Richard Cottingham Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Age, Biography and Wiki

Richard Cottingham (Richard Francis Cottingham) was born on 25 November, 1946 in New York City, U.S., is a killer. Discover Richard Cottingham's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is He in this year and how He spends money? Also learn how He earned most of networth at the age of 77 years old?

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 25 November. He is a member of famous killer with the age 77 years old group.

Richard Cottingham Height, Weight & Measurements

At 77 years old, Richard Cottingham height not available right now. We will update Richard Cottingham's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible.

Who Is Richard Cottingham's Wife?

His wife is Janet Cottingham (m. 1970-1981)

Richard Cottingham Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2022-2023. So, how much is Richard Cottingham worth at the age of 77 years old? Richard Cottingham’s income source is mostly from being a successful killer. He is from New York. We have estimated Richard Cottingham's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets.

Richard Cottingham Social Network

Timeline

In December 2022, Cottingham was convicted of Diane Cusick's 1968 murder and, under a non-prosecution agreement, officially admitted to killing another four women during 1972–1973 in Long Island, New York: Mary Beth Heinz, Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman, and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.

In 2022, Cottingham was arraigned from his prison hospital bed for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick in Long Island, New York. Authorities believed it to be, thus far, the oldest criminal case to be solved and prosecuted by direct DNA evidence. He pleaded guilty in a December court appearance, and also officially admitted killing four other women in Long Island during 1972–1973: Mary Beth Heinz, Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman, and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.

In April 2021, Cottingham confessed to the unsolved August 9–11, 1974, double-abduction, rape, and forcible drowning murders of Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17, in Montvale, one of New Jersey's most notorious cold cases. The confession was extracted by Detective Anzilotti weeks before his retirement and was facilitated by historian 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, counseling him to make the confession. Anzilotti had spent 15 years interviewing Cottingham, working toward the confession, which raised the total number of victims officially attributed to Cottingham to 11 at that time. He claims to have committed between 85 and 100 murders.

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office (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, made it public, with BCPO cooperation, in a community meeting in Midland Park, the site of Jacalyn Harp's murder. Anzilotti and BCPO subsequently confirmed the "exceptional closures" of the three schoolgirl murders from 1968 and 1969.

Starting in 2014, Cottingham confidentially admitted to Detective Robert Anzilotti of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, New Jersey, the murders of three teenage females in 1968 and 1969:

In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. Then during 2014–2017, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, he confessed to murdering three New Jersey schoolgirls in 1968–1969. In 2021, he pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping, raping and drowning of Lorraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor. In 2022, Cottingham officially confessed to the 1970 murder of Lorraine McGraw, under a non-prosecution agreement. His additional confession to a 1974 murder was discounted by Rockland County police.

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).

In the early hours of May 22, 1980, Cottingham picked up 18-year-old Leslie Ann O'Dell, who was soliciting on the corner of Manhattan's Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. At some point, she agreed to have sex with him for money. Around dawn, they checked into the same Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn where he had, 17 days earlier, left Valerie Street's handcuffed body under a bed to be discovered by a housekeeper. 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." O'Dell's muffled cries of pain became so loud that the motel staff, already spooked by the murder 17 days earlier, called police and then rushed to the room demanding that Cottingham open the door. Cottingham was apprehended in the hallway by arriving police officers. When arrested, he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade knife, replica pistols, and a stockpile of prescription pills.

During the early 1980s, Cottingham was convicted of five murders – in two separate New Jersey trials in 1981 and 1982, and in a single New York trial in 1984 for three murders. Cottingham was apparently "forensically aware" in the era before DNA analysis. In the 13-year period during which he is known to have committed at least 17 murders, 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. He pleaded innocent and for decades insisted he was being "framed", until admitting in 2009 that he had actually perpetrated those five murders.

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.

Cottingham was convicted of five 1977–1980 murders in a series of three trials during 1981–1984, two in New Jersey and one in New York:

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, then completed the divorce after his 1981 conviction for murder.

In August 2022, with a non-prosecution agreement, officials in Rockland County, New York, corroborated and accepted Cottingham's confession to the murder of 26-year-old Lorraine McGraw, who was beaten and killed March 1, 1970.

On October 3, 1969, Cottingham was charged and convicted of drunk driving in New York City, and sentenced to a $50 fine (equivalent to $400 in 2021). 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 or ten days in jail. He paid the fine. On September 4, 1973, Cottingham was arrested in New York City for robbery, oral sodomy and sex 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 a prostitute. Once again, the victim did not appear in further proceedings, and the case was dismissed.

On February 15, 1968, Cottingham killed his second known victim. After failing to return home from a trip to buy shoes at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York, 23-year old Diane Cusick was found raped, beaten, and strangled to death in the back seat of her car, parked near the mall. Cottingham was not charged with this murder until June 2022, when he was implicated by DNA.

Cottingham committed his first known murder when he was 20 years old, although he claims to have started as a teen. 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 nearby 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.

After his 1964 graduation, Cottingham began working for Metropolitan Life, where his father was a vice-president, at the firm's headquarters office in Manhattan, New York City. He started in the mail room and eventually became a mainframe computer operator after taking computer courses. In October 1966, he became a computer operator for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in New York, where he worked until his 1980 arrest. At Blue Cross, Cottingham worked in an office with Rodney Alcala, the fugitive child molester and future "Dating Game" serial killer who lived in New York during 1968–1971 under the alias "John Berger". Neither man has claimed to have been aware of the other, nor is there any evidence they were familiar with each other prior to their respective arrests.

Richard Francis Cottingham (born November 25, 1946) is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 17 young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. His confirmed killings include nine convictions and a further eight official confessions under non-prosecution agreements. He was nicknamed The Torso Killer and The Times Square Killer, since his crimes often targeted prostitutes and included mutilation. In 2009, decades after his first five murder convictions in 1981–1984, Cottingham told a journalist that he had committed at least 80 to 100 "perfect murders" of women in various regions of the United States. Four surviving abduction-rape victims testified against Cottingham; he was convicted in three of the cases and acquitted in one. He has been incarcerated in New Jersey state prisons since 1980, and has accumulated multiple life sentences.

Cottingham was born on November 25, 1946, in Mott Haven, Bronx, New York City, the first of four children (he has three sisters). In 1948, his family moved to Dumont, New Jersey, and in 1956 to River Vale, New Jersey, where he began his fascination with bondage pornography. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, New Jersey.

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