richard cottingham lodi, nj address

But the arrest in 1980 changed everything, exposing Richard's double life and deadly exploits. The back and forth went on for weeks. 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. [15], In 2022, Cottingham was arraigned from his prison hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick in Long Island, New York. In December 2019, forensic historian and author Peter Vronsky, on the eve of publishing the revelation in his second edition of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, publicized the confessions with the BCPO's cooperation, in a community meeting in Midland Park. He has been charged with 11 murders in all. Again and again, for 15 years, Mr. Anzilotti met with the inmate, seeking the truth. The weather worsened. He tried a different approach. Notably, none of his crimes took place on the property. 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. Richard Cunningham in NJ - Address & Phone Number | Whitepages Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. He kept these "trophies" in a locked room in the basement. I think it was just an evolution in his killing.. 'Torso Killer' Richard Cottingham admits drowning North Bergen girls But her light shines brightly against the backdrop of evil.. Then hed clear the room until only he and Mr. Cottingham faced each another, and begin with his questions. [22][23] He pleaded guilty in a December court appearance, and also officially admitted killing four other women in Long Island: Mary Beth Heinz,[24] Laverne Moye,[16] Sheila Heiman,[25] and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.[26]. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. He described things only the killer would know, like where hed thrown her car keys afterward. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. His "justification" for doing this was that he "didn't like anyone getting one over" on him. But beneath the veneer of normalcy was a heinous double-existence as a serial killer. On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. The predator, dubbed The Torso Killer, would strike again in May 1980. He lived with his wife and kids in. After 'Torso Killer' confession, NJ loved ones explain how 1960s Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. 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 He began to speak about a particular case, he said. All rights reserved (About Us). For more details, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. It was mainly psychological. Absolutely, its completely plausible. This is a "Then and Now" photograph of Cottingham's former house at 29 Vreeland Street. On March 12, 1974, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery and unlawful imprisonment on the complaint of another prostitute. On April 7, 1969, Cottingham saw Blase, 18, shopping in Hackensack, Vronsky said. He stood trial in New York and New Jersey in a coat and tie and denied everything, but he was convicted in all five killings. Richard Cottingham, 74, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murdering Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, both of North Bergen. Maywood, 0000003707 00000 n He married in 1970 and became a father of. 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. Richard Cottingham, a family man who denied everything in court, was convicted of killing five women in the early 1980s. 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.. Cusicks daughter, Darlene Altman, told Nassau County Judge Caryn Fink her late grandparents raised her after her mothers shocking slaying. 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 bodies of the women had no heads and no hands. He pleaded innocent and for decades insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated those five murders. Years after her sisters death, she had found some comfort speaking to another from her tribe, Karen Miller, a sister of Denise Falasca. He was the Torso Killer. Richard Cottingham, New Jersey prison photo. However, please be aware that not allowing certain cookies may impact your experience of the site. 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. 0000004577 00000 n He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. The sergeant was undeterred. This is a private property. 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. Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. When a worker came to check on her, ODell cracked open the door and gave a hand signal asking for help. During his trial, he testified that he had been fascinated by bondage since he was a young child. 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. The potential payoff in return felt almost too important to describe. 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. 0000004535 00000 n He did a U-turn in a bank parking lot and approached, he said. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. 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. Cottinghamss name came up several times, but it didnt fit for me, she said. Cottingham has confessed to murdering 12 women. These meetings went on for months, and then years, on top of Mr. Anzilottis regular caseload. [18], During the early 1980s, Cottingham was convicted of five murders in two separate New Jersey trials in 1981[19] and 1982,[20] and in a single New York trial in 1984 for three murders. The 45th year passed in the same way. Vronsky, who aided investigators in obtaining Junes indictment, is trying to coax as many confessions out of the aging, 300-pound serial killer as possible, but the clock is ticking since he suffers from diabetes and kidney disease, he said. 0000003125 00000 n She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. But he eventually realized the years-long association, which involved countless state prison visits, was coming to an end. What Is 'Torso Killer' Richard Cottingham's Life Like Today? 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. He asked to quietly close their daughters murder case without formally charging the killer. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.[10]. The case also had parallels to a previously unsolved murder of nurse Maryann Carr, who was found dead in the same motel three years earlier. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Where is Richard Cottingham Now? - The Cinemaholic Now I just have to go on with my life.. The house is close to Lodi High School, the Riverside Cemetery and Interstate 80. She knew that Mr. Anzilotti had solved Denises killing, too. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. No one could find any clues in the girls backgrounds: no drugs, no trouble with the law. Hes younger when all this is going on in Bergen County, he said. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. These objects, along with his fingerprint on the handcuffs, were presented as evidence by prosecutors at his trial. 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. He had been dubbed the Times Square Torso Ripper setting off Vronskys lifelong fascination of serial killers. However, his family moved to River Vale, New Jersey, when he was 12 years old. New Jersey 'Torso Killer' Pleads Guilty to 1974 Cold Case Murders 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. A married father of three, he lived in the. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. . Then, with just days remaining before the chief retired, the inmate relented. (1981, June 25). 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. 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. 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 latitude and longitude coordinates for the house are: To view directions on how to get there, you can use the Google Maps shortcut below: 29 Vreeland StreetLodiNew JerseyNJ 07644United States. For over 40 years, its been folklore in this county.. Stumped, the police used mannequins from nearby department stores and dressed them in the victims clothing, hoping to spark an identification from friends or family who recognized the outfits. Authorities executed a warrant on his Lodi home, which had a private room containing evidence linking him to the Torso Killer. God rest their souls," Bergen County Prosecutor's Chief of Detective Robert Anzilotti said Tuesday after Richard Cottingham of Lodi admitted killing both in 1974. . 0000006151 00000 n Moye, who traveled from Georgia to see Cottingham confess to killing his mother and four other women as part of a plea deal, said he leaned heavily on his Catholic faith as the unrepentant killer watched via video feed from South Woods State Prison in New Jersey, where hes serving multiple life sentences. Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. 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. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. The New York Times, p. 2. But the killer was a clever bastard, too. 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. 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. [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. [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. She was stunned. Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. Much like John Moye, Altman, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., said she struggled to process Cottinghams savagery. She was a mother, she was a wife, a daughter and a grandmother taken far too early. Its mind-boggling and very scary, especially to know theres more of them out there.. Cottingham had kept these items as souvenirs so that he could remember his victims and relive his attacks. Cottingham lived here with his wife, Janet, and their three children, Blair, Scott, and Jenny. ,X3ieG(>]/TUW#gI" p&gGgy`Un(aE6e#./"e3 A few days later, Mr. Anzilotti visited Mr. Cottingham in his new surroundings and told him, I put you here.. The victim, Valerie Street, had just been busted in Miami for prostitution, and was last seen getting picked up by a man in New York City. Five months later, the serial slayer struck again, strangling Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves, an 18-year-old Manhattan woman originally from Puerto Rico. Once, he outright explained his hesitation: He said, I know once I give you that case, Ill never see you again, Mr. Anzilotti recalled last month. 0000006081 00000 n Mr. Cottingham had a vulnerability, the chief realized: After divulging nothing during hours of questioning, hed sometimes loosen up on the drive back to prison, sitting in the back seat and believing the day was done. The following is a list of his victims in chronological order. That girl was found drowned, similar to Blases killing, he said. 0000009992 00000 n New Jersey . According to one of his co-workers, he was smart, well-read, and up-to-date on current events. I thought he could be responsible for some, Mr. Anzilotti said. ADVERTISEMENT. 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. And considering the closure of yesterdays cases, I absolutely believe him.. Here are the nine victims Cottingham has confessed to or been convicted of killing: On Oct. 28, 1967, Vogel, 29, told friends she was going to play bingo at a local church. Everyone deserves justice under the law.. 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. 0000003451 00000 n His murders were not the outcome of stalking or planning but of fleeting encounters. 0000000016 00000 n They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. Ms. Falasca was a 15-year-old who left her familys house in July 1969 and never returned. How it ended was me literally shaking his hand and saying, Thank you, Mr. Anzilotti said. 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. When arrested, he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade knife, replica pistols, and a stockpile of prescription pills. 'Crime Scene' reveals true depravity of 'Times Square Killer' The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. 0000007078 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. He enjoys our time together., The chief also had another theory. He described in detail how, instead, he took the girls to a motel, held them captive and eventually drowned them in the bathtub. 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. When reporters ran with the story, Mr. Anzilotti considered himself absolved from keeping his silence about the cases. This story has been shared 151,197 times. Taking a bus to another location, Cottingham and Blase spent some time together. I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. 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. endstream endobj 34 0 obj<>stream That night, city firefighters responded to a blaze at a motel in Times Square, the New York Daily News reported. The year 2020 arrived, and running his office through the coronavirus outbreak kept Mr. Anzilotti too busy for cold cases. 