Talk:Richard Cottingham

Web searches
Huh, more info should definately be added to this. I think it would be easy to confuse Cottingham with The Cleavland Torso Murders. The mention of the nickname actually made me think none of this was true, but a search brought up more than enough information about him. 214.13.149.10 (talk) 10:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Found a respectable source at Radford University's Forensic Science 405 course. Dr Mike Aamodt hosts timelines of serial killers' lives & crimes there, researched by his students, with verifiable sources cited. I've included a link to the specific timeline they have there for this person, who is a different individual from the paper company CEO mentioned by the person proposing deletion.
 * In addition, a search of inmates of Trenton State Prison, NJ reveals this page: https://www6.state.nj.us/DOC_Inmate/details?x=1053631&n=0 showing Richard Cottingham as a current inmate, with his rap sheet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sciamachy (talk • contribs) 13:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Belated thanks. The old student project at http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Cottingham,%20Richard%20_spring%202007_.pdf isn't a reliable source itself, but it can be a helpful guide for further research. —98.113.162.165 (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20161227060219/http://archive.northjersey.com/news/serial-killer-confesses-to-long-ago-murder-of-little-ferry-woman-1.930614?page=all to http://archive.northjersey.com/news/serial-killer-confesses-to-long-ago-murder-of-little-ferry-woman-1.930614?page=all

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other victims.
Information about his other victims should be added.

In 1967, aged 21, Cottingham committed his first murder, fatally strangling a 29-year-old woman, Nancy Vogel, a crime he didn't confess to until 2010.

In 1980, Cottingham attacked four women within less than three weeks. The first, Valerie Ann Street, was killed in a motel room and burned like the previous two victims. The next, Pamela Weisenfield, survived her attack. On May 15, the burned body of Ann Reyner was found in a hotel room in Manhattan South. She was also burned, but Cottingham didn't remove her head or hands; instead, he cut off both her breasts. On May 22, he solicited a prostitute named Leslie Ann O'Dell and took her to the Quality Inn Motel in Hasbrouck Heights, the same motel to which he had taken Valerie Ann Street and killed her. While he was torturing O'Dell, security staff heard her screams and called the police. When Cottingham tried to run, he was caught by them and arrested. Among his possessions, they found handcuffs, an open roll of duct tape, leather S&M gear, a toy gun, a knife and the drug he had used to incapacitate his victims. During interrogation, Cottingham claimed to have paid O'Dell $180 for sex and that everything he did to her had been consentual. Further investigation connected him to more crimes; his fingerprint was found on a pair of handcuffs found on Valerie Ann Street's crime scene. When the police searched his home, they found mountains of evidence linking him to other murders, such as the key to Mary Ann Carr's apartment, a toy koala bear and a pair of earrings that had belonged to Valerie Ann Street, and jewelry belonging to Deedah Godzari and Ann Reyner.

Cottingham was born in Bronx, New York in 1946, but his family moved to New Jersey when he was 12. He had two younger siblings. His father worked for an insurance company and his mother was a homemaker. His childhood was fairly normal. When his family moved to New Jersey, he entered seventh grade at St. Andrews, where he had trouble making friends since he was new to the area. Because he had poor eyesight, he wasn't good at sports. In high school, where he fit in better, he joined the track team because it allowed him time alone. After graduating, he found work as a computer operator at the insurance company where his father worked and also took computer classes. When he was 20, Cottingham got a job at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association as a computer operator. In 1967, aged 21, Cottingham committed his first murder, fatally strangling a 29-year-old woman, Nancy Vogel, a crime he didn't confess to until 2010. In 1969, he was convicted of drunken driving and was sentenced to a $50 fine and 10 days in jail. At the age of 23, he married a woman named Janet with whom he had three children, Blair, Scott and Jenny. In 1972, he was charged with robbery and sexual assult, but the case was dismissed. During his serial killing years, Cottingham had at least two affairs. In 1979, his wife filed for divorce. For some reason, she withdrew it after his arrest and moved to Poughkeepsie with their children.

