"Not to Make a Pattern": Richard Cottingham's Taped Conversations With His Detective

On tapes heard in an A&E special, Richard Cottingham tells detective Robert Anzilotti he killed in several states, avoided any pattern, and could not count his victims.

Subject

Richard Cottingham

Recorded

about 2023

Runtime

6:46

Content warning: A convicted killer of women and girls speaks about choosing and killing victims; the detective describes torture and sexual sadism.

The Recording

Robert Anzilotti, an investigator with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office in New Jersey, spent nearly two decades talking to Richard Cottingham in prison, trying to draw out confessions to unsolved killings. In this bonus scene from A&E's 2023 special "The Torso Killer Confessions", Anzilotti explains his approach on camera, and recordings of their conversations are played. On the tapes Cottingham names states where he says he killed, says his "whole thing was not to make a pattern", and claims that most of those he killed were women who could have connected him to them.

Historical Context

Cottingham, a computer operator from New Jersey, was arrested on May 22, 1980, at a motel in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, after a woman he was attacking screamed and motel staff called the police. He was convicted in New Jersey and New York between 1981 and 1984 of murders and assaults of women, some of them mutilated, which led to the name "Torso Killer". Decades later, after work by Anzilotti and others, he admitted older killings: Nancy Vogel (1967) in 2010, Lorraine Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor (1974) in 2021, and Diane Cusick (1968) in 2022.

Circumstances of the Recording

Anzilotti began reviewing cold cases in the early 2000s and started interviewing Cottingham in 2003 or 2004 (sources differ). The dates and settings of the tapes in this scene are not given. Anzilotti says on camera that ordinary methods, such as reading Miranda rights and going through every detail of a crime, would not work with Cottingham, and that a different approach was needed. In the on-camera commentary the investigators' aim is described as keeping "that dialogue going" for a greater good. The scene ends with Anzilotti saying Cottingham "left the window open just enough".

What the Recording Covers

Asked when he first killed, Cottingham gives 1967. Asked how many, he says he could not count and that it was "well over" a figure that is not clearly heard. He lists Florida, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Baltimore, and says he chose places "within driving distance that was not connected to me". He describes walking around the Bergen Mall and into its parking lot, and a woman he met in Atlantic City, and when asked what drove him, says it was being able to get away with it. In the on-camera commentary he is called a "master manipulator" and a "sexual sadist", and Anzilotti says Cottingham "loved what he was doing".

What Makes the Recording Significant

Cottingham's later confessions came out of conversations like these, and A&E describes the tapes as previously unheard. The scene lets listeners hear him describe, in his own words, how he tried to avoid detection.

Archival Importance

The special was broadcast as Cottingham's cold-case confessions were still being made public, including his admission in the 1967 case of Mary Ann Della Sala. The scene preserves both sides of a long investigative relationship.

Important Caveats

What Cottingham says about the number of his victims, the places he killed and his motives are his claims and are not established facts; he has claimed different totals at different times. His statements that he killed mainly women who could connect him to them, and that he never set out to kill a woman who was not a danger to him, are self-serving and contradicted by the record. The dates of the tapes are not given in the programme material seen. Several passages are hard to hear and are not quoted here.

Robert Anzilotti: Richard Cottingham is a control freak and a master manipulator. Since 1980 he's been in jail, and every aspect of his life is out of his control, except for what comes out of his mouth.

Robert Anzilotti: He wanted to control everything. He wanted to control the narrative of how he talked about these murders, and, of course, you know, that lent itself to how he committed these murders. [music]

Robert Anzilotti: These murders were all about that sexual sadist that was controlling these women, these young girls, and he would torture them, he would control them, and ultimately kill them.

Robert Anzilotti: Richard always refused to tell me when his first homicide occurred. He never wanted me to know that timeline of when he started to kill.

Robert Anzilotti: What year is the first, do you think? Do you have it in your head, or you have no idea?

Richard Cottingham: I can knock it down to [unclear: "them"]... for one or two years.

Robert Anzilotti: What do you think? How far back?

Richard Cottingham: '67. [unclear: "'60, maybe nearly '66, '67" / "'66, maybe, '66, '67"].

Richard Cottingham: It's a lot of years of running around. [unclear: "Other states too" / "A lot of states still"].

Robert Anzilotti: Yeah. Do you have, do you have a number in your head, do you think? Did you ever sit back and think about it?

Richard Cottingham: It's [unclear: "fair" / "safe"] to say I, I couldn't count [unclear: "that" / "it"], uh... [unclear: "So that is, they start to get jumbled" / "They started to get troubled"]. I would say it was well over [unclear: "80" / "again" / "really"].

