Portrait of a Predator PT 2

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st-century lens.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

How are you?

Overwhelmed with this case.

I was just joking, you know, we should make this like a triple parter.

I think people would be upset about that.

This is like a, this is a docu series on Netflix at this point.

Yeah, I'm game, though, but I've been, you know, this is

this is sort of the, 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.

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 Words 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 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 clothing's removed, sometimes it's not.

You know, we're in Long Island for Diane Kusick starting in 1968, who was the one found at the mall parking lot in her car.

And then we had four years later, Mary Heinz, 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 beginning of not being fully clothed.

Then we have Sheila Heineman.

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 Windmurray, New York, five miles from Rockville Center, where the other two women were found.

Number five is Maria.

And Maria is several 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 found bound and wrapped up in a blanket and some plastic.

And the way she was bound looked like it was a way for the offender to carry her.

Then we have Mary Ann Carr, and this is when we go to New Jersey.

And Mary Ann Carr is the x-ray technician who it sounds like was abducted from her apartment complex in Bergen County and taken very close by to a quality inn.

And then three years after that, in 1980, there's a sex worker named Valerie Ann Street who's found in that same quality inn 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 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?

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 worker, and checks in with a client in the room where her body is found.

I think it's 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 12 years.

So now we have to also start factoring in the offender's life.

Let's say he was 25 for the first attack in 1968.

Now he's 37, right?

Life changes occur.

Jobs change, marriages, kids are born.

It all depends on who this guy is, but that is a 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.

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 70s and 80s, 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 and 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 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.

Well, you know, I didn't realize Times Square was like that back in the 70s.

Yes.

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, you know, at one point, we were in big, you know, photograph of us in Times Square, right, for buried bones.

This is not that Times Square, I can tell you.

The location as it exists today would surprise me.

The location as you're describing it in 1979 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 what sounds 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 one, and he has to be comfortable in that type of culture if he's going to go in there and grab a victim.

And it's interesting because within Times Square, I had read about this.

And then when I watched the series, they talked about that Times 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, it is an incredible amount of hotels, motels who cater to sex work.

And unfortunately, what I learned was that so much 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 for the women.

So, yeah, stroll area is an understatement.

And the, 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 reason that we did this in this order was: I wanted to show you, of course, that you know, you have Mary Ann Carr and Valerie Ann Street connected because they're at the same hotel, even though they're three years apart.

But in between, in 1979, we're in Manhattan.

So, this is about a year before they find Valerie's body inside the Quality Inn 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, 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.

Yeah.

So I never want to label people with anything other 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.

Okay, so, well, a couple of things.

Now, 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 Dita, you know,

this goes into the victimology.

You know, we

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 Valerie.

I want to know, is she somebody who's walking on the stroll area or is she an escort?

Is she meeting the client at this 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.

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 Dita?

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 to know what type of sex work they're doing.

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You get nine IQ bars, eight IQ Mix sticks, and four IQ Joe sticks.

All IQ Bar products are entirely free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs, and artificial sweeteners.

With over 20,000 five-star reviews and counting, more people than ever are starting their days on the right foot with IQ Bars, brain and body boosting bars, hydration mixes, and mushroom coffees.

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IQ bars are really convenient and they taste great.

And right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ products, plus get free shipping.

To get your 20% off, just text Bones to 64,000.

Text Bones to 64,000.

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Well, I'll tell you, I mean, based on that series and a couple of interviews that I've read, Dita'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.

The reason that these women were found so quickly is because the offender set the room on fire.

And it is at a Travel Inn motor hotel right in Times Square.

Dita was 22, maybe 23, and they think that Jane Doe was in her teens or early 20s.

Once they put the fire out,

man, I remember this 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.

No head because of the fire, or no head because the killer had decapitated 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 and Street suffered.

Nicks and cuts and, you know, lots of like detailed, really difficult things for her to get through when she was still alive.

The heads and 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 the bathtub.

And that's what we know.

And Dita likely didn't do that.

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?

Well, this is a motel in Times Square.

So obviously, as soon as smoke is being seen, you're 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.

It also is dependent upon, well, how was the fire started?

Where was it?

As an example, if the offender is trying to cover up the crime, he's going to be pouring accelerant on the victim's 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 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 an attention getter versus trying to truly destroy the crime scene and the victim's bodies.

The folding of Dita's clothing is significant.

You know, the offender 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

we have the victim's clothing, you know, he's possibly redressing.

The clothing is significant to him, you know, and he's like sending a message.

He's protecting, he's folding and protecting Dita's clothing with the hope that responders are going to notice that.

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 Dita 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 at a department store and one of the detectives said, or an officer said, why don't we just just take one of these mannequins and dress it in her clothing?

