[car door opens]
[Wendy Naugle] We were stunned, at People,
when we first learned about a serial killer
who earned many names over the years.
From the Times Square killer...
to the Bergen Strangler.
No one, it seemed, was safe from his sadism.
[Ruth Good] She thought, "I don't need
somebody babying me by driving me home."
And we did not see her again after that.
A lot of people figured a psycho was on the loose,
and tonight, that may well be true.
[man] He enjoyed how he could outsmart somebody.
Getting them into his car.
It was a game for him.
[reporter] There were two dead girls, their heads and hands removed.
[Vernon Geberth] It was the hotel room from hell.
I knew immediately that we're dealing with a psychopathic sexual sadist.
[Alan Grieco] But we had no idea that he was one of the most prolific killers
in US history.
[killer speaking]
[theme music playing]
[Ruth] Midland Park in Bergen County
in 1968 was like,
just a little hometown.
Everybody knew everybody.
Eight thousand people.
Nobody locked doors.
Nobody had a care in the world back then.
My name is Suzan Mulder and I'm Jackie Harp's sister.
My older sister Clara,
Dottie, Cathy,
myself and Jackie.
She was the youngest of five. She was fun.
Independent. Just full of life.
In 1968, I was 15 years old.
Jackie was 13.
Jackie was just bubbly, funny, sense of humor
that just didn't quit.
She found something funny and happy in just about everything.
Although she's always trying to be like her older sisters,
and do whatever they are doing,
as a young teen, Jackie becomes involved
with the Imperial Knights Color Guard as a flag carrier.
The, um, Imperial Knights were a Drum and Bugle Corp.
You see those all the time at football games and stuff like that.
Our parents were very proud of Jackie.
This is her in her Imperial Knights uniform.
That's a favorite.
She looks very proud in this picture.
On the night of July 17th, 1968, I was out with friends.
Jackie had practice with the Imperial Knights that night.
[Ruth] This is the barn that we used to practice in.
When we were done, a bunch of people offered Jackie a ride home,
and she opted to walk home instead.
Jackie was just very independent.
She thought, "I don't need somebody babying me by driving me home."
[Suzan] I came home. Must have been later than 9:00.
And my mom said that Jackie wasn't home yet.
And she was getting worried.
And, you know, I said, "She'll be home soon, Mom. Don't worry.
It's okay, don't worry about it."
Well, you know, it went on and on and on
and she said, "Well, we need to go looking for her."
It got to be later and later.
So that's when we went down to the police station,
to report that she hadn't come home.
But after we reported her to the police,
we could see that something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
And my mother asked where Jackie was.
That's when they told us.
"We found your daughter. She's dead."
[sniffles]
[Wendy] Police find Jackie's body
in a brook in Midland Park.
There's a bruise on Jackie's face,
and red marks on her neck.
This 13-year-old schoolgirl
had been strangled with the sling from her own uniform.
My mother was just hysterical,
and she just couldn't handle it.
Everything was just like a blur to us.
You just don't believe what you're hearing.
You just cannot imagine hearing those words.
[Ruth] It... It was horrible.
I just kept asking my mother, "What do you mean, she's dead?
What do you mean, they found her body?"
I could not
believe what my mother was saying.
It took a while to really process that
I'm not gonna see Jackie again.
[Wendy] In 1968, the Midland Park police
interviewed everyone they could in this small town,
but shockingly little evidence ever came to light.
[Ruth] I never heard anything about a suspect.
I just remember hearing lots of accusations.
Everybody suspected everybody else.
You kinda almost trusted nobody anymore.
After a while, the phone calls would be less and less.
But my mother never lost her faith
that someday...
that Jackie's killer would be found.
[Corin Cesaric] While they continue to search for Jackie's killer,
the police notice that bodies keep turning up.
Throughout the late 1960s and early '70s,
there were eight unsolved murders
of young women strangled to death
in Bergen County.
[Ruth] I heard about some of the other girls
because they were close to Midland Park.
They were still Bergen County.
Bergen County is not that big.
And it was like, "What's going on?"
That's when we thought that maybe...
there was a connection to my sister's case.
And that somebody is out there,
targeting these girls.
[Corin] Authorities believe that there is one person
responsible for all these murders.
And the press starts calling him the Bergen Strangler.
[Ruth] The Bergen Strangler ended us going to the malls,
going shopping, going to visit your friends in town.
You were always afraid to go anywhere alone anymore.
[Corin] The investigations go on for years,
but there are no suspects named or arrested.
And unfortunately, all of these cases,
including Jackie Harp's, go cold.
[Wendy] Then nine years later, with the Bergen Strangler a distant memory,
the county, once again, find itself facing a string of murders.
My name is Nancy Kohlhoff
and I was a cousin of Maryann Carr.
Maryann was so pretty and so sweet.
She was just a beautiful, outgoing girl.
Her parents loved her so very much.
[Alan] In December 1977,
Maryann and Michael had only been married
approximately a year a half.
Michael was a young real estate executive.
Maryann was a young medical technician.
The newlyweds lived at the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments in Middlebury.
[Wendy] Ledgewood Terrace is a typical garden apartment setup.
Three floors, multiple buildings surrounding the parking lot.
It was a really nice place to live in the '70s.
[Nancy] She was just starting a new life with her husband.
She had her dream job.
It was a great start to a bright future.
[Alan] On December 9th, 1977,
Michael left for a business trip
in Rochester, New York.
He was expected to be up there several days.
[Vernon] On December 15th, 1977,
Maryann Carr was supposed to meet her mother-in-law for supper,
because her husband was out of town on a business trip.
-[phone ringing] -But she failed to arrive.
[Alan] She called a number of times that evening
and had received no answer.
And at 11:45, decided to call her nephew,
who lived in the same apartment complex
as Maryann,
and asked him to go over and check to see if she was okay.
[Wendy] He grabs the extra key
that Maryann and Michael gave him to their place,
and heads over to their building.
[Alan] When he got to the apartment building,
he used his key to enter the outside door
and proceeded downstairs to Apartment 112,
where Maryann and Michael lived.
[Corin] The doorknob is surprisingly unlocked,
so he peers inside the apartment...
He sees the kitchen, bedroom and living room lights on.
But there's no sign of Maryann.
He was very concerned about Maryann's wellbeing.
So much so, in fact, that he immediately called the police.
[Wendy] He describes Maryann to the police.
She's in her late 20s, medium-length hair,
and she's an X-ray technician.
He decides to reach out for Michael.
Michael decides to fly back first thing in the morning.
Unfortunately, before Michael can return home,
there's a dreadful discovery.
[Alan] Next morning at 7:15 a.m.,
the body of a white female
had been found in the parking lot of the Quality Inn
on Route 17 South, in Hasbrouck Heights.
Matched the description of Maryann Carr.
