It’s seems unlikely, given Cottingham’s lust for extended torture sessions that caused as much pain and fear as possible.
But more likely, the people who knew Cottingham and didn’t believe that he could possibly be a serial killer were lying to protect him.
Girlfriend talks
Not everyone in Cottingham’s circle felt compelled to protect him, however.
Barbara Lucas, Cottingham’s girlfriend, said she’s been to the Quality Inn twice with Cottingham, who clearly had no concerns about being noticed by hotel staff.
He was driving a green Ford Thunderbird, Lucas said.
Susan Geiger, although she remembered little else from the night she was savagely assaulted by Cottingham, remembered the car, a dirty Ford Thunderbird. And she remembered the color. It was green.
Survivors’ testimony leaves courtroom reeling
The testimony of his surviving victims was so horrifying that it would not matter much if even some choice bits of evidence were wiped from the jury’s memory.
Leslie O’Dell said that Cottingham picked her up on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 25th Street during the early hours of May 22, 1980, and they agreed that he would pay her $100 for sex, a number that doesn’t match Cottingham’s price of $180.
They stopped at first a bar and then a diner before he took her to the Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights, the same hotel where the bodies of Valerie Ann Street and Mary Ann Car were found. They arrived sometime before dawn.
In the hours that followed, Leslie O’Dell was handcuffed, cut with a knife, bitten, and warned of the terrible fate that awaited her.
Cottingham raped her repeatedly, sodomized her, and forced her to give him oral sex, each act more violent and reprehensible than the last.
Made even worse for Leslie was that she was the only one of Cottingham’s surviving victims who was not drugged, so she was aware of every horrific minute – aside from the times she nearly blacked out. But then, Cottingham used cool water to bring her back around so he could resume his fun and games.
Cottingham continued to deny any involvement in the abductions and tortures of the three women who had already testified, and as for his encounter with Leslie, he continued to say that the bloody, pain-fused sexual encounter was completely consensual.
O’Dell was grateful she escaped with her life.
“He told me to shut up, that I was a whore and I had to be punished,” said O’Dell, a native of Olympia, Washington, who crossed from coast to coast in search of a dream. “'He said the other girls took it and I had to take it, too. He said that uncountable times.”
Soon enough, she would be screaming for her life, and gratefully snapping back to reality when the “Do Not Disturb” sign was tossed aside, hotel staff opened the door, and she saw sweet freedom in the carpeted hall on the other side of the door.
Prosecution takes on psychopath
Bergen County’s tough prosecutor, sizing up his stack of evidence, took every opportunity to trip up his suspect.
“I didn’t like Mr. Cottingham, and I wanted him to know that I was out to get him,” said Caro, who did his best to throw the defendant off his game. “I wanted to convict him. I wanted to put him away for the rest of his life.”
He also wanted to prove that he and the police who played a role in apprehending Cottingham were smarter by far than the narcissistic, sadistic man dressing in orange and shackled in chains in the courtroom.
“Mr. Cottingham was a very intelligent man. But he was not as intelligent as he thought he was,” Caro said. “He thought he was more intelligent than everybody else. That was part of his personality. But he could not deny that he was arrested with multiple pairs of handcuffs, and that handcuffs were used in the murders of Mary Ann Carr and Valerie Ann Street. He could not deny that he had gags. He could not deny that he had a knife. He could not deny that he had barbiturates. He could not deny that he bit Leslie Ann’s breasts.”
His defense attorney could almost hear his client’s wheels turning as they sat next to one another in the Hackensack courtroom.
“You could sense that he was calculating,” said Conway. “I came to the conclusion that he was devious at best. After several weeks in court, everybody – the judge, the jury – had the same opinion.”
An inside look
According to reporter Rod Leith, who covered the trial, Cottingham’s lawyers used a classic trick and attempted to disparage the reputations of the surviving victims, many of them prostitutes, while they were testifying on the stand.
Conway also suggested that the crime scenes were too different, “there were variations of methodology, and the killer couldn't be the same person as there were too many variables. But the general modus operandi was the same, and when New York became too dangerous for him, he came to New Jersey, along Routes 46 and 17,” Leith said.
He also attempted to show jurors that Cottingham was an ideal employee, devoted to his job.
That proved less effective, because one of Cottingham’s co-workers, Alan Mackie, said Cottingham frequently would leave work early on Saturdays, although he was unable to say if the days Cottingham left before quitting time were the same days of the assaults.
There was also that evidence that Cottingham stole from his coworkers, so his character was called into significant question.
Volpe also took the stand and testified about how Cottingham used to brag about the money he used to lure prostitutes. Volpe also said that Cottingham drugged his victims’ drinks before taking the incapacitated victims to New Jersey, where he felt more familiar with the territory.
All in all, the evidence on the other side was overwhelming.
“The prosecution had evidence to build a case. Jewelry was a big part of it, traced back to him, plus eyewitness accounts from motels, and items he stole from victims,” Leith said.
In June of 1981, Cottingham was convicted on fifteen of the twenty-one felony counts he had originally faced.
Overwhelmed by the idea of a life behind bars, three days later, Cottingham attempted suicide in his jail cell by drinking six ounces of liquid antidepressants.
