01x02 - The Perfect Hunting Ground

[bunniefuu]

Times Square
was sex, sex, sex everywhere.

There were men everywhere

seeking what they were seeking.

It wasn't just one or two girls
standing on a street corner.

There were girls everywhere…

and I was one of them for 13 years.

One night I was out there,
and, uh, I had gotten into this car.

This guy,
he was just some younger white guy.

I mean, normal-looking person.

He didn't look, you know,
deranged or anything.

And, um…
when I got in the car,

I told this man to drive and take a left.

And he didn't. He took a right.

So he took me down to some…
by the river somewhere.

And he had a g*n.

My heart just sank 'cause I knew…
I knew what was gonna happen.

When someone thinks they've bought you,

they think they could
do whatever they want to with you.

And he did r*pe me, and he did rob me.

And then he told me, "Get out of the car,
and don't turn around."

And I… I didn't. I got out of the car,
and I didn't turn around.

I thought he was still
gonna sh**t me in the back.

I know my mind
kind of left my body during that.

It was horrible.

It's beyond horrible.
There's no word to describe it.

I'm pretty sure that I was
in the car with a serial k*ller,

and I don't know why he didn't k*ll me.

I don't know why.

This past December,
we told you about

an especially brutal m*rder
at a Times Square motel.

A man k*lled some women
and cut off their heads.

The k*ller police want

may be guilty
of other crimes against prostit*tes.

When I read the headlines
about a m*rder at the Travel Inn…

and I hear a report
about a m*rder at the Hotel Seville…

that's when I realized there are people
that are walking around out there

that are pure predators.

There's no… there's no stopping 'em.

Once you start cutting pieces
off of people,

once you start beheading people,
cutting hands off of people,

you're getting on the news.

And, uh, the city started calling
these homicides the Torso Killings.

At the time
of the Times Square torso murders,

it was what we sometimes called
tongue-in-cheek,

the golden age of serial m*rder,

1970 to 2000.

You have about 82% of all
20th-century American serial K*llers

emerge in that 30-year period.

At that time,

people were very aware
of what a serial k*ller was,

and it was on people's minds.

The Torso Killings occurred

less than two years

after the Summer of Sam.

These were the Son of Sam killings
in New York City.

This photograph of the man
accused of k*lling six and wounding seven

was taken by police this morning.

He confessed after he told them
he was a k*lling machine

ordered by a voice
speaking through a neighbor's dog

to carry out his bloody outrages
against young, pretty women.

The idea of having another serial k*ller
out there again, absolutely terrifying.

You wanna get him off the street
before he kills somebody else.

He's a ticking time b*mb.

The NYPD started a task force…

and set in motion a tremendous effort

over a wide range
of law enforcement officers,

NYPD officers of various units.

We knew we were dealing
with a serial k*ller,

a psychopathic sexual sadist,

and he's targeting prostit*tes.

Some serial K*llers like to dispose
of the bodies and hide them,

so the authorities are not aware.

But this guy,
he gets off on the presentation,

shocking people
and doing outrageous things to the bodies.

So to me, it speaks to someone
who's a malignant narcissist,

who considers themselves
smarter than the police,

and he wants to kind of, like, taunt you.

"I'm superior to you,
and you're dumb, and you won't catch me."

Well, you keep waiting, you as*h*le.
We're gonna catch you.

They work
the stroll on 11th Avenue.

Tonight, these hookers were scared.

It's… it's frightening, you know.
It's… it's very scary.

I mean, you know,

I just hope whoever it… whoever it is,
just please get him, you know what I mean?

So the girls
be able to work safely out here.

But I remember fear
rippling through the track.

That community of us…

of us… girls.

We would all talk.

They knew
that there were dangerous johns showing up

that they had
to protect themselves against.

They all knew each other,
and they had warning signs.

If somebody got in a car and drove off,

they often had somebody
who was looking out for them

and making sure that they came back.

At this point, the investigation
was concentrating on johns,

and rightfully so.

Serial K*llers predate
within a zone,

and his zone was Times Square.

And that was a place to pick up his prey.

You had a lot of a*usive johns
in the Times Square area

who got forceful, got violent, got mean.

