Serial Killers

In 1977, Cottingham was married with three kids, two secret girlfriends, and an itch for abusing sex workers. As the years wore on, he developed increasingly bizarre torture rituals, and his crimes escalated in both body count and brutality.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He had an idyllic childhood in the 1940s and ‘50s, but as Richard Francis Cottingham grew, he began having dark, dehumanizing sexual fantasies about women. When he started working in New York City, he took those violent, twisted dreams and made them a reality.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1979, Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris sexually assaulted and murdered five teenage girls. For months, authorities were at a loss to explain the disappearances of their victims, but eventually, Norris and Bittaker got reckless, and the crimes of the Toolbox Killers were revealed to the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They each lived lonely lives, bouncing from jail to jail until a chance meeting in California brought them together in 1978. Bittaker and Norris began a sadistic friendship which evolved into a twisted partnership—one that would eventually claim the lives of five teenage girls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At a young age, Moses Sithole was abandoned by his mother, forcing him to go in and out of a traumatic foster care system. As an adult in the ‘90s, he began enacting his revenge on women in a rampage that had South Africa terrified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early ‘70s, a teenaged Dugan had an encounter with one of the most notorious serial killers in the U.S.—a killer whose infamy Dugan would soon match, with a murder spree throughout Chicago’s rural suburbs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In his youth, Walter Ellis was prone to fits of physical violence. But as he grew older, he took on the role of a gentle and unsuspecting neighbor. Over the course of 20 years, it was this persona that allowed the man known as the Milwaukee North Side Strangler to avoid the detection of local police, who were facing a series of eerily similar murders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up in the California town of Solvang, Thor Nis Christiansen was the quiet son of Danish immigrants. As he grew older, Thor began harboring dark, disturbing fantasies about women. Before his 20th birthday, he would strike for the first time—and it wouldn't be the last... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He endured extreme childhood abuse, served in the Marines, and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. Between 1986 and 1996, Andrew Urdiales turned his anger into murder, taking the lives of eight women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He spent his life trying to escape jails, mental hospitals, and his urge to kill. From 1961 to 1982, Charles Ray Hatcher murdered at least four people, but he claims to have killed as many as 16 in Missouri, California, and Illinois. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices