COLD CASES CRACKED

New Jersey’s ‘Torso Killer’ Confesses to Killing Three Teen Girls in 1960s

He hasn’t been charged with the girls’ murders, but the cases have been “exceptionally cleared,” authorities said.

New Jersey’s “Torso Killer” has confessed to killing and dismembering three teenagers in the 1960s, bringing the unsolved cases to a close more than five decades later, authorities said. Richard Cottingham, 73, admitted to strangling Irene Blase, Denise Falasca, and Jackie Harp in 1968 and 1969, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella confirmed in an email to NJ.com. “The Prosecutor’s Office investigations revealed that Richard Cottingham committed these homicides,” Musella wrote. Cottingham has not been charged with the girls’ murders, but the cases have been “exceptionally cleared,” according to Musella. NJ.com reports that the teens’ killings add to a list of numerous slayings by Cottingham, who would often dismember his victims’ bodies after he killed them, leading to the the nickname “the torso killer.” Cottingham was ultimately convicted of two murders and three kidnappings in New Jersey, in addition to the murder of three women in New York.