August 6, 2025 • 63 mins
In this week’s episode, the second part of a two-parter, Paul and Kate return to the Long Island area in the late 60s / early 70s where a serial predator has been terrorizing the community. Our hosts discuss the victims and analyze the eventual apprehension of the sadistic perpetrator.
Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4buCoMc
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you overwhelmed with this case?
I was just joking, you know, we should make this
like a triple partner. I think people would be upset
about that. This is like this is a docu series
on Netflix at this point.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, I'm game though, but I've been you know, this
is this is sort of the types of cases that
I dig into, and you know, I've got for the
first time in YouTube, I've got a little bit of bourbon.
I'm looking forward to hearing, you know the rest of
the story, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I've got some tea, my tea. I've posted about my
tea in the past. I posted on Instagram a double
photo of me drinking tea in Wicked Word sound booth
and me drinking tea out here, and I, of course
look completely different to the folks who are on my
Wicked Words show. So okay, let me try to do
a roundup of what happened last week. So we have
(01:58):
a serial killer, and so far we know that he
is in Long Island because he has it seems like
a very similar method strangulation, sometimes sexual assault, sometimes not.
Sometimes clothings removed, sometimes it's not. You know, we're in
Long Island for Diane Cusick starting in nineteen sixty eight,
(02:18):
who was the one found at the Mall parking lot
in her car. And then we had four years later
Mary Hintz, who was found floating face down in that
creek in Rockville Center, New York. Then just a couple
of months later, basically the exact same spot, Laverne Moy
underneath a small bridge, and Laverne I think is the
(02:40):
beginning of not being fully clothed. Then we have Sila Hyman.
She's a little different because this is in her home.
Her husband had only been gone about two and a
half hours or so, and that was in north Wood Mirror,
New York, five miles from Rockville Center where the other
two women were found. Is Maria, and Maria is several
(03:03):
months after Sheila, and she is in an overgrown area
of Jones Beach, not far from a bus stop. But
you're not convinced that she was attacked by the bus
stop because she was You called it packaged, and so
we don't know what happened with Maria, but she was
(03:24):
found bound and wrapped up in a blanket and some
plastic in the way she was bound to look like
it was a way for the offender to carry her.
Then we have Marianne Carr, and this is when we
go to New Jersey and Marianne Carr is the X
ray technician who it sounds like was abducted from her
apartment complex in Bergen County and taken very close by
(03:46):
to a quality in. And then three years after that,
in nineteen eighty, there's a sex worker named Valerie Ann
Street who's found in that same quality in three years later,
but inside a room we found out that she had
checked in under an assumed name, and there was a
man with her, but that was the end of any
(04:08):
kind of description or anything like that, and she was
found underneath the bed. So then I told you at
the end of this, so that is seven victims. I
told you at the end of this we're going to
be moving to a different location. Did you have before
we talk about the location, did you have any sort
of thoughts or anything, you know, just regarding what happened
in episode one?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, I think you know, I think it's notable. You
know that the initial five attacks are occurring out there
in Long Island, and then the last two he's going
over to New Jersey. The two cases in New Jersey
they have a connection to that motel and a very
strong connection with the last one Valerie, who's a sex
(04:50):
worker and checks in with a client in the room
where her body is found. I think it's possible even
though these last two cases are occurring in New Jersey,
he may be traveling from Long Island. This location doesn't
necessarily mean that he has moved. And it's notable. We're
talking seven cases over the span of twelve years. So
(05:13):
now we have to also start factoring in the offender's life.
Let's say he was twenty five for the first attack
in nineteen sixty eight, now he's thirty seven. Right, Life
changes occur, jobs change, marriages, kids are born. It all
depends on who this guy is. But that is a
(05:34):
component that is going to influence how this series continues
to evolve because his personal life is going to have
an influence on what he does in these cases.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Let's talk about where we're heading next. So you know,
we had victims in Long Island, we had two victims
in New Jersey, and now we are going to New
York City. But not just New York City. We're going
to Times Square, which you know, I need to set
the scene with this Times Square in the seventies and eighties,
(06:10):
I'm sure you know the reputation. I mean, it is
lots of sex work, lots of pornography. But you know,
from what I've seen in what I've read, really really
dangerous for sex workers, like really really really dangerous, and
the police were kind of hamstrung. And so that's the
environment we're going into where we've been sort of having
(06:32):
worlds that were a little smaller if these weren't random crimes.
But now with Times Square and the just like the
violent and the electricity around what that place was like.
It to me changes things a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Well, you know, I didn't realize Times Square was like
that back in the seventies. Yes, you know, for me,
Times Square is what it is today. You know, it's
a touristy, you know, very you know all the signage
and everything else. In fact, you and I had me
you know, at one point we were in big you
know photograph of us in Times Square right for buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
This is not that Times Square. I can tell.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
You the location as it exists today would surprise me.
The location as you're describing it in nineteen seventy nine
is exactly the type of location. I would think that
this offender, because of his last case in New Jersey
with Valerie, a sex worker, again, he is comfortable in
that type of location where you now have it sounds
(07:32):
like Times Square is a stroll area in Manhattan. You know.
So this of course is going to be a magnet
for predators and he's he's won, and he has to
be comfortable in that type of culture if he's going
to go in there and grab a victim.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And it's interesting because within Times Square I had read
about this, and then when I watched the series, they
talked about that time Square just attracted everybody, I mean,
white collar men who would go to a peep show
on their lunch break, you know, who worked in the area.
Of course, there's tourists everywhere, but there is just I mean,
(08:13):
it is an incredible amount of hotels, motels who cater
to sex work. And unfortunately, what I learned was that
so much of the of the industry was connected to
the mafia and the mob in New York and it
drew in a very dangerous crowd. Not that it wouldn't
be dangerous already, but it just made things even worse
(08:35):
for the women. So yeah, stroll area is an understatement.
And you know the idea of the peep shows, I
mean the traditional where the window goes up, you put
in money, the window goes up, you see some kind
of salacious stuff, and then the window goes down and
you keep spending money. That was sort of the minimum.
So this is the environment we're heading into now. The
(08:55):
reason that we did this in this order was I
wanted to show you, of course that you know, you
have Mariann Carr and Valerie Ann Street connected because they're
at the same hotel, even though they're three years apart.
But in between, in nineteen seventy nine, we're in Manhattan,
so this is about a year before they find Valerie's body.
(09:17):
Inside the Quality and Motel room, they find the bodies
of two presumed sex workers. Now, one is a Jane Doe,
and that's one of the reasons why we said presumed.
The other one is a woman named Dida Goudarzi. And
you know, we say presumed in some of the material.
(09:40):
But then when I watched the Netflix series, her daughter,
who she had offered for adoption when Dita was really young,
said she was a sex worker. She was what they
would call maybe high end. And I don't mean that
in a derogatory way or a positive way. I mean
she had one or two clients for a lot of money.
So I never want to label people with anything other
(10:03):
than who they are, and that's why I'm trying to clarify.
And they've never been able to figure out the Jane Doe.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Okay, so well, a couple of things. First, in this
day and age, if they have access to Jane Doe's remains,
we can probably figure her out through genealogy, and they
should do that, and hopefully they're working towards that with data.
You know, this goes into the victimology. You know, we
(10:29):
talk about sex workers and we kind of lump them
into the same category. But we can't do that. We
have to truly understand what type of sex work that
they're doing, you know, and this is for investigative purposes.
So that's when I was talking about Thatalery. I want
(10:49):
to know is she somebody who's walking on the stroll
area or is she in escort? Is she meeting the
client at this motel or did he pick her up
on the stroll area? That tells me a lot about
the offender. So with DITA, I need to know, you know,
you use the term high end. Yes, there are what
you would say professionals, and they are typically very glammed up.
(11:16):
They don't walk in the stroll area, they have limited
high paying clients. And so if I have somebody like
that who's becoming a victim of this killer, how is
this offender running across data? You know, So that's all
just part of getting a sense. It's part of the victimology.
We just can't say they're a sex worker. We need
(11:37):
to know what type of sex work they're doing.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Well.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I mean, based on that series and a couple of
interviews that I've Readdda's daughter, who, as I said, you know,
had been adopted by a couple. Her name is Jennifer Boy.
She really was pretty amazing. And you know, I'll tell
you why, for many different reasons. Let me tell you
now about the victims, and boy, of course I wish
we knew who Jane Doe was the woman she was with,
(12:07):
the reason that these women were found so quickly is
because the offender set the room on fire, and it
is at a travel in motor hotel right in Times Square.
Dita was twenty two, maybe twenty three, and they think
that Jane Doe was in her teens or early twenties.
Once they put the fire out, man, I remember this
(12:29):
detail from the series. I think the firefighters went in
and they could see that there were people there, and
one of them went to go give CPR and there
was no head.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
No head because of the fire or no head because
the killer had decapitated.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
The victim decapitated. And you know, this is one of
the reasons why this became also known as the Torso murders.
So let me tell you what they find. They believe
they were set on fire after they were killed. They
were both sexually assaulted and tortured, which sounds like the
kind of torture that Valerie Ann Street suffered. Nicks and
(13:09):
cuts and you know, lots of detailed, really difficult things
for her to get through when she was still alive.
The heads in their hands were removed from their bodies
and were not there, not present at the scene. Dida
was identified by her clothing that were left behind at
the hotel. They had been neatly folded and placed in
(13:29):
the bathtub, and that's what we know.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
INDEEDA likely didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I don't think so. And we have profilers on who
worked on the case that I had, you know, listened to,
and they said, the person, now, you tell me what
you think the person who did this intentionally set the
fire to draw attention, not to cover up. What do
you think.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Well, this is a motel in Times Square, so obviously
as soon as smoke is being seen, going to have
fire alerted. And you have so many people that are
in this location at all times of the day and
night that I could see where they would draw this conclusion.
(14:11):
It also it's dependent upon well, how has the fire
started where was it? As an example, if the offender's
trying to cover up the crime, he's going to be
pouring accelerant on the victims' bodies and lighting their bodies
on fire. But if he's starting a fire in a
trash can across the room, you know, that's going to
really delay any part of the evidence that may be
(14:34):
present with the victim's body. And there I would say, yeah,
that likely would suggest that he's trying to get the smoke,
you know, as sort of attention getter, versus trying to
truly destroy the crime scene and the victims' bodies. The
folding of Dda's clothing is significant. You know, the offender
(14:55):
likely did that he put the clothing in the bathtub
that possibly was to protect the clothing from being burned
up from the fire, and it's folded. You know, this
is where with some of the previous cases where you
know we have the victim's clothing, you know, he's possibly
redressing the clothing is significant to him, you know, and
(15:18):
he's like sending a message, he's protecting, he's folding and
protecting Dda's clothing with the hope that responders are going
to notice that.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, let me tell you something smart that I picked
up on this series that one of the detectives did.
The way that they were able to have the clothing
be a positive ID for DTA is you know, you
can hand people clothes and say, hey, did she own
you know who owned this? Do we think anybody owned this?