[Alan] When I arrived at the Quality Inn hotel,
I was directed to the southwest corner
of the parking lot,
where I saw the body of a white female
wearing a white uniform,
which appeared to be a nurse's outfit.
It does not take long for authorities to realize
this is 26-year-old Maryann Carr.
And she is still wearing her uniform
from the day before.
Investigators canvas the area,
including the parking lot,
and inside the Quality Inn.
They're looking for clues but find nothing.
So they decide to head to Maryann's apartment,
hoping to piece together what happened.
Inside the apartment, we could see
that there were several lights on.
There was a glass of wine on the kitchen counter,
as well as some mail on the kitchen table.
But there was nothing to indicate
that any type of struggle had taken place there.
[Corin] Authorities were looking for fingerprints, maybe a hair.
There were no clues as to who killed Maryann.
But the scene does tell a story about Maryann's final moments.
[Alan] It appeared that Maryann Carr had arrived home
at her apartment.
Had entered. Had the time to collect the mail,
turn on some lights,
pour herself a drink...
and then suddenly disappeared.
Although her apartment door is open,
the outside door is locked.
And there's no sign of a break-in.
That pretty much tells you the person who attacked her
had to have had a key to the building and came inside.
We speculated that someone
forced his way into the apartment...
and confronted her.
At that point, we had no idea
whether she knew the person,
or if it was a stranger.
I'm John Van Soest, and Maryann and her husband were my neighbors.
Right below me.
When her husband came home,
he thought that she was still alive.
He said to a police officer, "Can I see my wife now?"
And the police officer had to tell him,
"Look, she's gone," you know. "She's dead."
He went off the deep end then
'cause really, it was a shock for him.
[Wendy] Maryann is taken to the morgue,
where it is determined that she was strangled.
[Alan] A thin red mark was also observed around her neck.
It looked like the chain that she was wearing
could have been used to strangle her.
[Wendy] Maryann Carr has not been sexually assaulted,
but she's been brutally, sadistically beaten,
and shackled with handcuffs.
There was also white adhesive around her mouth,
as if her mouth had been taped.
[Corin] Authorities could see that whoever did it
was particularly sadistic in the way that they killed her.
[Wendy] Detectives question Maryann's neighbors.
They want to find out if anyone saw or heard
anything unusual the night of December 15th,
after Maryann came home from work.
[Alan] The resident of the building informed us
that at approximately 7:45, she heard the scream
of a female
coming from the direction of Maryann's apartment,
and the words being uttered, "I will, I will."
I was like, "Man, why didn't I hear that?" 'Cause I was sleeping.
I'd worked a double shift.
And I felt bad because...
maybe I could have helped her.
[Alan] A subsequent canvass of the building
produced a couple of residents
who observed Maryann in the parking lot
at approximately 7:30 p.m.
Neighbors saw Maryann speaking to a white male,
who they thought was her husband.
For investigators, this is odd,
because Maryann's husband Michael
was supposed to be in Rochester that night.
I contacted Michael Carr and made arrangements
to interview him as quickly as possible.
We were able to determine that Michael Carr's story
of being up in Rochester, New York at a business conference
was the truth and verified by co-workers.
And Michael gave us no indication
of why anybody would want to hurt Maryann.
[Wendy] With Michael Carr ruled out as a suspect,
police look into the apartment complex
to see if there had been any recent disturbances,
and they discover the Carrs' neighbor, John Van Soest,
had been the victim of a burglary one month before.
[John] November, 1977.
Now when I get home in the morning, I saw my door ajar.
And I say, "What the hell is this?"
When I walked in, you know, right away,
you know, I saw that somebody had broken in.
I saw, like, some of my clothes were missing.
Especially jackets.
[Wendy] A leather jacket, a watch, some suits
had been taken from his apartment.
It feels like a typical burglary
except for one thing.
[John] My door wasn't damaged or anything.
So it looks like whoever got into the apartment
must have had a key to the place.
[Alan] I thought that Maryann Carr's killer
could be another resident of her building.
[Wendy] The Bergen County police
believe that all the evidence points toward the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments
being the key to finding Maryann's killer.
At the same time, Maryann's family struggles
to come to terms with her death.
I was 11 years old
and I overheard my aunts and uncles
and my parents
talking about her.
And I had asked what happened.
And because I was young, they just said that she was missing.
And then, as I got older, they told me
that it was, um, a murder.
I can only imagine the emotions they were going through.
It's one thing to lose a family member
who was only 26 years old,
but it's another thing to lose them in such a horrific manner,
and have no idea who did this to them.
[Wendy] Maryann is buried in her wedding dress.
But the tragedy continues to devastate her family at the wake.
[Nancy] Maryann's parents walked in first.
And her dad looked at her and he had a heart attack.
He had to be taken away
to the hospital in an ambulance,
so my aunt and uncle never got to be at the wake
and have closure with her.
[Wendy] Maryann's father, thankfully, survives.
But the fact that they have no answers for why their daughter was murdered
continues to haunt her parents.
[Alan] Murder cases bring a great deal of anguish and heartache
to families of the victims.
And you try, as hard as you can,
to help them find answers.
[Wendy] However, despite interviewing more than 300 people,
there's no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses,
so the case quickly goes cold.
[Alan] It's extremely frustrating as time goes on,
not being able to bring closure to a case of this type.
Then, in May of 1980, the case is broken wide open.
[Alan] On May 22nd of 1980,
we received a report of a disturbance
at the Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights.
The same location where Maryann Carr had been found.
[Vernon] The maid had gone to Room 132 to clean the room.
She began vacuuming.
The vacuum hit something under the bed.
She looked to see what it hit...
and she saw a nude body of a female.
[Alan] The body was of a white female,
completely naked,
with her hands handcuffed behind her back.
She had been raped and strangled.
The victim did have marks of adhesive tape on her mouth,
and he had bitten into her breast.
There were signs that, because of the markings that were seen on the breasts,
that she was tortured.
[Wendy] Investigators search the crime scene,
hoping they will find anything that will lead to the killer.
And that's when they catch a big break.
[Alan] A latent fingerprint was lifted from the handcuffs.
At the time, fingerprint technology is not what it is today.
We had no name to associate with the fingerprint.
But we knew this could be an extremely important piece of evidence.
[Wendy] There's no sign of a wallet,
there's no identification in the room,
but police do identify the victim.
[Rod] She had had some contact with the police prior to this,
and they were able to match her fingerprints
with those that they had on file,
and identified the body of Valerie Ann Street.
Valerie Ann Street is 19 years old.
And she was a prostitute.
There was markings on the neck where she was strangled,
either by ligature
or a necklace,
like Maryann Carr.
[Alan] We now had two females
found dead at the same hotel,
both wearing handcuffs.
Obviously, we suspected a connection between the two.
[Vernon] Valerie Street was last seen
the night before in Manhattan
at 10:00 p.m., when she was streetwalking.
