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On Dec. 2, 1979, the murders that earned Cottingham the nickname the "Torso Killer took place in New York City. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. It was like a game to him, Anzilotti recently said. They captured Cottingham soon after. And thats what bothers me, because I probably didnt have to do anything to them., Mr. Anzilotti left the confession both exhausted and relieved. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. 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". What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. Later on, Richard took a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York as a computer operator. But something a hunch, past investigative speculation, the proximity of the crimes drew Mr. Anzilotti to the prisoner. Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. When a worker came to check on her, ODell cracked open the door and gave a hand signal asking for help. 0000006151 00000 n Im leaving, he said. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. 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. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. I was able to get almostany woman to do whatever I wanted them to do . In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. 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.. Correctional officers found contraband and evidence of bookmaking and transferred Mr. Cottingham to solitary confinement. View Richard Cottingham's record in Manchester, NJ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Rochelle Park & He called his detectives and gave the word: Bring in Cottingham. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. Her glasses, a ring, a necklace, Ms. Mulder said. 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. He would occasionally remove and dispose of his victims heads and hands, presumably to make identification more difficult. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. Other locations that are relatively close to this place. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. 0000003431 00000 n But there was an even bigger problem. 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. The man has no heart, no soul, no emotion whatsoever, she said. 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.. 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. 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. After failing to return home from a trip to buy shoes at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York,[9] 23-year old Diane Cusick was found raped, beaten, and strangled to death in the back seat of her car, parked near the mall. Justice was served and thats the end of it case closed. (1981, June 16). 0000001082 00000 n On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. Mr. Cottingham at his virtual hearing on April 27 in Bergen County Superior Court, where he pleaded guilty to killing Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly 47 years later. This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. That was less than a year after Cottingham and his wife had their first child. He was locked away to serve several life sentences, aging into a portly man with a thick white beard. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Find NJ.com on Facebook. She later testified that he said, "You have to take it. Like a werewolf, Vronsky told The Post. 0000001001 00000 n <<8BD7E4F5B15F3F4A8993EB3A0150F7AC>]>> It could only be Jackie Harp.. Hackensack, 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. 0000003451 00000 n Questioning Mr. Cottingham was complicated. All these factors created this crucible in the center of Manhattan for Richard Cottingham to flourish.. Select this result to view Richard P Cunningham's phone number, address, and more. Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . This case was always haunting me.. 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. Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20-years-old, although he claims to have started as an adolescent. I couldnt even imagine losing a child. 3. 0000002847 00000 n But the arrest in 1980 changed everything, exposing Richard's double life and deadly exploits. 21 23 Harp was found strangled to death the next day. These include the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, and the Times Square Torso Ripper. He was imprisoned. It was mainly psychological. 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. 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. 0000002435 00000 n On May 5, 1980, a motel housekeeper found the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street in the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. Soon, the chief closed that case two down. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. Richard was arrested at a motel in Hasbrouck . 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). Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times. Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. 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 has been given various nicknames over the years. Cottingham, whose attorney did not return messages seeking comment, has claimed to have killed as many as 100 women. 0000007874 00000 n He said he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't retiring.. He kept these "trophies" in a locked room in the basement. 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. 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. I was shocked that one human being was capable of all this carnage, Moye said of Cottingham. FPh_3Gj Nt%Q[r L`%/9QTh/| Q4_g8KI}u'?xbif`H>;wNQ|sd2(? The teenagers were last seen on Aug. 9, 1974, in North Bergen. The other girls did, you have to take it, too. After their drink, Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station where they had taken the bus. He had pornographic artwork, adhesive tape, books about S&M, said Geberth. 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. On March 12, 1974, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery and unlawful imprisonment on the complaint of another prostitute. The house was built in 1974one year before Cottingham and his wife, Janet, moved in. The motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. Straddling her back, he drew a knife and put it to her throat as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists. But he told Mr. Cottingham. 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. Over time, though, one investigator was slowly developing a theory. 21 0 obj <> endobj Like two little dolls at Christmastime.. 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. Look her up, she looks like her. Others he remembered from a haircut.. On the way out, he bumped the author on the shins with a bag that felt like it contained bowling balls, Vronsky said. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Her body was found the next morning by the side of a road next to a cemetery in Saddle Brook. 