Richard Cottingham had his killing spree between 1977 to 1989, his first two victims garnered him huge media attention and he earned the nickname “the torso killer”. He murdered two women at the same motel room at the same time. They both where discovered when the fire department had been called in to put out a fire inside a motel room.
The bodies where taken to forensic pathologists they examined the bodies and said they had been sexually assaulted and sadistically tortured before being murdered. After the torture they had been severly mutilated with their heads and both hands being cut off.
The investigation showed that the motel room had been rented for three days by a white male and also that the victims were sex workers (20 and 16 years of age).
The third victim was murdered in New Jersey, found by a cleaning lady of the motel the killer had rented a room in. She had been handcuffed and severly tortured on her nipples and cuts over the body. The handcuffs used on the victim had a fingerprint on them but the police decided it was not related to the torso killer case.
The fourth victim was found when firemen were called to a motel because of a fire in one of the rooms. Inside they found a woman whose breast had been cut off and put on the nightstand. Police found evidence of extreme torture on the victim. This case was connected to the two earlier torso case killings because of the fire setting.
A few weeks after this murder the police were called to a motel where a woman had been heard screaming for help. The police arrested a man trying to flee the motel, he turned out to be Richard Cottingham.
The woman that was saved was a sex worker and had been bound and tortured against her will. Cottingham pretended to be co-operative with the police and claimed he paid for these services.
The Police did not believe him and they searched his house. In his house they found a room that his wife was not allowed to enter. In this room they found several “trophies” from his victims (these later were used to convict him as well as the print on the handcuffs from the third victim) and it turned out he had been abducting and raped several other women besides the ones he murdered.
He was implicated in another killing that had taken place three year earlier from the case that first made him famous. It was his former neighbour whom he had abducted and tortured to death in the same way as the other victims.
Richard Cottingham was sentenced for killing 5 people and several rapes and serves over 200 years in prison. He now claims to have killed between 85-100 women, just another one of all those pathetic scum that wants more attention once their own case been replaced by another serial killer in literature, news and movies.
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