From 1967 to 1980, serial killer Richard Cottingham prowled New York and New Jersey for victims — and he later claimed to have murdered 100 women.
Bergen County Sheriff’s OfficeRichard Cottingham, a.k.a. the Times Square Killer, terrorized victims in New York and New Jersey from 1967 until his arrest in 1980.
Known as the “Times Square Ripper” and the “Torso Killer,” Richard Cottingham got his infamous nicknames from a double murder he committed in a hotel room near Times Square in 1979. Two young women were found murdered in the room — which Cottingham had set on fire before fleeing — and both victims were missing their heads and hands.
Though Cottingham was arrested soon afterward in 1980, after a would-be victim escaped his clutches in New Jersey, his depravity was much deeper than police originally thought. He was initially convicted of five murders and three assaults in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison. But as time has gone on, Cottingham has confessed to many more killings, and now, the Times Square Ripper claims to have murdered more than 100 women.
This is the horrific story of serial killer Richard Cottingham.
Richard Cottingham’s Gruesome Murder Spree In Times Square
Bergen County Prosecutor’s OfficeRichard Cottingham, the infamous killer who terrorized Times Square.
The Torso Killer first captured New York’s attention on December 2, 1979, when firefighters were called to the Travel Inn Motor Hotel near Times Square. As the first responders burst into the burning room 417, they quickly spotted two bodies on the twin beds. A firefighter grabbed one in the hopes of saving a life and carried the body out of the smoky room.
“I was preparing to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which is standard procedure,” the firefighter said, “when I suddenly noticed there was no head.”
As the smoke cleared, the firefighters realized they’d stumbled onto a gruesome crime scene. Not only had two victims been beheaded by Richard Cottingham, but their hands were also cut off, and their killer had apparently set them on fire before fleeing the room. One victim was later identified as Deedeh Goodarzi, a 22-year-old sex worker. The other victim remains unidentified to this day, and tragically, she may have been as young as 16 years old.
FacebookDeedeh Goodarzi, a sex worker who Richard Cottingham murdered.
The baffled police initially had few clues to follow. The killer had apparently registered at the hotel under a fake name with a fake address — Carl Wilson of Merlin, New Jersey (a town that doesn’t even exist) — and hotel employees had hardly interacted with him. Some offered a possible description of a man in his 30s, about 5’10” and 175 pounds, with brown hair.
But detectives wondered whether the description really matched the man who was staying in room 417. “We don’t know if he’s the one who rented the room,” Deputy Chief Richard Nicastro said at the time. “We’re not ruling out the possibility that two men could have been involved.”
APFirst responders removing the Torso Killer’s victims from the Travel Inn Motor Hotel near Times Square in 1979.
Mere months later, on May 5, 1980, the body of 19-year-old sex worker Valerie Ann Street was discovered at a Quality Inn in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. Her body showed clear signs of torture, and she had been bitten numerous times and handcuffed before being strangled to death. At first, it wasn’t clear that this case was linked to Richard Cottingham. But as it would later be revealed, the Times Square Ripper didn’t limit his hunting ground to New York — and he had accidentally left a fingerprint on Street’s handcuffs.
Later that same month, on May 15th, 25-year-old sex worker Jean Reyner was found strangled in a burning room at New York’s Seville Hotel. Like Street, Reyner’s body showed clear signs of torture, and like Goodarzi and Jane Doe, she had been the victim of mutilation. This time, the killer had cut off Reyner’s breasts and placed them elsewhere in the room.
The Torso Killer seemed to be escalating. But just days later, on May 22nd, police were able to apprehend him back at the same Quality Inn in New Jersey where he murdered Street — when his would-be victim, 19-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell, screamed for help. Fortunately, housekeeping staff heard her. Police arrested 33-year-old Richard Cottingham at the scene.
But a burning question remained: Who was Richard Cottingham?
The Double Life Of Richard Cottingham, The Torso Killer
NorthJersey.comA computer operator and a father of three, Richard Cottingham initially seemed like an unlikely killer.
Born in the Bronx, New York, on November 25, 1946, Richard Cottingham lived an outwardly normal life. He’d spent his childhood in New Jersey, married his wife Janet in 1970, and welcomed three children. At the time of Cottingham’s arrest, he was living in New Jersey with his family and spending his days working in Manhattan as a computer operator.
