Episode 20 Transcript- Richard Cottingham: New York's Torso Killer Part 1

[Amanda] On May 22, 1980, around 9 AM a housekeeper named Eleanor at the Quality Inn Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey was making her usual rounds checking the rooms when she heard screams coming from room 117. Inside, eighteen-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell had been enduring hours of torture at the hands of one of New York and New Jersey’s most prolific serial killers. The quick actions of the hotel staff at the Quality Inn likely saved the life of Leslie as well as countless other future potential victims. I’m Amanda Morgan and you’re listening to New York’s Dark Side

[Intro Music]

[Amanda] Hey everyone, it’s been a bit, but I am back! Between the holidays, some personal stuff, a cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery for one of my beloved fur children- my dog Harley, it’s a been a rough couple of months. But I am excited to get back to the grind and bring you more true crime, dark history, and all the stuff I know I’ve been missing diving into the last few months. Even though I haven’t released anything during this time I have been working on episodes in the background. I've got several either in production or done with production. I’ll save updates about the show to the end and get started with the case we’re covering today. I’m starting this relaunch so to speak, off with a bang and bringing you an extremely dark story over the next couple of weeks. That’s right, this is a multi-part deep dive! In this group of episodes, I’m covering Richard Cottingham, a prolific serial killer who claims to have between 80 and 100 victims. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is going to be dark… I had to step away from researching this a couple of times for my own mental health. I’m going to give a trigger warning now, this case discusses elements of sexual assault, torture, and murder of young women, some in their early teens. In part two there’s also some discussion of attempted suicide. As always, all my sources are listed in the show notes and on the webpage for this episode at www.nydarksidepodcast.com. I've also included some resources that are available for anyone who has been a victim of human trafficking or sexual assault that I will discuss a little further at the end, but for now let’s dive right into it-

[Amanda] Leslie Ann O’Dell arrived in New York City at the Port Authority Terminal via a greyhound bus from Washington State around dawn May 18, 1980. She was young, blond, beautiful, and looking to start a new life but arriving alone and without any money left her sitting on the bench at the terminal feeling some regret about her decision. She was approached by a man who introduced himself to her as Jimmy after chatting for a while, he invited her to have breakfast with him. He seemed friendly and understanding, so she accepted, and they continued to get to know each other over breakfast. Jimmy would offer her to come to his father’s house in New Jersey. What Leslie didn’t know then was that Jimmy was a recruiter for the sex trade, and that night she was given the opportunity to “try out” for a new career in sex work. She would spend the next few nights passed around to another pimp, working different streets around Manhattan, and terrified of the situation that she had found herself in. On the night of May 21, she was approached by a man in a blue and silver Chevy Caprice where she was assigned that night on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. The man introduced himself as ‘Tommy’ and he asked her to join him for a drink which she accepted. The man looked trustworthy enough with his sandy hair and neatly trimmed mustache. Over drinks he built her trust, talking about his house, his job, and a couple of girlfriends he had. He offered to help her get out of New York City and take her to a bus depot in New Jersey so she could start over again. She decided she didn’t have much to lose and took the chance to trust him and accepted. After leaving the bar, ‘Tommy’ took her to a 24-hour diner called New Star where he bought her a steak, French fries, and a coke and they talked some more. He brought up the topic of purchasing sex from her and they negotiated a price. Leslie thought that the money would help her in her plans to start over once she got to the bus depot. After they finished eating, he drove her to the Quality Inn Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights. It was early morning when they arrived, just starting to get light out as they checked in and “Tommy” paid the bill for Room 117. Once they got inside, Leslie went to freshen up a bit and Tommy stepped out of the room telling her that he wanted to move the car. He came back carrying both a paper bag and a duffle bag. They climbed into bed together and this is when Leslie’s nightmare would begin. 

