn't say anything to her husband about what she found in the basement. She couldn't face it. And truth be told, she was afraid of what might happen, because deep down, she knew her husband was a killer. I'm Greg Paulson. This is serial. Killers, a Parcast Original.

Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we meet Richard Cottingham, known as the Torso Killer of New York. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast Originals for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To stream serial killers for free on Spotify, just open up the app and type Serial Killers in the search bar.

Today, we'll learn about Richard's idyllic childhood, concerning adolescence, and blighted young adulthood that led to his early kills. Next time, we'll cover the murderous rampage through New York City that earned him his grisly moniker.

We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the Unit Bomber. It's tedious work to find what you're looking for.

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In 1946, the Cottinghamms welcomed their first child, a son, a sweet little boy named Richard. They would go on to have two daughters. The Cottingham's doted on their children, whose childhoods were by all accounts uneventful. Well, except for one thing. At the age of four, Richard was struck by a car and suffered damage to his frontal lobe. As far as anyone knew, he made a full recovery. But historian Peter Vronsky isn't so sure about that. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode.

Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. A series of interviews and research conducted by journalist Hugh Ainsworth studies the link between childhood trauma and psychopathology. 29% of serial killers were shown to be accident-prone children, citing head trauma as a leading injury. In Richard's case, the frontal lobe.

The frontal lobe is responsible for aggression, impulse control, and problem-solving skills. It's also one of the easiest parts of the brain to injure and distort. The study suggests that in some cases, psychopathic behavior, is a defense mechanism meant to protect the brain from further trauma. Peter Vronsky calls this phenomenon injury-induced psychopathy. He believes this helps to explain the disordered behavior that Richard developed. As a young boy, Richard was antisocial and withdrawn. He had trouble connecting with his classmates at St. Andrews, his parochial grade school and junior high. He much preferred the company of his family. So he wasn't too bothered when,

in 1958, Richard's father, William, decided to move the family to Rivervale, New Jersey. The Cottingham's were among many white families fleeing their increasingly diverse Bronx neighborhood in favor of the suburbs, now casually referred to as the white flight of the late 1950s. Plus, the cost of living in New Jersey was lower. There, William could afford a split-level home with a yard, spacious enough for the kids to run. At first, 12-year-old Richard didn't engage very much with his new hometown.

Instead of making new friends, he raised homing pigeons. He also woke at dawn so that he could feed the deer around the neighborhood. He gained a reputation as a sweet, quiet boy. But as he grew into adolescence, that sweetness began to slowly fall away. Richard's classmates at Pascaque Valley High School remember him as thin, somewhat athletic and handsome. He dressed like a burnout, but joined the track team. He didn't seem particularly committed to any one social scene, but he was starting to come out of his shell. He wasn't popular, per se, but he was well-liked. In the book, Richard Cottingham, the true story of the torso killer,

one former classmate recalled, Richard stood apart in that he wasn't always at practice, he wasn't a joiner, and he didn't have a nickname, and he wasn't part of our little clique. He had a kind of wise guy attitude about him. Richard did become close friends with three of his classmates, though he was firmly the leader of the group. In fact, it was becoming clear that Richard wasn't about to take orders from anybody. He would later say, Inside, I always felt like I was a loner, apart from the crowd,

yet controlling or directing the crowd. Subliminally, I was a manipulative control freak. Even then, I was the boss. and they had to do whatever I wanted them to, or I dropped them. Control issues were not Richard's only issue. Around this time, he began shoplifting, stealing beer, candy, and cigarettes. He liked the rush of getting away with it. Richard also developed an interest in women,

though he wasn't interested in a typical high school fling. Another of Richard's classmates recalled locker room chats, where Richard would speak openly about his fixation with well-endowed brunette. The classmates said, when he spoke about women, it was kind of in a negative way. He would talk about the girls in class or the girls out on the street who were larger-breasted. That just sort of seemed to be a key attraction for him. He objectified these women far beyond anything that could be considered normal physical attraction. In fact, Richard Harbored dark dehumanizing fantasies that oftentimes involve these women in bondage or other compromising positions.

