Richard Cottingham is one of the ill-famed and deadliest serial killers in history.

He was nicknamed The Torso Killer and Times Square Torso Ripper after his dismemberment and decapitation of two victims on December 2, 1979, in a Travel Inn hotel on West 42nd Street and Tenth Avenue in the vicinity of Times Square.

He tortured and murdered sex workers Deedeh Goodarzi, age 22, and a still unidentified teenage victim, severed their heads and hands, and set their torsos on fire. Cottingham fled the scene with the severed heads and hands, which were never recovered. He was eventually apprehended on May 22, 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 a series of trials in New Jersey and New York from 1981 to 1984, Cottingham was convicted of five murders, two in New Jersey and three in New York, plus multiple charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. In 2010, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel. He confessed under immunity 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.

Is The Serial Killer Still Alive?

Yes, the ill-famed man is still alive. His death was just a piece of rumor news. He is alive but in jail.

However, that is not true; instead, he is sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence.

He will take his last breath in his jail cell given his prison sentence.

Age

Richard was born on the 25th of November 1946 in the Bronx, New York City, USA. As of January 2022, he is 75 years old.

Career

Cottingham was the first son of three children of his parents. In 1958, when he was 12, his family moved to River Vale, New Jersey. In 1964, Cottingham graduated from Pascack Valley High School, in Hillsdale, New Jersey.

Cottingham worked for his father at Metropolitan Life from 1964 to 1966 as a computer operator, while taking computer courses. 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

On May 3, 1970, Cottingham married his wife Janet at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, New York.

That’s all about Richard Cottingham’s biography. If you find anything that needs correction, then please leave a comment below. Your feedback is valuable to us.