Richard Francis Cottingham - Born November 25, 1946, is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered a minimum of 11 young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 to 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, but he claims to have committed between 85 and 100 murders. Cottingham is incarcerated in South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
On May 3, 1970, Cottingham was married at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, New York. He and his wife had three children, two boys and a girl. In April 1978, his 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, until after he was convicted in the first trial in New Jersey, then refilled the petition and completed the divorce proceeding.
Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20 years old. On October 28, 1967, he strangled Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two, in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Her nude body, hands bound in front of her, was found on October 31, under a blanket behind the passenger seat of her car parked in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. She had last been seen three days earlier, when she left home stating she was going to play bingo with friends at a local church. The murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed and pleaded guilty to it in August 2010.
In 2010, while serving multiple life sentences, Cottingham pleaded guilty in the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel, 29. It is believed that she was his first victim.
The first target of the man who would come to be known as the “Times Square Killer” and the “Torso Killer” was Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old mother of two who disappeared after heading out for a bingo game in October 1967. She lived in Little Ferry, N.J., once the same town where her killer resided, and was strangled after opting instead to visit a local mall.
Diane Cusick, then a 23-year-old dance instructor living on Long Island, left for the mall to buy new dancing shoes and never returned. Her father discovered her body in the backseat of her car in a mall parking lot, bound and with an adhesive band over her mouth.
Cottingham simply said “yes” in court when he was asked to acknowledge his role in the killings. That he did not speak further “just goes to prove the coward that he really is,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.
Richard Cottingham murder victims, from left, Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp.
Jaclyn Harp was just 13 when she was abducted and strangled while walking home from band practice on July 17, 1968. The Midland Park, N.J., teen fled when Cottingham asked her to come inside his car, but he snatched the girl off the street and her body was found a day later.
In April 1969, 18-year-old Irene Blase of Bogota, N.J., was spotted by Cottingham while shopping in Hackensack. He persuaded the teen to go for a drink with him, and her strangled corpse was discovered the next day.
Denise Falasca, 15, was walking along the side of a road in Emerson, N.J., when Cottingham pulled his car over to offer a ride on July 14, 1969. She too was strangled and found 24 hours after meeting Cottingham.
Hitchhikers Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17, were abducted and killed in August of 1974, with Cottingham later admitting he kidnapped and raped the teens before drowning them in a motel room bathtub.
Pryor and Kelly were last seen walking together on Broad Avenue in Ridgefield, New Jersey, on August 9, 1974. Witnesses told police that they had seen the two girls hitchhiking, and they had gotten into a vehicle with an unknown white male.
Four other cases from the 1970s
Diane Cusick, Mary Heinz and Sheila Heiman
Mary Heinz body was found in May 1972 in Rockville Centre on Long Island. Her body was found floating face down in a muddy stream, also strangled. She was 21 at the time. Cottingham, a former computer programmer whose wrath of terror spanned from 1967 to 1980, also copped on Monday to strangling Mary Beth Heinz, three months before he killed Moye and dumped her body in the same creek.
Laverne Moye, then 23, was found in the same area later that year, also strangled to death. She was the mother of two children, authorities said. The body of Laverne Moye, of St. Albans, Queens, was discovered in a Rockville Centre creek on July 20, 1972. Cottingham confessed to tossing the 22-year-old mother of two from a bridge — ending her family’s half-century quest for answers.
In 1973, Sheila Heiman’s body was found bludgeoned to death in her home on Long Island. Her husband had left the house that morning to go to a department store, and when he came back, he found her dead in the bathroom. Her kids were away at summer camp.
Five months later, the serial slayer struck again, In the winter of 1973, Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves was discovered in a weeded area of Jones Beach. Nieves, 18 at the time, had also been strangled to death. Manhattan woman originally from Puerto Rico. Maintenance workers found her body covered in plastic bags and wrapped in a gray blanket near a Jones Beach bus stop.
Richard Cottingham murder victims Deedeh Goodarzi, left, and Maryann Carr.
Sixteen months later Irene Blase, Denise Falasca and Jacalyn Harp murders, X-ray technician Maryann Carr was abducted from outside her Jersey home and killed, with her remains discovered in the parking lot of a Hasbrouck Heights motel on Dec. 15, 1977. She lived in an apartment complex where Cottingham was once a resident.
Deedeh Goodarzi, described in one report as a “high-priced call girl” whose clients included Cottingham, was just 22 when killed alongside a second woman who was never identified. Goodzari was tortured and killed inside a Times Square motel on Dec. 2, 1979, with the killer beheading his victim and lopping her hands off. The killer set her mutilated corpse afire, and Goodzari was found lying alongside the other victim on the same bed.