He was sexually excited by the idea of inflicting pain on the women he lusted after. This is known as sadism, a psychosexual disorder coined by German psychologist Richard von Kraftebbing. It's not to be confused with BDSM, which is bondage play between consenting adults. For sadists whose interests rise to the level of disorder, part of the fun is victimizing an unwilling participant. Throughout high school, his fantasies grew more intense, detailed, and graphic. In the early 1960s, when Richard was in his late teens, cheap pornography was the best way to explore darker fetishes. Richard bought a subscription to a monthly adventure magazine, though the contents were far more salacious than one would think. They were essentially torture porn, oftentimes centered on Nazi war crimes against women.

These disturbing rags featured articles with titles like, Soft Flesh for the Dungeon of the Damned, the Nazi who filled the fleshpots of the Middle East, and I like to see nude women lying in blood. The FBI would later refer to these magazines as pornography for sexual sadists. According to forensic psychologist Louis Schlesinger, serial killers usually begin to entertain twisted fantasies some 10 or 20 years before their first kill.

Clearly, Richard was already harboring a dark wretchedness that would not be contained to Nazi fan fiction, and unfortunately, he didn't have much else going on in his life to occupy his thoughts. Richard was a little lost. He didn't have the grades to go to college, so after graduating high school in 1964, his dad got him a job as a computer operator at Metropolitan Lodagh.

life. Father and son commuted together to Manhattan from New Jersey. Richard would zone out on the car rides into the city, though he perked up a little as they moved through Midtown. There, busty sex workers with flowing chocolate hair walked the corner, soliciting clients. Richard had no intention of stopping for their services, but he liked to look. He certainly had the means to pay for sex if he wanted to, though, Richard earned the modern-day equivalent of $120,000 a year, operating and maintaining the Honeywell H-8200 computer mainframes. It was simple, boring work. At night, he took as many computer classes as he could, possibly to escape the humdrum routines of metropolitan life.

After a year at his mundane desk job, Richard took a position at Blue Cross Blue Shield, metropolitan life's direct competitor. His father was horrified. His switch to the rival company caused so much tension between him and his father that Richard decided to move out of the family house. He got his own place in Little Ferry, New Jersey, about 30 minutes south of Rivervale.

Soon after Richard moved out, his father retired from MetLife and his parents moved to Florida. For the first time, 19-year-old Richard was alone, left to his own devices. Without family around to keep Richard occupied, his darkness had room to fester. He grew restless at his new day job, and the mind-numbing commute from New Jersey to Manhattan

didn't help. He was bored of shoplifting, the cigarettes he pilfered didn't deliver the same buzz, nor did his sadism porn, which seemed tame in comparison to the fantasies swirling around his head. He found himself trapped at a dull desk job, virtually alone and bored to tears. The single highlight of his day was the momentary commute past busty sex workers near Times Square. One evening, Richard decided not to go home after work. Instead, he headed for a corner where he knew sex workers solicited clients. He approached a woman with silky brunette hair, his exact type.

somewhat awkwardly he handed her a wad of cash. She flashed him a knowing smile, and something deep within Richard, something dark and twisted, clawed its way to the surface. This felt right. Coming up next, Richard's dark fantasies become a nightmarish reality.

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and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Must be 21 to enter. Now back to the story. A year into his job at Blue Cross Blue Shield,

20-year-old Richard Cottingham was bored. For lack of anything better to do, He began soliciting sex workers near Times Square, which in 1966 was a seedy part of New York City. Back then, it was nicknamed Minnesota due to the hundreds of Midwestern teenage runaways who arrived in Manhattan by bus, hoping for a better life. Instead, these young susceptible women were chum for the pimps who lined up outside of the bus station. They knew the runaway women were homeless and in need of cash. Sex work was the quickest way to make a dime in those days, so there were plenty of women trying it out.

Johns like Richard could walk the streets of Midtown cruising for tonight's companion. Police mostly turned a blind eye to the operation. The sex work industry was far too vast for police to even begin a crackdown. And back then, it was widely assumed that any woman involved in sex work must have been a low-class runaway. Probably a drug addict too. In any case, not worth ball. bothering with. Richard brought several sex workers to hotels near Times Square. The rooms were moldy, bed bug infested, and rented by the hour. You could hear the roaches hissing through the

walls. The hotels were there for one reason, and by morning they were gated and locked. After his detour to Times Square, Richard finally headed home to New Jersey. He'd get home late, peel off his clothes and jump in the shower, then crash for a few hours before work. Before long, it was a routine as predictable as his old one. But Richard hated routine, and he soon grew as bored as he had ever been. It was in moments like these that his dark fantasies crept back in. He imagined binding the women he solicited, inflicting pain on them, wrapping his hands around their necks until something snapped.