And when they did, they had somebody who recognized her and said, that's Dita's clothing, which I just thought, boy, that's simple, but

that's a really interesting way to display the clothing so that you can kind of visualize who that person might have been.

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.

Yeah, absolutely.

But they did not have that benefit back there in 1979, Paul.

This is 79.

Yep.

I know you have.

I have to remind myself that.

Why didn't they do this?

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, 1980.

And a question that I have on Dita and Jane Doe's case is,

were there heads and hands found in the motel room or had did the offender take those with him?

I don't believe they were ever found.

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, 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 in identification.

Now we're going to talk about the 10th victim.

It's 1980 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 25-year-old sex worker.

Her name is Jean Rayner.

And she's found dead inside the hotel.

She had been sexually assaulted and tortured before having her throat slashed and her body 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 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 can tell me.

And he took the clothes with him.

Well, we started out in 1968 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's gravitated towards sex workers.

These are victims that will voluntarily go with him versus his other victims, like Mary Ann out there in New Jersey.

You know,

there's an ear witness, right?

Here's Mary Ann scream, says, I will, I will.

You know, it sounds like he's probably putting a knife in her side, got 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 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 possibly abducting the prior victims out there in Long Island.

Now he's decided he wants to continue doing, committing these crimes, and he's going after sex workers.

Now, 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 Ridgway, 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 are committing these horrific, you know, in his mind, sins.

But it may just be purely M.O.

based.

It's easier for him to get these victims.

The mutilation, you know, we've seen the evolution in 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 putting them on the headboard.

Obviously, you know,

this is a form of posing.

You know, he is, as you mentioned, use the term shock value.

He is now

feeling his oats.

He is confident.

He has now been offending for 12 years.

He's been getting away with these crimes.

In a way,

this is a boast.

He is boasting.

He is taunting.

He's somebody that's going to continue.

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Okay,

well, now let me tell you about the very, very latest one.

So, this is 1980, and now we are back at that quality inn where Mary Ann was kidnapped and murdered.

Valerie Ann Street was murdered.

We are back at the same quality in.

Before I tell you 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, that seems to tempt fate a little bit, don't you think?

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 M.O.

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 he can commit his crimes and not be caught because of what he is seeing.

And he's already

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 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 motel itself, so to speak.

Okay, well, let me tell you what happens.

There is a housekeeper who's working at the Quality Inn Hotel.

She hears screams.

She calls the police.

The police come and they find Leslie Ann Odell, the sex worker.

She's handcuffed.

She has knife wounds.

She has incredibly severe bite marks all over her body.

She is still alive and survives.

And the offender is still there.

And they arrest him.

Caught in the act.

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.

Oh, I know the name.

But you don't know the case.

Finally, a serial killer case you don't know from

the

1900s.

That's good.

It was on the other side of the country.

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 unassuming life, as they sometimes do, married father.

He is a career man.

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 25 in 1968.

You know, if he were 25 and now he would be this, he was 22 in 1968 and he is arrested in 1980.

So he's in his mid-30s when he's caught.

Yes.

By the late 1970s, he's in his late 30s, 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.

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 sleeping next to a serial killer.

No, you know, I would say in most situations, the spouse is unaware.

These guys are very good at compart 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, 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 1968 to 1980.

He is changing in terms of how he is interacting with his victims.

And he's getting much more violent with 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 in New Jersey in 1968 for Diane's case, or was he out in Long Island at the time?

He was 22, so maybe still with parents.

The shift in 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 is where, you know, you start talking geographic profile.

You know, the Long Island area 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, so that's an anchor point.

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 46.

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 64, he graduated from a high 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 in an office with Rodney Alcala.

That's from Woman of the Hour.

He's the serial killer from that really well-known, really well-reviewed Netflix series.

It just, I mean, it just shows you coincidences happen.

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.

They just happen to be there.

So it sounds like, okay, so his

entire adult career, he is Manhattan-based.

Right now, it sounds like the 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 Dr.

Kim Rosmo, who wrote the book, one of the primary books on geographic profiling,

talks about,

I think he called it the smokestack theory,

is that you think about these offenders and they have these anchor points, you know, their residence, 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 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 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 away because they're familiar 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.

So I think he was in New Jersey.

When he graduated high school, which was in 64, four years before Diane was murdered, he graduated in 64, and that was from New Jersey.

And then he gets married six years later, and he gets married in Queens,

but I think they were in Lodi at that point, New Jersey also.

So I'm just seeing him in New Jersey mostly.

Okay, so he gets married in 1970 then?

Yes, it looks like he got married in 1970.

So if we take a look at the distribution of his attacks chronologically, he is not married for Diane's case in 1968.

And then we have a four-year gap.

He gets married after Diane's case in 1970 And two years

after he gets married, that's when he's attacking Mary

and Laverne.