In 1979, Cottingham raped, tortured and beheaded two sex workers at the Travel Inn Motel near Times Square. Known as the Torso Killer for his unique MO of dismembering the victims and leaving only their torsos behind, Cottingham is still considered to be one of the most sadistic serial killers in American history.
A mutilated body found in a midtown hotel. The victim had been sadistically tortured over a period of days. Cottingham purposely severed the head and hands to make the victim unidentifiable, then set the room on fire before leaving the hotel.
A mutilated body found in a midtown hotel, then set the room on fire before leaving the hotel.
Between 1967 and 1980, Cottingham brutally murdered and dismembered at least 6 women, and claimed to have killed at least 80 more.
One week before Jean Reyner's body was discovered at a Manhattan hotel, a maid at the Quality Inn in New Jersey found the naked corpse of Valerie Ann Street under the bed, with her hands tightly handcuffed behind her back. She had recently been arrested in Miami for prostitution and was last seen getting picked up by a John in New York City on May 5, 1980.
Valerie Street's body was covered in bite marks and brutally beaten in a chillingly similar manner to the murder of 26-year-old Maryann Carr, that had occurred in the same motel three years earlier.
Despite obvious similarities, 'no one in New Jersey connected them to the Times Square killer,' explained former NYPD detective Malcolm Reiman in the doc. Criminal profiling was still in its infancy and it was before CCTV footage was commonplace and the use of computers helped detectives share information across states.
Cottingham slipped the noose of law enforcement by deliberately preying on marginalized sex workers during a time when crime-ridden New York City descended into lawlessness.
It was the era when the Big Apple was nicknamed 'Fear City' and Times Square was a deviant drain of illicit thrills, pornography, prostitution and crooks - providing the sexual predator with the perfect hunting ground.
Cottingham murder victim Valerie Ann Street.
Sex worker Valerie Ann Street, just a teen when she came to New York from Florida, accompanied Cottingham to a New Jersey hotel. On May 4, 1980, Street’s body was found at the same Quality Inn where Carr’s body was discovered. Cottingham had stuffed Street’s body under the bed, where she was found by an employee.
Shock was what a maid at the Quality Inn, on Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights New Jersey felt eleven days before Ms Reyner. As she was vacuuming she discovered the handcuffed body of sex worker Valerie Ann Street under the bed. Ms Street had been strangled and there were scratches and cuts around her breasts. Officers didn't know it then, but the discovery of Ms Street is what marked the beginning of the end of the killer's reign of terror. A pattern was being realised; it recalled another murder that took place at the same Quality Inn.
Incised breasts found on the headboard of the bed.
Jean Reyner found in New York City hotel. Cottingham had removed the breasts and placed them on the bed headboard to shock the police. He once again set the room on fire, allowing the authorities to immediately link this killing to the previous incidents.
Jean Reyner, killed in gruesome fashion. Little more than a week after Street was slain, the 25-year-old prostitute was discovered inside the Seville Hotel in Manhattan, with her breasts severed before her body was set ablaze. Cops eventually tied him to the crime when they found Reyner's necklace among his 'trophies.' It was the same necklace that had been pictured on Reyner in a previous arrest photo for prostitution.
The body of Maryann Carr was found dumped in the Quality Inn parking lot in 1977.
The suffocated body of X-Ray technician Maryann Carr, 28, was found in the parking lot on December 16, 1977. Like Ms Street, her body bore evidence she had been handcuffed on her ankles and her wrists.
Arrest unmasks "normal" father of three
Described as average and normal, New Jersey man Richard Cottingham was a father-of-three with a marriage that was slowly unravelling. But on May 22, 1980 Cottingham's life as a predator came to light. Weeks after the discovery of Ms Street's body, on-edge workers at the Quality Inn heard the muffled screams of a woman emanating from another hotel room.
At knife point, he proceeded to torture, beat and sexually assault the 19-year-old runaway for hours, (nearly biting off one of her nipples) until a maid heard her muffled screams. When hotel staff investigated further, Leslie Ann O'Dell cracked open the door and quietly signaled for help. They notified police.
Inside police found a terrified woman with Cottingham. Leslie Ann O'Dell, a 18-year-old prostitute, had been tortured and assaulted for hours. Cottingham was arrested. After a search warrant was issued, officers commenced a search of the computer technician's house in Lodi, New Jersey. Inside a locked basement they found handcuffs, pornographic artwork, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade and inside a locked box, items from some of the victims. The basement became known as the "trophy room."
The "Torso Killer" had been found.