Guards were unable to awaken him after the incident, and Cottingham was transported to Hackensack Hospital where he was stabilized. For a man who thought he’d mastered the fine art of death, survival had to seem like the ultimate of failures.
The next month, on July 25, Cottingham was sentenced to 173 to 197 years in prison for the murder of Valerie Ann Street and the assaults of the four other women, including Leslie O’Dell. He was also fined $2,350, essentially pocket change for the man who’d used handfuls of cash to entice his victims.
Under the terms, he would not be eligible for parole for at least 30 years.
Cottingham goes on trial for murder of Mary Ann Carr
But Cottingham’s days in a courtroom were far from over.
He still faced numerous other charges, including the murder of the woman who had lived in the same apartment complex where Cottingham and his wife started their lives together, Mary Ann Carr.
Three days into his trial for that murder, on February 25, 1982, Cottingham collapsed in an elevator while being escorted back to his jail cell after the day’s deliberations, which focused primarily on jury selection.
Cottingham was rushed to Bergen Pines County Hospital in Paramus, New Jersey, where he was diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer, and a mistrial was declared.
Frank Wagner, Cottingham’s court-appointed defense attorney, requested the mistrial because his client would be unable to attend court proceedings due to his illness, as he was expected to be hospitalized for at least three to four days.
Bergen County Superior Court Judge James F. Madden granted the motion for a retrial and excused the thirteen prospective jurors chosen during the first three days of the trial, telling them it would be unfair to hold them indefinitely waiting for Cottingham to be healthy enough to return to trial.
When Cottingham was stabilized, he was transferred to the hospital unit
at Trenton State Prison.
No date was immediately set for a retrial.
Mary Ann Carr trial beings again
On September 28, 1982, Richard Cottingham again went on trial for the murder of X-ray technician Mary Ann Carr, the pretty brunette who was just starting her married life at Little Ferry’s Ledgeview Terrace apartment complex.
This time, Cottingham requested a non-jury trial, still insisting he was not guilty. He chose instead to hedge his bets on the opinion of one man, Bergen County Superior Court Judge Fred C. Galda.
Evidence, again presented by Bergen County District Attorney Dennis Calo, who had already secured a life sentence for Cottingham, included traces of white adhesive tape that Cottingham had used as a gag to silence Mary Ann.
It was the same type of tape that Cottingham had been carrying in his pocket when he was arrested after the brutal assault on Leslie O’Dell.
Even more telling, the method of the murder of Mary Ann Carr was almost a mirror image of that of Valerie Ann Street, who was found handcuffed, mutilated, and murdered in the same motel where Cottingham had abandoned Mary Ann’s body like so much trash. Both bodies had handcuff marks on their hands and ankles as well as ligature marks left behind from strangulation. Valerie Ann also had the same tape residue across her mouth.
When the fake names he’d written in hotel registries were analyzed against his penmanship on items found at his home, they were a match.
And the souvenirs that were found in his trophy room sealed the deal.
The evidence was a prosecutor’s dream, and Cottingham apparently knew it.
Curses, escape attempt foiled again
About a week into his trial, Cottingham must not have been feeling as certain he could manipulate the judge as he was when he made the decision to skip the jury trial and let one person decide his fate.
On October 3, 1982, Cottingham somehow managed to escape from the holding cell during lunch and made it all the way out of the courthouse, which likely gave him a sweet glimpse of freedom, something he rarely afforded any of his victims.
Officer Alan Grieco spotted the defendant as he was coming back to the courthouse after grabbing a bite to eat.
“I could see him running from the courthouse across the street,” said Grieco. “Another sheriff’s officer had spotted him as well, and we both tackled him on the street and put him in handcuffs and restrained him and brought him back to the courthouse.”
On October 13, 1982, after just over two weeks of testimony, Cottingham was found guilty of the murder of Mary Ann Carr by Judge Galda.
In rendering his decision, Galda said that the evidence presented “clearly and convincingly satisfied this court ... that the modus operandi in respect to these cases are so unique and novel ... that it had to be the handiwork of Richard Cottingham in this case.”
Mary Ann Carr’s mother was overwhelmed and screamed, “My God, thank God,” after the verdict was delivered.
Wagner said he would appeal the verdict, but it wouldn’t matter much in terms of Cottingham’s future.
On October 15, Cottingham was sentenced to 25 years to life for taking the life of Mary Ann Carr, with a minimum of 30 years to be served consecutively with his previous sentence.
Chapter 12: New York trial
On March 30, 1983, Cottingham was transferred from the maximum security state prison in Trenton to the men’s house of detention in Manhattan, nicknamed the Tombs, to go on trial for the murders of Deedeh Goodarzi, the Jane Doe who was also in Goodarzi’s hotel room tomb, and Jean Reyner.
On July 5, 1984, a few days before the New York verdict, Cottingham again attempted suicide by cutting his left forearm with a razor, this time in front of the jury. Again, he failed to successfully take his own life.
Four days later, an unsympathetic jury of seven men and five women deliberated less than three hours before they found Cottingham guilty of the August 1980 charges of murdering the three women.
On August 28, 1984, he was sentenced to an addition 75 years to life in prison.
“I want to make sure he never kills anyone again,” said Justice Sybil Hart Kooper when handing down the maximum sentence Cottingham could have faced for the mutilation, murder, and torching of his three helpless victims.
After the sentencing, Cottingham was moved back to New Jersey, where he would finish out his sentence at Trenton State Prison, now known as New Jersey State Prison, a maximum security facility that’s not only the oldest detention facility in New Jersey, but also one of the oldest in the United States.
He is housed among inmates including Jesse Timmendequas, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka, the crime that led to the passage of Megan’s Law, which requires neighborhoods to be notified when a convicted sex offender moves nearby.
The prison was also once home to Bruno Hauptmann, a household name in the 1930s for the kidnapping and murder of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh's toddler son.
Chapter 13: Cottingham confesses to first murder, solving cold case
It was in 2010 when Cottingham gave New Jersey police a present of sorts — a confession to the murder of yet another woman, closing a case that had been cold since 1967.
Nancy Schiava Vogel was killed long before Richard Cottingham was on anybody’s radar, before he had fully established his calling card, and her death had been one of the oldest cold cases in Bergen County.
Eventually however, Cottingham had a moment when his psychotic, narcissistic veneer slipped off, and he quietly confessed his crime to police.
He pled guilty to his first murder in front of Bergen County Superior Court Judge Donald R. Venezia on August 25 in Hackensack, New Jersey, and surprisingly, offered an apology for his actions to Vogel’s brother and her two children, who were in the courtroom.
It was the first time he’d acknowledged any sort of responsibility for any of his crimes.
Nonetheless, he was sentenced to another life sentence, this one to also run concurrent with his existing sentences. For Cottingham, death in prison will be his end.
“Obviously, I must be sick somehow,” he said. “Normal people don’t do what I did.”
Detectives and other law enforcement officials had been working him for a long time, and the confession was, Molinelli said in a newspaper interview, “the culmination of years of traveling to the prison” to get the madman to talk.
“After a thorough investigation and after speaking to Mr. Cottingham, we are, and were, clearly satisfied that he was the person responsible for the murder,” Molinelli said.
Other cold cases could have been Cottingham
While reporters questioned whether or not Cottingham could be responsible for other cold cases, police said at the time that he was not linked to any others.
“We always look at many past defendants for possible connections with all cases, but we have nothing active at this time,” Molinelli said.
Cottingham’s attorney in this case, James P. Kimball, said, “I don’t know if there would be any further discussions that will happen. Whether or not either side wishes to engage, we'll have to wait and see.”
At the time, Bergen County had six unsolved murders, including the August 1974 murders of 17-year-old Maryann Pryor and her 16-year-old friend Lorraine Kelly, who disappeared while on a shopping trip to Paramus.
The girls were both raped and beaten, and both their wrists and ankles had been bound. Their bodies were disposed of in Montvale, the same place Cottingham killed Nancy Vogel. Given his bold declaration that he had killed many more victims that he’d ever been charged with murdering, it would come as no surprise that the two girls were among his victims, despite an intense investigation at the time of Cottingham’s arrest looking into that possibility.
It’s also possible that teenage hooker Helen Sikes, who disappeared from Times Square in January of 1979, could have been one of Cottingham’s victims, although it has never been proven. Her body was found in Queens, her throat slash
ed so deeply that her head was nearly decapitated. It was her legs, however, that made investigators take a close look at Richard Cottingham. Those were found a block away from the rest of Sikes’ body, positioned side by side as though they were still attached to her body.
Chapter 14: The Aftermath
Now that he’s safely behind bars, no one else will ever fall prey to Cottingham’s cruel desires.
But for those who did – 28-year-old Mary Ann Carr, 23-year-old Deedeh Goodarzi and the teenage Jane Doe who was with her and will likely never be identified, 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street, 25-year-old Jean Reyner, and 29-year-old mom of two Nancy Vogel, along with survivors Karen Schilt, Susan Geiger, and Leslie Ann O’Dell, who brought an end to the sadistic violence – the universe had shifted.
Families would never recover from the pain of losing their child, sibling or spouse, and victims would always be haunted by the memories of their torture, especially so when they looked at the scars left behind from their ordeals.
Two books are born
Reporter Rod Leith, who covered Cottingham at length before, during and after the trial, wrote two books, “The Torso Killer” and “The Prostitute Murders,” about his experiences covering the assaults and murders, the hunt for the suspect, and the subsequent trials.
“I never had encountered this kind of dark evil in any of the subjects I covered. I had written about some deeply disturbed people, but not anyone who was as treacherous and deviant as Cottingham,” Leith said. “I found it to be fascinating and challenging. He was a con artist and a psychopath who lived a double life.”
Leith spent five years at the Daily Record in Morristown before joining the staff at the Bergen County Record, just before Richard Cottingham began his second wave of sadistic murder, 10 years after the murder of Nancy Vogel.
Richard Cottingham: The True Story of The Torso Killer: Historical Serial Killers and Murderers (True Crime by Evil Killers Book 20) Page 7