Getting to that point wasnt easy, Anzilotti said. Before his arrest, he was a successful computer operator who worked at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance company in Midtown Manhattan. Instead, he drove her to the Quality Inn, where he tortured, beat and sexually assaulted her for hours, until a maid heard her scream. 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. He was locked away to serve several life sentences, aging into a portly man with a thick white beard. 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. It was an era when the sex worker was criminalized. 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. 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 rented an apartment in Midtown and told his wife he worked nights. 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. [7] On October 28, 1967, he strangled Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two, in Little Ferry, New Jersey. <<69EF7C237A736942AE760EBDB9B8F80B>]>>
The man has no heart, no soul, no emotion whatsoever, she said. And even though Harp ran, Cottingham soon overtook her and dragged her into a grouping of bushes where teens would often go to smoke and make out, he said. 0000000991 00000 n
Fifty years after his mother was strangled and thrown from a Long Island bridge, John Moye finally got a glimpse of the wickedness that altered his life forever. The Blase family agreed. Her body was found the next morning by the side of a road next to a cemetery in Saddle Brook. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. 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. 0000001071 00000 n
Anzilotti and BCPO subsequently confirmed the "exceptional closures" of these three murders.[13][8]. His crimes were discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motel heard. A maid heard the teenagers guttural screams and called police. 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. 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). That was roughly one month after his arrest. I never broke my promise to him, all these years later, the chief said. 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. My whole life has been this, she said. Through the years, other people were assigned. Right up to Mr. Anzilotti. 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. His "justification" for doing this was that he "didn't like anyone getting one over" on him. 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. One day in 2014, the chief and a partner were driving the inmate back to prison when, from the back seat, Mr. Cottingham, who by then had spent almost half of his 68 years in prison, began describing a girl he once spotted near a store in Hackensack. Then he followed with an unusual request. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon. She was found strangled to death the next day in Saddle Brook. 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 . Cottingham is currently in state prison on a life sentence . To this day, their remains have never been recovered. The Google Street View image above was taken in May of 2022. 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". He had three children, two boys and a girl, with his wife. Cottingham murdered at least twelve women between 1967 and 1980. He was originally from the Bronx in New York City. Cottinghams luck began to unravel in early May 1980 when the maid at the Quality Inn found the naked corpse of a handcuffed woman under the bed. The items included necklaces, broaches, earrings, and other pieces of jewelry. 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. Rochelle Park & I asked them where they were going. The mall, they replied. 0000003686 00000 n
Seth Wenig/Associated Press By Ed Shanahan Dec. 5, 2022 On a. He soon realized the woman had no head, the Daily News reported. I was an immediate adult when it happened, she said later in an interview. [13] In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. 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. [12] Both bodies had their hands and heads removed, and had been doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. After failing to return home from a trip to buy shoes at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York,[9] 23-year old Diane Cusick was found raped, beaten, and strangled to death in the back seat of her car, parked near the mall. 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. After the hearing, the cameras off, Mr. Anzilotti approached Mr. Cottingham. 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 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. Her breasts had been severed and torso had been set on fire, Vronsky said. 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. Soon, the chief closed that case two down. The schoolgirl murder confessions increased that to to nine. But he told Mr. Cottingham. He then left the scene with their severed heads and hands. His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police. 0000002435 00000 n
Their murders shook the region. The chief questioned Mr. Cottingham. Consequently, he was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping. Zestimate Home Value: $598,600. I believe hes killed between 85 and 100, as he claims, Vronsky told The Post. Now I just have to go on with my life.. He continued to live here until the police eventually arrested him on May 22nd, 1980. 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 was a game to me. When you have a series of crimes today, everything goes through the computers, andwe have computer analysis and a wayof moving these through jurisdictionalboundaries. Thats why [authorities are] not going to make another statement. The investigators handed Ms. Mulder possessions of Jackies from half a century past. This story has been shared 150,597 times. (1981, June 25). Cottingham, whose attorney did not return messages seeking comment, has claimed to have killed as many as 100 women. As the New Jersey press reported on Cottinghams arrest, the NYPD started to take notice. The inmate made it clear that pressure would not work. Cottingham didnt like the idea, apparently wanting to continue their dialogue. 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. F!
It represented closure, Moye said of this weeks hearing. Richard Cottingham, 76, pleaded guilty to the February 1968 murder of Diane Cusick, 23, and admitted to strangling four additional women in the 1970s in Nassau County. Its hard to understand how someone could be like that. Notably, none of his crimes took place on the property. He had come further in closing cases than his younger self could have imagined. Richard Cottingham who is already serving time in state prison for several . [15], In 2022, Cottingham was arraigned from his prison hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick in Long Island, New York. 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. Everything that I was taught about evil was evident in his presence, in his demeanor, in the gaze of his eyes, Moye told The Post. His yearbook photo shows a cross-country runner with blond hair slicked back. The chief contacted the Blase family and told them what they had ached to know for decades: He knew who had killed Irene. 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 police pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms, The New York Times reported at the time. She then grew up without a father because her grandparents did not like him, she said. 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. Years after her sisters death, she had found some comfort speaking to another from her tribe, Karen Miller, a sister of Denise Falasca. 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. But in. I took over handling the calls, the arrangements. I just ruled him out. 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. 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. He abducted Vogel and took her to a field in Montvale, where he strangled her. 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. It was pure evil. On July 17, 1968, Harp, of Midland Park, was walking home from band practice when a strange man, Cottingham, tried to coax her into his car, Vronsky said. O'Dell's muffled cries of pain became so loud that the motel staff, already uneased by the previous two murders of Carr and Street, called police and then rushed to the room demanding that Cottingham open the door. Mr. Cottingham left behind no clues. More Local News to Love Start today for 50% off Expires 3/6/23, Rodrigo Torrejon | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, discovery of a Ridgefield Park woman dead, nude and bound. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. xb```"VV~g`0pt 9mzQ[2fXar9XcK',6=3Yb%^)=
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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.
FPh_3Gj Nt%Q[r L`%/9QTh/| Q4_g8KI}u'?xbif`H>;wNQ|sd2(? 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. 21 23
On Dec. 2, 1979, the murders that earned Cottingham the nickname the "Torso Killer took place in New York City. A hotel worker arrived at Room 417 to find smoke and a horrible scene: the scorched remains of two women on a bed. 0000002847 00000 n
In other words, he may have been content and/or preoccupied. Five months later, the serial slayer struck again, strangling Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves, an 18-year-old Manhattan woman originally from Puerto Rico. The family lived in Lodi, and Mr. Cottingham commuted to a job as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan. 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.
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