Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (22 page)

His mother chose to relocate to Florida at this time and asked Richard and Janet to go with her but they decided to remain in New Jersey, causing a family row.

Theft

Richard soon came to the notice of the authorities again, this time for shoplifting from a department store. Like many sexual sadists he got some of his kicks from stealing and from the possibility of being caught. Such acts gave him an adrenalin surge, made him feel more alive. He felt invincible up until the moment when the store detective detained him. On 30 August 1972 he appeared in court and was given a $50 fine.

Fatherhood

The following year – in October 1973 – his first son was born.

Richard at first appeared delighted and called the boy Blair, a name he would later use to introduce himself to prostitutes.

He continued to have ordinary sex with Janet but his fantasies grew increasingly dark…

Alleged sodomy

Shortly before Blair’s first birthday, on 4 September 1974, the 27-year-old allegedly tortured a teenager. A 17-year-old prostitute 183

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was extensively bitten, sodomised and sexually assaulted in a hotel room by a man answering Richard Cottingham’s description. He also robbed her of her inexpensive jewellery.

He was arrested and taken to court, but the teenager failed to show up so the charges were dismissed.

Another alleged assault

Six months later – on 12 February 1975 – a man again strongly matching Richard Cottingham’s description took a 19-year-old prostitute to a west side hotel in New York, where he handcuffed and sexually assaulted her. He also robbed her of her costume jewellery, something Cottingham would do fetishistically again and again. A chambermaid testified that she’d found the distressed prostitute in handcuffs, but there wasn’t enough proof of sexual assault to make a watertight case and again the charges against the supposedly respectable family man were dismissed.

Further children

Richard and Janet continued to procreate, producing a second son in March 1975 and a daughter in October 1976. The family settled in a modest three-bedroom house in Lodi, half an hour’s drive from New York.

After the birth of their daughter, Richard refused to resume sexual relations with his wife, telling her that she was fat and ugly. In this, he resembled many criminal sadists who endlessly criticise a woman once they know she’s in love with them.

Retreating into his extremely rich fantasy life, Richard put a lock on the basement door and turned it into his den where he’d stay for hours, masturbating over his large collection of sadomasochistic novels. But he wanted to put a real woman into non-consensual bondage and make her scream.

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Maryann Carr’s murder

On 15 December 1977, 26-year-old radiologist Maryann Carr was heard talking with a man in her flat at a time when her husband was out of town. A neighbour heard Maryann scream ‘I will, I will’, then all went silent. The beautiful young woman was abducted from her apartment, handcuffed at her wrists and ankles and had her mouth taped shut.

Taken to an unknown location, she was beaten with a blunt instrument and extensively bitten and possibly suffocated during the assault: whatever the abuse, her lungs collapsed.

Her body was dumped near the car park of a New Jersey motel (a motel to which Richard Cottingham would take future victims) – and a man matching his description had been seen talking to Maryann in the car park shortly before she disappeared. Cottingham also had a friend who lived in Maryann’s apartment complex, a friend whom he’d fallen out with. After the row, his friend’s house had been ransacked and the key to the apartment complex’s door had been stolen, a key which would have given the killer closer access to Maryann. Equally damning was the fact that Maryann’s car was abandoned in a street where Richard Cottingham used to live.

A year passed after Maryann’s murder in which there were no other known bondage murders in the area. But Richard spoke about the death to his colleagues constantly, speculating as to how the killer had managed to infiltrate the complex when it was securely locked. Again, this was classic serial killer behaviour – several of the serial sadists in this book talked in general terms to colleagues about murders they’d been responsible for, or even hinted that they’d committed some dark deeds.

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Karen’s ordeal

On 23 September 1978, Cottingham approached 22-year-old Karen Schilt in a bar in New York. Karen had just been to hospital to visit her estranged husband and was having a quick drink before starting her waitress job. The innocuous looking computer operator asked her if she was a working girl and she explained that she worked in a restaurant. They talked for a while and she told him that she had two children by her estranged husband and that she was pregnant with her new boyfriend’s child. Cottingham insisted on buying her several drinks, drinks he’d drugged.

