Son of Queens Richard Cottingham murder victim recalls losing his mother 50 years ago: ‘Such pain in that ... You have to put it away’
John Moye was 5 years old when his young mother Laverne was murdered in 1972. Even as he built a successful career and raised five children of his own, he yearned to know who was responsible.
And then, about a month ago, the phone rang in his Atlanta-area home. The truth was more bizarre than he could have imagined: notorious serial murderer Richard Cottingham, the so-called “Times Square Killer,” had admitted to the 50-year-old unsolved homicide.
“I was at home in the kitchen, and they said they identified him, and there were others, a series of murders, that he had some sort of notoriety,” Moye, 55, told the Daily News. “I literally had no idea that was coming. I almost dropped the phone.”
The body of Laverne Moye, 22, was discovered by an 11-year-old boy July 20, 1972 in a wooded creek along Maine Ave. near Peninsula Blvd. in Rockville Centre. The St. Albans, Queens mom of two had been strangled.
Laverne’s sister, Kim Tinsley — Moye’s aunt — was 10 when she went along with her mother and father to identify the body. It’s a moment etched in her memory.
“I was very nervous because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” said Tinsley, now 60, a teacher’s assistant with two grown children. “I got kind of sick from my stomach from the nerves and the stress. It was an eerie experience.”
The detectives asked the family to identify jewelry Laverne was wearing and questioned them about friends she may have had, Tinsley recalls. Her mother and father cried.
The body of a second woman, Mary Beth Heinz, 21, had been found in the same creek two months earlier. She had also been strangled. But in both cases the investigations eventually stalled.
Moye and Tinsley don’t recall any particular law enforcement contacts during their adult lives. Nor did any reporters come knocking to do retrospectives on the case.
As the decades passed, the family concluded Laverne’s murder would never be solved.
“We didn’t really know what happened — it was all pure speculation,” Moye said. “We knew she was murdered. We didn’t know the nature of it.”
And at some point, life simply had to go on.
“There’s so such pain in that. You can’t stay stuck in it,” Moye said. “You have to find closure. You have to put it away.”
Moye and his sister were raised mainly by their grandparents, Laverne B. Moye and the late Berghard Herriot, in their two-family brick home on Francis Lewis Blvd. in St. Albans.
The household was nurturing, Moye says, and years of Catholic school and the church instilled a faith that kept him strong.
Moye attended Queens College and went on to work for Gov. Mario Cuomo, and then for Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi as executive director of minority affairs, and later for Gov. Andrew Cuomo as his labor representative in the city. He is now senior policy director for the National Urban League in Atlanta.
He and his wife have five children, ages 21 to 31, including his eldest daughter Imani, who worked for Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), a former Nassau County District Attorney.
And so, from a childhood trauma that might have scarred someone else, Moye has thrived.
“My faith saved me, and I leaned on it heavily. And also I had a lot of good people behind me and support and mentors,” he said.
Laverne Moye is very much remembered in small ways, and large — especially around the holidays when the family gathers to share stories.
Moye’s father, John Moye Sr., became a pastor in North Carolina. He and Laverne had been separated when she was killed, but he carried a lifelong sense of loss and talked of her often.
Moye Sr. died a year ago at age 76, from COVID complications, never knowing who was responsible.
“He just was really deeply affected, I would say, wounded, even after these many years,” Moye said. “I wish he would have known what happened to her before he died.”
And then Nassau prosecutors reached out to the family a month ago. They actually called Moye’s grandmother first, also named Laverne. She still lives in the same home in Floral Park, where Tinsley also resides.
“She said it was a very important call. At first, I didn’t believe it. She’s in and out with her mind these days, and I said, ‘No, that can’t be,’” Tinsley said. “It was almost such a shock — I thought, this has to be a scam or a gimmick.”
Tinsley touched base with a detective in the Nassau prosecutor’s office who confirmed the news. Moye got the next call.
Unbeknownst to them, months earlier, investigators had gotten a hit on DNA found at the scene of the 1968 murder of dance teacher Diane Cusick in Valley Stream. The DNA hit led them to Cottingham.
The convicted killer, now 76 and frail, had long been in prison for 11 brutal murders of young women and teen girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. He had been a computer tech in Midtown who lived in the Garden State during his sick rampage.
Cottingham spent a dozen hours at South Woods Prison in Bridgeton, N.J. talking with detectives and Nassau homicide chief Jared Rosenblatt about other Nassau cold cases.
In 2021, the killer cooperated with a Netflix documentary and has made unproven claims to have more than 100 victims.
But he offered a level of detail about Laverne’s murder that convinced Rosenblatt and the detectives he was responsible. Cottingham gave similar detail about the murder of Heinz, the victim found in the same creek, and two other Nassau homicides from that era.
Prosecutors said that while Cottingham had relatives in Massapequa and often traveled along Sunrise Highway, they could not say why or how he chose Laverne or the others.
He claimed that he killed his victims when they “became a threat to identify him or his actions,” Nassau DA Anne Donnelly said.
As part of a deal formalized Monday, Cottingham pleaded guilty to Cusick’s murder and accepted a 25 years to life sentence. While he admitted to the other four murders, he won’t be prosecuted for those. He will die in prison for his earlier homicides.
Moye has mixed feelings about the plea arrangement. “Of course, I would have preferred for him to have been prosecuted on the merits, but I understand the greater good,” he said. “When the dust settled, he was held accountable and I was at peace with it.”
Cottingham refused to address the victims’ relatives in the courtroom with a flat, “No.” Moye called him a “coward” in the courtroom and says his refusal showed “the highest form of disrespect.” He says Cottingham should forfeit any money he’s made from the documentary.
“(The hearing) was surreal. It was intense, it was emotional, it was overwhelming in some respects,” Moye said.
Members of the victims’ families had a private lunch after the hearing and shared memories of their loved ones. Nassau prosecutors are still looking for the family of one victim, Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves, 18, whose body was found near Jones Beach.
“My mother was a beautiful person. She was only 22 but her impact has been immeasurable beyond the short time she was on this earth,” Moye said. “I hope her story will have a positive impact, that out of all this destruction, there came a resolution.”
Over the desk in his study at home near Atlanta, Moye keeps a framed photo of her, an enduring tribute to a woman who remains present even after so long.
“She’s about five or six years old in the photo and I talk to her every day,” he said. “The picture was taken in 1950-something, but it has never aged. It has remained like new all these years.”
