NEVER GIVE UP
Retired detective snares seventh ‘Torso Killer’ cold-case confession
ROBERT ANZILOTTI retired as Chief of Detectives for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in 2021. But, as exclusively revealed in the upcoming A&E documentary “The Torso Killer Confessions,” Anzilotti has now closed his seventh cold-case linked to serial killer Richard Cottingham: the murder of Mary Ann Della Sala, who was 17 when she vanished in January 1967 after working her shift at the Shop-Rite on Essex Street in Hackensack.
Her body was found three months later in the Passaic River in Hawthorne; the case remained unsolved until March 2022, when Anzilotti elicited a confession from Cottingham, kept secret until now.
Cottinghman, 76, is serving multiples life sentences after terrorizing Bergen County and the surrounding area with a string of brutal, unsolved murders from at least 1967 until his arrest in 1980. “I was determined … to use my retirement as a tool to get [Cottingham] to talk about more of those [cold] cases,” Anzilotti, 53, told The Post. “He had teased me over the years that he was responsible for other murders but never wanted to admit it.
“Unfortunately many of [Mary Ann’s] family have passed, but her brother and sister are still here. and I’ve spoken to her sister ... who cried about not having her big sister around all these years.”
In 2004, Anzilotti was tasked with re-opening a slew of coldcase murders of women, most of them living in Bergen County, dating back to the mid-1960s. The trail eventually led him to Cottingham, dubbed “The Torso Killer” after dismembering the bodies of two female victims.
As documented in A&E’s “The Torso Killer Confessions,” airing March 9 and 10 (9-11 p.m. each night), Anzilotti spent hundreds of hours with Cottingham from 2004 through the present day, first gaining his trust and in 2010, after six years, getting him to confess to murdering Nancy Vogel, a young mother whose naked body was found in the back seat of her car in Ridgefield Park in the fall of 1967.
“He was a very tough nut to crack and remains so today,” Anzilotti said. “He only tells you what he wants to tell you and there are plenty of times where he can be misleading. He likes to play games — and gaining his trust was most definitely the biggest priority.”
The documentary also features never-before-heard audio tapes of conversations between Anzilotti and Cottingham, along with exclusive footage showing how their relationship factored into multiple confessions.
“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” Anzilotti said of the process. “I’ve had so many conversations with people outside of my field who say, ‘What’s he got to lose [by confessing]?’ He’s now serving more than six life sentences and I explain to everybody that the only control Richard has in his life is what comes out of his mouth … he’s a definite control freak and it’s very difficult to get him to make these admissions ... because it’s a game to him.
“It took me six long years to get that first [Nancy Vogel confession] out of him,” Anzilotti said. “He always said that was one of his first, but not THE first, of his murders. His first [killing]? I have no idea.”
Anzilotti urged Vogel’s family, and successive families of Cottingham’s murder victims, not to talk publicly about his confessions. “The families needed some convincing … we said, ‘Hey, there’s a bigger picture here’ ... Once I explained to them the greater good — for us to continue to see what other cases he’s responsible for to bring closure to some other families … they got on board.”
Cottingham has confessed to multiple murders and is suspected in many others. While Anzilotti is retired, he said he “would drop everything” if law-enforcement authorities want his help to continue his relationship with Cottingham and, perhaps, to solve more cold cases. “These victims all need to have someone that tries to be their voice. They can never be forgotten,” he said. “Mary Ann Della Sala was a 17-year-old who had her whole life ahead of her when this animal snatched her off the street and killed her.
“It’s sad that it took this long for us to figure it out, but it also highlights the fact that we don’t give up on these cases,” he said.