Richard Cottingham, infamously dubbed the ‘torso killer,’ has admitted to the 1965 slaying of Alys Jean Eberhardt, an 18-year-old nursing student.

The Fair Lawn Police Department in New Jersey revealed this stunning development on Tuesday morning.

Peter Vronsky, an investigative historian, played a pivotal role in securing Cottingham’s confession on December 22, 2025. He collaborated with Sergeant Eric Eleshewich and Detective Brian Rypkema to crack this decades-old mystery.

“It was a race against time,” Vronsky shared with the Daily Mail. “Cottingham experienced a severe medical crisis in October, nearly passing away and risking taking his secrets to the grave.”

Eberhardt’s murder in September 1965 now stands as the earliest crime Cottingham has admitted to. At the time, he was 19, just a year older than Eberhardt. Were she alive today, Eberhardt would be 78 years old.

Known for his grisly legacy, Cottingham has been connected to 20 murders across New York and New Jersey and is serving multiple life sentences. However, authorities suspect he may have claimed the lives of as many as 85 to 100 women and girls, with his youngest victim being just 13.

Cottingham, now 79 with long white hair and a beard, showed little remorse during his confession to police last month.

‘He doesn’t understand why people still care,’ Eleshewich told the Daily Mail.

Alys Jean Eberhardt (pictured) was an 18-year-old nursing student and one of Richard Cottingham’s first victims, he confirmed. She was killed on September 24, 1965

Richard Cottingham, now 79, (pictured in an undated mugshot) confessed to Eberhardt’s murder Dec 22

‘He was very calculated with what he did back then and was very aware of things that he would do in order to keep himself out of trouble with the law and to evade capture.’

During the confession, the detective said, he admitted that ‘this one [murder] was sloppy, which wasn’t like him. But he said this was also very early on and he kind of learned from his mistakes.’

Cottingham told detectives of his sadistic plan during the kill.  

Eleshewich told the Daily Mail that the killer said his victim ‘kind of foiled his plans because she was very aggressive and fought him, and that he wasn’t expecting [it]. He was frustrated by the fight that she put up. His plan was to have fun with her.’

Cottingham was never formally linked to Eberhardt’s murder due to a lack of evidence and the absence of DNA – that is, until the case was reopened in the Spring of 2021.

After his confession, Eberhardt’s family was notified – finally putting the six-decade nightmare to rest and giving them the closure they yearned for. Eleshewich also notified one of the retired detectives who initially worked on the case in 1965 – he is over 100 years old today.

Eberhardt’s nephew Michael Smith released a statement on the family’s behalf.

‘Our family has waited since 1965 for the truth,’ Smith said. ‘To receive this news during the holidays – and to be able to tell my mother, Alys’s sister, that we finally have answers – was a moment I never thought would come.

‘As Alys’s nephew, I am deeply moved that our family can finally honor her memory with the truth. 

‘On behalf of the Eberhardt family, we want to thank the entire Fair Lawn Police Department for their work and the persistence required to secure a confession after all this time. Your efforts have brought a long-overdue sense of peace to our family and prove that victims like Alys are never forgotten, no matter how much time passes.

‘Richard Cottingham is the personification of evil, yet I am grateful that even he has finally chosen to answer the questions that have haunted our family for decades. We will never know why, but at least we finally know who.’

Pictured: The changing faces of ‘the torso killer’ Richard Cottingham through the decades

Vronsky created a chart (pictured) that is a historical and investigative-judicial chronology. Numbers 10 – 19 in the green portion were the confessions Vronsky was able to get from Cottingham from 2021 – 2022 with the help from a victim’s daughter, Jennifer Weiss

Vronsky said Cottingham was a highly praised and valued employee for 14 years at Blue Cross Insurance. He is pictured in his work ID from the 1970s

Eberhardt died of blunt force trauma, according to the medical examiner’s report.

The tall, auburn-haired woman was last seen leaving her dormitory at Hackensack Hospital School of Nursing on September 24, 1965.

Eberhardt left school early that day to attend her aunt’s funeral. She drove to her home on Saddle River Road in Fair Lawn and planned to drive with her father to meet the rest of their family in upstate New York.

But Eberhardt never made it.

Cottingham saw the young woman in the parking lot and followed her home, detectives said.