What they did was they took a mannequin. They were
(15:49):
at a department store, and the one of the detectives said,
or an officer said, why don't we just take one
of these mannequins and dress it in her clothing? And
when they did, they had somebody who recognized and said
that's Stida's clothing, which I just thought, well that's simple,
but that was that's a really interesting way to display
the clothing so that you can kind of visualize who
that person might have been.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Sure, and in this day and age, you have to
process that clothing for DNA evidence and trace evidence prior
to any type of dressing it on a mannequin.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
M Yeah, absolutely, But they did not have that benefit
back there in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Pole, This is seventy nine year. I have to remind
myself that why did.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
They Okay, then after that happened with these two women,
then Valerie Ann Street was the next victim after that,
So that one happened in the next year, in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And a question that I have on Dida and Jane
Doe's case is were their heads and hands found in
the motel room or had did the offender take those
with him.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I don't believe they were ever found.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I mean, some offenders will do this type of mutilation
to the bodies because it's part of their fantasy. But
I believe he's doing this to delay identification of the victims,
and he's trying to separate himself. He's calling attention to
the crime, but he doesn't want them identified too quickly
because possibly if they're identified quickly, then maybe the pimp,
(17:15):
the madam, you know, law enforcement can talk to them
and they go, well, these two went with who we
know as John and give a description or something, you know.
So he's definitely wanting that delay and identification.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Now we're going to talk about the tenth victim. It's
nineteen eighty and we're still in New York. It's not
Times Square, but it is in the Nomad area, which
is North Madison Square, and this is at a hotel
called the Seville and it's a twenty five year old
sex worker. Her name is Gene Rayner, and she's found
(17:53):
dead inside the hotel. She had been sexually assaulted and
tortured before having her throat slashed and her boy set
on fire. So I feel like, now he's done everything
but shot them. I mean, I haven't heard anything about
a gun at this point, but we've had strangulation, we've
had beating, we've now had a knife, and I know
again they change weapons all the time. It's so interesting
(18:16):
the fallacies that you think, you know, reading about true
crime growing up and thinking all of these things that
were definite, and they're not definite. Let me tell you
something different. So before he fled the scene, the offender
cut off her breasts and put them on the headboard
of the bed. We're thinking obviously shock value, but you
(18:37):
can tell me, and he took the clothes with him.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Well, we started out in nineteen sixty eight and very
very different crime, very different victimology. We started to see
his violence escalate when he bludgeoned the one victim in
the bathroom. Now he seems, at least with the last
cases that you've talked about, he gravitated towards sex workers.
(19:03):
These are victims that will voluntarily go with him versus
his other victims like mary Anne out there in New Jersey.
You know, there's an ear witness right here's mary Anne's
scream says, I will, I will. You know, it sounds
like he's probably putting a knife in her side, got
(19:24):
a gun out, and saying you're coming with me, and
she's responding, I will, I will. But now he's going
to sex workers. And again I don't know if he's
in the stroll areas, you know, picking these women up
off the street, if he's going through some sort of
escort service. But he for whatever reason, has decided that
(19:47):
that this is his preferred victim. And it may just
be because of the it's lower risk to him. The
abductions are high risk, especially in some of the locations
where he's ply abducting the prior victims out there on
Long Island. Now he's decided he wants to continue doing
committing these crimes, and he's going after sex workers. Now
(20:10):
there may be what we will call a missionary component
to what he's doing. He may have some personal philosophy
that justifies him going after sex workers, you know, whether
he's like a Gary Ridgeway, you know, reading the Bible,
going oh this is sinful, and so therefore I am,
you know, purging the world out of these victims that
(20:33):
are committing these horrific you know, in his mind sins.
But it may just be purely mo based. It's easier
for him to get these victims. The mutilation. You know,
we've seen the evolution and the mutilation, and now we
have a gene you know again at another I guess
it's a hotel. The cutting off the breasts and then
(20:54):
putting them on the headboard. Obviously, you know, this is
a this is a form of posing. You know, he is,
as you mentioned, used the term shock value. He is
now feeling his oats. He is confident. He has now
been offending for twelve years. He's been getting away with
(21:15):
these crimes. In a way, this is a boast. He
is boasting, he is taunting. He's somebody that's going to continue.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Okay, well, now let me tell you about the very
very latest one. So this is nineteen eighty and now
we are back at that quality inn where Marianne was
kidnapped and murdered Valerie and Street was murdered. We were
back at the same quality in before I tell you
(21:48):
what happens, and this involves a sex worker. Why does
he continue to go back to this one particular quality
in I mean, I don't know if there's an emotional attachment,
but it just seems I don't know, it seems to
tempt fade a little bit, don't you think.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, you know, it's significant to him. You know, we
can't necessarily, you know, read his mind as to why
it's significant. It may strictly because it's mo he's recognizing,
let's say, the lack of law enforcement in the area,
the prevalence of sex work that flows in and out
of this particular motel, and so he's got confidence that
(22:26):
he can commit his crimes and not be caught because
of what he is seeing, you know. And he's already
you know, done two crimes. He's dumped one body there
and he killed another gal Valerie in the room. But
there may be something else going on in his mind.
Maybe he tried to rent a room there at some
point and the lobby clerk turned him away. And now
(22:48):
he's mad at that location, and so he's you know,
killing at this location as a way to get back at,
you know, the the motel itself, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Okay, well, let me tell you what happens. There is
a housekeeper who's working at the Quality and hotel. She
hears screams, she calls the police. The police come and
they find Leslie and O'Dell, the sex worker. She's handcuffed,
she has knife wounds, she has incredibly severe bite marks
(23:21):
all over her body. She is still alive and survives.
And the offender is still there and they.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Arrest him, caught in the act.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Can you believe that's what stopped him? It was literally
a housekeeper who heard screams and reacted, and he would
have just kept going. Right. This is his name, Richard Cottingham.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Oh, I know the name.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
She don't know the case finally, a serial killer case
you don't know from nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
That's good those on the other side of the country.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, that's true. Now, everything that you have tried to
put together about who this offender is, let's see how
it matches up with who Richard Cottingham is. He has
been living an assuming life, as they sometimes do married father.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
He is a career man.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
He and his family live in Lodi, New Jersey, Bergen County.
We know we have two cases from New Jersey and
he is very close to the Hasbrook Heights Quality Inn.
But he has an insurance job in New York and
he has family in Long Island, So there are those connections.
You mentioned an age we talked about kind of a
(24:38):
twenty five in nineteen sixty eight. You know, if he
were twenty five and now he would be this. He
was twenty two in nineteen sixty eight and he has
arrested in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So he's in his mid thirties when he's caught.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, by the late nineteen seventies, he's in his late
thirties kind of, and his wife senses something's really off
with him. She files for divorce, and by that point
he was on his sixth victim. And you know, people
want to know sometimes does the spouse know, I know
that's coming up a lot with the Go Go Beach murders.
(25:11):
Did his wife have a sense that anything was off?
What is your theory about any of that? Either these
guys are really really great actors, or the spouses feel
like what this woman felt, something is off, But they're
not thinking they're slooping next to a serial killer.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
No, you know, I would say in most situations, the
spouse is unaware. These guys are very good at compartmentalizing
these crimes. They take advantage of life circumstances that gives
them an excuse to be out and about, you know.
And this is where, you know, is he telling his wife,
(25:49):
you know, the insurance job, I have to go entertain
some clients and instead what he's doing is he's picking
up sex workers. She's probably got that woman's intuition that
this man she's married to, there's a change, and you
see the change from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty.
He is changing in terms of how he is interacting
with his victims, and he's getting much more violent with
(26:11):
his victims. So that may have been something that she
was sensing. Now I think it's interesting. You know, he
has family in Long Island. Was he living all the
way out of New Jersey in nineteen sixty eight for
Diane's case or was he out in Long Island at
(26:32):
the time. He's twenty two, so maybe still with parents.
The shift and where he is committing his cases from
Long Island out to New Jersey and then in between,
you know, the Times Square or North Madison Square, you know,
up in northern Manhattan. You know, it's interesting and this
(26:54):
is where, you know, you start talking geographic profile. You know,
the longs is an anchor point for him, at least
with his family, and maybe he was raised there, maybe
he lived there when he first got married or lived
with his parents. Did you say his job was in Manhattan, yes, Okay,
(27:17):
So that's an anchor point.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Close to Times Square. And the series actually interviews a
co worker of his with this insurance company and kind
of talks about how they would all brag about conquests
with women. But he worked there in that proximity. So
he grew up in He was born in forty six.
(27:39):
He grew up in the mont Haven neighborhood of the Bronx,
and then his family moved to Dumont, New Jersey, and
then to Riverdale, New Jersey, which is where this sort
of fascination with pornography and bondage and stuff started to develop.
I suppose in sixty four he graduated from a high
(28:01):
school in Hillsdale, New Jersey, and then he worked for
Metropolitan Life where his dad was a vice president, and
he was in Manhattan and he started in the mailroom,
and it sounds like he was pretty much always in
Manhattan for work. Let me tell you something screwed up.
He was at Blue Cross, Blue Shield and he worked
(28:21):
in an office with Rodney Alcala. It's from Woman of
the Hour. He's the serial killer from that really well known,
really well reviewed Netflix series.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
I mean, it's just shows you coincidences happened. They never
paired up. But these are two, you know, serial killers
working in the same area at the same time. But
they're just not killing there, just happened to be there.
So it sounds like, okay, so his entire adult career
he is Manhattan based. Right now, it sounds like the
(28:55):
Long Island connection is family and he's not necessarily personally
living out there with his family, but he's going out there,
he's familiar with the area. One of the theories, and
this is doctor Kim Rossmo who wrote the book one
of the primary books on geographic profiling, talks about I
(29:17):
think he called it the smoke stack theory is that
you think about these offenders and they have these anchor points.
You know their residents, their place of work, where they
go to recreate, you know, things that they travel in between. Frequently.
Oftentimes they may attack in the general area of this
(29:38):
anchor point, but not too close to the anchor point.
And so if you have enough attacks, you can put
those on a map. And these these attacks may encircle
where this person's residence is or their place of work.
They're just making sure they're not attacking right next door, right,
but they may be attacking five blocks because they're familiar
(30:01):
with the area. They are in the area, and they
may get off work and go, well, I'm going to
drive around that neighborhood and see what I can find
in that neighborhood as they're commuting home, you know, so
they're peeling off their commute route in order to be
able to go find victims.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
So I think he was in New Jersey when he
graduated high school, which was in sixty four, four years
before Diane was murdered. He graduated in sixty four and
that was from New Jersey. And then he gets married
six years later and he gets married in Queens. But
(30:41):
I think they were in Lodi at that point in
New Jersey also, so I'm just seeing him in New.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Jersey mostly Okay, So he gets married in nineteen seventy, then, yes.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
It looks like he got married in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
So if we take a look at the distribution of
his attacks NA law, logically he is not married for
Diane's case in nineteen sixty eight, and then we have
a four year gap. He gets married after Diane's case
in nineteen seventy and two years after he gets married,
that's when he's attacking Mary and Laverne. So he does
(31:20):
two attacks in nineteen seventy two, and then a year
later he's doing Sheila, you know. And these are all
out there in log Island, as well as Maria seventy three,
you know. So it appears that after he gets married,
there's still a pause in his cases, and that may
just be because he doesn't have the freedom in order
to go out and attack. Then something allows him to
(31:43):
carry out attacks in nineteen seventy two and seventy three.