And at 1:00 by her girlfriend, who saw her getting into a car.
She described the person in the car as a white male
with sandy brown hair.
[Wendy] If the same person killed
both Maryann Carr and Valerie Ann Street,
maybe he has other victims.
So, Detective Grieco begins to look into open cases,
and that's when he comes across
a violent abduction
at the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments,
just three months after Maryann's murder.
[Alan] On March 23rd, 1978,
at 7:00 a.m.,
a young woman was found in the parking lot
of the same Ledgewood Terrace Apartments in Little Ferry
where Maryann Carr had lived.
An examination revealed
that she had bruises
and her breasts had been pinched and scratched.
Although she was in very bad shape,
amazingly, she survived.
The woman was 22-year-old Karen Schilt,
and at the time of her abduction, she was working as a waitress.
[Alan] Karen informed the police detectives
that she had been in New York City
and was approached by a white male.
[Vernon] He identified himself as John,
and he engaged her in conversation.
She went to the ladies' room.
When she came back, she had a fresh drink.
[Alan] When she begins to drink,
she becomes dizzy,
and she suspects that she's been drugged.
[Wendy] Karen passes out.
When she wakes up, she's in a strange car in the parking lot
of the Ledgewood Terrace Apartment complex.
And who is she with? The man from the bar.
[Alan] He tells her that he had once lived at this location.
This is an extremely important piece of evidence.
[Corin] The man robbed her and raped her,
stole her jewelry and then threw her body out of the car
and left the scene.
[Alan] After the discovery of Karen Schilt,
I continued looking up open cases in Bergen County,
trying to identify similarities
to the cases that we had connected
to this individual, hoping to find leads
that could bring us to a viable suspect.
And then I learned that seven months after Karen Schilt was found,
Susan Geiger, a sex worker,
was raped, beaten and left for dead
at the Airport Motel in South Hackensack,
New Jersey.
The person fit the description
of Karen Schilt's attacker.
White male, in his 30s.
We now begin to suspect that the same person
is responsible for these vicious attacks.
[Wendy] Police believe they're now chasing
a violent serial rapist,
and if they don't catch him soon,
a serial killer.
That sends chills through the residents of Bergen County.
[Ruth] At that point in time,
people started hearing that multiple girls
in Bergen County had been murdered.
And they were being found
in very similar ways
as Jackie and the other girls
suspected to have been killed by the Bergen Strangler
back in the late '60s, early '70s.
And I just...
In my mind, remembering back,
it just...
you know, makes you just feel so unsafe
all over.
[Alan] Too many attacks were occurring of the same nature
and we needed to get whoever was responsible
off the streets as quickly as possible.
But it never occurred to me
that we would be pursuing
one of the most prolific killers
in US history.
I would describe Times Square in the late '70s and early '80s
as Sodom and Gomorrah on steroids.
Okay?
There was call girls all over the place.
You had peep shows.
You had a potpourri of sexual entertainment.
On May 15th, 1980,
the same week Valerie Street's body is found in New Jersey,
authorities are called to The Seville Hotel,
a known location for sex workers
to take their johns in the middle of Times Square.
Firemen were called to a fire at a hotel in Manhattan.
When they went into the room, lot of smoke.
To their surprise, there was a body.
Homicide immediately responded.
It was a particularly atrocious scene,
in which the body of Jean Reyner
had been mutilated.
She was a street worker, there in New York.
There were signs that she had been tortured.
Her breasts, particularly, were severed.
It was a horrific, horrific scene.
[Rod] Anyone who was working these cases in New York,
this immediately brought the recollection of what happened
at the Travel Inn.
[Vernon] On December 2nd, 1979,
the fire department responded to a fire in a hotel room
at the Travel Inn Motor Lodge,
which was at 515 West 42nd Street.
[reporter] The murders were discovered on Sunday morning,
when firemen went into a fourth floor motel room here
to find the source of smoke.
That source was two fires, one on each bed.
There were two dead girls, white, about 19 years old,
their heads and hands removed.
One of the medical examiners said it almost looked surgical.
So I don't know if he had a hacksaw or what he had.
It's pretty hard to take off a head.
When the smoke had cleared,
what you had was the hotel room from hell.
It was unbelievable.
I mean, only Satan could tell you
what kinda perversions took place in there.
Their entire bodies had slices.
Back and front, and on the buttocks.
So this guy was torturing these girls.
The two women were both identified as prostitutes.
I knew immediately that we were dealing
with a psychopathic sexual sadist.
A psychopath who basically operates
with no moral or social values.
A person with no sense of conscience.
What I think happened is when he left,
he took the heads and hands, then he took lighter fluid
and doused the bodies and the bed,
lit it up and walked out.
By starting the fire, he eliminated all the forensic evidence.
[mimics lighting a match]
He was very organized.
An eye towards not being identified.
I remember my counterpart, he said, "This is not his first rodeo."
But there was no rodeo in New York to compare it to.
A lot of people figured a psycho was on the loose,
and tonight, that may well be true.
Well, they couldn't identify our guy.
They had other stories of being assaulted,
being robbed.
But this guy was like a ghost.
Just moving through 42nd Street
and 8th Avenue like a...
Almost like he's invisible.
[Rod] The cops are on high alert now.
And the street workers are very, very afraid
with the Times Square Killer on the loose.
A chill fell over the streets in Manhattan.
The women who I'd spoke to
were absolutely terrified
that somebody was out there, doing this.
[Corin] Authorities start questioning staff at each hotel,
and they discover that
the description of the men matches.
He's described as a white male in his mid-30s,
about 5' 9", 5' 10" tall.
Full dark brown hair.
High cheekbones and an olive complexion.
[Vernon] It wasn't much that we had to go with.
And so, if you looked into both cases,
from a perspective of evidence,
we had zip.
We had to try to figure out
what's going on with him.
Psychologically,
those endorphins, that dopamine,
that candy for the brain stuff,
he wants more of it
because the cases are getting more outrageous.
[Wendy] A week later, on May 22nd, 1980,
back in Bergen County,
the police are shocked
when they are once again called
to the Quality Inn motel
in Hasbrouck Heights.
[Alan] The Hasbrouck Heights police
receive notification
from management at the Quality Inn
that they have a disturbance in Room 117.
The female occupant of the room
is heard screaming by one of their employees.
[Vernon] A scream at the Quality Inn motel
after Valerie Street had been found two weeks earlier
is gonna definitely cause concern.
So they call the room to see if everything is all right.
A man answers.
"Oh, me and my girlfriend were just fooling around."
They don't believe him.
So they come to the door and knock on the door.
[Alan] A young woman opened the door.
The hotel employee can only see
this woman's head and face,
and inquired if everything was okay.
Even though the young woman verbally responded,
"Yes, everything is okay,"
she appeared to be in distress
and motioned with her eyes
that there was a problem.
