The murder of Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Marie Kelly
Montvale, Bergen County, New Jersey · 1974
Overview
On the afternoon of August 9, 1974, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and her friend Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, left their homes in North Bergen, New Jersey, to buy bathing suits at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus for a weekend at the Jersey Shore. They were last seen walking on Broad Avenue in Ridgefield; witnesses told police the girls were hitchhiking and got into a car driven by a white man nobody knew. Their families reported them missing that night. Five days later, on August 14, their bodies were found naked and face down in woods in Montvale, near the New York line, and were identified by their jewelry. Investigators exhausted every lead. After Richard Cottingham, a Lodi computer operator later known as the Torso Killer, was arrested in 1980 and convicted of murders in New Jersey and New York, detectives suspected him but could not prove it, and for decades he toyed with them. On April 14, 2021, after about fifteen years of prison interviews with Chief of Detectives Robert Anzilotti, Cottingham gave a sworn, recorded statement admitting he kidnapped the girls, held them in a motel room, raped them and drowned them in the bathtub. On April 27, 2021, aged 74, he waived indictment and pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in a virtual hearing before Superior Court Judge Keith Bachmann, under an agreement for two concurrent life sentences.
How it was solved
No forensic evidence tied Richard Cottingham to Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly. The case was closed by a confession that took the better part of two decades to extract. The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office said investigators suspected Cottingham after his 1980 arrest for the sexual assault and murder of multiple young women in Bergen County and New York City, but could not prove he had killed the two North Bergen girls. Alan Grieco, a retired Bergen County chief of detectives who had helped convict Cottingham of the 1977 murder of Maryann Carr, told the Associated Press that Cottingham played games with investigators for years over the Pryor-Kelly murders, trading hints for better treatment in prison because he knew how badly detectives wanted that case. Cottingham once told Grieco that detectives had done good work but had not gone back far enough, and that he remembered picking up a couple of girls near one of the malls and disposing of them out of the area. It was not a confession; as Grieco put it, we had nothing other than what he would tell us. In 2004 the prosecutor's office assigned detective Robert Anzilotti to reopen unsolved murders of women from the 1960s and 1970s, and the trail led to Cottingham. Anzilotti spent hundreds of hours with him, winning a guilty plea to the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel in 2010 and later admissions to three teenage girls killed in 1968 and 1969 that the office kept quiet for years to keep him talking. From 2017 a true-crime author and the daughter of one of Cottingham's 1979 victims also visited him, urging him to confess. On April 14, 2021, weeks before Anzilotti retired, Cottingham gave a detailed, sworn and recorded statement admitting he kidnapped Pryor and Kelly, tied them up and raped them in a motel room and drowned them in the bathtub. Anzilotti said he gave details only the killer would know, and that Cottingham said he would not have done it if Anzilotti were not retiring. On April 27, 2021, Cottingham was charged by accusation with two counts of murder, waived indictment and pleaded guilty.
Sources
- 'Torso Killer' pleads guilty in 1974 cold-case murders (April 27, 2021)
“The two had left their North Bergen homes on Aug. 9, 1974, for a trip 13 miles (20.92 kilometers) north to a Paramus mall. They had planned to take a bus there to buy bathing suits for a trip to the Jersey Shore but witnesses at the time told police the girls were hitchhiking and had gotten into a man's car.”
- BCPO: Richard Cottingham admits to 1974 murders of Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly (press release, April 27, 2021)
“While COTTINGHAM was arrested and charged in 1980 on the sexual assault and murder of multiple young women in Bergen County and New York City, detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office were not able to prove that COTTINGHAM had murdered Pryor and Kelly until April 14, 2021 when COTTINGHAM provided a detailed, sworn and recorded statement to Bergen County Prosecutor's Office Chief of Detectives Robert Anzilotti.”
- 'Torso Killer' pleads guilty in two 1974 cold-case murders in New Jersey (April 27, 2021)
“On Tuesday, Cottingham said he tied up both women in a motel room and raped them before killing them by drowning them in the motel room's bathtub.”
- Infamous New Jersey 'Torso Killer' admits to abducting, torturing and drowning 2 teens in 1974 (April 2021)
“When the Pryors called North Bergen police officials that night, they were told to wait 24 hours to file a missing persons report. Authorities believed Mary Ann might have been a runaway, but her family knew better.”
- 'Torso Killer' Richard Cottingham Pleads Guilty to 1974 Cold Case Murders After 15 Years of Interviews (April 2021)
“"'I remember picking up a couple of girls, by one of the malls, on one of the highways, or near one of the highways,' and he said, 'I disposed of them out of the area.'"”
- 'The Torso Killer' Richard Cottingham Pleads Guilty To Killing Mary Ann Pryor, Lorraine Kelly (April 28, 2021)
“He drowned both teens in the motel's bathtub on Aug. 11, 1974 before disposing of the bodies in the woods.”
- NJ Serial Killer Admits to 1974 Murders of Two Young Women in Ridgefield (April 2021)
“According to officials, he waived his right to prosecution by indictment and agreed to plead guilty to the charges as set forth in the Accusation. On April 27, Cottingham appeared in Bergen County Superior Court and admitted to kidnapping and raping Pryor and Kelly, and to their willful, deliberate, and premeditated murders between August 9 and August 14, 1974.”
- NJ 'Torso Killer' pleads guilty to cold case murders of 2 girls in 1974 (April 27, 2021)
“Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and her friend Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, wanted to buy bathing suits for an upcoming trip to the Jersey Shore on Aug. 9, 1974. So they did what many teenagers did at the time – they hitchhiked to the mall.”
- How a retired detective snared his seventh 'Torso Killer' confession (March 2, 2023)
“In 2004, Anzilotti was tasked with re-opening a slew of cold-case murders of women, most of them living in Bergen County, dating back to the mid-1960s. Eventually the trail led him to Cottingham, dubbed "The Torso Killer" after dismembering the bodies of two female victims in a midtown Manhattan hotel room.”
- Richard Cottingham
“In April 2021, Cottingham confessed to an unsolved 1974 double-homicide in Montvale, one of New Jersey's most notorious cold cases.”