But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. Cottingham, 75, admitted before state Superior Court Judge Keith Bachmann in April 2021 that he had killed Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and her friend Lorraine Kelly, 16, when the pair went shopping for. Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to murder in the death of one Long Island woman and admitted under oath to killing four others. Justice was served and thats the end of it case closed. On August 21, 1972, he is charged and convicted of shoplifting at a Stern's department store in Paramus, New Jersey, and was sentenced to pay a $50 fine or ten days in jail. In fact, Mr. Cottingham lurked around the fringes of a seedy Times Square and the prostitutes who worked its streets. And any new prison sentence would, practically speaking, be meaningless; Mr. Cottingham had no chance of ever being released. He said, Im going to give you one, Mr. Anzilotti recalled. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. This case was always haunting me.. But beneath the veneer of normalcy was a heinous double-existence as a serial killer. In the case of Diane Cusick, it was a drive-in that no longer exists there He remembers the victims characteristics, but he doesnt remember their names.. But in 2009, he surfaced to again make waves, when he gave a chilling interview to journalist Nadia Fezzani about his motivation and his body count. Which is entirely possible, especially in those days.. However, his family moved to River Vale, New Jersey, when he was 12 years old. It could only be Jackie Harp.. More Local News to Love Start today for 50% off Expires 3/6/23, Rodrigo Torrejon | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, discovery of a Ridgefield Park woman dead, nude and bound. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. 0000009264 00000 n xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)= RZlr$:kX;e =_i& ` ?# He had no relationship to his victims. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times. South Hackensack, Richard Cottingham, Lorraine Kelly, Mary Ann Pryor, Bergen County Prosecutor's Chief of Detectives Robert Anzilotti, Ecuadorian National Pleads Guilty To Brutal Stabbing Death Of Popular Bergen County Chef, Franklin Lakes Driver Indicted In Teaneck T-Bone Crash That Kil, Paterson Non-Violence Activist Shot Dead In Police Standoff Was, Man Killed By Amtrak Train In Central Jersey Was Family Breadwi, WATCH: YouTube Video Shows Rapper Assaulting Bergen Shop Rite W, Motel Guest Covered In Lotion Rescued From Knife-Wielding Woman, DWI Suspected In Horrific Route 80 Crash In Bergen County. Richard was arrested at a motel in Hasbrouck . 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. In August 2022, with a non-prosecution agreement, officials in Rockland County, New York, corroborated and accepted Cottingham's confession to the murder of 26-year-old Lorraine McGraw, who was beaten and killed March 1, 1970. You are in complete control of somebodys destiny, he told Fezzani in footage shown in the series. In 2010, Bergen County authorities announced hed pleaded guilty to a sixth murder, a 1967 strangling in Bergen County. Cottingham had kept these items as souvenirs so that he could remember his victims and relive his attacks. But he eventually realized the years-long association, which involved countless state prison visits, was coming to an end. Richard Cottingham, 76, pleaded guilty to the February 1968 murder of Diane Cusick, 23, and admitted to strangling four additional women in the 1970s in Nassau County. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey. On July 17, 1968, Harp, of Midland Park, was walking home from band practice when a strange man, Cottingham, tried to coax her into his car, Vronsky said. Select this result to view Richard P Cunningham's phone number, address, and more. But in. The latitude and longitude coordinates for the house are: To view directions on how to get there, you can use the Google Maps shortcut below: 29 Vreeland StreetLodiNew JerseyNJ 07644United States. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. F! Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. Berlinger said well never truly know how many women died at Cottinghams hands, but his story had long fascinated the director, who sees a social justice component aspect to telling his story. Mr. Cottingham mentioned details of the killing that matched what Mr. Anzilotti knew from the case file. Then he shared his intentions to retire. And I said, Hop in., He drove to the mall. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. If hes going to confess to some others, if they can get him to talk, just for those families if he can confess to those, that right there would be I dont know the right word to say, Ms. Mulder said. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. trailer A maid heard the teenagers guttural screams and called police. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. But eventually, their old give-and-take resumed. (1981, June 25). Cottingham primarily sought prostitutes who were petite blondes in their late teens to mid-twenties. Absolutely, its completely plausible. For more details, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. [8] Vogel's nude and bound body was found on October 31, under a blanket behind the passenger seat of her car parked in nearby Ridgefield Park. 0000003451 00000 n What started in 1967 with the discovery of a Ridgefield Park woman dead, nude and bound in her own car continued until 1980, when the hulking Cottingham, then 33, was arrested after the screams of a would-be victim pierced the walls of a Hasbrouck Heights motel room. A few days later, Mr. Anzilotti visited Mr. Cottingham in his new surroundings and told him, I put you here.. The Zestimate for this house is $598,600, which has decreased by $7,680 in the last 30 days. When reporters ran with the story, Mr. Anzilotti considered himself absolved from keeping his silence about the cases. %%EOF When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. 