[3], Cottingham was arrested on several lesser charges throughout his killing spree. No one could find any clues in the girls backgrounds: no drugs, no trouble with the law. 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. 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. 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. . He recalled the exact place in the woods where he left the bodies. You're a whore and you have to be punished." Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon. 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. 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. 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. Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. She was stunned. The year 2020 arrived, and running his office through the coronavirus outbreak kept Mr. Anzilotti too busy for cold cases. This girl did everything right, Vronsky said. Soon, the chief closed that case two down. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. <<8BD7E4F5B15F3F4A8993EB3A0150F7AC>]>>
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. The police were called and Cottingham was apprehended while trying to flee. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. That night, city firefighters responded to a blaze at a motel in Times Square, the New York Daily News reported. I knew, he recalled, that was Irene Blase.. It was Aug. 14, 1974, in Montvale, N.J., a suburb just over the New York state line. Anzilottihas spent all but 4 years of his law enforcement career with the prosecutors office after coming over from the Woodcliff Lake Police Department. Cottingham, a Lodi man who moonlighted as one of New Jersey's most savage serial killers, had been convicted of murdering five women in New York and New Jersey. The chief pressed ahead with his list. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. This guy was particularly ruthless. He said he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't retiring.. 3. He was eventually convicted of five murders in New Jersey and New York and sent to a New Jersey state prison in the early 1980s. He married in 1970 and became a father of. She had been tied up and strangled, authorities said. Trophies like jewellery and other personal items belonging to his victims were taken by him. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. Just shy of his 21st birthday, Richard Cottingham began a vicious killing spree that tore through north New Jersey and New York City. When Mr. Cottingham entered prison in 1981, Robert Anzilotti was not yet a teenager. It is not a public place. Questioning Mr. Cottingham was complicated. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. So we just stayed in the car and we kept talking to each other, getting to know each other and so forth., If the rain wasnt there, they would have just went to the mall and that would have been it, he said, And I would have went to work.. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. K3nVxb;X)oxeHME~> Later on, Richard took a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York as a computer operator. The other girls did, you have to take it, too. xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)=
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Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. It could only be Jackie Harp.. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. "From the sense of other things that Im uncovering, he was a very busy boy., I think the math worked out to one every six weeks, Vronsky also said. 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. 0
And last week, three more were added to his grisly toll. %%EOF
Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to murder in the death of one Long Island woman and admitted under oath to killing four others. Her killer, Richard Cottingham, was a computer operator, married with three children of his own, living a seemingly normal life. That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said. The New York Times, p. 26. Denise Falasca, aged 15, was abducted on July 14, 1969, in Emerson, while walking to a friend's home and found the next morning in Saddle Brook, by the side of a road next to a cemetery, strangled with the cord or the chain of her crucifix. 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. [4][5], After his graduation, Cottingham worked for Metropolitan Life, where his father was a vice-president, starting in the mail room at the firm's Manhattan headquarters and eventually became a mainframe computer operator upon taking computer courses. But there was an even bigger problem. It took some effort to convince him to go to court and let me make it public, Anzilotti said Tuesday. 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. For more information, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. A judge sentenced him to 25 years to life after Cusicks brother and only child read emotional impact statements in court. The teenagers were last seen on Aug. 9, 1974, in North Bergen. Its been half my career, he said. But in. His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. Serial killer Richard Cottingham made his admission in the cold case murders of the high school girls, acknowledging that he kidnapped, raped and finally drowned the pair inside a motel room. Serial Killer House in Lodi, New Jersey, United States. He described things only the killer would know, like where hed thrown her car keys afterward. But first, he wanted to return to those two murders from 47 years ago. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. F!
