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Richard Cottingham

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Richard Cottingham
Cottingham mugshot, May 1980
Born
Richard Francis Cottingham

(1946-11-25) November 25, 1946 (age 78)
Bronx, New York, U.S.
Other namesThe New York Ripper, The Torso Killer
OccupationComputer operator
Height5 ft 11 in (180cm)
Spouse
Janet Cottingham
​
​
(m. 1970; div. 1980)​
Children3
Criminal penaltyLife
Details
Victims8 (convicted)
85–100 (claimed)
Span of crimes
1967–1980
CountryUnited States
State(s)New York, New Jersey
Date apprehended
May 22, 1980

Richard Francis Cottingham (born November 25, 1946) is an American serial killer from New Jersey perpetrating murders in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. He was nicknamed The Torso Killer and Times Square Torso Ripper after his dismemberment and decapitation of two victims on December 2, 1979, in a Travel Inn hotel on West 42nd Street and Tenth Avenue in the vicinity of Times Square.

He tortured and murdered sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi, age 22, and a still unidentified teenage victim, severed their heads and hands, and set their torsos on fire. Cottingham fled the scene with the severed heads and hands, which were never recovered. He was eventually apprehended on May 22, 1980, in a New Jersey motel in the act of torturing a teenage sex worker he had lured and driven to the location from New York City.

In a series of trials in New Jersey and New York 1981 to 1984, Cottingham was convicted of five murders, two in New Jersey and three in New York, plus multiple charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. In 2010, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. He confessed under immunity to the murders of New Jersey school girls Jackie Harp, Irene Blase, and Denise Falasca in 1968–1969 in Bergen County, New Jersey. In 2021 he confessed and pleaded guilty in the double abduction rape/murders of Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16 and Mary Ann Pryor, 17.

Officially, Cottingham killed 11 people,[1] but he claims to have committed between 85 and 100 murders. Cottingham is incarcerated in South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.

Early life and education

Cottingham was born on November 25, 1946, in The Bronx, New York City, the first of three children. In 1958, when he was 12, his family moved to River Vale, New Jersey. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School, in Hillsdale, New Jersey.[2]

Career

Cottingham worked for his father at Metropolitan Life from 1964 to 1966 as a computer operator, while taking computer courses. In October 1966 he went to work as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in New York until his arrest in 1980.[2]

Marriage

On May 3, 1970, Cottingham married his wife Janet at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, New York.[2]

First arrest and subsequent minor offenses

Cottingham was arrested for several minor charges throughout his killing spree; the police were not aware of his murders at the time.

On October 3, 1969, he was charged and convicted of drunk driving in New York City, and sentenced to 10 days in jail and a $50 fine.

On August 21, 1972, Cottingham was charged and convicted of shoplifting at Stern's Department Store in Paramus, New Jersey and was sentenced to pay a $50 fine.[2]

Murders

Cottingham's first known murder was the 1967 slaying of Nancy Schiava Vogel. He strangled the 29-year-old married mother of two, and her nude, bound body was found in her car in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. She had last been seen three days earlier, when she left home to play bingo with friends at a local church.

On December 2, 1979, firemen in New York responded to an alarm at a Travel Inn hotel[citation needed] near Times Square. Inside they found the bodies of Deedeh Goodarzi and another unidentified woman. Both bodies had their hands and heads removed, been doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. The missing body parts were never found.[3]

On May 5, 1980, police found the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street in a Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. The victim's hands were tightly handcuffed behind her back. She was covered in bite marks and was beaten across the shins. Street had died of asphyxiation. This murder was later linked to an earlier murder in the same motel.[3]

The body of x-ray technician Maryann Carr, 26, was also found brutally beaten near the same hotel, but police could not positively link the crimes until after Cottingham's arrest. On May 15, Jean Reyner was strangled and her throat cut in the historic Seville Hotel.

Starting in 2014, Cottingham admitted to killing an additional three women (Jacalyn Harp, of Midland Park; Irene Blase, of Bogota; and Denise Falasca, of Closter, all of whom were strangled in the late 1960s).[4][5]

In April 2021 Cottingham confessed to the unsolved 1974 double-abduction, rape and murder of teenagers Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor in Montvale, New Jersey. The confession was facilitated by Detective Robert Anzilotti of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office shortly before his retirement.[5] Anzilotti spent 15 years meeting with Cottingham, working toward the confession, which raised the total number of victims attributed to Cottingham to 11. He claims to have committed between 85 and 100 murders.[6][2][7]

Arrest

On May 22, 1980, Cottingham picked up 18-year-old Leslie Ann O'Dell, who was soliciting on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. At some point she agreed to have sex with him for $100. Around dawn, they checked into the same Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn where he had left his last mutilated victim. Cottingham offered to give the girl a massage and she rolled over onto her stomach. Straddling her back, he drew a knife and put it to her throat as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists.[3]

He began torturing her, nearly biting off one of her nipples. She later testified that he said, “You have to take it. The other girls did, you have to take it too. You’re a whore and you have to be punished.” O’Dell's muffled cries of pain became so loud that the motel staff, already spooked by the murder eighteen days earlier, called police and then rushed to the room demanding that Cottingham open the door. Cottingham was apprehended by arriving police officers in the hallway. When arrested he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade, replica pistols and a stockpile of prescription pills.[3]

Charges

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, possession of controlled dangerous substances, Secobarbital and Amobarbital, or Tuinal, and possession of controlled dangerous substance, Diazepam or Valium.

After his wife Janet initiated divorce proceedings on the grounds of "abandonment, non-support and mental cruelty" he resided in a basement apartment of the house they lived in on Vreeland Street in Lodi, New Jersey. After his arrest police found a few personal effects traced to two of his victims in his room and in the trunk of his car.[citation needed]

Trials

Cottingham had a working knowledge of forensics, and in the 13-year period during which he is known to have committed 11 murders, only one fingerprint belonging to him was recovered, from the ratchet mechanism of handcuffs left behind on one of the victims. A case based on 'signature pattern' was built against Cottingham along with the testimony of three surviving victims.

In the early 1980s Cottingham was convicted of five murders.[4] In 2010 he pleaded guilty in the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel, 29. In 2021, he pleaded guilty to kidnapping, raping and drowning a pair of teenage girls in 1974.[1] He also confessed to three murders of New Jersey school girls in 1968–1969 in return for immunity from prosecution.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Dazio, Stefanie; Porter, David (April 27, 2021). "'Torso Killer' pleads guilty in 1974 cold-case murders". Associated Press. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Richard Francis Cottingham: "The Torso Killer"" (PDF). Radford, Virginia: Department of Psychology, Radford University. Retrieved April 22, 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d Anthony Banks (March 3, 2019). "The Torso Killer: Richard Cottingham". Criminally Intrigued.
  4. ^ a b "NJ Serial Killer Admits to Three More Slayings from Late 1960s". NBC New York. January 3, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c Wilson, Michael (June 13, 2021). "Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective". The New York Times.
  6. ^ Keppel, Robert D.; Birnes, William J. (2008). Serial Violence: Analysis of Modus Operandi and Signature Characteristics of Killers. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. pp. 65–96. ISBN 978-1-4200-6632-6.
  7. ^ https://www6.state.nj.us/DOC_Inmate/details?x=1053631&n=0 [dead link‍]

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