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In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. But he carried those cold cases with him literally, his thick files in cardboard boxes that he moved from office to office chipping away at the false leads, seeking similarities in the victims and in the crime scenes. The Rent Zestimate for this home is $3,099/mo, which has increased by $3,099/mo in the last 30 days. In this case, instead, he removed her breasts and placed them on the headboard for shock value, former Commanding Officer of Bronx Homicide and criminal profiler Vernon Geberth says in the series, noting it convinced him of one thing: Still, at the time, no one suspected the scope of this sexual sadists homicidal footprint, which stretched into the Garden State and had started more than a decade prior. 0000002435 00000 n We've received your submission. He did, however, leave behind their clothing, including a pair of Bonjour jeans, white leotards and a black fur coat, neatly folded in the bath tub. Maywood, But her light shines brightly against the backdrop of evil.. He married in 1970 and had three children. He later detailed his brief 1979 encounter with Cottingham in Times Square Torso Ripper: Sex and Murder on The Deuce. His upcoming book on the vicious predator will be released next fall. It was Aug. 14, 1974, in Montvale, N.J., a suburb just over the New York state line. He'd been a married father of three, but the Lodi resident - who would brutalize his victim's bodies, cutting off limbs, heads and breasts - would later become known as the "Torso Killer" for. I can go all the way back to the first detective on the case. 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. But the arrest in 1980 changed everything, exposing Richard's double life and deadly exploits. She agreed to have sex with him for money. (1981, June 25). They have also lived in Manasquan, NJ and Ada, MI. Bergen County investigators realized there were numerous open sexual assault cases with similar hallmarks: Cottingham kidnapped them from Times Square, drugged and assaulted them. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. Thats why [authorities are] not going to make another statement. Detective Anzilotti was startled to discover the same man killed all three. [12] Both bodies had their hands and heads removed, and had been doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. When arrested, he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade knife, replica pistols, and a stockpile of prescription pills. 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 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. He began to speak about a particular case, he said. 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. The police hunted for leads, questioning prostitutes about suspicious men, examining the handwriting of the guest who had checked into Room 417: Carl Wilson of Merlin, N.J., a fake name from a fake place. He has been charged with 11 murders in all. [7] On October 28, 1967, he strangled Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two, in Little Ferry, New Jersey. 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. Like two little dolls at Christmastime.. [4], On May 3, 1970, Cottingham was married at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, Queens. Over the course of 13 years, beginning in 1967, Cottingham killed six women in New Jersey and New York. These meetings went on for months, and then years, on top of Mr. Anzilottis regular caseload. Cottingham has been given various nicknames over the years. 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. However, please be aware that not allowing certain cookies may impact your experience of the site. 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. Harp was found strangled to death the next day. She, too, had been strangled. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.[10]. And even worse, the rape laws were particularly onerous, and you had to provide a witness to bring an allegation of rape. This guy was particularly ruthless. The 45th year passed in the same way. 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. 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. 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. The plea leaves the question: Will they be Cottinghams final admissions? 0000001071 00000 n But in. Hes embarrassed by this case, he said. 0000002831 00000 n 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. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. A few days later, Mr. Anzilotti visited Mr. Cottingham in his new surroundings and told him, I put you here.. Hes younger when all this is going on in Bergen County, he said. He admitted that those two killings weighed on him more than the others. Mr. Anzilotti would arrange to have the inmate transported to his office more than hours drive from the prison. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. Cottingham offered to give O'Dell a massage and she rolled onto her stomach. On one occasion, he dismembered two sex workers and set fire to their torsos at a hotel near Times Square. He abducted Vogel and took her to a field in Montvale, where he strangled her. You are in complete control of somebodys destiny, he told Fezzani in footage shown in the series. So we just stayed in the car and we kept talking to each other, getting to know each other and so forth., If the rain wasnt there, they would have just went to the mall and that would have been it, he said, And I would have went to work.. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. 0000001425 00000 n The New York Times, p. 2. 0000003183 00000 n On May 22, Cottingham then picked up Leslie Ann ODell, a 19-year-old runaway desperate to escape her pimp something he promised to help her do over drinks in Midtown. 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. When they arrived, one firefighter attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of a woman they found on the bed. The Blase family agreed. 0000003202 00000 n Rochelle Park & The potential payoff in return felt almost too important to describe. But he eventually realized the years-long association, which involved countless state prison visits, was coming to an end. endstream endobj 34 0 obj<>stream 0000003686 00000 n ,X3ieG(>]/TUW#gI" p&gGgy`Un(aE6e#./"e3 Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. But something a hunch, past investigative speculation, the proximity of the crimes drew Mr. Anzilotti to the prisoner. Filming Location in Lodi, New Jersey, United States, Filming Location in Paterson, New Jersey, United States, Filming Location in Clifton, New Jersey, United States, Filming Location in Bloomfield, New Jersey, United States, Crime Location Wylie, Texas, United States, Crime Location Memphis, Tennessee, United States, Place of Interest Brooklyn, New York, United States, Crash Site Location Beaufort, South Carolina, United States. Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates. 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. Then in exchange for immunity from prosecution, he confessed to murdering three New Jersey schoolgirls. 43 0 obj<>stream HUMs@Wf~}m1`16N7NLf%=Io8. 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. For decades, a string of killings of teenage girls haunted suburban New Jersey. 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 material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. 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. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. 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. 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. 0000001082 00000 n The Google Street View image on the right was taken 38 years later, in June of 2018. 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. Although Vogel was the earliest of Cottinghams murder victims, the killer has said she was not his first, according to Vronsky. He asked to quietly close their daughters murder case without formally charging the killer. They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. Between 1970 and 1974, Cottingham and his wife, Janet, lived at an apartment block called Ledgewood Terrace in Little Ferry, New Jersey. He began torturing her, nearly biting off one of her nipples. To bring Mr. Cottingham back to court, where the case would certainly draw attention, would stop him from talking about other open cases, the chief explained. And for Cottingham, every night was a full moon.. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. 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. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. It was like a game to him, Anzilotti recently said. xref Justice was served and thats the end of it case closed. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. 0000009543 00000 n [6] In 2022, Cottingham officially confessed to the 1970 murder of Lorraine McGraw, under a non-prosecution agreement. This is possibly due to the fact that he got married in 1970. At the mall, Cottingham, then a tall, brown-haired young man, met Vogel, a married mother of two. 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. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. I think sometimes he grapples with his own gruesomeness back then., On March 12, a Friday, Mr. Anzilotti summoned the inmate. K3nVxb;X)oxeHME~> 21 0 obj <> endobj That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said. If hes going to confess to some others, if they can get him to talk, just for those families if he can confess to those, that right there would be I dont know the right word to say, Ms. Mulder said. Mr. Cottingham left behind no clues. Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. He drove his car ahead of Harp, pulled over and walked back toward her, Vronsky said. 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. And last week, three more were added to his grisly toll. Those old enough to remember can recall the fear that many felt after the bodies of two girls from North Bergen whod gone missing after a shopping trip to Paramus were found raped, beaten and drowned in Bergen County. 0000001262 00000 n Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. %PDF-1.4 % For more details, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. 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. He had no relationship to his victims. The chief agreed. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. View Richard Cottingham's record in Manchester, NJ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. This location belongs to the following categories: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see future locations. 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. 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.