You said he had kids. Do you know when his
kids were born?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
He has three children, two boys and a girl with
his wife. I can look at see when they were born,
but I know they were married in seventy and his
I file for divorce in seventy eight, so within eight
years they had three kids.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
So that divorce in nineteen seventy eight is also significant
because when you take a look at after the divorce,
what is he doing to these women? He is brutally
you know, he's torturing them, he's mutilating their bodies, he's
cutting their heads and hands off, setting a couple of
(32:25):
these women on fire. So this divorce may have had
a psychological impact on him. This may be a where
I mentioned before, an anger retaliatory type of offender, where
now the divorce may have created this internal anger that
caused him to escalate the level of violence against women
(32:49):
in proxy because he's really angry at his wife.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And this is when he switches to sex workers. Yes,
his last woman who did not work in the sex
industry was Mary Anne in seventy seven, and then he
switches to the Times Square Victims in seventy nine, and
then we go back to Valerie Anne, who is a
sex worker at the Quality Inn in eighty and then
(33:13):
again back to New York. I'm assuming you know when
he's at the insurance company in eighty with Gene Rayner,
and then he gets caught with another sex worker.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Wow. Right, So you think about sort of the real
life aspect in his personal life of what happens, you know,
the divorce. I'm assuming they're not continuing to live together,
They're going to be separate. Now he has greater freedom
to be out, let's say, in the middle of the night.
Now he's getting familiar and don't know if he dabbled
(33:46):
with sex workers and stroll areas prior, but now he
has the freedom to go out there and hire sex workers.
And then eventually he's now victimizing sex workers as a
serial killer, hitting that comfort level of that culture, so
to speak. And then he's now escalating the violence. You know.
(34:09):
So the divorce I think is pivotal in Cottingham's series
in terms of you see that switch, and it's because
greater freedom as well as the anger from the divorce.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
M h. I will say, once he's been arrested and
this becomes a massive story, women come forward and say,
you know, these these women were not the only ones.
We were attacked to, raped, abducted, tortured. We have a
pregnant waitress, another sex worker, and then of course you
(34:42):
know you have Leslie and Odell, who is the reason
why he was caught to begin with. So he is
convicted around the same time, he's convicted of several murders
in both New Jersey and New York State. That includes
marian Carr who was abducted from her apartment complex. So
the note says coincidentally, it's not coincidence. Obviously, Conningham and
(35:05):
his ex wife used to live in the same damn
complex as Marianne Carr.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Close to the quality in now lived there at the
same time Maryanne did. No, I don't believe so, so
it's a watering hole for him. He's familiar with that area.
He's in that area and mary Anne got off work,
she's heading to her apartment, and he takes advantage and
it maybe is something where he's been surveilling that apartment
(35:33):
complex for maybe weeks, maybe months, and has noticed what
time Mary Anne gets home and is saying, here's this
you know gallony uniform. You know that I'm able to
I can grab her, and he plans it and he
successfully is able to get her away from her apartment
and then ultimately sexually assaults and kills her.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Well, now let's talk about the police work going into this.
You know, eventually he's going to be found guilty of
murdering many of these women, but there's evidence that they've
gathered beforehand. They find clothing and belongings with Cottingham from
many of these women. Jeene Rayner's necklace, a key to
(36:17):
Marianne Carr's apartment, a Koala bear trinket that belonged to
Valerie Ann Street, and these were all in his house.
They also managed to get a thumb print that matched
his from handcuffs that were used to restrain Valerie.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That's all great evidence. He's obviously collecting souvenirs. Did he
have any shoes from his victims?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Well, we're getting to that because he confesses and he
says there's a lot more where that came from. So
for decades he denies all of this, but after thirty
or so years he starts to talk where he starts
to finally admit to some of these killings. I told
you kind of about heroes. Dita's daughter was one of
(36:59):
the ones who got information out of him and just
wanting information about her mom, who she never got to meet.
But let me kind of go back and tell you
what happens, because again these are more pieces that I
find interesting based on everything that you've said, that things
read to you. So he says that he is responsible
for a string of unsolved murders in the Tri state area.
(37:22):
He says he started with a woman named Nancy Vogel
in nineteen sixty seven, so that would have made him
twenty twenty one. He said that he kidnapped her from
a mall in Bergen County. He sexually assaulted and strangled
her to death in a field, and then put her
in the backseat of her car naked and left her
(37:42):
in a residential street. There's that theory that you and
I have talked about about, you know, killers confessing to
every like Henry Lucas confessing to a thousand murders. But
the police say that he knew a lot of things
about that case that were never made public. They think
that he's a responsible for that, for that killing of
Nancy Vogel.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Well in that case, that case parallels Diane's case, Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
He says that he murdered several teen girls in the
late nineteen sixties, so probably around the same time, and
also in Bergen County. He said he'd randomly encounter these
women in public. These girls in public, there's a thirteen
year old named Jacqueline Harp in sixty eight, same year
as Marianne An, eighteen year old Irene Blasa, and fifteen
(38:31):
year old Denise Flaska, both in sixty nine, and each
girl was strangled to death. So this is pre marriage
and early to mid twenties. What does that say to you?
It's it seemed like almost like a spree to me.
That's a lot of people to attack.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Well, yeah, the term spree is for a different type
of killer than a serial killer. He's straight up a
serial predator starting in early twenties, and he likely has
had fantasy about committing these types of crimes during his
teenage years. I wouldn't be surprised if he had rape
(39:10):
victims going back into the high school age. So you know,
he is much more prolific in this late sixties than
what we knew from the original cases that you talked about.
And that's where you see what happens when he gets
married in nineteen seventy, All of a sudden, he's slowing
(39:31):
down unless you tell me. Also, he's confessing to more
cases during that nineteen seventy to seventy two timeframe.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
So this is what he says. This is such a
big document. It's hard for I have to keep going
back to figure out where we are. Okay, so he says,
we've talked about the sixties. All those girls were strangled
to death. I know that doesn't mean anything, but as
far as like you know, connecting him, they were strangled
to death twenty one. This guy's still alive. Four years ago.
(40:04):
He confesses to kidnapping and raping, murdering a seventeen year
old who I've heard of, Marianne Pryor, and a sixteen
year old Lorraine Kelly. These are both girls who were
murdered in nineteen seventy four, So this is right after Maria,
and Maria was in I think she was our last
victim in Long Island before we move over to New Jersey,
(40:29):
and that was Marianne Carr in seventy seven. So I
don't know when he decided to move back to New Jersey,
but he's so these Let me tell you about these
teenage girls. These two girls were hitchhiking to a New
Jersey mall to buy bathing suits. Back to malls, not
the same one. I believe they were taken to a
(40:49):
motel where they were beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and ultimately
drowned in the room's bathtub. And they were taken to
a wooded area of Bergen County where their wrists in
their ankles were still bound when they were found.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
This is where talking about some of his earlier cases,
and I was thinking, he's taking these women to a
different location where he's interacting with them, killing them, sexually
assaulting them, and then he's dumping their bodies. That's what's
happening with these teenage girls. And so maybe on Long Island.
If his family residence is all the way out in
(41:26):
New Jersey and he's got his family there, his wife
is there, the kids are there, he is very probably
using a motel on Long Island where he's taking some
of these women, interacting with them, killing them, and then
dumping their bodies out there on Long Island.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Okay, we've got more. So in twenty twenty two, so
three years ago, he confesses to murdering Diane Kusick, who
we thought was our own. You know, the first victim
clearly wasn't because DNA was collected from her car and
in linked by him. So he gets another twenty five
years in prison. He was given life, of course, without
(42:06):
parole on some of these other murder cases. And he
also says he's responsible for Mary and Laverne and Sheila
and Maria's murders. Now this appears to be part of
a deal with the DA, who says, just admit it,
and I won't prosecute you because we don't want to
deal with more trials in the media. But the family
(42:27):
wants answers, and of course the public wants answers to also.
It says that he's gotten certain privileges, so access to
certain foods in exchange for his information. How do you
feel about that? I don't know how I feel about that.
I'm also not the family of these young women who
want answers.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Well, and that's really what it comes down to, you know,
is the DA. You know my experience and I the
last four years, almost four years of my career, I
worked directly for the DA's office. I mean, they do
pay attention to what the family's wishes are. And if
the family is like, no way in hell is he
(43:04):
going to get any special privileges, we want him prosecuted.
You know, the DA will pay attention to that. Not necessarily,
you know, just do what the family says, but most certainly,
if there's any deals to be made, the DA's office
is going to pay attention. And from my perspective, if
(43:24):
all he's getting is certain food items in exchange for
confession details about what happened to these families loved ones
all for it, you know, you're not setting him free,
you're not making his life luxurious in custody. You're just
giving him something a little bit more than what he
(43:44):
would get in order to get these families' answers.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So he makes those confessions to the people we've covered
on this show. But then he says he's also murdered
a twenty six year old sex worker named Lorraine McGraw,
who's beaten body was found in nineteen seventy in South Nayak,
New York. And I'm pointing at you because that is
marriage year and the first sex worker I think we've
(44:09):
heard about.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Okay, so that didn't.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Coincide with my theory of he switched totally to sex
workers after the seventy eight divorce, because he obviously encounters
this woman.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, you know, but what it does suggest is at
a much younger age. He is hiring sex workers, and
prior to this homicide, he is hiring sex workers as
just a client. I often talk about barriers to offence
and how an offender has to cross certain social barriers
(44:43):
to get more and more comfortable to committing the types
of crimes that they ultimately commit. Joseph DiAngelo had to
get comfortable breaking into houses and so therefore, you know,
you go back and look at that evolution. He was
a peeping tom. You know, he's a burglar during the day,
and then he becomes a cat burglar night while there's
occupants inside the house. He's having to cross certain barriers
(45:04):
for offenders that prey on sex workers who are out
on the street. And that's the important part is I've
emphasized before what I call the stroll area. This is
a different culture. It can be a scary culture and
a scary environment for the kind of the uninitiated. And
so this type of offender has to start learning how
(45:27):
to interact with these victims, has to start seeing, well,
how do I spot law enforcement? Is law enforcement doing
a vice operation? Is there a decoy out?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
And as the offender gets comfortable with that culture, now
that offender, if their ultimate goal is to isolate a
sex worker and sexually assault and kill them and carry
out their fantasy, you know they already have many times
been in that area. So with Cottingham, if he's killing
(45:57):
a sex worker in nineteen seventy and he's picking her
up out of a stroll area, that means that well,
prior to nineteen seventy he's probably been hiring sex workers
and is familiar with them and is comfortable with that environment.
