Richard Cottingham

Woman befriends Mother’s Killer For Closure

It was a fridgid Manhattan night in December of 1979, and Peter Vronsky found himself stranded in the city for a few days. Having run out of money, he decided to stay at a seedy hotel on 42nd Street, where he had a strange encounter in the elevator with a man who had held up the car on another floor. When the car reached his floor, a pale sandy-haired man carrying a bulky duffel bag got on.  When Vronsky exited the elevator, leaving the man behind, he entered a hotel hallway littered with ashes and an odor he describes as burning chicken feathers. He later discovered that a hideously gruesome scene had taken place in one of the rooms: two women's torsos on burning twin beds. One was prostitute Deedeh Goodarzi, the other has never been identified; their heads and hands were never found. The man on the elevator would later be identified as Richard Cottingham.

Vronsky — now, in his Sixties, part of Ryerson University’s History Department — has been fascinated with Dick Cottingham ever since. Cottingham was in his early thirties when he was arrested. He was newly divorced and living in a New Jersey suburb in the basement of a nondescript row of identical tan houses. He had three children and worked the 3 to 11 p.m. shift as a computer operator at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance company on Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Like many killers, he was the picture of boring normality on the outside, but between work and family life, he was a frequent visitor to the Times Square sex clubs and bars where he hunted his victims. Although he preyed on sex workers, like Deedeh Goodarzi, this was not a pattern; he also killed moms, career women, and, most frighteningly, a 13-year-old girl. His earliest recorded confession dates to the late sixties, but Vronsky says Cottingham claims he was murdering women as a teenager in Jersey, when he was a high school jock with slicked-back blond hair and a tough wry smile.

Cottingham himself doesn’t attempt to justify his actions, saying he’s been trying to understand the darkness that enveloped his soul during his youth. Remorse back then wasn’t part of his thought process. When the sun went down, and the moon came up, the animal form that is in all of us came out and controlled my actions. Porn addiction did it. Childhood abuse is the cause… There’s always a scapegoat with these animals. A particularly sadistic killer, Cottingham raped and tortured his victims before murdering them. 

After decades of evading suspicion, Cottingham was arrested on May 22, 1980, after picking up 18-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell in Manhattan. Cottingham took O’Dell to the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn in New Jersey, where he had left the remains of his last victim, 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street, just weeks before. Police foiled his undoudtedly horrific plans for O’Dell when her screams were heard by hotel staff, who managed to intervene and save the woman’s life. 

In a series of trials between 1981 and 1984, Cottingham was convicted of five murders and sentenced to hundreds of years in prison; pleading innocent to all with the hope that his family might believe him. Until recently, his only known victims were Street; radiologist MaryAnn Carr, who he left behind in the parking lot of that same hotel in 1977; Deedeh Goodarzi and her unidentified friend; and 25-year-old Jean Mary Ann Reyner. 

And he’s remained pretty quiet over the last four decades, declining most interviews and shunning press of any kind, with the exception of Vronsky for his book, American Werewolf: The Life and Crimes of Richard F. Cottingham, the Last Serial Killer on the Left. Vronsky says Cottingham is an unusual serial killer. Coming from the golden age of serial murderers, yet few people have heard of him. He was busy killing while Ted Bundy was still running around in big boy underpants. 

In 1978, a year before those grisly murders in the Manhattan hotel room, Deedeh Goodarzi was visting a Trenton, New Jersey, adoption agency giving up her newborn daughter. Decades later, Jennifer Weiss found herself at the neighboring prison, confronting the man who had left her birth mother brutally murdered and dismembered in that burning Times Square hotel room. She was face to face with Richard Cottingham, also known as the Torso Killer, a man whose brutality toward his victims shocked even the most seasoned of cops.

Weiss learned of her mother’s identity in 2003, when she was in her early twenties. She yearned for more information on her birth mother. She was expecting to get the other half of the locket like Annie… and sadly it did not work out that way.

Weiss, determined to find the pieces (maybe that’s not the best choice of words) but she was eager of her mother’s life and where her remains were, arranged to meet her killer in his home for the past many decades, prison. Hopefully, he had the answers she was looking for. She was shocked to discover that she wasn’t scared of the man before her, who resembled a shitbag Santa Claus completely gone to seed.