Robert Anzilotti: You think that many?

Richard Cottingham: Well over. I've done some in Florida, Connecticut, [unclear: "Etiquette"], what, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Baltimore.

Robert Anzilotti: Right.

Richard Cottingham: Any place within driving distance that was not connected to me, I would try. [unclear: "All right."] My whole thing was not to make a pattern, which I never did, and never to try to kill them the exact same way, or to, you know, leave a signature, you know. I was, I wasn't stupid, you know.

Robert Anzilotti: When it comes to interview and interrogation techniques, you know, when it came down to someone like Richard Cottingham, the rules kind of all went out the window. Bringing him in and reading him his Miranda rights and using investigative techniques that people have used forever was clearly not going to work with him. Had I thought he was only responsible for one homicide, ordinarily I would go after the killer about every facet of the crime. In his instance, I felt like that would backfire on our long-term relationship that I was trying to cultivate. We would need to take a different approach with him, kind of go off the cuff a little bit.

Richard Cottingham: That was the thing with me. I, I wasn't, I wasn't a serial killer.

Robert Anzilotti: No? If you told me you think [unclear: "you" / "he"] killed [unclear: "over eight"]... That's, that's the definition, pretty well.

Richard Cottingham: No, it doesn't.

Robert Anzilotti: But I know what [unclear: "he said" / "you said"], because you've told me in the past there's been many more that you let go of.

Richard Cottingham: [unclear: "Hundreds, you know" / "I felt humbled, you know"]. You know, it's, I didn't go out to kill somebody. Most anyone I killed was when I would have been somehow connected to them, and I didn't want to get caught. There was more [unclear: "interesting" / "things"], just not getting caught, you know, just thinking about myself.

Robert Anzilotti: What do you mean, connected? Meaning like somebody might have seen her [unclear: "again" / "getting caught"]?

Richard Cottingham: Yeah, like in the Bergen Mall, you know. I walked around the mall. I [unclear: "walked apart, my, followed her" / "walked out of there"] into the parking lot. Anybody could [unclear: "sit" / "have sit"] in the car. To me, in my mind, I don't know if anybody's seen me.

Robert Anzilotti: I think every killer has their own, has their own kind of moral code that they don't want to get past. And in his particular case, I think he long buried how brutal he was to women in the recesses of his mind, and he constantly downplayed what he did to them. You know, we all had children. We had young girls that were the same age as some of his victims. And, you know, that makes you sick. You know, it really can make you angry at him, and you want to just shut the door and you want to walk out. But the truth of the matter is that we were doing this for a greater good. So however much that he would discuss [unclear: "to us" / "with us"], we would go back and continue and just keep that dialogue going.

Richard Cottingham: [unclear: "Well, I have to tell you" / "I'd like to tell you"], one time in Atlantic City, I met a girl in Resorts. She went with me, and I brought her back up here. In my mind, hey, I could be on [unclear: "a camera" / "the counter"] down here or whatever. So those are the ones that I couldn't leave. But if the girl wasn't dangerous to me, I never, I never went out to kill her. That's why I [unclear: "didn't say that" / "said"], I'm not really like a [unclear: "standard serial killer" / "stand-through killer"]. [unclear: "I just, I think I didn't really show anybody" / "I didn't get a no-joint in that song already"]. And that's the truth. Never had no [unclear: "joy" / "joint"]. It was very hard.

Robert Anzilotti: So what was it for [unclear: "us" / "you"]? Was it more [unclear: "race" / "rage"]? Control? Tying up?

Richard Cottingham: [unclear: "The game" / "Through the game"]. It was being able to get away with it. [unclear: "To stalking" / "It's distorting"], to be able to, to be able to do it, it was like the perfect murder every time.

Robert Anzilotti: You can tell he enjoyed this. He enjoyed the, uh, the control over these women. He also liked the fact that the police weren't able to catch him, following [unclear: "the girl into" / "we rolling to"] Sears in Hackensack, you know, meeting girls on the roadside. The problem was that with young girls back in these days, they were a little bit easier to engage in conversation than now. They would be hitchhiking. They weren't as acutely aware as what was really out there as is now. But he, make no mistake about it, Richard loved what he was doing.

Robert Anzilotti: There is not a chance in hell that Richard Cottingham is going to come to some epiphany and say, I may die soon, so let me cleanse my soul. It's never going to happen. The only time Richard confesses is when there's something in it for Richard. So I don't think we're ever going to learn of all of his crimes, from his mouth, anyway. After 18 years, he's never confessed to a crime in his life. But he left the window open just enough. This was the break I've been waiting for. [recording ends] ---