Original subtitles

♪

♪

[Anzilotti] In the year 2000,

I was assigned a series of 12 unsolved murders.

There were a number of girls

that were either last seen hitchhiking,

or had been picked up by a stranger...

in and around Bergen County.

I am born and raised in Bergen County.

This is my home, and this is my community.

And these cases hit home.

It absolutely became my mission to

try and solve these cases,

and bring some justice and some closure

to the people that were left behind.

♪

By 2004, I zeroed in on

convicted serial killer Richard Cottingham,

known as 'The Torso Killer'.

It would take me six more years,

but I finally got him to confess to killing

married mother-of-two, Nancy Vogel.

In the middle of the court proceeding,

the judge just goes off on Cottingham.

All that work and grind...

was just gone in an instant.

Someone hurt your feelings? You're kidding me?

My mother was murdered. He should feel like a freak.

He just completely shut down on me.

And I'm just like, this is so [bleep] bad.

I know this guy's responsible for

more of these killings.

How am I gonna get him to talk again?

♪

You could take all the serial killers that's ever been.

And there's not been one like me.

♪

Richard Cottingham is a control freak and

a master manipulator.

♪

After he went to court in 2010,

I made a point to kind of let him just...

percolate and sit in prison...

and leave him alone.

♪

This was the cat-and-mouse game that

we played for many, many years.

♪

And, three weeks later,

boom, it gets even worse.

I went to such lengths to

keep the court appearance quiet.

But somehow the media found out about it,

and there was a newspaper article.

I was so [bleep] pissed.

♪

And, he somehow found out about that and,

in typical Richard Cottingham fashion, he's like,

"There's no scenario I'm going back to court."

He didn't want his kids to know the real,

true monster that he was.

I don't know if after this,

this guy's ever gonna talk to me again.

♪

I invested so many years trying to solve these cases.

And I'm like, I can't give up now because then he wins.

And all I could think about is,

how do I bring justice for these other girls?

♪

I dropped him a letter.

He went off on me in his letter in response:

"You and your bosses have had

your day of glory at my expense.

Did you really believe I wouldn't learn about

my name being splattered all over the media?"

He claimed that one of his kids,

I believe his daughter, wrote him a letter saying,

"How could you do this to us?"

"For us to continue will be difficult.

First, a way will have to be found to guarantee,

not 90%, not 95%, not even 99%,

but 100% that nothing will ever be made public

to the media or the public."

♪

He's Richard being Richard, which is...

making an excuse on why I needed to do more...

to get something from him.

But he left the window open just enough...

that I knew I was going to get him again.

Anzilotti stayed vigilant.

He's always watching for, "Where's the opening?

And how can I use that to potentially get information?"

♪

I'm stuck with a killer who's refusing to

ever be in a courtroom again.

So, there's only one choice left...

and that's what we call 'Exceptional Clearance'.

That is, as long as the confession

is corroborated by the evidence,

and the witness statements,

and we felt it was a credible confession,

that we would simply tell the family what we learned,

what happened to their loved one,

and close the case without any public fanfare and

without a courtroom.

It's a gamble.

You're making a deal with the devil.

Because it's a tough balancing act.

And the right for the public to know, versus

the integrity of future investigations, potentially.

I have no idea if Richard was gonna go for it.

And while he agreed that he was willing to have

discussions with me, it is not as if

he suddenly became an open book and gave me everything.

♪

In Richard's mind,

he thought he had the upper hand.

So, he of course, was making demands on me,

whether it be food packages,

the TV Guide subscription.

Stupid stuff to you and I, but things that are...

hard to come by in prison.

♪

Eventually, we went down to New Jersey State Prision

in Trenton to pick him up.

We would bring him up from New Jersey State Prison,

and we would keep him for overnight or

maybe for the weekend.

♪

Jim McMorrow transferred to the Bergen County

prosecutor's office from the

Hackensack Police Department.

He's a strong, tough Irish cop and,

I always knew that Jimmy had my back,

and he was a hell of a detective.

So, that started Jimmy on a journey to always be with me

when I would talk to Cottingham.

♪

The car ride up from New Jersey State Prison

was important because during that time

was really when we tried to

just kind of smooth him out.

I'm six years into this strange relationship

with a serial killer,

and I still have 11 of these cases unsolved.

I'm convinced that Richard's good for more,

but was conscious not to go too hard, too fast.

♪

During my time with Richard,

I learned what was working.

And that was me making him feel like a human being.

And, as disgusting as that was to make this

sadistic killer feel good about himself,

it was necessary to get him to open up.

This became like a game.

But we didn't want to offend him at this point.

You have to remember that at any given time, if he gets...

annoyed, he's going to shut down on us.

And we're starting from square one.

Anzilotti would allow Cottingham to drift...

but then he'd pull him back in.

"No, we're here for this."

♪

So, in 2010, Rob and I were bringing him

back to New Jersey State prison.

Jim McMorrow was driving and I'm in the passenger seat.

And, we're just getting him to

talk about total nonsense.

I'm telling him, "Hey Rich, it's been, been a while now.