Cottingham, who is now 75, has spent the last four decades in relative obscurity at South Woods State Prison. Watching hours of police shows and crime dramas behind bars as he slipped into his seventies and his health headed south. Over the past decade, however, the killer, who was convicted of eight murders, has slowly confessed to a string of cold cases. How those confessions came about, however, depends on who you ask. Former Bergen County Prosecutor's Office Chief of Detectives Robert Anzilotti claims he was responsible for wearing Cottingham down over the years, while Weiss and her friend, serial killer expert Dr. Peter Vronsky, contend that their unlikely, and uneasy relationship with Cottingham helped get the cogs greased and turning. Cottingham however credits both and even appears to pit his confidants against each other from behind bars.

Recognition aside, it was not easy to extract confessions from Cottingham. Whether it's his poor memory, the police department's interdepartmental politics, or Cottingham's lust for manipulation, it's a proverbial race against time to get his alleged crimes down on paper - according to Cottingham's own account, he still has some 70 to 90 murders to go. Damn. Now we crime hounds here on Homicide Inc. know damn well that you can’t trust a serial killer as far as you can shoot them out of a cannon. They ALL claim to have killed WAY more folks than they’ve been charged with or suspected of. So lets assume even if he’s added a 75% braggers tax to his claims- that’s still a morgue load of murders. 

While Cottingham rotted in prison and Vronsky plumbed the depths of killers’ psyches, Jennifer Weiss wondered who, exactly, she was. She found out she was adopted when she overheard one of her siblings telling a friend. When she was 12, she started wondering in earnest who her real parents were. What if her real mom was an upgrade? At first, her mother told her that her biological mom died in a motorcycle accident. A few years later, she said it was a fire. When she was 16, her mom finally told her: Her birth mom was a sex worker. 

At 23, Weiss reached out to that adoption agency in Trenton to get access to her files and her original birth certificate. They called her back and asked her to come in. She was excited. But when she got there, they gave her a pile of horrific newspaper articles.

Goodarzi’s name isn’t listed in the files or on Weiss’ birth certificate, but they do bear her mother’s street name: Crystal Jeanne Roberts. And the birth certificate reads  another alias “Ghaniya Jaqualine Roberts,” 

Given the aliases and the lack of available DNA — Goodarzi’s body is buried in a mass grave on New York’s Hart Island. With the info she has gathered, Weiss has managed to piece together a truncated history of Goodzari’s life — from growing up in Kuwait to relocating to New York at age 14 with her father to entering the sex trade.

After her parents both died and she survived breast cancer, she decided to face her darkest fears and confront the beast   head on. Weiss wrote a letter to Richard Cottingham in which she wanted to answer one question: Where is her mother's head? He answered that question - more on that later - but their relationship didn’t stop there. Weiss continued to write to Cottingham, a most unlikely pen pal, talked to him on the phone, and eventually even visited him in prison. That same year, she approached Vronsky after reading about his encounter with Cottingham, and the two decided to work together on a new project: They wanted to get this notorious murderer to confess, once and for all, to all of his crimes. Together, they built a website called NewJerseyGirlMurders.com, where they list unsolved cases across the state, which they would then bring to Cottingham's attention in hopes of jogging his memory.

Vronsky’s rapport with Cottingham is often just reminiscing about old New York — like where to get the best pastrami in 1977. This often leads to Cottingham blurting out where he left bodies on his way to get a sandwich at his favorite restaurant. His memories triggered by mundane discussions.

When it comes to having discussions like this with the man who dismembered her mother and claims to have brutalized dozens more, Weiss does her best to play it cool. “I was Raised on Stephen King novels, she’s not squeamish. She takes what Cottingham says with a grain of salt, unsure of what he rambles on about is the truth or not.

Still, Weiss’ pain is evident when she discusses her mother. Like the time when she listened in horror as Cottingham described how he removed Goodarzi’s head. The anguish is palpable.

Richard Cottingham seems somewhat infatuated with Weiss, calling her generous, wild, brave, beautiful and very vulnerable, like a bird with an injured wing. Weiss is aware how weird it is that she regularly talks to a serial killer — one who killed her mother, no less, but stresses that they are not friends.

In 2017 when Cottingham finally revealed info to Weiss about where he buried Goodarzi’s head, she contacted the Fort Lee Police Department. Former Bergen County Chief of Police Robert Anzilotti — who has been on Cottingham’s case for about 17 years then met with Weiss and Vronsky to put together a search team. Cottingham suggested he buried the severed head under a prominent New York landmark.