Now it's interesting that, at least with what you've told me,
(46:18):
he doesn't kill sex workers again until the late seventies.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
We have to keep going because he keeps confessing two
years ago, a year and a half. Frankly, he admits
to the murder of a seventeen year old girl named
mary Ann Della Sala in January of sixty seven. To
listen to this, Paul, because I think you'll find this interesting.
So I think this is his earliest confession as of now.
(46:44):
I probably have to do a Google search because something
else might have popped up yesterday. But this is January
of nineteen sixty seven, and I don't think we have
a sixty six This girl mary Anne worked as a
cashier at a grocery store in Hackensack, New Jersey, which
is Bergen County, which is apparently where he lived. He
used to go to that store all the time and
(47:05):
he had a crush on her, So it started on
as a crush. He stalked her as she walked home
from work, somehow got her into his car. We don't
know if it was voluntary or an abduction. He sexually
assaulted her before expiciating her. They said, it's not clear
if he strangled her or you know, if he put
some kind of object over her mouth. He left her
(47:27):
body in a muddy area near the river where she
was found three months later. How awful for her parents.
So is that a thing? This one started as a
crush someone he knew. He came to visit the store
all the time because he liked her, and it kind
of there it goes after that.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Well, I think his internal thoughts about this victim under
the guise of a crush are very different than what
a normal person is thinking. Right, you know, I can
guarantee he has had violent fantasies, violent sexual fantasies about
(48:05):
girls and women prior to this girl. He may have
found her very attractive. But stalking, to me is very
particular type of crime versus surveillance. And so when I
use the term stalking, and I'm not even talking about
how stocking is defined in statutes, I'm talking about how
(48:30):
I use the term stocking. This is where now you
have an offender that has developed an obsession, is following, communicating.
The victim is aware that this offender is really trying
to make the victim uncomfortable because there's this jealousy and
vindictiveness and obsession that is very different than a predator
(48:52):
who is following a victim around to learn her movements,
to watch her, to fantasize about her. That's surveillance. He's
on the hunt. He's trolling for victims. So that's where
with Cottingham, with his very first case, he sees this,
(49:14):
I mean, she was what seventeen, you said, Yeah, they're
peers if you will, in terms of the age range.
But instead of asking her for her number, right and
let's go out on a date, you know, he puts
her under surveillance and he abducts her and kills her.
He's living out his fantasy. So him using the term crush,
(49:36):
I just don't. I don't buy it. You know, he
may have had some level of feelings for her, but
it was well he wants to get off, you know,
sexually assaulting and killing her. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
There are a lot of people focused on this case,
on Cottingham in general, so they think that he might
be connected to a nineteen seventy four blows budgeting case
of a fifteen year old girl named Lisa Thomas in
New York State, and Cottingham kind of confessed to it.
And I'm not sure what that means, except the police
(50:11):
said he doesn't have the facts to back it up.
So yeah, as far as I can tell, this is
the first time they've called BS on him, so everything
else he's listing off seems to be legitimate. Overwhelmingly. At
this point, he has confessed to murdering more than one
hundred women. I do want to answer one little question
(50:31):
for you. He'll answer it essentially the shoes. So does
he have a foot fetish? You know, what are some
of the tell me some of the different things you
had said foot fetish or is there more practical things
or well.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
So people often get the term fetish wrong. The term
paraphilia is a broad term in which individuals they have
what would be considered abnormal sexual interests of various sort.
A fetish is a paraphilia, and fetish is attraction to
(51:07):
inanimate objects. So the most common fetish in the world
is men's attraction to women's lingerie. That's a fetish considered
really normal. But when you are Jerry Brutos and you're
cutting women's feet off and keeping them in the freezer
because you have a foot fetish, technically at that point,
(51:27):
it's an inanimate object, right, and he's getting off sexually
looking and fondling these dismembered feet with Cottingham, you know,
the prevalence of the lack of shoes on his Long
Island victims, you know, that's where it was like, well,
why is that? You know, Is that just because he's
failing to just you know, see them in his vehicle
(51:48):
and he's having to discard them at a secondary location.
Is he keeping them because he has a shoe fetish?
He gets turned on by women's shoes, and that is
a thing. Is he taking the shoes off because he
has a foot fetish and he's interacting with these victims feet?
You know, So that's where early on, I'm starting to go,
what is going on with the shoes. Is the offender
(52:11):
holding on to these shoes as souvenirs or because he
has a sexual attraction to the shoes, you know? And
so I'm kind of curious to see what the answer is.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
So he says that he took off the shoes and
I guess in some cases toss them because he didn't
want to get kicked.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Okay, so it's absolutely a practical thing.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah, absolutely, boy, that was interesting. Now he does not
explain the folded clothing. In the case of the two
women you know in Times Square, he has not said
where Dita and Jane Do's decapitated heads and hands are.
He won't talk about that. He loves these stupid cat
(52:52):
and mouse games with detectives. He is in his seventies,
he has declining health. He says he's killed more than
one hundred people, and he has detectives visiting him, hoping
to pry out more confessions before he dies.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Sure, and so you know, first, you know, these types
of details are bargaining chips for him, you know. And
give me a pack of SIGs and I'll tell you
where her head is. Fundamentally, he's holding on to those
types of details. The one thing that and I'm sure
the investigators that are dealing with him are completely savvy
(53:28):
to this, but the one thing you think about the
posing he did in the case where he cut the
woman's breasts off and put them up for shock value.
That's a look at me, Right, I'm a badass serial killer.
Look at me. Now, he's reckoned, he's never getting out,
he's feeding law enforcement case after case. He's getting a
(53:51):
lot of notoriety as a result. Does he start over
extending himself like Henry Lee Lucas because he's demonstrated that
psychology in the posing of that one victim, the look
at me? So this is where you just have to
obviously DNA. If there's DNA in cases, that's easy. But
(54:14):
if it's a case in which he has to provide details,
the interviewers need to know those cases and the details
of those cases inside and out, as well as what
has been publicly disseminated on those cases, because he's going
to be reading up on cases he's got. I'm sure
he has access to various types of media and go, oh,
(54:37):
there's another case in New Jersey. Yeah, I'll say I
did that one too, you know, Okay, feed me specific
details that only the killer would know.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
I normally don't have a hard time figuring out how
to wrap up our episodes, but this is so disturbing.
I mean, this is certainly the largest amount of victims
that we've talked about. He is still there are still cases.
The police say, I don't think he's blowing anything out
of proportion. We think he has done a lot more
of these. You know, they're trying to figure out before
(55:09):
he dies. Essentially, So do we learn anything about this
kind of case? I mean, I don't even think practical
be careful when you go out at night kind of things.
But what is the big takeaway for you that you
might bring up later on in another episode? Oh? Yeah,
do you remember we talked about that Cottingham guy? He
did this? Now you know?
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Well, my big takeaway has been not just from learning
about Cottingham and the crimes he's committing. This has been
my world for over thirty years. I think it's so
important for people to understand, and specifically I'm talking to women,
but this is not just a type of crime that
(55:51):
impacts women, but there are other victims of serial predators,
but by and large, women are the victim. And it's
understanding that there are men out there that are hunting you,
and there are monsters. These men do horrific things to
(56:13):
their victims, and this is where prevention is absolutely key.
You know, you talk about situational awareness. In Diane's case,
you know, did she park out in a dark area
of that parking lot and was that the reason she
was chosen? We don't know, but it's it's a possibility.
(56:35):
These men capitalize on that type of little thing that
you may not think about, but you have to think
about it. Just recently, I used to talk to citizens academies.
I just recently am talking to a group here where
I live and it's a group of women who are
(56:55):
taking a class. But the fundamental message is trying to
convey to them there are predators that are specifically targeting
you because you are a woman, and they it's not
just because you happen to cross their paths. They will
go out of the way to find you. You have
(57:17):
to protect yourselves. You have to understand that these guys
exist and do what you can. Still live your life,
but you need to do what you can because you
do not want to become victims of these guys. Yeah,
because like we see with Cottingham, Valerie, her breast is
got numerous cuts to it, horrific. You don't want to
(57:42):
have that done to you.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Well, of the awful, terrible things that we cover, this
is one of the worst cases. I hate to say,
at least at least there is something the families can
have answers, but not all the families. And so, you know,
I think we learn things from every single case that
we did. This is the most profiling I think we've
ever done, and so I think it's interesting what matches up,
(58:07):
you know, what we learn about these stories. In the seventies,
the FBI Behavioral Science Unit went in and interviewed Bundy
and Kemper and all of these different you know, serial
killers and took away useful things. And sometimes I criticize
when I hear how much a show or an author
(58:29):
or anything really digging in. Don't they ignore the victims
and you know, learn only about the killer. But I
don't believe that's the only reason why people listen to
these kinds of shows. It's just to learn about what
a whack job, you know. Richard Cottingham is. I think
they do want to know the kind of people who
are deprived of a wonderful life, you know, because of
this asshole. So we've learned a lot about him, but
(58:53):
also I think we've learned a lot about the society.
And thank goodness, the cops were working on all of this.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
It seemed like, you know, you know, and along those lines, I,
you know, getting into the true crime space. I've talked
to audiences. You know. A message that I always want
to put out there is it's okay, you know, to
be intrigued by the psychology of a serial predator, a
(59:22):
serial killer, you know what makes these guys tick, but
don't glorify them. Don't wear t shirts with their images
on it. You know, recognize that they have taken the
lives of real people, and always remember the victims. Become
victim centric. It's okay to consume, learn about a case,
(59:42):
even be entertained by the story of the case, but
just recognize these cases happen to real people, and that
the person who's committing these crimes is a horrific, horrific person,
and you should never glorify them.
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Well, and I tell my students at the University of
Tech says, if this were your sister, wouldn't you want
to kind of have this narrative when we when you
want people to know who she is? Yeah, you're right,
I mean glorifying the killers. I mean that is that
is the antithesis of what you and I try to
do well.
Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
And I think you know too along those lines, is
that in my experience, certain families want their loved one's
cases to be discussed because it's a way that they're
the memory of their loved one is kept alive in
a way. But also there's their message. They're usually wanting
(01:00:38):
other people to be helped by their their loved ones
experience that case and what the family has gone through.
You know. So some families don't want that attention and
some do and and that's just you know, I know,
from from a true crime perspective, you just have to respect.
You know, if a family does not want to be
(01:00:59):
you know, part of a story, part of a podcast,
part of a TV show, don't press it, you know,
because they don't that's not something that they're desiring.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, I would like to say next week
that we're not going to talk about a serial killer,
but I'm not sure that's the case, because there were
for the season. I had a little list of the
serial killer in these cases that people are asking us
to look at, and so we might end up with
(01:01:31):
another serial killer coming up pretty soon. I know that's
your that's your one of your big interests. But usually
I like to say, we're not going to be doing
this again, but we might be doing this again.
Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
I will get to a clean, clean piece of paper
on my notepad, and I'll be ready to go and
more whiskey.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
I know you were going to say that too.
Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Well, there's always that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Okay, Well, I will see you next week, all right, Kate,
thank you too.
Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
For our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi.
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a
Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode
the criminal mind, is available now, and Paul's.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's cold cases,
is also available now.
Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you overwhelmed with this case?
I was just joking, you know, we should make this
like a triple partner. I think people would be upset
about that. This is like this is a docu series
on Netflix at this point.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, I'm game though, but I've been you know, this
is this is sort of the types of cases that
I dig into, and you know, I've got for the
first time in YouTube, I've got a little bit of bourbon.
I'm looking forward to hearing, you know the rest of
the story, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I've got some tea, my tea. I've posted about my
tea in the past. I posted on Instagram a double
photo of me drinking tea in Wicked Word sound booth
and me drinking tea out here, and I, of course
look completely different to the folks who are on my
Wicked Words show. So okay, let me try to do
a roundup of what happened last week. So we have
(01:58):
a serial killer, and so far we know that he
is in Long Island because he has it seems like
a very similar method strangulation, sometimes sexual assault, sometimes not.
Sometimes clothings removed, sometimes it's not. You know, we're in
Long Island for Diane Cusick starting in nineteen sixty eight,
(02:18):
who was the one found at the Mall parking lot
in her car. And then we had four years later
Mary Hintz, who was found floating face down in that
creek in Rockville Center, New York. Then just a couple
of months later, basically the exact same spot, Laverne Moy
underneath a small bridge, and Laverne I think is the
(02:40):
beginning of not being fully clothed. Then we have Sila Hyman.
She's a little different because this is in her home.
Her husband had only been gone about two and a
half hours or so, and that was in north Wood Mirror,
New York, five miles from Rockville Center where the other
two women were found. Is Maria, and Maria is several
(03:03):
months after Sheila, and she is in an overgrown area
of Jones Beach, not far from a bus stop. But
you're not convinced that she was attacked by the bus
stop because she was You called it packaged, and so
we don't know what happened with Maria, but she was
(03:24):
found bound and wrapped up in a blanket and some
plastic in the way she was bound to look like
it was a way for the offender to carry her.
Then we have Marianne Carr, and this is when we
go to New Jersey and Marianne Carr is the X
ray technician who it sounds like was abducted from her
apartment complex in Bergen County and taken very close by
(03:46):
to a quality in. And then three years after that,
in nineteen eighty, there's a sex worker named Valerie Ann
Street who's found in that same quality in three years later,
but inside a room we found out that she had
checked in under an assumed name, and there was a
man with her, but that was the end of any
(04:08):
kind of description or anything like that, and she was
found underneath the bed. So then I told you at
the end of this, so that is seven victims. I
told you at the end of this we're going to
be moving to a different location. Did you have before
we talk about the location, did you have any sort
of thoughts or anything, you know, just regarding what happened
in episode one?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, I think you know, I think it's notable. You
know that the initial five attacks are occurring out there
in Long Island, and then the last two he's going
over to New Jersey. The two cases in New Jersey
they have a connection to that motel and a very
strong connection with the last one Valerie, who's a sex
(04:50):
worker and checks in with a client in the room
where her body is found. I think it's possible even
though these last two cases are occurring in New Jersey,
he may be traveling from Long Island. This location doesn't
necessarily mean that he has moved. And it's notable. We're
talking seven cases over the span of twelve years. So
(05:13):
now we have to also start factoring in the offender's life.
Let's say he was twenty five for the first attack
in nineteen sixty eight, now he's thirty seven. Right, Life
changes occur, jobs change, marriages, kids are born. It all
depends on who this guy is. But that is a
(05:34):
component that is going to influence how this series continues
to evolve because his personal life is going to have
an influence on what he does in these cases.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Let's talk about where we're heading next. So you know,
we had victims in Long Island, we had two victims
in New Jersey, and now we are going to New
York City. But not just New York City. We're going
to Times Square, which you know, I need to set
the scene with this Times Square in the seventies and eighties,
(06:10):
I'm sure you know the reputation. I mean, it is
lots of sex work, lots of pornography. But you know,
from what I've seen in what I've read, really really
dangerous for sex workers, like really really really dangerous, and
the police were kind of hamstrung. And so that's the
environment we're going into where we've been sort of having
(06:32):
worlds that were a little smaller if these weren't random crimes.
But now with Times Square and the just like the
violent and the electricity around what that place was like.
It to me changes things a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Well, you know, I didn't realize Times Square was like
that back in the seventies. Yes, you know, for me,
Times Square is what it is today. You know, it's
a touristy, you know, very you know all the signage
and everything else. In fact, you and I had me
you know, at one point we were in big you
know photograph of us in Times Square right for buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
This is not that Times Square. I can tell.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
You the location as it exists today would surprise me.
The location as you're describing it in nineteen seventy nine
is exactly the type of location. I would think that
this offender, because of his last case in New Jersey
with Valerie, a sex worker, again, he is comfortable in
that type of location where you now have it sounds
(07:32):
like Times Square is a stroll area in Manhattan. You know.
So this of course is going to be a magnet
for predators and he's he's won, and he has to
be comfortable in that type of culture if he's going
to go in there and grab a victim.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And it's interesting because within Times Square I had read
about this, and then when I watched the series, they
talked about that time Square just attracted everybody, I mean,
white collar men who would go to a peep show
on their lunch break, you know, who worked in the area.
Of course, there's tourists everywhere, but there is just I mean,
(08:13):
it is an incredible amount of hotels, motels who cater
to sex work. And unfortunately, what I learned was that
so much of the of the industry was connected to
the mafia and the mob in New York and it
drew in a very dangerous crowd. Not that it wouldn't
be dangerous already, but it just made things even worse
(08:35):
for the women. So yeah, stroll area is an understatement.
And you know the idea of the peep shows, I
mean the traditional where the window goes up, you put
in money, the window goes up, you see some kind
of salacious stuff, and then the window goes down and
you keep spending money. That was sort of the minimum.
So this is the environment we're heading into now. The
(08:55):
reason that we did this in this order was I
wanted to show you, of course that you know, you
have Mariann Carr and Valerie Ann Street connected because they're
at the same hotel, even though they're three years apart.
But in between, in nineteen seventy nine, we're in Manhattan,
so this is about a year before they find Valerie's body.
(09:17):
Inside the Quality and Motel room, they find the bodies
of two presumed sex workers. Now, one is a Jane Doe,
and that's one of the reasons why we said presumed.
The other one is a woman named Dida Goudarzi. And
you know, we say presumed in some of the material.
(09:40):
But then when I watched the Netflix series, her daughter,
who she had offered for adoption when Dita was really young,
said she was a sex worker. She was what they
would call maybe high end. And I don't mean that
in a derogatory way or a positive way. I mean
she had one or two clients for a lot of money.
So I never want to label people with anything other
(10:03):
than who they are, and that's why I'm trying to clarify.
And they've never been able to figure out the Jane Doe.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Okay, so well, a couple of things. First, in this
day and age, if they have access to Jane Doe's remains,
we can probably figure her out through genealogy, and they
should do that, and hopefully they're working towards that with data.
You know, this goes into the victimology. You know, we
(10:29):
talk about sex workers and we kind of lump them
into the same category. But we can't do that. We
have to truly understand what type of sex work that
they're doing, you know, and this is for investigative purposes.
So that's when I was talking about Thatalery. I want
(10:49):
to know is she somebody who's walking on the stroll
area or is she in escort? Is she meeting the
client at this motel or did he pick her up
on the stroll area? That tells me a lot about
the offender. So with DITA, I need to know, you know,
you use the term high end. Yes, there are what
you would say professionals, and they are typically very glammed up.
(11:16):
They don't walk in the stroll area, they have limited
high paying clients. And so if I have somebody like
that who's becoming a victim of this killer, how is
this offender running across data? You know, So that's all
just part of getting a sense. It's part of the victimology.
We just can't say they're a sex worker. We need
(11:37):
to know what type of sex work they're doing.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Well.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I mean, based on that series and a couple of
interviews that I've Readdda's daughter, who, as I said, you know,
had been adopted by a couple. Her name is Jennifer Boy.
She really was pretty amazing. And you know, I'll tell
you why, for many different reasons. Let me tell you
now about the victims, and boy, of course I wish
we knew who Jane Doe was the woman she was with,
(12:07):
the reason that these women were found so quickly is
because the offender set the room on fire, and it
is at a travel in motor hotel right in Times Square.
Dita was twenty two, maybe twenty three, and they think
that Jane Doe was in her teens or early twenties.
Once they put the fire out, man, I remember this
(12:29):
detail from the series. I think the firefighters went in
and they could see that there were people there, and
one of them went to go give CPR and there
was no head.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
No head because of the fire or no head because
the killer had decapitated.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
The victim decapitated. And you know, this is one of
the reasons why this became also known as the Torso murders.
So let me tell you what they find. They believe
they were set on fire after they were killed. They
were both sexually assaulted and tortured, which sounds like the
kind of torture that Valerie Ann Street suffered. Nicks and
(13:09):
cuts and you know, lots of detailed, really difficult things
for her to get through when she was still alive.
The heads in their hands were removed from their bodies
and were not there, not present at the scene. Dida
was identified by her clothing that were left behind at
the hotel. They had been neatly folded and placed in
(13:29):
the bathtub, and that's what we know.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
INDEEDA likely didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I don't think so. And we have profilers on who
worked on the case that I had, you know, listened to,
and they said, the person, now, you tell me what
you think the person who did this intentionally set the
fire to draw attention, not to cover up. What do
you think.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Well, this is a motel in Times Square, so obviously
as soon as smoke is being seen, going to have
fire alerted. And you have so many people that are
in this location at all times of the day and
night that I could see where they would draw this conclusion.
(14:11):
It also it's dependent upon well, how has the fire
started where was it? As an example, if the offender's
trying to cover up the crime, he's going to be
pouring accelerant on the victims' bodies and lighting their bodies
on fire. But if he's starting a fire in a
trash can across the room, you know, that's going to
really delay any part of the evidence that may be
(14:34):
present with the victim's body. And there I would say, yeah,
that likely would suggest that he's trying to get the smoke,
you know, as sort of attention getter, versus trying to
truly destroy the crime scene and the victims' bodies. The
folding of Dda's clothing is significant. You know, the offender
(14:55):
likely did that he put the clothing in the bathtub
that possibly was to protect the clothing from being burned
up from the fire, and it's folded. You know, this
is where with some of the previous cases where you
know we have the victim's clothing, you know, he's possibly
redressing the clothing is significant to him, you know, and
(15:18):
he's like sending a message, he's protecting, he's folding and
protecting Dda's clothing with the hope that responders are going
to notice that.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, let me tell you something smart that I picked
up on this series that one of the detectives did.
The way that they were able to have the clothing
be a positive ID for DTA is you know, you
can hand people clothes and say, hey, did she own
you know who owned this? Do we think anybody owned this?