You haven't really given much of substance."

And he'd be like, "Well, I didn't tell you that

we're going to talk about another case."

And I'm like, "Well, let's just say hypothetically

we're going to talk about another case, you know.

Which, which... which file should I pull?"

And obviously, at this point

he's much more comfortable, and he started to talk.

He goes, "Well, you know, there was this one case."

And he goes, "I really remember this girl.

And I remember her because I watched this TV show

in my cell, called Roswell.

And there's this actress, Shiri Appleby."

And he's like,

"I've never been able to forget this homicide

because this actress reminds me of her so much."

He also said that he had picked her up at

a bus stop in Hackensack.

♪

As he's saying it,

I'm furiously typing notes on my Blackberry.

♪

I have no idea who she is.

I don't spell it right, of course.

It's a little crumb that he's thrown my way

without even realizing he's throwing it.

And he's like, "Let's just leave it alone for now."

♪

Jimmy and I couldn't get back up the turnpike fast enough.

And sure enough, when I got back to the office,

I went on the internet, Googled Shiri Appleby,

the show, and sure enough...

Bam.

She bore a striking resemblance to Irene Blase.

♪

Irene Blase was murdered in April of 1969.

That's nearly two years after

the killing of Nancy Vogel.

This was huge.

This is the second female from the 60s that

I'm thinking Cottingham may be responsible for.

♪

We need detail, we need detail that

only the killer's gonna know.

♪

Anything that Richard Cottingham gave us,

we had to be able to support it by evidence.

And, the detectives interviewed

hundreds of people.

So, we had to go through each of these interviews,

their notes, to see if there was anything

that we could match up with what he would give us.

Irene Blase was an 18-year-old girl

when she went missing in April of 1969.

And, she was last seen at a bus stop

in Hackensack, New Jersey.

♪

She was found the next day in the Saddle River,

which is in Bergen County.

She has a stab wound in her back.

♪

She had been strangled...

and she had been raped.

As I reviewed the case file, one of the primary suspects

from the beginning was her boyfriend at the time,

Richard Guadagno.

And I'm like, holy [bleep],

I've known this person my entire life.

Richard Guadagno...

is my cousin.

♪

This is Irene.

That was in 1968,

about a year before she was killed.

And I kept this all these years.

I truly loved her a lot, a real lot.

♪

She loved life, you know?

She was 16 when I first started going out with her.

I'm a motorcycle guy, and...

we used to go everywhere together.

♪

The last time I saw Irene was on a Saturday night.

We went to a club in the city.

I had an argument with her at the club.

I don't remember why, but...

I got mad, and I went home.

And then...

I didn't hear nothing until...

late Monday.

♪

I was leaving work...

and two cop cars cut in front of me.

Richard had already a checkered past.

So, of course, the police right away latched on to the

idea that he was already somewhat of a bad guy,

and now his girlfriend's dead.

So, of course, they look hard at him.

They took me to the Teaneck, New Jersey Police Department.

♪

The piece of garbage police turned polaroids around and

slid them over to me and showed me her dead body.

You know, she was just dragged

out of the Saddle Brook River.

♪

And I cried.

♪

They kept asking me, "Why'd you choke her?

Did you want sex from her,

and she wouldn't give it to you?

So, you beat it out of her?"

I knew I didn't do it.

But people always had it in the back of their head,

"Was it Richie?"

Oh, her mother, she thought it was me.

"He's not comin' to the funeral."

And, I couldn't go.

That hurt. I loved her so much.

♪

For nearly 50 years,

my cousin was suspected in this killing.

But I needed a lot more evidence than just

Richard Cottingham's passing comment in the car about

an actress that reminds him of a girl he killed.

♪

One of the really more challenging aspects of

getting confessions from Cottingham,

where decades have gone by, is, you know,

that he doesn't know the person's name.

He doesn't have immediate recollection of

all of the facts.

And, at the same time,

you can't feed anything to them and

put thoughts in their head.

So, you know, you kind of have to just

bring them back in time without...

feeding them the answers, right?

One of the things that really stood out to me,

in the case file I had read that there was

a witness account of the man that was seen

with Irene Blase at that bus stop...

seemed to have a twitch where

he was pulling on his ear lobe.

And sure enough, he admitted to that.

That's what we needed to know that he did it.

Those little bits counted because

you need those details,

you need the specifics, and you get enough,

you have what's called the totality of circumstances.

It's like a tipping point-

you have enough to make a case.

But Richard being Richard, he wants something

or he's not going to give you something.

And then he would throw another obstacle in front of me

on why he wouldn't go on record with it,

why I couldn't turn the recorder on and

take a confession.

Listen, enough. Enough bull-[bleep].

It's now back on you.

I've done everything that you've asked of me.

I've told you that we're gonna keep this quiet.

We're just gonna talk to the family.

[Talking over each other]

And, just finally overcame him, the resistance.

♪ [Suspenseful] ♪

♪

And he decided to let me turn the tape recorder on,

and give me the detail of the Irene Blase murder.

♪

Ultimately, he notices that she walks to a bus stop.