The staff immediately called down to the desk
and advised them to call the police.
-[sirens wailing] -[Rod] When the police arrive there
at the Quality Inn,
they see a man leaving 117,
walking down the hallway,
and they call out to him
and he tries to make an escape.
[Vernon] He's running down the hallway.
But at Hasbrouck Heights,
police officers were waiting for him with a shotgun.
[gun clicks]
And he yells, "Freeze, [bleep]!"
With a shotgun in his face,
this guy realizes the jig is up.
[chuckles] And that's it.
He drops everything.
What was in the bag was tape,
handcuffs, sexual collars,
a bottle of liquor,
knife, starter pistol.
[Wendy] The assailant is arrested and taken to the police station,
where he's fingerprinted
and he and the woman are interviewed by Hasbrouck Heights police.
[Corin] Authorities discover that the man is
34-year-old Richard Cottingham.
He lived in Lodi, New Jersey.
And he was a married father with three children.
He was working in Midtown Manhattan
as a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance Company.
[Alan] At the police department,
Cottingham seems like an average guy,
and does not give the impression as a crazed killer.
He indicated that he met a prostitute from New York.
He arranged to pay her $180 for sex,
but that it was completely consensual.
[Wendy] Police don't believe it's a coincidence
that Richard Cottingham was at the Quality Inn.
[Alan] We began to think that we were possibly
on the cusp of solving the previous two murders
that had occurred there.
The woman with Cottingham
identified herself as Leslie Ann Odell.
[Rod] Leslie Ann Odell is a charming, pretty, young, 18-year-old prostitute.
She had been working the streets
for a short time in New York
when she was picked up by this assailant
on May 22nd.
[Alan] They got in his car and he drove to the Quality Inn
in Hasbrouck Heights with her.
Once in the room, they began to have sex.
[Rod] She was okay
with most of what he wanted.
But it got dangerous.
He handcuffed her behind the back
and also handcuffed her ankles.
He proceeded to cut her with a knife,
sodomized her,
abraded her breasts,
and threatened to beat her with a belt.
He started telling her
that he was a murderer for hire,
showing her the gun he had.
At that point, she became very fearful.
[Alan] He told her that she was a whore,
and that he also was gonna kill her
because that's what he does to whores.
[Rod] She was over by the bed,
and he was trying to smother her.
But she somehow or other slipped away
and screamed out.
If Leslie Ann Odell didn't scream,
or if the staff didn't call the authorities that evening,
Leslie would have been killed.
[Alan] My partner and I had spoke to Richard Cottingham
in his jail cell
about Leslie Ann Odell.
He was crying, and after a brief pause,
he picked his head up and said,
"I'd have to be crazy to tell you guys
about what I had been up to."
[Alan] At that point, Cottingham seemed like
he was about to break down and open up to us.
He was asked whether or not he had any problem with women.
After a pause, he replied that he did have a problem with women.
But Cottingham was not willing
to make any admissions of any type.
[Suzan] Twelve years after Jackie was killed,
my parents would still call the police
trying to, you know, keep the case just going.
That police'd say, "Oh, you know, Jackie's case is still open,
and we're still working on it."
Every now and then you'd get a phone call
or a newspaper clipping
about certain men that were in jail,
or out of jail, that were being looked at.
But, you know, they were just big question marks on all of them.
I remember seeing Richard Cottingham's name in a newspaper.
To me, it was another name, another guy, another person.
The circumstances were all different.
So, didn't even think about it.
[Wendy] Back at the police station,
Detective Grieco believes
that even though Cottingham has admitted nothing,
his arrest at the Quality Inn, his odd behavior,
his confession that he has an issue with women,
it all further convinces him
that Cottingham
is involved in his unsolved cases.
He was now a prime suspect
in the death of Maryann Carr
as well as Valerie Ann Street.
Police go back to the Quality Inn again
to see who registered for the room
where Valerie Street was found.
[Alan] We pulled registration cards
from the Quality Inn
and we were able to determine
the handwriting did match Cottingham.
[Wendy] Now, police have a solid suspect
in both the Street and the Odell cases.
So, Bergen County investigators,
while Cottingham is safely behind bars
on assault charges,
dig into his background.
[Rod] They found out where he lived,
and they got authorization
to do a search of his home
in Lodi, New Jersey.
[Alan] When the investigators arrived,
the door was opened by his wife, Janet Cottingham.
We learned that Janet had recently filed for a divorce,
alleging cruelty and abandonment, from Richard.
[Corin] Janet tells Detective Grieco
that there is a locked room in the basement
that only Richard Cotingham was allowed to go into.
[Rod] What they discovered in the basement of that house,
that was a big surprise.
The found a safe.
They got a locksmith.
In the safe, they found evidence
of weapons that he had used.
They found souvenirs
of some of his escapades,
including the jewelry
of Karen Schilt and Susan Geiger.
Those trophies are very, very important
to this killer.
Because something that belonged to the victim
that you sexually assaulted and killed
takes on a significance
that's proof of the hunt.
[Alan] Also in that safe
was found a key which was stamped
462C.
[Wendy] It was one of the keys for the outside doors
at the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments.
[Alan] There was always a major question
in our minds of how someone who was responsible
for Maryann Carr's abduction and murder
was able to get into her building.
Police bag all the contents of the safe as evidence
and they return to the jail where Cottingham is being held.
They question him again,
this time about the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments in Little Ferry.
Cottingham had indicated to us
that he had lived at Ledgewood Terrace,
in a different building
than Maryann Carr,
but had moved around 1975.
[Wendy] But if Cottingham lived in a different building
that required a different key,
the question is,
how did he get the key to Maryann's building?
[Alan] The person who lived directly above
Maryann Carr's apartment
was John Van Soest,
who we interviewed shortly after Maryann Carr's murder.
And we became aware John Van Soest
was a co-worker
of Richard Cottingham
and knew him well.
[John] He was fun to work with.
He could talk sports with you all the time.
Cars.
The stock market. Finances.
But he didn't hang around with any of the other guys after work.
You know, he never went to the bars or anything.
He just kinda kept to himself.
When I heard that he was arrested,
I said, "Come on, they must have made a mistake."
Guy I was working with for years...
he turns out to be a mass murderer.
It was a shock to me.
[Alan] Van Soest's apartment had been burglarized
sometime prior to the abduction of Maryann Carr.
The locks were fine.
So, I figured it must have been somebody that knew me.
Richie was around the complex all the time.
And he suggested that I move over where he used to live.
We now became suspicious
that the burglary of Van Soest's apartment
was actually committed by Richard Cottingham.
[John] And then, the police told me that they had found
things that belonged to me
in his possession, in that room.
My first reaction was, "I thought this guy was my friend."
And then I found out he was taking advantage
of a lot of the guys he worked with.
Stealing their keys
with the intention of robbing their house,
or their apartment.