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. HUMs@Wf~}m1`16N7NLf%=Io8. Torso Killer: Ailing Richard Cottingham Confesses to More Murders 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. View Richard Cottingham's record in Manchester, NJ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Mr. Anzilotti and another investigator drove to the town of Reading, Vt., to deliver the news to Jackies older sister, Suzan Mulder, then 69. F! Her body was found the next morning by the side of a road next to a cemetery in Saddle Brook. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. 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). Peter Karas/The Record, via USA Today Network. xref After years in prison, Mr. Cottingham began to open up to the detective about past unsolved crimes. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. In May of 1980, police arrested Cottingham while he was torturing a sex worker at a motel room in New Jersey. This is the house where the "Times Square Killer," Richard Cottingham, lived between 1975 and 1980. This case was always haunting me.. This murder was later linked to the 1977 murder of Maryann Carr, who was left in the same motel's parking lot. This is possibly due to the fact that he got married in 1970. 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. Questioning Mr. Cottingham was complicated. He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. 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. 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.. 0000000756 00000 n Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. Just shy of his 21st birthday, Richard Cottingham began a vicious killing spree that tore through north New Jersey and New York City. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. To this day, the other young female has never been identified. He said, Im going to give you one, Mr. Anzilotti recalled. Cottingham, who is also nicknamed "The Torso Killer," moved into this rented three-bedroom house in February of 1975. Which is entirely possible, especially in those days.. Cottingham murdered at least twelve women between 1967 and 1980. Feech La Manna's house from The Sopranos. One day, Cottingham told his co-worker that he had stolen a sex worker's money and clothes while she was sleeping. [7] On October 28, 1967, he strangled Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two, in Little Ferry, New Jersey. 0000001262 00000 n Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . 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. Cottingham was indicted in Cusicks killing in June after DNA evidence linked him to the cold-case slaying believed to be the oldest match to ever lead to a prosecution, Nassau County prosecutors said. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. Vronsky and Weiss had been meeting with Cottingham in prison since the spring of 2017, counseling him to make the confession. According to his neighbors, he seemed like a regular family man. [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". On Thursday, authorities told NJ Advance Media that Cottingham confessed to the murders of three Bergen County teenagers in the late 1960s - each a cold case for over 50 years. When you have a series of crimes today, everything goes through the computers, andwe have computer analysis and a wayof moving these through jurisdictionalboundaries. The clever killer slipped up, leaving a fingerprint on the cuffs. Richard Cottingham of Lodi (NJ) is sentenced to 173-179 years in prison. That was roughly one month after his arrest. The Zestimate for this house is $598,600, which has decreased by $7,680 in the last 30 days. After dismembering Goodarzi, Cottingham lit her torso on fire, along with a second unidentified woman, who was found next to Goodarzi on the same bed. 43 0 obj <>stream After their drink, Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station where they had taken the bus. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. He called his detectives and gave the word: Bring in Cottingham. A Detective's Work Ends: Lodi Serial Killer Admits Raping, Drowning Inmates were wagering everything from cash to cigarettes. At the mall, Cottingham, then a tall, brown-haired young man, met Vogel, a married mother of two. 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. You're a whore and you have to be punished." 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. After those confessions, the two men barely spoke. 7{(~tm LB IBJ*ZB`0 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. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop. Hearing prosecutors detail grisly crime scenes like where Laverne was found was especially difficult to endure, her son said. Richard Cottingham seemed like a character from a pulp novel: the crazed killer and the family man. Select this result to view Richard P Cunningham's phone number, address, and more. On December 2, 1979, firemen in New York responded to an alarm at the Travel Inn motel[11] near Times Square. 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. He was also extremely fidgety and unable to sit still. Which, of course, I wasnt overly interested in, the former chief said. Over the months that followed, Mr. Anzilotti cultivated an unusual relationship with Mr. Cottingham, sometimes testy, sometimes closer to a sort of warmth. Richard Cottingham - Wikipedia 21 23 We use cookies to deliver personalized advertisements, improve your online experience, and to analyze our site's performance. He enjoys our relationship. 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'Torso Killer' pleads guilty in 1974 cold-case murders - AP NEWS He was originally from the Bronx in New York City. A horrible scene, the police commissioner said that day. The 22-year-old's death appeared brutal: she had been beheaded and set on fire and her skull has yet to be found. K3nVxb;X)oxeHME~> Jennifer Weiss Befriends Richard Cottingham, "The Torso Killer" | Crime I think sometimes he grapples with his own gruesomeness back then., On March 12, a Friday, Mr. Anzilotti summoned the inmate. 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. [13] In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. 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. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. 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. But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. The police pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms, The New York Times reported at the time. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.