What they did was they took a mannequin. They were
(15:49):
at a department store, and the one of the detectives said,
or an officer said, why don't we just take one
of these mannequins and dress it in her clothing? And
when they did, they had somebody who recognized and said
that's Stida's clothing, which I just thought, well that's simple,
but that was that's a really interesting way to display
the clothing so that you can kind of visualize who
that person might have been.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Sure, and in this day and age, you have to
process that clothing for DNA evidence and trace evidence prior
to any type of dressing it on a mannequin.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
M Yeah, absolutely, But they did not have that benefit
back there in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Pole, This is seventy nine year. I have to remind
myself that why did.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
They Okay, then after that happened with these two women,
then Valerie Ann Street was the next victim after that,
So that one happened in the next year, in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And a question that I have on Dida and Jane
Doe's case is were their heads and hands found in
the motel room or had did the offender take those
with him.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I don't believe they were ever found.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I mean, some offenders will do this type of mutilation
to the bodies because it's part of their fantasy. But
I believe he's doing this to delay identification of the victims,
and he's trying to separate himself. He's calling attention to
the crime, but he doesn't want them identified too quickly
because possibly if they're identified quickly, then maybe the pimp,
(17:15):
the madam, you know, law enforcement can talk to them
and they go, well, these two went with who we
know as John and give a description or something, you know.
So he's definitely wanting that delay and identification.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Now we're going to talk about the tenth victim. It's
nineteen eighty and we're still in New York. It's not
Times Square, but it is in the Nomad area, which
is North Madison Square, and this is at a hotel
called the Seville and it's a twenty five year old
sex worker. Her name is Gene Rayner, and she's found
(17:53):
dead inside the hotel. She had been sexually assaulted and
tortured before having her throat slashed and her boy set
on fire. So I feel like, now he's done everything
but shot them. I mean, I haven't heard anything about
a gun at this point, but we've had strangulation, we've
had beating, we've now had a knife, and I know
again they change weapons all the time. It's so interesting
(18:16):
the fallacies that you think, you know, reading about true
crime growing up and thinking all of these things that
were definite, and they're not definite. Let me tell you
something different. So before he fled the scene, the offender
cut off her breasts and put them on the headboard
of the bed. We're thinking obviously shock value, but you
(18:37):
can tell me, and he took the clothes with him.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Well, we started out in nineteen sixty eight and very
very different crime, very different victimology. We started to see
his violence escalate when he bludgeoned the one victim in
the bathroom. Now he seems, at least with the last
cases that you've talked about, he gravitated towards sex workers.
(19:03):
These are victims that will voluntarily go with him versus
his other victims like mary Anne out there in New Jersey.
You know, there's an ear witness right here's mary Anne's
scream says, I will, I will. You know, it sounds
like he's probably putting a knife in her side, got
(19:24):
a gun out, and saying you're coming with me, and
she's responding, I will, I will. But now he's going
to sex workers. And again I don't know if he's
in the stroll areas, you know, picking these women up
off the street, if he's going through some sort of
escort service. But he for whatever reason, has decided that
(19:47):
that this is his preferred victim. And it may just
be because of the it's lower risk to him. The
abductions are high risk, especially in some of the locations
where he's ply abducting the prior victims out there on
Long Island. Now he's decided he wants to continue doing
committing these crimes, and he's going after sex workers. Now
(20:10):
there may be what we will call a missionary component
to what he's doing. He may have some personal philosophy
that justifies him going after sex workers, you know, whether
he's like a Gary Ridgeway, you know, reading the Bible,
going oh this is sinful, and so therefore I am,
you know, purging the world out of these victims that
(20:33):
are committing these horrific you know, in his mind sins.
But it may just be purely mo based. It's easier
for him to get these victims. The mutilation. You know,
we've seen the evolution and the mutilation, and now we
have a gene you know again at another I guess
it's a hotel. The cutting off the breasts and then
(20:54):
putting them on the headboard. Obviously, you know, this is
a this is a form of posing. You know, he is,
as you mentioned, used the term shock value. He is
now feeling his oats. He is confident. He has now
been offending for twelve years. He's been getting away with
(21:15):
these crimes. In a way, this is a boast. He
is boasting, he is taunting. He's somebody that's going to continue.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Okay, well, now let me tell you about the very
very latest one. So this is nineteen eighty and now
we are back at that quality inn where Marianne was
kidnapped and murdered Valerie and Street was murdered. We were
back at the same quality in before I tell you
(21:48):
what happens, and this involves a sex worker. Why does
he continue to go back to this one particular quality
in I mean, I don't know if there's an emotional attachment,
but it just seems I don't know, it seems to
tempt fade a little bit, don't you think.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, you know, it's significant to him. You know, we
can't necessarily, you know, read his mind as to why
it's significant. It may strictly because it's mo he's recognizing,
let's say, the lack of law enforcement in the area,
the prevalence of sex work that flows in and out
of this particular motel, and so he's got confidence that
(22:26):
he can commit his crimes and not be caught because
of what he is seeing, you know. And he's already
you know, done two crimes. He's dumped one body there
and he killed another gal Valerie in the room. But
there may be something else going on in his mind.
Maybe he tried to rent a room there at some
point and the lobby clerk turned him away. And now
(22:48):
he's mad at that location, and so he's you know,
killing at this location as a way to get back at,
you know, the the motel itself, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Okay, well, let me tell you what happens. There is
a housekeeper who's working at the Quality and hotel. She
hears screams, she calls the police. The police come and
they find Leslie and O'Dell, the sex worker. She's handcuffed,
she has knife wounds, she has incredibly severe bite marks
(23:21):
all over her body. She is still alive and survives.
And the offender is still there and they.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Arrest him, caught in the act.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Can you believe that's what stopped him? It was literally
a housekeeper who heard screams and reacted, and he would
have just kept going. Right. This is his name, Richard Cottingham.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Oh, I know the name.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
She don't know the case finally, a serial killer case
you don't know from nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
That's good those on the other side of the country.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, that's true. Now, everything that you have tried to
put together about who this offender is, let's see how
it matches up with who Richard Cottingham is. He has
been living an assuming life, as they sometimes do married father.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
He is a career man.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
He and his family live in Lodi, New Jersey, Bergen County.
We know we have two cases from New Jersey and
he is very close to the Hasbrook Heights Quality Inn.
But he has an insurance job in New York and
he has family in Long Island, So there are those connections.
You mentioned an age we talked about kind of a
(24:38):
twenty five in nineteen sixty eight. You know, if he
were twenty five and now he would be this. He
was twenty two in nineteen sixty eight and he has
arrested in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So he's in his mid thirties when he's caught.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, by the late nineteen seventies, he's in his late
thirties kind of, and his wife senses something's really off
with him. She files for divorce, and by that point
he was on his sixth victim. And you know, people
want to know sometimes does the spouse know, I know
that's coming up a lot with the Go Go Beach murders.
(25:11):
Did his wife have a sense that anything was off?
What is your theory about any of that? Either these
guys are really really great actors, or the spouses feel
like what this woman felt, something is off, But they're
not thinking they're slooping next to a serial killer.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
No, you know, I would say in most situations, the
spouse is unaware. These guys are very good at compartmentalizing
these crimes. They take advantage of life circumstances that gives
them an excuse to be out and about, you know.
And this is where, you know, is he telling his wife,
(25:49):
you know, the insurance job, I have to go entertain
some clients and instead what he's doing is he's picking
up sex workers. She's probably got that woman's intuition that
this man she's married to, there's a change, and you
see the change from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty.
He is changing in terms of how he is interacting
with his victims, and he's getting much more violent with
(26:11):
his victims. So that may have been something that she
was sensing. Now I think it's interesting. You know, he
has family in Long Island. Was he living all the
way out of New Jersey in nineteen sixty eight for
Diane's case or was he out in Long Island at
(26:32):
the time. He's twenty two, so maybe still with parents.
The shift and where he is committing his cases from
Long Island out to New Jersey and then in between,
you know, the Times Square or North Madison Square, you know,
up in northern Manhattan. You know, it's interesting and this
(26:54):
is where, you know, you start talking geographic profile. You know,
the longs is an anchor point for him, at least
with his family, and maybe he was raised there, maybe
he lived there when he first got married or lived
with his parents. Did you say his job was in Manhattan, yes, Okay,
(27:17):
So that's an anchor point.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Close to Times Square. And the series actually interviews a
co worker of his with this insurance company and kind
of talks about how they would all brag about conquests
with women. But he worked there in that proximity. So
he grew up in He was born in forty six.
(27:39):
He grew up in the mont Haven neighborhood of the Bronx,
and then his family moved to Dumont, New Jersey, and
then to Riverdale, New Jersey, which is where this sort
of fascination with pornography and bondage and stuff started to develop.
I suppose in sixty four he graduated from a high
(28:01):
school in Hillsdale, New Jersey, and then he worked for
Metropolitan Life where his dad was a vice president, and
he was in Manhattan and he started in the mailroom,
and it sounds like he was pretty much always in
Manhattan for work. Let me tell you something screwed up.
He was at Blue Cross, Blue Shield and he worked
(28:21):
in an office with Rodney Alcala. It's from Woman of
the Hour. He's the serial killer from that really well known,
really well reviewed Netflix series.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
I mean, it's just shows you coincidences happened. They never
paired up. But these are two, you know, serial killers
working in the same area at the same time. But
they're just not killing there, just happened to be there.
So it sounds like, okay, so his entire adult career
he is Manhattan based. Right now, it sounds like the
(28:55):
Long Island connection is family and he's not necessarily personally
living out there with his family, but he's going out there,
he's familiar with the area. One of the theories, and
this is doctor Kim Rossmo who wrote the book one
of the primary books on geographic profiling, talks about I
(29:17):
think he called it the smoke stack theory is that
you think about these offenders and they have these anchor points.
You know their residents, their place of work, where they
go to recreate, you know, things that they travel in between. Frequently.
Oftentimes they may attack in the general area of this
(29:38):
anchor point, but not too close to the anchor point.
And so if you have enough attacks, you can put
those on a map. And these these attacks may encircle
where this person's residence is or their place of work.
They're just making sure they're not attacking right next door, right,
but they may be attacking five blocks because they're familiar
(30:01):
with the area. They are in the area, and they
may get off work and go, well, I'm going to
drive around that neighborhood and see what I can find
in that neighborhood as they're commuting home, you know, so
they're peeling off their commute route in order to be
able to go find victims.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
So I think he was in New Jersey when he
graduated high school, which was in sixty four, four years
before Diane was murdered. He graduated in sixty four and
that was from New Jersey. And then he gets married
six years later and he gets married in Queens. But
(30:41):
I think they were in Lodi at that point in
New Jersey also, so I'm just seeing him in New.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Jersey mostly Okay, So he gets married in nineteen seventy, then, yes.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
It looks like he got married in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
So if we take a look at the distribution of
his attacks NA law, logically he is not married for
Diane's case in nineteen sixty eight, and then we have
a four year gap. He gets married after Diane's case
in nineteen seventy and two years after he gets married,
that's when he's attacking Mary and Laverne. So he does
(31:20):
two attacks in nineteen seventy two, and then a year
later he's doing Sheila, you know. And these are all
out there in log Island, as well as Maria seventy three,
you know. So it appears that after he gets married,
there's still a pause in his cases, and that may
just be because he doesn't have the freedom in order
to go out and attack. Then something allows him to
(31:43):
carry out attacks in nineteen seventy two and seventy three.