[Amanda] The man claiming to be Tommy offered her a massage, which she accepted. She rolled onto her stomach, and he straddled her pinning her to the bed, but instead of a massage, she felt something sharp against her neck and could hear the sound of something jingling. Before she knew it, she was handcuffed and defenseless. In Rod Leith’s book, the Prostitute Murders, he goes into a great amount of detail of the incredible torture that Leslie would suffer at the hands of the man pretending to be Tommy. While I’m not going to go into that amount of depth, [Insert Sound Clip] this is your cue to skip ahead about 15 seconds or so if you would like. Over the next few hours Leslie suffered incredible trauma as she was beaten with his belt, cut repeatedly with the knife, raped, and sodomized. Tommy threatened to shoot her with a pistol he pulled out of one of the bags that he had retrieved earlier, forced her to perform oral sex, and savagely bit her breast to the point where he almost severed her nipple. Leslie, however, though I’m sure petrified, was not ready to give up without a fight. At one point he removed her leather gag and ordered her to give him a bath with her tongue. This was her chance. She was able to grab the pistol that Tommy had threatened her with from where it had ended up under the bed and she pulled it out taking aim at him. She told him not to move or she would shoot him. What she didn’t know was that the gun was a fake. Tommy grabbed the knife and came at her, when she pulled the trigger at the gun she had pointed at his chest, it failed. It was then that Leslie began to scream. Thankfully for Leslie, a housekeeper for the hotel named Eleanor was at this time making her rounds and heard Leslie’s panicked screams. 

[Amanda] Eleanor did not hesitate to act, because Eleanor was terrified… as were many of the other staff of the hotel. A few weeks earlier while cleaning room 132, Mary, another maid for the same Quality Inn had found the naked and handcuffed body of a young woman named Valorie Street hidden under one of the room’s double beds. That murder was still unsolved. Eleanor quickly alerted the front desk to the screams, and within moments they were on the phone with room 117. The hotel’s assistant manager, Todd, had called into the room and was speaking on the phone with Leslie. He told her that they had heard screams coming from her room and wanted to know if everything was okay. Leslie told him everything was fine, but Todd thankfully was not convinced by the tone of her voice and told her that he was coming to the room. Inside the room, the man she knew as Tommy was in a panicked rage and struck Leslie sending her tumbling across the room. Before he could do anything more though, Todd the assistant manager and Paula, the head housekeeper, were outside the door knocking and asking to see Leslie. Leslie was still naked, but Tommy told her to answer the door and to leave the chain lock engaged so they couldn’t see all the way in. Tommy stood behind her with the knife pressed against her back as she spoke through the gap. They asked her to open the door all the way, but she told them she couldn’t because she wasn’t dressed. With the trembling voice she told them that everything was okay and that she had just gotten into a fight with her boyfriend. Desperately, Leslie was signaling to them as best she could with her eyes and her hand to let them know that Tommy was behind her like a true bad-ass warrior. After they left, Tommy made her call the front desk, where Leslie spoke with Todd one more time, trying to reassure him that everything was okay but I’m sure her mind was screaming to him that it wasn’t. Todd and Paula were not at all convinced that Leslie was okay, and they called police. When Leslie got off the phone with the front desk, Tommy asked her if they were coming, Leslie said the only thing she could think of now, “yes, they are coming” before collapsing on the bed. Tommy decided now was the ideal time to flee, grabbing all of his shit, and running out the door.

[Amanda] The hotel staff was not about to let this man escape; they were attentively watching the room knowing the police were on their way. Patrolman Stanley Melowic was the first to arrive and was waved down by Todd, the hotel’s assistant manager. When the man claiming to be Tommy ran from the room, another hotel maid named Jean saw him, which caused him to alter his original course. Leslie emerged from the room screaming for them to stop him because he tried to kill her. Patrolman Melowic checked his shot gun and got out of his car, he could hear someone approaching him. A moment later, a man carrying a couple bags and what appeared to be a small caliber pistol raced into view. Melowic shouted at him to stop, raising his shotgun. After taking a few more steps, the man did stop and stood spreadeagle against the hotel’s wall. Melowic quickly disarmed the man and handcuffed him, and as he did so, the man told him that he “hadn’t done anything” he had “been with a hooker and gotten scared”. 

[Amanda] Meanwhile, back in room 117, Leslie was in absolute hysterics when Sergeant Edward Chermark arrived to meet with her. She was covered with a sheet and one of the hotel’s maids was trying to comfort her. Leslie had been handcuffed again, and the sergeant attempted to unlock them with his keys but was unable to. He went to the man they had apprehended, found some handcuff keys in his bag, and they unlocked the cuffs around Leslie’s wrists. Leslie was able to identify the Chevy Caprice that the man had brought her to the hotel in before being sent to an area hospital to be treated for her wounds. At the hotel, when looking into the man’s bags, police found more handcuffs, tape, a leather gag, collars used in S&M, a switchblade, replica pistols, and a stockpile of prescription pills including valium and barbiturates. The man when questioned said that everything that had happened between him and Leslie had been consensual and that he had paid her $180 dollars for sex, and she had agreed when they made the arrangement to let him do anything he wanted. The police were not buying it at all, and he was taken to Hasbrouck Heights police department. 