♪

And she is last seen by witnesses

talking to an unknown white male.

And he starts pulling on his ear lobe.

When Cottingham mentions

taking Irene Blase to Little Ferry,

a light bulb goes off in my head.

In 1967, some two years earlier,

that's exactly where he met Nancy Vogel and

abducted her from.

♪

Now, he's feeling that some of the people in the

restaurant might recognize him because

he's been there before.

So, he wants to get her out of there.

Richard is out for his own satisfaction.

And, when he attacked her,

his plan was to rape Irene Blase.

He takes the scarf that she purchased at Sears,

and he ties it around her hands to prevent her

from trying to get out of the car.

He liked to do what we call Piquerism,

which is a paraphilia where

you stick the knife in, in very shallow ways.

He talks himself into,

"Oh, I wasn't forcing them to do anything."

Well, you have a knife in your hand,

and you're sticking them with it.

And you're tying them up,

and you're keeping them for hours and hours.

That's forcing! You did rape them.

His demeanor when he's confessing is

just pure lack of empathy, lack of caring,

as if, as if he was just as matter of fact

as you could be.

It's just disgusting.

♪ [Somber instrumental] ♪

He just leaves her there.

And that's ultimately how she's found.

♪

There's no mistake about it,

Richard Cottingham is a stone-cold sociopath.

♪

When Richard finally confessed to the murder of

Irene Blase, this is now the second confession I was able

to get out of him, out of this original

12 cold case homicides that I'd been investigating.

It was literally ten years since the start of this

endeavor to get Richard Cottingham to

speak about the murders that he committed.

♪

We very quickly went and notified the family.

We gave them the details of the confession,

as painful as it was.

And then we had the difficult conversation of

asking them to, of course,

share it with any loved ones that they felt appropriate,

but to keep it as tight a circle as possible because

if it leaked out to the press in any way,

it might be the last confession we ever get

out of Cottingham.

♪

They knew that there were all these other unsolved homicides

of teenage girls just like Irene.

♪

A few days before Christmas, my cousin Rob...

called me and invited me to a Christmas party at his house.

And, he said,

"I know who killed Irene Blase."

I said, "How do you know?"

He goes, "Because the guy that we thought might have

done it finally confessed to me that he did do it."

He was genuinely stunned.

And that was really the first time I heard him tell me

about how affected he was as a young man

of being accused of murder by the police.

That was like 50 years before I found out,

but that's 50 years too late.

♪

I always think what could have been.

You know?

Had a stupid argument and now she's dead.

♪

Closure, to me, is me

getting my hands on him for five minutes.

And I was told not to say that to you.

♪

But I don't care who knows.

Given the opportunity...

He would get what he gave.

She was just a little, petite girl.

Tough guy... You know?

Tough guy.

♪

After Cottingham confessed to the killing of Irene Blase,

I began talking to him about the 15-year-old girl

who was last seen walking in Westwood, New Jersey,

just months after Irene Blase's body's found.

The following morning, on July 15th of 1969,

a man that was out walking his dog finds the body

five or six feet off the road,

just behind a cemetery in Saddle Brook, New Jersey.

♪

The medical examiner determined that

she had been strangled with a ligature,

possibly with the actual crucifix and chain

that was around her neck at the time.

And her body was found not far from where

Irene Blase's body had been found.

It's Denise Falasca.

♪

♪

Denise Falasca was very similar in appearance

to Irene Blase.

Good-looking, typical teenage girl,

slender, brunette.

So, the victimology,

the looks of the two victims, and...

the proximity and time of when these murders occurred

made me feel like it was the same killer.

♪

Denise was going into her sophomore year at

Northern Valley Regional High School in Demarest.

And she was an active girl.

She played field hockey, basketball.

♪

Denise was headed out that summer night

to meet her boyfriend.

And then the next thing you know, she was gone.

Getting confessions out of Richard Cottingham is, is...

grinding, time after time after time.

At that point in the interview,

he didn't want to go any further.

And, that was the hardest part for us.

Then if communication shut down,

then it shut down.

And it could shut down for years.

♪

My relationship with Richard Cottingham

has ebbed and flowed over the years.

There are times when we get mad at each other.

There's times when he gets stubborn and

doesn't want to talk.

And then I had everyday life in between.

♪

I had an obsession for these cases, and...

that certainly impacted my home life.

I would talk to Cottingham for hours and hours

and days and days sometimes,

and, as focused as I was, and as obsessed as I was,

I have three beautiful children and a family at home

to, to worry about and care for.

I think I was probably overly more overprotective

than most parents would be.

♪

It made it a little extra special to get a hug,

or a kiss from my daughters and my son,

just knowing what can happen, right?

♪

And I think that really drove my resolve

to get this done.

Because the more I spoke to Richard, the more I'm like,

I'm not letting this guy get away with it.

♪

Shortly after I got him to confess to Irene Blase,

I was promoted to the rank of captain,

overseeing the operations of all our investigative squads.

♪

There was still no cold case unit, per se,

that I could pass Cottingham off to.

So, I needed to make sure I continued this relationship.

I never wanted to forget these unsolved murders

of these young women.

I never wanted to give up on them.

♪

So, we're writing each other letters.

Every time I got promoted,

he would write me a letter congratulating me.

He just started to get this very weird attachment to me.

♪

So, by 2017, I, by now,

was the chief of detectives.

And I literally said to him,

"The only person that ever believed..."

Ah, ah, excuse me.

"The only person that ever believed that

I'd be the chief was my grandfather."

He was dead by the time it happened, but...

Pop used to say to me all the time,

"You know what, Robert,

you're going to run that place one day."

♪

And, I told Richard, and he's like,

'You're wrong, you're wrong.

I told you you were going to run this place one day."

And he said it with this weird fatherly like pride

that was a little creepy.

♪

It's not really a father-son thing.

It's, "Without me, you'd be an ordinary detective.

And now, you've got a little bit of immortality

thanks to me."

So, Cottingham wants to keep the game going.

And that means he's gonna have to give up another case.

♪

It's now three years since the last confession that

I've gotten from Richard, and...

I was getting tired of the cat-and-mouse game

that we continually play.

So, on this particular day, I'm interviewing Richard,

and I said, "Let's stop bull-[bleep] each other.

Let's talk about a real case."

And, he would ultimately confess to

the murder and rape of Denise Falasca,

a 15-year-old girl that he picked up on Old Hook Road

in Westwood, New Jersey.

And this time around, although the tape recorder

was flowing, Richard seemed more at ease.

Remember, we're talking late 1960s,

hitchhiking and young girls, young teenage girls

thought nothing of jumping in a car with a stranger.

Richard used a car like a vessel for killing.

Once he had them in the car...

they were his.

And he ultimately takes her down to St. Andrew's School.

And St. Andrew's School is important because

that's where Mr. Cottingham went to school.

So, he knows this area.

When I pushed him hard for some detail

about the rape, itself, he said

he forced her to commit oral sex on him.

And he just kind of sat back for a minute...

and casually looked at me, and he goes,

"Well... she wasn't very good at it."

And it took every ounce of energy in my body to not

leap across that table and be like,

"She's 15 [bleep] years old, [bleep]!"

It was very difficult to listen to.

You know, I always had an endgame in mind.

Everything he's ever done, I want him to spit out.

So, I wasn't about to blow that endgame

by, by losing my cool with him.

He drives her down to Saddle Brook...

to an area that, again, he's familiar with.

And, he pulls over to the side of the road,

by the cemetery.

He dragged her body out of the car,

and just disposed of her body like it was nothing.

His confession of Denise Falasca was

tough to get over, to be honest with you.

I've seen a lot, but all I could envision was somebody

knocking on my door and having to tell me, as a dad,

that my daughter was found like that.

Denise Falasca was now the third confession that

I obtained from Richard Cottingham,

with all three of these murders occurring in a

two-year timeframe between October of 1967 and

July of 1969.

♪

I'm beginning to see a pattern emerge

in Cottingham's victimology.

♪

The killings were very different

than what he became known for.

Remember, this is more than a decade before

Richard becomes known as 'The Torso Killer'

for mutilating and decapitating prostitutes.

♪

In June of 2017,

We went down to New Jersey State prison

picked him up,

And I had him back up at the prosecutor's office to now

see who else he might be responsible for out of these

unsolved killings that I'm looking at.

I got him to say that he'd be willing to look at

some pictures of different victims.

And, he pointed to one of the pictures and said,

"It's, that's not her, but kind of that same haircut."

Sure enough, who wasn't pictured

in that newspaper article,

but who had a very, very short, boyish haircut...

was Jacalyn Harp.

Of all the cold case homicides I've investigated

over the years,

Jacalyn Harp was by far the youngest,

just 13 years' old when she was murdered.

♪

In 1968,

someone assaulted her and strangled her.

♪

I was blown away that Richard Cottingham

could be responsible for Jackie Harp's murder,

for a number of reasons.

One, she didn't fit the victimology of the other ones.

The tall, very feminine, long brown hair.

Jackie Harp was a very tomboyish,

like short blonde hair, and very young.

There was no mistaking Jackie Harp for anything

other than a 12 or 13-year-old child.

And also, it occurred in Midland Park, New Jersey,

which is not the usual areas

that he talked about...

hunting for victims.

But this was in 1968,

and it's at the beginning of his killing curve.

♪

Jackie Harp had just finished band practice

with the local school band.

♪

And, she was the flag holder.

♪

This is the harness she had worn during band practice.

So, it wraps around your body, I guess, kinda-

and around your shoulder and then, the,

the actual flag goes- is held in here.

They must've been individually assigned

because it has the name "J. Harp."

♪

And, as she was walking home, she was...

dragged into an alleyway...

and murdered.

♪

I remember I went out that night,

looking for my sister, Jackie.

Calling out her name.

And we did go right on past where she was found.

♪

This picture is of Jackie in her uniform, obviously,

going to a practise or to a meet.

So, it was the Imperial Knights Drum and Bugle Corp.

She was very proud of it.

Of course, being the youngest,

she had four big sisters and

always wanted to be around all of us.

