How a retired detective snared his seventh ‘Torso Killer’ confession
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 six 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.