They sat at the kitchen table, very professional, very polite, very considerate, Ms. Mulder recalled. Photos of the house and other related images. But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. He had his list of names, each one a dead girl and a crime long unsolved. That was roughly one month after his arrest. He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. 43 0 obj<>stream
Everything that I was taught about evil was evident in his presence, in his demeanor, in the gaze of his eyes, Moye told The Post. 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, New Jersey prison photo. 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. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. (1981, June 25). <<8BD7E4F5B15F3F4A8993EB3A0150F7AC>]>>
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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. There were at least five unsolved killings of girls, each an open wound for families seeking resolution. But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. 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. xref
Their murders shook the region. 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 house was built in 1974one year before Cottingham and his wife, Janet, moved in. [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. I think it was just an evolution in his killing.. But there was an even bigger problem. Cottingham has confessed to murdering 12 women. 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. Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/nyregion/new-jersey-serial-killer-cottingham-anzilotti.html. This murder was later linked to the 1977 murder of Maryann Carr, who was left in the same motel's parking lot. Its been half my career, he said. %%EOF
Vogel was found dead in her own car in Ridgefield Park, nude and bound. (1981, June 25). Thats why [authorities are] not going to make another statement. 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. Months later, in May 1980, another prostitute from Times Square was found dead, this time in a New Jersey motel; that murder was linked to yet another at the same location. [3], Cottingham was arrested on several lesser charges throughout his killing spree. 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. One would remind him of a TV actress. The clever killer slipped up, leaving a fingerprint on the cuffs. On the way out, he bumped the author on the shins with a bag that felt like it contained bowling balls, Vronsky said. Mr. Anzilotti, doing his best not to betray any emotion, slowly pulled out his Blackberry and took notes. Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. Pages in category "People from Lodi, New Jersey" The following 21 pages are in this category, out of 21 total. He did a U-turn in a bank parking lot and approached, he said. On May 5, 1980, a motel housekeeper found the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street in the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn. Cusicks daughter, Darlene Altman, told Nassau County Judge Caryn Fink her late grandparents raised her after her mothers shocking slaying. He also claimed to have committed 80 perfect murders no one knows about. trailer
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 pleaded innocent and for decades insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated those five murders. The girls vanished Aug. 9, 1974, while hitchhiking to a mall in . Then he shared his intentions to retire. Cottingham offered to give O'Dell a massage and she rolled onto her stomach. 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. Feech La Manna's house from The Sopranos. I took over handling the calls, the arrangements. 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. This guy was particularly ruthless. 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. The case also had parallels to a previously unsolved murder of nurse Maryann Carr, who was found dead in the same motel three years earlier. In other words, he may have been content and/or preoccupied. 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. xref
They were facedown, side by side, as if placed there with care. 21 23
Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. [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. 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. Bergen County investigators realized there were numerous open sexual assault cases with similar hallmarks: Cottingham kidnapped them from Times Square, drugged and assaulted them. Over the course of 13 years, beginning in 1967, Cottingham killed six women in New Jersey and New York. He kept these "trophies" in a locked room in the basement. This is a somber day as we revisit the horrific acts and terror this man brought upon Bergen County nearly 50 years ago, the prosecutor said Tuesday. 0000003107 00000 n
. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. A judge sentenced him to 25 years to life after Cusicks brother and only child read emotional impact statements in court. 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 decades earlier, bringing his known tally to 17 although experts believe that figure could be as high as 100 victims. [5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel. 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 details stopped him cold. He would describe to me certain routes he would drive, Vronsky said of Cottinghamm relaying his murderous spree in letters and interviews over the span of five years. Everyone deserves justice under the law.. Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp all girls whose murders were unsolved. [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). Cottingham was convicted of five murders in a series of three trials between 1981 and 1984 (two in New Jersey and one in New York). The photographs are ordered from left to right and top to bottom. [5][17], The charges listed in Cottingham's New Jersey indictment included kidnapping, attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with deadly weapon, aggravated sexual assault while armed (rape), aggravated sexual assault while armed (sodomy), aggravated sexual assault while armed (fellatio), possession of a weapon (switchblade knife), and possession of controlled substances (secobarbital, amobarbital and diazepam). 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. According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. This story has been shared 150,597 times. 0000007874 00000 n
His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. 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. 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. Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. 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. . 0000003686 00000 n
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You're a whore and you have to be punished." F!
Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . Much like John Moye, Altman, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., said she struggled to process Cottinghams savagery. 0000001001 00000 n
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The series features interviews with former sex workers, including Barbara Amaya, who was raped and robbed at gunpoint by a man she believes was Cottingham, although she was inexplicably spared. 0000001071 00000 n
Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. Questioning Mr. Cottingham was complicated. The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. Since his conviction, Cottingham has pleaded guilty to 12 murders. Then, with just days remaining before the chief retired, the inmate relented. iP^ -KvWZvxhc'm$93tSz =oBTmD]+)bTJ T|u>/. At the time, Cottingham, who had not been arrested or identified, was dubbed the "Times Square Ripper.. He married in 1970 and became a father of three. 0000000756 00000 n
In April of 1979, he started living in the basement of the property after his wife initiated divorce proceedings against him for "abandonment" and "mental cruelty.". 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. What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. 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. Her name was Nancy Schiava Vogel. By all accounts, he seemed to be leading an everyday life in Lodi, New Jersey, with his wife and three kids. 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. My whole life has been this, she said. 0000009264 00000 n
There was also a lockbox filled with trophies from his murders, including Maryann Carrs apartment key and a necklace belonging to Jean Reyner. Richard Cottingham, serial killer from New Jersey operating in New York between 1967 and 1980. He also claims that his true victim count is at least 85. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. Richard Cottingham, 74, appeared virtually in court Tuesday to admit to the slayings of 17-year-old Mary Ann Pryor and 16-year-old Lorraine Marie Kelly. And later that same month, a fifth woman was found mutilated in the former Hotel Seville near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a photograph of Jean Reyner. I thought he could be responsible for some, Mr. Anzilotti said. It also left enormous holes in the souls of family and friends of Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16. He abducted Vogel and took her to a field in Montvale, where he strangled her. His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police.
