Over the course of 13 years, beginning in 1967, Cottingham killed six women in New Jersey and New York. Serial Killer House in Lodi, New Jersey, United States. He did a U-turn in a bank parking lot and approached, he said. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Cusick, an instructor at a dance school in the Oceanside community of Long Island, went to Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream to buy a pair of shoes. Cottingham primarily sought prostitutes who were petite blondes in their late teens to mid-twenties. I lost so much more than just my mother that day, Altman said. Mr. Anzilotti and another investigator drove to the town of Reading, Vt., to deliver the news to Jackies older sister, Suzan Mulder, then 69. They have also lived in Whiting, IN. Then, in January of this year, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office made an announcement: The notorious serial killer Richard Cottingham, known as "The Torso Killer," had confessed to the murders. Goodarzi had come to the United States years prior from Iran. [13] In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. 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. Therefore, you should be respectful and not step foot on the property without permission. Absolutely, its completely plausible. In 2010, Bergen County authorities announced hed pleaded guilty to a sixth murder, a 1967 strangling in Bergen County. In recent years, he had asked Mr. Cottingham about the case, and the inmate had simultaneously denied responsibility and let on that he knew more than he would share. 0000003431 00000 n 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. Look her up, she looks like her. Others he remembered from a haircut.. 0000010308 00000 n 43 0 obj<>stream It was a game to me. Cottingham then confessed to more murders including Nancy Vogel, whom he killed in 1967, and five teenaged victims from New Jersey, none of whom were in the sex trade. . Just shy of his 21st birthday, Richard Cottingham began a vicious killing spree that tore through north New Jersey and New York City. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. When Mr. Cottingham entered prison in 1981, Robert Anzilotti was not yet a teenager. He asked to quietly close their daughters murder case without formally charging the killer. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. 0000002435 00000 n Cottingham had just raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers in a room at the motel before setting it on fire. (1981, June 16). 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I thought he could be responsible for some, Mr. Anzilotti said. <<69EF7C237A736942AE760EBDB9B8F80B>]>> Much of Cottinghams crimes were not murders, but other violent crimes like abductions and rapes. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. 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.. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. He was originally from the Bronx in New York City. After years in prison, Mr. Cottingham began to open up to the detective about past unsolved crimes. Six months later, Vronsky would learn that the man he encountered on the elevator was Cottingham as the killers face appeared in newspapers across the region. He also claimed to have committed 80 perfect murders no one knows about. He married in 1970 and became a father of three. [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. But it was a way to get him comfortable to talk to me about murders.. 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. trailer The man has no heart, no soul, no emotion whatsoever, she said. Hes younger when all this is going on in Bergen County, he said. He married in 1970 and had three children. The following is a list of his victims in chronological order. And later that same month, a fifth woman was found mutilated in the former Hotel Seville near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. trailer 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. 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 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. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. She agreed to have sex with him for money. On more than one occasion, he would openly talk about his experiences with sex workers. 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. I believe hes killed between 85 and 100, as he claims, Vronsky told The Post. The chief pressed ahead with his list. She was a mother, she was a wife, a daughter and a grandmother taken far too early. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. Responding officers found an 18-year-old victim whod been bitten, stabbed and bound with handcuffs. 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. 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. Hed order pizza and play cards with the older man and other detectives. Which, of course, I wasnt overly interested in, the former chief said. Now 74, Cottingham, who claims responsibility for dozens of murders, has confessed to a. Her attacker was caught as he ran away. Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. 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. Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. I was shocked that it was a serial killer, Moye said of his mothers confessed murderer. The Rent Zestimate for this home is $3,099/mo, which has increased by $3,099/mo in the last 30 days. That made 11 murders Cottingham that admitted since his arrest more than 30 years ago. 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. It took some effort to convince him to go to court and let me make it public, Anzilotti said Tuesday. I think sometimes he grapples with his own gruesomeness back then., On March 12, a Friday, Mr. Anzilotti summoned the inmate. About a week later, Big Apple authorities would find Reyners body, but still, no one in New Jersey connected them to the Times Square killer, says former NYPD detective Malcolm Reiman in the series. Vogel was found dead in her own car in Ridgefield Park, nude and bound. But he carried those cold cases with him literally, his thick files in cardboard boxes that he moved from office to office chipping away at the false leads, seeking similarities in the victims and in the crime scenes. A killing in Somerset County a week after Cottingham got his drivers license may have been one of his first victims, Vronsky said. She was Nancy Pryor, and she was 19 when her sister, Mary Ann, was found dead. Anzilottihas spent all but 4 years of his law enforcement career with the prosecutors office after coming over from the Woodcliff Lake Police Department. 0000006151 00000 n 21 23 [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". 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, How a retired detective snared his seventh Torso Killer confession, Expert reveals biological reason why were obsessed with true crime shows. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. 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. 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. 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. What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. 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. 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. 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. It was just shock all the way around.. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey. 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. 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. He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. 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. (1981, June 25). Photos of the house and other related images. We've received your submission. I could feel it.. The other girls did, you have to take it, too. <<8BD7E4F5B15F3F4A8993EB3A0150F7AC>]>> To bring Mr. Cottingham back to court, where the case would certainly draw attention, would stop him from talking about other open cases, the chief explained. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times. Her youth and difference in appearance, with a boyish haircut, set her apart from the other victims. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. And at the time, it was beyond our capacity to look beyond New York City, he told The Post. Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. On May 4, 1980, the body of Street, a sex worker, was found at the same Quality Inn where Cottingham had dumped Carrs body. The Google Street View image above was taken in May of 2022. In March, looking back on 25 years with the office, Mr. Anzilotti decided it was time to move on from the job. Instead, she ended up shopping at one of Bergen Countys malls, according to Vronsky. Cottinghamss name came up several times, but it didnt fit for me, she said. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Cottingham had stuffed Streets body under the bed for housekeeping to find, Vronsky said. This is the house where the "Times Square Killer," Richard Cottingham, lived between 1975 and 1980. 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. 0000001250 00000 n Years ticked past, 1974 into 1975, into the 1980s, the 1990s. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. 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.
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