You gotta filter through 'em.
Who's just a mean guy, or who's a k*ller?

So in a case like this,

police would do prostitution sweeps.

Undercovers would go
into these prostitution-prone areas

and talk to 'em,
each and every one of them,

one by one.

The investigators
were interviewing prostit*tes

to see if anyone knew anything about johns
of the victims who were k*lled.

And they asked them, "Have you had
any problems with johns in the area?"

I was out on the street,

and these detectives
were trying to talk to me,

and I didn't wanna talk to them,

and finally, I just gave up,
and I was like, "What?"

And they said,
"Another girl was k*lled last night."

"This guy has k*lled many girls."

"Please, do you know this face?"

I thought,

"Yeah, I remember that face."

But when the police asked me
if I knew this man,

I told them no. I lied.

I lied to them

because I was so scared
of my trafficker Moses

and what he would do to me
if I talked to the police.

Now, this isn't a simple thing.

This isn't like what you see on TV,
where the detectives pull up to the corner

to one streetwalker
who tells them what they need to know.

Very often, prostit*tes are not likely
to cooperate with police.

They don't want to be seen
cooperating with the police.

There's been
so many cops out there,

and you gotta keep running
every time you see 'em.

The relationship
between sex workers and police is fraught.

There were times the policing
could be harsh, cruel, and out of step.

You wouldn't tell the police
if you'd been assaulted by a john.

There's no way.

Because you were doing something ill*gal,

and so you were putting yourself
into danger of being arrested.

And when you have an arrest
for prostitution,

that can cut off all sorts
of avenues for credit,

for an apartment, for another job,

even for retaining custody
of your children.

It will be used against you.

I still, to this day, feel bad about that

because I didn't tell them the truth,
you know, I…

But telling them the truth,

that's the last thing that I could do.

When you living this life,
you only live day-to-day.

You don't think about tomorrow,
and you don't think about yesterday.

Just day by day.

Because the industry
is criminalized,

you create a very dangerous situation
for women working on the street.

There were sexual predators

stalking and preying
on women who were marginalized…

because they were not protected
by the police.

Girls were,
you know, just easy targets,

but it didn't matter.

When you're out there, you...
Nothing can keep you off the street.

Because I was told
I had to do whatever I had to do

to get as much money as I could.

Prostitution is a… is a business
that keeps money circulating,

and that's what your… that's what the goal
is all about, to get money.

Is it worth it?

Uh. Yeah, I come out ahead.

You can make up to a thousand a night.

It's quick. It's easy, you know?

It is kind of dangerous.
Everything is dangerous.

Transactional sex
is part of the way society

has developed for millennia.

For some sex workers,

it's how people survive
and how people thrive.

In New York generally,

Times Square operated
as a known sexual district,

and it had been, of course, for decades.

At the turn of the century,
prostit*tes were walking the streets.

There were women
leaning out of windows soliciting.

The city fathers didn't much care,
so it… it was everywhere.

Times Square developed into the greatest
entertainment district in America.

The Great White Way,

the street that is paved
with tears and laughter.

There are more picture palaces
and theaters here

than any other street on Earth.

So at the peak
of the Roaring '20s,

the cult of the chorus girl
developed on 42nd Street,

attracting thousands of pretty women

from all over the country

coming here hoping to get jobs.

Many of them, when they couldn't launch
an entertainment career,

ended up becoming prostit*tes
to make some money.

Over time,

Times Square became a prost*tute's
promenade, as they called it.

By the 1970s,
things had changed in the sex industry

when pimping becomes a cultural icon.

- Hey, where you going?
- I'll be back, honey.

You had all these
blaxploitation films coming out

making heroes out of figures
like Iceberg Slim,

who controlled women and who made money.

When I ask you a question,
you answer.

I was around 12, maybe 12 and a half,

when Moses first brought me
up to New York City.

He would tattoo this cross
on all of his girls' hands…

like a branding, some kind of, um…
uh, you know, property of ownership.

He made it very clear
that he was the one in charge,

and he also made sure that I saw
he had a big GL*CK in his belt, a g*n.

Isn't it true,
p*mps keep their girls

working on the streets
by threats or by force?

