Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes,

listener discretion is advised.

This episode includes discussions of murder, rape, and assault

that some people may find offensive.

We advise extreme caution for children under 13.

The Cottingham family mostly kept to themselves. Richard Cottingham family mostly kept to themselves.

Richard Cottingham seemed like a doting father.

He took his children trick-or-treating.

He brought them to and from school.

To the neighbors they were a normal albeit cloistered family.

But secretly Janet Coddingham suspected that something was amiss.

Her husband was hiding something. He'd become withdrawn, locking himself in the basement for hours on end.

There was a holiness to him, a vacancy Janet didn't recognize.

Richard seemed less and less like the man she married.

She didn't know what was going on, but she knew he was hiding it downstairs.

In the cellar he called his study.

One afternoon, while Richard was at work, she crept down the dusty stairs to the basement.

She stepped into a room filled with women's clothing, shoes,

purses, and costume jewelry. Mysterious sets of house keys were strewn across a desk.

Janet found bondage equipment, gags and restraints that made her stomach drop.

Something was deeply wrong.

That night, when Richard walked through the front door, Janet played it cool.

...