Twisted - Richard Cottingham - The New York Ripper

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in the late 70s a merciless serial killer began to strike in New York in New Jersey it was a very big story because of how gruesome it was his methods heinous and extreme he's a very bizarre and blade crimes beheaded burnt chopped up he killed with Kellis confidence some narcissists absolutely believe they are invisible they're untouchable it was the second case of a woman's body being found on the premises of this motel but who was this serial sadist what sick son of a bitch would do something like this and was he born to kill in 1977 New Jersey detective Alan Greco was about to be confronted by a mystery we received a call that a young married woman was reported missing from her apartment complex in Little Ferry New Jersey under suspicious circumstances Maryann was an x-ray technician who had been married a short period of time they lived in a garden apartment there were very strange circumstances in that the report came from her husband who was away on a business trip Maryann Carr had failed to keep an appointment that evening with her mother-in-law concerned Mary Ann's husband called the police there did not appear to be anything broken in the apartment no broken glasses no forced entry on the door and we had no indication at all as to what had happened to Maryann car despite her husband's reported absence there had been a suspicious sighting at the time of Mary Ann's disappearance we had a witness who lived in the same apartment building who said that as he was backing his card out out of the parking lot he saw a person in his rear view mirror that he thought was Maryann cars husband although they didn't know it at the time Mary Ann's husband bore a likeness to a former resident of the Little Ferry apartments a successful New York computer operator Richard Francis Cunningham Halley working what they referred to as midtown Manhattan right in the heart of the business district the Lou Cross Blue Shield which is a very substantial insurance company fellow computer operator Dominick Volpe worked with Cottingham for 13 years I am Richard worked on the console together chatting a lot he was well-read and he was up-to-date on current events he was he read a lot of stuff about medicine he was pretty smart at the time a console operator was a big thing it's a four floors of complete square block the city 17 makes a memory okay didn't no one ever heard of a gigabyte then but it was the cutting-edge at the time the thing that I knows most about him is a good system he was always I called him the lake shaker and he was always sitting in his office shit shaking legs were shaking his back was shaking and he would he would keep that up for the whole shift for eight nine hours straight across the river in New Jersey investigating the disappearance of x-ray technician Mary Anne car detective Greco was called to a motel near the airport in the parking lot a body had been discovered it was clothed in a white nurse's uniform Mary Anne car was no longer a missing person but now the victim of a homicide we could observe Mary and cars body lying in this area between the curb and the fence area and cars body had ligature marks on the wrists and the ankles from handcuffs so we know that we knew that handcuffs were used in Merrion cars murder and she had a ligature mark along the aspect of her neck investigators speculated Mary Anne had been dumped from the trunk of a car but they had no solid leads we had no idea of how she had gotten to where she was found nor why she was there nor who would have been responsible for removing her from her apartment and taking her there however it wouldn't be the last time they would be called to that location a tale of terror and torture had only just begun in December of 1977 the body of married x-ray technician Mary Anne car had been discovered dumped in the parking lot of a New Jersey motel with no real leads detective Alan Greco faced frustration as the investigation ground to a halt you need to have the investigation lead you in a particular direction without that direction it's like a shotgun blast that you're covering all of these different things that 99% of them have no connection whatsoever while Marianne Carr's case stalled police were kept busy by a series of violent attacks in the airport area there were actually a number of incidents of sexual assaults that had taken place within that time period in which victims were either found on the side of the roadway or reported to be in motel rooms semi-conscious the attacks were perpetrated on prostitutes who had been picked up in New York City where New Jersey resident Richard Cunningham worked as a computer operator he was strange I mean most of the stuff we talked about other than the job at the time was stuff that he he did after work supposedly you know he talked about S&M clubs in Coto he talked about prostitutes Cottingham made no secret of his enjoyment of New York's red-light district New York City at that time was a very different place than it is now the Times Square area was a set virtual cesspool porno houses up and down the block streetwalkers four blocks around photojournalist Alan Tannenbaum captured the Time Square area while working for this Soho News there was rampant it was all over the place but especially concentrated in the few blocks around here it was quite funky very seedy I can I can give you an example right around the corner all right the girls would work on these corners by the subway entrances is close to the peep shows and solicit asking men going out on a date and/or the men would approach them it was pretty obvious who was working girl eighth Avenue was one of the more seedy parts of this strip in fact it used to be called the Minnesota strip that's because girls would come to New York City from the Midwest get off at the Port Authority and they would immediately get hustled by pimps who would put them into prostitution I think a lot of them were Runaways and a bit naive