She knew that Mr. Anzilotti had solved Denises killing, too. startxref
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.. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. The 45th year passed in the same way. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. 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. Irene Blase, aged 18, vanished on April 7, 1969, in Hackensack and was found face down in four feet of water in the Saddle River, strangled with a wire, a cord, or perhaps the chain of a crucifix she was wearing. She had been abducted while walking home from practice with her schools fife-and-drum team in 1968. Cottingham was convicted of five murders and numerous counts of kidnapping and sexual assault and sentenced to 173 to 197 years, which he is serving in Trenton's New Jersey State Prison. 0000002847 00000 n
It will take her a while to forget the habit of calling the detectives for updates a lifetime constant, through the deaths of her parents, her marriage and divorce, her second marriage and widowhood. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. In April 1978, after his wife had initiated divorce proceedings, he kept a locked room in a basement apartment of the house in which they lived in Lodi, New Jersey. 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.. 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. Pages in category "People from Lodi, New Jersey" The following 21 pages are in this category, out of 21 total. That was less than a year after Cottingham and his wife had their first child. [2], In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. In this image taken from a New Jersey Courts virtual hearing, Richard Cottingham, center, known as the "Torso Killer," pleads guilty April 27, 2021, to two 1974 murders, finally closing the cold case deaths of teenage friends who had left home for a trip to the mall and never returned. Then came Tuesdays pleas. PB|
According to one of his co-workers, he was smart, well-read, and up-to-date on current events. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. 0000001968 00000 n
And any new prison sentence would, practically speaking, be meaningless; Mr. Cottingham had no chance of ever being released. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. 21 0 obj
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Goodarzi had come to the United States years prior from Iran. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. 0000005253 00000 n
[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. And for Cottingham, every night was a full moon.. He had no relationship to his victims. 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. You can set your cookie preferences below. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. Blase was found strangled to death in 4 feet of water in Saddle River the next day. But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. But then, four years ago, Mr. Cottingham stunned the chief. He began torturing her, nearly biting off one of her nipples. He then drowned them in a bathtub, he said, and dumped their bodies in the woods in a wooded area behind Rolling Ridge Road in Montvale. HKo0l06CYf,Y(v (I?0c9 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. This case was always haunting me.. 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. xref
He had pornographic artwork, adhesive tape, books about S&M, said Geberth. There were at least five unsolved killings of girls, each an open wound for families seeking resolution. That man, Richard Cottingham, had been convicted of crimes that seemed to bear little resemblance to the murders of the girls. 0000003183 00000 n
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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 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. The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. 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. 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. Since his incarceration, he has attempted suicide on two occasions. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Im leaving, he said. The girls vanished Aug. 9, 1974, while hitchhiking to a mall in . (1981, June 25). When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. Starting in 2014, Cottingham confidentially admitted to Detective Robert Anzilotti of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office (BCPO) to being the perpetrator of the murders of three teenage females between 1968 and 1969. In December 2019, forensic historian and author Peter Vronsky, on the eve of publishing the revelation in his second edition of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, publicized the confessions with the BCPO's cooperation, in a community meeting in Midland Park. The following is a list of his victims in chronological order. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. But it was a way to get him comfortable to talk to me about murders.. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. 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. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. Math-wise its possible," said Vronsky. The New York Times, p. 26. (1981, June 25). I took over handling the calls, the arrangements. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. When a worker came to check on her, ODell cracked open the door and gave a hand signal asking for help. 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. 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. 0000002865 00000 n
Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. He also claimed to have committed 80 perfect murders no one knows about. This is the house where the "Times Square Killer," Richard Cottingham, lived between 1975 and 1980. 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. 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. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. 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. Her glasses, a ring, a necklace, Ms. Mulder said. They sat at the kitchen table, very professional, very polite, very considerate, Ms. Mulder recalled. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. His proclivity toward violence and the lack of solid profiling tactics for serial killers made Vronsky believe that Cottinghams claim of 100 victims was possible. For over 40 years, its been folklore in this county.. To this day, the other young female has never been identified. [15] In December 2022, Cottingham was convicted of Diane Cusick's 1968 murder and, under a non-prosecution agreement, officially admitted to killing another four women during 19721973 in Long Island, New York: Mary Beth Heinz, Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman, and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves. They have also lived in Whiting, IN. He began to speak about a particular case, he said. However, please be aware that not allowing certain cookies may impact your experience of the site. 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. These include the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, and the Times Square Torso Ripper. On Tuesday, Richard Cottingham, 74, sat in a wheelchair in beige prison scrubs as he pleaded guilty to kidnapping the teenage girls and raping them for days before he drowned them in a motel room bathtub. Her attacker was caught as he ran away. Once again, the victim did not appear in further proceedings and the case was dismissed.[6]. The inmate, with no real incentive to say anything about that crime, had given the chief what amounted to a parting gift. His murders were not the outcome of stalking or planning but of fleeting encounters. He had his list of names, each one a dead girl and a crime long unsolved. endstream
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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. He soon realized the woman had no head, the Daily News reported. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. 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. Authorities executed a warrant on his Lodi home, which had a private room containing evidence linking him to the Torso Killer. It contains 0 bedroom and 0 bathroom. [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". 0000002882 00000 n
A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. In his possession, the 33-year-old had a stash of handcuffs, tape and sedatives. 21 23
Cottingham had kept these items as souvenirs so that he could remember his victims and relive his attacks. Cottingham murdered at least twelve women between 1967 and 1980. His crimes were discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motel heard. 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. I never thought I would get caught, he added. 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. [5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel. The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . Hackensack, [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. Knowing better, Harp, just 13 years old, refused. A few days later, Mr. Anzilotti visited Mr. Cottingham in his new surroundings and told him, I put you here..