We were all close.

It was all about family.

Jackie was just walking home that night,

she was just headed home.

That's when the hair on the back of my neck stood up,

and I recognized that this is Jackie.

She was wearing moccasins.

♪

So, once we got him to line up those details,

and he was comfortable with it,

we took his statement of the murder.

♪

♪

It was November, 'cause it was my birthday.

The message was that they would like to

come to the house and speak to me.

Your heart does start pounding and you do think,

oh, my God.

♪

In a cold case homicide, these folks have been

living with this forever.

So, you don't know how they're going to take it.

We sat in the kitchen at the kitchen table,

and Rob and James returned my sister's possessions that

was, what was on her, when she was found.

And this is a box. It was my mother's.

And when my mother died,

I put Jackie's belongings in this box.

♪

I haven't opened this box in a long time.

Her glasses that she had on.

A medal from the Imperial Knights.

♪

And then, Rob told us that Richard Cottingham

confessed to killing my sister.

[Suzan] He offered her a ride and

she said no, and turned around,

started walking back into town and she had thought that

he had just drove off.

♪ [Sinister] ♪

[Suzan] I just kind of was like,

"Oh, my God," you know...

I walked that path many times, myself.

She's screaming at that point.

♪

He sees lights on in the houses around the area.

So, he gets nervous.

Now, remember, this is 1968.

This is a young Richard Cottingham.

So, panic would set in.

He hasn't really honed his craft yet.

Jackie Harp was wearing her parade belt

that held the flag.

This was found wrapped around her neck.

It sickens me.

It really does, it sickens me.

♪

Any kind of asphyxiation or strangulation

requires up close.

It's very intimate.

It's really about being pretty much close to the

individual, so you can watch them die.

I know he says he didn't enjoy killing.

I think he did.

♪

By this point, I had gotten Richard

to confess to four murders,

three of which we closed through exceptional clearance.

The Blase family, the Falasca family,

and the family of Jacalyn Harp,

all agreed to keep this quiet.

♪

Suzan understood the longer-term mission ahead.

And, it was never disclosed to the press

or to the community.

I agreed to that.

You do have to accept a deal...

and, and go on with your life.

I wasn't even filling in the local police in the

jurisdictions where these crimes occurred.

It was just us as the prosecutor's office

dealing with these cases.

And this, if it ever came out,

would surely cause all sorts of hell for me.

But imagine the angst and the anxiety of the community

of Bergen County.

We have all of these killings of young women.

These are big deals in our county's history and

folklore, in our crime folklore.

♪

In 1968, when I was 15 years old,

I lived around the corner from Jacalyn Harp.

And after Jacalyn Harp's murder...

there's this fear that went through everybody.

♪

This went on and on.

And when it got to the 50th anniversary,

it was on Facebook.

Everybody was just discussing this again,

and saying how,

"Remember how it changed everything in town?"

And then there was another posting.

And, it was from an author of serial killer books.

♪

[Anzilotti] I always knew that it was a gamble,

keeping these cases to myself and closed from the community.

♪

And, sure enough, one day...

[News] And a serial killer confessing to three more

murders after more than 50 years.

All of a sudden, it all blew up.

In an odd twist of events, Richard Cottingham

was befriended by an author,

and they began cooperating in this author

writing a book about his life.

Richard had told him that he had confessed

to these cases to me.

♪

I was thinking more about,

how am I going to get closure for my town...

because he's writing a book.

I got in touch with him, I said,

"How about a public meeting? I'll put it on Facebook.

I'll make it known."

And so, that's how the meeting in

December of 2019 came about.

In 2018, I learned that

three of the cases have been actually closed

by the Bergen County prosecutor's office.

Jackie Harp, Irene Blase...

and Denise Falasca.

He announced it, in public, you know,

to an audience of people at the public library.

And that quickly made the newspaper.

[News] And a serial killer confessing to three more

murders after more than fifty years.

Of course, once it was public,

we obviously confirmed that these cases had been cleared.

There were a lot of people that criticized the fact that

we kept it quiet.

And all that criticism was squarely at my feet.

I understand where they're coming from.

I could see why, you know,

the communities want to know about it.

But, I was looking at this more globally.

♪

It's a strange thing to learn that a serial killer did it.

A lot of people did not want to believe that

it was that simple.

So, they, they were very, very shocked at that.

♪

The blow to me with the whole thing was,

for all these years that he used the potential publicity

as a roadblock for me to get confessions out of him,

here he is now letting it out to everybody.

I was pretty pissed off.

I was like, "This is all on you, man.

You're the one cooperating on this book, and,

and your boy is who let this out."

It was a bit of a betrayal.

♪

Fast forward to 2020, and the pandemic hits.

And then, we just weren't able to see each other.

♪

I wrote him a few letters here and there.

Then, in March of 2021...

I made the rather difficult decision to retire,

effective May 1st.

♪

It wasn't easy for me because I really loved the job,

loved the place.

But I had completed nearly 30 years in law enforcement.

And, I just felt in my heart it was time to move on.