And eventually something would. On Friday, October 27, 1967, 29-year-old Nancy Skiava Vogel was on her way to play bingo at her neighborhood church. She was a brunette mother of two in Little Ferry. On her way, she stopped at the Valley Fair Mall to buy new shoes and a blouse. As she returned to her car, 21-year-old Richard approached Nancy in the parking lot. Maybe he greeted her.

After all, they both lived in Littlefairy. Perhaps she recognized him. Or maybe he simply attacked her. Either way, she never turned up at Bingo that night. While it's unclear where exactly he killed her, we know that Nancy was murdered inside her car. It was Richard's first kill, and it was exhilarating. The control he felt over Nancy as he squeezed the life from her body

fulfilled every dark urge he'd ever harbored. But in the aftermath of the murder, he grew anxious. Thinking quickly, he drove her vehicle to a neighborhood in nearby Ridgefield Park. He hoped this would throw suspicion off anyone who lived in Little Ferry. When Nancy failed to return home, her husband Henry reported her missing. The police were quick to launch an investigation, scouring the streets of Little Ferry. Of course, her body was already a town over on a quiet street called Homestead Place. Nancy's body sat undisturbed all weekend.

It wasn't until Monday afternoon that two young girls from Ridgefield Park glanced out their second-story bedroom window and noticed something strange. It looked like a wax mannequin sitting upright in a nearby car. The 12-year-old girls decided to investigate, as they drew closer to. the car, they realized it wasn't a mannequin at all. It was Nancy Vogel. She'd been stripped, beaten, and strangled. Her hands were tied in front of her with a nylon cord and a rope hung around her neck. All forensic evidence had been cleaned up, leaving little else to go on. Bizarrely, Nancy's clothes were folded neatly and placed beneath her body. The FBI categorizes serial predators

as either organized or disorganized. Disorganized serial killers are impulsive. They leave their crime scenes in disarray. They tend to be lower functioning members of society. Organized killers, on the other hand, can blend in. They're typically of average to above average intelligence, can hold stable jobs and seem otherwise competent. Organized offenders premeditate their kills.

They plan which weapons they'll bring, and they clean up. afterwards. In Richard's case, the lack of forensic evidence, the careful posing, and neatly folded clothing beneath the body, told investigators they were dealing with an organized killer. Police could also tell that Nancy had fought her assailant. Her body showed signs of a serious struggle. Nancy tore at Richard until the rope around her neck stole her last breath. But ultimately, the investigation dried up. Within a way, week, the case went cold, and Nancy's family were left to grieve without answers.

Meanwhile, her killer remained at his boring day job, just an hour's commute away. Richard sat at his desk, shaking with excitement. Two nights previous, he'd murdered for the first time. He was on a high, yes, but a small part of him was also terrified. Days past, no police showed up at the office asking for Richard, there were no late-night knocks on the door. After a few weeks, the knot in Richard's stomach began to untangle, and his mouth loosened, too. At Blue Cross Blue Shield, Richard shared a consul with a colleague named Dominic Volpe. Richard and Dominic had a friendly rapport, but after Nancy's murder, Richard was too proud of himself to keep from boasting. He bragged to Dominic about his vices. He told his

coworker that he was interested in bondage, handcuffs, and that he dreamed of having a sex slave. He bragged about soliciting sex workers and called himself a winner. Dominic and a few fellow colleagues thought Richard was weird, but never suspected that he would actually enact any of his more twisted fantasies. Something about his demeanor kept them from suspecting him of true evil. Richard never felt remorse for murdering Nancy. In fact, he barely thought of her at all. He later said, I forgot like it didn't happen.

I could put myself into a zone to do something like that. Richard was compartmentalizing his kill. It was like the birth of two Richards, the Daywalker, who held down a job and unnerved his coworkers, and the night stalker who trolled the streets for sex workers. The only constant in his life was simmering rage, which could bubble over at any moment. Soon, Richard's routine evolved. After work, he would head to Times Square searching for a sex worker he liked.

