Richard Francis Cottingham (born November 25, 1946) is an American serial killer who was convicted in New York of six murders committed between 1972 and 1980 and convicted in New Jersey of twelve murders committed between 1967 and 1978.[1] He was nicknamed by media as the Torso Killer and the Times Square Ripper, since some of the murders he was convicted of included mutilation.
Cottingham's confirmed killings resulted in nine convictions and a further eight confessions under non-prosecution agreements, leading to him serving multiple life sentences in New Jersey prisons. In 2009, decades after his first five murder convictions, Cottingham told a journalist he had committed at least 80 "perfect murders" of women in various regions of the United States.[2]
After 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 mainframecomputer operator upon taking computer courses. In October 1966 he became a computer operator for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked until his 1980 arrest.[5] At Blue Cross, Cottingham worked in an office with Rodney Alcala, a fugitive child molester and serial killer who lived in New York under the alias "John Berger". Neither man claimed to have been aware of the other, nor is there any evidence they were familiar with each other prior to their respective arrests.[3]
On May 3, 1970, Cottingham was married at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, Queens. He had three children, two boys and a girl, with his wife. In April 1978, Cottingham's wife filed for divorce on the grounds of "abandonment" and "mental cruelty" (refusing to have sex with her after the birth of their third child, staying out until early morning and leaving her with insufficient household funds). His wife withdrew the petition upon his arrest in May 1980, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction.[6]
Cottingham was arrested on several lesser charges throughout his killing spree. Police were not aware of his murders at the time, nor were they aware that a serial killer was active in the tri-state area.[3] On October 3, 1969, Cottingham was charged and convicted of drunk driving in New York City and was fined $50. On August 21, 1972, he was 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. On September 4, 1973, he was arrested in New York City for robbery, oral sodomy and sexual abuse on the complaint of a prostitute and her pimp. Neither complainant appeared in further proceedings, however, and the case was dismissed. On March 12, 1974, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery and unlawful imprisonment on the complaint of another prostitute. Once again, the victim did not appear in further proceedings and the case was dismissed.[5]
In the early morning hours of May 22, 1980, Cottingham picked up 18-year-old prostitute Leslie Ann O'Dell, who was soliciting on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 25th Street in Manhattan. They checked into the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn at Room 117. Cottingham offered to give O'Dell a massage and she rolled 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. 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." At one point, O'Dell reached under the bed for a fake gun that Cottingham had threatened her with thinking it was real and attempted to shoot Cottingham with it. When it did not fire, Cottingham came at her with the knife. She screamed: "Oh, God, no!" The screams brought motel employees to the room, and they summoned police. Cottingham was arrested in the hallway at gunpoint. When arrested, he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade knife, replica pistols, and a stockpile of prescription pills.[4][7]
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). 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. Following his 1980 arrest, police found, in the locked room and in the trunk of his car, personal effects which they traced to several of his victims.[8]
During his 1981 trial, three additional surviving abduction-rape victims testified along with O'Dell against Cottingham in court claiming that they had also been sexually abused and tortured by him. Two of the victims (Susan Geiger and Karen Schilt) identified Cottingham in a police line-up. He was ultimately convicted in three of the cases (Schilt, Geiger, O'Dell) and acquitted in one (Weisenfeld).[6]
22-year-old pregnant waitress Karen Schilt met Cottingham at 9 p.m. on March 22, 1978. Schilt had exited a Third Avenue bar and made her way back to her apartment. She was then picked up by Cottingham and driven down Route 80inNew Jersey after being forced to ingest sleeping pills. Near the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments, in a parking lot, a patrolman had discovered her motionless body the following morning. She had been sexually assaulted by Cottingham, who then abandoned her in a sewer, with her breasts and genitalia exposed.[9]
19-year-old prostitute Susan Geiger was approached and propositioned by Cottingham on the night of October 10, 1978, in Manhattan between Broadway and Seventh Avenue on West 47th Street. Although Susan informed Cottingham that she had reservations for the remainder of the evening, she left him her contact information at the Alpine Hotel. The subsequent evening, Cottingham called her and asked her out for a date at midnight. He picked Susan up in his vehicle before plying Susan with a number of drugged drinks. Susan would later awaken covered in her own blood in Room 28 of the Airport Motel in South Hackensack, New Jersey. Susan had been tortured by Cottingham, who injured her face, breasts, vagina, and rectum. In addition, he had beaten Susan multiple times with a garden hose and torn her gold earrings out of her ears.[9]
On May 12, 1980, 19-year-old prostitute Pamela Weisenfeld was found beaten up in a parking lot in Teaneck, New Jersey. According to police and medical reports, Weisenfeld's attacker bit her multiple times. After meeting Cottingham, Pamela had been drugged and brutally beaten, suffering several injuries all over her body. After being found, Teaneck police took her to a hospital.[9]
Cottingham claims to have started killing as an adolescent[10] and has claimed to have killed as many as 100. Cottingham often sought female sex workers in their late-teens to mid-twenties and is believed to have killed people in Florida, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Baltimore. He would approach his victims in bars, drug them, take them to a remote location and would bind, gag, torture, and stab them before killing them by strangulationorasphyxiation. Trophies like jewelry and other personal items belonging to his victims were taken by him.
