41°
Cottingham, now 76, has been serving multiple life sentences in South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, NJ, for more than four decades for killing six Garden State women between 1967 and 1980.
He's spent a considerable part of that time lately claiming he's committed several other killings.
“For a long time now I have been trying to understand the darkness that enveloped my soul during my youth,” Cottingham told Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year. “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.”
Thanks to advances in DNA technology, prosecutors on Long Island charged Cottingham this past summer with the 1968 rape and murder of dance teacher Diane Cusick, 23, of New Hyde Park.
Cottingham initially refused to admit killing Cusick in the parking lot of the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream. He's not only had a change of heart in that case -- he's pleading guilty to four other Long Island murders, as well, Newsday reported on Sunday, Dec. 4.
The plea hearing is scheduled via teleconference in Mineola on Monday.
SEE: 'Torso Killer' Richard Cottingham to admit to 5 Nassau killings, sources tell Newsday
Cottingham, who lived in Lodi and worked as a computer tech for Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan, long ago confessed to killing two women whose mutilated bodies — missing their heads and hands — were found at a motel near Times Square in December 1979.
It ended up giving the married father of three his gruesome nickname -- and made him the subject of a Netflix series released nearly a year ago.
Cottingham was finally stopped in the spring of 1980 after a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights hotel heard a woman screaming and called police. They found Cottingham's 18-year-old victim with knife wounds and bite marks but still alive.
Juries ended up convicting Cottingham of five New Jersey murders.
Retired Bergen County (NJ) Chief of Detectives Robert Anzilotti got Cottingham to plead guilty to several other New Jersey killings.
The first involved 13-year-old Jackie Harp of Midland Park, NJ, who was abducted as she walked home from band practice and strangled in July 1968.
Cottingham also admitted killing Irene Blase, 18, of Bogota, who went missing from Hackensack on April 7, 1969 and was found strangled in Saddle River.
He also pleaded guilty to killing Denise Falasca, 15, of Closter, who went missing from Westwood on July 14, 1969. Her body was found the next morning by the side of a road next to a cemetery in Saddle Brook. She, too, had been strangled.
The final confession secured by Anzilotti came last year, when Cottingham admitted killing North Bergen teenagers Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly in 1974.
The burly killer said he picked the girls up at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus and brought them to a local hotel where he raped and tortured them for three days before drowning them.
SEE: A Detective's Work Ends: Lodi Serial Killer Admits Raping, Drowning North Bergen Teens In 1974
Peter Vronsky, author of “American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950 to 2000,” said Cottingham told him he’d also killed anywhere from 85 to 100 other females.
This past June, Cottingham entered a not-guilty plea to murder in the death of Cusick, a divorced single mom who worked as a dance instructor.
Cusick’s loved ones said she’d gone to the mall the night of Feb. 15, 1968, to buy a pair of dancing shoes, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in announcing the indictment.
When she didn’t return home, her parents drove to the mall and found her Plymouth Valiant in the lot – and her body in the back seat, Donnelly said. Her mouth was covered with adhesives, her hands bound, the district attorney said, adding that Cusick had been strangled.
A retest of DNA by the Nassau County medical examiner produced a match – Cottingham – paving the way for closure, Donnelly said.
"It was only through advances in DNA technology that the NCDA and our partners at the Nassau County Police Department, could solve this 54-year-old cold case and identify a suspect in Ms. Cusick’s tragic death,” the DA said this past June. “We make a promise to her surviving daughter today: We will bring her mother’s killer to justice."
That day comes tomorrow.
SEE: Notorious NJ Serial Killer Charged With Murder Of Dance Teacher At Popular Long Island Mall
Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates.