But there were signs that he was living a double life. He had his own apartment in New York City that he told Janet he needed for when he worked late nights. And he spent a lot of time in the family home’s basement, where authorities would later find “trophies” from some of his victims, along with pornographic artwork, handcuffs, and “slave” collars.
Richard Cottingham had a clear obsession with bondage, and he had also had multiple extramarital affairs. Janet had even filed for divorce shortly before her husband’s arrest, accusing him of “extreme cruelty.”
Still, the extent of Cottingham’s crimes shocked New York and New Jersey. O’Dell, the teen who’d survived her encounter with the Torso Killer at the Quality Inn, described in chilling detail how he tortured his victims.
Walter Leporati/Getty ImagesNew York City’s Times Square had a seedy reputation in the 1970s and the 1980s, and serial killer Richard Cottingham gleefully took advantage of that while hunting for potential victims.
“He told me to shut up, that I was a whore and I had to be punished,” O’Dell testified during one of Cottingham’s trials. “He said the other girls took it and I had to take it, too. He said that uncountable times.”
While Richard Cottingham was on trial in the early 1980s for his four known murder victims, it emerged that he had also claimed a fifth victim, an X-ray technician named Maryanne (sometimes spelled Maryann) Carr. Some sources claim that Carr was 26 when she died, while others say that she was 28. Her body had been found at the infamous Quality Inn back in 1977, but it wasn’t immediately clear that she’d been the victim of a serial killer.
All of the murders described during the trials were horrific, and many people were glad that Cottingham was no longer on the streets. But what drove him to kill in the first place? Cottingham later described his motives as “mainly psychological” and said that he saw murder as “a game.”
“I was able to get almost any woman to do whatever I wanted them to do, psychologically,” he said, decades after he was first found guilty of murder. “It’s God-like, almost. You’re in complete control of somebody’s destiny.”
After his initial conviction in 1984, Richard Cottingham was sent to prison for the rest of his life. But he didn’t stay out of the news. Decades later, it was revealed that the Torso Killer had murdered many more than five victims.
The Later Confessions Of The Notorious Times Square Ripper
New Jersey Department of CorrectionsRichard Cottingham has claimed to have killed over 100 women.
Though he’s best known for killing sex workers near Times Square, Richard Cottingham killed whenever he had the opportunity, and New York clearly wasn’t his only hunting ground. Thanks to a dogged New Jersey detective, the Times Square Ripper has confessed to a number of additional murders.
Haunted by a handful of unsolved New Jersey homicides, Robert Anzilotti, the Bergen County chief of detectives, began to wonder if Cottingham had killed more people in New Jersey than police knew about.
“I thought he could be responsible for some,” Anzilotti said in 2021, explaining that while the details of the murders were different, the timing matched. “His name had floated around in the lore of Bergen County cold cases.”
So the detective started spending time with the Torso Killer. He brought Richard Cottingham to his office and offered him pizza and card games. Though Cottingham resisted the detective’s questions about cold cases at first, he slowly began to reveal details of some of his past crimes.
Thanks to years of Anzilotti’s persistence, Richard Cottingham eventually confessed to killing 29-year-old Nancy Schiava Vogel in 1967, 13-year-old Jackie Harp in 1968, 18-year-old Irene Blase and 15-year-old Denise Falasca in 1969, and 17-year-old Mary Ann Pryor and 16-year-old Lorraine Kelly in 1974.
Public DomainA newspaper clipping about the murders of Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly, which remained unsolved for decades.
In a sign of things to come, Cottingham had kidnapped Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly while they were looking for a ride to a mall. Instead of taking them there, he brought them to a hotel room, held them prisoner, drowned them in a bathtub, and dumped their bodies in the woods.
“He’s younger when all this is going on in Bergen County,” Anzilotti explained. “I think it was just an evolution in his killing.”
For a while, authorities believed his total number of killings stood at 11. But then, in 2022, the Torso Killer confessed to murdering five additional women: 21-year-old Mary Beth Heinz in 1972, 23-year-old Laverne Moye in 1972, Sheila Heiman in 1973, 18-year-old Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves in 1973, and 23-year-old Diane Cusick in 1968. This brought the official total to 16.
It remains to be seen if other victims’ names will come to light, but Richard Cottingham, now in his 70s, has claimed to have murdered over 100 victims.
After this look at Richard Cottingham, the “Torso Killer,” read up on Ed Kemper, the “Co-Ed Killer,” and Rodney Alcala, the “Dating Game Killer.”
