Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates. Goodarzi had come to the United States years prior from Iran. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. 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, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. Richard Cottingham, New Jersey prison photo. Furthermore, one of the women that he murdered in 1979 is still unidentified. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. The weather worsened. Just shy of his 21st birthday, Richard Cottingham began a vicious killing spree that tore through north New Jersey and New York City. 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. Much of Cottinghams crimes were not murders, but other violent crimes like abductions and rapes. 0000003107 00000 n Mr. Anzilotti, doing his best not to betray any emotion, slowly pulled out his Blackberry and took notes. The victim's hands were tightly handcuffed behind her back and police would later lift a fingerprint matching Cottingham, the only fingerprint successfully found from any of his known murders. Mr. Cottingham was summoned before a judge on April 27, remotely, via Zoom, sitting in a wheelchair in a conference room at the prosecutors office. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a photograph of Jean Reyner. Notably, none of his crimes took place on the property. 0000001968 00000 n He pleaded guilty to the killing in 2010, but when the news got out, Mr. Cottingham, who evidently thought the hearing would be ignored, was furious. Mr. Cottingham mentioned details of the killing that matched what Mr. Anzilotti knew from the case file. I never thought I would get caught, he added. 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. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. At the time, Cottingham, who had not been arrested or identified, was dubbed the "Times Square Ripper.. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. For a year, he refused to speak to Mr. Anzilotti. endstream endobj 22 0 obj <> endobj 23 0 obj <> endobj 24 0 obj <>/ColorSpace<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC]/ExtGState<>>> endobj 25 0 obj <> endobj 26 0 obj <> endobj 27 0 obj <> endobj 28 0 obj [/ICCBased 41 0 R] endobj 29 0 obj <> endobj 30 0 obj <> endobj 31 0 obj <> endobj 32 0 obj <> endobj 33 0 obj <>stream There were similarities in the two cases: the girls ages, the apparently hasty disposal of their bodies, even their appearance, both with long, dark hair. Inmates were wagering everything from cash to cigarettes. Mr. Cottingham left behind no clues. I was shocked that it was a serial killer, Moye said of his mothers confessed murderer. Cottingham has confessed to murdering 12 women. 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. They'd left home for a trip 13 miles (21 kilometers) north to . Jacalyn "Jackie" Harp, aged 13, was randomly ambushed as she walked home in the evening of July 17, 1968, from school band practice in Midland Park and strangled with the leather strap of her bag. 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. Look her up, she looks like her. Others he remembered from a haircut.. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. The other girls did, you have to take it, too. Then he followed with an unusual request. A local investigator began to wonder: Could there be a link to a series of infamous Times Square murders? He asked to quietly close their daughters murder case without formally charging the killer. Cottingham was apprehended in the hallway by arriving police officers. However, please be aware that not allowing certain cookies may impact your experience of the site. And thats what bothers me, because I probably didnt have to do anything to them., Mr. Anzilotti left the confession both exhausted and relieved. [4], On May 3, 1970, Cottingham was married at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, Queens. The newspapers called the murderer The Torso Killer. Then on May 22, 1980, a worker at a Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., heard a woman screaming. Although Vogel was the earliest of Cottinghams murder victims, the killer has said she was not his first, according to Vronsky. But there was an even bigger problem. Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to murder in the death of one Long Island woman and admitted under oath to killing four others. The motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. [6] At Blue Cross, Cottingham worked in an office with Rodney Alcala, the fugitive child molester and future serial killer who lived in New York under the alias "John Berger". It was quite a shock to learn it was him.. Five months later, the serial slayer struck again, strangling Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves, an 18-year-old Manhattan woman originally from Puerto Rico. This case was always haunting me.. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. He had three children, two boys and a girl, with his wife. Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . Instead, she ended up shopping at one of Bergen Countys malls, according to Vronsky. This story has been shared 151,197 times. 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. 0000003183 00000 n It was pure evil. Following his 1980 arrest, police found, in the locked room and in the trunk of his car, personal effects which they traced to several of his victims. James McMorrow, Cottingham confessed last year to three other cold-case slayings of teenage school girls in Bergen County: Jacalyn (Jackie) Harp, 13, of Midland Park, who was walking home from school band practice on July 17, 1968 when she was strangled with the leather strap of her flag sling; Irene Blase, 18, of Bogota, who went missing from Hackensack on April 7, 1969 and was found strangled in Saddle River; Denise Falasca, 15, of Closter, who went missing from Westwood on July 14, 1969. 0000002865 00000 n During his trial, he testified that he had been fascinated by bondage since he was a young child. 0000002847 00000 n 0000008735 00000 n Straddling her back, he drew a knife and put it to her throat as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists. Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. Prosecutors will seek dual life sentences to run alongside his current lifetime term when Cottingham is sentenced on July 9 for what Musella said were the willful, deliberate, and premediated murders of Mary Ann Prior and Lorraine Kelly. 0000001071 00000 n During a search of the house, investigators discovered personal items belonging to some of his victims. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. He did not know the names of those he killed. The victim, Valerie Street, had just been busted in Miami for prostitution, and was last seen getting picked up by a man in New York City. A maid heard the teenagers guttural screams and called police. 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. [3], Richard Francis Cottingham was born on November 25, 1946, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City, the first of four children. I had long suspected that whoever killed Irene Blase also killed Denise Falasca, Mr. Anzilotti said. In early December 1979, firefighters were called to the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on 42nd Street as a fire burned in room 417. He said he would talk about other murders only on the condition that the revelations would be kept out of the papers. 0000001082 00000 n That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said. On the way out, he bumped the author on the shins with a bag that felt like it contained bowling balls, Vronsky said. I believe hes killed between 85 and 100, as he claims, Vronsky told The Post. 