humming after arriving with a lot of money so that they would get trapped into this kind of situation now these young women were being plucked from the city streets and brutally assaulted prostitutes are very very common victims why the hardest thing in getting a victim is the abduction how do you get a woman to go with you you have to talk to her and even if you could talk well in your somewhat articulate and charming and engaging not all women are going to go with the stranger the problem with the abduction is eliminated by targeting prostitutes that's part of their job description to go with strangers take their clothes off and have sex the victims were being drugged beaten and dumped in an area just across the river in New Jersey not far from where the body of x-ray technician Marianne car had been found a lot of motels in the area and they're not high-class motels there places that are used for our traffic much of it from New York City one of the patrons of those motels was computer operator Richard Cottingham Easton talked about how he would be able to lure a prostitute out of Manhattan showing them really always had two pockets full of cash and tons of cash down through the bowels he would show a prostitute the cash he would take them to New Jersey but Cottingham it seemed didn't like the idea of pay for his pleasure he talks about not letting anybody get the best of him one time we had a long discussion about this hotel that he went to and how he could slip out of the place where you know when she was just sleeping take her everything he said he took her clothes and her money and left her in the room you know when you're at work and you talk and some of it you believe some of it you know we hate you take the loot yeah those are wondering or at the end you take what a great soul meanwhile the attacks on the New York working girls continued dumped discarded and left for dead one of the girls was left in this motel on the corner here called the airport motel she had been picked up she was brought to a bar in New York City called Flanagan's and that's the last thing she could recall near a major hospital Flanigan's bar was a popular hot for Richard Cottingham analysis of her blood and urine indicated that she was drugged the young victim had been subjected to a horrific ly violent ordeal when she was found she was unconscious in the room and she was in pretty bad shape he sodomized her he beat her very very severely bit her breasts very severely prostitutes are sexual service providers and that offends many serial sexual murderers as ironic as it sounds many serial sexual murderers view themselves as highly moralistic and they want to degrade prostitutes who are behaving in what they consider to be an unpermitted they're very very mixed up sexually and so you would think that they would understand prostitutes and relate to them and understand but they don't they have very very twisted sense of sexuality this targeting of prostitutes in December 1979 would send shockwaves throughout the city you it was a very big story even for Manhattan it was very big I clearly remember it because if only because of how gruesome it was emergency services had been alerted to a fire in a room at the Travel Inn Motor Lodge near Times Square there they found 23 year-old DDG Darcy and another unidentified young woman they were two alleged prostitutes that were discovered in beds in a motel room and the bodies had been desecrated each woman's head and hands had been cut off before the beds were ignited beheaded burnt chopped up and nobody knew who was responsible it was a mystery the gruesome nature of the crime led to the mystery perpetrator being dubbed The Times Square Ripper news hit the Manhattan computer room where Dominic po'pay and Richard Cottingham worked this guy seems robbed he came and he said what sick son of a bitch would do something like this take the heads and the hands off the girl and burn them in right so don't let the con Yenny shook his head like this is well Rob could be you could have been me I thought you really liked that was a joke in December of 1979 New York had been shocked by a grizzly double murder in a motel room near Times Square dd guitars II unknown prostitute and another unidentified female had had their heads and hands cut off and removed before the room was set ablaze but the depraved crime appeared to have no connection to the murder two years earlier of x-ray technician Mary Anne car her body found in the parking lot of a New Jersey motel it did not seem to have any connection to our case it happened in New York City with the bodies being desecrated the way they were New York City had a tremendous amount of homicides every day so there was no direct connection made at that time this is an important point because we found in our research that about 70% of serial sexual murderers will experiment at a crime scene and do something very very different with one victim that they had not done with the others such as cut their eyes out cut their vagina out and so on now when an investigator without extensive experience in this field looks at that one victim looks so very different they're led to believe least from their own experience that it has to be someone else that's incorrect however detectives were about to be called to a scene with a similarity that couldn't be ignored at the same location where Maryann car had been found two and a half years earlier a chambermaid was cleaning the room and thought she detected two it was a foul odor coming from the bed area lifting the mattress from the frame she was startled to see the naked handcuffed body of a female deceased female lying there it was extremely frightening and disturbing to the chambermaid to say the least of that woman who we sometime later learned was Valerie Ann Street who had been a prostitute of New York City on her lower back there was an abrasion which had been made by a sharp object we thought at the time it was a knife that was torture marks it's a rata sighs the power and control that the