Which is what he did to me.
[Wendy Naugle] Among the items collected in the safe
are John Van Soest's watch,
Valerie Ann Streets's koala pin,
as well as jewelry from Karen Schilt.
But Bergen County Police also find items
that do not belong to any of their known victims.
[Vernon Geberth] That case made the newspapers.
As it turns out, one of our New York City detectives
who was not supposed to live in New Jersey, but he's saving money,
saw the paper. He came in and said,
"Listen this might be connected to our case in New York."
It turns out the necklace
and a complete set of clothing
belonged to Jean Ann Reyner.
There was no doubt that
this was our Times Square Killer.
[Rod Leith] And that's when the tie began to tighten around
Richard Cottingham
as being responsible
for more than just
the Bergen County murders,
and the attacks of the Time Square victims,
are all tied together now.
And that's when the floodgates opened.
Lot of good evidence came out.
Last winter we told you about several,
especially brutal murders of alleged prostitutes
here in New York.
Today they announced they want a New Jersey man
to appear in a lineup here
in connection with those murders.
Investigators bring the two surviving victims
to the Bergen County Police Department.
They want to see if they can identify their attackers
from a lineup of men.
[Detective Alan Grieco] Two of the previous sexual assault victims
identified Cottingham
as the person responsible
for what occurred to them.
Then the police discover the final nail
in Cottingham's coffin.
[Geberth] When he was taken to the Bergen County
prosecutor's office for processing,
they took his fingerprints
and the latent print examiner was able to match his prints
to the pair of handcuffs on the wrist of Valerie Street.
[Grieco] We were elated.
Now we certainly had a concrete piece of evidence,
indicating that we had the right guy.
[Naugle] Despite the evidence mounting against Cottingham,
especially the trophies in his safe
he denies having any knowledge
of the Bergen County or the New York City murders.
[Grieco] Once we finished our interview,
that was the last time we ever spoke to him
because within next 24 hours
he had an attorney.
My name is Donald Conway.
I was Richard Cottingham's attorney for his first trial.
I received a call from Mrs. Cottingham,
his mother.
She wore me down, and I said yes.
When I took the case
all I knew was he was being charged
with torturing and killing women.
[Naugle] Cottingham is linked to the assault
or murder of nine women.
But the prosecution chooses to try him
in just three separate trials,
starting with the murder of Valerie Ann Street
and the kidnapping and assault survivors,
Karen Schilt, Susan Geiger,
Leslie Ann O'Dell,
as well as one additional sex worker.
[reporter] There are 19 charges
pending against Richard Cottingham.
The major charge is murder.
The murder of Valerie Ann Street.
[Conway] They are all serious charges.
Enough to put somebody behind the slammer for a long, long time.
In general, the most powerful
kinds of evidence for the prosecutor
is somebody caught in the act.
And in the case of Leslie Ann O'Dell,
police officers certainly caught him red-handed.
And so my strategy was that we shouldn't even go to trial
and try a plea bargain.
And to my amazement,
they offered something like 20 years.
I go back to him and say,
"Richard, I got a hell of a deal for you."
He says, "Oh, no.
I'm not gonna plead guilty. I wanna go to trial."
[Corin Cesaric] Cottingham is so arrogant
that he thinks that when he goes to trial
he's going to beat all the charges
and be a free man once again.
[Conway] He thought he can fool everybody,
like he fooled these young ladies.
[Naugle] Richard Cottingham sits in jail for four months
until early 1981,
when his first trial begins.
[Conway] From the outset I knew,
we were going nowhere at the trial,
'cause there's nothing that I could do
to overcome the overwhelming evidence against him.
Especially when his victims who managed to survive
comes to court to testify against him.
[Naugle] And the sexual assault victims
take the stand and identify Cottingham in court
as the man who kidnapped, raped, and beat them.
[Leith] They also told the police about
jewelry that had been stolen from them
and were able to identify
that some of those items were there
in this guy's home.
[Grieco] Cottingham denied knowing most of the women.
With respect to Leslie O'Dell
he continued to say
his relationship with her was purely consensual.
[Conway] He did say he paid for the opportunity
to cut up this young lady.
He's gonna convince the jury that she consented to this?
No way.
That was not gonna fly.
[Geberth] Cottingham hired a forensic psychiatrist
that used to work for the FBI
to talk about his pathologies.
He tried to explain it's normal, like,
you go to a prostitute,
and you live out these things, the fantasy.
[chuckles]
[Leith] Then Cottingham's testimony,
he would talk about his youth,
and being fascinated
with bondage and holding women hostage.
He said he wasn't killing anybody.
He wasn't a murderer.
His denial was not believable
based on the other evidence that they had.
His fingerprints on handcuffs
on Valerie Ann Street.
Why would her koala bear be in his house,
if he never met her?
So, it was overwhelming evidences.
In the end, the jury finds him guilty on all counts.
The entire team was elated at the verdict.
Richard Cottingham stood in a court room in Hackensack, New Jersey,
and said if he gets out of jail he won't break the law again.
He probably won't get out of jail.
He's 34 years old now.
He was sent to jail for almost 200 years.
[Naugle] Cottingham began serving
his nearly 200-year sentence
and a few months later
the prosecution prepares for their second trial,
for the strangulation of Maryann Carr,
a 26-year-old X-ray technician.
The prosecution opens by calling one of their
strongest witnesses to the stand.
[Leith] One of the physicians that examined
both Maryann Carr and Valerie Street,
said, "I thought I was looking at the same killer."
The same method of murder.
The injuries were so similar.
[Grieco] The use of handcuffs,
adhesive tape across the mouth,
and manual strangulation.
[Leith] The prosecution made the case
identifying him as the serial killer,
who had left his signature, there's no question
of who committed this crime.
[Naugle] The prosecution also points out
that Cottingham had the opportunity
to kill Maryann Carr.
[Grieco] Cottingham's co-worker,
John Van Soest
who lived in the same apartment building as Maryann Carr
had his keys taken while at work.
We were able to use that that is how Cottingham
was able to get into her building.
To bolster their case
they called Cottingham's coworker
and friends to the stand.
[John Van Soest] I testified Richard may have stole my keys
with the intention of robbing my apartment,
but found another interest.
And I think he just took an opportunity,
you know, "As long as I have this key
why not take advantage of it."
Richard Cottingham was found guilty of Maryann Carr's murder,
and sentenced to serve life in prison
consecutively to his past sentence of nearly 200 years.
[Nancy Kohloff] I can't imagine what it was like
for Maryann's parents to be in the courtroom
to hear the verdict.
I can't imagine how painful that was,
but maybe they finally had some closure.
Two years later in 1984 a third trial gets underway
and Cottingham is tried and convicted
of the three, Times Square murders.
That was the end for him.
He's there in Trenton at the Department of Corrections
and he's not going anywhere.