Beginning to feel dizzy but assuming that it was because of her pregnancy, Karen left the bar and began to walk along the sidewalk. As she stumbled along the road, Richard Cottingham drew up and asked her if she wanted a lift.

She lost consciousness in the car and revived later to find that it was dark and that they were parked behind an apartment complex. Cottingham now lit a cigarette and extensively burnt her breasts, aroused by her moaning. He also bit them repeatedly.

After removing her jewellery from her body, he threw her out of the car into a car park where she was found unconscious.

(The car park was next to murder victim Maryann’s apartment.) Karen remained insensible for five hours and was kept in hospital for several days.

Susan’s ordeal

On 11 October 1978, Richard arranged to have sex with 19-year-old Susan Geiger for money. He bought her a drink first and slipped two heavy-duty tranquillisers into it.

In retrospect, Susan Geiger’s instincts told her that Cottingham was no good. He’d parked his car so close to the car in front that she couldn’t see his licence plate, insisted on 186

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buying her alcohol even when she didn’t want any, and stirred her glass again and again, demanding that she drink the contents through a straw to avoid germs on the glass.

But Susan needed the money so she ignored her misgivings and drank the alcohol. As she became drowsy, Cottingham walked her to a motel room where she passed out. He stripped her and beat her with a rubber hose but she revived during the beating and was forced to fellate her captor before she lost consciousness again. When she next awoke she found that the man had raped and sodomised her and bitten her all over, concentrating especially on her nipples. He’d also taken her jewellery and her clothes.

Chillingly, she bumped into Cottingham a few days later and he tried to brazen it out, asking, ‘What happened to you that night?’ The traumatised teenager began screaming and two men came to her rescue, whereupon Richard Cottingham fled the scene.

Separation

The following year, Janet Cottingham filed for divorce citing mental cruelty. For the last few years she had rarely seen her husband – and when he was home he alternately mocked and ignored her. She now moved herself and her children to Poughkeepsie and supported herself through part-time work.

Cottingham was enraged at her decision and tried to halt the divorce proceedings. He might not want her, but he wanted to remain in control.

Two murders

On the evening of Wednesday 29 November 1979, Cottingham booked into a downmarket hotel on West 42nd Street, a street frequented by prostitutes. He soon persuaded 23-year-old Kuwaiti beauty Deedeh Goodarzi back to his hotel. The young 187

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Muslim prostitute had given birth to a baby four months earlier which was being cared for by friends.

He also lured a teenage girl – unidentified and so later referred to in court as Miss X – back to the same room, though no one knows if he killed one woman and then abducted another or if he tortured them both at the same time. (Sadistic co-killers such as the Hillside Stranglers and Bittaker and Norris sometimes abducted and killed pairs of girls. And Ivan Milat, profiled later in this book, killed heterosexual pairs.)

Throughout that night and for the next three days, Cottingham indulged himself in an orgy of sadistic excess. He burnt his gagged and bound victims over and over with cigarettes, beat them with a whip and bit extensively around their breasts.

After eventually murdering both women, Cottingham cut off their hands and heads and packed them with the rest of his luggage. The sadist knew that it would be very hard for police to identify bodies which had no facial features and no fingerprints – and if they couldn’t identify the women, they couldn’t trace the murders back to him.

Determined to rid the room of any forensic traces, he poured lighter fluid over the vaginas of both corpses and set them alight. Then, as the flames leapt from the mattress and began to burn the carpet, he calmly left the room.

Carrying a bag which probably held the prostitutes’ heads and hands, he bumped into movie production assistant Peter Vronsky who noticed that the overweight guest with the bad haircut was perspiring slightly. Cottingham ignored Vronsky and seemed lost in thought.

