The Torso Killer’s Twisted Legacy: What Richard Cottingham’s Life Looks Like Today
In a courtroom photo from April 2021, Richard Cottingham looks more like a kindly old grandfather than one of America’s most sadistic serial killers. With his bushy white beard and frail demeanor, he hardly resembles the ruthless predator once known as the “Torso Killer.” But beneath that seemingly harmless exterior lies the mind of a man who spent more than a decade terrorizing the streets of New York and New Jersey.
Between 1967 and 1980, Cottingham brutally tortured, raped, and murdered at least 11 women—though he claims the real number is closer to 100. Many of his victims were sex workers, lured into his nightmarish world before meeting an unthinkable fate. He earned the chilling nickname “Times Square Torso Ripper” after two of his victims were discovered decapitated, dismembered, and set on fire in a seedy motel near Times Square in 1979.
Even as he withers away behind bars, his dark past continues to unfold. Investigators are racing against time to link him to more unsolved murders before his health fails completely. And in early 2021, he finally confessed to the decades-old murder of two teenage girls, offering a small semblance of closure to families haunted by his crimes.
The Double Life of a Killer
Unlike many infamous serial killers, Cottingham’s childhood was unremarkable. Born in the Bronx in 1946, he grew up in a stable, Catholic home in New Jersey. A quiet and introverted child, he struggled to make friends but found solace in running cross-country. After high school, he entered the corporate world, working as a computer operator for insurance companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, where he remained until his arrest.
By all outward appearances, Cottingham led a normal life. He married in 1970, had three children, and maintained a steady job. But beneath the surface, he was harboring a monstrous secret. His violent urges escalated over the years, culminating in a series of gruesome murders that left authorities baffled.
His first known victim, Nancy Schiava Vogel, was a 29-year-old mother found strangled inside her car in 1967. As the years passed, his crimes became more horrifying. In 1979, firefighters stumbled upon a chilling crime scene at a Times Square motel—two women, brutally mutilated and burned beyond recognition, their heads and hands missing. The dismembered bodies of 26-year-old x-ray technician Maryann Carr and 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street were later linked to him as well.
Cottingham’s reign of terror finally came to an end in May 1980. After luring a sex worker to a New Jersey motel, he subjected her to the same torture as his previous victims. But this time, her screams were heard. The hotel staff called the police, and they arrived just in time to catch him in the act. A fingerprint analysis linked him to multiple murders, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
The ‘Odd Friendship’ That Led to New Confessions
For years, Cottingham remained tight-lipped about the full extent of his crimes. That changed when he developed an unexpected relationship with detective Robert Anzilotti, a man determined to close cold cases linked to the Torso Killer.
“They formed a very strange bond,” journalist Steve Janoski, who covered Cottingham’s hearings, explains. “Cottingham looked at Anzilotti almost like a surrogate son. Sometimes he was proud of him, other times he refused to speak to him.”
But that twisted bond paid off. In 2014, Cottingham admitted to murdering three teenage girls in the late 1960s. Then, in 2021, as a ‘retirement gift’ to Anzilotti, he confessed to the 1974 double-murder of Lorraine Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17, two friends who vanished while shopping for bathing suits. At his hearing, Cottingham showed no emotion—his responses limited to a monotone series of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers.
A Killer’s Final Days
Today, Richard Cottingham is a shadow of the monster he once was. Confined to a wheelchair and in rapidly declining health, he remains incarcerated at New Jersey State Prison. While his name never reached the notoriety of Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy, his crimes were just as savage—if not worse.
In December 2022, he admitted to five additional murders from the late 1960s and early 1970s. That same day, he received another life sentence for the murder of Diane Cusick, a Long Island woman killed in 1968. The plea deal granted him immunity from prosecution for the four other murders, ensuring that he will remain in prison until his last breath.
For decades, Cottingham played a deadly game of cat and mouse, evading justice while leaving a trail of mutilated bodies behind him. But in the end, time has caught up with the Torso Killer. His confessions may bring some closure to grieving families, but they also serve as a haunting reminder of the horrors he inflicted. And as investigators continue to dig into the past, one question remains: Just how many more victims did he leave behind?
