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. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. 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. Mr. Cottingham at his virtual hearing on April 27 in Bergen County Superior Court, where he pleaded guilty to killing Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly 47 years later. She was Nancy Pryor, and she was 19 when her sister, Mary Ann, was found dead. Anzilottihas spent all but 4 years of his law enforcement career with the prosecutors office after coming over from the Woodcliff Lake Police Department. His wife withdrew the petition upon his arrest in May 1980, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction. 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. Goodarzi was later identified as the woman who had been tortured, killed, beheaded and had her hands cut off by Cottingham. Then in exchange for immunity from prosecution, he confessed to murdering three New Jersey schoolgirls. He described in detail how, instead, he took the girls to a motel, held them captive and eventually drowned them in the bathtub. Therefore, you should be respectful and not step foot on the property without permission. Mr. Anzilotti would arrange to have the inmate transported to his office more than hours drive from the prison. I believe hes killed between 85 and 100, as he claims, Vronsky told The Post. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. The police were called and Cottingham was apprehended while trying to flee. 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. He said, Youre welcome.. In May of 1980, police arrested Cottingham while he was torturing a sex worker at a motel room in New Jersey. It could only be Jackie Harp.. It was Aug. 14, 1974, in Montvale, N.J., a suburb just over the New York state line. The police pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms, The New York Times reported at the time. xref Blase was found strangled to death in 4 feet of water in Saddle River the next day. 0000006846 00000 n They have also lived in Manasquan, NJ and Ada, MI. But he eventually realized the years-long association, which involved countless state prison visits, was coming to an end. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. 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. When you have a series of crimes today, everything goes through the computers, andwe have computer analysis and a wayof moving these through jurisdictionalboundaries. 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. Shed been abducted by Cottingham from the Ledgewood Terrace apartments, in Little Ferry, where Cottingham had previously lived, said 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. Those cases were already closed. (1981, June 25). She was a mother, she was a wife, a daughter and a grandmother taken far too early. I took over handling the calls, the arrangements. The third result is Richard Eric Cunningham age 50s in Skillman, NJ. 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. Which is entirely possible, especially in those days.. Note that there seems to have been a "lull" between 1970 and 1973. In the 1970s, he had preyed on prostitutes in Times Square 30 miles but a world away from Montvale not just killing them, but torturing and dismembering them. 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. His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police. 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. Crime: Cottingham, a Lodi resident, killed six women in New Jersey and New York between 1967 and 1980. The girls vanished Aug. 9, 1974, while hitchhiking to a mall in . But there was an even bigger problem. During a search of the house, investigators discovered personal items belonging to some of his victims. On August 21, 1972, he is charged and convicted of shoplifting at a Stern's department store in Paramus, New Jersey, and was sentenced to pay a $50 fine or ten days in jail. Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20-years-old, although he claims to have started as an adolescent. 0000001082 00000 n document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. 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. 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. To this day, the other young female has never been identified. I knew, he recalled, that was Irene Blase.. My whole life has been this, she said. Absolutely, its completely plausible. The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. Now 74, Cottingham, who claims responsibility for dozens of murders, has confessed to a. The Blase family agreed. 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. With Ms. Pryor and a judge watching on Zoom that day, Mr. Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two murders. 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. [15], In 2022, Cottingham was arraigned from his prison hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick in Long Island, New York. Described as average and normal, New Jersey man Richard Cottingham was a father-of-three with a marriage that was slowly unravelling. He began torturing her, nearly biting off one of her nipples. The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. 0000001982 00000 n They captured Cottingham soon after. He then left the scene with their severed heads and hands. Cottingham, who is already serving a lifetime state prison sentence for killing several other women and girls, was brought to the office of Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella in Paramus to enter his pleas before Superior Court Judge Keith Bachmann in Hackensack. Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. <<69EF7C237A736942AE760EBDB9B8F80B>]>> But first, he wanted to return to those two murders from 47 years ago. 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 tied up and strangled, authorities said. But he told Mr. Cottingham. The other girls did, you have to take it, too. [4], On May 3, 1970, Cottingham was married at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, Queens. The Google Street View image above was taken in May of 2022. He said he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't retiring.. Thats why [authorities are] not going to make another statement. Inmates were wagering everything from cash to cigarettes. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. During his trial, he testified that he had been fascinated by bondage since he was a young child. 0000003707 00000 n Authorities executed a warrant on his Lodi home, which had a private room containing evidence linking him to the Torso Killer. 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 After those confessions, the two men barely spoke. Hearing prosecutors detail grisly crime scenes like where Laverne was found was especially difficult to endure, her son said. [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. Canadian author Peter Vronsky is now writing his second book on the horrifying killing spree that culminated in May 1980 at a New Jersey motel, where cops arrested Cottingham after he handcuffed, stabbed and bit an 18-year-old woman. 0000002831 00000 n 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. H|U0+(QvG`b08NbHlSoZ2CRSs=* \e~ And any new prison sentence would, practically speaking, be meaningless; Mr. Cottingham had no chance of ever being released. Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. 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. The schoolgirl murder confessions increased that to to nine. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. 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. 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. New Jersey . On May 5, 1980, a motel housekeeper found the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street in the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn. ADVERTISEMENT. 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. New documentary The 12th Victim: Is Fugate a Natural Born Killer or Starkweather victim? These objects, along with his fingerprint on the handcuffs, were presented as evidence by prosecutors at his trial. Richard was arrested at a motel in Hasbrouck . The photographs are ordered from left to right and top to bottom. 