But once I put that in motion,

I decided there was one last thing that

I really wanted to do before I left.

I had made a very conscious decision that

I was going to use my retirement as leverage

to get Richard to cooperate one last time.

[News] The bodies of Mary Ann Pryor and

Lorraine Marie Kelly were here, in a wooded area

near the Ridgemont Apartments in Montvale.

♪

The Lorraine Kelly, Mary Ann Pryor case

in August of 1974

was really one of our most gruesome...

and haunting cases in Bergen County.

They're found nude.

They're face down.

And they've been sexually assaulted.

[Reporter] Where?

It was clear that they had been tortured,

and then just tossed away like trash.

♪

Everybody loved Mary Ann.

Everybody loved her.

She had a lot of friends.

She had such a kind heart.

I was the last person to see Mary Ann that day.

She wanted to go to Macy's to buy a new swimsuit

for her trip to the shore.

She said, "I'm going to the mall with Lorraine.

And I'll see you later." I'm like, "Okay, have fun."

♪

Lorraine Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor

were two best friends, 16 and 17 years' old.

They left their respective houses to take a bus

up to a mall in Bergen County.

But they never returned home.

♪

One of the big points that Richard

always made to me was...

how, in his mind,

he was the smartest killer that ever walked the earth.

"I always killed differently.

I always mixed things up, that's why the police

never figured me out."

And he bragged about it.

So, I challenged him: "Convince me,

convince me that you were so smart back in the day."

And he's like, "I can give you details about a murder

that even fooled the medical examiner."

♪

And he said, "You're never gonna be able to

guess how I did it."

He's like, "Well, because they were left outside

in the hot summer for a few days,

the medical examiner didn't find water in their lungs."

Cottingham doesn't say who these girls are,

but he is dumb enough to use the plural.

And, I only had one double homicide

that I was looking at.

♪

And sure enough, the autopsy showed

both girls had congestion in their lungs.

We consulted with our medical examiners.

Would something like that in the bodies of these girls

lead us to believe that they were in fact drowned?

And he agreed that, that we would.

And it was at that moment that I first realize

he was the killer of Lorraine Kelly and

Mary Anne Pryor.

Over the years, I, of course,

would try and prod him for more information.

And he'd shut down because he told me,

"You'll never be able to keep it quiet.

That case is too famous around here."

♪

So, after I put in my retirement papers,

I only had about six weeks to put this idea I had in motion

to get Richard to confess to the murders of

Lorraine Kelly and Mary Anne Pryor.

The clock was definitely ticking.

And I was on a mission to get this done.

Richard never agreed to anything until it was time to

actually cross the line and get that confession.

So, I sat with him by myself and

told him that I was leaving.

And he was stunned and...

tried to talk me out of retiring.

Think of the irony of a serial killer

trying to talk a cop out of leaving.

I told him I was adamant, I was insistent.

I wanted to go out on a high.

I watched too many chiefs stay too long.

And then hit him with like,

"There's one thing left, Richard."

"I'm asking you to do this for me.

Confess to the murders of

Lorraine Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor."

He was hesitant.

And I just put the tape recorder down, and I said,

'Stop [bleep] around and let's do this."

And, in the end, almost like, you know,

a retirement gift to me, he said,

"I want to do this."

And that's how the confession started.

[Thunder]

On this particular day in 1974,

he claims that he drove them to the mall.

And it was pouring rain.

He decided that he was going to kidnap them and

take them for his own pleasure.

♪

So, he drove to an area motel that

he had used before to rape women.

♪ [Sinister] ♪

When Richard claimed that...

the girls were laughing and

he was joking around with them,

I was just flat-out disgusted by what he was saying

because I knew it was not true.

In typical Richard Cottingham fashion,

he was minimizing the brutality of his crime.

I didn't get home until about 10 PM.

And my mother said, "Where's your sister?"

I'm like, "I don't know, I just got in."

So, then we started panicking.

We started calling Lorraine's family.

They hadn't heard from Lorraine.

♪

We called the police department,

and they said, "Oh, they're just runaways."

♪

I stayed up all night, driving around, searching.

Yelling, "Mary Ann, Mary Ann!"

Of course, we're imagining all kinds of different things.

They were hogtied, right, hogtied while

he was sleeping, so they wouldn't go anywhere.

And according to him, they never cried,

they weren't afraid.

That's, that's the twisted mind.

♪

This became a huge story in the area.

My mother was pleading on camera:

"Mary Ann, if you're out there and you can hear this,

please come home."

For all the days that Mary Ann was missing,

we had the radio on, for the news.

And then, I can remember we were sitting in the kitchen,

and they interrupted the broadcast to say,

"Two girls were found in Montvale, New Jersey."

♪

And right away, we all looked at each other, like,

disbelief that, could it be?

A couple seconds later,

there were knocks on the door...

and it was the detectives coming to tell us.

♪

My mother passed out.

She held her heart and she just kind of, like,

passed out on the floor.

This is the magnitude of the monster that Cottingham is.

♪ [Sinister] ♪

After keeping the girls for nearly three days,

he decided that he had to kill them.