From 1977 to 1980, Cottingham is known to have killed five women and attempted to kill an additional four, though he has claimed to have killed as many as 100. On the night of December 15, he abducted a 26-year-old nurse named Mary Ann Carr from the parking lot near her apartment, took her to a motel, tortured and killed her. In March the following year, Cottingham, using the alias "John Schaefer", approached a woman named Karen Schilt in a bar, drugged her, took her to an unknown location, raped her and left her for dead in a sewer near an apartment complex. Because she was found by a hotel employee, she survived, but couldn't remember much useful information about the assault, so the case went cold until Cottingham's arrest. In October, he drugged, sexually assaulted and tried to kill a prostitute named Susan Geiger, who also survived.100.34.143.131 (talk) 05:07, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * This seems to be a copy-paste from some old blog posts. As of 2022, our Wikipedia article is a reasonably complete summary of Cottingham's homicides. —98.113.162.165 (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Victim count
Because there has been some confusion, here is the victim count.


 * In the early 1980s he was convicted of murdering Deedeh Goodarzi, unidentified woman at Travel Inn, Ann Street, Maryann Carr, and Jean Reyner.
 * In 2010 he pleaded guilty to killing Nancy Vogel in 1967.
 * In 2014 he confessed to killing Irene Blase, Denise Falasca, and Jackie Harp, but those confessions weren't revealed publicly until later. He was not charged with these murders.
 * In 2021 he pleaded guilty to killing Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly.

So that's 8 convictions plus 3 confessions makes 11 confirmed. Most of this is in the 2021 NYT story. Some of the names are left out but you can find them in the other sources. GA-RT-22 (talk) 22:12, 11 January 2022 (UTC)


 * These bullet points aren't 100% accurate, but were still useful – thanks. At the start of the #Murders section, I've tried to collect all the key info into a sortable table. Hope this helps. —98.113.162.165 (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Prison
He's in Trenton state penn 69.125.56.207 (talk) 00:28, 30 January 2022 (UTC)


 * And recently he's in South Woods State Prison in poor health, according to https://pix11.com/news/local-news/long-island/serial-killer-richard-cottingham-admits-to-5-more-murders-on-long-island/ . I just added a general statement to our article: "He has been incarcerated in New Jersey state prisons since 1980, and has accumulated multiple life sentences." —98.113.162.165 (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Table of victims
(copied from User talk:Briaboru)

Can someone add a table to the former’s page as list to his victims? Keep the written section on his victims but simply add the table. Briaboru (talk) 23:18, 5 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Good suggestion, thanks – done!
 * —98.113.162.165 (talk) 12:51, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Victim count
Why is his victim count listed at 17? According to this article, he has been convicted of 12 murders. I am aware that he recently confessed to four others, but WP:BLPCRIME states that a person is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Confessions are not convictions. Silent-Rains (talk) 02:34, 17 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Good question. To resolve open cases and bring some peace to the victims' families, Cottingham officially confessed to several killings after the families and law enforcement officials agreed that he wouldn't be officially charged for them, and after he provided previously nonpublic details to convince authorities that his confessions were true. Courts accepted the plea deals, so legally these are counted among his confirmed victims. I'll try to explain this in our article. (The CBS link was wrong about the conviction count.) —98.113.162.165 (talk) 03:18, 20 December 2022 (UTC)


 * OK, I've added more explanatory info about this to our article – see if it helps. The last sentence of WP:BLPCRIME itself should probably be expanded to something like this? "If different judicial proceedings result in seemingly contradictory outcomes that do not overrule each other, or if a court accepts an individual's confession without a formal prosecution or conviction, include sufficient explanatory information."


 * Thanks if we can help clarify this important point. —98.113.162.165 (talk) 04:33, 22 December 2022 (UTC)