[Amanda] As you may have gathered, the man’s name was not Tommy at all. He would be identified as 34 year old Richard Cottingham who lived with his wife Janet, and their three children- Blair, Scott, and Jenny in Lodi, New Jersey. Yes, like many other serial killers- Dennis Radar, Gary Ridgeway, and Joseph DeAngelo for example- Richard Cottingham was living the life of a normal, everyday husband and father, and no one suspected him of any wrongdoing, let alone being a serial killer. At home, things were not all sunshine and rainbows though. Cottingham would tell investigators that things had gotten little rough with Leslie because he was really broken up about the fact that his wife Janet had filed for divorce which had been causing him a great deal of stress. Janet, had in fact filed for divorce in April of 1980, citing extreme cruelty. She would file in her motion for divorce that the family was often left without money for essentials, that Cottingham was gone from the home for prolonged periods most nights, that he was frequently visiting gay bars and bathhouses in Manhattan, or Plato’s Retreat- which was a swinger’s club. Which, I mean, you do you as long as everyone is on board... but this guy... Richard Cottingham also refused to have intimate relations with his wife after the birth of their youngest child. He told investigators that the day that he had met Leslie in Manhattan, he had found out that the divorce hearing had been postponed. He had decided then to go see a movie, which he couldn’t remember where he went or what he saw, then he went to a restaurant to eat, but again couldn’t recall where. After eating at the mysterious restaurant, he went to a couple of different bars to have some drinks. At one of the bars, he claimed Leslie approached him soliciting sex. He admitted to taking her a couple more places before they arrived at the Quality Inn Hotel where he registered under the name Tommy Caruthers. At this point he began to refer to Leslie as “the female subject”. He told police that he never threatened her, she agreed to everything that he did to her, and that he had handcuffed her at her request for her own sexual pleasure and that he had put ankle cuffs on her to keep her from running away in case she got panicky. Which, again, you do you, lots of people probably use handcuff during intimate situations, but I feel like this kind of contracticts the statements he's made because if she was agreeing to everyting, why would she run away? Anyway… not the point. At this point Cottingham requests a lawyer. 

[Amanda] I mentioned earlier that the hotel staff at the Quality Inn had been on edge due to a recent unsolved murder in another room of the hotel a couple weeks before. Investigators speaking to Richard Cottingham were aware of that case as well as one other unsolved murder from 1977 where a woman’s body had been found discarded in the parking lot of the Quality Inn Hotel. So, they began taking a much harder look at Richard Cottingham. 

[Amanda] Let’s back up and talk about his early life. Richard Francis Cottingham was born on November 25, 1946, in the Bronx, New York. His early life was really for the most part uneventful. He wasn’t abused, he didn’t come from a broken home, he doesn’t have any of the red flag items that you hear about with other’s that grow up to become so evil- no animal cruelty, no trouble with the law in his youth and adolescence. His father, William worked in insurance at Metropolitan Life. His mother, Anna was a homemaker. Richard was the oldest of three, with two younger sisters. As a young child, Richard was described as “somewhat odd” and had trouble making friends. When he was 12, his family moved to Rivervale, New Jersey in Bergen County to a large split-level home on Cleveland Avenue. He attended St. Andrews and started raising pigeons as a hobby. Later when he started at Pascack Valley High School, he had a bit of an easier time making friends, though classmates would later report when the news broke of his arrest that he often spoke about women in a negative manner. He was a member of the cross country and track team during high school. Cottingham would graduate from high school in 1964 and started working as a computer operator at the same insurance company as his father- Metropolitan Life. He took several computer classes while working there to increase his skills and after two years, he found a new job with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Greater New York where he worked in the center of the business district in midtown Manhattan working evening shift from 3pm-11pm. On a side note, for a period of time Richard Cottingham worked in the office with a man named Rodney Alcala who was using the alias, John Berger. Alcala was a fugitive child molester and serial killer who had come to Manhattan to hide out after beating and sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl that he had lured into his car and taken to his apartment on her way to school.  Both men would later claim to not have been aware of each other when questioned. The girl was found alive and spent 32 days in a coma and months in rehab after the incident. I feel bad for their co-workers… I can’t imagine finding out later that I was working with one sick, twisted serial killer let alone two… What’s the statistic they throw around, that over the course of your lifetime the average person walks past 36 murderers? Scary… I think about that a lot because a few years ago my family and I were at Arches National Park around the same time that Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie were there and I wonder if we happened to pass by each other because it was literally the same group of days that they were out there that we were there. Fucking scary. Anyway, back to Cottingham.

