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He would occasionally remove and dispose of his victims heads and hands, presumably to make identification more difficult. Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. This girl did everything right, Vronsky said. 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. And any new prison sentence would, practically speaking, be meaningless; Mr. Cottingham had no chance of ever being released. Blase was found strangled to death in 4 feet of water in Saddle River the next day. This is a "Then and Now" photograph of Cottingham's former house at 29 Vreeland Street. 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. [2], In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. That made 11 murders Cottingham that admitted since his arrest more than 30 years ago. [13] In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. In 2022, Cottingham also confessed to the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick after DNA evidence linked him to the crime. Falasca, 15, accepted. %%EOF
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Shed been abducted by Cottingham from the Ledgewood Terrace apartments, in Little Ferry, where Cottingham had previously lived, said Vronsky. Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to murder in the death of one Long Island woman and admitted under oath to killing four others. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. He forced his victims to address him as "master". Cottingham was indicted in Cusicks killing in June after DNA evidence linked him to the cold-case slaying believed to be the oldest match to ever lead to a prosecution, Nassau County prosecutors said. 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. Mr. Anzilotti would arrange to have the inmate transported to his office more than hours drive from the prison. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. He was also known to threaten them with a plastic gun and leave it within their reach so they could try to grab it only to find out it was false, severely bite and scrape their nipples, cut around the breasts, and use other forms of torture. 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. [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". 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. [6] The confession was extracted by Detective Anzilotti weeks before his retirement and was facilitated by historian Vronsky and by Jennifer Weiss, the daughter of Deedeh Goodarzi, one of Cottingham's later victims. The weather worsened. Defense attorney John Bruno recited the details, which the white-bearded, 74-year-old killer acknowledged. The bodies of the women had no heads and no hands. Ms. Falasca was a 15-year-old who left her familys house in July 1969 and never returned. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. 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. It is not a public place. endstream
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Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. In 2010, Bergen County authorities announced hed pleaded guilty to a sixth murder, a 1967 strangling in Bergen County. And I said, Hop in., He drove to the mall. Among the other faces in separate windows on the Zoom screen was a 66-year-old woman, identified simply as Nancy. 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. 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. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. 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. Both men were keenly aware that it was their years-old relationship that had brought about this moment. But the killer was a clever bastard, too. He began torturing her, nearly biting off one of her nipples. 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. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. 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). It was pure evil. 0000012661 00000 n
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. In other words, he may have been content and/or preoccupied. His murders were not the outcome of stalking or planning but of fleeting encounters. And last week, three more were added to his grisly toll. Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates. Location of first contact Maryann Carr = her apartment; Prostitutes = street or bar . 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. The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. They'd left home for a trip 13 miles (21 kilometers) north to . 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. This time, at the Seville Hotel, where he strangled Jean Reyner, a 25-year-old mother working in the sex trade to finance a child custody battle. When they arrived, one firefighter attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of a woman they found on the bed. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. He pleaded innocent and for decades insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated those five murders. %PDF-1.4
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Like a werewolf, Vronsky told The Post. But Mr. Anzilotti kept pressing him: You know youre going to tell me.. He asked to quietly close their daughters murder case without formally charging the killer. The inmate, with no real incentive to say anything about that crime, had given the chief what amounted to a parting gift. A notorious New Jersey serial killer pleaded guilty Tuesday to the cold case murders of two teenage girls in 1974. Since his conviction, Cottingham has pleaded guilty to 12 murders. PB|
Between 1970 and 1974, Cottingham and his wife, Janet, lived at an apartment block called Ledgewood Terrace in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. Years after her sisters death, she had found some comfort speaking to another from her tribe, Karen Miller, a sister of Denise Falasca. xref
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. The motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. Getting to that point wasnt easy, Anzilotti said. 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. During his trial, he testified that he had been fascinated by bondage since he was a young child. 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. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. Denise Falasca, 15, of Closter, New Jersey. HUMs@Wf~}m1`16N7NLf%=Io8. 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. Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. 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. In 2000, as a young detective in the Bergen County prosecutors office, Robert Anzilotti was tasked with looking into the murders, along with a few other similar cold cases from the 1960s and 1970s. In December 2019, forensic historian and author Peter Vronsky, on the eve of publishing the revelation in his second edition of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, publicized the confessions with the BCPO's cooperation, in a community meeting in Midland Park. The third result is Richard Eric Cunningham age 50s in Skillman, NJ. The newspapers called the murderer The Torso Killer. Then on May 22, 1980, a worker at a Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., heard a woman screaming. There was also a lockbox filled with trophies from his murders, including Maryann Carrs apartment key and a necklace belonging to Jean Reyner. Soon, Cottingham persuaded Blase to go for a drink with him. 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. 0000002847 00000 n
But on May 22, 1980 Cottingham's life as a predator came to light. 0000007874 00000 n
[15] In December 2022, Cottingham was convicted of Diane Cusick's 1968 murder and, under a non-prosecution agreement, officially admitted to killing another four women during 19721973 in Long Island, New York: Mary Beth Heinz, Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman, and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves. 0000009543 00000 n
Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20-years-old, although he claims to have started as an adolescent. 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. )' Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. The Blase family agreed. It also left enormous holes in the souls of family and friends of Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16. Hes hedged around and all but confessed.. trailer
In fact, Mr. Cottingham lurked around the fringes of a seedy Times Square and the prostitutes who worked its streets. The New York Times, p. 26. 0000001262 00000 n
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. After their drink, Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station where they had taken the bus. 0000001968 00000 n
One day, Cottingham told his co-worker that he had stolen a sex worker's money and clothes while she was sleeping. He also claims that his true victim count is at least 85. It was a game to me. 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). On December 2, 1979, firemen in New York responded to an alarm at the Travel Inn motel[11] near Times Square. The police photograph on the left was taken in June of 1980. The sergeant was undeterred. Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. The bridge where Mallory Beach died in a boating accident. [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]. 21 0 obj
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This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. Hed order pizza and play cards with the older man and other detectives. Those cases were already closed. 0000001425 00000 n
Investigators noted the crime scene was devoid of evidence and they were unable to identify the victims. 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. A married father of three, he lived in the. 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. Although Vogel was the earliest of Cottinghams murder victims, the killer has said she was not his first, according to Vronsky. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. That man, Richard Cottingham, had been convicted of crimes that seemed to bear little resemblance to the murders of the girls. When a worker came to check on her, ODell cracked open the door and gave a hand signal asking for help.