You said he had kids. Do you know when his
kids were born?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
He has three children, two boys and a girl with
his wife. I can look at see when they were born,
but I know they were married in seventy and his
I file for divorce in seventy eight, so within eight
years they had three kids.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
So that divorce in nineteen seventy eight is also significant
because when you take a look at after the divorce,
what is he doing to these women? He is brutally
you know, he's torturing them, he's mutilating their bodies, he's
cutting their heads and hands off, setting a couple of
(32:25):
these women on fire. So this divorce may have had
a psychological impact on him. This may be a where
I mentioned before, an anger retaliatory type of offender, where
now the divorce may have created this internal anger that
caused him to escalate the level of violence against women
(32:49):
in proxy because he's really angry at his wife.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And this is when he switches to sex workers. Yes,
his last woman who did not work in the sex
industry was Mary Anne in seventy seven, and then he
switches to the Times Square Victims in seventy nine, and
then we go back to Valerie Anne, who is a
sex worker at the Quality Inn in eighty and then
(33:13):
again back to New York. I'm assuming you know when
he's at the insurance company in eighty with Gene Rayner,
and then he gets caught with another sex worker.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Wow. Right, So you think about sort of the real
life aspect in his personal life of what happens, you know,
the divorce. I'm assuming they're not continuing to live together,
They're going to be separate. Now he has greater freedom
to be out, let's say, in the middle of the night.
Now he's getting familiar and don't know if he dabbled
(33:46):
with sex workers and stroll areas prior, but now he
has the freedom to go out there and hire sex workers.
And then eventually he's now victimizing sex workers as a
serial killer, hitting that comfort level of that culture, so
to speak. And then he's now escalating the violence. You know.
(34:09):
So the divorce I think is pivotal in Cottingham's series
in terms of you see that switch, and it's because
greater freedom as well as the anger from the divorce.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
M h. I will say, once he's been arrested and
this becomes a massive story, women come forward and say,
you know, these these women were not the only ones.
We were attacked to, raped, abducted, tortured. We have a
pregnant waitress, another sex worker, and then of course you
(34:42):
know you have Leslie and Odell, who is the reason
why he was caught to begin with. So he is
convicted around the same time, he's convicted of several murders
in both New Jersey and New York State. That includes
marian Carr who was abducted from her apartment complex. So
the note says coincidentally, it's not coincidence. Obviously, Conningham and
(35:05):
his ex wife used to live in the same damn
complex as Marianne Carr.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Close to the quality in now lived there at the
same time Maryanne did. No, I don't believe so, so
it's a watering hole for him. He's familiar with that area.
He's in that area and mary Anne got off work,
she's heading to her apartment, and he takes advantage and
it maybe is something where he's been surveilling that apartment
(35:33):
complex for maybe weeks, maybe months, and has noticed what
time Mary Anne gets home and is saying, here's this
you know gallony uniform. You know that I'm able to
I can grab her, and he plans it and he
successfully is able to get her away from her apartment
and then ultimately sexually assaults and kills her.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Well, now let's talk about the police work going into this.
You know, eventually he's going to be found guilty of
murdering many of these women, but there's evidence that they've
gathered beforehand. They find clothing and belongings with Cottingham from
many of these women. Jeene Rayner's necklace, a key to
(36:17):
Marianne Carr's apartment, a Koala bear trinket that belonged to
Valerie Ann Street, and these were all in his house.
They also managed to get a thumb print that matched
his from handcuffs that were used to restrain Valerie.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That's all great evidence. He's obviously collecting souvenirs. Did he
have any shoes from his victims?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Well, we're getting to that because he confesses and he
says there's a lot more where that came from. So
for decades he denies all of this, but after thirty
or so years he starts to talk where he starts
to finally admit to some of these killings. I told
you kind of about heroes. Dita's daughter was one of
(36:59):
the ones who got information out of him and just
wanting information about her mom, who she never got to meet.
But let me kind of go back and tell you
what happens, because again these are more pieces that I
find interesting based on everything that you've said, that things
read to you. So he says that he is responsible
for a string of unsolved murders in the Tri state area.
(37:22):
He says he started with a woman named Nancy Vogel
in nineteen sixty seven, so that would have made him
twenty twenty one. He said that he kidnapped her from
a mall in Bergen County. He sexually assaulted and strangled
her to death in a field, and then put her
in the backseat of her car naked and left her
(37:42):
in a residential street. There's that theory that you and
I have talked about about, you know, killers confessing to
every like Henry Lucas confessing to a thousand murders. But
the police say that he knew a lot of things
about that case that were never made public. They think
that he's a responsible for that, for that killing of
Nancy Vogel.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Well in that case, that case parallels Diane's case, Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
He says that he murdered several teen girls in the
late nineteen sixties, so probably around the same time, and
also in Bergen County. He said he'd randomly encounter these
women in public. These girls in public, there's a thirteen
year old named Jacqueline Harp in sixty eight, same year
as Marianne An, eighteen year old Irene Blasa, and fifteen
(38:31):
year old Denise Flaska, both in sixty nine, and each
girl was strangled to death. So this is pre marriage
and early to mid twenties. What does that say to you?
It's it seemed like almost like a spree to me.
That's a lot of people to attack.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Well, yeah, the term spree is for a different type
of killer than a serial killer. He's straight up a
serial predator starting in early twenties, and he likely has
had fantasy about committing these types of crimes during his
teenage years. I wouldn't be surprised if he had rape
(39:10):
victims going back into the high school age. So you know,
he is much more prolific in this late sixties than
what we knew from the original cases that you talked about.
And that's where you see what happens when he gets
married in nineteen seventy, All of a sudden, he's slowing
(39:31):
down unless you tell me. Also, he's confessing to more
cases during that nineteen seventy to seventy two timeframe.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
So this is what he says. This is such a
big document. It's hard for I have to keep going
back to figure out where we are. Okay, so he says,
we've talked about the sixties. All those girls were strangled
to death. I know that doesn't mean anything, but as
far as like you know, connecting him, they were strangled
to death twenty one. This guy's still alive. Four years ago.
(40:04):
He confesses to kidnapping and raping, murdering a seventeen year
old who I've heard of, Marianne Pryor, and a sixteen
year old Lorraine Kelly. These are both girls who were
murdered in nineteen seventy four, So this is right after Maria,
and Maria was in I think she was our last
victim in Long Island before we move over to New Jersey,
(40:29):
and that was Marianne Carr in seventy seven. So I
don't know when he decided to move back to New Jersey,
but he's so these Let me tell you about these
teenage girls. These two girls were hitchhiking to a New
Jersey mall to buy bathing suits. Back to malls, not
the same one. I believe they were taken to a
(40:49):
motel where they were beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and ultimately
drowned in the room's bathtub. And they were taken to
a wooded area of Bergen County where their wrists in
their ankles were still bound when they were found.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
This is where talking about some of his earlier cases,
and I was thinking, he's taking these women to a
different location where he's interacting with them, killing them, sexually
assaulting them, and then he's dumping their bodies. That's what's
happening with these teenage girls. And so maybe on Long Island.
If his family residence is all the way out in
(41:26):
New Jersey and he's got his family there, his wife
is there, the kids are there, he is very probably
using a motel on Long Island where he's taking some
of these women, interacting with them, killing them, and then
dumping their bodies out there on Long Island.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Okay, we've got more. So in twenty twenty two, so
three years ago, he confesses to murdering Diane Kusick, who
we thought was our own. You know, the first victim
clearly wasn't because DNA was collected from her car and
in linked by him. So he gets another twenty five
years in prison. He was given life, of course, without
(42:06):
parole on some of these other murder cases. And he
also says he's responsible for Mary and Laverne and Sheila
and Maria's murders. Now this appears to be part of
a deal with the DA, who says, just admit it,
and I won't prosecute you because we don't want to
deal with more trials in the media. But the family
(42:27):
wants answers, and of course the public wants answers to also.
It says that he's gotten certain privileges, so access to
certain foods in exchange for his information. How do you
feel about that? I don't know how I feel about that.
I'm also not the family of these young women who
want answers.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Well, and that's really what it comes down to, you know,
is the DA. You know my experience and I the
last four years, almost four years of my career, I
worked directly for the DA's office. I mean, they do
pay attention to what the family's wishes are. And if
the family is like, no way in hell is he
(43:04):
going to get any special privileges, we want him prosecuted.
You know, the DA will pay attention to that. Not necessarily,
you know, just do what the family says, but most certainly,
if there's any deals to be made, the DA's office
is going to pay attention. And from my perspective, if
(43:24):
all he's getting is certain food items in exchange for
confession details about what happened to these families loved ones
all for it, you know, you're not setting him free,
you're not making his life luxurious in custody. You're just
giving him something a little bit more than what he
(43:44):
would get in order to get these families' answers.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So he makes those confessions to the people we've covered
on this show. But then he says he's also murdered
a twenty six year old sex worker named Lorraine McGraw,
who's beaten body was found in nineteen seventy in South Nayak,
New York. And I'm pointing at you because that is
marriage year and the first sex worker I think we've
(44:09):
heard about.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Okay, so that didn't.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Coincide with my theory of he switched totally to sex
workers after the seventy eight divorce, because he obviously encounters
this woman.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, you know, but what it does suggest is at
a much younger age. He is hiring sex workers, and
prior to this homicide, he is hiring sex workers as
just a client. I often talk about barriers to offence
and how an offender has to cross certain social barriers
(44:43):
to get more and more comfortable to committing the types
of crimes that they ultimately commit. Joseph DiAngelo had to
get comfortable breaking into houses and so therefore, you know,
you go back and look at that evolution. He was
a peeping tom. You know, he's a burglar during the day,
and then he becomes a cat burglar night while there's
occupants inside the house. He's having to cross certain barriers
(45:04):
for offenders that prey on sex workers who are out
on the street. And that's the important part is I've
emphasized before what I call the stroll area. This is
a different culture. It can be a scary culture and
a scary environment for the kind of the uninitiated. And
so this type of offender has to start learning how
(45:27):
to interact with these victims, has to start seeing, well,
how do I spot law enforcement? Is law enforcement doing
a vice operation? Is there a decoy out?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
And as the offender gets comfortable with that culture, now
that offender, if their ultimate goal is to isolate a
sex worker and sexually assault and kill them and carry
out their fantasy, you know they already have many times
been in that area. So with Cottingham, if he's killing
(45:57):
a sex worker in nineteen seventy and he's picking her
up out of a stroll area, that means that well,
prior to nineteen seventy he's probably been hiring sex workers
and is familiar with them and is comfortable with that environment.