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. They'd left home for a trip 13 miles (21 kilometers) north to . 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 He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. 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. 0000001071 00000 n 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. Its taken more than 46 years, but a Bergen County police veteran who is only days from retirement got one of the countrys most notorious serial killers to confess. When you have a series of crimes today, everything goes through the computers, andwe have computer analysis and a wayof moving these through jurisdictionalboundaries. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. HUMs@Wf~}m1`16N7NLf%=Io8. PB| As you can see, he didn't always look like Santa Claus. [21] Cottingham was apparently "forensically aware" in the era before DNA analysis. They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. But eventually, their old give-and-take resumed. 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. 0000000756 00000 n 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. I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. 0000012661 00000 n When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. 0000007078 00000 n Little more than a week after Street was found, Reyner was found butchered in the Seville Motel in New York City. We use cookies to deliver personalized advertisements, improve your online experience, and to analyze our site's performance. Ms. The five victims addressed . And I said, Hop in., He drove to the mall. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. He enjoys our relationship. F! 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. 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. O'Dell's muffled cries of pain became so loud that the motel staff, already uneased by the previous two murders of Carr and Street, called police and then rushed to the room demanding that Cottingham open the door. These objects, along with his fingerprint on the handcuffs, were presented as evidence by prosecutors at his trial. Again and again, for 15 years, Mr. Anzilotti met with the inmate, seeking the truth. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a photograph of Jean Reyner. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Vronsky and Weiss had been meeting with Cottingham in prison since the spring of 2017, counseling him to make the confession. 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. 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. Both men were keenly aware that it was their years-old relationship that had brought about this moment. 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. But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. . With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. But in 2009, he surfaced to again make waves, when he gave a chilling interview to journalist Nadia Fezzani about his motivation and his body count. On April 7, 1969, Cottingham saw Blase, 18, shopping in Hackensack, Vronsky said. The New York Times, p. 2. It was a game to me. You can set your cookie preferences below. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. She had been abducted while walking home from practice with her schools fife-and-drum team in 1968. One day, Cottingham told his co-worker that he had stolen a sex worker's money and clothes while she was sleeping. 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. A hotel worker arrived at Room 417 to find smoke and a horrible scene: the scorched remains of two women on a bed. A woman walking to her car found them: two teenage girls, naked and dead in a sliver of woods behind an apartment parking lot. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Her killer, Richard Cottingham, was a computer operator, married with three children of his own, living a seemingly normal life. Richard Cottingham, the notorious North Jersey serial killer known for dismembering the young women who were so often his victims, publicly confessed Tuesday to drowning two North Bergen girls. 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. 0000003125 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. A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. 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. He soon realized the woman had no head, the Daily News reported. xref 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. Now I just have to go on with my life.. trailer That made 11 murders Cottingham that admitted since his arrest more than 30 years ago. Anzilottihas spent all but 4 years of his law enforcement career with the prosecutors office after coming over from the Woodcliff Lake Police Department. Author Peter Vronsky, who has a forthcoming book on Cottingham, and was first to publicly announce that the imprisoned Cottingham was responsible for the three 50-year-old crimes, says authorities want to add more to the list. %PDF-1.4 % At the mall, Cottingham, then a tall, brown-haired young man, met Vogel, a married mother of two. Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. Hes hedged around and all but confessed.. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon. Police were not aware of his murders at the time, nor were they aware that an active serial killer was at large in the New York-New Jersey area. Pages in category "People from Lodi, New Jersey" The following 21 pages are in this category, out of 21 total. Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. Stumped, the police used mannequins from nearby department stores and dressed them in the victims clothing, hoping to spark an identification from friends or family who recognized the outfits. 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. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. 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. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. 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. 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. Cottingham, a divorced father of three who previously lived in Lodi, NJ, also pleaded guilty to the February 1968 rape and murder of Diane Cusick, 23, a dance instructor from New Hyde Park, NY. 0000003686 00000 n It also left enormous holes in the souls of family and friends of Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16. Mr. Anzilotti, doing his best not to betray any emotion, slowly pulled out his Blackberry and took notes. %PDF-1.4 % The chief agreed. %%EOF Mr. Anzilotti would arrange to have the inmate transported to his office more than hours drive from the prison. 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. His "justification" for doing this was that he "didn't like anyone getting one over" on him. Soon, Cottingham persuaded Blase to go for a drink with him. Taking a bus to another location, Cottingham and Blase spent some time together. He tried a different approach. And at. [5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel.