A notorious New Jersey serial killer, dubbed the "Torso Killer” for his brutal dismemberment of his victims, has confessed to killing three Bergen County teenagers in the late 1960s. The crimes that had been unsolved for more than five decades are now officially cleared, authorities say.

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 Advance Media. Cottingham has been in the state prison system since the early 1980s for other murders.

In July 1968, Cottingham strangled Harp, 13, of Midland Park, as she was walking home from band practice, Musella said.

On April 7, 1969, Blase, 18, of Bogota, vanished from Hackensack and was found strangled to death in Saddle River the next day.

Much like Blase, Falasca, 15, of Closter, was abducted from Emerson on July 14, 1969 and found strangled to death the next day in nearby Saddle Brook, the prosecutor said.

“The Prosecutor’s Office investigations revealed that Richard Cottingham committed these homicides,” Musella wrote.

The office did not immediately explain how they were able to get Cottingham’s confession. Musella also did not immediately say if or how Cottingham’s existing prison terms or parole eligibility might be affected.

Cottingham has not been charged with the girls’ murders, but the cases have been, what is called “exceptionally cleared.”

Detectives did this over 15 years, author and historian Peter Vronsky revealed Monday night at an event in Midland Park, where Harp’s murder had loomed over town as a cold case.

“Those confessions were made sometime between 2004 and 2019 ― it began in 2004 ― through this ongoing dogged process," Vronsky told NJ Advance Media.

The teens’ killings add to a list of grisly slayings by Cottingham, who would often brutalize his victim’s bodies after he killed them, cutting off their limbs, breasts and heads. The gruesome manner in which Cottingham dispatched his victims earned him the nickname "the torso killer.”

Between 1967 and 1980, Cottingham, of Lodi, killed six women in New Jersey and New York. His interstate killing spree was discovered in May 1980, when a maid at a Hasbrouck Heights motels heard a woman screaming from inside his room. Cottingham had attempted to rape and murder the 18-year-old woman.

When police arrived, they found the woman bound with handcuffs on her ankles, bite marks on one breast and a knife wound below it.

The investigation into Cottingham led to a trail of violence and savage murders. He ultimately was convicted of two murders and three kidnappings in New Jersey, in addition to the murders of three women in New York.

Richard Cottingham being led out of court in Hackensack in 1982 following a guilty verdict.Photo by Peter Karas

In 2010, investigators from the Bergen prosecutor’s office were able to elicit a confession from Cottingham for another previously unsolved murder, from 1967.

As with Cottingham’s recent confessions, Bergen investigators made relentless visits to his prison cell for interviews. Finally, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the murder of Nancy Schiava Vogel, of Ridgefield Park. He strangled the 29-year-old married mother of two in Little Ferry. Her nude, bound body was found in her car, in Ridgefield Park.

Vogel had last been seen three days earlier, when she left to play bingo with friends at a local church.

Cottingham is currently serving more than 200 years for two murders in New Jersey and a life sentence for Vogel’s murder. He has been in custody since July 1981 and has a parole eligibility date in August 2025, according to prison records.

He is currently incarcerated in New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.

Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon.

Find NJ.com on Facebook. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.