Documentary maker Joe Berlinger is looking at the crimes of Richard Cottingham in his latest Netflix documentary, Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer.
Following on from the first series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, the new three-part series will focus on “the danger and depravity of NYC’s Times Square in the ’70s and ’80s – a place that made it possible for one man to commit unthinkable acts”.
So, who is Richard Cottingham? And where is he now?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Who is Richard Cottingham?
Richard Cottingham is an American serial killer from New Jersey, who committed crimes in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980.
He worked for his father at Metropolitan Life from 1964 to 1966 as a computer operator. In October 1966, he went to work as a computer operator at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in New York until his arrest in 1980.
After the dismemberment and decapitation of two victims on 2nd December 1979 in a Hell’s Kitchen hotel on W 42nd Street and Tenth Avenue in the vicinity of Times Square, he was nicknamed The Torso Killer and Times Square Torso Ripper.
He tortured and murdered sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi, aged 22, and a still-unidentified teenage victim.
He was eventually apprehended on 22nd May 1980 in a New Jersey motel in the act of torturing a teenage sex worker he had lured and driven to the location from New York City.
In 2010, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. Under immunity, he confessed 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.
Officially, Cottingham killed 11 people, but he claims to have committed between 85 and 100 murders.
He had a working knowledge of forensics, and in the 13-year period in which he is known to have committed 11 murders, only one fingerprint belonging to him was recovered.
Where is Richard Cottingham now?
Cottingham is currently incarcerated in New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey.
He has claimed he was responsible for up to 100 murders, and authorities in New York and New Jersey have linked him to 11 so far, but it’s believed the death toll is higher.
Cottingham has been in prison since 1981 but confessed to three of the murders, dating back to the late 1960s, in 2020.
Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer is available to stream on Netflix on Wednesday 29th December.
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