Peter Frankopan (1:58)

She really wanted to know why. How had Cottingham become the man who killed her sister?

Afwah Hirsch (2:04)

I needed to know things about him, and he did disappoint. Richard would have to be the one to tell us what happened that made him so evil. Such an evil, nice guy.

Peter Frankopan (2:21)

I knew that I would need to get answers to Karen's questions, and those could only come from Cottingham. I listened back to one of the last things she said to me. Is there anything that you would impart to me? Any sort of wisdom?

Afwah Hirsch (2:35)

Don't be afraid.

Peter Frankopan (2:38)

When you get that feeling inside of you to go after something, don't be afraid. Cottingham was known to reject interviews. It took a while, but then there I was, sitting in my parents Basement waiting for his call.

Afwah Hirsch (3:00)

You will not be charged for this call. Whose call is from. Get him. An inmate at the New Jersey State Prison. This call will be monitored and recorded. To accept this call, press 5 now. To decline this call, hang up. Hello?

Peter Frankopan (3:22)

Hello?

Afwah Hirsch (3:24)

Hello?

Peter Frankopan (3:25)

Hi, Richard?

Afwah Hirsch (3:27)

Yes.

Peter Frankopan (3:29)

Hi, this is Anthony. Can you hear me?

Afwah Hirsch (3:33)

Yes.

Peter Frankopan (3:33)

Okay.

Afwah Hirsch (3:34)

Can you hear me?

Peter Frankopan (3:34)

Yes. Yes, I can hear you.

Afwah Hirsch (3:36)

That was a bad time, eh?

Peter Frankopan (3:38)

Yeah. My name is Anthony Scalia from Truth Media and Sony Music Entertainment. This is. Denise didn't come home.

Afwah Hirsch (3:53)

When I'm done talking to Richard, I want to be done with Denise's case.

Peter Frankopan (3:59)

We're talking about a guy who is the master of deception.

Afwah Hirsch (4:03)

He's a bad guy, but he is the one that has answers. Believable or not, the person that stalked me that day, to me was like the devil himself.

Peter Frankopan (4:15)

Do you think that you saw Richard the night that Denise died? Do you think that person in the car was Richard?

Afwah Hirsch (4:19)

I know it was. Now I absolutely know it was. Hello, Anthony. How are you? This is to you and your girlfriend. You know, the one I'm going to steal from you. Good morning.

Peter Frankopan (4:38)

Chapter seven. Evil. Nice guy.

Afwah Hirsch (4:45)

Most people see me as a monster. I can understand that. I don't blame them at all. When they look at what I've done and everything, it has to come out to a monster. It has to come out to a scary, dangerous, ghoul type of person.

Peter Frankopan (5:05)

By the time I finally got on the phone with Richard Cottingham, he was a 73 year old who had spent more than half his life in prison. He had been convicted of five murders and had confessed to four more. But he claimed to have killed around 80.

Afwah Hirsch (5:20)

It's true. I did some really, really terrible things in my life. I don't believe it sometimes, you know? Sometimes I don't believe I did these things.

Peter Frankopan (5:31)

I knew two things about him from talking to Bergen county detectives. That he was charming and manipulative and that he loved food. So on that first call, that's what we talked about. What do you miss the most, food wise?

Afwah Hirsch (5:45)

Pizza. I love pizza. I could eat pizza all day long. Hot dogs. I love hot dogs, too.

Peter Frankopan (5:50)

Yesterday we made fresh homemade tomato sauce.

Afwah Hirsch (5:54)

Oh, fuck you. I make it, too. I use ketchup and water, just like watery ketchup.

Peter Frankopan (6:04)

I knew that I wouldn't be able to get into the big stuff right away. So on that first call, I kept it to small talk.

Afwah Hirsch (6:11)

You know who my biggest singer right now is? Kelly Clarkson. I love her music.

Peter Frankopan (6:15)

Get out of here. Really?

Afwah Hirsch (6:17)

I listen to them all day. Long. I got 65 of her songs.

Peter Frankopan (6:21)

Wow. Karen called Cottingham an evil, nice guy. I was starting to see why. You know, you said that you really did feel bad when it came to Karen.

Afwah Hirsch (6:32)

I felt horrible. I felt ashamed. I liked her. I liked her immediately. She was very sincere. She wasn't easy on me. She told me off right away. She had a lot of hurt in her still, which really troubled me because I didn't realize after all these years it would still be there or brought me peace and happiness was making Taryn feel good, seeing that I could help her. She deserved better. She deserved a little more life where she could enjoy her family. And, you know, it just seems like the good ones go early and the moms like me. I'll probably be around till I'm 98. See, I'm going to go look at my baloney. You have 30 seconds remaining and you can eat your lasagna and stuffed meatballs.