Over the course of two separate New Jersey trials in 1981[11] and 1982,[12] Cottingham was convicted in three non-fatal assaults (Schilt, Geiger, O'Dell) and the murders of two women (Maryann Carr and Valerie Street) which occurred in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.
At approximately 7:00 a.m. on the morning of December 16, 1977, the body of X-ray technologist Maryann "Marzi" Carr, 26,[12] was found between a parked van and a chain-link fence in Little Ferry, New Jersey. She was still wearing her white nurse's uniform but her shoes were missing. Carr was last seen on December 15, in the parking lot of the Ledgewood Terrance Apartments, where Cottingham and his wife had previously resided. Cottingham kidnapped her from the apartment complex and took her to a Quality InninHasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. Once she was inside, Cottingham beat, bit, slashed, and raped her. She had been restrained and then strangled with a ligature. Afterward, Cottingham dumped her in the parking lot of the Quality Inn, not far from the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments. Carr exhibited handcuff-related bruises on her wrists, ankles, as well as remnants of adhesive tape on her mouth. Cottingham was convicted of her murder on October 12, 1982.
On May 5, 1980, the body of Valerie Ann Street, 19,[11]asex worker, was found by a motel worker at the same Quality Inn where Cottingham had dumped Carr's body in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. Using an alias, Street checked into Room 132 with Cottingham, who killed her and stuffed her body under the bed for housekeeping to find. Investigators discovered Street handcuffed and with two ligature marks on her throat. They also determined that she had been gagged with white adhesive tape. Street had bite marks on her breasts in addition to being bitten all over her body and head. She also had numerous minor knife incisions on her breasts. One fingerprint belonging to Cottingham was recovered from the ratchet mechanism of the handcuffs left behind on Street. He was convicted of her murder on June 12, 1981.[4]
In a single 1984 trial, Cottingham was convicted in the deaths of three additional women which occurred in New York City between 1979 and 1980. Cottingham was convicted of their murders on July 9, 1984.[13]
Staff at the Travel Lodge Motor Inn in New York City, New York, made a call to the nearby fire department on December 2, 1979, at around 9 a.m.[14] The call was made as a result of the personnel discovering significant smoke inside Room 417. A "Do Not Disturb" sign was hanging from the door latch of the room, which had been rented by "Carl Wilson" since November 29, 1979.[15] Two naked female bodies were discovered by the firefighters on two different beds. Prior to their deaths, the women were brutalised, and their murderer burned their bodies. Both women's hands had been severed, and the killer had also beheaded them. The missing body parts were never found.[4] A later autopsy revealed that both women had been tortured and sexually assaulted while still alive for several days. Deedeh Goodarzi, 22, an Iranian immigrant who worked as a prostitute, was identified shortly afterward. The other victim remains unidentified and is estimated to be aged between 16 and 22.[16] She is referred to as Manhattan Jane Doe. In a 2009 interview, Cottingham admitted to the murders and claimed that he severed the heads and hands of the victims to prevent their identification, as he was acquainted with Goodarzi and had been seen with her in a bar the night before.[2][10]
Mary Ann Jean Reyner, 25,[13] was discovered on May 15, 1980, at the Seville HotelinNew York City, New York. Investigators discovered that Reyner's attacker had cut her throat and removed both of her breasts. The murderer had left the breasts on the headboard of the bed. Reyner's body had also been set on fire as part of the perpetrator's attempt to get rid of evidence.
