A list of his victims in chronological order.
1967: Nancy Schiava Vogel (29).
1968: Jacalyn Harp (13).
1969: Irene Blase (18).
1969: Denise Falasca (18).
1972: Mary Beth Heinz (21).
1972: Laverne Moye (23).
1973: Sheila Hyman (33).
1973: Marita Emerita Rosado Nieves (18).
1974: Lorraine Marie Kelly (16).
1974: Mary Ann Pryor (17).
1977: Maryann Carr (26).
1979: Deedeh Goodarzi (22).
1979: Unidentified female.
1980: Jean Reyner (25).
1980: Valerie Ann Street (19).
Mary Beth Heinz
Sheila Heiman
Richard Cottingham was recently charged for the murder of Diane Cusick in 1968
Richard Cottingham appears via video link at his arraignment, Wednesday, June 22, 2022 in Mineola, N.Y.
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 and 1980. He was nicknamed The Torso Killer and The Times Square Killer. In 2009, nearly 30 years after being convicted of five murders in trials in New Jersey and New York in 1981–1984, Cottingham admitted to a journalist that he had committed at least 80 to 100 "perfect murders" of women in various regions of the United States, of which, since 2009, six have been subsequently confirmed and their cases closed.
In the most notorious of his murders, Cottingham tortured and murdered sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi, age 22, and a still unidentified teenage victim, severed their heads and hands, and set the mattresses under their bodies 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 while in the act of torturing a teenage sex worker whom he had lured and driven to the location from New York City.
Cottingham was convicted of five murders, two in New Jersey and three in New York, plus multiple charges of kidnapping and sexual assualt and other charges. Four surviving victims testified against Cottingham; he was convicted in three of the abduction-rape survivor cases and acquitted in one. In 2010, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. Subsequently, 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. In 2022, he was charged with the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick through DNA evidence.
Trials
During the early 1980s, Cottingham was convicted of five murders, in two separate New Jersey murder trials in 1981 and 1982, and in a single trial in New York City in 1984 for three murders. He pleaded innocent and, for the next thirty years, insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated the murders he was accused of. Cottingham was apparently 'forensically aware' and, in the 13-year period during which he is known to have committed 11 murders, in the pre-DNA era, only one fingerprint belonging to him was ever recovered, from the ratchet mechanism of handcuffs left behind on Valerie Street. A case based on his 'signature pattern' was built against him, combined with the testimony of four surviving victims, as well as pieces of his victims' jewelry and other items found in his possession after his arrest.
In 2010 he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel.
In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Loraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. He also confessed to three murders of New Jersey school girls in 1968–1969 in return for immunity from prosecution.
In 2022, he was arraigned from his hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick. The link was found through DNA evidence; authorities believe it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be prosecuted by DNA evidence.
Cottingham is currently incarcerated in South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cottingham
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