When she arrived, her parents and siblings were not there.

She heard a knock on the front door of the home, opened it, and saw Cottingham standing there. He showed her a fake police badge and told her he wanted to talk to her parents.

When the teen told him her parents weren’t home, he asked her for a piece of paper to write his number on so her father could call him.

Eberhardt left Cottingham at the door momentarily, and that is when he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

He took an object from the house and bashed Eberhardt’s head with it until she was dead. He then used a dagger to make 62 shallow cuts on her upper chest and neck before thrusting a kitchen knife into her throat.

Around 6pm, when Eberhardt’s father, Ross, arrived home, he found his daughter’s bludgeoned and partially nude body on the living room floor.

Cottingham had fled through a back door with some of the weapons he had used, then discarded them.

No arrests were ever made, and the case eventually went cold.

Cottingham told Vronsky that he was ‘surprised’ by how hard the young woman fought him.

Vronsky said the killer also told him he did not remember what object he used to hit Eberhardt with, but said he took it from the home’s garage. He also told him he was still in the house when her father arrived home.

Peter Vronsky (left) said Weiss (right), who died of a brain tumor in May 2023, forgave Cottingham for the brutal murder of her mother 

Weiss’s mother was Deedeh Goodarzi (pictured), one of Cottingham’s victims. Goodarzi’s head and hands were severed at Times Square hotel The Travel Inn on December 2, 1979

Cottingham used a rare souvenir dagger (only a thousand were made) that he bought in Manhattan to make the cuts.

He told Vronsky he made the cuts to confuse police and had intended to make 52 slashes, the number of playing cards in a deck, but ‘lost count.’

‘He said he attempted to group the cuts into four “playing card suites” of 13, but said it was difficult to make the grouping on the victim’s body,’ Vronsky said.

The newspapers initially reported that Eberhardt was ‘stabbed like crazy,’ but the historian said ‘the newspapers got it completely wrong.’

‘I never saw him “stab” a victim so many times, but when I saw those “scratch cuts” I nearly fell out of my chair. I saw those familiar scratches in some of his other murders,’ he told the Daily Mail.

Criminologist Peter Vronksy (left) pictured with serial killer Richard Cottingham (right)

Weiss (left) pictured with Cottingham (right) in prison – before her May 2023 death

Vronsky, who authored four books on the history of serial homicide, said the police ‘never knew they had a serial killer out there until the day of his random arrest in May 1980.’

He explained that Cottingham was not your typical serial killer. 

‘Every time a case gets closed, we learn just how versatile and far-ranging this serial killer was. Cottingham’s MO was no MO,’ Vronsky said. ‘He stabbed, suffocated, battered, ligature-strangled and drowned his victims.

Vronsky (pictured) explains that Cottingham ‘does not respond to direct questions about the murders’

‘He was a ghostly serial killer for 15 years at least, and I suspect his earliest murders were in 1962-1963 when Cottingham was a 16-year-old high school student.’

Whether Eberhardt was Cottingham’s first murder victim remains unknown.  

‘He said he killed “only” maybe one in every 10 or 15 he abducted or raped,’ Vronsky added. ‘[Meaning there are] a lot of unreported victims out there in their 60s and 70s who survived him and never said anything.’

Vronsky told the Daily Mail that ‘Cottingham started killing years before Ted Bundy is known to have started,’ adding that ‘he was Ted Bundy before Ted Bundy was Ted Bundy.’

‘He was using the same ruses Bundy used, and was still killing – without anybody catching on – years after Ted Bundy was arrested,’ Vronsky said.

The historian and his late investigative partner, Jennifer Weiss, were instrumental in getting a confession from Cottingham, telling the Daily Mail they ‘pushed on hard at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office since 2019.’

Cottingham murdered Weiss’ mother, Deedeh Goodarzi, in the late 1970s. He severed her head and hands in a hotel room in Times Square and then lit the room on fire.

In 2023, Weiss died of a brain tumor. Before her death, she miraculously forgave Cottingham for her mother’s murder.

‘Jennifer forgiving him had a profound effect on him. It moved him deeply,’ Vronsky said.

‘This was number 11 for Jennifer and me. She is gone but still at work. She is credited posthumously for what she did.’