On a crisp evening in January 1967, 17-year-old Mary Ann Della Sala, a female high school senior, finished her shift at the Shop-Rite on Essex Street in Hackensack, New Jersey. It was January 24th, and after declining a ride from a coworker, she began her walk home, a journey she would never complete. When she failed to arrive, her concerned parents reported her missing, launching a search that would stretch on for a painful 76 days. The community waited, hoping for the safe return of the hardworking student who was helping to support her family.
The search for Mary Ann ended in heartbreak on April 10, 1967, when a factory worker discovered her body floating in the Passaic River in Hawthorne, about nine miles from where she was last seen. An autopsy revealed that she had been strangled, and investigators concluded that she had been killed elsewhere before being discarded in the river. Despite the tragic discovery, the investigation into her murder yielded no immediate answers.
Her case grew cold, and for decades, her name faded into the quiet files of unsolved homicides, leaving her family without closure.
For over half a century, the question of who killed Mary Ann Della Sala remained unanswered. The silence was finally broken in March 2022, when notorious serial killer Richard Cottingham, also known as the "Torso Killer," confessed to her murder. The confession was the result of years of persistent work by retired Bergen County Chief of Detectives Robert Anzilotti, who had built a relationship with the incarcerated Cottingham to solve numerous cold cases. Cottingham, already serving multiple life sentences for a string of brutal murders committed in New Jersey and New York, admitted to ending the young woman's life all those years ago. His admission made Mary Ann's murder one of the oldest cold cases ever to be closed through a confession and confirmed her as his earliest known victim. While there would be no separate trial or sentencing for this specific crime due to his existing life sentences, the confession finally brought a definitive, albeit somber, conclusion to a mystery that had haunted a New Jersey community for 55 years.