So he does two attacks in 1972.

And then a year later, he's doing Sheila.

And these are all out there in Long Island, as well as Maria, 73.

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 out and attack.

Then something allows him to carry out attacks in 1972 and 73.

You said he had kids.

Do you know when his kids were born?

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 1970, and his wife filed for divorce in 78.

So within eight years, they had three kids.

So that divorce in 1978 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 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 in proxy because he's really angry at his wife.

And this is when he switches to sex workers.

Yes.

His last woman who did not work in the sex industry was Mary Ann in 77.

And then he switches to the Times Square victims in 79.

And then we go back to Valerie Ann, who was a sex worker at the Quality Inn in 80.

And then again, back to New York.

I'm assuming, you know, when he's at the insurance company in 80 with Gene Raynor, and then he gets caught with another sex worker.

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 in the middle of the night.

Now he's getting familiar and don't know if he dabbled 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.

So he's getting that comfort level of that culture, so to speak.

And then he's now escalating the violence.

So the divorce, I 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.

I will say once he's been arrested and this becomes a massive story, women come forward and say, you know,

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 know, you have Leslie Ann 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 Mary Ann Carr,

who was abducted from her apartment complex.

So the note says coincidentally, it's not coincidence, obviously.

Conningham and his ex-wife used to live in the same damn complex as Mary Ann Carr, close to the Quality Inn.

Now, live there at the same time Marianne did?

No, I don't believe so.

So, so it's a watering hole for him.

He's familiar with that area.

He's in that area, and Mary Ann got off work.

She's heading to her apartment, and he takes advantage.

And it may be something where he's been surveilling that apartment complex for maybe weeks, maybe months, and has noticed what time Mary Ann gets home and is saying, Here's this, you know, gal in a uniform, you know, that I'm able to, I can grab her.

And he plans it, and he's he successfully is able to get her away from her apartment and then ultimately sexually assaults and kills her.

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 and belongings with Cottingham from many of these women, Gene Raynor's necklace, a key to Mary Ann 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 thumbprint that matched his from handcuffs that were used to restrain Valerie.

That's all great evidence.

He's obviously collecting souvenirs.

Did he have any shoes from his victims?

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 30 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 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.

He says he started with a woman named Nancy Vogel in 1967.

So that would have made him 2021.

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 back seat of her car naked and left her in a residential street.

There's that theory that you and I have talked about about killers confessing to every like Henry Lee 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 involved responsible for that, for that killing of Nancy Vogel.

Well, in that case, that case parallels Diane's case.

Okay.

He says that he murdered several teen girls in the late 1960s, 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 13-year-old named Jacqueline Harp in 68, same year as Marianne, an 18-year-old Irene Blaza, and 15-year-old Denise Falaska, both in 69, and each girl was strangled to death.

So this is pre-marriage and early to mid-20s.

What does that say to you?

It's like, it seemed like almost like a spree to me.

That's a lot of people to attack.

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 his early 20s.

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 victims going back into the high school age.

So, you know, he is much more prolific in these late 60s than what we knew from the original cases that you talked about.

But that's where you see what happens when he gets married in 1970.

All of a sudden, he's slowing down unless you tell me, you know, all of a sudden he's confessing to more cases during that 1970 to 72 timeframe.

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 60s.

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.

So in 2021, this guy's still alive.

Four years ago, he confesses to kidnapping and raping and murdering a 17-year-old who I've heard of, Marianne Pryor, and a 16-year-old, Lorraine Kelly.

These are both girls who were murdered in 1974.

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.

And that was Marianne Carr in 77.

So I don't know when he decided to move back to New Jersey, but he, 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 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 and their ankles were still bound when they were found.

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 to 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.

Okay, we've got more.

So in 2022, 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 then linked back to him.

So he gets another 25 years in prison.

He was given life, of course, without parole on some of these other murder cases.

And he also says 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 wants answers.

And of course, the public wants answers too.

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.

Well, and that's really what it comes down to, you know, is

the DA, you know, in 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 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 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 would get in order to get these families' answers.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So he makes those confessions to the people we've covered on this show.

But then he says he's also murdered a 26-year-old sex worker named Lorraine McGraw, whose beaten body was found in 1970 in South Nyack.

New York.

And I'm pointing at you because that is marriage year and the first sex worker I think we've heard about.

Okay.

So that didn't coincide with my theory of he switched totally to sex workers after the 78 divorce because he obviously encounters this woman.

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 offense and how an offender has to cross certain social barriers to get more and more comfortable to committing the types of crimes that they ultimately commit.

Joseph D'Angelo 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 at night while there's occupants inside the house.

He's having to cross certain barriers.