offender has over the victim to make the victim realize that he the offender is in control of life and death and so very often the offender will prolong her agony to kill her in a very very slow and deliberate way so that she's aware that he's gonna kill her a monster was on the loose and it was clear he wasn't afraid to return to the scene of his crimes that was the second case of a woman's body being found on the premises of this particular Motel I think that the fact that he'd use the same hotel is narcissism and that brings us to the concept of narcissistic immunity some narcissists absolutely believe they are invisible they're untouchable they're so superior to everybody else that there's no chance that they're ever going to get caught as if to prove the killer right identifying a suspect seemed impossible we had no idea who the perpetrator of the murder of Valerie Ann Street was meanwhile in the computer room of a large New York insurance firm Dominick Volpe would listen in disbelief to fellow operator and family man richard Cottingham as he openly discussed his predilection for the city's dark entertainments was very upfront better bring about prostitutes snn gambling all those vices that he had he bragged about Cottingham claimed to be a regular visitor to sadomasochistic clubs he would describe things that went on there he talked about a woman that was walking around with a guy on a leash he was on his knees he would walk him to the bathroom Cunningham would follow him and watch this the girl made him lick the urinals with his tongue he liked the slave thing you know handcuffs and treating people you know better that had no way of helping themselves it seems from an early age richard Cottingham liked being in control in Pascack Valley New Jersey Richard Newman had been on the same high school track team I met Richard long athletic field Richard stood apart in the sense that he wasn't always at practice as I remember he wasn't a joiner he didn't have a nickname he wasn't part of our little clique he had a kind of wiseguy attitude about him dismissive of teachers and of school in general I don't think he was crazy about Authority he would stand out from groups it's common for narcissists who believe they're better than others and it obviously they're at heart insecure but he just has disdain for what other people are doing and doesn't really want to be invested in it he thinks he's superior to everybody else he was kind of a big guy several inches taller than me I'm sure broad shoulders I don't remember him menacing students in general I do remember that the two or three friends of his that he seemed to lord it over them a bit like he was the leader of the pack so to speak he was certainly attracted to women but my recollection is that he did not have a girlfriend when he spoke about women it was kind of in a negative way being in the locker room reminds you of the expression locker room talk I certainly remember him talking among his friends and perhaps in gym class if I remember about what girls were attractive to him and the only inkling you would have of the way his mind works is that he would talk about the girls in class or I guess the girls out on the street too who were perhaps we're better endowed in a larger breasted that just seemed to be sort of a key attraction for him it's one thing to have an interest in large breasted women because you think they're attractive it's another to have an obsession with the breasts not the women the breasts and that then becomes what we call a paraphilia or an abnormal sexual interest that is needed for arousal now in his mid-30s richard Cottingham would brag to his co-workers about his use of prostitutes but it seems Cottingham did not enjoy all aspects of the vice trade I heard one conversation about you had a venereal disease that he contracted to a prostitute and at that point he was he was lovely sounded angry when he mentioned the hookers less than two weeks after the discovery of the second body at the New Jersey motel the Times Square Ripper struck again in New York in a burning hotel bedroom the body of another young working girl was found both breasts had been sliced off and removed in almost all serial sexual murder cases they will go above and beyond killing the individual and engage in post-mortem activity that to them is sexually gratifying this type of ritualistic behavior grows out of the offenders fantasy life and very often as a series of murders occurs the individuals behavior becomes much more elaborate as the offender gains much more comfort and killing the ritualistic behavior is apt to become more personalized and more embellished with a depraved killer on the loose police in New York in New Jersey were in a state of frustration but one week later the killer would make an uncharacteristic mistake and reveal himself for the first time over the course of two years a series of brutal assaults and murders had occurred in New York in New Jersey so far the sadistic perpetrator had been clever enough to escape detection but in May 1980 he would make a mistake and yet again the motel in New Jersey would be the focus there was a great deal of excitement when we got the call from he has four kites Police Department which said that they had just apprehended a suspect attempting to flee from the motel the motel front desk was alerted to a disturbance in one of the rooms they decided to send one of their representatives to make sure that the occupants were okay it took several minutes for someone to be coaxed to the door verbally she said yes everything is okay but with her eyes gave the impression that everything was not okay the motel staff immediately called the police in an officer was dispatched and when he responded he responded to that area of the motel towards the farthest corner where there was an entrance a man was observed running out of the building and a suspicious manner carrying a bag in his hand and at the time of his arrest he had the handcuffs tape used to either place over the mouths of the women or