Richard Cottingham seemed to be the typical guy-next-door. A former standout athlete in high school who worked as a computer operator in New York City, Cottingham was married with three children and considered a good family man. In reality he was a sadistic sexaul predator who murdered five women from 1977 to 1980.

Cottingham's first known victim was radiologist Maryann Carr who he abducted and asphyxiated in December of 1977. She was found dumped outside of a Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, motel. In a more spectacular slaying firemen responding to a hotel fire in December of 1979 found two dismembered bodies in one of the rooms. Both were women with their heads and hands removed. Despite the missing parts having never been found one of the women was identified as prostitute Deedeh Goodarzi. The other woman remains a Jane Doe.

On May 5, 1980, prostitute Valerie Street was found murdered and stuffed beneath a bed in a room at the same Quality Inn where Carr's body had been found over two years before. Next came the slaying of another hooker, Jean Reyner. She was discovered on May 15 at a Times Square hotel with her breasts cut off and her body set on fire. Only a week later officers responding to a disturbance back at the Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights interrupted Cottingham while the perverted sex slayer was in the middle of what would have been his sixth murder.

Cottingham was arrested and a search of his home turned up an enormous amount of bondage equipment and trophies he had taken from the four murdered prostitutes. Once in custody and knowing his days as a free man where at and end, Cottingham attempted suicide several times while detectives where busy definitively linking him with the murders and three abduction/rapes in which the victims had been allowed to survive.

After three seperate murder trials, Cottingham had been convicted of all five homicides and racked up a sentence of at least 268 years in prison.