What he found her, he'd flashed two rolls of cash, showing he was a big tipper, thinking she'd hit the jackpot, she'd accompany him out of Manhattan and back to New Jersey. Richard liked having the home court advantage. He knew the storefronts. He knew which streets were wrong. well-lit. He also knew how to be charismatic and friendly. He prided himself on being able to persuade these women to go with him and told his deskmate Dominic Volpe as much. Volpe didn't really believe many of Richard's stories. He took them with a grain of salt, but Richard was serious. And worse,

Richard knew he could brag to his colleagues without fear of being ratted out, since nobody really believed him. Still, they could tell when something was wrong. Co-workers remembered that when upset, Richard was unable to sit still. His legs would shake, sometimes for eight hours straight. In an effort to calm his nerves, he began drinking under his desk. Eventually, his coping mechanisms couldn't quell the deep-seated anger and need for control. That rage that stood just beneath the surface, He felt a need to kill again. On a sticky night in July of 1968, 13-year-old Jacqueline Harp was leaving band practice at her school. She lived in Midland Park, a suburb as small as it was safe.

Her parents never worried about her walking home alone at night. She should have been home by 9.30. By 10 p.m., her parents began to worry. It's hard to imagine the fear and guilt that must have followed, as her parents spent. the night frantically trying to track down their daughter. At midnight, they called the police. Sure, Jacqueline had been kidnapped. The police probably tried to keep the harps calm as they launched a search for the missing girl. But their worst fears were confirmed the next morning. Jacqueline's body was found in a nearby sliver of woods, just 25 feet from the road.

The eighth grader had been beaten and strangled with the leather strap she used to hold her flag for marching band. Though she hadn't been sexually assaulted, police believed that the crime was sexually motivated, largely because she'd been beaten and tortured before being strangled. Clearly, it wasn't a robbery gone wrong or an accident. This was the work of a child molester.

The harps were left to grieve their daughter and raged as her case went cold. The police had no leads. The attack seemed random. As the town of Midland Park reeled, Jacqueline's killer sat shaking behind his desk, stealing sips of whiskey in the supply closet. Richard relished the rush of a new kill. Each day his ego inflated as he realized that he'd gotten away with murder again. He loved this feeling, so much so that it made it all the more bitter when the high began to fade. Once again, he compartmented. He

compartmentalize the kill, like it never happened at all. All he could remember was how easy it had been and how simple it would be to strike again. In a moment, Richard Cottingham's bizarre behavior catches the attention of the police. Now back to the story. On July 17, 1968, 22-year-old Richard Cottingham abducted 13-year-old Jacqueline harp on her way home from band practice. He beat and strangled her, discarding her body in the woods a few blocks from home. And though he wasn't interested in sexually assaulting the young victim, he relished the power he felt over someone so helpless and young, so much so that in April 1969, he decided to kill again.

On April 7th, the body of 18-year-old Irene Blaze was found face down to the shallows of Saddle River, 10 miles south of Midland Park. She had been strangled with a wire. But much like Jacqueline Harp, she was not sexually assaulted. Police flagged the murder as part of a pattern, but still had no leads, which gave Richard Cottingham the confidence to kill again, just three months later. Fifteen-year-old Denise Velasca was found strangled in Saddlebrook on July 14, 1969, just three days before the one-year anniversary of Jacqueline's murder.

Denise's murder made it official. Bergen County, New Jersey, had a serial killer on their hands. At the time, there was no evidence to link any of these murders to Richard Cottingham. It should be noted that to this day, such evidence does not exist. Richard later confessed to the murders, but his word is all there is to go on. This is likely because Richard was surprisingly good at removing forensic evidence from the scene. He knew to clean up traces of hair, dead skin, and any sexual secretion, like in the case of Nancy Vogel, his first victim.

He also had a modus operandi that worked. He stalked his victims, carefully choosing someone he knew was alone and easily overpowered. He would lure the victim to his car, kill them, then dump their body miles away. By the time police found the body, it was almost impossible to know exactly what happened. By now, Richard was adept at killing, a fact that he relished. In a later interview with journalist Nadia Fazzani, Richard said, I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. I wanted to be the best serial killer yet.