Another girlfriend

From February to May 1980, he was busy dating yet another girlfriend, a 28-year-old nurse. He’d told his colleagues that nurses were often promiscuous so he eagerly sought 188

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them out. It was a gross generalisation but no one picked him up on it.

Several of Richard’s workmates used prostitutes and he would brag about having sex with these girls then departing the motel without paying them. He showed them how to leave via the fire exits of cheap motels.

He also made loans of several thousand dollars to some of his colleagues on the understanding that they paid him interest.

Cottingham used the money from his loan sharking to go gambling and became very good at it. But a night in a casino or in the arms of a loving girlfriend couldn’t compete with the thrill of torturing a girl until she agreed to do anything that he desired.

Valorie Street’s murder

On 4 May 1980, he got into conversation with Valorie Ann Street (who also used the name Shelly Dudley) and she accompanied him to a motel in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. There they stripped off their clothes and he handcuffed the 19-year-old prostitute’s arms behind her back and gagged her with adhesive tape. He whipped her on the shins and progressed to beating her all over her body, also viciously raping and sodomising her. He cut her stomach and breasts with a knife, biting the latter so savagely that the right nipple was almost torn off.

It’s likely that Valorie was unable to scream loudly enough to alert hotel staff as she’d been given strong tranquillisers and alcohol. Eventually, after at least six hours of extensive and repeated torture, he strangled her to death.

The sadist now found that he’d lost the key to the handcuffs so he left them in situ and stuffed Valorie’s naked corpse under the bed where it was found the following day by an aghast chambermaid.

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Pamela’s ordeal

On 11 May 1980, Cottingham may have struck again.

Pamela Weisenfeld, a 27-year-old prostitute, met with a man answering Cottingham’s description who drugged her, beat her and ferociously bit her breasts. She regained consciousness in a New Jersey car park to find that her handbag and jewellery were missing. But the court would later find him not guilty of this particular attack due to lack of evidence.

Jean Reyner’s murder

Soon Cottingham’s cruel lust rebuilt, and on 15 May 1980 he approached 25-year-old Jean Mary Ann Reyner. The young prostitute accompanied him to a hotel she frequented near Madison Avenue.

There she suffered for an unknown period of time after Cottingham cuffed and gagged her. He mutilated her body with a knife and finally progressed to stabbing her again and again until she expired. Post-mortem, he severed both her breasts, putting them on top of the bed’s headboard before setting fire to her vagina and leaving the hotel. Sadists carry out such acts after death has occurred as a confused way of further

‘hurting’ the victim and because they’re aware of how shocking the scene will be to everyone who enters the room.

During this period he continued to date women who weren’t prostitutes, sometimes taking them away for weekend breaks.

He gave one girlfriend a novel to read which featured mutilation murders, telling her that it was great.

The nal torture victim

On 22 May 1980, he picked up 18-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell and bought her a meal at an all-night diner. She told him that she was desperate to escape from her pimp and he agreed to 190

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help. In turn, she agreed to have sex with him for $100 and was pleased that her luck was about to change.

Incredibly, Cottingham took her to the motel where he’d left Valorie’s corpse under the bed 18 days before. He felt invincible. After all, he’d been torturing and killing women for years and had never gone to jail for it.

When they were naked on the bed he offered Leslie a back rub and she rolled onto her stomach, whereupon he snapped handcuffs on her wrists. Telling her that she was a whore and that she had to be punished, he added that he intended to cut her face, breasts, vagina and anus.

For the next four hours he did just that, biting her breasts until they bled and cutting them lightly. He sodomised her so brutally that her anus was torn. He also raped her and beat her all over her body with a leather belt – and when she looked as if she was going to pass out from the pain and fear, he revived her by wiping her face with a damp cloth. This is textbook sadistic behaviour, with the sadist determined that his victim isn’t going to escape into unconsciousness.