With Dick Cottingham in tow, Police conducted a search, complete with ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs - After two days, however, the authorities came up empty-handed, and Weiss and Vronsky were frustrated. Weiss wanted police to give Cottingham more freedom to search (she claims he was not allowed to move freely around the crime scene, which Anzilotti denies); Vronsky wanted special dogs used in archeological digs. Anzilotti says they did their best - it was decades ago and they were dealing with a faded memory.

Although Anzilotti, Weiss, and Vronsky have been in near-constant communication about Cottingham’s case since 2017, they don’t entirely agree on who got him to come clean. In true detective fashion, Anzilotti insists cockily that he interrogates, whereas Weiss and Vronsky socialize with Cottingham. But adds that he’s always supported the two once it became clear that they were both important to Richard.

If you ask Cottingham about his relationship with Det Anzilotti, he’ll give it to you straight: He respects the former fuzz, but he’s in charge of what he chooses to reveal. It’s a cat and mouse relationship and the mouse prevails most of the time, despite Anzilotti’s relentless pedal to the metal pressure. Cottingham says he feels at some level they became friends yet always aware of the line between them.

Anzilotti on the other hand wouldn’t exactly call Cottingham a pal — saying he loathes him and finds him to be without a soul. 

Anzilotti started getting into cold cases in the early 2000s, before there was an official department. It was his interactions with New Jersey’s brutally infamous murderer Richard Kuklinski (a.k.a. the Iceman) that led him to Cottingham in 2004. I know you’re wondering where the nickname ‘Iceman’ came from. Well despite having done all manner of nasty things — he got his nickname by freezing a victim to conceal the cause of death. Kuklinski was disgusted by Cottingham’s crimes against women, some of which closely resembled some of Anzilotti’s cold cases. I  love it when these hardened violent criminals call out other hardened vilolent criminals for THEIR horrific crimes. Since the two baddies were at the same facility, Kuklinski fed Anzilotti intel about Cottingham’s illegal gambling ring he had going in the pokey, and then Anzilotti made a bust. 

Anzilotti let Cottingham sweat it out in the hole for a few days and then introduced himself. He explained to Cottingham that the reason he was in solitary was because of Anzelotti and he’d continue to fuck with him until he started talking. Just like in the movies!! Cottingham agreed to talk — with the understanding that Anzilotti would never mess with him again.

What followed were six grueling years of conversations that, for the most part, came to naught. When it came to getting actual confessions, Cottingham kept his mouth shut. He demanded impossible things. He wanted all confessions kept out of the press. Finally, in 2010, Cottingham broke down and confessed to the 1967 murder of Nancy Schiava Vogel, a 29-year-old married mother of two who was found strangled and naked in her car in Ridgefield Park.

Cottingham says he had always planned on confessing at some point after he was found guilty of earlier crimes. 

When Anzilotti arranged for the confession of the Vogel murder to happen after-hours at the courthouse so the press wouldn’t be there, he did his best not to spook Cottingham out of future confessions. He started sweating the second the tape recorder was switched on and it didn’t help that Vogel’s children were in the courtroom. The judge made [Richard] turn around, look at the victim’s family, and apologize. Cottingham turned white, sweating profusely like a British Prince with an underage chick in a disco. That would be the last time for nearly 2 years before Cottingham agreed to get back on track and talk. 

Meanwhile Anzilotti endured hours of poker games with the serial killer featuring his favorite pizza from nearby Dumont. Although he was an animal, Anzilotti had to make Cottingham feel like a human in order to get him to spill. I think we all wonder why killers don’t just come out and come clean on everything. Like what does this guy have to lose? Why doesn’t he just tell everything? And perhaps the only answer is the only thing he has control over is what comes out of his mouth. They were controlling when they killed and this is is an extension of that power.

For proof of that, just look at his crimes. Cottingham has told both Anzilotti and Vronsky about how he got his kicks — not necessarily by murdering women, but by getting them to do what he wanted, whether it be sex, crossing state lines, or getting sex workers into his car without money changing hands. Anzilotti says that Cottingham still plays this game in prison - whether with the policeman himself, Weiss, Vronsky, or any reporter who approaches him. This is evidenced by the fact that he signs his emails "Richie" after more than one letter, and that he plays everyone off against each other in his interview responses.

False confessions are a known phenomenon among serial killers, but those who have come into contact with Cottingham think his are credible. He’s able to recall details only police would know, after all. If you do the math, it’s very possible that he’s killed between 80 and 100. [He confessed to killing Nancy Vogel] in April of 1967, and wasn’t caught until 1980. So that’s 13 years that he was out there preying on women.