Over four trials in the early 1980s, three in Jersey and one in New York, Richard Cottingham was convicted of five murders. That included the 1977 slaying of a married 27-year-old nurse whose body was found dumped by a chain-link fence in the parking lot of the same Quality Inn where he’d committed other atrocities three years later. She had been cut about the chest and legs, beaten with a blunt instrument, and covered in bites and bruises.
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 handcuffs used in the murder of Valerie Street. He was sentenced to 173 to 197 years, which he is currently serving in Trenton's New Jersey State Prison.
In 2010, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. He also confessed under immunity to the 1968 and 1969 homicides of New Jersey teenagers Jackie Harp, Irene Blase, and Denise Falasca.
Most recently, in April 2021, Cottingham confessed and pleaded guilty to the double kidnapping and murders of Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16 and Mary Ann Pryor, 17 in 1974. He admitted that he brought the two girls to a motel room where he tied them up, raped them, then drowned them in bathtub.
He has officially been charged with 11 murders but according to Cottingham himself, has committed as many as 105 total slayings over the course of his homicidal career - 80 of which he described as 'perfect murders.'
Directed by serial killer-aficionado Joe Berlinger, the Netflix series features interviews with former detectives, police officers, sex workers. Dominick Volpe, a former colleague at BlueCross BlueShield, testifies to Cottingham's perverse sexual tendencies.
The doc also spotlights a conversation with Jennifer Weiss, Deedah Goodarzi's biological daughter, who made headlines last year when she struck up an unlikely friendship with her mother's killer while he served his prison sentence.
In a strange turn of events, Deedeh Goodarzi's biological daughter, Jennifer Weiss has forged an unlikely friendship with the man who strangled and beheaded her mother in 1979. Goodarzi gave up her daughter for adoption when she was less than two weeks old, it wasn't until Weiss tried to reconnect with her biological mother in 2002 that she discovered the disturbing truth of her violent demise.
Weiss was given up for adoption when she was less than two weeks old. It wasn't until she endeavored to reconnect with her biological mother in 2002, that she discovered the disturbing truth of her violent demise through old newspaper clippings. Looking for more answers, she reached out to Richard Cottingham in prison and has visited him over 30 times.
'All of the women that Richard killed left this world in a horrific way,' she said in the doc. 'It always weighs heavily over me.
'So I maintain a relationship with Richard now because I want the names of the unidentified victims he took. Lives that never came to fruition. I think we need to remember them because they deserve justice.'
Cottingham actually preferred to do his thing closer to home in New Jersey. He would either pick up his victims on the streets of Manhattan or meet them in bars. Either way, he would buy them drinks or dinner and slip a date rape–type drug into their glass. He then would maneuver or lure the semiconscious victims to his car and drive them across the river to New Jersey to cheap motels that lined the complex of highways there. He carried them in through motel back doors and then molested and tortured them in his room for extended periods of time.
The lucky ones would later awake from the effects of the drug finding themselves raped and sodomized and covered with horrific wounds, dumped naked by a roadside or on the floor of a motel room with little memory of what had transpired.
They were alive because Cottingham was a particular type of serial killer an anger excitation or sadistic-lust offender. Cottingham did not derive his pleasure from killing, but from torturing the victim. He couldn’t care less whether the victim lived or died once he was finished with his torture and if the victim did die during the attack before Cottingham was satisfied, he would continue abusing the corpse until satisfied. Once done, he would abandon the victim like “trash,” and whether she was dead or alive was inconsequential to him. Some victims were lucky to survive, but others were not.
The charges that would be listed in Cottingham’s New Jersey indictment give us some idea of how the next four hours passed for O’Dell:
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.
Between bouts of rape, sodomy, forced oral sex, biting, beating, cutting with the knife, and whipping with a leather belt, Cottingham would pause to gently wipe down the face of his victim with a cool, damp washcloth.
Cottingham denied committing any of the murders to the bitter end, despite the fact that some of the victims’ property was found in his home and his fingerprint was found on the handcuffs restraining one of the victims.
The only thing Cottingham admitted was, “I have a problem with women.”
“This guy was particularly ruthless. He tortured women before he killed them and did terrible things to them, and yet we still don’t 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.
“I never thought I would get caught,” he added. 'It was a game to me. It was mainly psychological. I was able to get almost any woman to do whatever I wanted them to do, psychologically,' said the sinister 75-year-old in a recent jailhouse interview with journalist Nadia Fezzani. 'It's God-like, almost. You're in complete control of somebody's destiny.'
He was busted after a maid at a New Jersey motel heard a woman screaming inside his room, and cops found the 18-year-old victim alive. She had been handcuffed and had suffered knife wounds and bite marks to her breasts.
His horrifying exploits were detailed in the Netflix series “Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer,” which was released in December 2021.
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