Peter Frankopan (7:28)

And thank you.

Afwah Hirsch (7:30)

You don't have to worry. I'm doing this because I want to. I'm doing it for Karen. And I'll talk to you as long as it's necessary to take care of this project.

Peter Frankopan (7:40)

Great. I'll write you. As soon as the phone cut out, I remember I went upstairs and my parents were like, oh my God, what was he like? I was like, he was normal. You could easily forget who you're talking to. But then I remembered what Karen told me about Cottingham. This man had been damaged to this point where there was no good in them. There was an evil that exists within this man even to this day.

Afwah Hirsch (8:18)

Did you know that after World War II, the US government quietly brought former Nazi scientists to America in a covert.

Peter Frankopan (8:25)

Operation to advance military technology?

Afwah Hirsch (8:28)

Or that in the 1950s, the US army conducted a secret experiment by releasing.

Peter Frankopan (8:32)

Bacteria over San Francisco to test how a biological attack might spread without alerting the public?

Afwah Hirsch (8:38)

These might sound like conspiracy theories, but they're not. They're well documented government operations that have been hidden away in classified files for decades. I'm Luke Lamanna, a Marine Corps recon vet and I've always had a thing for digging into the unknown.

Peter Frankopan (8:53)

It's what led me to start my.

Afwah Hirsch (8:54)

New podcast, Declassified Mysteries. In it I explore hidden truths and reveal some eye opening events like covert experiments and secret operations that those in.

Peter Frankopan (9:05)

Power tried to keep buried.

Afwah Hirsch (9:07)

Follow redacted Declassified mysteries with me, Luke Lamanna, on the Wondery app or wherever.

Peter Frankopan (9:13)

You get your podcasts to listen ad free.

Afwah Hirsch (9:15)

Join Wondery plus in the Wondery App. I'M Indra Verma. And in the latest season of the Spy who, we open the file on Daphne park, the spy who killed a prime minister. As the Belgian Congo gains its independence, Officer park sets out to build a spy network. Together, they're about to go to new extremes to keep Congo free of communists. Follow the spy who now wherever you listen to podcasts. This call is from an inmate at New Jersey State Prison. To accept this call, press 5 now to declare. Hello?

Peter Frankopan (9:58)

Hey, Rich, how are you?

Afwah Hirsch (10:00)

Oh, it's been a whirlwind the last week and a half. You know, prison shit, you know.

Peter Frankopan (10:07)

After a few calls with Richard Cottingham, we started to get into a rhythm. We'd get on the phone, he'd complain about the prisoner's health.

Afwah Hirsch (10:14)

They got mad at me because I wouldn't go to the hospital.

Peter Frankopan (10:17)

I'd ask a question or two, and then the 15 minutes would be up and he'd have to call me back. But on those calls, I started to dig into one of Karen's unanswered questions. What had turned Cottingham into a monster? Have you ever tried to seriously take the time and think about why you did these things?

Afwah Hirsch (10:38)

I thought about it thousands of times. There's no answer. There's just no answer. I had a perfect family life, had two great parents, went to the best schools in the area. Never went to bed hungry. Just a normal life.

Peter Frankopan (10:56)

Cottingham grew up in the nice part of Bergen county with three sisters. His father worked for an insurance company. His mother was a housewife.

Afwah Hirsch (11:05)

I had no proclivity toward any of the known actions of serial killers when they were young. I never started fires. I never killed animals. In fact, I raised honing pigeons. Every once in a while, a bird would come back and then have a broken wing or something, and you'd have to kill it. I couldn't kill it. My father would have to go out and ring its neck because I couldn't do. I just couldn't do it.

Peter Frankopan (11:33)

But there was one thing that happened to Cottingham when he was a kid that he thinks might explain who he became.

Afwah Hirsch (11:39)

When I was four years old, I hit a car, and it made the papers because the article wasn't that a car hit a boy. The boy ran into the car, like it hit my head, and I went to the hospital and the whole bit, you know, when a kid gets the head injury or something, it's possible that some area of your brain gets scrambled up or something like that.

Peter Frankopan (12:07)

Cottingham says he started acting out at his elementary school, talking in class, cheating on tests and stealing.

Afwah Hirsch (12:14)

Yeah, I'd always take the chance, and more times than not, I got caught. Back then, when you went to Catholic school, the nuns beat the shit out of you.

Peter Frankopan (12:23)

Did you ever get hit by the nuns?

Afwah Hirsch (12:25)

Oh, I got hit all the time because I wasn't smart enough to get away with it.