The haunting things that I'll,

I'll never get out of my head is just the cavalier and

callous way that he talks about...

drowning one while the other girl is still alive.

I said to him, "Could you imagine the fear that,

you know, the one left there had?"

♪

But he has a way of minimizing the brutality

that he inflicted on all of his victims.

That's a highly sadistic act

that would make him feel very powerful.

He wanted to experience their deaths at his hands.

♪

[Nancy] She would have fought for her life.

She would have bit, kicked, punched,

grabbed for hair, anything.

I'm sure she was calling for my mother, my father, me.

And fighting 'til the end.

♪

And that's when those bodies are dumped a short distance

from the hotel, into the woods.

♪

This particular confession was

one of the worst I've ever heard.

I can't wait to go home and take a shower and

wash the stink of his...

sins off my body, from listening to it.

♪

After we got the confession from Cottingham,

I was trying to leverage my retirement as a means to

try and get Richard to go to court

the way we did with Vogel, ten years prior.

He was afraid that our relationship was

going to be over because of my retirement.

And I promised him that it would not be.

And in the end, I convinced him to go to court.

It was his way of keeping the relationship going.

Because of the pandemic, it was a virtual proceeding.

More than a decade earlier,

he literally looked at me and said,

"You'll never get me in a courtroom again."

And hearing him give details to the judge in a courtroom

with the victims' families looking on,

that, for me, was a huge victory.

He was given another two life sentences.

♪

I'm so grateful for Chief Anzilotti for pursuing this.

He's an angel.

For me, it was the culmination of nearly

20 years of work trying to bring justice for these girls.

[Sirens]

♪

My last day...

[Sighing] ...was emotional.

It was crazy.

It was just an amazing tribute to my career.

There were hundreds of people waiting to clap me out.

[Applauding]

It was wild, it was wild.

[Applauding]

I was lucky enough, not only to work with Rob,

but be part of the command staff with him.

He had an uncanny ability

to get to the bottom of a, of a crime.

And he inspired people to work harder,

not just because of the threat of authority,

but because of who he was.

I never thought I'd leave as

the Chief of Detectives of the county.

You know, I always just wanted to be a really good cop.

♪

Six days after Cottingham appeared in court,

admitting his guilt...

I retired.

♪

I had solved 6 out of these

original 12 cold case homicides.

That left 6 more still to be solved.

And it made me wonder whether Richard was

responsible for all or any of those 6.

♪

We started emailing each other, really,

almost on a weekly basis once I first left.

♪

And to the credit of the new administration,

they were adamant that I stay involved.

♪

That is just who Rob is.

He's not going to let his retirement

get in the way of finding closure for a family.

♪

The case that came to my mind

was Mary Ann Della Sala.

On January 24th of 1967,

she left her place of employment

at the local ShopRite in Hackensack.

And, she was never seen alive again.

♪

11 weeks later, her body was found floating in the

Passaic River in Hawthorne, New Jersey.

♪

She was 18 years' old at the time of her death.

Brunette, pretty girl, and...

knowing what I now know about Cottingham,

for what he was hunting back in those days,

the 60s and early 70s,

she fit his look to a tee.

Mary Ann's cause of death was never really

made clear by the medical examiner.

There was some speculation that maybe she jumped off of

a nearby bridge and that's how her body

floated up where it did.

♪

But her family insisted that

Mary Ann would have never taken her own life.

♪

And, the investigators came across a diary

that Mary Ann had.

And in that diary, they found an entry...

a week or so prior to her disappearance in which

she describes a white male driving a Chevy who had

been stalking her from the ShopRite at times.

This was a huge clue.

Richard had previously told me that

he had a Chevy in the late 60s.

And he also told me that

there was a girl that was found in the river

that he may have been responsible for.

I had always been convinced that his first victim

was Nancy Vogel.

Now, I begin to develop this hunch that

Mary Ann Della Sala may have been his first victim.

♪

[Monitor beeping]

The reality is...

I retired, but...

I wasn't done with Richard Cottingham.

Richard is now bedridden

with a lot of health ailments.

He's been moved to South Woods State Prison,

in a long-term infirmary.

♪

So, Sergeant Kevin Dempsey,

who's with the BCPO cold case unit, and I,

take the ride down there to interview Richard.

♪

Richard can't get out of bed.

He needs help sitting up.

I was like, wow, this guy looks like

he's gonna die at any minute.

I really wanted to give one last shot to see

if I could get a confession out of him.

But he's of sound mind.

And, Kevin and I sat by his bedside and...

interviewed him.

It was still our typical back and forth,

him telling me why he doesn't want to cooperate and,

"What have you done for me lately?"

And, same old Richard being Richard.

But in the end, I got him talking about this

beautiful young girl that he used to have an eye for

in a ShopRite in Hackensack.

In January of 1967,

when Mary Anne Della Sala was last seen alive,

Richard Cottingham was going on 21 years' old.

He had just started working at Blue Cross Blue Shield

in New York City.

He told me that on the night of her disappearance,

he stalked her leaving the store.