By the fall of 1969, the 23-year-old was confident police would never link him to his victims. After all, he wasn't even in the system. His record was clean. That was until October 1969, when an intoxicated Richard drove his car up onto a sidewalk in New York. The incident was cinematic. Pedestrians screamed and jumped out of the way as he bottomed out on the curb. He was arrested and charged with drunk driving. He received a $50 fine, roughly $350 today. He was also sentenced to 10.000. 10 days in jail. During his 10-day stint, Richard mostly kept to himself. Something about the isolation of county jail and the embarrassment of missing work got his wheels turning. He began to think about

long-term stability. Killing was fun, but what was he doing with his life? So, like many lost 23-year-olds before him, Richard started dating. He liked the idea of having a wife. It would help him. It would help him look stable. In his mind, serial killers were low lives hiding in the shadows. No one would ever suspect a respectable family man of being a killer. So, Richard began courting a young woman from Queens named Janet. Something about her enchanted Richard. Perhaps it was her chestnut hair or the size of her ample bosom. She just had a way about her. This woman was special. For the next few months, he paraded her around town in his teabird, treating her to dinner and nights out at the movies. On May 3rd, 1970, he married her. The newlyweds moved into a modest apartment at Ledgewood Terrace in

Little Ferry, New Jersey. Like his father before him, Richard prided himself on his extremely normal life. He had a nice home, a wife, and a stable job. It was the perfect cover. But being normal wasn't enough for Richard. He was simply a little. He was simply a little. too addicted to high-risk thrills. On August 21st, 1972, he was caught shoplifting in Paramus, New Jersey, in order to pay another $50 fine. It's unclear whether Janet knew about the shoplifting or his previous DUI. Richard may have hidden them from her. But even without the criminal record, Janet knew something about her new husband was off. Richard had violent sexual fantasies, and shortly after their wedding, he began asking to act them out in the bedroom.

The exact details of what he was asking are unclear, but either way, Janet wanted no part in it. Richard was left frustrated, lusting after a violent power dynamic few women would enter into willingly. Before long, he was back to trawling his old haunts. On September 4, 1973, a 17-year-old sex worker sought the help of police. She had been robbed, beaten, severely bitten, sodomized, and raped by a man whose sex workers in her sphere considered a frequent client. Her attack was so brutal it rattled sex workers,

pimps, and the police. The teenager identified Richard as her attacker, and he was charged with rape, assault, and robbery. But for whatever reason, the girl didn't appear in court, and Richard's charges were dismissed. Richard was a free man, but his reputation, the very thing he'd been working to safeguard, was no longer so clean. He couldn't hide these charges from Janet. Janet was rightfully horrified. She demanded to know what kind of man she was married to. Charismatic Richard assured her the police had the wrong guy. He pleaded with her. His voice cracked with sincerity. Never mind the fact that the sex workers' attack seemed to mirror

the things Richard had asked for in bed, never mind his late nights and alcoholism, and every other red flag Janet refused to notice. This was her husband, a man she had loved deeply for almost three years, and besides, she was in too deep to back out now. She had a son on the way. Blair Cottingham was born on October 15, 1973. Richard was overjoyed. For a moment, it seemed as though everything was back on track.

He and Janet were in love, their baby was beautiful, and Richard was a standout success at Blue Cross Blue Shield. So much so that the company invited him to set his own schedule, which was perfect for Richard. After all, he hated routine. So he forewent the traditional 9 to 5, preferring to work from 3 p.m. until 11. This meant that he clocked out just as New York nightlife was heating up.

He could stop by his favorite S&M clubs on the way home, where he was a known regular. He told Janet he was working overtime, so she got used to going to bed long before Richard arrived home. And because Richard was doing well at work, Janet didn't question when he drove into the city on days off, claiming he wanted to put in extra hours at the office. Janet tried to forget Richard's run-in with the law that September, but downtown police were taking a keen interest in Richard Cottingham. He had two priors, and now he had been accused of rape. They suspected it was only a matter of time before he was in trouble again.

