richard cottingham lodi, nj address

And any new prison sentence would, practically speaking, be meaningless; Mr. Cottingham had no chance of ever being released. 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. Soon, the chief closed that case two down. 0 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 Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. It was like a game to him, Anzilotti recently said. He tried a different approach. It is situated at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. Im leaving, he said. To this day, the other young female has never been identified. On more than one occasion, he would openly talk about his experiences with sex workers. As you can see, he didn't always look like Santa Claus. Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . HKo0l06CYf,Y(v (I?0c9 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. And at. This is a private property. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. A third the killing of 13-year-old Jackie Harp seemed to be the work of another killer. The back and forth went on for weeks. Richard Francis Cottingham (born November 25, 1946) is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eighteen young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. She was stunned. Richard Cottingham was convicted of five murders and numerous counts of kidnapping and sexual assault using evidence found in his 'trophy room' combined with a matching fingerprint left on. Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. My whole life has been this, she said. New documentary The 12th Victim: Is Fugate a Natural Born Killer or Starkweather victim? %PDF-1.4 % The five victims addressed . The public in Bergen County deserved to know the outcome of those girls, he said. What they want is an outright statement and a sign-off of Yes thats me,' Vronsky continued. 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. When the 40th year since the killings arrived in 2014, the local police asked the public for any new information. They captured Cottingham soon after. Cottingham had just raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers in a room at the motel before setting it on fire. They found an 18-year-old victim who'd been bitten and stabbed bound with handcuffs. Richard Cottingham, convicted of murdering prostitute and kidnapping three. Richard is related to Rosemarie Marie Cunningham and Larry J Cunningham as well as 3 additional people. But then, four years ago, Mr. Cottingham stunned the chief. I was able to get almostany woman to do whatever I wanted them to do . 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". [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. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon. Furthermore, one of the women that he murdered in 1979 is still unidentified. 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. 0000005280 00000 n 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. 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. Did the old man kill those girls? Her name was Nancy Schiava Vogel. She, like members of the other families, agreed to forgo a guilty plea in open court. He did not want his family hassled by reporters or the police, and he vowed to Mr. Anzilotti that he would never again allow himself to be thrust into the spotlight. 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. And for Cottingham, every night was a full moon.. 21 23 The potential payoff in return felt almost too important to describe. [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. Absolutely, its completely plausible. Rochelle Park & 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. They'd left home for a trip 13 miles (21 kilometers) north to . He then left the scene with their severed heads and hands. This story has been shared 150,597 times. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. The girls vanished Aug. 9, 1974, while hitchhiking to a mall in . Thats why [authorities are] not going to make another statement. With Cottinghams next victim, a killers hunting ground of sorts began to form. It was just shock all the way around.. And considering the closure of yesterdays cases, I absolutely believe him.. 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. He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. 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 man has no heart, no soul, no emotion whatsoever, she said. The girls, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16, had last been seen days earlier at a nearby bus stop. It was Aug. 14, 1974, in Montvale, N.J., a suburb just over the New York state line. Their murders shook the region. ,X3ieG(>]/TUW#gI" p&gGgy`Un(aE6e#./"e3 And he sat there with literally no remorse. ADVERTISEMENT. [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]. Authorities tied him to the killings after police were called to a Hasbrouck Heights motel, where a maid had heard a woman screaming. 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. One would remind him of a TV actress. Justice was served and thats the end of it case closed. 0000002882 00000 n 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. He said, Youre welcome.. 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. 0000003125 00000 n The predator, dubbed The Torso Killer, would strike again in May 1980. He said, Im going to give you one, Mr. Anzilotti recalled. 0000002435 00000 n 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. 0000000991 00000 n 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). [15], In 2022, Cottingham was arraigned from his prison hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick in Long Island, New York. He also claimed to have committed 80 perfect murders no one knows about. 0000003107 00000 n Thats not the natural order its supposed to go in.. 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. In recent years, he had asked Mr. Cottingham about the case, and the inmate had simultaneously denied responsibility and let on that he knew more than he would share. The plea leaves the question: Will they be Cottinghams final admissions? If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. 