[Amanda] While things were seemingly going well at work, Richard did have some legal trouble in 1969 and in the early 1970’s. On October 3, 1969, Cottingham nearly mowed down a sidewalk full of people in Manhattan, was arrested for drunk driving, spent ten days in jail, and received a $50 fine. On May 3rd of 1970, Richard would marry his wife Janet at our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens. They would move to a small apartment at Ledgewood Terrace in Little Ferry, New Jersey and continued to commute to his job at Blue Cross Blue Shield in NY. Throughout their marriage, Richard would have many, many affairs, later bragging to investigators that he was cheating on Janet during their honeymoon. This guy… is a real asshole. On August 21, 1972, Cottingham was arrested after being caught shoplifting at a Stern’s Department Store in New Jersey. On September 4th, 1973, he was arrested again, this time for robbery, assault, and sodomy charges. Unfortunately, these charges would end up being dropped because the victim was a sex worker, she and her pimp had come forward with the complaints, however, neither of them came to the court proceedings. Despite the charges, Janet stayed with him. On October 15, 1973, Richard and Janet welcomed their first son, Blair. A few months later- March 12, 1974, Richard was arrested again for unlawful imprisonment and robbery of another sex worker. Once again, these charges would be dropped because the sex worker didn’t come to the proceedings. Richard and Janet would move their family to a three-bedroom home in Lodi, New Jersey in 1975. They welcomed their second son Scott on March 28, 1975, and their daughter Jenny on October 13, 1976. It was after Jenny was born that Richard told Janet that they would no longer be having sex. Soon after this he started an affair with a woman that would become a longer-term girlfriend to him named Barbara Lucas. 

[Amanda] At work, Cottingham appeared to be doing well. His bosses would describe him as one of their most experienced and productive computer operators. To his co-workers, he had a habit of running his mouth. He would brag about all his vices outside of work- hiring sex workers, gambling, S&M. He would talk about how he lured sex workers from Manhattan to New Jersey by showing them huge wads of cash consisting of thousands of dollars. But he wouldn't give his family money for essentials.... ugh.... okay... They had no idea what Richard Cottingham was truly getting into outside of work and that they were working with a dangerous serial killer who we now know has murdered at least 18 women between New York and New Jersey but claims to have murdered as many as 80-100 total and may be connected to unsolved murders in other states including Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. We’ll likely never know the true extent of the horror and torture he committed upon his victims and he’s seriously just fine with that. He’s not been the most forthcoming with information. I’ve put his picture on social media, but if you haven’t seen it, when you first look at pictures of him from the last few years, he looks like he could be sitting in your local department store as Santa… A really evil fucked up Santa. Back in the early 60’s he wasn’t a bad looking man, on our website I’ve posted his senior yearbook photo. If he’s to be believed, he likely committed his first murder about then. As of 2024, he’s now 77 years old, and likely nearing the end of his natural life in a New Jersey State Prison. After his arrest on May 22, 1980, and during the subsequent investigation and court proceedings, they would learn the true darkness and depravity of Mr. Cottingham. 