They weren't left waiting long. On February 12, 1974, another sex worker came forward. The 19-year-old told police that Richard Cottingham had hand. handcuffed her, raped her, then stolen her jewelry on his way out. The jewels were worthless. He'd taken them for the sheer thrill of stealing. Once again, Richard was charged. Police hoped that this time he would be sent away.

But again, the victim didn't show up in court, and the charges were dropped. If Richard had felt untouchable before, now he was invincible. Police knew Richard was a bad seed, but without charges against him, they couldn't legally investigate. Besides, they had over 1,500 other murders to contend with that year, even if they wanted to look into Richard Cottingham. They didn't have the resources. Richard was free to continue his life, just as before. The next year, in 1975, the Cottingham family moved to a three-bedroom home at 29 Vreeland Street, in Lodi, New Jersey.

The growing family needed the space. Their second son, Scott, was born in March of 1975, with their daughter Jenny born the following year. Neighbors remember the Cottingham's keeping mostly to themselves. They were a fairly private family, albeit nice people. But in reality, trouble was brewing. Richard had grown distant from Janet and no longer wanted to sleep with her, perhaps because she was reticent to try the fantasies Richard obsessed over.

Of course, his fantasies went far beyond anything that could be reasonably called bondage play. He wanted to maim the women he slept with. Around this time, Richard commandeered the basement in their house, turning it into his private study. It was where he spent most of his free time. He forbade Janet from going down there, and something about the sternness in his voice told her not. to argue. And so she raised their three children largely by herself, while her husband spent all morning in his study and all evening at work. She barely saw him, and when she did, Richard seemed cold. There was something more animalistic about him, a vacancy behind his eyes. And so one day, when Richard

was out, she crept into the basement to see what had captured so much of her husband's attention. It's hard to imagine how Janet felt as she wandered around his plainland of costume jewelry and bondage gear, a gruesome candy land. She was horrified, of course, but deep down she had already known who her husband was. Janet never let on that she'd been to the study. After all, what choice did she have? Even if she left Richard, she couldn't support herself and her three children. Perhaps that denial began to seat back in. After all, she might have reasoned, none of this was proof that Richard was actually guilty or even cheating on her.

Just because he had the bondage equipment didn't mean he was using it. And so Janet carried on, pretending she'd never descended into her husband's murky world. A few months later, in 1977, 29-year-old Richard visited a tavern on the Upper East Side, where he met a beautiful nurse named Barbara Lucas. Something about her

enchanted Richard. Perhaps it was her chestnut hair or at the size of her ample bosom. She just had a way about her. This woman was special. The pair began seeing each other regularly. Richard loved ferrying Barbara around in his teabird, treating her to dinner and the movies. He took her to budget motels for romantic evenings in. It's unclear whether Barbara knew Richard was married, though there were obvious signs. Perhaps Barbara stayed with him because he was handsome and charming. She described Richard as a loving and attentive boyfriend. Apparently, he never tried to engage in rough sex with her.

In fact, she complained that their sex life was a little too routine. Barbara did notice that her boyfriend had stacks of books about stalking and bondage. A fact she clocked is odd, but it never had. bothered her enough to tell anyone. Even though he was balancing a full-time job, three children, a marriage, and a girlfriend, Richard still found time to cruise for sex workers near Times Square. Richard said he wanted to be the best at serial killing. He must have also wished to be the best at dating, because a few months after meeting Barbara,

he also began dating another nurse named Jean Connolly. Something about her enchanted Richard. Perhaps it was her chestnut hair or the size of her ample bosom. She just had a way about her. This woman was special. By the autumn of 1977, Richard Cottingham had everything, a family, two girlfriends, a steady job, and a secret life as a serial killer.

He had pulled it off, the flawless cover. story. But he was growing confident, perhaps too confident. And much like his victims, Richard's double lives would slowly begin to bleed. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with part two of Richard Francis Cottingham, the torso killer. Next time we'll cover Richard's twisted killing spree as his methods became even more gruesome. For more information on Richard Cottingham, Amongst the many sources we used, we found the New York Ripper, Serial Killer Richard Cottingham, by Peter Ronski, extremely helpful to our research.

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Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Anthony Valsick, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Amanda Prager, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon, and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation,

the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcast this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast, On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Do you want to hear something spooky? Some Monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot.

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