0000002420 00000 n 0000013001 00000 n On September 4, 1973, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery, oral sodomy and sexual abuse on the complaint of a prostitute and her pimp. 0000008735 00000 n 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. 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. 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. I took over handling the calls, the arrangements. (1981, June 16). 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. FPh_3Gj Nt%Q[r L`%/9QTh/| Q4_g8KI}u'?xbif`H>;wNQ|sd2(? On Dec. 2, 1979, fire alarms rang out at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. %PDF-1.4 % My parents couldnt handle it., She had called Bergen County every few months to ask about the case for 47 years, she said. Again, he knew details from Ms. Falascas file. Inside they found the bodies of 22-year-old sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi[9] and an unidentified woman estimated between 16 and 22. The photographs are ordered from left to right and top to bottom. Cottingham severed the victim's breasts and posed them on the headboard of the bed, and set fire to the mattress under her body before fleeing, similar to the Travel Inn torso killings. 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. 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. Richard Cottingham, New Jersey prison photo. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. Then in exchange for immunity from prosecution, he confessed to murdering three New Jersey schoolgirls. I think it was just an evolution in his killing.. On May 5, 1980, a motel housekeeper found the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street in the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn. He was a coward.. 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 a Hasbrouck Heights hotel called police saying shed heard a woman screaming. He would describe to me certain routes he would drive, Vronsky said of Cottinghamm relaying his murderous spree in letters and interviews over the span of five years. 0000001425 00000 n 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. He would let his guard down, Mr. Anzilotti said. Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (each updated 1/26/2023). 0000005253 00000 n 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. 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 Trentons New Jersey State Prison. According to one of his co-workers, he was smart, well-read, and up-to-date on current events. The chief pressed ahead with his list. [5][17], The charges listed in Cottingham's New Jersey indictment included kidnapping, attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with deadly weapon, aggravated sexual assault while armed (rape), aggravated sexual assault while armed (sodomy), aggravated sexual assault while armed (fellatio), possession of a weapon (switchblade knife), and possession of controlled substances (secobarbital, amobarbital and diazepam). But Cottingham flew under the radar precisely because of how he chose his victims and who his victims were. Cottingham has claimed in the past he. He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. But first, he wanted to return to those two murders from 47 years ago. 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. Denise Falasca, aged 15, was abducted on July 14, 1969, in Emerson, while walking to a friend's home and found the next morning in Saddle Brook, by the side of a road next to a cemetery, strangled with the cord or the chain of her crucifix. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and entered a guilty plea in August 2010. And before I go, I want to close out the Kelly-Pryor case., Mr. Cottingham urged the chief to reconsider leaving the force. The picture in the top left corner shows Cottingham during one of his trials. Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates. [4], The BCPO "exceptionally closed" the three cold case murders with agreement from the victims' families and evidence corroborating the confessions, but for several years kept this secret from the public to keep Cottingham talking about other cases. This murder was later linked to the 1977 murder of Maryann Carr, who was left in the same motel's parking lot. )' The 45th year passed in the same way. In other words, he may have been content and/or preoccupied. 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. You can set your cookie preferences below. He was also extremely fidgety and unable to sit still. 0000001412 00000 n Although Vogel was the earliest of Cottinghams murder victims, the killer has said she was not his first, according to Vronsky. A horrible scene, the police commissioner said that day. 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 was eventually convicted of five murders in New Jersey and New York and sent to a New Jersey state prison in the early 1980s. The bridge where Mallory Beach died in a boating accident. Hes younger when all this is going on in Bergen County, he said. 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. He rented an apartment in Midtown and told his wife he worked nights. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. Richard Cottingham seemed like a character from a pulp novel: the crazed killer and the family man. A woman walking to her car found them: two teenage girls, naked and dead in a sliver of woods behind an apartment parking lot. Her killer, Richard Cottingham, was a computer operator, married with three children of his own, living a seemingly normal life. [2], In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. 0000009264 00000 n 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and grew up largely in New Jersey. It was mainly psychological. These meetings went on for months, and then years, on top of Mr. Anzilottis regular caseload. I couldnt even imagine losing a child. On May 4, 1980, the body of Street, a sex worker, was found at the same Quality Inn where Cottingham had dumped Carrs body. Richard Cottingham, the notorious North Jersey serial killer known for dismembering the young women who were so often his victims, publicly confessed Tuesday to drowning two North Bergen girls. Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. Math-wise its possible," said Vronsky. 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. He abducted Vogel and took her to a field in Montvale, where he strangled her. On the way out, he bumped the author on the shins with a bag that felt like it contained bowling balls, Vronsky said. He had his list of names, each one a dead girl and a crime long unsolved. 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. Getting to that point wasnt easy, Anzilotti said. [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". [6] In 2022, Cottingham officially confessed to the 1970 murder of Lorraine McGraw, under a non-prosecution agreement. But Cottingham had other victims, and he would later boast of killing 85 to 100 people. 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. It represented the opportunity to let the entire world know that Laverne Moye was a human being. 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. Eventually, Mr. Cottingham began to loosen up, and he spoke about killing the prostitutes. Mr. Anzilotti would arrange to have the inmate transported to his office more than hours drive from the prison. 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. But Mr. Anzilotti kept pressing him: You know youre going to tell me.. And thats what bothers me, because I probably didnt have to do anything to them., Mr. Anzilotti left the confession both exhausted and relieved. Starting in 2014, Cottingham confidentially admitted to Detective Robert Anzilotti of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office (BCPO) to being the perpetrator of the murders of three teenage females between 1968 and 1969. Hes hedged around and all but confessed.. Trophies like jewellery and other personal items belonging to his victims were taken by him. Defense attorney John Bruno recited the details, which the white-bearded, 74-year-old killer acknowledged. It was pure evil. Soon, Cottingham persuaded Blase to go for a drink with him. The teenagers were last seen on Aug. 9, 1974, in North Bergen. 0000009992 00000 n Everyone deserves justice under the law.. Irene Blase, aged 18, vanished on April 7, 1969, in Hackensack and was found face down in four feet of water in the Saddle River, strangled with a wire, a cord, or perhaps the chain of a crucifix she was wearing. [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. Ive never seen rain like that, he said. Blase was 18 when she was found strangled in Saddle River in 1969. 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. (1981, June 25). Mr. Cottingham left behind no clues. Hes been chief of detectives nearly five years. 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. In April of 1979, he started living in the basement of the property after his wife initiated divorce proceedings against him for "abandonment" and "mental cruelty.". Inmates were wagering everything from cash to cigarettes. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop. He has been charged with 11 murders in all. Then he followed with an unusual request. 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. It was quite a shock to learn it was him.. After his wife filed for divorce in April of 1979, it seems as though his killings became far more frequent. Altman, who was just 3 years old at the time, said her parents had separated prior to Cusicks killing. Much like John Moye, Altman, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., said she struggled to process Cottinghams savagery. 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 did not know the names of those he killed. 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. And last week, three more were added to his grisly toll. She agreed to have sex with him for money. 0000003202 00000 n Its mind-boggling and very scary, especially to know theres more of them out there.. [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. Other locations that are relatively close to this place. Richard Cottingham was born in 1946 and was raised mostly in New Jersey, according to the The New York Times. And I said, Hop in., He drove to the mall. This location belongs to the following categories: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see future locations. Like a werewolf, Vronsky told The Post. He had not yet put in for retirement, or even told his boss he planned to do that the following week. They have also lived in Manasquan, NJ and Ada, MI. Cottingham offered to give O'Dell a massage and she rolled onto her stomach. In 1981, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to nearly 200 years in prison. Its not something you can ever get over, Altman, 58, told The Post. Now 74, Cottingham, who claims responsibility for dozens of murders, has confessed to a. But he eventually realized the years-long association, which involved countless state prison visits, was coming to an end. At the mall, Cottingham, then a tall, brown-haired young man, met Vogel, a married mother of two. In early December 1979, firefighters were called to the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on 42nd Street as a fire burned in room 417. And at the time, it was beyond our capacity to look beyond New York City, he told The Post. "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 began torturing her, nearly biting off one of her nipples. Retrieved April 2nd, 2007, from Factiva database. This number may increase in the future, as he has stated in the past that his victim count is much higher. But beneath the veneer of normalcy was a heinous double-existence as a serial killer. 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.. 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.

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