Richard Cottingham, the New York City-area “Torso Killer,” has confessed to another long-unsolved killing: the 1965 death of nursing student Alys Eberhardt, Fair Lawn police said Tuesday.
Police said Cottingham admitted killing Eberhardt, an 18-year-old who was found dead in her family’s home in Fair Lawn, a suburb about 12 miles (19 kilometers) northwest of Manhattan. Investigators said the confession emerged after they reopened the case in 2021 and spent years seeking information from Cottingham.
Fair Lawn Police Chief Joseph Dawicki said his department will close the case and that Cottingham will not face additional charges. Dawicki said he understands the confession cannot bring Eberhardt back, but he expressed hope that the family can find peace knowing the person responsible has admitted the killing.
The statement from the department said investigators obtained “a full confession” from Cottingham, including details that were “never publicly known.” The department attributed the development to “countless interviews” over several years.
Cottingham, now 79, has been imprisoned since his arrest in 1980. Authorities said he is serving three life sentences at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
Investigators and prosecutors have previously linked Cottingham to multiple killings spanning New York and New Jersey. Cottingham has claimed responsibility for up to 100 homicides dating to the 1960s, while authorities have officially linked him to about a dozen.
The authorities’ charging history includes a 1968 slaying of 23-year-old Diane Cusick, for which Cottingham was sentenced to 25 years to life. Authorities said he received immunity from prosecution for four other killings tied to the plea deal, and that he was previously convicted in killings of five other women—three in New York City and two in northern New Jersey.
In 2022, Cottingham also admitted killing five women in Long Island suburbs of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to police. Lawyers in New York and New Jersey who have represented Cottingham over the years did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.
Cottingham is known as the “Torso Killer” because he dismembered some of his victims, and police say the new confession adds another name to a case that had remained open for decades.