The weather worsened. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. Described as average and normal, New Jersey man Richard Cottingham was a father-of-three with a marriage that was slowly unravelling. He didnt have the decency or the dignity to ask for forgiveness or to even address the victims families. Since his conviction, Cottingham has pleaded guilty to 12 murders. I didnt know what to expect. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. Hed been a married father of three, but the Lodi resident - who would brutalize his victims bodies, cutting off limbs, heads and breasts - would later become known as the Torso Killer" for what he left behind. Look her up, she looks like her. Others he remembered from a haircut.. Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to murder in the death of one Long Island woman and admitted under oath to killing four others. In 2022, Cottingham also confessed to the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick after DNA evidence linked him to the crime. The highly-respected law enforcement veteran knew the notorious killer was responsible for the deaths of the North Bergen teens, but Cottingham made him work for it.
Richard Cottingham's house in Lodi - The Times Square Killer. - Odd Stops 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. The police believed they had given up on the bus and were trying to hitchhike to a mall. But on May 22, 1980 Cottingham's life as a predator came to light. And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. When arrested, he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade knife, replica pistols, and a stockpile of prescription pills. The schoolgirl murder confessions increased that to to nine. Select this result to view Richard P Cunningham's phone number, address, and more. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. He was locked away to serve several life sentences, aging into a portly man with a thick white beard. On one occasion, he dismembered two sex workers and set fire to their torsos at a hotel near Times Square. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. 0000006081 00000 n
Mr. Anzilotti, doing his best not to betray any emotion, slowly pulled out his Blackberry and took notes. You can change your choice at any time by using the Privacy Center link in our footer. 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. The Zestimate for this house is $598,600, which has decreased by $7,680 in the last 30 days.
Victims' kids confront serial 'Torso' killer Richard Cottingham Her glasses, a ring, a necklace, Ms. Mulder said. [4], On October 3, 1969, Cottingham was charged and convicted of drunk driving in New York City and was fined $50 (equivalent to $400 in 2021). Both men were keenly aware that it was their years-old relationship that had brought about this moment. 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. 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). Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. She later testified that he said, "You have to take it. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. 0000008501 00000 n
For more information, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. The chief agreed. 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. 0000012661 00000 n
Absolutely, its completely plausible. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop. Its been half my career, he said. She had been tied up and strangled, authorities said. 0000001982 00000 n
To Mr. Anzilotti, what had once seemed like a great disparity between the two series of murders one a group of suburban teenagers and the other mostly sex workers in the city now made sense. You can set your cookie preferences below.
Category:People from Lodi, New Jersey - Wikipedia He kept his glasses case tucked in a vest pocket of his prison scrubs, beneath his white beard, and folded his hands over his broad belly. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. He had pornographic artwork, adhesive tape, books about S&M, said Geberth. Mr. Cottingham left behind no clues. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Hackensack, And thats what bothers me, because I probably didnt have to do anything to them., Mr. Anzilotti left the confession both exhausted and relieved. 0000000756 00000 n
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I just ruled him out. Here are the nine victims Cottingham has confessed to or been convicted of killing: On Oct. 28, 1967, Vogel, 29, told friends she was going to play bingo at a local church. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. 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 other girls did, you have to take it, too. He lived with his wife and kids in. 3. [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.
A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. As he moved through Midtown undetected, Cottingham, a successful computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan, was also committing sadistic sexual assault and sometimes murder at the Quality Inn, a motel in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ.
New Jersey 'Torso Killer' Pleads Guilty to 1974 Cold Case Murders Anzilottihas spent all but 4 years of his law enforcement career with the prosecutors office after coming over from the Woodcliff Lake Police Department. startxref
If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. He pleaded innocent and for decades insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated those five murders. It is not a public place. 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. [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. He then left the scene with their severed heads and hands. 0000005253 00000 n
Twenty years later, he was reinvestigating several cold cases involving girls and young women who had been abducted, sexually abused and killed. 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. Defense attorney John Bruno recited the details, which the white-bearded, 74-year-old killer acknowledged. There were at least five unsolved killings of girls, each an open wound for families seeking resolution. She had been a teenager when her sister was killed.
Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. Goodarzi had come to the United States years prior from Iran. It represented the opportunity to let the entire world know that Laverne Moye was a human being. The family lived in Lodi, and Mr. Cottingham commuted to a job as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan. 0000001071 00000 n
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). It was quite a shock to learn it was him.. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Richard Cottingham, Lorraine . The photographs are ordered from left to right and top to bottom. Other locations that are relatively close to this place. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. This location belongs to the following categories: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see future locations. 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. In the new docuseries, the second in Netflixs Crime Scene anthology, director Joe Berlinger dissects the Torso Killers murder spree against the backdrop of the sexually charged, crime-ridden culture of 1970s Times Square and how it provided the predator with a fertile hunting ground. Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/nyregion/new-jersey-serial-killer-cottingham-anzilotti.html. 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. 0000002420 00000 n
Dont think youre going to mess with me and Im going to help you, Mr. Anzilotti recalled Mr. Cottingham saying. However, he started killing again in 1974, when he murdered Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. He recalled the exact place in the woods where he left the bodies. [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. But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. The details stopped him cold. He had no relationship to his victims. He tried a different approach. [21] Cottingham was apparently "forensically aware" in the era before DNA analysis. H|U0+(QvG`b08NbHlSoZ2CRSs=* \e~ On December 15, 1977, the body of X-ray technician Maryann Carr, 26, was found brutally beaten and strangled in the parking lot of the Quality Inn motel in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, but police did not link the murder to Cottingham until his 1980 arrest at the same motel.