Oh yes.

Any of the girls
ever hold out on you?

- One time.
- What did you do about it?

Well, she and I had a little talk,
and then she went to the hospital.

When she came back,
she didn't hold out again.

- What did you do to her?
- I had an argument with my belt with her.

It's nothing to hear that a girl
got k*lled or that a girl got beat up.

It's an occupational hazard,
and it happens to everybody.

They say, "She's the third one today,
or she's the third one this week."

They were getting constantly
put in these traumatic situations

where they were
getting abused by the p*mps

and abused by the johns

who wanted to take their anger out
on these sex workers.

It was so easy for my mother's k*ller

to get away with torturing young women.

Horrific things happened

on the street all the time.

The investigators
went through mountains of dead ends,

and all these detectives
had to think outside the box.

Detectives started looking
at arrest records for johns in the area

that had assaulted prostit*tes.

One of the detectives
pulled the records from two cases

that might hint at someone,
uh, who committed this crime.

Both crimes took place years before,
in 1973 and in 1974.

In both cases,
the complainants are working girls.

One of the charges
was actually filed by the girls' pimp.

They claimed that the perpetrator

would not let them go.

He… he insisted
on keeping them in his car,

and one of them says
that he took her money.

In both cases,
he took their costume jewelry.

Jewelry wasn't expensive.

It was a trophy.

He was accused of robbery,
kidnapping, and sexual as*ault.

So we had crimes
against two different women…

by the same man,

Richard Cottingham.

Richard Cottingham
was an average guy.

He drove an average car,

had an average home in Lodi, New Jersey,

which is nestled there
right close to New York for commuters.

He had a full-time job in New York City

as a computer operator
with Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

He was a family man.

His wife,
she was a fairly typical housewife

raising a daughter and two sons.

When they interviewed Cottingham
in these cases,

he said the women were lying.

He was either at home, or he was at work
at the time of these crimes.

He adamantly denied these charges.

It goes to court,

but the sex workers don't show up
to the trial, to the hearing.

No victim, no crime.

So in 1973 and 1974,

in both cases, the charges were dismissed.

And that's it. It's gone.

But now, in 1980,

now the task force is looking at this guy.

How did Richard Cottingham
fit the profile of the Torso k*ller?

Richard Cottingham
comes from a very stable family.

There's nothing in his family history

that is typical of serial K*llers.

There's no indication
that he was ever abused as a child.

He had a pretty good relationship
with his mother.

He also, uh... He excelled at work.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield
employed hundreds of people,

and, uh, Richard
was one of their lead employees.

At that point in time,
middle-class men

were not profiled
as being potentially violent,

especially if they were well-spoken,
appeared to be educated,

drove a nice vehicle…

You know, you would think,
"Oh, well, he's okay."

He didn't fit the profile.

And you'd have to eliminate the suspects
based on how the profile doesn't fit them.

That's how it works.

So once again, detectives had no suspects.

Nothing.

When we're talking
about serial K*llers…

a lot of these guys
are… are moving around.

They're moving around
from borough to borough,

from county to county.

Once they'd cross boundaries,

it becomes far more difficult
to link different crimes together.

Now, if you get out of state,
it was like another planet.

Because back then…

different departments didn't communicate.

So the task force

that was looking for the Torso k*ller
in New York City…

had no idea what was going on

in New Jersey.

In May 1980…

about 32 minutes away
from New York City, in New Jersey…

…at the Quality Inn motel.

The maid had gone to clean room 132.

She's vacuuming the room.

Bunk, bunk.
She's hitting something under the bed.

She looks under the bed…

and there's a body of a naked woman

with her hands handcuffed behind her back.

The Bergen County homicide squad
picked up on that case.

There is traces of

adhesive around her mouth,

circular scratches,

cuts around her breasts,

but clearly cause of death
is manual strangulation.

The victim was a young woman
thought to be approximately 19 years old.

Upon printing the victim,

Bergen County Police learned

that she had been arrested
in Miami for prostitution.

Her name was Valerie Street.

And they found out from the authorities
in Miami that she had come to New York.

She'd only been
in town a few days

when she was seen being picked up by a man

and brought to New Jersey.

