Goodarzi, of Trenton, was a sex worker who had been traveling to the then-seedy streets of midtown Manhattan, Vronsky said. Cottingham, whose attorney did not return messages seeking comment, has claimed to have killed as many as 100 women. He would occasionally remove and dispose of his victims heads and hands, presumably to make identification more difficult. Their murders shook the region. Again and again, for 15 years, Mr. Anzilotti met with the inmate, seeking the truth. He remembers certain aspects of a person, Mr. Anzilotti said. Taking a bus to another location, Cottingham and Blase spent some time together. Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . The chief pressed ahead with his list. PB| They captured Cottingham soon after. Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20-years-old, although he claims to have started as an adolescent. Described as average and normal, New Jersey man Richard Cottingham was a father-of-three with a marriage that was slowly unravelling. I thought he could be responsible for some, Mr. Anzilotti said. He was a coward.. 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. What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. startxref Richard was arrested at a motel in Hasbrouck . He did a U-turn in a bank parking lot and approached, he said. [7] On October 28, 1967, he strangled Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two, in Little Ferry, New Jersey. The predator, dubbed The Torso Killer, would strike again in May 1980. A real sick bastard did this, retired NYPD detective Jim Riegel, who was working as a beat cop that day, recalls his sergeant telling him in the new Netflix series Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer, out Wednesday. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a photograph of Jean Reyner. [18], During the early 1980s, Cottingham was convicted of five murders in two separate New Jersey trials in 1981[19] and 1982,[20] and in a single New York trial in 1984 for three murders. Peter Karas/The Record, via USA Today Network. It was a game to me. And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. 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. The man has no heart, no soul, no emotion whatsoever, she said. 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. Mr. Anzilotti, by then a sergeant, arranged a surprise search of the inmates cell the day after the Super Bowl. 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. 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. The Google Street View image on the right was taken 38 years later, in June of 2018. He also claims that his true victim count is at least 85. [5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel. Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. 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. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. Vogel was found dead in her own car in Ridgefield Park, nude and bound. Its been half my career, he said. 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. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. [13] In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. 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. His crimes were discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motel heard. 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. But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. %PDF-1.4 % Shed been abducted by Cottingham from the Ledgewood Terrace apartments, in Little Ferry, where Cottingham had previously lived, said Vronsky. Before his arrest, he was a successful computer operator who worked at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance company in Midtown Manhattan. 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. Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. With an uncomplicated enthusiasm for his work, Detective Anzilotti rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the chief of detectives with a busy office to lead. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. He married in 1970 and became a father of three. To this day, I dont even think they would have ever said anything. Hes younger when all this is going on in Bergen County, he said. Hes embarrassed by this case, he said. In other words, he may have been content and/or preoccupied. He said he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't retiring.. Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. She was a mother, she was a wife, a daughter and a grandmother taken far too early. . I knew, he recalled, that was Irene Blase.. Straddling her back, he drew a knife and put it to her throat as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists. On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. Ms. Falasca was a 15-year-old who left her familys house in July 1969 and never returned. He later detailed his brief 1979 encounter with Cottingham in Times Square Torso Ripper: Sex and Murder on The Deuce. His upcoming book on the vicious predator will be released next fall. 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. And last week, three more were added to his grisly toll. The motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. Although Cottingham has formally admitted to eighteen killings and has claimed to have killed as many as 100, he is known to have only murdered seventeen girls between 1967 and 1980 and attempted to kill a further four. 0000003451 00000 n xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)= RZlr$:kX;e =_i& ` ?# And even worse, the rape laws were particularly onerous, and you had to provide a witness to bring an allegation of rape. Three days later, Mr. Anzilotti walked out of his office for good. Cottingham, who is already serving a lifetime state prison sentence for killing several other women and girls, was brought to the office of Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella in Paramus to enter his pleas before Superior Court Judge Keith Bachmann in Hackensack. 0000013001 00000 n Did the old man kill those girls? And later that same month, a fifth woman was found mutilated in the former Hotel Seville near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times. Anyone can read what you share. Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. A woman walking to her car found them: two teenage girls, naked and dead in a sliver of woods behind an apartment parking lot. Goodarzi had come to the United States years prior from Iran. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.[10]. 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. %PDF-1.4 % 0000002847 00000 n 21 0 obj <> endobj 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 Trentons New Jersey State Prison. I think sometimes he grapples with his own gruesomeness back then., On March 12, a Friday, Mr. Anzilotti summoned the inmate. It took some effort to convince him to go to court and let me make it public, Anzilotti said Tuesday. 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. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. Cottinghamss name came up several times, but it didnt fit for me, she said. 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.. 0000003125 00000 n Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. Cottingham had just raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers in a room at the motel before setting it on fire. 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. 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 was eventually convicted of five murders in New Jersey and New York and sent to a New Jersey state prison in the early 1980s. And considering the closure of yesterdays cases, I absolutely believe him.. On the way out, he bumped the author on the shins with a bag that felt like it contained bowling balls, Vronsky said. Detective Anzilotti was startled to discover the same man killed all three. 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. They have also lived in Manasquan, NJ and Ada, MI. Crime: Cottingham, a Lodi resident, killed six women in New Jersey and New York between 1967 and 1980. Mr. Anzilotti would arrange to have the inmate transported to his office more than hours drive from the prison. She was stunned. 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. On May 4, 1980, the body of Street, a sex worker, was found at the same Quality Inn where Cottingham had dumped Carrs body. Then came Tuesdays pleas. 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. This location belongs to the following categories: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see future locations. 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. A killing in Somerset County a week after Cottingham got his drivers license may have been one of his first victims, Vronsky said. %%EOF Absolutely, its completely plausible. Both men were keenly aware that it was their years-old relationship that had brought about this moment. His "justification" for doing this was that he "didn't like anyone getting one over" on him. For more information, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. We've received your submission. Her killer, Richard Cottingham, was a computer operator, married with three children of his own, living a seemingly normal life. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. But he eventually realized the years-long association, which involved countless state prison visits, was coming to an end. Again, he knew details from Ms. Falascas file. They have also lived in Whiting, IN. And he sat there with literally no remorse. [7] In a 2009 interview, Cottingham admitted to the murders and claimed that he severed the heads and hands of the victims to prevent their identification, as he was acquainted with Goodarzi and had been seen with her in a bar the night before.[2]. He has been charged with 11 murders in all. Later on, Richard took a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York as a computer operator. Monday marked the first time Moye ever laid eyes on Cottingham, who dismembered some of victims, including two women whose bodies were found without their heads and hands in a Times Square motel in December 1979. Richard Cottingham, New Jersey prison photo. 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. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. I was shocked that one human being was capable of all this carnage, Moye said of Cottingham. endstream endobj 34 0 obj<>stream 0000005253 00000 n Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp all girls whose murders were unsolved. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. He called his detectives and gave the word: Bring in Cottingham. He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. On March 12, 1974, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery and unlawful imprisonment on the complaint of another prostitute. Responding officers found an 18-year-old victim whod been bitten, stabbed and bound with handcuffs. Bergen County investigators realized there were numerous open sexual assault cases with similar hallmarks: Cottingham kidnapped them from Times Square, drugged and assaulted them. On Dec. 2, 1979, the murders that earned Cottingham the nickname the "Torso Killer took place in New York City. The house is close to Lodi High School, the Riverside Cemetery and Interstate 80. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey. Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. 0000000756 00000 n Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. 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. I lost so much more than just my mother that day, Altman said. Im leaving, he said. He had three children, two boys and a girl, with his wife. 0000003107 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. In the thirteen-year period during which he is known to have committed at least seventeen murders, only one fingerprint belonging to him was ever recovered, from the ratchet mechanism of handcuffs left behind on Valerie Street. 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. 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 . The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. Hackensack, In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. 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. These include the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, and the Times Square Torso Ripper. 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). The people listed below were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Lodi, New Jersey. 43 0 obj <>stream If they came forward and said theyd been assaulted, they would be arrested for prostitution, so there was no reason to come forward, Berlinger said. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. 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. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. 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. However, he started killing again in 1974, when he murdered Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. This story has been shared 150,597 times. [2] Four surviving abduction-rape victims testified against Cottingham; he was convicted in three of the cases and acquitted in one. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. And for Cottingham, every night was a full moon.. It was quite a shock to learn it was him.. He would let his guard down, Mr. Anzilotti said. 0000004535 00000 n 0000003686 00000 n 0000003431 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.. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. For more details, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. 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. Thats not the natural order its supposed to go in.. Vronsky, whose works also include an authoritative tome cataloging 17,000 years of pathological homicide, said Cottingham scouted his victims before transforming from a family man into a ferocious monster. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. The 45th year passed in the same way. 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. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. xb```"WVf~g`0pt 9"~S?``Z V|bG!+N}TzYl@2 `QD2 @DACEDJaOs6x?+[Ihlrt ? This story has been shared 151,197 times. Altman, who was just 3 years old at the time, said her parents had separated prior to Cusicks killing. 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. He married in 1970 and became a father of. 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. He didnt have the decency or the dignity to ask for forgiveness or to even address the victims families. ADVERTISEMENT. And at. 0000003183 00000 n He was the Torso Killer. Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. Mr. Anzilotti had begun to believe, he said in a recent interview, that Mr. Cottingham, between his history and the suspicions of detectives that came before me, could be responsible for one or more of those deaths. 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. 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. 0000004577 00000 n Then, with just days remaining before the chief retired, the inmate relented. Theyre pushing him on multiple other cases. Hes been interviewing Cottingham in state prison for years. [4], The BCPO "exceptionally closed" the three cold case murders with agreement from the victims' families and evidence corroborating the confessions, but for several years kept this secret from the public to keep Cottingham talking about other cases. 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). The photographs are ordered from left to right and top to bottom. [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. 0 All rights reserved (About Us). 0 On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Cottingham had kept these items as souvenirs so that he could remember his victims and relive his attacks. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. 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 0000002435 00000 n [2], In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. 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. [21] Cottingham was apparently "forensically aware" in the era before DNA analysis. The sergeant was undeterred. Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. [12] Both bodies had their hands and heads removed, and had been doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. The confessed killer then fatally bludgeoned Sheila Heiman, a 33-year-old mother of three, in July 1973, at her North Woodmere, NY, home, where her husband found her upon returning from shopping, authorities said. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two 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. 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. Find NJ.com on Facebook. The Blase family agreed. 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 a Hasbrouck Heights hotel called police saying shed heard a woman screaming. As you can see, he didn't always look like Santa Claus. Cottingham fled the scene with the victims heads and hands. 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. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. 0000001425 00000 n But first, he wanted to return to those two murders from 47 years ago. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. 43 0 obj<>stream I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. Vronsky, who aided investigators in obtaining Junes indictment, is trying to coax as many confessions out of the aging, 300-pound serial killer as possible, but the clock is ticking since he suffers from diabetes and kidney disease, he said. Like a werewolf, Vronsky told The Post. <<8BD7E4F5B15F3F4A8993EB3A0150F7AC>]>> 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. The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. 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.
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