[Amanda] It’s important to understand that at the time all of this was going on, New York’s City’s Times Square was a much different place than it is now. In the late 1960’s and 70’s, it was a place of high crime, sex trafficking, drug use, and violence. Almost all the subway systems go through Times Square. The Port Authority Bus Terminal brings in people visiting New York from all over. Anthony Bianco, an author who wrote the book “Ghosts of 42nd Street” would say of Times Square “42nd Street was a collecting point for all sorts of people. It was alike a drain. Everything came there”. During this time there were upwards of 1,200 sex workers a night out on the streets turning tricks. The sexual culture of 42ndstreet was led by a man named Martin Hodas. In the 1960’s Hodas started building private viewing booths for peep shows. This continued to grow into live peep shows, swingers’ clubs, massage parlors, and more. Along with the increase in these establishments came increases in drug use and trafficking, mob activity, and violence particularly against women. Unfortunately, police would often look away in instances of crimes against sex workers. They even adopted an unofficial acronym- N.H.I. when creating reports on sex workers found deceased which stood for No Human Involved in the deaths during the 1970’s and 1980’s meaning that no investigation would be conducted… How many of these women could have been victims of Richard Cottingham or other violent offenders in this time frame? It’s fucking disgusting. Richard Cottingham had no shortage of potential victims, and he took full advantage of it. It didn’t help that there were deep financial problems for the city, leading to 5,000 first responders being laid off causing a surge in more crime. It got so bad that in the mid 1970’s the Council for Public Safety released a pamphlet called “Welcome to Fear City- A Survival Guide for Visitors of the City of New York” complete with an image of a hooded skull to try to discourage tourists from coming to the city. I’ve linked an article in the show notes where you can go to see a copy of the pamphlet. Mayor Abe Beame would eventually form the Office of Midtown Enforcement to help curb the crime and start to clean up the more than 450 illicit establishments that had become the center of Times Square. 

[Amanda] Not long after Cottingham’s arrest in late May of 1980, as part of their investigation, police of course searched the Cottingham’s home. They would quickly find that Richard had a secret trophy room… a room in the basement that he kept locked that no one was allowed to enter. They found women’s clothing items, jewelry, purses, perfume, there were books highlighting torture porn and bondage, motel keys, and some items that would be connected to two unsolved cases in Bergen County New Jersey connected to the Quality Inn Hotel. A small Koala bear that belonged to Valorie Street, the victim from Quality Inn’s room 132 from a few weeks earlier and the key to the exterior door of the apartment complex from an unsolved homicide victim who was found in the Quality Inn Parking lot in 1977. 

[Amanda] On December 15, 1977, 26-year-old Mary Ann Carr went missing from her home at Ledgewood Terrace Apartments. Mary Ann was a beautiful brunette who was said to have a striking smile. She was a cheerleader in high school and after graduation she studied to become a radiology technician. I want to make a quick note here that in most of the sources they bounce between referring to Mary Ann as a nurse and an x-ray technician. I saw this consistently across sources from news articles, to books, and in some of the docuseries. As a nurse by trade, I can honestly say, I cannot do the same things my friends in diagnostic imaging can do, they’re different skill sets. Shout out to all of you guys because we need you to do what we do. Anyway, the point I am trying to get to is that investigators keep discussing Mary Ann was wearing a “nurses’ uniform” when she was found which I am going to go on a limb and guess were likely scrubs. Why this is relevant I’ll get to later, but I have a theory that likely her work uniform may have played a factor in why she was chosen by Richard Cottingham as one of his victims. Mary Ann dated a variety of men, from cops, to doctors, and had been married once previously. She married her second husband, Michael Carr about a year prior to her disappearance. Michael had to take a business trip to Rochester, New York and would be gone about a week. While he was gone, his mother Catherine had agreed to promised to keep Mary Ann company. Mary Ann spent the night of December 14th at Catherine’s house in Hackensack. On December 15th, Mary Ann got up and went to work in Englewood where she put in a full day, getting done at almost 7pm. She had plans to spend the night at her mother in law’s house again, but prior to going there, she drove to Ledgewood Terrace Apartments in Little Ferry, New Jersey, where she lived with Michael in apartment 112. A neighbor would later report that sometime between 7:30 and 7:40 pm he was getting in his car and saw Mary Ann standing outside her car talking to a man that he assumed at the time was Michael. He didn’t think there was anything odd about this, he just thought they were just having a conversation, no one seemed to be in any distress. He would glance at them one more time while pulling out of his parking space and driving away. This was the last time that Mary Ann was seen alive. Mary Ann would enter her apartment, make herself a drink and light a cigarette. Sometime after 7:30 pm the neighbor across the hall would hear a woman scream. Knowing some of the tenants in the building were having marital problems, she didn’t know what to do when she heard this so she would report when questioned later that she just stood near her front door. Around 8pm Catherine would try reaching Mary Ann by phone, but got no response. After not being able to get in touch with her for over three hours, she called her nephew Robert who lived in another building in the same apartment complex. He agreed to go check to see if Mary Ann was home. He would tell investigators that he was able to use his key to his apartment building’s exterior door to enter her building’s exterior door. After knocking on her apartment door and not getting an answer, he tried the handle and the door was unlocked. He would find Mary Ann’s half-finished drink and cigarette, but no other signs of where she could be. Robert called his Aunt Catherine back, and they agreed that they would reach out to Michael who was still in Rochester, and to Little Ferry Police. While police did respond to the apartment, there was little they could do because they couldn’t find anything to indicate something had happened to Mary Ann. Sometime in the early morning hours, a police officer would note seeing an orange/red Camaro, Mary Ann’s car, in front of building 470 at Ledgewood Terrace. Mary Ann lived in building 462, which looking at Google Maps doesn’t look like a huge distance to walk, but… I’m wondering if they had assigned parking spaces and if so, hers would likely be in front of her building, not there. This mystery about the parking of her car is potentially relevant because Richard Cottingham used to live in building 470 with Janet before they moved to their current home in Lodi two years prior. Mary Ann’s body was found later that day on December 16th in the parking lot of the Quality Inn Motel between the curb and chain link fence of the parking lot. She had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles and a mark around her neck. The left leg of her pants had been cut as well as a bunch of her hair. Her shoes, coat, and purse were all missing. There was tape residue around her mouth. She was not sexually assaulted. 

