It was quite a shock to learn it was him.. Then came Tuesdays pleas. 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. That was less than a year after Cottingham and his wife had their first child. A notorious New Jersey serial killer pleaded guilty Tuesday to the cold case murders of two teenage girls in 1974. Since his incarceration, he has attempted suicide on two occasions. Math-wise its possible," said Vronsky. The girls vanished Aug. 9, 1974, while hitchhiking to a mall in . Much like John Moye, Altman, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., said she struggled to process Cottinghams savagery. I can go all the way back to the first detective on the case. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. [6] In 2022, Cottingham officially confessed to the 1970 murder of Lorraine McGraw, under a non-prosecution agreement. 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. To Mr. Anzilotti, what had once seemed like a great disparity between the two series of murders one a group of suburban teenagers and the other mostly sex workers in the city now made sense. Cottingham has been given various nicknames over the years. [13][14] Anzilotti had spent 15 years interviewing Cottingham, working toward the confession. 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. And later that same month, a fifth woman was found mutilated in the former Hotel Seville near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. 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. Cottingham, a divorced father of three who previously lived in Lodi, NJ, also pleaded guilty to the February 1968 rape and murder of Diane Cusick, 23, a dance instructor from New Hyde Park, NY. Cottingham had just raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers in a room at the motel before setting it on fire. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. The police believed they had given up on the bus and were trying to hitchhike to a mall. "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. He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. 0000005280 00000 n 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. 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. %%EOF The Blase family agreed. No leads were forthcoming. 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. 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.. My whole life has been this, she said. He described things only the killer would know, like where hed thrown her car keys afterward. [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. ,X3ieG(>]/TUW#gI" p&gGgy`Un(aE6e#./"e3 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.. The New York Times, p. 26. A hotel worker arrived at Room 417 to find smoke and a horrible scene: the scorched remains of two women on a bed. [2] Four surviving abduction-rape victims testified against Cottingham; he was convicted in three of the cases and acquitted in one. She was Nancy Pryor, and she was 19 when her sister, Mary Ann, was found dead. A case based on his "signature pattern" was built against him, combined with the testimony of four surviving victims, as well as pieces of his victims' jewellery and other items found in his possession after his arrest. . After years in prison, Mr. Cottingham began to open up to the detective about past unsolved crimes. endstream endobj 34 0 obj<>stream 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. That was roughly one month after his arrest. His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. Mary Anne and Lorraine deserve it, God rest their souls, Bergen County Prosecutors Chief of Detective Robert Anzilotti said Tuesday after Richard Cottingham of Lodi admitted killing both in 1974. Thats not the natural order its supposed to go in.. Cusick, an instructor at a dance school in the Oceanside community of Long Island, went to Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream to buy a pair of shoes. He remembers certain aspects of a person, Mr. Anzilotti said. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. 0000008735 00000 n 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. 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. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. 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. His wife withdrew the petition upon his arrest in May 1980, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction. In fact, Mr. Cottingham lurked around the fringes of a seedy Times Square and the prostitutes who worked its streets. Their heads and hands had been cut off. Hours later, her parents drove to the mall and found Dianes Plymouth Valiant in the parking lot, where her body was discovered in the backseat. This location belongs to the following categories: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see future locations. 0 When reporters ran with the story, Mr. Anzilotti considered himself absolved from keeping his silence about the cases. This guy was particularly ruthless. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. Now 74, Cottingham, who claims responsibility for dozens of murders, has confessed to a. Prosecutors had long believed that Cottingham abducted Mary Ann and Lorraine both North Bergen High School students whod been known to hitch-hike during a shopping trip to the Garden State Plaza on August 9, 1974. Look her up, she looks like her. Others he remembered from a haircut.. These objects, along with his fingerprint on the handcuffs, were presented as evidence by prosecutors at his trial. To this day, the other young female has never been identified. He had his list of names, each one a dead girl and a crime long unsolved. (1981, June 16). Mr. Anzilotti insisted that this case be resolved in open court. 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. Mr. Anzilotti, by then a sergeant, arranged a surprise search of the inmates cell the day after the Super Bowl. Cusicks daughter, Darlene Altman, told Nassau County Judge Caryn Fink her late grandparents raised her after her mothers shocking slaying. We use cookies to deliver personalized advertisements, improve your online experience, and to analyze our site's performance. In April 1978, Cottingham's wife filed for divorce on the grounds of "abandonment" and "mental cruelty" (refusing to have sex with her after the birth of their third child, staying out until early morning, and leaving her with insufficient household funds). He tried a different approach. Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. 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. startxref 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. 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. Which, of course, I wasnt overly interested in, the former chief said. Following his arrest, police linked him to the murder of Valerie Streets. On the way out, he bumped the author on the shins with a bag that felt like it contained bowling balls, Vronsky said. Little more than a week after Street was found, Reyner was found butchered in the Seville Motel in New York City. ADVERTISEMENT. On May 4, 1980, the body of Street, a sex worker, was found at the same Quality Inn where Cottingham had dumped Carrs body. The police pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms, The New York Times reported at the time. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. [5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel. This is a "Then and Now" photograph of Cottingham's former house at 29 Vreeland Street. Cottinghams luck began to unravel in early May 1980 when the maid at the Quality Inn found the naked corpse of a handcuffed woman under the bed. 0000009264 00000 n 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. He was the Torso Killer. He didnt have the decency or the dignity to ask for forgiveness or to even address the victims families. A horrible scene, the police commissioner said that day. My parents couldnt handle it., She had called Bergen County every few months to ask about the case for 47 years, she said. 0000000991 00000 n No one could find any clues in the girls backgrounds: no drugs, no trouble with the law. 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. Like two little dolls at Christmastime.. Despite the gruesome nature of his murders, the butcher, named Richard Cottingham, never warranted the breathless news coverage of David Son of Sam Berkowitz, who only three years prior paralyzed the Big Apple with fear. When Mr. Cottingham entered prison in 1981, Robert Anzilotti was not yet a teenager. As Cottingham was fleeing the scene of the torso murders, he briefly encountered the 23-year-old Peter Vronsky, who was attempting to check into the Travel Inn while in New York on a film production assignment. It was like a game to him, Anzilotti recently said. He enjoys our time together., The chief also had another theory. After those confessions, the two men barely spoke. xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)= RZlr$:kX;e =_i& ` ?# 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. It is not a public place. 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. I have done many shows about serial killers, and I have always marveled at the fact that [Ted] Bundy, [John Wayne] Gacy, [Jeffrey] Dahmer and Berkowitz were all household names, perversely, Berlinger told The Post. His proclivity toward violence and the lack of solid profiling tactics for serial killers made Vronsky believe that Cottinghams claim of 100 victims was possible. But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. And at the time, it was beyond our capacity to look beyond New York City, he told The Post. Defense attorney John Bruno recited the details, which the white-bearded, 74-year-old killer acknowledged. 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 Anzilotti and BCPO subsequently confirmed the "exceptional closures" of these three murders.[13][8]. They sat at the kitchen table, very professional, very polite, very considerate, Ms. Mulder recalled. To this day, I dont even think they would have ever said anything. 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. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. He lived with his wife and kids in. The girls, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16, had last been seen days earlier at a nearby bus stop. When a worker came to check on her, ODell cracked open the door and gave a hand signal asking for help. What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. 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. 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. Feech La Manna's house from The Sopranos. 0000003125 00000 n 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. 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. 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. 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. Falasca was walking by the side of the road in Emerson on July 14, 1969, when Cottingham pulled up beside her and offered her a ride. Cottingham, who grew up in River Vale, has been in prison since the 1980s, when he was convicted of the first five murders to which he was linked. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. 21 0 obj <> endobj 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. If they came forward and said theyd been assaulted, they would be arrested for prostitution, so there was no reason to come forward, Berlinger said. trailer 0000001262 00000 n 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. It took some effort to convince him to go to court and let me make it public, Anzilotti said Tuesday. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. He admitted that those two killings weighed on him more than the others. On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. During his trial, he testified that he had been fascinated by bondage since he was a young child. Its an ongoing process, Vronsky said. She had been abducted while walking home from practice with her schools fife-and-drum team in 1968. This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. 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. Inmates were wagering everything from cash to cigarettes. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. A few days later, Mr. Anzilotti visited Mr. Cottingham in his new surroundings and told him, I put you here..
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