ROBERT ANZILOTTI AND A&E's TORSO KILLER CONFESSIONS
SOME UNTRUTHS TO START WITH

TWO UNTRUTHS OFF THE TOP TOLD IN THE 2023 A&E mini-series TORSO KILLER CONFESSIONS. Without diminishing the righteous work done by retired Chief Robert Anzilotti in closing murders committed by Richard Cottingham, or the public praise and congratulations I gave him when the show aired in March 2023, and in my two previous books, American Serial Killers and Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (Second Edition 2020 (2004)) - he has not shared credit for the good work he has done in the last three of Cottingham's confessions, with the help of Jennifer Weiss, and has even chosen to state mistruths in the TV show recently aired on A&E, which he executive-produced. Here are two examples of the untrue claims off the top:

1. Anzilotti implies he first developed and determined on his own self in 2004-2010, Cottingham's role in the 1967 murder of Nancy Vogel, brilliantly figuring out who the victim might be that Cottingham was giving him "clues" to having murdered during his interviews with the serial killer.

NOT TRUE!  Link: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Cottingham confessed to the murder of Nancy Vogel in 1997-1998 to Detective Alan Grieco of the Bergen County Prosecutors Office (BCPO) who was working with Charles Buckley, the Deputy-Attorney General assigned to BCPO at the time as a interim prosecutor, and a deal had been negotiated for the case to be closed and the Vogel family were to be informed.  But they never were.  The deal was cancelled, apparently for political reasons - for "optics" - at the behest of the then New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman for political, who was concerned appearing "tough on crime" - no deals were going to be made. The A&E show even had retired Detective Grieco on as a guest, without mentioning that he had developed, confirmed and all-but-closed Cottingham's confession to the murder of Nancy Vogel back in the 1990s, when Anzilotti was still wet-behind-the-ears as a cop. The confession of Nancy Vogel was delivered to Anzilotti like room service on a platter by another senior cop's work (someone who actually was his mentor godfather in BCPO) who A&E refuses to acknowledge.

2. Anzilotti claims in his TV show he was surprised by my (I am the "true crime" author A&E refers to without daring to mention me by name) public announcement in a church (not "a library" the way A&E gets it wrong) in Midland Park in December 2019 and implies that my making that public I somehow perhaps imperilled his investigation and any future forthcoming confessions from Cottingham.

NOT TRUE!  Link: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Robert Anzilotti approved the text of my announcement in AUGUST 2019, six months before the December 2019 public meeting. It was scheduled to be published in February 2020, in the new updated second edition of my book Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monster - and Anzilotti and BCPO approved the text that would appear in the book. When John Bandstra, who also appears in the A&E documentary invited me to attend a public meeting on the murder of Jackie Harp he was hosting in the church basement in late December 2019, I met with Chief Anzilotti personally two weeks earlier, and reviewed with him what I would state in that meeting.

Right up to the morning of the meeting, Chief Anzilotti was contemplating appearing with me at the community meeting but three hours before it was scheduled to begin, he called me to say he decided not to attend the meeting because he was afraid to face "some of the questions that might be asked of him". Chief Anzilotti, myself, and John Bandstra agreed not to invite any members of the press to the meeting, however, Anzilotti on the morning of the meeting, confirmed to me that should the press attend or report on the meeting, any inquiries made by the press to BCPO, they will confirm the names of the three victims from 1968-1969, Jacalyn (Jackie) Harp, Irene Blase, and Denise Falasca, that their cases were exceptionally closed, their manner and cause of death, and that Richard Cottingham confessed in their murders but will not be prosecuted. It was not a shock or surprise to Anzilotti, the way the bullshit A&E show makes it out to be.

It was done in coordination with Chief Anzilotti's and BCPO and was integral to the subsequent confessions by Cottingham to the murders of Kelly & Pryor and Della Sala.

Jennifer Weiss at BCPO Field Office in Paramus New Jersey, assisting Chief Robert Anzilotti with the extraction of confessions from serial killer Richard Cottingham, Copyright © 2019 Peter Vronsky All Rights Reserved.

Jennifer and I did not participate or assist in the four case closures made by Chief Anzilotti in 2004-2017.  Jennifer and I did not arrive on the scene until May and June 2017 respectively.  Jennifer brought me in about six weeks after she began visiting serial killer Richard Cottingham, the man who murdered and beheaded her mother when she was an 18-month infant.

Whether those first four cases were closed by the brilliant work of this one-man-band "serial killer whisperer" all by his genius lonesome Anzilotti self... I don't know... I give him the benefit of the doubt. The world is full of geniuses. I know I'm not one. But maybe he is.

I know in the case of Nancy Vogel, all the work for Anzilotti to figure out WHO the victim was the Cottingham had been describing, the way Anzilotti on camera claims he had to 'Sherlock Holmes' it -- is not true, because BCPO Detective Alan Grieco had done it all in the 1996.  Anzilotti certainly earned due credit for reviving the case, and persuading Cottingham to confess to it again, and getting it into a courtroom and closing it in 2010. BRAVO! Job well done.

The subsequent 2014-2017 confession to Jacalyn (Jackie) Harp, Irene Blase, and Denise Falasca... I wasn't there.  Nor was Jennifer Weiss.  I will take retired Chief Anzilotti's word that it was all his genius work (and I am glad to see he at least for once credited his detective partner Jimmy McMorrow in the A&E show.)

BUT AFTER 2018... The murders of Lorraine Marie Kelly & Mary Ann Pryor in 1974 and Mary Ann Della Sala in 1967 would NOT HAVE BEEN CLOSED without Jennifer Weiss's assistance.