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But he told Mr. Cottingham. Little more than a week after Street was found, Reyner was found butchered in the Seville Motel in New York City. FPh_3Gj Nt%Q[r L`%/9QTh/| Q4_g8KI}u'?xbif`H>;wNQ|sd2(? Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . 0000003202 00000 n This murder was later linked to the 1977 murder of Maryann Carr, who was left in the same motel's parking lot. 3. Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, List of serial killers in the United States, List of serial killers by number of victims, "New Jersey's 'Torso Killer' admits murdering 3 teenage girls over 50 years ago", "Justice Story: 'Times Square Ripper' revealed to be mild-mannered husband from suburban Jersey", "Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective", "First of Three Trials of Jerseyan in Prostitute Slayings Nears End", "Killer of 2 Is Guilty of 3 More Slayings", "Legislator Gaynor Honors Detectives Who Solved 50 Year Old Cold Case", "Mineola Woman's Murder 48 Years Ago Still Unsolved", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Cottingham&oldid=1142468060. Anzilottihas spent all but 4 years of his law enforcement career with the prosecutors office after coming over from the Woodcliff Lake Police Department. 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. K3nVxb;X)oxeHME~> I knew, he recalled, that was Irene Blase.. Berlinger said well never truly know how many women died at Cottinghams hands, but his story had long fascinated the director, who sees a social justice component aspect to telling his story. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop. The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. Hackensack, A hotel worker arrived at Room 417 to find smoke and a horrible scene: the scorched remains of two women on a bed. Although Vogel was the earliest of Cottinghams murder victims, the killer has said she was not his first, according to Vronsky. [3], Cottingham was arrested on several lesser charges throughout his killing spree. 0000009264 00000 n The family lived in Lodi, and Mr. Cottingham commuted to a job as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan. Richard was arrested at a motel in Hasbrouck . 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. 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. In his possession, the 33-year-old had a stash of handcuffs, tape and sedatives. A maid heard the teenagers guttural screams and called police. Everyone deserves justice under the law.. Maywood, They captured Cottingham soon after. Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp all girls whose murders were unsolved. The Google Street View image above was taken in May of 2022. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. The other girls did, you have to take it, too. He needed a way to approach Mr. Cottingham and found an opening in 2003, when he got a tip: Mr. Cottingham was taking bets on sporting events from his cell. He was also extremely fidgety and unable to sit still. As he moved through Midtown undetected, Cottingham, a successful computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan, was also committing sadistic sexual assault and sometimes murder at the Quality Inn, a motel in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)= RZlr$:kX;e =_i& ` ?# 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. These include the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, and the Times Square Torso Ripper. The chief questioned Mr. Cottingham. And even though Harp ran, Cottingham soon overtook her and dragged her into a grouping of bushes where teens would often go to smoke and make out, he said. For more information, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. 0000005280 00000 n Cottingham has been given various nicknames over the years. He had pornographic artwork, adhesive tape, books about S&M, said Geberth. Ms. 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.. [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 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. On May 5, 1980, a motel housekeeper found the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street in the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn. 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 . 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. 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. For decades, a string of killings of teenage girls haunted suburban New Jersey. 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. The house was built in 1974one year before Cottingham and his wife, Janet, moved 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. Note that there seems to have been a "lull" between 1970 and 1973. This is the house where the "Times Square Killer," Richard Cottingham, lived between 1975 and 1980. 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. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. Cottingham, a depraved killer already serving more than 200 years in prison, confessed to tossing the 22-year-old mother of two from a bridge ending her familys half-century quest for answers. 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. A woman walking to her car found them: two teenage girls, naked and dead in a sliver of woods behind an apartment parking lot. Peter Karas/The Record, via USA Today Network. But beneath the veneer of normalcy was a heinous double-existence as a serial killer. Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. But as he considered retirement, he kept returning to the two girls found dead in the woods. 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. 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. 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. 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. A judge sentenced him to 25 years to life after Cusicks brother and only child read emotional impact statements in court. But Mr. Anzilotti kept pressing him: You know youre going to tell me.. To this day, the other young female has never been identified. 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. The people listed below were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Lodi, New Jersey. [7] On October 28, 1967, he strangled Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two, in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a photograph of Jean Reyner. For more details, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. But eventually, their old give-and-take resumed. It was like a game to him, Anzilotti recently said. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. Accused serial killer nurse allegedly tried to murder premature infant twice. Goodarzi, of Trenton, was a sex worker who had been traveling to the then-seedy streets of midtown Manhattan, Vronsky said. After their drink, Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station where they had taken the bus. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. He recalled the exact place in the woods where he left the bodies. They sat at the kitchen table, very professional, very polite, very considerate, Ms. Mulder recalled. 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. Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/nyregion/new-jersey-serial-killer-cottingham-anzilotti.html. Over the course of 13 years, beginning in 1967, Cottingham killed six women in New Jersey and New York. His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. 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. 21 0 obj <> endobj Cottingham, a former computer programmer whose wrath of terror spanned from 1967 to 1980, also copped on Monday to strangling Mary Beth Heinz, 21, in May 1972, three months before he killed Moye and dumped her body in the same creek. )' 0000006151 00000 n A horrible scene, the police commissioner said that day. They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. You can change your choice at any time by using the Privacy Center link in our footer. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. The Google Street View image on the right was taken 38 years later, in June of 2018. I thought he could be responsible for some, Mr. Anzilotti said. On July 17, 1968, Harp, of Midland Park, was walking home from band practice when a strange man, Cottingham, tried to coax her into his car, Vronsky said. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. He did a U-turn in a bank parking lot and approached, he said. 0000000991 00000 n 0000009992 00000 n Getting to that point wasnt easy, Anzilotti said. The girls, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16, had last been seen days earlier at a nearby bus stop. Cottingham, whose attorney did not return messages seeking comment, has claimed to have killed as many as 100 women. Richard Cottingham, New Jersey prison photo. Its mind-boggling and very scary, especially to know theres more of them out there.. The details stopped him cold. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. 0000001968 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. startxref That man, Richard Cottingham, had been convicted of crimes that seemed to bear little resemblance to the murders of the girls. Falasca, 15, accepted. A few days later, Mr. Anzilotti visited Mr. Cottingham in his new surroundings and told him, I put you here.. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. And even worse, the rape laws were particularly onerous, and you had to provide a witness to bring an allegation of rape. The five victims addressed . What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said. It was pure evil. But something a hunch, past investigative speculation, the proximity of the crimes drew Mr. Anzilotti to the prisoner. 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. Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. Like a werewolf, Vronsky told The Post. Look her up, she looks like her. Others he remembered from a haircut.. 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.. And he sat there with literally no remorse. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. 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. Over time, though, one investigator was slowly developing a theory. 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. She knew that Mr. Anzilotti had solved Denises killing, too. Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. [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. He also claimed to have committed 80 perfect murders no one knows about. It doesnt bring my mother back, but at least I have answers now. On Monday, July 13, 1969, at approximately 8:00 p.m., On March 1, 1970, a group of hikers came across a young woman's naked body in the woods to the west of Tweed Boulevard in, At approximately 7:00 a.m. on the morning of December 16, 1977, the body of X-ray technician, At 9:30 a.m. on May 22, 1980, police entered Room 117 at the same Quality Inn where Carr and Street were murdered and found 18-year-old, This page was last edited on 2 March 2023, at 15:20. 0000001425 00000 n On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. He did not know the names of those he killed. 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. On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. The brief encounter later inspired Vronsky to write his serial killer histories and paved the way for his prison meetings with Cottingham four decades later. It could only be Jackie Harp.. Her name was Nancy Schiava Vogel. Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. Because I was with them for a couple of days, he replied, according to a transcript, and got to know them., It was raining that day in August 1974, and Mr. Cottingham, then 28, was driving to work in Manhattan when he passed the two girls walking in the opposite direction. 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. He didnt have the decency or the dignity to ask for forgiveness or to even address the victims families. (1981, June 25). Bergen County investigators realized there were numerous open sexual assault cases with similar hallmarks: Cottingham kidnapped them from Times Square, drugged and assaulted them. Anything that might close more cases, bring answers to more families. Cottingham offered to give O'Dell a massage and she rolled onto her stomach. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. 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. 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. The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. 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. They were facedown, side by side, as if placed there with care. He said he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't retiring.. Like two little dolls at Christmastime..