He admitted that those two killings weighed on him more than the others. Neither man has claimed to have been aware of the other, nor is there any evidence they were familiar with each other prior to their respective arrests. Cottingham had just raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers in a room at the motel before setting it on fire. View Richard Cottingham's record in Manchester, NJ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. After years in prison, Mr. Cottingham began to open up to the detective about past unsolved crimes. Vogel was found dead in her own car in Ridgefield Park, nude and bound. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. 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. His murders were not the outcome of stalking or planning but of fleeting encounters. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. Mr. Anzilotti, doing his best not to betray any emotion, slowly pulled out his Blackberry and took notes. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. 21 0 obj <> endobj 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. [3], 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. Since his conviction, Cottingham has pleaded guilty to 12 murders. iP^ -KvWZvxhc'm$93tSz =oBTmD]+)bTJ T|u>/. The chief questioned Mr. Cottingham. Those cases were already closed. The potential payoff in return felt almost too important to describe. Goodarzi, of Trenton, was a sex worker who had been traveling to the then-seedy streets of midtown Manhattan, Vronsky said. The house is close to Lodi High School, the Riverside Cemetery and Interstate 80. [13] In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. 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. Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. 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. Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop. 0000003202 00000 n Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. Other locations that are relatively close to this place. New Jersey . Harp was found strangled to death the next day. 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 nearly 15 years of interviews by Anzilotti and Detective Capt. When reporters ran with the story, Mr. Anzilotti considered himself absolved from keeping his silence about the cases. %PDF-1.4 % And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. 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.". But in. Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/nyregion/new-jersey-serial-killer-cottingham-anzilotti.html. The Rent Zestimate for this home is $3,099/mo, which has increased by $3,099/mo in the last 30 days. <<69EF7C237A736942AE760EBDB9B8F80B>]>> And thats what bothers me, because I probably didnt have to do anything to them., Mr. Anzilotti left the confession both exhausted and relieved. This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. My whole life has been this, she said. 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.. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. 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. 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. The inmate made it clear that pressure would not work. 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. 43 0 obj<>stream She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. 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. He said, Youre welcome.. Dont think youre going to mess with me and Im going to help you, Mr. Anzilotti recalled Mr. Cottingham saying. 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. [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. In early December 1979, firefighters were called to the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on 42nd Street as a fire burned in room 417. 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. She had been abducted while walking home from practice with her schools fife-and-drum team in 1968. That made 11 murders Cottingham that admitted since his arrest more than 30 years ago. In April 1978, after his wife had initiated divorce proceedings, he kept a locked room in a basement apartment of the house in which they lived in Lodi, New Jersey. HUMs@Wf~}m1`16N7NLf%=Io8. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20-years-old, although he claims to have started as an adolescent. But something a hunch, past investigative speculation, the proximity of the crimes drew Mr. Anzilotti to the prisoner. ,X3ieG(>]/TUW#gI" p&gGgy`Un(aE6e#./"e3 Authorities executed a warrant on his Lodi home, which had a private room containing evidence linking him to the Torso Killer. [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. During a search of the house, investigators discovered personal items belonging to some of his victims. Straddling her back, he drew a knife and put it to her throat as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists. But the killer was a clever bastard, too. 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. The family lived in Lodi, and Mr. Cottingham commuted to a job as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan. 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. He did not want his family hassled by reporters or the police, and he vowed to Mr. Anzilotti that he would never again allow himself to be thrust into the spotlight. 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. 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. 0000012661 00000 n 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. New documentary The 12th Victim: Is Fugate a Natural Born Killer or Starkweather victim? %PDF-1.4 % There was also a lockbox filled with trophies from his murders, including Maryann Carrs apartment key and a necklace belonging to Jean Reyner. 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. He began to speak about a particular case, he said. Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. Cottingham's confirmed killings resulted in nine convictions and a further eight confessions under non-prosecution agreements, leading to him serving multiple life sentences in New Jersey prisons. 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. 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 . He enjoys our time together., The chief also had another theory. That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said. He then left the scene with their severed heads and hands. But beneath the veneer of normalcy was a heinous double-existence as a serial killer. 