Friday, November 25, 2022

The Times Square Killer on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: American serial killer and rapist Richard Cottingham, who murdered a minimum of 12 young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980, was born on this day in 1946. He was nicknamed The Torso Killer and The Times Square Killer. In 2009, nearly 30 years after being convicted of five murders in New Jersey and New York in 1981–1984, Cottingham admitted to a journalist that he had committed at least 80 to 100 "perfect murders" of women in various regions of the United States, of which, since 2009, six have been subsequently confirmed and their cases closed. Cottingham was convicted of five murders, two in New Jersey and three in New York, plus multiple charges of kidnapping and sexual assault and other charges. Four surviving victims testified against Cottingham; he was convicted in three of the abduction-rape survivor cases and acquitted in one.

He earned the nicknames the “Torso Killer” and “Times Square Torso Ripper,” after two victims were found savagely dismembered and decapitated, then set on fire, in a Times Square motel in 1979. 

The remains incarcerated at the state prison in New Jersey to this day.

No comments:

Post a Comment