buying their hands and feet or what-have-you so all of these items were imitating and he had no real explanation for it the fleeing man was identified as Richard Francis Cunningham of Lodi New Jersey he had a wife and children a computer operator in New York City he was in his mid-30s he was kind of stocky it was at at least average looking except again as I said he was kind of stocky well-built you might say his wife she described him I admit to my recollection as a devoted husband she said that he was very attentive to his children despite being virtually caught in the act Richard Cottingham professed his innocence he just flat-out denied it and I I found it very difficult to accept they sort of caught him red-handed as one might say he was somewhat smug in his attitude and his answers although at one point he indicated the only thing I'll say is that I have a problem with women investigators immediately moved to search Cunningham's New Jersey home we prepared a search warrant to look for any evidence that might be associated with female abduction rape murder this is the street that Richard Cunningham lived on Cottingham resided with his wife and children in a two family home in a pleasant suburban setting there's a middle-class neighborhood I would describe it as working-class people nothing would stand out of the ordinary he seemed to be a normal dad and husband it's what we didn't know was hidden underneath he truly was a monster inside the family home detectives would discover evidence of a man who reveled in sadistic murder in the lower basement of his home he had a large room which was locked which his wife her his children did not have access to not his guy married with three children but he has in this room I suppose one we could refer to as souvenirs or memorabilia or whatever you want to call it items that he took from these women after he tortured them and and murdered them people that we call organized circulars often take trophies they will take something from victims like an earring or shoe or a piece of clothing a purse like big-game hunters the trophy room helps them to relive those moments where they felt most in control the trophy room is a nice metaphor for this compartmentalize life this is the place where they go to just completely fully indulge in their narcissistic fantasies of what they've done to other people now the successful computer operator husband and father was identified as the Times Square Ripper and murderer of the women of the New Jersey motel his capture stunned those who had known him hey work it was like he was unbelievable no one talked about anything else hey Todd even got arrested and blah blah blah and it was all articles in the newspaper being copied every day and he talked about crazy things but we never thought he would do crazy things you know I got chills on my I'm just thinking about it now 35 years later so I mean with a complete shock among his co-workers Cottingham had never made any secret of his vices of prostitution sadomasochism and gambling he was a gambler ah he was not afraid to take chances on anything he usually won I would say 95% at a time it was a winner he always said that he can get out of anything there was nothing to take him over in other words he would always win he used that gambling thing in his head for everything that he did he was a winner now Richard Cunningham was gambling on his ability to outwit his accusers and beat the legal system during his trial he seemed to be a very conscious participant along with his attorney taking notes paying very close attention to the testimony of the victims and of the witnesses against him you could sense that he was calculating all the time I came to conclusion that he was devious at best after several weeks in court everybody of course the jury the judge court officers everybody sort of had the same impression mr. Cottingham was a very intelligent man he was not as intelligent as he thought he was he thought he was more intelligent than everybody else that was that was part of his personality Cottingham denied all the crimes and claimed that on the one occasion he'd been caught at the motel with prostitute Leslie Ann Odell the activities had been consensual what's more despite the advice of his lawyers Cottingham insisted on personally taking the stand that was explained to me you're going to be cross-examined and there are a lot of holes in your story that probably will be exposed but he wanted to testify a guy like conyngham enjoys being smarter than other people particularly the law enforcement he thinks he's the smartest person in the room no matter where he is he wants to show everyone his brilliance and how smart he is I started my cross-examination by getting him to admit the things that he could not deny as any good prosecutor would do he could not deny that he was arrested with multiple pairs of handcuffs handcuffs were used in the murders of Valerie and Street and Mary Ann car they were used in the assault on Leslie Ann Odell he could not deny that he had mouth suppressants he could not deny that he had a knife and a knife was used against Valerie and street could torture her on the lower back could not deny that he could not deny that he had the barbiturate pills in his satchel barbiturates were used on one of the victims that he had sexually assaulted and thrown on the roadside he could not deny that he bet Leslie Ann odells breasts he could not deny because it was in the photographs part of the assault on Valerie Ann Street on the stand Cottingham was forced to admit that he'd had a fascination with bondage since his childhood from everything that we were able to piece together he had a typical upbringing middle class lower middle class family very close to his mother Cottingham had been born in the Bronx then later moved with his family to the leafy Pascack Valley in New Jersey his home was about two miles from where I lived was a great area to grow up in there was plenty of parks and open space yeah this is it here this is where he lived a modest