[Amanda] After Mary Ann’s death, police began to find victims of sexual assault in this area, either along the side of the road or in motel rooms. Some of these women, not all, were sex workers. They had all been tortured in a similar manner, but their attacker had not been identified. Additionally, there were several unsolved homicides in the time between Mary Ann Carr’s death and the arrest of Richard Cottingham. One of those was, as I mentioned was Valorie Street. Valorie was 19 and had arrived in New York City early in May of 1980 from Florida. She had been arrested on April 15th in Miami on a prostitution charge and she was on the run. She found a room at the Hotel Seville with another sex worker named Theresa and they became friends. Early in the morning on May 4th, Valorie was seen working the streets dressed in a white blouse, jeans, and white tennis shoes off Madison Avenue. Around 3 AM, using the name Shelley Dudley, she booked room 132 at the Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights. She wasn’t seen by workers of the hotel after that until her body was found by the maid cleaning the room on May 5th. The maid had noticed that one of the beds in the room appeared to not have been slept in but that the bed coverings had been moved slightly. While vacuuming under the bed, she felt the vacuum hit something. When she bent to look, she found Valorie’s dead body lying handcuffed under the bed, a strip of white adhesive tape over her mouth. Valorie had bruises over most of her torso and had endured a tremendous amount of torture before her life had been taken from her. Her autopsy would reveal that she had eaten a short time before her death. She had also consumed a large amount of alcohol and had been drugged. Trigger warning here- her autopsy would show signs of both sexual assault and sodomy. Her breasts had been badly bitten, to the point that one of her nipples was almost removed. Investigators wound find that all her personal belongings had been removed from the room, the bedding from the one bed had been removed and was saturated with water, and there was no physical evidence of the killer initially found. They did send the handcuffs that had been around Valorie’s wrists off for testing and were able to pull a thumbprint. This print would later be matched to Richard Cottingham. This asshole likely celebrated his tenth wedding anniversary by himself instead of with Janet, which granted, they were in the process of divorcing, but if he's really broking up about his fucking marriage ending, don't you think you would spend your time trying to get with your wife? Especially on your anniversary? Instead, he spent his time alone, trolling for victims late into the night on May 3rd, met up with Valorie, wined, dined, and drugged her, then tortured, and killed her. He’s a sick fuck. It wound take investigators quite some time to gather information about Valorie, since they only had her alias and an address in Florida to go on when she was found. But they would eventually track thigns don, get a hold of her roomate Theresa, who helped in identifying her and kind of creating the timeline that we have for her later. 