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 . 0000005253 00000 n 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. He enjoys our relationship. 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. 0000003202 00000 n Mr. Anzilotti insisted that this case be resolved in open court. In other words, he may have been content and/or preoccupied. Then in exchange for immunity from prosecution, he confessed to murdering three New Jersey schoolgirls. 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. But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. They have also lived in Whiting, IN. Three days later, Mr. Anzilotti walked out of his office for good. The chief pressed ahead with his list. In early December 1979, firefighters were called to the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on 42nd Street as a fire burned in room 417. The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. A horrible scene, the police commissioner said that day. Cottingham was serving time for five murders, following convictions in New Jersey and New York, when Bergen prosecutors detectives in 2010 tied him to the killing of 29-year-old Ridgefield Park mom Nancy Schiava Vogel, bringing the total then to six. The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. He had been dubbed the Times Square Torso Ripper setting off Vronskys lifelong fascination of serial killers. And even worse, the rape laws were particularly onerous, and you had to provide a witness to bring an allegation of rape. Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates. 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. FPh_3Gj Nt%Q[r L`%/9QTh/| Q4_g8KI}u'?xbif`H>;wNQ|sd2(? His wife withdrew the petition upon his arrest in May 1980, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction. On Dec. 2, 1979, the murders that earned Cottingham the nickname the "Torso Killer took place in New York City. However, he started killing again in 1974, when he murdered Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. 0000005280 00000 n She had been tied up and strangled, authorities said. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. Inmates were wagering everything from cash to cigarettes. The details stopped him cold. 29 Vreeland St, Lodi, NJ is a single family home that contains 2,716 sq ft and was built in 1974. 3. He did a U-turn in a bank parking lot and approached, he said. The bridge where Mallory Beach died in a boating accident. Authorities executed a warrant on his Lodi home, which had a private room containing evidence linking him to the Torso Killer. [13][14] Anzilotti had spent 15 years interviewing Cottingham, working toward the confession. However, please be aware that not allowing certain cookies may impact your experience of the site. 0000006151 00000 n Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. The schoolgirl murder confessions increased that to to nine. He then left the scene with their severed heads and hands. Its an ongoing process, Vronsky said. She agreed to have sex with him for money. Just shy of his 21st birthday, Richard Cottingham began a vicious killing spree that tore through north New Jersey and New York City. endstream endobj 34 0 obj<>stream The Google Street View image on the right was taken 38 years later, in June of 2018. He had his list of names, each one a dead girl and a crime long unsolved. Investigators noted the crime scene was devoid of evidence and they were unable to identify the victims. The girls vanished Aug. 9, 1974, while hitchhiking to a mall in . 0000001082 00000 n . Fifty years after his mother was strangled and thrown from a Long Island bridge, John Moye finally got a glimpse of the wickedness that altered his life forever. Cottingham severed the victim's breasts and posed them on the headboard of the bed, and set fire to the mattress under her body before fleeing, similar to the Travel Inn torso killings. 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. The case also had parallels to a previously unsolved murder of nurse Maryann Carr, who was found dead in the same motel three years earlier. Now 74, Cottingham, who claims responsibility for dozens of murders, has confessed to a. Their murders shook the region. Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp all girls whose murders were unsolved. 0000001982 00000 n [5][17], The charges listed in Cottingham's New Jersey indictment included kidnapping, attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with deadly weapon, aggravated sexual assault while armed (rape), aggravated sexual assault while armed (sodomy), aggravated sexual assault while armed (fellatio), possession of a weapon (switchblade knife), and possession of controlled substances (secobarbital, amobarbital and diazepam). He abducted Vogel and took her to a field in Montvale, where he strangled her. Feech La Manna's house from The Sopranos. Because I was with them for a couple of days, he replied, according to a transcript, and got to know them., It was raining that day in August 1974, and Mr. Cottingham, then 28, was driving to work in Manhattan when he passed the two girls walking in the opposite direction. 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. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. Richard Cottingham, New Jersey prison photo. He did not know the names of those he killed. But there was an even bigger problem. He was also known to threaten them with a plastic gun and leave it within their reach so they could try to grab it only to find out it was false, severely bite and scrape their nipples, cut around the breasts, and use other forms of torture. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. The chief agreed. Five months later, the serial slayer struck again, strangling Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves, an 18-year-old Manhattan woman originally from Puerto Rico. (1981, June 16). According to one of his co-workers, he was smart, well-read, and up-to-date on current events. Moye, 55, stared down serial murderer and rapist Richard Cottingham in a Nassau County courtroom Monday as the 76-year-old notorious "Torso Killer" admitted to five more sadistic slayings. He lived with his wife and kids in. 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. He had three children, two boys and a girl, with his wife. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. The chief questioned Mr. Cottingham. Defense attorney John Bruno recited the details, which the white-bearded, 74-year-old killer acknowledged. The 45th year passed in the same way. 0000006846 00000 n 21 0 obj <> endobj One day in 2014, the chief and a partner were driving the inmate back to prison when, from the back seat, Mr. Cottingham, who by then had spent almost half of his 68 years in prison, began describing a girl he once spotted near a store in Hackensack. She was stunned. Moye, who traveled from Georgia to see Cottingham confess to killing his mother and four other women as part of a plea deal, said he leaned heavily on his Catholic faith as the unrepentant killer watched via video feed from South Woods State Prison in New Jersey, where hes serving multiple life sentences. In the 1970s, he had preyed on prostitutes in Times Square 30 miles but a world away from Montvale not just killing them, but torturing and dismembering them. He remembers certain aspects of a person, Mr. Anzilotti said. And even though Harp ran, Cottingham soon overtook her and dragged her into a grouping of bushes where teens would often go to smoke and make out, he said. In 2004, Vronsky published his first book on homicidal maniacs, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, an exhaustive look at executioners slayings dating back to ancient Rome. 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. He would approach them in bars, drug them with the date rape drug Tuinal, take them to a remote locationtypically a motelwhere he would bind, gag, torture, and stab them before killing them by strangling them with a ligature. He said he would talk about other murders only on the condition that the revelations would be kept out of the papers. His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. The murders committed by the Torso Killer bore little resemblance to the ones Mr. Anzilotti was investigating, but their timing matched up with Mr. Cottinghams settling in New Jersey. But first, he wanted to return to those two murders from 47 years ago. 0000003707 00000 n 0000012661 00000 n He rented an apartment in Midtown and told his wife he worked nights. It is my fervent hope that this arrest and conviction bring some semblance of closure to the friends and family of Mary Ann and Lorraine and a measure of justice to members of our communities, who have long feared this unknown actor.. 21 0 obj <> endobj Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. He worked hard on this., There were never any meaningful updates, until a Monday this April, when detectives knocked on her door in Ocean County, N.J., and said they had obtained a confession. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, Times Square Torso Ripper: Sex and Murder on The Deuce, cataloging 17,000 years of pathological homicide. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. Getting to that point wasnt easy, Anzilotti said. Rochelle Park & 0000003107 00000 n But Mr. Anzilotti kept pressing him: You know youre going to tell me.. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. On December 2, 1979, firemen in New York responded to an alarm at the Travel Inn motel[11] near Times Square. Find NJ.com on Facebook. While some serial killers claim murders they have not committed, Mr. Anzilotti didnt believe Mr. Cottingham was that type, but still he meticulously lined up details of the admissions with facts that only the killer would know. Falasca was walking by the side of the road in Emerson on July 14, 1969, when Cottingham pulled up beside her and offered her a ride. 0000000756 00000 n The bodies of the women had no heads and no hands. Trophies like jewellery and other personal items belonging to his victims were taken by him. He was the Torso Killer. 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. These objects, along with his fingerprint on the handcuffs, were presented as evidence by prosecutors at his trial. Cottingham admitted during the plea hearing that he brought Mary Ann and Lorraine to a hotel, where he raped both and bound the girls to keep them from getting away. And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. The following is a chronological summary of Cottingham's seventeen identified murder victims and four identified survivors: Cottingham's case has been discussed in several books and documentaries on serial killers. He enjoys our time together., The chief also had another theory. Like two little dolls at Christmastime.. Premiering on Dec. 29, the three-part season explores the case of Richard Cottingham, a New Jersey man who was dubbed "The Torso Killer" and found guilty of killing 11 women between 1967 and 1980. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. 0000000756 00000 n His crimes were discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motel heard. But the arrest in 1980 changed everything, exposing Richard's double life and deadly exploits. Taking a bus to another location, Cottingham and Blase spent some time together. Over time, though, one investigator was slowly developing a theory. 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.
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