The police and the prosecution
are ecstatic that they've closed nine cases,
but Detective Grieco is onto Cottingham.
He wants to see if maybe there are other murders he's ready to confess to.
I began to visit Cottingham in prison
in an effort to gain his cooperation.
Cottingham said that we had done a very good job in the cases against him.
But he said, "You didn't go back far enough.
My first murder occurred in 1967."
[Leith] For a long time Maryann Carr
was believed to have been Richard Cottingham's first victim.
But all of a sudden, you know, you have this ten-year span.
There was no telling how many murders
Richard Cottingham was responsible for.
[Grieco] During one of the visits made to Cottingham in prison
in an effort to make a deal
whereby he would speak about other cases
that he was responsible for,
the number that he threw out was approximately 80 women.
I recognize that the number that he threw out was rather high
but I did not necessarily disbelieve him
because I thought that he was very capable of carrying out that many.
For the 1967 murder
he told me that he strangled her
with her own pantyhose.
He was not willing to give me the name of the woman
but I quickly recalled
the unsolved murder of Nancy Vogel.
Nancy was a young housewife with a couple of children.
She had gone out to play bingo on October 31st, 1967,
but never returned.
She was later found murdered
in the backseat of her car in Ridgefield Park.
[Cesaric] Her hands were bound and she was strangled
and raped before she was murdered.
[Grieco] The fact that Nancy Vogel was strangled
and bound at the wrist
made her killing similar to Cottingham's known victims.
So once we identified Nancy Vogel,
we looked at other open cases in Bergen County.
As Detective Grieco digs through all the case files
he discovers that in the late 1960s and '70s,
New Jersey police suspected that eight girls were murdered by the same person.
They even nicknamed him the "Bergen Strangler."
[Grieco] Like Nancy Vogel
these girls had ligature marks around the neck
and bound at the wrist.
I began to suspect that Richard Cottingham
was the Bergen County Strangler.
Most serial killers have a comfort zone,
some place where they know they're gonna be safe,
probably close to home and/or work.
And all these victims were in Bergen County,
well, Richard Cottingham lived in Bergen County.
One of the Bergen Strangler cases
that Grieco thinks could be the work of Cottingham
is 13-year-old Jackie Harp.
Jackie Harp was returning home
from a flag squad practice in Midland Park, New Jersey,
when she went missing on July 17, 1968.
Her body was found strangled
with a belt from her uniform.
Grieco then researched two more unsolved cases
that were attributed to the Bergen Strangler.
[Grieco] On April 8th, 1969,
the body of Irene Blase
was found in the Saddle River
located in Saddle Brook, New Jersey.
She was 18 years old.
She was strangled with a necklace she had been wearing.
Then on July 14th, 1969,
the body of 15-year-old Denise Falasca
was found outside a cemetery.
She was also strangled
with a necklace she had been wearing.
I'm Sue Fitzsimmons,
and I was a good friend of Denise's elder sister Cheryl.
In 1969 I was 19. Denise was 15.
And for Denise, it was all makeup,
boys and music.
A little dancing to the music.
Denise wanted to do everything that Cheryl and I were doing.
She was almost like a little puppy dog.
There was a culture of hitchhiking back then,
and Cheryl and I would hitchhike to meet guys.
When we would come home,
Denise wanted to know what we did,
and we would tell her,
we embellished it, we glamorized it.
In 1969, on July 13th, Denise leaves her home alone.
She plans to hitchhike into town.
[Naugle] The last known sighting of Denise
was around 9:00 p.m. as she was getting into someone's car.
I was stunned.
I felt guilty because I never talked to Denise
about the dangers of getting in somebody's car.
I thought maybe we could have stopped it
from happening if we did tell her.
And my life really changed that day.
Childhood ended.
[Grieco] Over the course of many years, I met with Cottingham
three times in New Jersey State prison
in an effort to try to gain his cooperation
and get him to make a confession.
[Naugle] During those conversations, Cottingham reveals to Grieco
how and why he kills.
[Grieco] Cottingham said it started at a very young age
with his interest in pornography.
Then he needed to escalate his fantasies
into sexual activity, such as bondage and S&M.
When that no longer worked,
he found killing women to be the ultimate satisfaction.
[Geberth] Sexual sadism is a progressive disorder.
It gets worse as time goes on.
So what the sadist was satisfied
when he began based on the piece of pornography
suddenly is enhanced with his first attack
and sexual sadists will keep the same programs,
but it will get worse, they'll start mutilating,
eviscerating,
do things that go beyond the pale.
[Grieco] I asked him how it was possible
for him to dismember and set a body on fire.
His response was once a person was dead,
they don't feel anything.
He added that once you kill someone
every one after that is easy.
He said that he never thought about someone
after he killed them.
It was an extremely cold response
with no indication of any human compassion.
There was never a time that Cottingham expressed any true remorse
during my conversations with him.
[Geberth] Richard Cottingham is a Jekyll and Hyde personality.
If you take a look at the clever, Dr. Jekyll,
that will be Cottingham.
He's being overwhelmed by
the insatiable lust of his Mr. Hyde.
Despite explaining why he killed these women,
even after 15 years of conversations with Grieco,
Cottingham never confesses to any additional murders,
even though he boasted that he killed up to 80 women.
[Grieco] Having been convicted of nine similar cases
with five being murders,
there was little doubt in my mind
that he was responsible
for many of the unsolved murders
of young females in Bergen County.
[Naugle] In 1997, Detective Grieco retires
without getting the confession.
And although he continues to correspond
with Cottingham by letter
he worries that the Bergen Strangler cases
will just go unsolved.
Fortunately, 30 miles away on Long Island,
the Nassau County Police are having better luck
with one of their own cold cases.
[Dennis Farrell] This woman has been looking
for answers her whole life,
and she always hoped that someday, somehow
the murder of her mother could be solved.
My name is Darlene Altman.
I'm the daughter of Diane Cusick.
In 1968 my mother and I
lived in New Hyde Park with my grandparents.
It was a great place to grow up.
[Naugle] Twenty-three-year-old dance instructor, Diane Cusick
had just separated from her husband
and had moved with her three-year-old daughter Darlene
into the house where she grew up.
[Altman] On February 15th, 1968
my mother went to work as normal.
She needed a pair of shoes for an upcoming dance show,
so she said that she wanted to stop at the Green Acres Mall.
And she wanted my grandmother to come with her.
But my grandmother was home with me
and I was sick at the time.
And she's like, "Diane, can we just go tomorrow?"
And Diane's like, "No, I'll just go
and I'll be home afterwards."
It got to the point where the mall was closed,
and she wasn't home.
[Cesaric] Her parents started to worry.
They travelled to the mall to see if they could find her.
And they see something
that no parent should ever see.
[Altman] They saw her car in the parking lot
and my mother was in the back seat,
with tape over her mouth and her nose.
