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Just shy of his 21st birthday, Richard Cottingham began a vicious killing spree that tore through north New Jersey and New York City. Richard Cottingham, the notorious North Jersey serial killer known for dismembering the young women who were so often his victims, publicly confessed Tuesday to drowning two North Bergen girls. Over decades, through his rise from sergeant to detective to chief of detectives, Robert Anzilotti plugged away at cold cases in New Jersey involving young womens murders.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times. 0000004577 00000 n
And even worse, the rape laws were particularly onerous, and you had to provide a witness to bring an allegation of rape. Years after her sisters death, she had found some comfort speaking to another from her tribe, Karen Miller, a sister of Denise Falasca. Mary Anne and Lorraine deserve it, God rest their souls, Bergen County Prosecutors Chief of Detective Robert Anzilotti said Tuesday after Richard Cottingham of Lodi admitted killing both in 1974. The weather worsened. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. The little perks for the older man the pizza, the poker, the distraction from prison life were always in the service of the younger mans long game.
Where is Richard Cottingham Now? - The Cinemaholic In 1948, Cottingham's family moved to Dumont, New Jersey, and in 1956 to River Vale, New Jersey, where he began his fascination with bondage pornography. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. Despite the gruesome nature of his murders, the butcher, named Richard Cottingham, never warranted the breathless news coverage of David Son of Sam Berkowitz, who only three years prior paralyzed the Big Apple with fear. The confessed killer then fatally bludgeoned Sheila Heiman, a 33-year-old mother of three, in July 1973, at her North Woodmere, NY, home, where her husband found her upon returning from shopping, authorities said. Her name was Nancy Schiava Vogel. He married in 1970 and became a father of three. 0000008735 00000 n
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Netflix details Times Square torso killer Richard Cottingham who Richard Cottingham, Lorraine . Then came Tuesdays pleas. He was also extremely fidgety and unable to sit still.
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The police photograph on the left was taken in June of 1980. He kept these "trophies" in a locked room in the basement. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (each updated 1/26/2023). For decades, a string of killings of teenage girls haunted suburban New Jersey. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. But Mr. Anzilotti kept pressing him: You know youre going to tell me.. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. [1] He was nicknamed the New York Ripper, the Torso Killer and the Times Square Killer, since his crimes often targeted prostitutes and included mutilation. It could only be Jackie Harp.. A real sick bastard did this, retired NYPD detective Jim Riegel, who was working as a beat cop that day, recalls his sergeant telling him in the new Netflix series Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer, out Wednesday. Cottingham's reign of terror on both sides of the Hudson River is the subject of Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer, whose tale begins on Dec. 2, 1979, with New York City police and fire. The potential payoff in return felt almost too important to describe. In this image taken from a New Jersey Courts virtual hearing, Richard Cottingham, center, known as the "Torso Killer," pleads guilty Tuesday, April 27, 2021, to two 1974 murders. His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. All rights reserved (About Us). There was also a lockbox filled with trophies from his murders, including Maryann Carrs apartment key and a necklace belonging to Jean Reyner. He drove his car ahead of Harp, pulled over and walked back toward her, Vronsky said. Shed been abducted by Cottingham from the Ledgewood Terrace apartments, in Little Ferry, where Cottingham had previously lived, said Vronsky. Did the old man kill those girls? It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. He abducted Vogel and took her to a field in Montvale, where he strangled her. Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. xref
Cottingham, whose attorney did not return messages seeking comment, has claimed to have killed as many as 100 women. HKo0l06CYf,Y(v (I?0c9 Harp was found strangled to death the next day. 0000003107 00000 n
Its an ongoing process, Vronsky said. [7] In a 2009 interview, Cottingham admitted to the murders and claimed that he severed the heads and hands of the victims to prevent their identification, as he was acquainted with Goodarzi and had been seen with her in a bar the night before.[2]. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. The series features interviews with former sex workers, including Barbara Amaya, who was raped and robbed at gunpoint by a man she believes was Cottingham, although she was inexplicably spared. Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. The family lived in Lodi, and Mr. Cottingham commuted to a job as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan. He described in detail how, instead, he took the girls to a motel, held them captive and eventually drowned them in the bathtub. Months later, in May 1980, another prostitute from Times Square was found dead, this time in a New Jersey motel; that murder was linked to yet another at the same location.