Things got even more complicated after the next trio of confessions: the strangulation deaths of 18-year-old Irene Blase in 1969, 15-year-old Denise Falasca the same year and 13-year-old Jackie Harp in 1968. Anzilotti says he pieced together the girls' identities based on scraps of information Cottingham dropped over the years: Blase's resemblance to a TV actress the killer liked, and his nickname for Harp, Helmet Head (she had a bowl cut). Through an agreement with the families, Anzilotti was able to close these cases without going to court or informing the press - that is until 2020. Enter Vronsky and Weiss.

Vronsky says he and Weiss learned of the confessions through a network of victims' families and friends who were frustrated because they couldn’t talk about the murders. In some communities where the murders occurred, he says, innocent men whom the public linked to the crimes still lived with the burden of suspicion. After receiving permission from Anzilotti to write about the confessions in one of his books, Vronsky - at the behest of Harp's family and friends - held a press conference of sorts in Midland Park, New Jersey, in December 2019 to announce that Cottingham was behind those infamous murders. Anzilotti had spent years bending to Cottingham's press-shy will, only to have the dam break wide open

Oddly, though, Cottingham did not completely shut down after that - largely, Vronsky says, because of Weiss, who is a kind of 'vessel' or 'vehicle' for his confessions. The daughter of one of his many victims, through whom he atones for the murders of others. Confessions through her were now what Cottingham had set as 'his price’.

As a result, there is serious disagreement over who is responsible for the next two 2021 confessions: the 1974 murders of 17-year-old Mary Ann Pryor and her friend, 16-year-old Lorraine Kelly. Cottingham kidnapped the girls as they were shopping for swim suits at the Paramus Mall, took them to a hotel and drowned them in the bathtub after raping them. Cottingham had hinted at the crime during his years with Anzilotti, but hesitated to confess to them officially, saying it was a particularly notable local incident.

Vronsky says Cottingham told him in 2020 he was willing to confess to a series of about 16 murders in New York and New Jersey as a favor to the writer, who was working on his book, and to Weiss, who dreamed of being a public figure and an artist. He asked to be allowed to make the confessions on camera while Weiss was in the room. Vronsky says Anzilotti was initially "intrigued" by the idea, but then backed out. Anzilotti remembers it differently and says he was never on board.

After much deliberation, a new deal was soon reached, that after Cottingham pleaded guilty to the two New Jersey murders, he would then confess to a series of crimes he committed in New York — provided he be hosted outside the prison on the “neutral ground” of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Weiss and Vronsky be in attendance. 

While Cottingham did confess to the murders in April 2021 — he’s currently awaiting sentencing — Anzilotti claims that the confessions were a retirement present from Cottingham to him after he hung up his badge in May 2021. Admitting they have a strange relationship. Cottingham has a bizarre pride in him. 

Over the last few months, Cottingham’s health has been on the decline, as he’s been shuttled from the prison infirmary to the hospital which amounts to a retirement home for criminals. Currently, Vronsky and Weiss claim, they’ve gotten at least eight more confessions out of Cottingham to murders he committed in New York — and they’re just waiting to make them official. Although retired, Anzilotti says he also has a few more in the works.

But, Vronsky and Weiss say, they hit a snag when it came to negotiating with police authorities in both Bergen and New York City. Ultimately it all boils down to where Cottingham will make the confessions and to whom. Vronsky wants him and Weiss in a room "on neutral ground, outside the confines of the prison," as Cottingham's terms read. Given Cottingham's declining health, however, this seems unlikely. 

For their part, the New York State Police can not say much at this point, as these possible confessions are an open and active case.

What everyone agrees on, however, is that these confessions, if they are to take place, must happen pretty soon. Vronsky is more than frustrated, as is Weiss, who just wants to stop thinking about dead women and spend time with her kids. It’s the people vs. Richard Cottingham. Weiss says Cottingham doesn’t want to deal with the public. He doesn’t want to apologize to anyone anymore. He's not confessing for humanity, he's literally just doing it for Weiss. Perhaps that infatuation will continue to keep his tongue well-lubed and spilling the details that so many families need.

Anzilotti, for his part, is ironic. When he spoke to Cottingham the other day, he told him the old chestnut: You could die tomorrow. Close these cases. Do it for the families. Cottingham just looked at him and asked,  “Well, what are you gonna do for me?”