Times Square Torso Ripper

Book excerpt: The story of Richard Cottingham, the "Times Square Ripper" or "Times Square Torso Killer," one of America's most sadistically depraved serial killers. A shocking case of unbridled sex, sadism, prostitution, porn, singles bars, date-rape drugs, abduction, bondage, handcuffs, duct tape, torture, sexploitation, perverted paraphilic fetishes, serial killing and dismemberment on New York's notorious Times Square and the Forty-Deuce in the 1970s. Historian Peter Vronsky describes his brief encounter with serial killer Cottingham in a seedy New York hotel in 1979 that later inspired him to write his bestseller history "Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters." In "Times Square Torso Ripper" Vronsky explores the history of the notorious Forty-Deuce strip on 42nd Street near Times Square and how it spawned the sadistic monster Richard Cottingham in an era before the term "serial killer" had been coined in popular culture. Renowned serial homicide expert Dr. Robert D. Keppel said of Richard Cottingham, "I kept asking myself what it was that ultimately intrigued me about the Cottingham case. Partly it was the level of sadistic torture that Cottingham acted out on his victims. He didn't kill them and desecrate their bodies; he forced them to experience pain and humiliation before he killed them. Then he desecrated their bodies." Includes 50 photographs WARNING: SOME FORENSIC CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE PHOTOS, EXPLICIT LANGUANGE AND GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF EXTREME SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND DEPRAVITY THAT SOME MAY FIND HIGHLY DISTURBING