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. Anzilotti and BCPO subsequently confirmed the "exceptional closures" of these three murders.[13][8]. Over time, though, one investigator was slowly developing a theory. Once, he outright explained his hesitation: He said, I know once I give you that case, Ill never see you again, Mr. Anzilotti recalled last month. 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 . Those old enough to remember can recall the fear that many felt after the bodies of two girls from North Bergen whod gone missing after a shopping trip to Paramus were found raped, beaten and drowned in Bergen County. In fact, Mr. Cottingham lurked around the fringes of a seedy Times Square and the prostitutes who worked its streets. 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. Its been half my career, he said. Ms. 0000001262 00000 n She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. For over 40 years, its been folklore in this county.. Later on, Richard took a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York as a computer operator. On May 22, Cottingham then picked up Leslie Ann ODell, a 19-year-old runaway desperate to escape her pimp something he promised to help her do over drinks in Midtown. Blase was found strangled to death in 4 feet of water in Saddle River the next day. 0000002420 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. This is a "Then and Now" photograph of Cottingham's former house at 29 Vreeland Street. And considering the closure of yesterdays cases, I absolutely believe him.. Cottingham murdered at least twelve women between 1967 and 1980. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. When reporters ran with the story, Mr. Anzilotti considered himself absolved from keeping his silence about the cases. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . startxref Two focused entirely on him: Rod Leith's The Prostitute Murders: The People vs. Richard Cottingham (Lyle Stuart Inc., 1983) and Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer (Netflix, 2021). Feech La Manna's house from The Sopranos. 0000001425 00000 n I just kind of looked at it and touched it and put it in a box where I had some dried flowers for my mother when she passed.. He rented an apartment in Midtown and told his wife he worked nights. The brief encounter later inspired Vronsky to write his serial killer histories and paved the way for his prison meetings with Cottingham four decades later. Hes been chief of detectives nearly five years. 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.. Then, with just days remaining before the chief retired, the inmate relented. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. Maywood, The clever killer slipped up, leaving a fingerprint on the cuffs. F! The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. The details stopped him cold. Everything that I was taught about evil was evident in his presence, in his demeanor, in the gaze of his eyes, Moye told The Post. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. ,X3ieG(>]/TUW#gI" p&gGgy`Un(aE6e#./"e3 He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. 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. The back and forth went on for weeks. ADVERTISEMENT. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. xref Detective Anzilotti was startled to discover the same man killed all three. 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. 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. 43 0 obj <>stream On Monday, July 13, 1969, at approximately 8:00 p.m., On March 1, 1970, a group of hikers came across a young woman's naked body in the woods to the west of Tweed Boulevard in, At approximately 7:00 a.m. on the morning of December 16, 1977, the body of X-ray technician, At 9:30 a.m. on May 22, 1980, police entered Room 117 at the same Quality Inn where Carr and Street were murdered and found 18-year-old, This page was last edited on 2 March 2023, at 15:20. He soon realized the woman had no head, the Daily News reported. You're a whore and you have to be punished." In March, looking back on 25 years with the office, Mr. Anzilotti decided it was time to move on from the job. Geberth noted that this was a time before the proliferation of surveillance cameras and the use of computer analysis to establish patterns and share information across jurisdictions. But it was a way to get him comfortable to talk to me about murders.. On September 4, 1973, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery, oral sodomy and sexual abuse on the complaint of a prostitute and her pimp. I could feel it.. The New York Times, p. 26. On April 7, 1969, Cottingham saw Blase, 18, shopping in Hackensack, Vronsky said. Over the months that followed, Mr. Anzilotti cultivated an unusual relationship with Mr. Cottingham, sometimes testy, sometimes closer to a sort of warmth. Cottingham has claimed in the past he. There were at least five unsolved killings of girls, each an open wound for families seeking resolution. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. Before his arrest, he was a successful computer operator who worked at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance company in Midtown Manhattan. 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. On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. The 45th year passed in the same way. endstream endobj 34 0 obj<>stream 0000006151 00000 n Much like John Moye, Altman, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., said she struggled to process Cottinghams savagery. After the hearing, the cameras off, Mr. Anzilotti approached Mr. Cottingham. 0000009543 00000 n He lived with his wife and kids in. 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. Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. These meetings went on for months, and then years, on top of Mr. Anzilottis regular caseload. For more information, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. Its his fault this is out.. Math-wise its possible," said Vronsky. As Cottingham was fleeing the scene of the torso murders, he briefly encountered the 23-year-old Peter Vronsky, who was attempting to check into the Travel Inn while in New York on a film production assignment. 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. Dont think youre going to mess with me and Im going to help you, Mr. Anzilotti recalled Mr. Cottingham saying. 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. Filming Location in Lodi, New Jersey, United States, Filming Location in Paterson, New Jersey, United States, Filming Location in Clifton, New Jersey, United States, Filming Location in Bloomfield, New Jersey, United States, Crime Location Wylie, Texas, United States, Crime Location Memphis, Tennessee, United States, Place of Interest Brooklyn, New York, United States, Crash Site Location Beaufort, South Carolina, United States. 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. We use cookies to deliver personalized advertisements, improve your online experience, and to analyze our site's performance. Cottingham had just raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers in a room at the motel before setting it on fire. The house was built in 1974one year before Cottingham and his wife, Janet, moved in. Although first responders encountered thick smoke in the room, one noticed the shape of bodies on the pair of twin beds and attempted to administer CPR. Hes hedged around and all but confessed..
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