And I know my grandfather ripped the tape off,
[voice breaking] and then picked up my mother's body,
not knowing if she was dead or alive,
and ran out to Sunrise Highway for help.
[Naugle] Sadly, there's nothing he can do.
Diane is dead.
And despite every effort by the local police
her killer was never caught.
[Altman] I mean, at three years old,
unfortunately I don't have any memories of her.
And that bothers me.
As I started to get older I became very interested
in true-crime documentaries
and solving cases with DNA.
I was like, "Oh, why couldn't that happen for me?"
So, in 2003, I wrote to the Nassau County Police Department
and asked if they could reopen my mother's case?
And not long after that, a detective called
and he said he would try to find out what he could
and that he would do his best.
[Naugle] Seeing in the file that Diane Cusick was raped,
the Nassau County detective
digs through the evidence locker,
and finds her 1968 dress and pantyhose,
and he hopes they will be the source of viable DNA.
[Farrell] Test would prove Ms. Cusick's clothing
did have some kind of viable bits on it.
Which made it viable for DNA testing.
They did such a thorough job back then in '68
that they had preserved everything
in a way that they were able to obtain DNA.
It was amazing.
I was hopeful.
[Farrell] Even though some DNA was identified
the sample isn't big enough
to make a full profile
and we couldn't yield a match at that time.
And when it came back without a match it was very disappointing.
Felt like my last shot.
Like, that was it.
What now?
[Naugle] At the same time back in Bergen County,
the prosecutor's office is beginning
the cold case division of their own,
led by Detective Robert Anzilotti and prosecutor John Molinelli.
They set their sights on the Bergen Strangler cases.
The same ones Detective Grieco
always believed were committed by Richard Cottingham.
[John Molinelli] In New Jersey
we don't just handle the prosecution.
We are the primary investigating authority
of most major crimes such as homicides.
[Naugle] Although after 22 years in prison,
Cottingham still has not confessed to an additional crime.
But in 2006, opportunity strikes.
Cottingham is caught taking bets in prison
and is banished to solitary confinement.
[Molinelli] Once he was moved into solitary
now there's an opportunity
to have a conversation with him.
That's when Anzilotti made arrangements
to go down to Trenton State
to try and build a relationship
with Cottingham.
Cottingham liked to gamble. So they would play cards.
And Detective Anzilotti was starting to ask Cottingham,
"Look, we know you had something to do with some of these things.
Let's talk about it.
These families need closure."
[Cesaric] The conversations go on for years.
Then in 2010, Cottingham tells Detective Anzilotti
that he will confess,
but he wants some perks in return.
[Geberth] It was a quid pro quo.
So Anzilotti was able to get him pizza,
get chocolate-covered doughnuts
and whatever the fat guy wanted, okay.
The bottom-line is he wanted something.
He's a negotiator.
[Molinelli] It took a lot of work.
And then finally Cottingham told Anzilotti,
"Okay, I'll give you one."
And that was Nancy Vogel.
We believed she was his first victim.
[Grieco] Cottingham said, on that particular night
in late October of 1967,
he had met Nancy Vogel
at a bar in Little Ferry, New Jersey.
They left the bar and they drove
in her vehicle on Route 46 into Ridgefield Park,
where he parked the car.
At some point in time he bounds her wrists,
and engages in sex with her in the backseat.
[Grieco] After having sex with her,
he strangled her
with her own pantyhose.
He advised us that she had done some food shopping
and there were bags with food
that were in the trunk of the car.
[Molinelli] Those facts were not publicized.
And Detective Anzilotti knew
that Cottingham had murdered Nancy Vogel.
At that point we had the basis to charge him.
But Cottingham did not want his family
to have to pick up newspaper and read the story about
their father committing another murder.
So, he wanted it to be kept quiet.
But when he pled guilty
there was a reporter in the courtroom.
It got highly publicized
that Cottingham had pled guilty
to the Vogel homicide.
Cottingham is upset.
His family read it in the paper.
And it definitely set us back.
I think it took about 18 months
before he at least agreed to talk to Anzilotti.
It's not until 2014,
thirty years into his sentence,
that Cottingham confesses again.
This time it's to a murder from 1969.
He gave us Irene Blase.
She was strangled and raped
and her body was dumped in the Saddle River
in Saddle Brook, in New Jersey.
At this point they have confessions for two of the eight girls
who were attributed to the Bergen Strangler,
Vogel and Blase.
But Jackie Harp's case is still unsolved.
You just wonder whether they would ever find out
what happened, what truly happened to her.
[Cesaric] After police elicit a confession
in the murder of Irene Blase
authorities decide to hold off
and not prosecute Cottingham
because they're hopeful that they can still get
more confessions from him.
[Molinelli] Once he gave up Blase
we knew that he was responsible for Falasca.
Murders were the same.
Picking up a stranded girl, alone, long dark hair.
And ultimately Cottingham
admitted that he picked her up on the street.
Same MO. Strangulation, sexual assault,
dumped her body,
not far from where Irene Blase's body had been dumped.
All involved very similar profiles of victims,
how they looked, the fact that they were alone.
We saw common threads in all cases.
After that Cottingham gave up Jackie Harp.
In November of 2017, the police came to my home,
sat at my kitchen table,
and told me that they had the man that killed Jackie.
I was in disbelief.
[Mulder] It's just all wrong that it all happened.
You always say "Why?" "Why me?" Or "Why her?"
It's... It's just...
It's very difficult. It's very difficult.
I was very glad that after 55 years
the detectives returned to me
the belongings that Jackie had been wearing when she was found.
Some jewelry, her glasses.
You know they were, just...
you know, so sorry that it took so long.
It is a sense of relief,
but, you know, wishing that my mom and dad
could have heard those words, too.
[Naugle] Cottingham has now confessed to four murders.
But Bergen County police wanted to keep talking.
And in 2021 when Cottingham is 75 years old and his health is ailing,
Anzilotti goes to talk to him once more
hoping he'll finally get answers
about the four remaining girls
that were victims of the Bergen Strangler.
[Molinelli] Detective Anzilotti went down to Trenton State Prison
and he told Cottingham, "This is it. I'm retiring."
And Cottingham was concerned.
He was losing a lifeline
that he had to the outside world.
And out of the blue Cottingham said to Anzilotti,
"Well, I wanna give you a parting gift."
He confessed to Lorraine Kelly, Mary Ann Pryor.
That was a double homicide in August of '74.
They had been hitchhiking.
He took them to a motel,
tied both of them up, raped them both,
and then ultimately drowned them in the bathtub.
Their bodies were found in a construction site in Montvale.
[Naugle] With confessions for six of the eight suspected cases,
prosecutors decide to have Cottingham plead.
It was COVID so the guilty plea
had to be taken actually in private office.
But it was an enormous day.
[Naugle] There are now 15 cases closed
in New Jersey and New York City.