Her dad had actually stopped in at the store,

and asked her,

"Do you want me to give you a ride at the end of your shift?"

But it was an unusually warm night,

and she told her dad that she was going to walk home.

He wasn't certain the exact spot that he put her

in the water, but he knew it wasn't where

the body had been found.

And that would be consistent with a body

being in the water for a period of time...

as Mary Ann's was.

What Richard didn't realize, while he was confessing

about the Mary Ann Della Sala case,

was I was actually recording the conversation.

He didn't see a tape recorder,

so he thought we were just having a conversation.

The reality is that was a tape-recorded confession.

When it comes to these exceptional clearances,

the manner in which we record the

actual confession is irrelevant.

All that matters is that it's documented properly.

And that it's irrefutable that these

words came out of his mouth.

There was information provided by Mr. Cottingham

that we believe were specific enough that

only the killer would know.

And, the team felt as though there was

sufficient evidence to charge him.

♪

♪

I don't just like solving cold cases,

I love solving cold cases.

♪

I love the satisfaction and the

emotional pride that it gives me...

to knock on someone's door that hasn't had answers

in 30, 40, 50 years.

I don't think I can put it into words,

to be quite honest.

I think you have to walk in these shoes

to know what it feels like.

And every homicide detective out there

knows exactly what I'm talking about.

♪

Cottingham confessing to the

Mary Anne Della Sala homicide

brings his timeline of killing even earlier.

♪

She went missing in January of 1967,

so that's some ten months before Nancy Vogel is killed.

And, who knows if Mary Ann Della Sala was his first?

♪

♪

Then, in June of 2022, something I had always

hoped would happen, finally did.

[News] A woman's family finally getting some answers

after she was found strangled in the back seat of her car

more than 50 years ago.

Yeah, prosecutors say the so-called 'Torso Killer'

who's been convicted in 11 other deaths

is responsible.

Jennifer McLobin shows us how they were able to

tie him to this case.

♪

During my last visit at his bedside,

Richard explained to me that Nassau County detectives

had come to visit him.

I'm like, "Well, then cooperate with them."

"There's no reason not to."

"If you did it, then tell them you did it."

"What, you know, what, what are you...

holding out for?"

"At this point in your life,

look at the state of health you're in."

"Don't take these cases to the grave with you."

"Just... man up and admit it."

♪

[News] Emotions spilled over for the family of Diane Cusick.

A cold case breakthrough after a chilling murder

more than 5 decades ago.

Prosecutors blame...

I learned through the news media that Nassau County

indicted Cottingham on DNA evidence.

[News] Diane Cusick, of New Hyde Park,a dance teacher

left her 4 year old daughter with her parents

and drove to the Green Acres Mall

and never came home.

We believe this may be the oldest DNA hit

to lead to a prosecution in the United States.

♪

This case prompted the Nassau District Attorney's

office to review all unsolved homicides

involving women from 1967 to 1980,

and police tell us so far they've submitted DNA for

an additional five cases to see if there's any connection.

♪

Today is one of the most emotional days we've ever had

in the Nassau County District Attorney's Office.

This morning, serial killer Richard Cottingham

pleaded guilty to 23-year-old

Diane Cusick's murder in February of 1968.

Cottingham also admitted to the murders of

Mary Beth Heinz,

Laverne Moy, Sheila Hyman,

and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.

♪

As more jurisdictions learn just how active he was

in the 60s and 70s, in killing women,

I'm sure more crimes can be connected to him.

♪

If this guy's not arrested until 1980...

holy [bleep], how many could be out there?

He says it could be up to 100 women that he's killed.

I have no idea.

But he went out and hunted women,

from the 60s until he was caught in 1980.

I've done the math.

Even just four or five a year

adds up to an astronomical number.

The reality is, he liked to kill.

There are more.

I know there are.

I'm hoping...

as his days grow shorter and a little darker,

he, himself, realizes that...

his time to allow these families to

close those chapters is running out.

♪

You never stop thinking about it.

All these girls were innocent kids.

You know, they had a life ahead of them.

"To the person who killed my sister,

The depths of depravity

necessary for you to plan and

commit a crime of this nature

against helpless teenage girls

is beyond the capacity of human comprehension

to adequately understand.

Before you burn in hell,

I wish for you a slow, painful death."

♪

Years later, I bumped into Rob and his family.

And, I just had to go up and say, you know,

I wanted to thank him because after that point,

I had the closure and I felt good.

And I turned to his son, and I said,

"You know, your dad's a real hero.

He's a good man, he helped my family out a lot."

He's like an unsung hero.

♪

18 years of Richard Cottingham and Rob Anzilotti.

♪

The toll that it took on me was just having to

kind of eat my own conscience...

and my own moral code to sit and listen to this guy,

and take in just how vicious he was.

But no matter what kind of scars it's left for me,

it's been well worth the ride,

you know, for these families.

It really has been.

♪

It was like a game of cat and mouse between the two of us.

Each of us was trying to play the other.

♪

That was his way of keeping the whole game going.

And as long as Richard Cottingham

has air in his lungs,

he has more confessions to give.

I'm convinced of that.

♪