The Google Street View image on the right was taken 38 years later, in June of 2018. Vronsky and Weiss had been meeting with Cottingham in prison since the spring of 2017, counseling him to make the confession. A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. 21 23
After dismembering Goodarzi, Cottingham lit her torso on fire, along with a second unidentified woman, who was found next to Goodarzi on the same bed. My whole life has been this, she said. 0000003202 00000 n
Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. 21 23
Vronsky, who frequently visits Cottingham in prison, said he had a freak, random elevator encounter with the serial killer on the early morning of Dec. 2, 1979, as he tried to check into the Travel Inn Motel near a seedy and sex-crazed Times Square. In this case, instead, he removed her breasts and placed them on the headboard for shock value, former Commanding Officer of Bronx Homicide and criminal profiler Vernon Geberth says in the series, noting it convinced him of one thing: Still, at the time, no one suspected the scope of this sexual sadists homicidal footprint, which stretched into the Garden State and had started more than a decade prior. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.[10]. This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. The bridge where Mallory Beach died in a boating accident. In April 2021, Cottingham confessed to the unsolved 1974 double-abduction, rape, and forcible drowning murders of Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17, in Montvale, one of New Jersey's most notorious cold cases. Cottingham's confirmed killings resulted in nine convictions and a further eight confessions under non-prosecution agreements, leading to him serving multiple life sentences in New Jersey prisons. [6] The confession was extracted by Detective Anzilotti weeks before his retirement and was facilitated by historian Vronsky and by Jennifer Weiss, the daughter of Deedeh Goodarzi, one of Cottingham's later victims. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. In 2010, Bergen County authorities announced hed pleaded guilty to a sixth murder, a 1967 strangling in Bergen County. She was Nancy Pryor, and she was 19 when her sister, Mary Ann, was found dead. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police. But something a hunch, past investigative speculation, the proximity of the crimes drew Mr. Anzilotti to the prisoner. Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, List of serial killers in the United States, List of serial killers by number of victims, "New Jersey's 'Torso Killer' admits murdering 3 teenage girls over 50 years ago", "Justice Story: 'Times Square Ripper' revealed to be mild-mannered husband from suburban Jersey", "Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective", "First of Three Trials of Jerseyan in Prostitute Slayings Nears End", "Killer of 2 Is Guilty of 3 More Slayings", "Legislator Gaynor Honors Detectives Who Solved 50 Year Old Cold Case", "Mineola Woman's Murder 48 Years Ago Still Unsolved", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Cottingham&oldid=1142468060. Note that there seems to have been a "lull" between 1970 and 1973. <<8BD7E4F5B15F3F4A8993EB3A0150F7AC>]>>
They were facedown, side by side, as if placed there with care. God rest their souls," Bergen County Prosecutor's Chief of Detective Robert Anzilotti said Tuesday after Richard Cottingham of Lodi admitted killing both in 1974. . In April of 1979, he started living in the basement of the property after his wife initiated divorce proceedings against him for "abandonment" and "mental cruelty.". On April 7, 1969, Cottingham saw Blase, 18, shopping in Hackensack, Vronsky said. 0000002882 00000 n
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Cottingham, a depraved killer already serving more than 200 years in prison, confessed to tossing the 22-year-old mother of two from a bridge ending her familys half-century quest for answers. Theyre pushing him on multiple other cases. Hes been interviewing Cottingham in state prison for years. To this day, their remains have never been recovered. 43 0 obj<>stream
And last week, three more were added to his grisly toll. Over decades, through his rise from sergeant to detective to chief of detectives, Robert Anzilotti plugged away at cold cases in New Jersey involving young womens murders. xref
Like two little dolls at Christmastime.. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. The motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. [16], In the early hours of May 22, 1980, Cottingham picked up 18-year-old Leslie Ann O'Dell, who was soliciting on the corner of Manhattan's Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. Cottingham was indicted in Cusicks killing in June after DNA evidence linked him to the cold-case slaying believed to be the oldest match to ever lead to a prosecution, Nassau County prosecutors said.
'Torso Killer' Admits to '68 Strangling and 4 More Cold-Case Murders 0000000756 00000 n
Mr. Anzilotti, doing his best not to betray any emotion, slowly pulled out his Blackberry and took notes. Around dawn, they checked into the same Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn where he had left Valerie Street's handcuffed body under a bed to be discovered by a housekeeper. The killer would suddenly recall picking a girl up from a store somewhere, and the chief, in the front passenger seat as a detective drove, surreptitiously took notes. Altman, who was just 3 years old at the time, said her parents had separated prior to Cusicks killing. 0000004535 00000 n
The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. After their drink, Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station where they had taken the bus. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times. Anzilotti and BCPO subsequently confirmed the "exceptional closures" of these three murders.[13][8]. Vogel was found dead in her own car in Ridgefield Park, nude and bound.