[Amanda] As investigators continued to build their case against Cottingham, they brought in some of the women who had been victims of torture and sexual assault that might be connected to their case. One of the first of those known victims was Karen Schilt on March 22, 1978, a few months after the murder of Mary Ann Carr. Karen was working as a waitress at a bar called Tuesday’s in Manhattan at the time. Around 6 pm on March 22, Karen got off work and had a couple pina colada’s before taking a bus over to Bellevue hospital where her husband was a patient after suffering a broken leg. She stayed and visited with him about an hour and then returned to Tuesday’s where she filled in a part of a shift for a co-worker. After finishing that shift, she left and started for home, but was feeling upset after her visit with her husband. They were in the process of divorcing but when she had been to visit, the mother of a past girlfriend had come and was trying to patch up his relationship with her daughter. It was a bit of a mess, so Karen decided to stop at a bar on the way home for a drink to help calm her nerves. While she was sitting at the bar, enjoying her drink, she was joined by a man that she would later describe as being about 5 foot 10, about 170 pounds, clean shaven, and nicely dressed in an open collar shirt and sports jacket. He started to engage in conversation with her, and she politely made some small talk with him before taking her drink from the bar to a table to be alone again. After a few minutes, the man joined her at the table. They talked a little more, Karen confided in him that she was getting a divorce from her husband and had been seeing another man, by whom she was now pregnant. The man went to the bar and came back with two drinks, Karen would later testify that she had not watched him at the bar while he had gotten them. After sipping some of the drink he had bought her, Karen began to feel off, like she needed to lie down. She thanked the man for her drink and left the bar, starting down 3rd Ave toward her apartment. She would not make it very far; she was having difficulty walking and was stumbling. A few moments later a blue and silver car pulled up to the curb and the man inside offered her a ride. She accepted, though she would later say this was not something she would have normally done, but she felt unsafe walking in her condition. Karen lost consciousness in the car, waking at one point and seeing the road signs for interstate 80 in New Jersey. During the ride, the man would force her to take a red and blue capsule that he called Tulenol and she would pass out again. She would wake up again to find that the car was now parked in a dark area. Karen was incapacitated from the combination of being drugged and the alcohol she had consumed, she was not able to fight him. She would later recall feeling a burning feeling in her breasts and later being thrown from the car. She was found around 9 AM the following morning by Little Ferry Police in a drainage ditch behind a car at Ledgewood Terrace Apartment complex, the same apartment complex where Cottingham had lived with his family until 1975 and where Mary Ann Carr had been abducted from a few months earlier. Her shirt was pulled up exposing her chest and police noted that one of her breasts had been burned with a cigarette and brutally bitten. Her pants were undone and pulled around her ankles. Her coat, scarf, purse, and a ring were missing. She was treated for her injuries at Hackensack Hospital. Blood tests would confirm that she had been drugged with a combination of secobarbital and amobarbital, which combined in a capsule is called Tulenol. 

[Amanda] On September 10, 1978, Susan Geiger, a pregnant blond sex worker would have her first encounter with Richard Cottingham. She was walking from an apartment of a regular client at the corner of 47th and Broadway when a man in a blue 1973 Ford Thunderbird honked and waved her over to him. The man asked if she was a working girl, which she told him she was. Susan would recall that the man flashed a huge pile of cash at her, but she was tired, and told him to call her the next day, giving him her number where she was staying with her boyfriend and pimp at the Alpine hotel. The man did call her the following day and they set up a time to meet at the Burger King near the hotel she was living in. The man called himself Jim and she described him as having sandy hair, weighing about 175 pounds, wearing wire rim glasses over his blue eyes. He was nicely dressed in a beige sports jacket, white shirt, and black pants. He promised her $200 for some drinks and sex. While Susan would later say she usually didn’t get in the car with anyone, she trusted the nicely dressed man, and agreed to ride over to First Avenue to Flanagan’s bar. Once there, the man asked her to get some cigarettes while he got them drinks. She told him she hadn’t been drinking due to being pregnant, but he asked her to please share one drink with her and she accepted because she needed the money. When she got back to the table with the cigarettes, she noted that the man had bought her a vodka and orange juice, and was stirring it for her with the straw, which he continued to do as they sat and talked. He told her that he was married, had five kids, worked with computers, lived in New Jersey, and wanted to get a divorce. She started to feed drowsy, the man calling himself Jim told her it was probably due to her pregnancy, and she said he offered to pay her for her time and take her back to the Alpine Hotel, but she declined because she needed the money. She suggested they go to the Remington Hotel. As they headed to his car, he had to nearly carry her due to her drowsiness. She would recall feeling extremely out of it and not sure where they were going as he drove but would recall going over a bridge at some point. She would later recall waking up and realizing they were in a motel room, where he beat her, bit her, sexually assaulted and sodomized her. She tried to fight him to protect herself and her baby, but she would end up falling unconscious again, later waking up on the floor of room 28 at the Airport Motel bruised and bloody. Her purse and jewelry were gone.  She would be taken to Hackensack Hospital for treatment of her injuries. Blood tests would confirm that she had also been given a combination of secobarbital and amobarbital. She did attempt to pick out the man who had assaulted her from mug shots after leaving the hospital but was only able to find one that vaguely resembled him. 

[Amanda] On May 12, 1980, ten days before the assault on Leslie Ann O’Dell that would lead to Cottingham’s arrest, a sex worker named Pamela Weisenfeld was found dumped in a vacant parking lot in Teaneck, New Jersey. She had also been drugged, beaten, raped, and her breasts had been severely bitten. She would later identify Richard Cottingham as her attacker. What investigators didn’t know when they found her was that her attack was part of a spree that Cottingham was on as he bounced between attacking women in New York and New Jersey. They would find this out in the days after news broke of his arrest when members of New York’s Time Square task force reached out to Bergen County because they had a couple cases that might match Cottingham’s modus operandi. But that we’re going to save for part two. 

[Amanda] Wow… guys, as I said, this is a dark one, truly living up to the name of the podcast. I mentioned at the start I had to walk away from this one while researching quite a few times and take a break from true crime in general because this one is just pure evil and it’s only going to get darker as we dive into part 2 which will be released next week. Before I jump to updates regarding the show, I wanted to share some information and resources that are available for some of the topics that we’ve discussed today. According to the Polaris project: In 2021, 10,359 situations of human trafficking were reported to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline involving 16,554 individual victims. Reports of human trafficking are very likely under reported, so this is only a fraction of the picture. The Polaris Project operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline in the United States, if you or someone you know need help you can call 1-888-373-7888 or Text “BeFree” to 233733. You can go to polarisproject.org for more information, resources, statistics, or education regarding Human Trafficking and the work they are doing in prevention and for the survivors. 

[Amanda] The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) is another resource that I wanted to share, they are the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence resource and run the National Sexual Assault Hotline. If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, you can call 1-800-656-4273 for help and support, download their mobile app, or visit www.rainn.org

[Amanda]I'm excited to announce that I have teamed up with the Polaris Project to help raise funds to support their work in th eprevention and advocacy to end human trafficking. Linked in the show notes, you'll find the  URL to the fundraising page if you are interested in donating to their cause, so please consider making a donation if you are able. Any amount helps. If you can't donate, that's okay too, you can help by takinga moment to share with the community to hep spread awareness and help us with our goal in that way. And finally to close us out, I just wanted to give a quick couple of updates about the show in general. I mentioned at the beginning that even though I haven't released episodes in the last several weeks, I have been working on them in the bacground and have several epsiodes that are already done and ready to go to help ensure that we continue to release episodes weekly as I have always intended to do in the past. Life has kind of had a tendency to get away from me at times, so I had to scramble some weeks to get content out at the last minute. This should hopefully not be the case going forward. I think my upcoming schedule has a variety of content that has a good balance between true crime elements, as well as history around New York, and some other exciting things that I've had on the radar. I've also got a special guest host coming in a couple of weeks so I am excited to bring her on an dhope to have her poppin into the show for guest host appearances every now and again in the fugure. One other things that I have been working on is building the show's Patreon page. right now I have two teirs and I am planning on adding a third. The first tier is $2.00 a month- you'll get a shout out on an upcoming episode, my eternal gratitude, and sneak peaks of upcoming epsiodes. For $5.00 a month, you'll get the same benefits of the $2.00 tier and early access to the next week's episode. The proceeds from the show will go back to the show to help support the cost of equipment, programs, and research materials to keep the show running and a portion of the proceeds will also go towards our fundraising campaign with the Polaris Project. I think that about covers the business side of things for now. I'm excited to be back in action and just want to tank you fro your patientce while I've dealth with life. Just one more quick reminder, if you haven't already donse so, please make sure you're following the show on your podcast platform of choice for updates on when new episodes launch. I'd also greatly appreciate it if you could consider giving the show a rating or a share so that our dark side community can continue to grow. I hope you all have a great week ahead and I will be back next week with the second installment of New York's Torso Killer, Richard Cottingham. I hope you keep listening and I hope you stay curious.