Now it's interesting that, at least with what you've told me,
(46:18):
he doesn't kill sex workers again until the late seventies.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
We have to keep going because he keeps confessing two
years ago, a year and a half. Frankly, he admits
to the murder of a seventeen year old girl named
mary Ann Della Sala in January of sixty seven. To
listen to this, Paul, because I think you'll find this interesting.
So I think this is his earliest confession as of now.
(46:44):
I probably have to do a Google search because something
else might have popped up yesterday. But this is January
of nineteen sixty seven, and I don't think we have
a sixty six This girl mary Anne worked as a
cashier at a grocery store in Hackensack, New Jersey, which
is Bergen County, which is apparently where he lived. He
used to go to that store all the time and
(47:05):
he had a crush on her, So it started on
as a crush. He stalked her as she walked home
from work, somehow got her into his car. We don't
know if it was voluntary or an abduction. He sexually
assaulted her before expiciating her. They said, it's not clear
if he strangled her or you know, if he put
some kind of object over her mouth. He left her
(47:27):
body in a muddy area near the river where she
was found three months later. How awful for her parents.
So is that a thing? This one started as a
crush someone he knew. He came to visit the store
all the time because he liked her, and it kind
of there it goes after that.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Well, I think his internal thoughts about this victim under
the guise of a crush are very different than what
a normal person is thinking. Right, you know, I can
guarantee he has had violent fantasies, violent sexual fantasies about
(48:05):
girls and women prior to this girl. He may have
found her very attractive. But stalking, to me is very
particular type of crime versus surveillance. And so when I
use the term stalking, and I'm not even talking about
how stocking is defined in statutes, I'm talking about how
(48:30):
I use the term stocking. This is where now you
have an offender that has developed an obsession, is following, communicating.
The victim is aware that this offender is really trying
to make the victim uncomfortable because there's this jealousy and
vindictiveness and obsession that is very different than a predator
(48:52):
who is following a victim around to learn her movements,
to watch her, to fantasize about her. That's surveillance. He's
on the hunt. He's trolling for victims. So that's where
with Cottingham, with his very first case, he sees this,
(49:14):
I mean, she was what seventeen, you said, Yeah, they're
peers if you will, in terms of the age range.
But instead of asking her for her number, right and
let's go out on a date, you know, he puts
her under surveillance and he abducts her and kills her.
He's living out his fantasy. So him using the term crush,
(49:36):
I just don't. I don't buy it. You know, he
may have had some level of feelings for her, but
it was well he wants to get off, you know,
sexually assaulting and killing her. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
There are a lot of people focused on this case,
on Cottingham in general, so they think that he might
be connected to a nineteen seventy four blows budgeting case
of a fifteen year old girl named Lisa Thomas in
New York State, and Cottingham kind of confessed to it.
And I'm not sure what that means, except the police
(50:11):
said he doesn't have the facts to back it up.
So yeah, as far as I can tell, this is
the first time they've called BS on him, so everything
else he's listing off seems to be legitimate. Overwhelmingly. At
this point, he has confessed to murdering more than one
hundred women. I do want to answer one little question
(50:31):
for you. He'll answer it essentially the shoes. So does
he have a foot fetish? You know, what are some
of the tell me some of the different things you
had said foot fetish or is there more practical things
or well.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
So people often get the term fetish wrong. The term
paraphilia is a broad term in which individuals they have
what would be considered abnormal sexual interests of various sort.
A fetish is a paraphilia, and fetish is attraction to
(51:07):
inanimate objects. So the most common fetish in the world
is men's attraction to women's lingerie. That's a fetish considered
really normal. But when you are Jerry Brutos and you're
cutting women's feet off and keeping them in the freezer
because you have a foot fetish, technically at that point,
(51:27):
it's an inanimate object, right, and he's getting off sexually
looking and fondling these dismembered feet with Cottingham, you know,
the prevalence of the lack of shoes on his Long
Island victims, you know, that's where it was like, well,
why is that? You know, Is that just because he's
failing to just you know, see them in his vehicle
(51:48):
and he's having to discard them at a secondary location.
Is he keeping them because he has a shoe fetish?
He gets turned on by women's shoes, and that is
a thing. Is he taking the shoes off because he
has a foot fetish and he's interacting with these victims feet?
You know, So that's where early on, I'm starting to go,
what is going on with the shoes. Is the offender
(52:11):
holding on to these shoes as souvenirs or because he
has a sexual attraction to the shoes, you know? And
so I'm kind of curious to see what the answer is.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
So he says that he took off the shoes and
I guess in some cases toss them because he didn't
want to get kicked.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Okay, so it's absolutely a practical thing.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah, absolutely, boy, that was interesting. Now he does not
explain the folded clothing. In the case of the two
women you know in Times Square, he has not said
where Dita and Jane Do's decapitated heads and hands are.
He won't talk about that. He loves these stupid cat
(52:52):
and mouse games with detectives. He is in his seventies,
he has declining health. He says he's killed more than
one hundred people, and he has detectives visiting him, hoping
to pry out more confessions before he dies.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Sure, and so you know, first, you know, these types
of details are bargaining chips for him, you know. And
give me a pack of SIGs and I'll tell you
where her head is. Fundamentally, he's holding on to those
types of details. The one thing that and I'm sure
the investigators that are dealing with him are completely savvy
(53:28):
to this, but the one thing you think about the
posing he did in the case where he cut the
woman's breasts off and put them up for shock value.
That's a look at me, Right, I'm a badass serial killer.
Look at me. Now, he's reckoned, he's never getting out,
he's feeding law enforcement case after case. He's getting a
(53:51):
lot of notoriety as a result. Does he start over
extending himself like Henry Lee Lucas because he's demonstrated that
psychology in the posing of that one victim, the look
at me? So this is where you just have to
obviously DNA. If there's DNA in cases, that's easy. But
(54:14):
if it's a case in which he has to provide details,
the interviewers need to know those cases and the details
of those cases inside and out, as well as what
has been publicly disseminated on those cases, because he's going
to be reading up on cases he's got. I'm sure
he has access to various types of media and go, oh,
(54:37):
there's another case in New Jersey. Yeah, I'll say I
did that one too, you know, Okay, feed me specific
details that only the killer would know.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
I normally don't have a hard time figuring out how
to wrap up our episodes, but this is so disturbing.
I mean, this is certainly the largest amount of victims
that we've talked about. He is still there are still cases.
The police say, I don't think he's blowing anything out
of proportion. We think he has done a lot more
of these. You know, they're trying to figure out before
(55:09):
he dies. Essentially, So do we learn anything about this
kind of case? I mean, I don't even think practical
be careful when you go out at night kind of things.
But what is the big takeaway for you that you
might bring up later on in another episode? Oh? Yeah,
do you remember we talked about that Cottingham guy? He
did this? Now you know?
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Well, my big takeaway has been not just from learning
about Cottingham and the crimes he's committing. This has been
my world for over thirty years. I think it's so
important for people to understand, and specifically I'm talking to women,
but this is not just a type of crime that
(55:51):
impacts women, but there are other victims of serial predators,
but by and large, women are the victim. And it's
understanding that there are men out there that are hunting you,
and there are monsters. These men do horrific things to
(56:13):
their victims, and this is where prevention is absolutely key.
You know, you talk about situational awareness. In Diane's case,
you know, did she park out in a dark area
of that parking lot and was that the reason she
was chosen? We don't know, but it's it's a possibility.
(56:35):
These men capitalize on that type of little thing that
you may not think about, but you have to think
about it. Just recently, I used to talk to citizens academies.
I just recently am talking to a group here where
I live and it's a group of women who are
(56:55):
taking a class. But the fundamental message is trying to
convey to them there are predators that are specifically targeting
you because you are a woman, and they it's not
just because you happen to cross their paths. They will
go out of the way to find you. You have
(57:17):
to protect yourselves. You have to understand that these guys
exist and do what you can. Still live your life,
but you need to do what you can because you
do not want to become victims of these guys. Yeah,
because like we see with Cottingham, Valerie, her breast is
got numerous cuts to it, horrific. You don't want to
(57:42):
have that done to you.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Well, of the awful, terrible things that we cover, this
is one of the worst cases. I hate to say,
at least at least there is something the families can
have answers, but not all the families. And so, you know,
I think we learn things from every single case that
we did. This is the most profiling I think we've
ever done, and so I think it's interesting what matches up,
(58:07):
you know, what we learn about these stories. In the seventies,
the FBI Behavioral Science Unit went in and interviewed Bundy
and Kemper and all of these different you know, serial
killers and took away useful things. And sometimes I criticize
when I hear how much a show or an author
(58:29):
or anything really digging in. Don't they ignore the victims
and you know, learn only about the killer. But I
don't believe that's the only reason why people listen to
these kinds of shows. It's just to learn about what
a whack job, you know. Richard Cottingham is. I think
they do want to know the kind of people who
are deprived of a wonderful life, you know, because of
this asshole. So we've learned a lot about him, but
(58:53):
also I think we've learned a lot about the society.
And thank goodness, the cops were working on all of this.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
It seemed like, you know, you know, and along those lines, I,
you know, getting into the true crime space. I've talked
to audiences. You know. A message that I always want
to put out there is it's okay, you know, to
be intrigued by the psychology of a serial predator, a
(59:22):
serial killer, you know what makes these guys tick, but
don't glorify them. Don't wear t shirts with their images
on it. You know, recognize that they have taken the
lives of real people, and always remember the victims. Become
victim centric. It's okay to consume, learn about a case,
(59:42):
even be entertained by the story of the case, but
just recognize these cases happen to real people, and that
the person who's committing these crimes is a horrific, horrific person,
and you should never glorify them.
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Well, and I tell my students at the University of
Tech says, if this were your sister, wouldn't you want
to kind of have this narrative when we when you
want people to know who she is? Yeah, you're right,
I mean glorifying the killers. I mean that is that
is the antithesis of what you and I try to
do well.
Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
And I think you know too along those lines, is
that in my experience, certain families want their loved one's
cases to be discussed because it's a way that they're
the memory of their loved one is kept alive in
a way. But also there's their message. They're usually wanting
(01:00:38):
other people to be helped by their their loved ones
experience that case and what the family has gone through.
You know. So some families don't want that attention and
some do and and that's just you know, I know,
from from a true crime perspective, you just have to respect.
You know, if a family does not want to be
(01:00:59):
you know, part of a story, part of a podcast,
part of a TV show, don't press it, you know,
because they don't that's not something that they're desiring.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, I would like to say next week
that we're not going to talk about a serial killer,
but I'm not sure that's the case, because there were
for the season. I had a little list of the
serial killer in these cases that people are asking us
to look at, and so we might end up with
(01:01:31):
another serial killer coming up pretty soon. I know that's
your that's your one of your big interests. But usually
I like to say, we're not going to be doing
this again, but we might be doing this again.
Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
I will get to a clean, clean piece of paper
on my notepad, and I'll be ready to go and
more whiskey.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
I know you were going to say that too.
Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Well, there's always that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Okay, Well, I will see you next week, all right, Kate,
thank you too.
Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
For our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi.
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a
Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode
the criminal mind, is available now, and Paul's.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's cold cases,
is also available now.
Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!