home set back from the road I didn't go in the house but but I remember that this is where he lived I know his mother was devoted to him these individuals are in very dark and perverse sexually sadistic fantasies from very very early on the fantasy driven crimes like serial sexual murder begins 10 15 20 years earlier in the offender's mind cutting hem would claim that his deviant desires had grown out of the use of pornography it's a common trajectory with sadistic sexual serial murders is to begin with ordinary pornography even just erotic literature even just catalogs that show women and underwear some people stop at various stages because they don't really like the rest thing they're fine with the tame stuff others want more and if that is what appeals to them and excites them and arouses them they will continue to get more and more extreme with it not all serial killers are sadistic sexual murderers those who are tend to become very extreme with what they do to their victims a portrait developed of a monster with a devious method of operation he would on the street meet these girls say to them I want to take you out not just to have sex in a car or some such thing but I'd like to take you to a restaurant I just want a lot of money in a card game or gambling and he would show them a wad of money with a hundred-dollar bill around it of course I guess these girls were impressed they would go to dinner with him at some point he would drugged them and then he was able to lead them out of the place and into his car and take him to a motel and sexually assault them plus cut them and try to torture them that's kind of person he is as the evidence mounted Cottingham faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison still by hook or by crook the killer was determined to win his freedom I had briefly left the courtroom and gone downstairs to my office and as I came back into the courtroom I immediately saw the matron in a frenzy running from the area of the holding cell and without her saying a word I knew that he escaped after taking the stand in his own defense for multiple assaults and murders Richard Cottingham was faced with the likely prospect of a life behind bars during a break in proceedings he decided to make an audacious bid for freedom took a jacket and threw it against the sheriff's officers face he followed the sheriff's officer and went out one of the back stairways I could see him running from the courthouse across the street we chased him across the street a another sheriff's officer had spotted him as well and we both tackled him on the street and put him in handcuffs and restrained them and brought him back to the courthouse Richard Cottingham would not elude authorities again he was found guilty and condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison but was this serial sadist mad bad or born to kill what makes them think they're going to get away with it that's what I do well on more than anything else what makes them think they can continue to do it and have this smug attitude and exercise this this awful power over people there's lots of things inside our mentality inside our personality that tell us not to do it if only that that's a fellow human being and that they have loved ones at home those who are psychopathic absolutely have no remorse for what they're doing they don't really care about people being in pain unless there's status then they care because they want them to be in pain so they're the Psychopaths and the sadists are not one of the same but if you get the two in combination you have a very very dangerous person some people might have trophies for their exploits in baseball or basketball or golf or awards that they get for community service these were his trophies these were his conquests these were his criminal activities which he had gotten away with and these were his trophies of how intelligent he was how charming he was and how smarter than everyone else he was Cottingham is pretty much a very classic serial sexual murderer the best way to understand serial sexual murder is to view it as a deviant sexual arousal pattern where sex and aggression become fused and the aggressive act itself is a rata size whether it's choking or cutting or stabbing in regular sexual intercourse in normal conditions there is some level of pain inflicted and received and there's some level of biting and these sorts of things in serial sexual murder those particular behaviors are exaggerated a norm slate and really take a life on of their own I think there is something in their genetic makeup I think it is a twisted mind that associates sex with harm hurt injury and death I think someone who's a psychopath already starts at a disadvantage as he then gets exposed to things that lure him into wanting power over other people and in particular being a sadistic type of person the idea of being born to kill comes pretty close to him in 2010 the incarcerated Cottingham admitted to the murder of Nancy Vogel in 1967 when he was just 20 years old and Cottingham is suspected of several other possible slags one thing is for certain for those who met him and were lucky enough to survive Richard Cottingham torturer murderer mutilator will never be forgotten he was far different than people that I've met and I bet some people from all kinds of bad backgrounds or bad situations but he I think is intrinsically evil you know he fool around with hookers he fool around with nurses you fool around this you for without that fine a lot of people do that nobody kills people nobody decapitate people nobody rips people's hands off I think this is sick son of a bitch

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Channel: Bill D Berg

Views: 2,282,435

Rating: 4.4447441 out of 5

Keywords: Serial Killer, Richard Cottingham, Serial killers, murder, twisted, psycopath, new york

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Length: 42min 33sec (2553 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2015

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