For offenders that prey on sex workers who are out on the street, and that's the important part, as 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 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?

You know, 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 a sex worker in 1970 and he's picking her up out of a stroll area, that means that.

well, prior to 1970, 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, he doesn't kill sex workers again until the late 70s.

We have to keep going because he keeps confessing.

Two years ago, year and a half, frankly, he admits to the murder of a 17-year-old girl named Mary Ann Della Sala in January of 67.

So, listen to this, Paul, because I think you'll find this interesting.

So, I think this is his earliest confession as of now.

I probably have to do a Google search because something else might have popped up yesterday.

But this is January of 1967, and I don't think we have a 66.

This girl, Mary Ann, 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 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 asphyxiating 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 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 store all the time because he liked her.

And it kind of, there it goes after that.

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 girls and women prior to this girl.

He may have found her very attractive,

But stalking to me is a very particular type of crime versus surveillance.

And so when I use the term stalking, and I'm not even talking about how stalking is defined in statutes.

I'm talking about how I use the term stalking.

This is where now you have an offender that has developed an obsession, is following, communicating.

The victim is aware that 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 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.

I mean, she was, what, 17, 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, I just don't, I don't buy it.

You know, he, he may have had some level of

feelings for her, but it was, well, he wants to get off sexually assaulting and killing her.

That's the bottom line.

There are a lot of people focused on this case, on Cottingham in general.

So they think that he might be connected to a 1974 bludgeoning case of a 15-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 said he doesn't have the facts to back it up.

So

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 100 women.

I do want to answer one little question for you.

He'll answer it, essentially.

The shoes.

So does he have a foot fetish?

You know, what are the some of the, tell me some of the different things you had said.

Foot fetish or is there more practical things?

Well, 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 sorts.

A fetish is a paraphilia and fetish is attraction to 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 a Jerry Brutus and you're cutting women's feet off and keeping them in the freezer because you have a foot fetish, technically at that point, 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

see them in his vehicle 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 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.

So he says that he took off the shoes and I guess in some cases tossed them because he didn't want to get kicked.

Okay, so it's absolutely a practical thing.

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 Dove's decapitated heads and hands are.

He won't talk about that.

He loves these stupid cat and mouse games with detectives.

He is in his 70s.

He has declining health.

He says he's killed more than 100 people, and he has detectives visiting him, hoping to pry out more confessions before he dies.

Sure.

Yeah.

And

so, you know, first, you know, this, these types of details are bargaining chips for him.

You know,

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, the investigators that are dealing with him are completely savvy 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 serial killer.

Look at me.

Now he's reckoning, he's never getting out.

He's feeding law enforcement case after case.

He's getting a lot of notoriety as a result.

Does he start overextending himself like a 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 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 there's another case in new jersey yeah i'll i'll say i did that one too.

You know, okay, feed me specific details that only the killer would know.

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 alive.

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 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?

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 30 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 impacts women, but there are other victims of serial predators, but by and large, women are the victims.

And it's understanding that there are men out there that are hunting you and there are monsters.

These men do horrific things to 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 a possibility.

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 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 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.

Because like we see with Cottingham, Valerie, her breast has got numerous cuts to it.

Horrific.

You don't want to have that done to you.

Well, of the awful, terrible things that we cover, this is one of the worst cases.

I hate to say,

at least there is something.

The families can have answers, but not all of 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, you know, what we learn about these stories.

in the 70s, the FBI behavioral science unit went in and interviewed Bundy and Kemper and all of these different serial killers and took away useful things.

And sometimes I criticize when I hear how much a show or an author or anything are really digging in.

They ignore the victims and

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 also I think we've learned a lot about society.

And thank goodness the cops were working on all of this, it seemed like, you know?

Yeah, 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 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, 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.

Well, and I tell my students at the University of Texas, if this were your sister, wouldn't you want to kind of have this narrative when you want people to know who she is?

You're right.

I mean, glorifying the the killers.

I mean, that is the antithesis of what you and I try to do.

Right.

Well, and I think, you know, to along those lines is that in my experience, certain families want

their loved ones' cases to be discussed because it's a way that

the memory of their loved one is kept alive in a way, but also

there's their message.

They're usually wanting 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 that's just, you know, I know from a true crime perspective, you just have to respect, you know, if a family does not want to be, you know, part of a story, part of a podcast, part of a TV show, don't press it, you know?

Yeah.

Because they don't, that's not something that they're desiring.

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 and these cases that people are asking us to look at.

And so we might end up with 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.

I will

get to a

clean piece of paper on my notepad and I'll be ready to go.

And more whiskey.

I know you were going to say that too.

Well, there's always that.

Okay.

Well, I will see you next week.

All right, Kate.

Thank you.

You too.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emerosi.

Research by Allison Trouble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

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