N.J serial killer now linked to 9 victims, but will his murder toll According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. H|U0+(QvG`b08NbHlSoZ2CRSs=* \e~ He tortured women before he killed them and did terrible things to them, and yet we still dont know who he is because he preyed on sex workers, Berlinger said, adding that he hopes this series helps destigmatize sex work and potentially solve more cold cases. For years, the three confessions remained a secret, until January 2020, when a true-crime writer who had been visiting Mr. Cottingham in prison, Peter Vronsky, announced that the inmate had revealed his crimes in interviews for a forthcoming book. I could feel it.. The Blase family agreed. Described as average and normal, New Jersey man Richard Cottingham was a father-of-three with a marriage that was slowly unravelling. [18], During the early 1980s, Cottingham was convicted of five murders in two separate New Jersey trials in 1981[19] and 1982,[20] and in a single New York trial in 1984 for three murders. A number of killings of young women and girls in New Jersey and New York had gone unsolved for years before a night in May 1980 when a maid at . In a candid interview, the Bergen County chief who spent 20 years trying to wrangle new confessions out of serial killer Richard Cottingham revealed the 74-year-old prisoner has "regrets". Cottinghams luck began to unravel in early May 1980 when the maid at the Quality Inn found the naked corpse of a handcuffed woman under the bed. Cottingham, who grew up in River Vale, has been in prison since the 1980s, when he was convicted of the first five murders to which he was linked. Soon, Cottingham persuaded Blase to go for a drink with him. Cottingham murdered at least twelve women between 1967 and 1980. You are in complete control of somebodys destiny, he told Fezzani in footage shown in the series. He asked to quietly close their daughters murder case without formally charging the killer. His murders were not the outcome of stalking or planning but of fleeting encounters. A friend of one victim came forward and the slain woman was later positively identified through a cesarean-section scar and chest X-ray as 22-year-old prostitute Deedeh Goodarzi. 0000003707 00000 n
Responding officers found an 18-year-old victim whod been bitten, stabbed and bound with handcuffs. Furthermore, one of the women that he murdered in 1979 is still unidentified. After years in prison, Mr. Cottingham began to open up to the detective about past unsolved crimes. But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. startxref
Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Prosecutors had long believed that Cottingham abducted Mary Ann and Lorraine both North Bergen High School students whod been known to hitch-hike during a shopping trip to the Garden State Plaza on August 9, 1974. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. Her youth and difference in appearance, with a boyish haircut, set her apart from the other victims. 0000012661 00000 n
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He did, however, leave behind their clothing, including a pair of Bonjour jeans, white leotards and a black fur coat, neatly folded in the bath tub. 0000008501 00000 n
K3nVxb;X)oxeHME~> Richard Cottingham was convicted of five murders and numerous counts of kidnapping and sexual assault using evidence found in his 'trophy room' combined with a matching fingerprint left on. A woman walking to her car found them: two teenage girls, naked and dead in a sliver of woods behind an apartment parking lot. On more than one occasion, he would openly talk about his experiences with sex workers. Morgan Wallen has best-selling album of 2021 despite his N Canadian teacher with size-Z prosthetic breasts placed on paid leave, Buster Murdaugh got 'very drunk' with dad 2 months after mom, brother murdered: source, What's next for Buster Murdaugh after dad's murder conviction, life sentence, I'm a professional cleaner ditch these 4 household products immediately, Prince Harry was scared to lose Meghan Markle after fight that led to therapy, Prince Harry says psychedelics are fundamental part of his life, Inside Scheana Shay, Raquel Leviss heated confrontation about Tom Sandoval affair, Kellyanne Conway and George Conway to divorce. 0000001001 00000 n
However, he started killing again in 1974, when he murdered Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. The inmate, with no real incentive to say anything about that crime, had given the chief what amounted to a parting gift. 0000003183 00000 n
Anyone can read what you share. Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . Cottingham was apprehended in the hallway by arriving police officers. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. I was shocked that it was a serial killer, Moye said of his mothers confessed murderer. Select this result to view Richard P Cunningham's phone number, address, and more. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. xb```"WVf~g`0pt 9"~S?``Z V|bG!+N}TzYl@2
`QD2 @DACEDJaOs6x?+[Ihlrt ? Although Cottingham has formally admitted to eighteen killings and has claimed to have killed as many as 100, he is known to have only murdered seventeen girls between 1967 and 1980 and attempted to kill a further four. With an uncomplicated enthusiasm for his work, Detective Anzilotti rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the chief of detectives with a busy office to lead. Canadian author Peter Vronsky is now writing his second book on the horrifying killing spree that culminated in May 1980 at a New Jersey motel, where cops arrested Cottingham after he handcuffed, stabbed and bit an 18-year-old woman. He would describe to me certain routes he would drive, Vronsky said of Cottinghamm relaying his murderous spree in letters and interviews over the span of five years. Richard is related to Rosemarie Marie Cunningham and Larry J Cunningham as well as 3 additional people. On Dec 15, 1977, Carr was found dead in the parking lot of a Quality Inn motel, in Hasbrouck Heights. In fact, Mr. Cottingham lurked around the fringes of a seedy Times Square and the prostitutes who worked its streets. He described things only the killer would know, like where hed thrown her car keys afterward. Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. Over time, though, one investigator was slowly developing a theory. Richard Francis Cottingham (born November 25, 1946) is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eighteen young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. And later that same month, a fifth woman was found mutilated in the former Hotel Seville near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. 0000001071 00000 n
Cottingham has been given various nicknames over the years. Years ticked past, 1974 into 1975, into the 1980s, the 1990s. Hed order pizza and play cards with the older man and other detectives. The sergeant was undeterred. Twenty years later, he was reinvestigating several cold cases involving girls and young women who had been abducted, sexually abused and killed.