The predator, dubbed The Torso Killer, would strike again in May 1980. Anyone can read what you share. They have also lived in Whiting, IN. 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. Then came Tuesdays pleas. For more information, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. 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 sergeant was undeterred. 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. He had been dubbed the Times Square Torso Ripper setting off Vronskys lifelong fascination of serial killers. 21 23
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The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. However, he started killing again in 1974, when he murdered Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. Vronsky and Weiss had been meeting with Cottingham in prison since the spring of 2017, counseling him to make the confession. View Richard Cottingham's record in Manchester, NJ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Her killer, Richard Cottingham, was a computer operator, married with three children of his own, living a seemingly normal life. Now I just have to go on with my life.. He soon realized the woman had no head, the Daily News reported. They captured Cottingham soon after. His "justification" for doing this was that he "didn't like anyone getting one over" on him. On Dec. 2, 1979, the murders that earned Cottingham the nickname the "Torso Killer took place in New York City. But Mr. Anzilotti kept pressing him: You know youre going to tell me.. Cottingham has claimed in the past he. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. However, his family moved to River Vale, New Jersey, when he was 12 years old. 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. On September 4, 1973, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery, oral sodomy and sexual abuse on the complaint of a prostitute and her pimp. 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. He drove his car ahead of Harp, pulled over and walked back toward her, Vronsky said. He would occasionally remove and dispose of his victims heads and hands, presumably to make identification more difficult. But then, four years ago, Mr. Cottingham stunned the chief. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. 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.. After those confessions, the two men barely spoke. Cottingham has been given various nicknames over the years. Goodarzi had come to the United States years prior from Iran. . 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. 0000001982 00000 n
In his possession, the 33-year-old had a stash of handcuffs, tape and sedatives. Hes embarrassed by this case, he said. ADVERTISEMENT. It was a game to me. Mr. Anzilotti and another investigator drove to the town of Reading, Vt., to deliver the news to Jackies older sister, Suzan Mulder, then 69. 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. The Blase family agreed. Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. 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. Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. Richard Cottingham, 76, pleaded guilty to the February 1968 murder of Diane Cusick, 23, and admitted to strangling four additional women in the 1970s in Nassau County. 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. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. 0000003202 00000 n
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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. I had long suspected that whoever killed Irene Blase also killed Denise Falasca, Mr. Anzilotti said. And for Cottingham, every night was a full moon.. It is my fervent hope that this arrest and conviction bring some semblance of closure to the friends and family of Mary Ann and Lorraine and a measure of justice to members of our communities, who have long feared this unknown actor.. In 2009, decades after his first five murder convictions, Cottingham told a journalist that he had committed at least 80 to 100 "perfect murders" of women in various regions of the United States. Cottingham fled the scene with the victims heads and hands. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.[10]. The teenagers were last seen on Aug. 9, 1974, in North Bergen. When a worker came to check on her, ODell cracked open the door and gave a hand signal asking for help. She was believed to have accepted a ride from a stranger, and her body was found on the side of a road near a cemetery. And any new prison sentence would, practically speaking, be meaningless; Mr. Cottingham had no chance of ever being released. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. The man has no heart, no soul, no emotion whatsoever, she said. And thats what bothers me, because I probably didnt have to do anything to them., Mr. Anzilotti left the confession both exhausted and relieved. He said he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't retiring.. Her glasses, a ring, a necklace, Ms. Mulder said. 21 0 obj <>
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Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. But her light shines brightly against the backdrop of evil.. xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)=
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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. Its an ongoing process, Vronsky said. 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. (1981, June 16). He stood trial in New York and New Jersey in a coat and tie and denied everything, but he was convicted in all five killings. Falasca, 15, accepted. This is possibly due to the fact that he got married in 1970. In April 2021, Cottingham confessed to the unsolved 1974 double-abduction, rape, and forcible drowning murders of Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17, in Montvale, one of New Jersey's most notorious cold cases. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. His search for a killer led him to a man already locked away, in New Jersey State Prison, 75 miles from his office. When Mr. Cottingham entered prison in 1981, Robert Anzilotti was not yet a teenager. He described things only the killer would know, like where hed thrown her car keys afterward. Ms. Falasca was a 15-year-old who left her familys house in July 1969 and never returned. He had no relationship to his victims. Other locations that are relatively close to this place. 0000006846 00000 n
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His murders were not the outcome of stalking or planning but of fleeting encounters. 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. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . 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. But it was a way to get him comfortable to talk to me about murders.. 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. Between 1970 and 1974, Cottingham and his wife, Janet, lived at an apartment block called Ledgewood Terrace in Little Ferry, New Jersey. 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. PB|
[13][14] Anzilotti had spent 15 years interviewing Cottingham, working toward the confession. I didnt know what to expect. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times.
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