0000007078 00000 n 0000003183 00000 n She agreed to have sex with him for money. He called his detectives and gave the word: Bring in Cottingham. 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. 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. 0000009992 00000 n The following is a list of his victims in chronological order. On May 4, 1980, the body of Street, a sex worker, was found at the same Quality Inn where Cottingham had dumped Carrs body. In March, looking back on 25 years with the office, Mr. Anzilotti decided it was time to move on from the job. Later on, Richard took a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York as a computer operator. His crimes were discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motel heard. Soon, Cottingham persuaded Blase to go for a drink with him. 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. 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. 0000001071 00000 n Authorities tied him to the killings after police were called to a Hasbrouck Heights motel, where a maid had heard a woman screaming. So he would remember something on the way: a racetrack or a shopping mall. On December 2, 1979, firemen in New York responded to an alarm at the Travel Inn motel[11] near Times Square. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. Its been half my career, he said. What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. 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. Mr. Anzilotti and another investigator drove to the town of Reading, Vt., to deliver the news to Jackies older sister, Suzan Mulder, then 69. 0000003451 00000 n Rochelle Park & It will take her a while to forget the habit of calling the detectives for updates a lifetime constant, through the deaths of her parents, her marriage and divorce, her second marriage and widowhood. [5] On May 15, 1980, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in New York's historic Seville Hotel. 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. 0000002882 00000 n Her attacker was caught as he ran away. 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. 0000003431 00000 n It took some effort to convince him to go to court and let me make it public, Anzilotti said Tuesday. 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. 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. He was a coward.. Once again, the victim did not appear in further proceedings and the case was dismissed.[6]. Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates. Feech La Manna's house from The Sopranos. And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. Years after her sisters death, she had found some comfort speaking to another from her tribe, Karen Miller, a sister of Denise Falasca. A killing in Somerset County a week after Cottingham got his drivers license may have been one of his first victims, Vronsky said. 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. 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. 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. Over the course of 13 years, beginning in 1967, Cottingham killed six women in New Jersey and New York. Mr. Anzilotti, by then a sergeant, arranged a surprise search of the inmates cell the day after the Super Bowl. 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. He also claimed to have committed 80 perfect murders no one knows about. 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. He said, Im going to give you one, Mr. Anzilotti recalled. The chief pressed ahead with his list. In 2010, Bergen County authorities announced hed pleaded guilty to a sixth murder, a 1967 strangling in Bergen County. 0000004577 00000 n Hackensack, On April 7, 1969, Cottingham saw Blase, 18, shopping in Hackensack, Vronsky said. trailer As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. On March 12, 1974, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery and unlawful imprisonment on the complaint of another prostitute. 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 Rent Zestimate for this home is $3,099/mo, which has increased by $3,099/mo in the last 30 days. James McMorrow, Cottingham confessed last year to three other cold-case slayings of teenage school girls in Bergen County: Jacalyn (Jackie) Harp, 13, of Midland Park, who was walking home from school band practice on July 17, 1968 when she was strangled with the leather strap of her flag sling; Irene Blase, 18, of Bogota, who went missing from Hackensack on April 7, 1969 and was found strangled in Saddle River; Denise Falasca, 15, of Closter, who went missing from Westwood on July 14, 1969. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.[10]. 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. In this image taken from a New Jersey Courts virtual hearing, Richard Cottingham, center, known as the "Torso Killer," pleads guilty April 27, 2021, to two 1974 murders, finally closing the cold case deaths of teenage friends who had left home for a trip to the mall and never returned. Sitting in a conference room, Mr. Cottingham calmly reached back more than 40 years and described how hed murdered a woman whose name he couldnt remember, a 29-year-old mother found strangled in her car in Ridgefield Park, N.J., in 1967. The predator, dubbed The Torso Killer, would strike again in May 1980. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. )' In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. In a candid interview, the Bergen County chief who spent 20 years trying to wrangle new confessions out of serial killer Richard Cottingham revealed the 74-year-old prisoner has "regrets". 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. 43 0 obj<>stream A maid heard the teenagers guttural screams and called police. Richard Cottingham, serial killer from New Jersey operating in New York between 1967 and 1980. Vogel was found dead in her own car in Ridgefield Park, nude and bound. Then he shared his intentions to retire. 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. 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. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. Cottinghamss name came up several times, but it didnt fit for me, she said. 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. Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. Her glasses, a ring, a necklace, Ms. Mulder said. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. Furthermore, one of the women that he murdered in 1979 is still unidentified. Select this result to view Richard P Cunningham's phone number, address, and more. 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. Before his arrest, he was a successful computer operator who worked at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance company in Midtown Manhattan. It was pure evil. 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. After the hearing, the cameras off, Mr. Anzilotti approached Mr. Cottingham. Im leaving, he said. In 2000, as a young detective in the Bergen County prosecutors office, Robert Anzilotti was tasked with looking into the murders, along with a few other similar cold cases from the 1960s and 1970s. These include the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, and the Times Square Torso Ripper. Its Godlike almost. He remembers certain aspects of a person, Mr. Anzilotti said. He enjoys our relationship. 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. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. Little more than a week after Street was found, Reyner was found butchered in the Seville Motel in New York City. 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.. xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)= RZlr$:kX;e =_i& ` ?# His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.. For over 40 years, its been folklore in this county.. The police believed they had given up on the bus and were trying to hitchhike to a mall. Responding officers found an 18-year-old victim whod been bitten, stabbed and bound with handcuffs.