His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police. A killing in Somerset County a week after Cottingham got his drivers license may have been one of his first victims, Vronsky said. 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. trailer These include the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, and the Times Square Torso Ripper. startxref [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. 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. Once again, the victim did not appear in further proceedings and the case was dismissed.[6]. [21] Cottingham was apparently "forensically aware" in the era before DNA analysis. 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.. 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. . And later that same month, a fifth woman was found mutilated in the former Hotel Seville near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Between 1970 and 1974, Cottingham and his wife, Janet, lived at an apartment block called Ledgewood Terrace in Little Ferry, New Jersey. 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. )' Cottingham had stuffed Streets body under the bed for housekeeping to find, Vronsky said. 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. For a year, he refused to speak to Mr. Anzilotti. 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. 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. 0000002831 00000 n 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. Authorities tied him to the killings after police were called to a Hasbrouck Heights motel, where a maid had heard a woman screaming. Soon, the chief closed that case two down. Bergen County investigators realized there were numerous open sexual assault cases with similar hallmarks: Cottingham kidnapped them from Times Square, drugged and assaulted them. He called his detectives and gave the word: Bring in Cottingham. This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. 0000003202 00000 n The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. It took some effort to convince him to go to court and let me make it public, Anzilotti said Tuesday. I didnt know what to expect. The sergeant was undeterred. 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. 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. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. 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. 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. Among the other faces in separate windows on the Zoom screen was a 66-year-old woman, identified simply as Nancy. You are in complete control of somebodys destiny, he told Fezzani in footage shown in the series. 0000001082 00000 n He said, Youre welcome.. He has been charged with 11 murders in all. 0000006081 00000 n 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. 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. However, please be aware that not allowing certain cookies may impact your experience of the site. Did the old man kill those girls? Before his arrest, he was a successful computer operator who worked at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance company in Midtown Manhattan. He would occasionally remove and dispose of his victims heads and hands, presumably to make identification more difficult. [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. 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). Then hed clear the room until only he and Mr. Cottingham faced each another, and begin with his questions. 0000003107 00000 n 0000012661 00000 n 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. 0000003707 00000 n In 2010, Bergen County authorities announced hed pleaded guilty to a sixth murder, a 1967 strangling in Bergen County. [2], In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. 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. She had been tied up and strangled, authorities said. 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The third result is Richard Eric Cunningham age 50s in Skillman, NJ. The inmate made it clear that pressure would not work. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey. %PDF-1.4 % Its his fault this is out.. When you have a series of crimes today, everything goes through the computers, andwe have computer analysis and a wayof moving these through jurisdictionalboundaries. Richard Cottingham, serial killer from New Jersey operating in New York between 1967 and 1980. Maywood, 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. 7{(~tm LB IBJ*ZB`0 But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. Note that there seems to have been a "lull" between 1970 and 1973. He began to speak about a particular case, he said. The police pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms, The New York Times reported at the time. The house was built in 1974one year before Cottingham and his wife, Janet, moved in. On more than one occasion, he would openly talk about his experiences with sex workers. But he told Mr. Cottingham. According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. 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. Hes younger when all this is going on in Bergen County, he said. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. The inmate, with no real incentive to say anything about that crime, had given the chief what amounted to a parting gift. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. But first, he wanted to return to those two murders from 47 years ago. You can set your cookie preferences below. It also left enormous holes in the souls of family and friends of Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16. 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.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times. Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . It was a game to me. xref Hearing prosecutors detail grisly crime scenes like where Laverne was found was especially difficult to endure, her son said. Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. Cottingham was serving time for five murders, following convictions in New Jersey and New York, when Bergen prosecutors detectives in 2010 tied him to the killing of 29-year-old Ridgefield Park mom Nancy Schiava Vogel, bringing the total then to six. 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 Trenton's New Jersey State Prison. Since his incarceration, he has attempted suicide on two occasions. 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. I lost so much more than just my mother that day, Altman said. Getting to that point wasnt easy, Anzilotti said. 0000001071 00000 n Find NJ.com on Facebook. What started in 1967 with the discovery of a Ridgefield Park woman dead, nude and bound in her own car continued until 1980, when the hulking Cottingham, then 33, was arrested after the screams of a would-be victim pierced the walls of a Hasbrouck Heights motel room. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. A horrible scene, the police commissioner said that day.

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