At the Quality Inn motel,
a processing of the crime scene

revealed that the k*ller
inadvertently left

a latent print on the handcuff.

So they lift that print.

Remember, in those days, again,
you're doing physical searches,

a guy with one of those eye loupes
looking for the swirls

and trying to identify the print.

But at the time,
that print matched nobody.

Because the k*ller
wasn't in the system in New Jersey,

so the detectives had no suspects.

Nothing.

The law enforcement agencies
in Bergen County continued to investigate,

and that's when,
uh, one of the detectives

remembered a crime that took place

over two years before

where a woman
was m*rder*d in the same fashion

at the same location, the Quality Inn.

The victim
was a woman named Maryann Carr.

She was a nurse,

not a sex worker.

This was an open homicide
from December 16th, 1977.

She was supposed to meet
her mother-in-law for supper,

and she didn't show up.

They had a witness who saw Maryann Carr

arguing with a man
in the dimly lit parking lot

by her apartment
in Little Ferry, New Jersey.

Her body was found
the following day in the parking lot

of the Quality Inn motel
in Hasbrouck Heights.

There is a ligature
strangulation mark around her throat,

with traces of adhesive
around her mouth as well.

And, of course, the evidence
that she had been handcuffed

both on her ankles and her wrists.

Between Valerie Street
and Maryann Carr,

the connections are becoming very obvious.

This is the same hotel.

Victims handcuffed as well.

There was a determination made
that this was a signature.

This is a signature
of the same k*ller as Valerie Ann Street.

And now New Jersey had a serial k*ller.

The Quality Inn motel
appears to be a comfort zone for him.

And… and one thing about serial K*llers,

the first killings
are usually close to home and/or work.

The best way to explain it is that

they're able to control the environment.

So the Bergen County homicide squad
knew that he was familiar with the area.

With Valerie Street
and Maryann Carr, they have no suspect.

In New Jersey, there's no connection yet

to anyone at this point,

and both of these cases,
they just go dead.

Dead ends. Nothing.

And no one in New Jersey connected them

to the Times Square Torso k*ller
in New York.

Walking down the Deuce,

it was shocking and pretty filthy.

My father could have taken 42nd Street

and made it a pretty thing,

but his personality was in the gutter.

And a lot of bad things
happened on 42nd Street

because the porno world was there.

It just created a monster over there.

Seriously. More peep shows,
more freak parlors, more everything.

It has increased.

- What's your feeling?
- They're increasing.

Increasing? Huh?

Every restaurant that closes down,
a peep show opens.

Talk about pushing the envelope.

My father loved pushing the envelope.

His business expanded and expanded,

getting much, much XXX.

And in some of those peep shows,

I mean,
it wasn't only those girls dancing.

My father came in
with having live sex acts.

Now, you know,
there's people having sex on the stage,

and people were just watching
the whole thing.

Oh yeah.
Come on, sugar. It's all live.

And it's all happening right here
at Show World Center.

At Show World,
my wife Brandy and I

got into doing live shows.

So basically, there's a stage with a bed.

No barrier, just a live show.

You're naked.
Your back is to the audience.

It was up to us at that point,

but you had to have
at least three positions

so that the audience
could see the penetration.

And then that's a half-hour show.

People from out of state
would be sitting there like, "Oh, God."

You know? "What is this?"

Meanwhile, the regular patrons
wouldn't even flinch.

And my wife and I did eight shows a day.

We had a following.

Guys would actually come
just to watch her and me.

But men have a tendency to be…

What's the word? Stupid.

They feel that, "Oh, she's naked.
She just did a sex show,

so I can do whatever I want."

In between shows,
Brandy went in the ladies' room.

She was in the stall.

So this guy entered
the bathroom behind her.

He reached under to grab her,

and every time he reached under,
she would hit him with her heels.

I was like, "No, no."

Walked up to him
and proceeded to beat the sh*t out of him.

That's the mentality
that we were dealing with.

It was either you were a victim,
or you were a predator.

When you're at work,
and people are talking,

they say a lot of crazy things
just to spike your interest.

At Blue Cross and Blue Shield,

Richard was, like,
the dark side of the talking.