Peter Frankopan (12:29)

As he moved to high school, Cottingham says he got better at breaking the rules and getting away with it, and he was starting to enjoy it.

Afwah Hirsch (12:37)

It's that gambling instinct. If you did something bad like that, you were supposed to get caught. So when I didn't, it showed me that you can probably do anything you want and get away with it.

Peter Frankopan (12:54)

Cottingham told the cops that his first murder happened back in 1967, when he was 20 years old. The victim was a young housewife named Nancy Vogel. Was Nancy Vogel your first homicide?

Afwah Hirsch (13:08)

No. No way. I haven't told nobody when the first one, but it was well before Nancy Vogel.

Peter Frankopan (13:16)

I think I understand now that your first was in high school, right?

Afwah Hirsch (13:20)

Yes, and I'm not going to go too much into it, but he did.

Peter Frankopan (13:25)

End up telling me a little about it. She was also a young housewife from Bergen county. And at the time, he was only 16 or 17 years old.

Afwah Hirsch (13:36)

It was unintentional, maybe 99, 98% unintentional. You know, maybe in the back of my mind something was going to happen or something like that, but it wasn't intentional.

Peter Frankopan (13:49)

Did you realize then that you were capable of this, or were you kind of surprised that you had done something like that?

Afwah Hirsch (13:56)

I was euphoric that I got away with it. You feel powerful. You feel like you know something that nobody else in the world knows. And that's a powerful thought.

Peter Frankopan (14:13)

After high school, Cottingham went on to kill other young women in Bergen county, like Nancy Vogel, Irene Blaise and Denise Velaska.

Afwah Hirsch (14:22)

I didn't get off killing anybody. I enjoyed getting away with things. You know, it was the excitement, it was the adrenaline pumping in you, knowing you could do something so dangerous and not have to worry about getting caught.

Peter Frankopan (14:39)

By the 70s, Cottingham was married with three kids, living in my hometown of Lodi. He had a steady job working the night shift as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York City.

Afwah Hirsch (14:52)

I'd get off work and I'd have five or six or seven hours every night to go to the bars or pick up girls, stalking people and doing what I wanted to do. I went to Times Square at 3 o'clock in the morning, you couldn't imagine what timescale was. The excitement, it was like electricity in the air. You could walk down the street and almost guarantee you see somebody getting stabbed. You know, the pimps would be shooting each other. You'd always hear the whores fighting with each other. And it was a wild place. Everything a man dish out for some fun could want was right in that area. I loved women. I could never get enough of them. I was always mysterious. I would sit at the end of the bar and I would just look disinterested and before I know it, they'd be running after me. I wasn't a bad looking guy back in those days. I dressed well and I had the knack of just being able to start a conversation or friendly or maybe I looked safe or I don't. I don't really know what it is. They never really thought that anything bad was going to happen at the end.

Peter Frankopan (16:15)

Sometimes Cottingham says he would pick up a nurse or a waitress who had just gotten off her shift, but most of the time he would pick up a prostitute and bring her to a seedy motel.

Afwah Hirsch (16:28)

I would just put the fear of God into them. You know, if you make any noise or anything, you're not gonna see it tomorrow morning. All I would have to do is tell them what to do and they would do it. I didn't get off hurting anybody. And it wasn't fighting or yelling or screaming or punching or any of that stuff that you might think it would be. It wasn't violent.

Peter Frankopan (16:55)

The bodies Cottingham left behind told a different story. He would sexually assault these women. He would torture them for hours, sometimes for days. He cut them with knives, bit them and beat them. The autopsies in these cases are clear.

Afwah Hirsch (17:13)

It was almost like playing God. It's a powerful situation. It's a powerful feeling. The day after I'd done something, it was out of my mind already. I never looked over my shoulder. I never lost a night's sleep, you know, I didn't think about it no more. I didn't have to think about it no more. Come home, sleep two hours, play with the kids for two hours, take my wife to the store for an hour and then go right back and do it over again, night after night, week after week, year after year.

Peter Frankopan (17:48)

If you had not been arrested, do you think you would have continued to do these violent crimes?

Afwah Hirsch (17:55)

Definitely. You have 60 seconds remaining.

Peter Frankopan (18:01)

Does Friday around the same time work for you? Is that okay?

Afwah Hirsch (18:05)

Yeah, unless they give me parole before that. You know, I might Just knock on your door one night and say, hey, guess who.