But investigators in Nassau County on Long Island,
still hoped to close out many of their own cold cases.
That's when they get a phone call
that just might be the tip they've been waiting for.
[Jared Rosenblatt] We receive a notification
from our law enforcement partners in New Jersey
that Richard Cottingham may be responsible
for deaths outside of Bergen County.
[Anne T. Donnelly] Back in 1981, his first conviction
did not require a DNA sample.
As DNA progressed, it became law
that you have to give a DNA sample.
In 2005 he took a plea in New Jersey to one of the murders.
It was at that time that the court could order
that he give a DNA sample to be uploaded
into the national data bank.
So we start focusing specifically on 13 cases where women are the victims.
One of the cases that we start focusing in on
is the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick.
[Naugle] More than 50 years after the rape and murder
of Long Island dance instructor Diane Cusick,
her pantyhose are checked out for evidence yet again.
Although they've been tested for DNA in 2003,
they're tested once more.
In January 2022, we got a match.
Richard Cottingham's DNA matches the male DNA
in the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick.
[Altman] The detective told me that they got a DNA match.
And was just beside myself, I had to...
I couldn't believe it, because I had given up.
As soon as he gave me the name, of course I googled him
and started learning,
you know, just what an animal he was.
Yeah. It's a lot to take in.
You know, no one ever imagines it's gonna be a serial killer.
Now they've got a match,
and they are ready to charge him but they hold off.
[Donnelly] Jared Rosenblatt came to me and said we can go forward
with an indictment against Richard Cottingham
for one count of murder.
But we had these 13 profiles
that the homicide detectives had come up with
of homicides that he may have committed.
But once I met Darlene Altman,
Diane Cusick's daughter
and saw the pain that she'd been in
for 50-plus years,
I said, well if we can
give some closure to other families with it,
I'm obligated to try to do that.
In early 2022 we go up to visit Richard Cottingham.
At this point in his life, Cottingham's unhealthy, sitting in a wheelchair,
but Cottingham still loves to be in control.
He only wants to give a little crumb,
unless Cottingham can get something himself.
He loves the dance.
That's who he is.
Cottingham pretty much says, "I'm not gonna talk to you
without immunity."
I said to him, "Mr. Cottingham,
we have your DNA on a murder.
Unlike every other county,
I don't need to give you immunity,
because I can prosecute you.
So, you can talk to us or come to New York
to be prosecuted in Nassau County."
Richard Cottingham has been in the same jail in New Jersey
for so many years.
He's comfortable there.
He knows the people who surround him,
his medical doctors.
He comes to Nassau County, it's a clean slate.
He doesn't know anybody.
That would have rocked his world.
[Cesaric] In 2022, DNA evidence on Diane Cusick's clothing
is matched to Richard Cottingham,
and for the first time ever
prosecutors have the upper hand.
Although Cottingham is very ill,
they're threatening to send him to Nassau County
in New York to face charges.
As a bargaining tool,
I said, "Well, in exchange
for not dragging you here to Nassau County,
I want you to tell me what you remember about other cases."
[Rosenblatt] At that point it was him realizing
that the old
Richard Cottingham dance wasn't gonna play.
[Naugle] Cottingham starts talking.
He admits to the murders of four women
between 1972 and 1973,
bringing his total known victim count to 20.
[Donnelly] We had the DNA on the Diane Cusick case.
Then we had four confessions
that he was willing to get on the record with the judge and say,
"I killed these four women."
He wouldn't give us any details
about the other eight unsolved homicides,
here in Nassau County
that detectives have come up with
that was possibly committed by Richard Cottingham.
[Naugle] On December 5th, 2022,
a video Zoom is set up at the hospital for Richard Cottingham.
And the Nassau County prosecutors
head to the court house.
[Donnelly] I met with the families
and then we walked down to court together.
Darlene had a necklace on,
a pair of gold ballet slippers,
and she said, "They're my mother's,
and I wanted to bring her here to the court,
to see the arraignment of this man."
And that was very, very moving.
[Rosenblatt] The families meet for the first time.
They sat there and they talked
for probably more than an hour.
It was an important day for them.
There's that bond there, you know,
that other people can't understand
no matter how hard they try.
We went into court,
and Richard Cottingham was on the monitor,
which I'm thankful for,
because I don't know how I would have felt
being in the same room as that man.
[Rosenblatt] In court, Cottingham admitted
to murdering Diane Cusick.
In addition to that, we reached an agreement with Mr. Cottingham
where we wouldn't charge him
for the four additional murders,
and in exchange he would admit his role
in their deaths in open court.
[Donnelly] And these families were looking at him for the first time,
and some of them started to cry,
and some of them got...
visibly angry with the knowledge
that they now knew who actually killed their loved one.
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who worked on this case.
I never thought I'd see this day. I had given up.
But all these people
got justice for me,
and for my mother.
Five cases got closed out that day.
It was an emotional day,
but it was a good day.
[Naugle] In 2023, Cottingham's 76 years old
and is serving six life sentences.
He has been convicted of or confessed to 20 crimes,
including 16 murders.
But he has told authorities
that he's responsible
for nearly 100 murders.
[Cesaric] There are so many unsolved cases
in New York City and New Jersey.
I don't think it's a farfetched idea
that Richard Cottingham is responsible
for at least some of them.
[Donnelly] I'm confident that there are more bodies.
You know, hopefully, we'll keep looking.
Keep searching. Maybe we can close some more.
I find it difficult...
to this very day, to accept there is such a human being
that is...
so, so, different,
that would do the kinds of things
that he now acknowledges doing.
He is intrinsically evil,
devious, monster of a person.
[Grieco] It was extremely gratifying
that we were able to bring some closure to the families
and loved ones that were affected.
This case proved to be an odyssey
for myself and other investigators that worked on it,
and it still continues to go on to this day.
As long as he's alive he has time to think
and perhaps give more families that peace.
[Altman] It's on record now, that he murdered my mother.
And the case is closed.
It definitely changes things.
Doesn't bring my mother back. [laughs]
Doesn't change, you know,
the whole course of my life and how things got, you know...
messed up, because of what he did,
but I don't have to wonder anymore.
This has been a very difficult journey,
learning about what happened to Maryann
but mostly it was a huge loss to our family and...
it's just devastating to think about
what my aunt and uncle went through.
[Fitzsimmons] Denise, she had the talent to be somebody.
She could've been a loving mother,
a good family person.
And she never had that opportunity.
[Mulder] If I was to speak to someone
going through a similar situation,
I would tell them that, there's always hope
but at the same time you got to have some faith.
You got to have something to hang on to.
You really do.
You got to hang on tight.
[man] He took control of the bank.
-He pulled out two guns. -[woman screams]
I'd never heard something that loud in my life.
He just disappeared into thin air.
This person knew what he was doing.
Somebody knew who it was.
We began to think maybe there's an inside job here.