One of the, uh, stories Richard told

was about The Hellfire Club.

It was a sex club,

and Richie talked about this master
and sl*ve act that was going on there.

He said this guy was dragging
this woman around on the… on the floor.

There was some pain given to women.

Sticking pins in them,
in the woman's breast.

And he told me that really turned him on.

I said, "That turned you on?"

He says, "Yep."

He was into, uh, sadomasochism.

He was into that stuff,

that bloody stuff.

The sex trade, period,
is always gonna attract a darker side…

and the Deuce
started getting grittier and grittier.

The girls faced a lot of violence

because the cops
weren't stopping anything.

It was just, you know,

as they would put it,
"The scum getting rid of the scum."

Nobody really gave a sh*t.

It was like
they were ready for Times Square

to fold under the pressure anyway.

Ask any patrolman in this area,

either in the subways or on the street.

He'll tell you 42nd Street and 8th Avenue

is a frightening place day or night.

The difficulty was because
of the fiscal crisis in the 1970s.

The city laid off 5,000 police officers,
took them off the streets,

so crime went out of control.

New York City,
the state it was in was real shitty.

It's the only way
I can describe 42nd Street…

I got shot.

…all the crime that surrounds the area.

With the sex-related businesses

and the problems that it's caused

the residential community,
it feels that it is in a state of siege.

We're being threatened,
we're being harassed,

and we're being chased.

And I think something has to be done.

A group of police officers
came out with this pamphlet,

"Welcome to Fear City,"

with a reaper on the front.

Hold on to your belongings.
Don't go here. Don't go there.

It was a guide
to how not to get k*lled or victimized

in New York City,
especially in Times Square.

The fears were real.

I have children.

I wanna be able
to walk down the street without fear

and with… and without being exposed

to what we've been seeing every day,
every day, every night.

Smut must go!
Smut must go!

The city decides that the Deuce
and that whole area

is too much crime, too much public sex,

and that they need to crack down.

That's when it all started,
saving New York from itself.

Then they created
the Office of Midtown Enforcement.

Uh, we can't overemphasize

this is not going to be
a glossed over, one-shot thing.

And we're gonna be at it as rough
and as tough as we can possibly be.

The man directly in charge
of the cleanup of vice

in the Times Square area

is Sidney Baumgarten,
an assistant to the mayor,

who'll have a full-time staff of 14

and $432,000 of federal money
to do the job right.

We had identified
450 illicit establishments.

Massage parlors,
topless, bottomless bars, drug dens,

all the ill*gal activities
that were going on.

Baumgarten's attack
on the porno and prostitution problems

will be aimed at catching the people
involved in those businesses

violating new laws he hopes to get,

as well as electrical, building, health,
and zoning codes already on the books.

We needed a mechanism to shut them down.

We had a variety
of reasons why these places were ill*gal.

You'd find the massage parlor

had hooked up its electric
to the next-door neighbor.

So the ConEd people would come down,
they would disconnect it,

and they'd be in the dark,
so they'd light candles.

The fire department
would go in and close them up

because they didn't have
an open flame permit.

We're using whatever means
we have at our disposal

that are legal and proper
to close the premises down.

We would see the orange sticker
from the mayor's Midtown Enforcement

closing a place, one after another.

I think that it's such nonsense.

What is going on today is such nonsense,

and all… all the money that's being spent…

We'll look back at it
as we look back today

on what Massachusetts did
to the witches up there in those days.

A lot of the politicians
were going after my father,

and he was becoming
like public enemy number one.

My father had a friend
in the police department say,

"They want you."

They wanted to catch
the porno king of New York City

to show that they cleaned up porn.

He was arrested 12 times and got off.

And then eventually, my dad went to jail.

They got him on tax evasion.

My arrest record runs eight times
for doing the live shows.

But the streetwalkers,
that was a different level.

Those arrests were a lot more frequent.

It's easier
to arrest women than to, you know,

hunt a serial k*ller,

to stop muggings,

to do all these other kinds of things.

And so, people in the sex industry

become the victims
of police public relations

to make it look like the cops
were being tough on crime.

It's, uh, a never-ending w*r.

It's not like World w*r I,
when it's over, it's over.

It's always there to be fought.

Mayor Beame noted the city
has shut down 173 sex-related businesses.

Many others are still flourishing, though,

right in the open
in the shadow of Times Square.

There were times when
we closed a place down,

and then a month later, it was reopened.

That happened too often.

The desire
for deviant behavior is… is insatiable.

Once you permit one level,

then people go to the next level.

And if you permit that,
they go to the level beyond that.

Where do you stop?

Where do you stop?

Basically,
Richard's big thing was adventure.

Always an adventure.

One morning at Blue Cross and Blue Shield,

Richard and I were sitting at the console,

and Cottingham was in his chair,
rocking away, shaking his leg.

He was a leg shaker.

That drove me nuts.

He was talking about
taking girls from New York,

bringing them to this hotel in Jersey,

and drew this complete diagram

of the Quality Inn hotel.

The entrances, the exits,

the easy ways in, and the easy ways out.

He told me he would go there with a date

and then slip out whenever he wanted to

and leave the girl completely undressed,

no money, and nowhere to go
because she had nothing.

According to other guys in the office,
Richard said that he would drug them.

And you know when he said it,
you think you would say to yourself,

"What a sick son of a b*tch this guy is."

But you don't
because you don't believe half of it.

It goes in one ear and out the other.

You know, we took it with a grain of salt.

I don't know when
he had time to be with his family

'cause he was always out
at night prowling.

The guy never slept.

His wife eventually found out

that her husband
was going to places in New York

to buy sex.

And finally, she, uh,
she filed, uh, filed for divorce.

His life seemed
to be unraveling.

The detectives
in different police jurisdictions

in New Jersey, in New York,

they can't find the guy,

and then it went nowhere.

There was nothing more
they could find out.

So now it's 18 days

after the m*rder
of Valerie Street in New Jersey

and seven days
after the Jean Reyner m*rder in New York.

And now… another girl is in danger.

Leslie O'Dell
was a 19-year-old girl.

She had come into town
through the Port Authority building.

There are so many
runaway kids at this time

who were showing up
at Port Authority on a bus

trying to figure out how to survive.

And there were a lot of men
who were looking to exploit them

by turning them into sex workers.

When she got there,
she was probably hungry,

had a couple bucks in a big city.

Next thing you know, this pimp says,

"What's a girl like you doing
on the street? I can help you."

She went for it.

She was immediately snapped up
and put on the street.

She was only out there a few days,
and she was trapped.

She… she knew she was in a bad situation.

Leslie Ann O'Dell
was approached in Manhattan by the john.

And he had a lot of money.

He was waving
a lot of money, uh, in front of her.

This individual
had asked her to come with him,

and she did.

At a bar,
he came across very friendly,

and he said his name was Tommy.

He, uh, bought her drinks.

He showed interest in her.

She said she wanted
to get away from the pimp.

He said, "I can help you out.
I'll give you money. You can go home."

"I'm gonna help
you out of your situation."

He promised her if he…
if she did go with him

that he would get her safely
to a bus station in New Jersey

so that she could make her escape,
uh, from her pimp.

She felt very comfortable
with this man.

She trusted him,

so she got in the car with him willingly

and drove to New Jersey.

And then he said,

"I'd like to have sex
with you before you go,"

and he took her to the Quality Inn motel.

He wanted to put her in handcuffs,

that he wanted to spank her.

That's when the horror began.

Next thing you know, he's attacking her.

She was beaten, tortured,

sexually assaulted,

on and on for hours.

And finally,
he removed the handcuffs…

…and pointed a g*n at her.

She knew she had to get out.

She grabs the p*stol, points it at him…

pulls the trigger.

The trigger goes "click."

It's not a real p*stol.
It's a fake p*stol.

Now he's coming at her with a knife.

A maid hears muffled screams.

The maid
is already frightened and horrified

by the earlier homicide
of Valerie Ann Street.

They send somebody to the door.

And they said, "Is everything all right?"

Leslie went to the door…

…and he warned her
to tell them that she was okay.

She managed to get the door open
just a… a wee bit enough

to make some kind of a hand signal.