After his initial convictions, Cottingham pleaded his innocence and for decades insisted he had been "framed," until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated the five homicides.[2] In 2000, a detective in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office (BCPO), Robert Anzilotti, was tasked with reviewing a series of cold cases from the 1960s and 1970s. Anzilotti believed that Cottingham, "between his history and the suspicions of detectives that came before me," could be responsible for one or more of those crimes and so began to interview Cottingham from 2003. In 2010, Cottingham pleaded guilty to a 1967 murder. Then in exchange for immunity from prosecution, starting in 2014, Cottingham confessed to murdering three teenage girls between 1968 and 1969.[17]
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. 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 co-operation. Anzilotti and the BCPO subsequently confirmed the "exceptional closures" of the three murders.[17][18][3]
In April 2021, Cottingham confessed to an unsolved 1974 double-homicide in Montvale, one of New Jersey's most notorious cold cases.[5] The confession was extracted by Anzilotti weeks before his retirement and was facilitated by Vronsky and by Jennifer Weiss, the daughter of Deedeh Goodarzi, one of Cottingham's later victims. Vronsky and Weiss had been meeting with Cottingham in prison since the spring of 2017, counselling him to make the confession.[17][19] In March 2023, Anzilotti elicited another confession from Cottingham: the murder of a 17-year-old who vanished in January 1967.[20]
Mary Ann Della Sala, 17,[20] disappeared at the end of her shift, at 9 p.m. on January 24, 1967, from a Shop-Rite store at 330 Essex Street in Hackensack, New Jersey. Her body was found three months later on April 20 in the Passaic RiverinHawthorne, New Jersey. She had been strangled. Police concluded that she was killed elsewhere and then thrown into the river. There was no sign of sexual assault.
Nancy "Bubby" Schiava Vogel, 29,[10] a married mother of two, was found dead in her automobile, bound and naked, in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, on October 30, 1967. She had been last seen three days earlier in Little Ferry, when she left home to play bingo with friends at a local church. Instead, Vogel chose to do her shopping in a mall in Bergen County. Cottingham met Vogel at the shopping centre and kidnapped her. He took her to a field in Montvale and strangled her there. Vogel and Cottingham were acquaintances and he was convicted of her murder on August 25, 2010.[18]
Jacalyn Leah "Jackie" Harp, 13,[17] vanished on July 17, 1968, in Midland Park, New Jersey, after she failed to come home from band rehearsal at her school. The next morning, on July 18, her body was discovered at Goffle Brook; she had been beaten about the face and had been strangled with the leather strap from her flag sling. Police believed the attack was sexually motivated despite the fact that she had not been raped since her clothes were in "disarray." Cottingham claimed that he attempted to persuade Harp to get into his car, but she resisted. He then drove his car in front of Harp, stopped, and walked over to her. Cottingham caught up to Harp despite her attempts to flee, dragged her into a cluster of bushes, and killed her.
Irene Blase, 18,[17] was reported missing on April 7, 1969. On April 8, she was discovered face-down in four feet of water in Saddle River, New Jersey, strangled with the chain from a crucifix she was wearing. Cottingham confessed that he saw Blase shopping in Hackensack, New Jersey and convinced her to join him for a drink. Taking a cab to another location, Cottingham and Blase spent some time together after which Cottingham offered to bring Blase back to the bus station. He then drove Blase to a remote location against her will before raping and killing her.
Denise Falasca
On July 13, 1969, at approximately 8:00 p.m., Denise Falasca, 15,[17] left her residence on Bergenline Avenue in Closter, New Jersey on her way to meet friends in Westwood, New Jersey. At 11:00 p.m. Denise was scheduled to be back home, but she never arrived. At around 9:00 p.m., witnesses claimed to have seen Denise heading along Old Hook Road in Emerson in the direction of Westwood. Falasca's body was found on the side of Westminster Place in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, on July 14. Falasca, according to Cottingham, was walking down the side of the road in Emerson when he pulled up next to her and offered her a ride. Shortly after, he drove to the parking lot of his former school where he forced Falasca to perform oral sex on him. Dissatisfied with her sexual inexperience, Cottingham murdered her.
On August 9, 1974, Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17,[5] left North Bergen, New Jersey with plans to go shopping at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey. Kelly's boyfriend left the two off at a bus stop on Broad Street in Ridgefield, New Jersey. They intended to hitchhike from there. Their bodies were found on August 14 in a wooded location close to the Ridgemont Gardens complex in Montvale, New Jersey. They were naked and bound to one another at the wrists and ankles while lying facedown next to each other. Both had been beaten and raped; the ligature marks on their necks suggested that they had likely been strangled as well. Both also had cigarette burns on their flesh. Cottingham was convicted of both of their murders on April 27, 2021. In court, Cottingham admitted to kidnapping the girls and then tying them up and raping them both in a motel room. He killed them by drowning them in the bathtub.