Peter Frankopan (18:27)

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Afwah Hirsch (18:55)

This week on this is History in conversation. Join me, Dan Jones, for an interview with the man, the myth, the legend, Stephen Fry. We'll be talking about the impact of Greek myths on the Middle Ages and get stuck into our favourite and least favorite heroes of legend. Aeneas is a very annoying hero. The word that's always attached to him is pious. Whatever the gods tell him to do, whatever a prophet tells him to do, he does it. Search this is History wherever you get your podcasts. This call is from an inmate at New Jersey State Prison. To accept this call, press 5 now. To decline.

Peter Frankopan (19:35)

Hello?

Afwah Hirsch (19:36)

Hello. How's it going?

Peter Frankopan (19:38)

Good, good. I wanted to jump into some questions about Denise because I'd been talking to Richard Cottingham every week for a few months, hoping to gain his trust. And now that I felt that I had it, there was one more murder I wanted him to tell me about. Can you just talk me through that initial moment when you saw Denise and what followed afterwards?

Afwah Hirsch (20:03)

I was driving on Old Look Road at night. It was desolate, so to speak. There's no houses, there's nothing but woods. In that time frame, it was almost impossible to drive two or three miles and not see a hitchhiker. Everybody hitchhiked and usually it was mostly girls. I don't think Denise was actually sticking her finger out. I seen her on the other side of the street going the opposite way and she was just walking alongside of the road and I pulled over and she just came right up, opened the door and said, you're going to Westwood. She was very pretty, she was sexy. I said, yeah, she just hopped in. I think I asked her if she wanted to go for a drink or something and she giggled or something like that. She had a very young sounding voice. She was just too young. But when you pick them up and they're already in your car, it's too late. She wanted to go to a pizza shop in Westwood and that was only about maybe 5 minute drive at the tops. So I had to make a decision right away whether I was going to kidnap her or hurt her or whatever, or let her go and just let her Go on her way. Obviously, I decided to do it. She told me she was supposed to meet her friends at the pizza shop, but as we approached the pizza shop, you could see there was nobody there. You know, I told her something to the effect, well, why don't we go in and have a slice of pizza and wait for your friends? And her friends didn't show up. I said to her, you know, can I take you someplace else or whatever? I went and got the car and just honked the horn, and she was still on the corner in front of the pizza shop. But she didn't know what to do. It all depended on if she got back in the car and she just hopped in.

Peter Frankopan (22:25)

Cottingham told me that he drove Denise to the parking lot behind his old Catholic elementary school. It was the place where he first started breaking the rules.

Afwah Hirsch (22:34)

It was a beautiful place to be alone and, you know, not be bothered. It was a really perfect place where people want to do bad things back then. You gotta remember the seats are like one big bench seat. So I scooted over towards her. You know, I put my arm around her, and I don't think she knew how to handle the situation. At some point, she didn't want to go no further, and I was going to have my wife.

Peter Frankopan (23:09)

Cottingham sexually assaulted Denise. He told me that when it was all over, he questioned her, trying to get a feel for whether he could let her go.

Afwah Hirsch (23:18)

Are you going to get in trouble if you come home really late? What are you going to say when you go home? I think she asked me if I had any sisters. What high school did I go to? You know, of course, I didn't tell her the truth. I knew immediately what she was getting at. I could sense that she was trying to find out a little bit about me. I got the sense that she would not be afraid to go home and tell her parents exactly what happened. It's not going to end if I just let her go home. She was a lot smarter than I gave her credit for in the beginning, and she was a little more stupid. I think she might be alive right now at that point. She is very dangerous to me. If you're out in the woods and there's a bear there, and you don't want to shoot the bear because he's a beautiful animal, well, you know, this bear is going to tear you apart if you don't shoot him first.

Peter Frankopan (24:17)

You realize now in retrospect, the hypocrisy is something like that. She was just a sitting duck. You're the Bear, I mean, that's the way I see it. There's no way to justify something like that.

Afwah Hirsch (24:30)

When I met her, she was the sitting duck. She was helpless. She didn't do anything wrong or anything like that. If I were to let her go, then it turns around and now she becomes the danger and I'm the one that's the sitting duck.

Peter Frankopan (24:47)

But you put yourself in that danger.

Afwah Hirsch (24:50)

Oh, of course. I'm not blaming her at all. And I chose to put her in that position. To me, in my mind, it was her or me.

Peter Frankopan (25:03)

Cottingham says that once he made up his mind, the only question left was where it would happen.

Afwah Hirsch (25:09)

I just decided I would go down to Saddleblook, around that area, which I knew I had used it before.

Peter Frankopan (25:17)

Cottingham had killed another girl in that area just a few months before.

Afwah Hirsch (25:22)

It was a safe place, you know, a little eerie with the cemetery on the other end. It was just really a perfect place for something like that. She knew something was going on. She was acting different. She was, of course, a lot more worried. I pulled off to the side of the road. I remember shaking her, grabbing her around the head, you know, around the neck to calm her down. She was bent over, almost laying on her back and I was basically on top of her with my hands around her and I strangled her. It's amazing how heavy a 95 or 100 pound girl can be when they're dead. And you're on the side of a road and the wind is going by, you're rushed, you know, you can't take your time. In a way, it's an exciting type of time because that's where the danger is.

Peter Frankopan (26:37)

Karen told me she wanted to know all the details, that not knowing what happened was the worst part. But by the time Cottingham was finished, I was glad she would never have to hear them all. Do you have any idea what Denise's last words may have been?

Afwah Hirsch (26:54)

Yes. Well, I'm not going to tell you.

Peter Frankopan (26:57)

Are you lying to me?

Afwah Hirsch (27:00)

No.

Peter Frankopan (27:01)

That's quite an important thing. Is there any way you could just tell me? Because it is a big deal to me.

Afwah Hirsch (27:09)

It's a hard thing to talk about. I get very emotional when I talk about it. I will tell you. I just gotta be in the right mood.

Peter Frankopan (27:20)

For weeks I pushed Cottingham to give me Denise's last words. It started to feel like he was stringing me along to keep me calling. But then finally he said he would tell me on our next call. What made you not want to talk about it? Until today, I wasn't going to talk.

Afwah Hirsch (27:38)

About it at all. I didn't have no intention the entire time to really speak of it.

Peter Frankopan (27:45)

Okay, so what were they?

Afwah Hirsch (27:49)

They're in the actual ending of her life. She looked up at me and I was looking at her, and she looked right at me and she said, I love you. I was shocked. It was emotionally terrifying. Nobody ever said anything like that. One part of me didn't want to do it, and the other part of me said I had to do it. That other part just took over, you know? But why couldn't I have stopped at that point? I don't know. So now you know.

Peter Frankopan (28:38)

I would never be able to know if Cottingham was lying to me about this. But for some reason, it felt like the truth. I thought about Karen, about everything she and her family would go through after that moment. A moment that Cottingham would repeat many more times. He murdered so many women and he destroyed so many families. Do you think people will ever know the extent of all that you've done?

Afwah Hirsch (29:05)

No simple answer. No. There's only one person in the world that knows what went on, and it's me. I really am the one that determines what is going to come out by what I feel like talking about.

Peter Frankopan (29:21)

In a lot of ways, Cottingham is still the kid he was in high school, holding secrets in his head and taking pleasure from the fact that no one else knows. He could help more people like Karen, but he chooses not to.

Afwah Hirsch (29:35)

There's really not that many crimes where people are still even living safe.

Peter Frankopan (29:41)

I can assure you that there are a lot of people who are still looking.

Afwah Hirsch (29:45)

Oh, I'm sure there are.

Peter Frankopan (29:55)

Karen got enough from Cottingham to bring her some peace. But there was one more question she asked him that he didn't give a clear answer to. Do you think that you may have seen Karen that night?

Afwah Hirsch (30:08)

We talked about that extensively. She seen a blue car, she said, and the way the guy looked at her, she always wondered about that. Was that the person that eventually met her sister? She wanted to hear that. I saw her sometimes. I wanted to say things to her just to make her feel good. But in the long run, I said that's not the right thing to do. So I told her I really just didn't remember. I don't remember the incidents. You know, some people have imaginations and they start to imagine things. Cameron might have said something over and over and over until she got convinced of it.

Peter Frankopan (30:57)

On the next and final episode of Denise Didn't Come Home. I finally get my hands on Denise's case file and learn things Karen always wanted to know. And I learned some things Karen didn't want me to know.

Afwah Hirsch (31:11)

You can actually sometimes convince yourself that you did something or you saw something that you didn't.

Peter Frankopan (31:24)

Unlock all episodes of Denise Didn't Come Home ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast Channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of thrilling true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Binge Cases show page on Apple podcasts or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Denise Didn't Come Home is a production of Truth Media in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment. I'm your host Anthony Scalia. The show is produced by Ryan Sweikert and me. Story editing by Mark Smerling. Kevin Shepard is our associate producer. Scott Curtis is our production manager from Sony. Our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. Fact checking by Dania Suleiman. Kenny Kusiak did the mix. Sound design by Kenny Kusiak and Ryan Swigert. Music by Kenny Kusiak. Epidemic Sound and Marmoset. Special thanks to Peter Vronsky and Jennifer Weiss. Our title track is Gimme Some by Weevil. If you've been enjoying the show, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 646-665-2748 and leave us a voicemail. Don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other people find the show and thanks for listening.