PDF Richard Francis Cottingham He was also extremely fidgety and unable to sit still. 0000001968 00000 n
[5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel. On April 14, in a recorded interview, Mr. Cottingham said he remembered Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly, and Mr. Anzilotti asked why he knew their names, when he hadnt in past cases. The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. Richard Cottingham, 74, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murdering Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, both of North Bergen. He'd been a married father of three, but the Lodi resident - who would brutalize his victim's bodies, cutting off limbs, heads and breasts - would later become known as the "Torso Killer" for. 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. Goodarzi, of Trenton, was a sex worker who had been traveling to the then-seedy streets of midtown Manhattan, Vronsky said. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. Then in exchange for immunity from prosecution, he confessed to murdering three New Jersey schoolgirls. And I said, Hop in., He drove to the mall. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. After their drink, Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station where they had taken the bus. 0000000991 00000 n
Richard Cunningham in NJ - Address & Phone Number | Whitepages But the killer was a clever bastard, too. [22][23] He pleaded guilty in a December court appearance, and also officially admitted killing four other women in Long Island: Mary Beth Heinz,[24] Laverne Moye,[16] Sheila Heiman,[25] and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.[26]. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. xref
Richard is related to Rosemarie Marie Cunningham and Larry J Cunningham as well as 3 additional people. Her name was Nancy Schiava Vogel. Sitting in a conference room, Mr. Cottingham calmly reached back more than 40 years and described how hed murdered a woman whose name he couldnt remember, a 29-year-old mother found strangled in her car in Ridgefield Park, N.J., in 1967.
Lodi Serial Killer Confesses To 1960s Bergen Schoolgirl Murders Shed been abducted by Cottingham from the Ledgewood Terrace apartments, in Little Ferry, where Cottingham had previously lived, said Vronsky. 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. New Jersey . 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. That night, city firefighters responded to a blaze at a motel in Times Square, the New York Daily News reported. Hes been chief of detectives nearly five years. In March, looking back on 25 years with the office, Mr. Anzilotti decided it was time to move on from the job. It also left enormous holes in the souls of family and friends of Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16. 0000003202 00000 n
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. For decades, a string of killings of teenage girls haunted suburban New Jersey. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. Richard Cottingham seemed like a character from a pulp novel: the crazed killer and the family man. "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. 0000001412 00000 n
I was shocked that one human being was capable of all this carnage, Moye said of Cottingham. This is the house where the "Times Square Killer," Richard Cottingham, lived between 1975 and 1980. It would take about five months after the grisly Travel Inn slayings for investigators to arrest their man, a married father of three from Lodi, New Jersey, who preyed on sex workers in Times Square, then a seedy nucleus of pornography, prostitution and crime. This story has been shared 150,597 times. The police pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms, The New York Times reported at the time. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. 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. His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. All rights reserved (About Us). A case based on his "signature pattern" was built against him, combined with the testimony of four surviving victims, as well as pieces of his victims' jewellery and other items found in his possession after his arrest.
Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective 0000008735 00000 n
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. It was just shock all the way around.. 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". Cottingham has claimed in the past he. They were facedown, side by side, as if placed there with care. 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 dismembering Goodarzi, Cottingham lit her torso on fire, along with a second unidentified woman, who was found next to Goodarzi on the same bed. After nearly 15 years of interviews by Anzilotti and Detective Capt. As you can see, he didn't always look like Santa Claus. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said.
Then he shared his intentions to retire. 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. His upcoming sentencing will add more time to a prison term that already extends beyond his remaining years. The police hunted for leads, questioning prostitutes about suspicious men, examining the handwriting of the guest who had checked into Room 417: Carl Wilson of Merlin, N.J., a fake name from a fake place. He has been charged with 11 murders in all. 0000001250 00000 n
He was imprisoned. We've received your submission. In May of 1980, police arrested Cottingham while he was torturing a sex worker at a motel room in New Jersey. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. . On Dec. 2, 1979, the murders that earned Cottingham the nickname the "Torso Killer took place in New York City. 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.. Richard was arrested at a motel in Hasbrouck . [6] In 2022, Cottingham officially confessed to the 1970 murder of Lorraine McGraw, under a non-prosecution agreement. For over 40 years, its been folklore in this county.. 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. %%EOF
This guy was particularly ruthless. And for Cottingham, every night was a full moon.. 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. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. Notably, none of his crimes took place on the property. He rented an apartment in Midtown and told his wife he worked nights. Ms. The people listed below were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Lodi, New Jersey. Much like John Moye, Altman, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., said she struggled to process Cottinghams savagery. Like a werewolf, Vronsky told The Post. His wife withdrew the petition upon his arrest in May 1980, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction. 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. ADVERTISEMENT. Their heads and hands had been cut off.