On August 26, 2022, with a non-prosecution agreement, officials in Rockland County, New York, corroborated and accepted Cottingham's confession to the 1970 murder of 26-year-old Lorraine McGraw.[21] Cottingham's additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police.[21] In June 2022, Cottingham was arraigned from his prison hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick. Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence.[22][23][24] He pleaded guilty in a court appearance on December 5, and also officially admitted killing four other women during 1972 and 1973 in Long Island, New York: Mary Beth Heinz,[25] Laverne Moye,[22] Sheila Heiman,[26] and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.[27]
Diane Martin Cusick, 23,[27] a Long Island dance teacher, was found dead on February 16, 1968, in the back seat of her car, a 1961 Plymouth Valiant, outside the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York with adhesive tape around her mouth and neck. She had been beaten, raped, and strangled. Her hands had defence wounds.[28]DNA from semen discovered at the crime scene was extracted, and it matched a sample retrieved from Cottingham. Near the Green Acres Mall, there was a drive-in theatre that Cottingham frequently visited. Authorities believe Cottingham approached Cusick while pretending to be a mall security guard.[15]
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 South Nyack, New York. The victim had marks around her neck indicating that she had been strangled. The FBI identified the decedent as Lorraine Montalvo McGraw, 26,[21] who lived in Long Island and had been missing since February 27, 1970. McGraw had a history of drug and prostitution offences; many of them were listed under false names. McGraw worked in a number of adult establishments. On August 26, 2022, Cottingham confessed to killing McGraw.
The body of Mary Beth Heinz, 21,[22] was discovered on May 10, 1972, near a creek in Rockville Centre, New York. She had cuts on her face and neck from being strangled. Heinz, who experienced grand mal seizures and had been diagnosed with epilepsy, vanished on May 5th as she boarded a bus to travel to a nearby dance. He claimed to have thrown her body from Rockville Center's Peninsula Boulevard Bridge.
Laverne Moye, 23,[22]ofSt. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. She had been killed by strangulation. Cottingham claimed that he had thrown her body off the same bridge where he had previously dumped Heinz's body.
Sheila Heiman, 33,[22] was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death in her home in North Woodmere, New York on July 20, 1973. When her husband returned after a trip to a department store that morning, he discovered her dead in the master bathroom. None of the rooms outside of the bathroom showed evidence of a struggle and none of Heiman's neighbours reported anything strange around the time of her death.
18-year-old Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves,[22] a native of Puerto Rico, was found dead in Wantagh, New York on December 27, 1973. She was found strangled to death in a weeded area close to a bus stop on Ocean Parkway. She was discovered by park maintenance personnel wrapped in a grey blanket and covered in plastic bags.
On October 7, 1974, 15-year-old Lisa Thomas left her home and walked to the Nanuet Mall at 3:30 p.m., intending to buy a blouse. About 700 feet from their Nanuet, New York home, Thomas' body was found by her father the following morning in the woods behind the mall. Thomas was blindfolded with a crimson rag that she had in her purse and her head had been bashed in. Thomas had not been sexually assaulted. On August 26, 2022, Cottingham admitted to killing both her and McGraw. Despite his confession, the investigation into her death is still ongoing, and he was not charged with the crime. This is because authorities did not agree with or take Cottingham's statements regarding Thomas seriously.[21]
Cottingham's case has been discussed in several books and documentaries on serial killers. Two focused entirely on him: Rod Leith's The Prostitute Murders: The People vs. Richard Cottingham (Lyle Stuart Inc., 1983) and Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer (Netflix, 2021). He was also featured in a 2-hour special episode of People Magazine Investigates entitled “The Times Square Killer” (Investigation Discovery, 2023). Cottingham's subsequent prison confessions to cold case murders were the focus of the two-part The Torso Killer Confessions (Hulu, 2023).
^"Legislator Gaynor Honors Detectives Who Solved 50 Year Old Cold Case". Nassau County, NY. August 10, 2022. Archived from the original on December 6, 2022. Retrieved December 6, 2022. Detectives Finn and Salerno took over the case in 2021 from the late Detective Bellotti who had preserved all the evidence. The Detectives reviewed the evidence in the case jacket and re-interviewed numerous people involved in the original investigation. They submitted DNA evidence, which matched with Richard Cottingham[.]
^Murray, Anthony (July 2, 2020). "Mineola Woman's Murder 48 Years Ago Still Unsolved". Mineola American. Retrieved December 6, 2022. Mary Beth's body was discovered on May 10, 1972, near a creek in Rockville Centre. She had been strangled and had abrasions on her neck and face. Mary Beth worked as a live-in nanny and would come home to her family in Mineola on weekends by taking the bus.
^Thomas, Robert McGill Jr. (July 22, 1973). "Police Studying Slaying on L.I."The New York Times. Retrieved December 5, 2022. The victim was identified as Mrs. Sheila Heiman, [...] Her body was found about 1:30 P.M. in the master bathroom, which the police said was covered with so much blood that it was several hours before the police could be certain that Mrs. Heiman had been beaten, and had not struck her head in a fall.
^ abMorales, Mark (December 5, 2022). "'Times Square killer' pleads guilty to 1 woman's murder and admits killing 4 others". CNN. Retrieved December 5, 2022. In the winter of 1973, Nieves was discovered in a weeded area of Jones Beach. Nieves, 18 at the time, had also been strangled to death. Park maintenance workers found her covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket.