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. Richard Cottingham, 74, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murdering Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, both of North Bergen. A notorious New Jersey serial killer pleaded guilty Tuesday to the cold case murders of two teenage girls in 1974. Instead, she ended up shopping at one of Bergen Countys malls, according to Vronsky. 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. It was mainly psychological. He would let his guard down, Mr. Anzilotti said. Hes embarrassed by this case, he said. Cottingham offered to give O'Dell a massage and she rolled onto her stomach. 0000001250 00000 n HKo0l06CYf,Y(v (I?0c9 Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. The Zestimate for this house is $598,600, which has decreased by $7,680 in the last 30 days. When they arrived, one firefighter attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of a woman they found on the bed. She had been tied up and strangled, authorities said. . "From the sense of other things that Im uncovering, he was a very busy boy., I think the math worked out to one every six weeks, Vronsky also said. Its Godlike almost. Richard Cottingham, serial killer from New Jersey operating in New York between 1967 and 1980. The New York Times, p. 26. The bridge where Mallory Beach died in a boating accident. A married father of three, he lived in the. xref On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. A maid heard the teenagers guttural screams and called police. Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp all girls whose murders were unsolved. He was a coward.. 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 other girls did, you have to take it, too. 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 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. His wife withdrew the petition upon his arrest in May 1980, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction. Her name was Nancy Schiava Vogel. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. 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. They captured Cottingham soon after. It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. 0000000756 00000 n The photographs are ordered from left to right and top to bottom. 0000003107 00000 n I never thought I would get caught, he added. My parents couldnt handle it., She had called Bergen County every few months to ask about the case for 47 years, she said. 21 23 WjgF\A9Ro9r/;l5Gh3h}NG2L -S$B{s"=z{ 0EaSe,&@yJQ>`n; ;dj7n (~>*}fEx*\W]xvpt]/k"0JTj4%`G?t$8I@FmYkr(_5_+ jfbXP{]~&I6"%}\STHD Ld2=ENhk$)HESdX,g o+IkRC~eC1 dm"GZBDM7~K&'/9"[{$AXH'my It was Aug. 14, 1974, in Montvale, N.J., a suburb just over the New York state line. And I said, Hop in., He drove to the mall. 0000001412 00000 n They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. Her youth and difference in appearance, with a boyish haircut, set her apart from the other victims. 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. [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. He then drowned them in a bathtub, he said, and dumped their bodies in the woods in a wooded area behind Rolling Ridge Road in Montvale. There were similarities in the two cases: the girls ages, the apparently hasty disposal of their bodies, even their appearance, both with long, dark hair. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. Three days later, Mr. Anzilotti walked out of his office for good. The inmate, with no real incentive to say anything about that crime, had given the chief what amounted to a parting gift. He pleaded innocent and for decades insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated those five murders. It represented the opportunity to let the entire world know that Laverne Moye was a human being. His crimes were discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motel heard. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. She, too, had been strangled. Thats not the natural order its supposed to go in.. We've received your submission. 0000013001 00000 n Again and again, for 15 years, Mr. Anzilotti met with the inmate, seeking the truth. In this image taken from a New Jersey Courts virtual hearing, Richard Cottingham, center, known as the "Torso Killer," pleads guilty Tuesday, April 27, 2021, to two 1974 murders. . 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. Her glasses, a ring, a necklace, Ms. Mulder said. 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. 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. His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police. 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. It is not a public place. 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. The house was built in 1974one year before Cottingham and his wife, Janet, moved in. These objects, along with his fingerprint on the handcuffs, were presented as evidence by prosecutors at his trial. Trophies like jewellery and other personal items belonging to his victims were taken by him. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. [4][5], After his graduation, Cottingham worked for Metropolitan Life, where his father was a vice-president, starting in the mail room at the firm's Manhattan headquarters and eventually became a mainframe computer operator upon taking computer courses. Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. It was like a game to him, Anzilotti recently said. But her light shines brightly against the backdrop of evil.. The following is a list of his victims in chronological order. Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. I couldnt even imagine losing a child. On March 12, 1974, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery and unlawful imprisonment on the complaint of another prostitute. 0000002831 00000 n One day, Cottingham told his co-worker that he had stolen a sex worker's money and clothes while she was sleeping. 0000007078 00000 n [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". Denise Falasca, 15, of Closter, New Jersey. He would occasionally remove and dispose of his victims heads and hands, presumably to make identification more difficult. 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). 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. The police believed they had given up on the bus and were trying to hitchhike to a mall. He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to murder in the death of one Long Island woman and admitted under oath to killing four others. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. Soon, Cottingham persuaded Blase to go for a drink with him. 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 That was less than a year after Cottingham and his wife had their first child. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972.